A Matter of Love in da Bronx

by Paul Argentini

  Exploding in a rage, he tore the covers from the bed, lashing them across the room high to the furthermost wall as he forced himself to stand on the freezing floor, his genitals drawing in, small, tight, hard to the now roughskinned sack. Packed to his teeth, his throat filled with the attritus of fear: ash, dry as death.

  Downcurtain.

  Next scene.

  As a sooty smoke drifted away from before his eyes, Sam could only sense that a scurfy mud was slipping from over his brain, not realizing it was the scoriaceous product of his heart's pilgrimage through the volcano of his soul. Only now was the night's blackness releasing him, and it came a blink at a time until the pain of the light in the shop made him snap his head about to clear his sight. There was a gap in sequential memory. He fought to erase the amnesia, to no avail. He was in the shop, leaning hard against the worktable, wearing hat and jacket, realizing by the time that he had lost two hours of his life. He had no idea of how he got there; by feeling his face that he had not shaved; but nothing would tell him if he had breakfast, if he saw anyone, what he did. So? What does it matter? Who cares? His hands hung heavily in his jacket pockets, just as he felt his cheeks sag weightily. It mattered not, not a whit, what he'd been up to. Without moving his head, his eyes now searched the room, not for anything in particular, just to see what he saw. What came through his eyes had never penetrated before--the shop, not the shop in which he worked; the shop in which he grew old. Like a mouse emptying a sackful of rice by snacking it away grain by grain, the full sack is soon known only to be a collapsed, empty bag on the floor. Wasn't it always so? Would one could order another full sack of life. The change had come so insidiously, painstakingly slowly it was never noticed. So was it with the moments of his life right to his very second. So complete was Rose's affect on him, Sam rejected himself totally as a person. He wasn't selective in choosing the one aspect that made her not want to see him again--the fact was the corruption of his ego by his younger self wouldn't allow him to accept even that part of the truth happened to be that she was fearful of her father and their family's feud. Not seeing that, he could see, however, that he was totally rotten, and suddenly, for the very first time, time had a new meaning. Heretofore, he'd have a healthy respect for time...if he wasn't such a shit. Then, his eyes caught the tack hammer, the curved needle, the tack puller, the stapler, the scissor, the dikes. Tools, his tools. The sight of them made him shiver. Not the shiver from a chill, the kind that would make him feel tight all over, then cause his body to shake. It was a quiet shiver, one born of nervousness, anxiety. Fear. Enervating. Deadening. Time passed unnoticed, but yoked to it the fatigue that made Sam unable to sustain the spasticity either in mind or body, which made room for sadness to envelope him. He saw the tools for exactly what they were, what they had been. He forced himself to pick up the hammer, then, with revulsion, drop it. He nodded his head slowly. He had come to understand one more thing about himself, about this life. The spiritual, natural, instinctual forces generated in his gonads went into his guts then detoured to come out his hands instead of an erect penis brought to orgasm into a helpmate's receptacle. The lust to endure was put into his tools. Each one of them came into his hand with the sensual slickness of a dribbling, springtide, embrocated vagina. Each one of them replaced his penis. Each one of them demanded satisfaction. If there was no woman by which he could walk, or hold hands, or embrace, or kiss, or fuck; then, he could drive a tack head home, hard and deep; he could run a needle in and out fast, pricking heatedly; or he could strip a chair bare, see its hidden mysteries and incarcerate therein a few wishes of his own. Be that such as it was. It was now. Now meant gone. All gone. Everything was all gone. Time had been played--unforgiving, irretrievable time. Lost. Lost. Lost! What a pity. He could not undo what he had done to himself. Sam had thrust upon Sam, so very long ago it seems, choices made in a pique; made to spite, made to gain revenge, made to induce misery. But, he knew now, "society"--whoever that was--wasn't listening. Society was indifferent. Society couldn't give a fuck about Sam Scopia. That didn't make him unique, however. What did make him somewhat rare, though, was that in the face of life's cruelty, life's indifference, Sam Scopia had fallen victim to one of life’s more egregious incorrigibility’s: self-betrayal.

  --Sam! You look like you fell, dipped and drug yourself back and forth couples times through your own asshole. What for be you hugging such a shitpile a misery? Thus spake Lincoln Jackson.

  Shattering. The elytron-like bubble within which his condemnatory thoughts ricocheted frenetically--as electrons in a microwave oven--which was making a fricassee of his brain, fissioned. To macrosmithereens. Unencased, unprotected he had to forego the indulgence of his sado-masochistic pleasures to respond, he was not, after all, catatonic. --Lincoln Jackson...?

  --That's me.

  --I'm doing just great! What's with you? Embarrassed at first by his self-made malaise his mind exploded in an effort to cover up, then, quickly regaining control, Sam became aware his sensitivity level was once more on full key, flashing an attention signal to the black man. The vibrations emanating from him were starbursts. And Lincoln Jackson had an aura. Without much focusing, it was quite discernable. A shadowgraph around his form. In subtle hues is deepened from a light lavender at his outline to a bishop's purple several feet out, all of it gently pulsing as a breathing life, a true ectonebula. This was the first of this color Sam ever encountered in all the years since he had discovered his gift. The first was a yellowish brown--like horehound drops--that emanated from his teacher when he was…what? seven? eight? nine? years old? Like he had stared at the brilliant sun at midday and the person was a shadow coming through the haze with the aura fading somewhat as the features became prevalent. He didn't associate the colors with events until some long weeks later when the teacher died. A brown, Smith Brothers cough drop color aura, meant then, soon to depart this world. Noted. So, he avoided eye contact, or looking at someone for fear of catching them in aura. He was especially frightened to glance at his parents, because, for a long time--a half-dozen years, he felt he held the power of life and death. He would lie awake long into the night, thinking about it, shaking, shaking. Then, the revelation: He wasn't sending out any messages which would cause an incident. No. He was merely the receptor of such notices. There were other colors, but he had no way of knowing what they signified. So he guessed at most, attempting to read the mannerisms, facial expressions, physical performance of the auraed person. The bright yellows indicated physical or mental pain; the range of blues he interpreted as from contentment to ecstasy; greens as any variation on anger; the reds as hard mental activity. He would go through long periods where auras appeared to him frequently; and others, such as in the last four years or so where he had completely forgotten about them. And now the dry spell was broken with the unusual aura color...--the purple--he'd never before seen. The compounded event icing him solidly.

  --Sam! Sam! D'you slip off the edge or what?

  --I'm fine!

  --Like shit you're fine. You look to me like you need a couple ounces bluing starch poured down your gullet.

  Lincoln Jackson prescribing for Sam Scopia? That was a switch. It always was that Sam was in control trying to ease the other man's pain: hunger, the misery of the D.T.s, or the general agonies of living. Physically he seemed rock solid. He wasn't shaking or weaving back and forth, his clothes were clean, all buttons buttoned, laces tied; and, most unusual, there wasn't a hint of odor about him of wine, beer or booze. --No, really. Just this and that. I'm fine...

  --If you say so. Now, Sam, you and I know each other a long time, not like deep, well-thought relatives would be, but enough like we worked together . . . on that level I'm talking. Lincoln Jackson didn't talk that way at all, but it was the way Sam preferred to translate his remarks. And on that basis I can tell you I need you to help me out so I don't want to rile you in any way, and miss out on my chance. I've never seen you like this before, not that I was always in any condition to ma
ke a critical analysis, so I must assume something of major proportion has altered in your world. So, it's gotta be woman trouble.

  --Speak of a flattering accusation. What makes you say that?

  --If one of your folks died, you wouldn't be here. I know Sol Yeuch The Scootch isn't around, so you're not fired; and you'd have your clothes with you if you got kicked out of your house; or, if you got the clap you'd be at the doctors. Worse than all that, if you're dying, you'd be out picking out your box, or deciding on a headstone. But, you're not any of those. So, gotta be a dame. Either your wife left you, or your girl friend did, or both.

  --I don't have either one. Never did.

  --Like I said woman trouble.

  --Sam smiled broadly, taking a gentle roundhouse in his direction. --This lady makes me hurt all over, and as far as she'd concerned, I walk the sewers.

  --I'll get you fixed up with some black pussy what knows all about love and loving will wear your pecker out right up to your belly button. Pining for a woman while you have boiling balls is like food shopping with an empty belly, you take on more than you need and no amount will really satisfy you. Just one visit with Jacinta! Hooooo-eeeeeey! She's more good medicine than a cut-rate drug store. She's been known to bring sobriety to the inebriated; erectionability to the impotent; and liveability to the dead! She has the lame, the halt, the blind, the infirm, the weak, the unwilling run relay races because once one goes into Jacinta there's damn good reason to do it again. What do you say? Once she starts working on you with her hands, her mouth, and that pussy of hers she'll drive any other woman right, direct, straight out of your mind and hard-on! I could take you there, and you could be in freedom-land in less than fifteen minutes! Now, you stop shaking your head like that because you look like you're trying to saw through your neck with a rusty razor! Man! You oughta try one good fuck first, then go back to moping!

  --No. I don't think so.

  --Come on!

  --No, thanks. I'm just not interested.

  --Really?

  --Really.

  --Oh! Man! You are sick. You got a problem. You're in love! Whooooooo-eeeeee!

  Sam screwed up his face, staring right square into the black man's eyes before he eased into a soft smile, and nodded his head up and down rapidly. What an absolutely marvelous fact!

  Lincoln Jackson shrugged. It was just another of life's hopelessnesses. --Then promise yourself one thing: Before you try suicide, try Jacinta.

  The full realization--the discovery--that his emotions had been projected to such an extent to another person brought almost as much ecstasy as the bewitchment itself. The disconsolateness came from his perception that there would be no requitement, which was altogether something else but which unleashed the madness within him. He was quite content to make the point to himself, and understanding this, found himself quite free to pursue the fury of each posture exactly as he wished. Though, first, Lincoln Jackson. --Lincoln Jackson, there's something going on in your world, and I want to know what it is.

  --How do you know that?

  --You don't have the shakes. You're not on booze, or scratch, or black tar, or crack. Your eyeballs are only half bloodshot, though I get the feeling you've not been sleeping. Your clothes are neat, ironed. All that not to hurt your feelings, but to prove I'm a good friend, and I'd like to help. Just tell me how.

  --Sure! What I came here for! Put me to work!

  --You need the money.

  --No. I need the work. Howevermuch there is. Just for today.

  --Do me a favor. I wouldn't ask if you couldn't do it. I'm sick. I don't want anyone around. Here's forty dollars. You owe eight hours work. The two twenties came off the outside of the roll he took from his pocket. Now go.

  --Sam...

  --Don't have to say a word. Just take it. The black hand came pink palm upwards accepting the green as a consecrated offeratory. This is not a day for you to be working. You've seen a redemption, I know.

  --How do you know?

  --I know. I hope it lasts.

  --Maybe. Maybe not. Long as it lasts long enough. Reformed sinner's like a reformed drunk: You always know there's some good trouble missing from your life.

  --I hope you aren't in too much pain.

  --There's always something a man can do, you know. That gives him dignity when nothing else will do. Like, he's got to find it somewhere. I may not make it past the next package store to buy a bottle with this, but I sure hope I do. I'm needed, Sam. No feeling in this world like the feeling you are needed and needed badly. I'm needed by my family. I need me for myself, too. My boy needs me. He closed his hand on the money, the floe in his eyes balancing precariously on the lids, as they grew larger, then rolled free of their own weight, streaking a glistening tracks down the black man's cheeks. I gotta make my own contribution to the boy, Sam. Police found cause to put eleven bullet holes in him last night. I want to be around his wife and baby. Sam? What the Christ is this all about? He was just fifteen. My God! Fifteen! He didn't yet know how to get his feet out of the way when he pissed.

  Sam followed him to the door, and bolted it after he'd passed through. There was an insanity in the world that should never be faced by sane people, he thought, but if it wasn't so, then whose world would it become? Too much. So, he focused his attention on the bathroom.

  The transformation was a stunner. He had first attacked the room with boiling hot water and detergent: the walls, ceiling, floor, door; then the toilet, sink and medicine cabinet. When all the porcelain and metal gleamed he started painting. Now the room was a pale, robin's egg blue. He made a paper pattern of the floor, and used it to cut the carpet remnant, then set it in place. Finally, he covered the new bulb with a many-colored shade. The shopping trip to buy what he needed took less than two hours, using everything he bought took the rest of the day. Now, standing before the open door ready to leave for work at the restaurant, he nodded in understanding and appreciation: the room had become his therapy; the room had become his salvation; the room had become him.