Удушье (Choke)

by Чак Паланик

  It's a gifting scam with just me at the top and new members lined up to buy in by hugging me from behind. Bleeding these good generous people is.

  Still, it's not like I'm spending the money on drugs and gam­bling. It's not like I even get to finish a meal anymore. Halfway through every main course, I have to go to work. Do my gagging and thrashing. Even then, some people never come across with any money. Some never seem to give it another thought. After long enough even the most generous people will stop sending a check.

  The crying part, where I'm hugged in somebody's arms, gasp­ing and crying, that part just gets easier and easier. More and more, the hardest part of crying is when I can't stop.

  Not crossed out in the phone book, there's still fondue. There's Thai. Greek. Ethiopian. Cuban. There's still a thousand places I haven't gone to die.

  To increase cash flow, you have to create two or three heroes every night. Some nights you have to hit three or four places be­fore you've had a full meal.

  I'm a performance artist doing dinner theater, doing three shows a night. Ladies and gentlemen, may I have a volunteer from the audience.

  "Thank you, but no thank you," I'd like to tell my dead rela­tives. "But I can build my own family."

  Fish. Meat. Vegan. Tonight, like most nights, the easiest way is to just close your eyes.

  Hold your finger over the open phone book.

  Step right up and become a hero, ladies and gentlemen. Step right up and save a life.

  Just let your hand drop, and let fate decide for you.

  Chapter 13

  Because of the heat, Denny strips off his coat, then his sweater. Without undoing the buttons, even the cuffs or the collar one, he pulls his shirt off over his head, inside out, so now his head and hands are bagged in red plaid flannel. The T-shirt underneath works up around his armpits while he's fighting the shirt off his head, and his bare stomach looks rashy and caved-in. Some long twisted hairs sprout around his little dot nipples. His nipples look cracked and sore.

  "Dude," Denny says, still struggling inside his shirt. "Too many layers. Why's it got to be so hot in here?"

  Because it's a kind of a hospital. It's a constant care residence.

  Over his jeans and belt, you can see the dead elastic waist­band of his bad underpants. Orange rust stains show on the loose elastic. In front, a few coiled hairs poke out. There's yellowy sweat stains on, for real, his underarm skin.

  The front desk girl is sitting right here, watching with her face all bunched up tight around her nose.

  I try and tug his T-shirt back down, and there's for sure many colors of lint in his navel. At work in the locker room, I've seen Denny pull his pants off inside out with the underpants still on them the way I did when I was little.

  And still with his head wrapped up in his shirt, Denny goes, "Dude, can you help me? There's a button somewheres I don't know about."

  The front desk girl is giving me her look. She's got the tele­phone receiver halfway to her ear.

  With most of his clothes on the floor next to him, Denny gets skinnier until he's down to just his sour T-shirt and his jeans with dirt on each knee. His tennis shoes are double-knotted with the knots and eye holes glued forever with dirt.

  It's somewhere around a hundred degrees here because most of these people don't have any circulation, I tell him. It's a lot of old folks here.

  It smells clean, which means you only smell chemicals, clean­ing stuff, or perfumes. You have to know the pine smell is cover­ing up shit somewhere. Lemon means somebody vomited. Roses are urine. After an afternoon at St. Anthony's, you never want to smell another rose the rest of your life.

  The lobby has stuffed furniture and fake plants and flowers.

  This decorator stuff will peter out after you get beyond the locked doors.

  To the front desk girl, Denny says, "Will anybody mess with my junk if I just leave it here?" He means the pile of his old clothes. He says, "I'm Victor Mancini." He looks at me. "And I'm here to see my mom?"

  To Denny, I go, "Dude, jeez, she doesn't have brain damage." To the desk girl, I say, "I'm Victor Mancini. I'm here all the time to see my mom, Ida Mancini. She's in Room 158."

  The girl presses a phone button and says, "Paging Nurse Remington. Nurse Remington to the front desk, please." Her voice comes out huge through the ceiling.

  You have to wonder if Nurse Remington is a real person.

  You have to wonder if maybe this girl thinks Denny's just another aggressive chronic undresser.

  Denny goes to kick his clothes under a stuffed chair.

  A fat man comes jogging down the hall with one hand pressed over a bouncing chest pocket full of pens and another hand on his hip holster of hot pepper spray. Keys jingle on his other hip. To the front desk girl, he says, "So what's the situation here?"

  And Denny says, "Is there a bathroom I can use? Like, for civilians?"

  The problem is Denny.

  So he'll hear her confession, he needs to meet what's left of my mom. My plan is I'll introduce him as Victor Mancini.

  This way Denny can find out who I really am. This way my mom can find some peace. Gain some weight. Save me the cost of a tube. Not die.

  When Denny's back from the bathroom, the guard is walking us to the living part of St. Anthony's and Denny says, "There's no lock on the bathroom door here. I was settled on the can and some old lady just barged in on me."

  I ask if she wanted sex.

  And Denny says, "How's that again?"

  We go through a set of doors the guard has to unlock, then another set. As we walk, his keys bounce against his hip. Even the back of his neck has a big roll of fat.

  "Your mom?" Denny says. "So does she look like you?"

  "Maybe," I say, "except, you know . . ."

  And Denny says, "Except starved and with no brain left, right?"

  And I go, "Stop already." I say, "Okay, she was a shitty mother, but she's the only mom I have."

  "Sorry, dude," Denny says, and he goes, "But won't she notice I'm not you?"

  Here at St. Anthony's, they have to close the curtains before it gets dark, since if a resident sees themself reflected in a window they'll think somebody's peeping in at them. It's called "sun-downing." When all the old folks get crazy at sunset.

  You could put most of these folks in front of a mirror and tell them it's a television special about old dying miserable people, and they'd watch for hours.

  The problem is my mom won't talk to me when I'm Victor, and she won't talk to me when I'm her attorney. My only hope is to be her public defender while Denny's me. I can goad. He can listen. Maybe then she'll talk.

  Think of this as some kind of Gestalt ambush.

  Along the way, the guard asks wasn't I the guy who raped Mrs. Field's dog?

  No, I tell him. It's a long story, I say. About eighty years long.

  We find Mom in the dayroom, sitting at a table with a shat­tered jigsaw puzzle spread out in front of her. There must be a thousand pieces, but there's no box to show how it's supposed to look. It could be anything.

  Denny says, "That's her?" He says, "Dude, she looks nothing like you."

  My mom's pushing puzzle pieces around, some of them turned over so the gray cardboard side shows, and she's trying to fit them together.

  "Dude," Denny says. He turns a chair around and sits at the table so he can lean forward on the chair back. "In my experi­ence, these puzzles work best if you find all the flat edge pieces first."

  My mom's eyes crawl all over Denny, his face, his chapped lips, his shaved head, the holes open in the seams of his T-shirt.

  "Good morning, Mrs. Mancini," I say. "Your son, Victor, is here to visit you. This is him." I say, "Don't you have something important to tell him?"

  "Yeah," Denny says, nodding. "I'm Victor." He starts picking up pieces with a flat edge. "Is this blue part supposed to be sky or water?" he says.

  And my mom's old blue eyes start to fill up with juice.

  "Victor
?" she says.

  She clears her throat. Staring at Denny, she says, "You're here."

  And Denny keeps spreading the puzzle pieces with his fin­gers, picking out the flat ones and getting them off to one side. On the stubble of his shaved head, from his red plaid shirt, there are lumps of red lint.

  And my mom's old hand creaks out across the table and closes around Denny's hand. "It's so good to see you," she says. "How are you? It's been so long." A little eye juice tips out the bottom of one eye and follows the wrinkles to the corner of her mouth.

  "Jeez," Denny says, and he pulls his hand back. "Mrs. Mancini, your hands are freezing."

  My mother says, "I'm sorry."

  You can smell some kind of cafeteria food, cabbage or beans, that's being cooked down to mush.

  This whole time, I'm still standing here.

  Denny pieces together a few inches of the edge. To me, he says, "So when do we meet this perfect lady doctor of yours?"

  My mom says, "You're not going already, are you?" She looks at Denny, her eyes swamped and her old eyebrow bushes kissing together in the middle above her nose. "I've missed you so much," she says.

  Denny says, "Hey, dude, we lucked out. Here's a corner!"

  My mom's shaky, boiled-looking old hand shakes over and picks a clump of red lint off Denny's head.

  And I say, "Excuse me, Mrs. Mancini." I say, "But wasn't there something you needed to tell your son?"

  My mom just looks at me, then at Denny. "Can you stay, Vic­tor?" she says. "We need to talk. There's so much I need to ex­plain."

  "So explain," I say.

  Denny says, "Here's an eye, I think." He says, "So is this sup­posed to be somebody's face?"

  My mom holds one shaky old hand open at me, and she says, "Fred, this is between my son and me. This is an important fam­ily matter. Go someplace. Go watch the television, and let us visit in private."

  And I say, "But."

  But my mom says, "Go."

  Denny says, "Here's another corner." Denny picks out all the blue pieces and puts them off to one side. All the pieces are the same basic shape, liquid crosses. Melted swastikas.

  "Go try to save someone else for a change," my mom says, not looking at me. Looking at Denny, she says, "Victor will come find you when we're done."

  She watches me until I step back as far as the hallway. After that she says something to Denny I can't hear. Her shaky hand reaches to touch Denny's shiny blue scalp, to touch it just behind one ear. Where her pajama sleeve stops, her old wrist shows stringy and thin brown as a boiled turkey neck.

  Still nosing around in the puzzle, Denny flinches.

  A smell comes around me, a diaper smell, and a broken voice behind me says, "You're the one who threw all my second-grade primers in the mud."

  Still watching my mom, trying to see what she's saying, I go, "Yeah, I guess."

  "Well, here, at least you're honest" the voice says. A dried lit­tle mushroom of a woman slips her skeleton's arm through mine. "Come along with me," she says. "Dr. Marshall would like very much to talk to you. Alone somewhere."

  She's wearing Denny's red plaid shirt.

  Chapter 14

  Leaning her head back, her little black brain, Paige Marshall points up into the vaulted beige ceiling. "There used to be angels," she says. "The story is they were incredibly beautiful, with blue feath­ery wings and real gilded halos."

  The old woman leads me to the big chapel at St. Anthony's, big and empty since it used to be a convent. One whole wall is a window of stained glass in a hundred different colors of gold. The other wall is just a big wood crucifix. Between the two is Paige Marshall in her white lab coat, golden in the light, under the black brain of her hair. She's wearing her black glasses and looking up. All of her black and gold.

  "According to the decrees of Vatican II," she says, "they painted over church murals. The angels and the frescoes. They weeded out most of the statues. All those gorgeous mysteries of faith. All gone."

  She looks at me.

  The old woman is gone. The chapel door clicks shut behind me.

  "It's pathetic," Paige says, "how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How if we can't explain something we'll just deny it."

  She says, "I've found a way to save your mother's life." She says, "But you may not approve."

  Paige Marshall starts undoing the buttons of her coat, and there's more and more skin showing inside.

  "You may find the idea entirely repugnant," she says.

  She opens the lab coat.

  She's naked inside. Naked and as pale white as the skin under her hair. Naked white and about four steps away. And very doable. And she shrugs the coat off her shoulders so it drapes be­hind her, still hanging from her elbows. Her arms still in the sleeves.

  Here are all those tight furry shadows where you're dying to go.

  "We only have this small window of opportunity," she says.

  And she steps toward me. Still wearing her glasses. Her feet still in their white deck shoes, only they look gold here.

  I was right about her ears. For sure, the resemblance is awe­some. Another hole she can't close, hidden and frilled with skin. Framed in her soft hair.

  "If you love your mother," she says, "if you want her to live, you'll need to do this with me."

  Now?

  "It's my time," she says. "My mucosa is so thick you could stand a spoon in it."

  Here?

  "I can't see you outside of here," she says.

  Her ring finger is as bare as most of her. I ask, is she married?

  "Do you have an issue with that?" she says. Just one reach away is the curve of her waist going down along the outline of her ass. Just that far is the shelf of each breast pushing up a dark button nipple. Just my arm away is the warm hot space where her legs come together.

  I say, "No. Nope. No issues here."

  Her hands come together around my top shirt button, then the next, and the next. Her hands spread the shirt back off my shoulders so it falls behind me.

  "I just need you to know," I say, "since you're a doctor and everything," I say, "I might be a recovering sex addict."

  Her hands spring my belt buckle, and she says, "Then just do what comes naturally."

  The smell of her isn't roses or pine or lemons. It isn't any­thing, not even skin.

  How she smells is wet.

  "You don't understand," I say. "I have almost two whole days of sobriety."

  The gold light shows her warm and glowy. Still, the feeling is if I kissed her my lips would stick the way they would on frozen metal. To slow things down, I think of basal cell carcinomas. I picture the bacterial skin infection impetigo. Corneal ulcers.

  She pulls my face into her ear. Into my ear she whispers,

  "Fine. That's very noble of you. But how about if you start your recovery tomorrow...."

  She thumbs my pants off my hips and says, "I need you to put your faith in me."

  And her smooth cool hands close around me.

  Chapter 15

  If you're ever in a big hotel lobby, and they start to play "The Blue Danube Waltz," get the hell out. Don't think. Run.

  Anymore, nothing is straightforward.

  If you're ever in a hospital and they page Nurse Flamingo to the cancer ward, do not go anywhere near there. There is no Nurse Flamingo. If they page Dr. Blaze, there is no such person.

  In a big hotel, that waltz means they need to evacuate the building.

  In most hospitals, Nurse Flamingo means a fire. Dr. Blaze means a fire. Dr. Green means a suicide. Dr. Blue means some­body stopped breathing.

  This is stuff the Mommy told the stupid little boy as they sat in traffic. This is how far back she was going nuts.

  This one day, the kid had been sitting in class when a lady from the school office had come to tell him his dentist appoint­ment was canceled. A minute later, he'd raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom. There never was any appointment. Sure, somebody had called,
saying they were from the dentist, but this was a new secret signal. He went out a side door by the cafeteria, and there she was waiting in a gold car.

  This was the second time the Mommy came back to claim him.

  She rolled down the window and said, "Do you know why Mommy was in jail this time?"

  "For changing the hair colors?" he said.

  See also: The malicious mischief.

  See also: The second-degree assault.

  She leaned over to open the door and never stopped talking. Not for days and days.

  If you're ever in the Hard Rock Cafe, she told him, and they announce "Elvis has left the building," that means all the servers need to go to the kitchen and find out what dinner special has just sold out.

  These are the things people tell you when they won't tell you the truth.

  In a Broadway theater, announcing "Elvis has left the build­ing" means a fire.

  In a grocery store, paging Mr. Cash is a call for an armed se­curity guard. Paging "Freight check to Women's Clothing" means somebody is shoplifting in that department. Other stores page a fake woman named Sheila. "Sheila to the front" means somebody is shoplifting in the front of the store. Mr. Cash and Sheila and Nurse Flamingo are always bad news.

  The Mommy shut off the engine and sat with one hand grip­ping the steering wheel at twelve o'clock, and with her other hand she snapped her fingers for the boy to repeat stuff back to her. The insides of her nose were dark with dried blood. Twisted old tissues smeared with more old blood were on the car floor. Some blood was on the dashboard from when she sneezed. On the inside of the windshield was some more.

  "Nothing you learn in school is this important," she said. "This stuff you're learning here will save your life."

  She snapped her fingers. "Mr. Amond Silvestiri?" she said. "If he's paged, what should you do?"

  At some airports, paging him means a terrorist with a bomb. "Mr. Amond Silvestiri, please meet your party at gate ten on the D concourse" means that's where the SWAT teams will find their man.

  Mrs. Pamela Rank-Mensa means a terrorist in the airport with just a gun.

  "Mr. Bernard Wellis, please meet your party at gate sixteen on the F concourse" means somebody holding a knife to the throat of a hostage there.