Удушье (Choke)

by Чак Паланик

  Me locked in my room, Denny comes and goes.

  As if it's just some innocent accident, I catch myself thumb­ing through the Marshalls in the phone book. She's not listed. After work some nights, I take the bus that goes past St. An­thony's. She's never in any of the windows. Riding past, you can't guess which is her car in the parking lot. I don't get off.

  Whether I'd slash her tires or leave a love note, I don't know.

  Denny comes and goes, and every day there's fewer rocks in the house. And if you don't see somebody every day, you see them change. Me watching from an upstairs window, Denny comes and goes pushing bigger and bigger rocks in a shopping cart, and every day, Denny looks a little bigger inside his old plaid shirt. His face gets tan, his chest and shoulders get big enough to spread the plaid out so it doesn't hang in folds. He's not huge, but he's bigger, big for Denny.

  Watching Denny from the window, I am a rock. I am an is­land.

  I call down, does he need any help?

  On the sidewalk, Denny looks around, his arms hugging a rock to his chest.

  "Up here," I say. "Do you need me to help you?"

  Denny heaves the rock into his shopping cart and shrugs. He shakes his head and looks up at me, one hand shading his eyes. "I don't need help," he says, "but you can help if you want."

  Never mind.

  What I want is to be needed.

  What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my atten­tion. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.

  See also: Paige Marshall.

  It's the same way a drug can be something good and some­thing bad.

  You don't eat. You don't sleep. Eating Leeza isn't really eating. Sleeping with Sarah Bernhardt, you're not really asleep.

  The magic of sexual addiction is you don't ever feel hungry or tired or bored or lonely.

  On the dining-room table, all the new cards pile up. All the checks and best wishes from a lot of strangers who want to believe they're somebody's hero. Who think they're needed. Some woman writes about how she's started a prayer chain for me. A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully Him around.

  The fine line between praying and nagging.

  Tuesday evening, a voice on the answering machine is asking for my permission to move my mom up to the third floor at St. Anthony's, the floor where you go to die. What I hear first is this isn't Dr. Marshall's voice.

  Yelling back at the answering machine, I say, sure. Move the crazy bitch upstairs. Make her comfortable, but I'm not paying for any heroic measures. Feeding tubes. Respirators. The way I react could be nicer, but the soft way the administrator talks to me, the hush in her voice. The way she assumes that I'm a nice person.

  I tell her soft little recorded voice not to call me again until Mrs. Mancini is good and dead.

  Unless I'm scamming for money, I'd rather people hate me than feel sorry for me.

  Hearing this, I'm not angry. I'm not sad. All I feel anymore is horny.

  And Wednesdays mean Nico.

  In the women's room, the padded fist of her pubic bone punching me in the nose, Nico wipes and smears herself up and down my face. For two hours, Nico laces her fingers together across the back of my head and pulls my face into her until I'm choking down pubic hair.

  Tonguing inside her labia minora, I'm tonguing the folds of Dr. Marshall's ear. Breathing through my nose, I'm stretching my tongue toward salvation.

  Thursday is Virginia Woolf, first. Then it's Anais Nin. Then there's just enough time for a session with Sacajawea before it's morning, and I have to go to work in 1734.

  In between, I write down my past in my notebook. This is doing my fourth step, my fearless and complete moral inventory.

  Fridays mean Tanya.

  By Friday, there are no more rocks in my mom's house.

  Tanya comes by the house, and Tanya means anal.

  The magic of getting butt is she's as tight as a virgin every time. And Tanya brings toys. Beads and rods and probes, these all smell like bleach, and she smuggles them around in a black leather bag she keeps in the trunk of her car. Tanya works my dog with one hand and her mouth while she presses the first ball on a long string full of greasy red rubber balls against my trapdoor.

  My eyes closed, I'm trying to relax enough.

  Breathe in. Then out.

  Think of the monkey and the chestnuts.

  Slow and even, in and then out.

  Tanya twisting the first ball against me, I say, "You'd tell me if I sounded too needy, wouldn't you?"

  And the first ball pops inside.

  "Why don't people believe me," I say, "when I tell them I just don't care?"

  And the second ball pops in.

  "I really really can't give a shit about anything," I say. Another ball pops in. "I'm not going to get hurt, again," I say. Something else pops inside me.

  Tanya still throating my dog, she makes a fist around the dan­gling string and yanks.

  Imagine a woman yanking your guts out. See also: My dying mother.

  See also: Dr. Paige Marshall.

  Tanya yanks again, and my dog triggers, the white soldiers gobbing against the bedroom wallpaper beside her face. She yanks again, and my dog's coughing dry and still coughing.

  And still triggering dry, I say, "Damn. For serious, I felt that."

  What would Jesus NOT do?

  Leaning forward with both my hands spread against the wall, my knees folding a little, I say, "Easy does it." I tell Tanya, "You're not starting a lawn mower."

  And Tanya kneeling under me, still looking at the greasy, stinking balls on the floor, says, "Oh boy." She lifts the string of red rubber balls for me to see, and she says, "There are supposed to be ten."

  There's only eight and what looks like a lot of empty string.

  My ass hurts so much, I finger around back there and then check my fingers for blood. As much as I hurt right now, you'd be amazed there's not blood everywhere.

  And gritting my teeth, I say, "That was fun, don't you think?"

  And Tanya says, "I need you to sign my release form so I can get back to jail." She's dangling the string of balls into her black bag and says, "You're going to want to stop by an emergency room."

  See also: Impacted colon.

  See also: Bowel blockage.

  See also: Cramping, fever, septic shock, heart failure.

  It's been five days since I remember feeling hungry enough to eat. I haven't been tired. Or worried or angry or afraid or thirsty. If the air in here smells bad, I can't tell. I only know this is Friday because Tanya is here.

  Paige and her dental floss. Tanya and her toys. Gwen with her safe word. All these women are yanking me around on a string.

  "No, really," I tell Tanya. I sign the form, under sponsor, and say, "Really, nothing's wrong. I don't feel anything left in­side."

  And Tanya takes the form and says, "I can't believe that." What's funny is, I'm still not sure I believe it either.

  Chapter 34

  Without insurance or even a driver's license, I call a cab to come jump-start my mom's old car. On the radio, they talk about where to find traffic, a two-car accident on the bypass, a stalled tractor-trailer on the airport freeway. After I fill the gas tank, I just find an accident and get in line. Just to feel like I'm part of something.

  Sitting in traffic, my heart would beat at regular speed. I'm not alone. Trapped there, I could just be a normal person headed home to a wife, kids, a house. I could pretend that my life was more than just waiting for the next disaster. That I knew how to function. The way other kids would "play house," I could play commuter.

  After work, I go visit Denny on the empty block where he's laid out his rocks, the old Menningtown Country Townhouses block where he's pasting row on top of row with mortar until he's already got a wall, and I say, "Hey."

  And Denny says, "Dude."

  Denny says, "How's your mom?"

  And I say I don
't care.

  Denny trowels a layer of gritty gray mud on top of the last row of stones. With the pointed steel end of the trowel, he fusses with the mortar until it's even. With a stick, he smoothes the joints between rocks he's already laid.

  A girl's sitting under an apple tree close enough you can see she's Cherry Daiquiri from the strip club. A blanket is spread out under her, and she's lifting white cartons of take-out food from a brown grocery bag and opening each carton.

  Denny starts bedding stones into the new mortar.

  I say, "What are you building?"

  Denny shrugs. He twists a square brown rock deeper into the mortar. With the trowel, he chinks mortar between two stones. Assembling his whole generation of babies into something huge.

  Doesn't he need to build it on paper, first? I say, don't you need a plan? There's permits and inspections you have to get. You have to pay fees. There's building codes you have to know.

  And Denny says, "How come?"

  He rolls around rocks with his foot, then finds the best one and fits it in place. You don't need a permit to paint a picture, he says. You don't need to file a plan to write a book. There're books that do more damage than he ever could. You don't need your poem inspected. There's such a thing as freedom of expression.

  Denny says, "You don't need a permit to have a baby. So why do you need to buy permission to build a house?"

  And I say, "But what if you build a dangerous, ugly house?"

  And Denny says, "Well, what if you raise a dangerous, ass-holey kid?"

  And I hold my fist up between us and say, "You better not mean me, dude."

  Denny looks over at Cherry Daiquiri sitting in the grass and says, "Her name's Beth."

  "Don't think for a minute that the city is going to buy your First Amendment logic," I say.

  And I say, "She's not really as attractive as you think."

  With the bottom of his shirt, Denny wipes the sweat off his face. You can see his abs are rippled armor, and he says, "You need to go see her."

  I can see her from here.

  "Your mom, I mean," he says.

  She doesn't know me anymore. She won't miss me.

  "Not for her," Denny says. "You need to go complete this for you."

  Denny, his arms flicker with shadows where his muscles flex. Denny, now his arms stretch the sleeves of his sour T-shirt. His skinny arms look big around. His pinched shoulders spread wide. With every row, he's having to lift the stones a little higher. With every row, he's having to be stronger. Denny says, "You want to stay for Chinese food?" He says, "You look a little wasted."

  I ask, is he living with this Beth girl now?

  I ask if he's got her pregnant or anything.

  And Denny lugging a big gray rock with both hands at his waist, he shrugs. A month ago, this was a rock the two of us could hardly lift together.

  If he needs it, I tell him I got my mom's old car running.

  "Go see how your mom is," Denny says. "Then come and help."

  Everybody at Colonial Dunsboro says to say hello, I tell him.

  And Denny says, "Don't lie to me, dude. I'm not the one who needs cheering up."

  Chapter 35

  Fast-forwarding through the messages on my mom's answering ma­chine, there's the same soft voice, hushed and understanding, saying, "Condition is deteriorating . . ." Saying, "Critical. . ." Saying, "Mother ..." Saying, "Intervene ..."

  I just keep hitting the fast-forward button.

  Still on the shelf for tonight, there's Colleen Moore, whoever she was. There's Constance Lloyd, whoever that is. There's Judy Garland. There's Eva Braun. What's left is definitely the second string.

  The voice on the message machine stops and starts.

  "... been calling some of the fertility clinics listed in his mother's diary ..." it says.

  It's Paige Marshall.

  I rewind.

  "Hello, this is Dr. Marshall," she says. "I need to talk to Vic­tor Mancini. Please tell Mr. Mancini that I've been calling some of the fertility clinics listed in his mother's diary, and they all seem to be legitimate. Even the doctors are real." She says, "The oddest part is that they get very upset when I ask them about Ida Mancini."

  She says, "This is looking like something more than just Mrs. Mancini's fantasy."

  A voice in the background says, "Paige?"

  A man's voice.

  "Listen," she says. "My husband's here, so would Victor Mancini please visit me at St. Anthony's Care Center as soon as possible."

  The man's voice says, "Paige? What are you up to? Why are you whispering—"

  And the line goes dead.

  Chapter 36

  So Saturday means visiting my mom.

  In the lobby of St. Anthony's, talking to the front desk girl, I tell her I'm Victor Mancini and I'm here to see my mom, Ida Mancini.

  I say, "Unless, I mean, unless she's dead."

  The front desk girl gives me that look, the one where you tuck your chin down and look at the person you feel so, so sorry for. You tilt your face down so your eyes have to look up at the person. That look of submission. Lift your eyebrows into your hairline as you look up. It's that look of infinite pity. Squash your mouth down into a frowny face, and you'll know the exact way the front desk girl is looking at me.

  And she says, "Of course your mother is still with us."

  And I say, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I kind of wish she wasn't."

  Her face forgets for a second how sorry she is, and her lips pull back to show her teeth. The way to make most women break eye contact is to run your tongue around your lips. The ones who don't look away, for serious, bingo.

  Just go back, she tells me. Mrs. Mancini is still on the first floor.

  It's Miss Mancini, I tell her. My mom's not married, unless you count me in that creepy Oedipal way.

  I ask if Paige Marshall is here.

  "Of course she is," the front desk girl says, now with her face turned a little away from me, looking at me out the corner of her eye. The look of distrust.

  Beyond the security doors, all the crazy old Irmas and La­vernes, the Violets and Olives start their slow migration of walk­ers and wheelchairs coming my way. All the chronic undressers. All the dumped grannies and squirrels with their pockets full of chewed food, the ones who forget how to swallow, their lungs full of food and drink.

  All of them, smiling at me. Beaming. They're all wearing those plastic bracelets that keep the doors locked, but they still look better than I feel.

  In the dayroom, the smell of roses and lemons and pine. The loud little world begging for attention from inside the television. The shattered jigsaw puzzles. Nobody's moved my mom up to the third floor yet, the death floor, and in her room Paige Mar­shall's sitting in a tweed recliner, reading her clipboard with her glasses on, and when she sees me says, "Look at you." She says, "Your mother isn't the only one who could use a stomach tube."

  I say I got her message.

  My mom is. She's just in bed. She's just asleep is all, her stom­ach just a bloated little mound under the covers. Her bones are the only thing left in her arms and hands. Her head sunk in her pillow, she squeezes her eyes shut. The corners of her jaw swell as her teeth clench for a moment, and she brings her whole face to­gether to swallow.

  Her eyes fall open, and she stretches her green-gray fingers at me, in a creepy underwater way, a slow-motion swimming stroke, trembling the way light does at the bottom of a swimming pool, when you're little and staying overnight in some motel just off some highway. The plastic bracelet hangs around her wrist, and she says, "Fred."

  She swallows again, her whole face bunching with the effort, and says, "Fred Hastings." Her eyes roll to one side and she smiles at Paige. "Tammy," she says. "Fred and Tammy Hastings."

  Her old defense attorney and his wife.

  All my notes for being Fred Hastings are at home. If I drive a Ford or a Dodge, I can't remember. How many kids I'm supposed to have. What color did we finally pa
int the dining room. I can't remember a single detail about how I'm supposed to live my life.

  Paige still sitting in the recliner, I step close to her and put a hand on her lab coat shoulder and say, "How are you feeling, Mrs. Mancini?"

  Her terrible green-gray hand comes up level and rocks from side to side, the universal sign language for so-so. With her eyes closed, she smiles and says, "I was hoping you'd be Victor."

  Paige shrugs my hand off her shoulder.

  And I say, "I thought you liked me better."

  I say, "Nobody likes Victor very much."

  My mother stretches her fingers toward Paige and says, "Do you love him?"

  Paige looks at me.

  "Fred, here," my mom says, "do you love him?"

  Paige starts clicking and unclicking her ballpoint pen, fast. Not looking at me, looking at the clipboard in her lap, she says,

  "I do."

  And my mom smiles. And stretching her fingers toward me, she says, "And do you love her?"

  Maybe the way a porcupine thinks about its stinking stick, if you'd call that love.

  Maybe the way a dolphin loves the smooth sides of its pool.

  And I say, "I guess."

  My mom tucks her chin into her neck sideways, eyeballing me, and says, "Fred."

  And I say, "Okay, yes." I say, "I love her."

  She brings her terrible green-gray fingers back to rest on her mounded belly and says, "You two are so lucky." She closes her eyes and says, "Victor isn't very good at loving people."

  She says, "What I'm most afraid of is, after I'm gone, there will be no one left in the entire world who'll love Victor."

  These frigging old people. These human ruins.

  Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit. I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring asshole and proud of it.

  What would Jesus NOT do?

  If it comes down to a choice between being unloved and be­ing vulnerable and sensitive and emotional, then you can just keep your love.

  If what I just said about loving Paige was a lie or a vow, I don't know. But it was a trick. This is just heaps more chick bullshit. There is no human soul, and I am absolutely for sure seriously not going to fucking cry.