by Josh Emmons
As the conversation rose in earthiness and then partitioned into smaller units, Sadie, who’d had two mescal shots since her first Bloody Mary, placed an arm around Bob and thanked him for what he’d told her at Amigas Burritos a few weeks earlier. She squeezed and rubbed his shoulder. Despite being an impotent pariah, he was a wise man and had helped to restore her sense of herself as a therapist.
“That’s nice of you to say,” Bob answered. “Half nice, at least. A backhanded compliment is what it is.”
“I mean it in a good way, Bob.”
“Are you still filling out applications to culinary schools?”
“I threw them away.”
“You did?”
That morning Sadie had placed a statue of herself that was thinner and younger looking than she was now in her kitchen. Interestingly, there was a crowbar in its right hand, which instead of being gripped in the air like a weapon was pointing down and touching the ground like a walking stick. The statue’s guard was lowered. She put her arms around it, danced in place with it, kissed it, draped a fuzzy blanket around its shoulders. “Leon,” she said aloud, “you can come back now and say what’s the point of this and I won’t get mad. I’ll listen. Don’t be one of those people who only shows up when he’s not invited.” She stared and didn’t expect a Pygmalion-style awakening or the ghost of Leon to appear to provide a short dissertation on his aims and strategies. Her statue was indeed her, and the world hadn’t grown dull in ten years. Her job hadn’t become less interesting, marriage less tenable, or Eureka less hospitable. People who were bored were themselves boring. Sadie, she realized in a wave of self-recognition that completed the change in her attitude begun with Joon-sup the day before, had simply forgotten the basics.
Bob said, “Do you really think that you and I are such a bad idea? Because I could switch my prescription. Say the word and I’ll be a man again.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that for me.”
“Sure you could.”
Sadie took the temperature then of her drunkenness and told herself not to have anything more; she was meeting Elaine for dinner later and had to be sober enough not to yell in the restaurant. Her phone rang and it was Elaine, coincidentally, saying she had to cancel because Steve wanted to talk that night. They hung up. Sadie stared at her phone and she could—she would—lead Elaine and Steve to reconciliation. She had the power and means. This very night. Bob poured her another Bloody Mary and ordered her another shot, and she was too excited to say no.
At six o’clock, Eve was waiting for the Sacred Heart Church to begin its Christmas Eve mass. She wore a black skirt and white blouse with pearl earrings. Children scuffled with each other not far from her on the pew, which vibrated against and provided relief to her lower back. Time passed with ceremonial grace. She chewed a piece of gum secretly, moving her mouth with a ventriloquist’s skill, as the priest came out of the vestry carrying a single book.
Eve had attended Sacred Heart for ten years. In the beginning it provided her with a sense of sanctioned community, where there were no drug-addicted young men or despairing rock songs. Appetites once integral to her sense of self and future identity had been buried with Ryan, and she grew older and relieved to be done with them. She now prayed for Joon-sup. She prayed that his slide away from the world of the living wouldn’t be so fast that he knew, in the end, only the sensation of freefall. The children in her pew were reprimanded by their parents, so they quit fighting and played with their shirt cuffs and listened to stories in their heads, on an unending quest to amuse themselves.
The priest, a bowlegged man with thin gray hair and ears that stuck out at the tips, took his place at the podium and gave a sermon about Christ not being an idol. This was the last mass Eve would attend as a layperson. She agreed that celebrating Christ’s birth was not idolatry and was instead an opportunity to study His Beatitudes. The priest led them in prayer and Eve kept her eyes open throughout. The children beside her were ambivalent toward the service and God was not the most important element in their lives. They’d sooner give Him up than their families or best friends, and this prioritization of people over God was man’s primal instinct. Placing Him above all others was a learned exaltation. During communion she ate bread and drank wine that in transubstantiation was the body and blood of her Savior.
Eve accepted a votive candle. For years she’d struggled against dependence on others as though life were a test to be taken alone. No cheating. Dozens of men had asked her out, and some had been warm and attractive, and it had required a certain coldness to dismiss them. Now she was going to leave those considerations forever. She was going to a place beyond the reach of loss. Closer to eternity. Nearer to God. And if it turned out to be no different a solution for emotional pain than numbness was for physical pain? If she were merely covering up her heart rather than healing it?
Ferdinand the pig had been in the kitchen all day, lying beneath the water cooler and sniffing at the bowl used to collect drips from its leaking spout. Prentiss, hunting for his car keys under a mound of magazines and newspapers, keeping the left half of his attention on the clock, worried that his pet was sick.
“I’d stay with you,” Prentiss said, turning from the bad news, “but as you know I got a date. Proof of miracles.”
In the bathroom, Prentiss flossed and brushed his teeth, ran a pick through his hair, and leaned close enough to the mirror to look down and see the reflection of most of his outfit. He was presentable, perhaps even attractive, and he felt a twinge of optimism before realizing that these were the same slacks and sweater he’d worn at the holiday party where he’d met Lillith. He went to his bedroom and changed into different clothes, thankful to have avoided an accident.
Driving along H Street, Joon-sup carried in his lap a completed thirty-four-page small business loan application for the Joon-sup Experience. With his right hand he worried a corner of its cover sheet and then, to stop himself, stuffed the whole thing in his suit jacket’s inside left pocket. The sidewalk around the church was lined with cars—among them Eve’s hatchback—forcing him to park five blocks away. He then spent fifteen minutes removing lint from his coat with shaking hands, doing breathing exercises, telling himself it was going to be okay. If his statue clarified anything, it was that as an adult he shouldn’t wish to be otherwise. His conservative, middle-aged clothes weren’t a reason to be upset. Borrowing fifty thousand dollars required collateral. You had to have little or no debt and a clean police record, whereas Joon-sup had three thousand dollars riding on credit cards and two arrests from his environmental activism days. He was a bad loan prospect. He was aging and would continue to do so. He’d operated his stall for eight years and been crime-free for almost as long. He had a solid local reputation among other restaurateurs and was a Better Bagel manager in good standing. Who knew how his application would fare when reviewed closely?
Not far from where Joon-sup idled in his car, at a house on I Street, Barry arrived at the Knavetivity Scene party and was greeted with the usual cries of “Lock up your sons, ladies, it’s Baseline Barry,” and “Barry, you slut, don’t sit down unless you’re ready to discuss your exploits now!” To which he rolled his eyes and said, “Waste my drama on you Puritans?”
The party was unevenly divided between Josephs and Marys, with the majority of attendees dressed as the latter. This made seven Josephs and thirty-two Marys. Only the host was Baby Jesus, which, given his predilection for being swaddled and nursed, was no surprise. One of the Josephs whom Barry didn’t recognize smiled at him from beneath a voluminous fiery red beard. Algerian disco music thumped and cried—you could almost feel the hot night air on your back and the cool sand on your knees—from the sound system installed in a crib at the center of the room. Barry (Mary) sat on a couch between Robert Mary and Derrick Mary, and the three of them in their matching headdresses and sandy robes looked like Nazarene sisters.
Soon would be the Yuletide blow jobs. Soon a stranger or a friend or someone
you barely knew would grab your crotch—or you would grab theirs—and there would be preliminary stroking—not much, because everyday life provided enough delayed gratification—and, if mutually approving, the two of you would find a room or a closet or simply some floor space in the living room on the night before Christmas. The red-bearded Joseph eyed Barry hungrily and was aflame, and Barry showed not an iota of life.
“That beard is raping you with his eyes and you aren’t even playing the coquette,” Derrick Mary said to Barry Mary. “What’s the matter?”
“This.”
“What?”
“This whole thing.”
“Uh-oh,” sang Robert Mary gaily, “sounds like someone’s disgruntled. You are such a one for brooding.”
Barry Mary looked at Derrick Mary, at the laboriously crafted effect of a twenty-first-century American man trying to look like a sixteenth-century Italian painter’s conception of the first-century Madonna. Barry Mary stood up and deflected the advance of the hirsute red Joseph by going to the kitchen, having a glass of wine, and returning to the manger (living room) to press the hands of those present with a I know it’s early but I have to go.
It had been a while since Shane last brought the pain to a guy who was in essence a pussy. Doing so was beneath him, because men who couldn’t fight were no different from women, and Shane drew the line at the fairer sex. He wouldn’t beat up a woman any more than he’d put the hurt on a small child or an old geezer—not that he hadn’t wanted to smack the pensioners who’d haggled with him in the past about casket prices and then gone over to the competition—and when the pain recipient was as drunk as Martin had been something shameful marked the proceeding. Shane, while driving away from Martin’s apartment, rubbing the blood from his knuckles, searching the radio for some decent power chords—in a big city he’d have more options—made a short, flexible promise not to demean himself like that in the future. He’d chosen to destroy his enemies’ property rather than their bodies in order to maintain the honor that walloping on a weak drunk like Martin tarnished.
In this case it couldn’t be helped. Martin hadn’t been given a statue and was therefore unable to lose one. Shane had had no choice but to beat him up before drugging him for the night and taking his car (Martin couldn’t go to the police or secure an alibi). No choice at all. Plus, after Shane’s disappointment at Rasmussen’s office, when he’d been told—without an accompanying apology—that his inheritance was nothing but a useless statue, that there was no money component, he’d needed a workout to steady his nerves. Turning right on Buhne Street, he already felt better. An intoxicating kerosene smell came from the three red metal gas cans sloshing around in his backseat. He felt the bulge of matches in his front pants pocket. The night was still and holy.
Elaine had brought up divorce with Steve on the phone that morning. If two people were so distant from each other. If confidence were so completely eroded. She’d stood in the kitchen and talked in endgame terms as their chances for reconciliation slipped away.
When Steve came over at seven that evening, they sat at the dining-room table—how strange and familiar the scene was—and discussed the logistics of a divorce, and she joked about how much better they would be at it this time than they’d been before. Practice makes perfect. They laughed, and she wondered at how things had deteriorated so quickly, not expecting a response. He said he didn’t want to be left behind. She said she hadn’t planned to leave him and his believing otherwise was crazy. He said he knew the signs of abandonment; he knew what Sacramento meant. Elaine said, without meaning to insult him, that that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. Hadn’t all of her entreaties for him to open up to her proven that she wanted to save, not end, their marriage? She’d only suggested divorce today because his withdrawal into himself had been so ominous and complete. She would do anything to restore their marriage, but she couldn’t do it alone. He had to help. While he stared at his soft surgeon’s hands on the table, she repeated: he had to help.
Something unexpected happened while Lillith was cleaning her apartment in preparation for her date with Prentiss. Her statue, which she pulled out of the broom closet to get to the vacuum cleaner, made her happy. She looked at it in the living room’s seventy-five-watt light and realized she’d been missing the point. True, she was ordinary and unexceptional and powerless in most respects, a generic specimen of humankind. She could be considered foolish or gullible or romantic. But it was for these reasons she’d become a Wiccan; they were the key to her religion’s success. That Leon chose to sculpt her naturally, unadorned, didn’t invalidate her beliefs; instead it reminded her of what she gained from them. Strength. Self-confidence. Courage to withstand the very shame that had recently infected her. She would own her faith and be proud of it and refuse to let others’ incredulity sway her. We were all made differently. We were all made the same. She looked at her statue and felt a suffusion of compassion for it, for herself, like a mother for her first child, and at that moment a car engine fell silent outside. She put away her broom, dustpan, and bucket of cleaning sprays and liquids. She said “The Lady’s Prayer” and would not live in fear of attracting überpervs. She heard someone ascending the stairs leading to her apartment door. She straightened the magazines on her coffee table and had time to sit down before a knock came at her door.
When the mass ended, Eve gathered her coat and purse and stood up, a relief to her lower back, which had worsened over the past hour. The children in her pew filed out with their parents’ hands on their shoulders. The organist played solemn Bach. Eve looked for the priest to thank him, but he was gone.
Outside she stood at the doorway and watched everyone recede from the church like a human tide. Then, as she followed them down the steps, she came face-to-face with Joon-sup next to the church welcome sign. He wore a suit and his hair was parted at the side in salaryman style.
“What are you doing here?” she said, happily surprised, squeezing his left arm.
“I have to talk to you.”
“Now?”
He nodded. “Can we go someplace?”
They walked toward Seventh Street, he ahead of her by a half-step, and stopped at the number 9 bus stop. Eve looked at Joon-sup preparing to tell her his news and felt as though they were in a play they’d rehearsed a thousand times, one she could perform without thinking. She knew by heart the coming dialogue and facial expressions. She saw in advance every studied gesture, every crafted emotion. Joon-sup cleared his throat and rubbed the coins together in his pockets.
“I should keep this to myself,” he began, “but your decision to join a convent has forced me to say it.”
There was no room for improvisation, no chance for the unexpected. In plays, in the now according to God, the end was preordained. She saw a man meekly following a script to an abhorrent conclusion.
“Should we sit down?” she asked, indicating the bench under the bus stop awning and internally noting, with dreamy, sad detachment, her intonation and blocking.
“I’d rather stand.”
“Okay.”
“Go ahead and stop me at any time.” He paused.
“Okay,” she said.
He pulled a packet of papers from his coat pocket and held it up for her to see. “I’m meeting with someone from Humboldt Bank in a few weeks to discuss my loan application.”
This was expected and heartbreaking. For him to do what he’d postponed forever, merely for thematic closure and to have one fewer regret when death stopped for him. Eve stared at his careful lettering in the application’s information boxes, the conscientious words describing his biographical and economic coordinates. The hopeful figure in the amount-requested space. “That’s great,” she said, her voice catching in spite of knowing everything in advance.
“Don’t cry. I won’t say it. We can forget this happened.”
She wasn’t aware she’d been crying but when her fingers touched her cheek it was wet. “I know it already, but I should hea
r it from you.”
“No you shouldn’t. If it’s upsetting—”
“Of course it is, but I can’t keep hiding from the fact. That’s not fair to you or me.”
“I’m sorry.” He gestured with his hands that he didn’t know what more to say.
“It’s not like you have any choice in the matter. No one does. It’s a cruel accident.”
He breathed out—too dramatically, perhaps—and stood so that the streetlamp light accentuated his cheekbones. There was fear in his eyes; his performance was in most ways irreproachable; the set was elaborate and every attention had been paid to detail.
Eve said, “Justine told me a couple of weeks ago.”
Joon-sup frowned searchingly, as though waiting for a line prompt. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I promised not to.”
“Did she threaten you?”
“No. She invited me out one night to talk because she thought I had a right to know. I don’t think she’s told anyone else.”
“I’ll bet she’s told everybody.”
“It’s a mistake to keep it a secret. It’s a tragedy. Your friends can help you if you let them.”
“My other friends have nothing to do with it. You’re calling it a tragedy. That’s it. End of discussion.”
“I’m just saying you don’t have to go through it alone. If you need daily help when your condition gets worse, I can spend mornings and nights at your place and reduce my hours at Going Places.”
“What?”
She put her arms around Joon-sup and held him for a dark, desperate moment. Pulling back, she said, “I hope I didn’t crumple your application.”