by Tom Stern
“The proposal places it at seven to eight years minimum,” she stated, before adding, “but we may not want him to go. Even after that. You never know.”
Walter did not say anything. He feared that were he to get too fine in his response, Veronica might discover that he still had not read the proposal. A strategy quickly threatened when Veronica inquired…
“So what did you think of the proposal?”
He had figured there was no practical way he could say no to Twin’s plan without being cast as a horrible, selfish, and dreamless shell of a man. So he had placed the proposal on the dresser, intending full well to read it once all of this became a little less real. Even though he hadn’t a clue how and when that would be happening. But he figured if he waited a few days, it would seem at least as though he had read the proposal and, in turn, as though he was actively choosing, after careful deliberation, to invest in the future of the unthinkable thing to whom he had sort of given birth. What he had not quite expected to find beneath this posturing, way deep down and underneath all of the sedimentary layers that had gradually filled in every open corner of his life over the years, was a tiny small spark inside of him that actually felt inspired by what Twin was doing. He would never concede the existence of this spark to Veronica or to Twin or to anyone. He was surprised he had even conceded it to himself.
“I’m still processing things,” Walter replied, which was not a lie, even if it could be interpreted as a suggestion that he had read at least some parts of the proposal.
He predicted that Veronica would now sigh and turn her back to him.
Veronica sighed and turned her back to him.
Walter predicted that Veronica would now ask him if he still found her attractive. And he would say, “Of course.” And she would say, “Are you really just on the mend?” And he would say, “Why would I lie?” And she would sigh and say, “Fine, then. But we shouldn’t wait much longer.” And he would say, “Tomorrow.” And she would begrudgingly accept the rain check only to not think of sex again for at least two more weeks.
Instead of all that, though, Veronica presented a most unexpected question which Walter failed to see as related, immediately or indirectly, to the conversation at hand—or any conversation at all, really, that they had ever had in the past or might ever be having in the future…
“So you’re not masturbating?” she asked.
These words assembled in this order stunned Walter silent.
He suspected he was even blushing.
He could not remember Veronica using that particular word in this or any other context before.
“What?” Walter eventually said, more as a reflex to combat the compounding, and in turn incriminating, silence than as a conscious decision.
Veronica turned back to face Walter.
But she did not repeat her question. She just looked at him expectantly.
“Why would you ask me that?” Walter insisted.
“Because I want to know if it’s me you’re not interested in or if it’s sex in general.”
“I can tell you that it’s sex in general.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, I can’t do anything about that…”
“Where and when do you masturbate?” Veronica expanded the scope of her initial question.
“That wasn’t the question!” Walter demanded, far more interested in answering the first question if he was going to be forced to answer either one.
“I want to know these things.”
“No.”
“It’s our sex life. It’s important.”
“But…it’s not… I don’t think couples usually discuss that.”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
“There must be a good reason. Even if I can’t come up with one right this moment.”
“Did you do it today?”
“I just gave birth to my mother’s baby, can you please leave the last few, lingering shreds of my dignity alone?”
“This is important to me,” she insisted. “If you won’t have sex with me tonight, then I want to know this about you instead. All you have to do is share with me the details of your masturbation practices and I will leave you alone.”
“My masturbation practices? It’s not like I have a calendar.”
“But you admit you do it?”
“Let’s just have sex, then.”
“No. That offer no longer stands.”
“I’m not talking about this.”
“Do you clean up with tissues? Wouldn’t those tear?”
“Damn it!” Walter barked.
“When is the last time that you had an orgasm?” Veronica persisted.
This particular phrasing of the initial inquiry, coupled with what Walter knew to be the actual answer to this particular phrasing, sent a surge of panic through Walter’s entire body. He even felt it tingle in his healing surgical wound, a sensation which he profoundly hoped was not actually a burgeoning infection transferred from the mouth bacteria of the woman who was responsible for his aforementioned last orgasm.
“When did you last masturbate?” Walter, desperate and cornered, spun the question around like a wild animal lashing out at the biggest member of a pressing herd.
Veronica fell silent.
And blushed.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” she eventually explained, fuming with anger. “And don’t think I don’t know that you are just avoiding my question.”
Veronica rolled her back to Walter again.
The restored bedroom silence made Walter acutely aware that his heart was pounding through his chest. Fortunately and graciously, it did not seem that it was pounding quite loud enough or hard enough for Veronica to take notice.
By the next morning, Walter was fairly confident he was in love with Eleanor.
But by lunch he wasn’t sure anymore.
He reasoned that it might well just be infatuation.
Or unhappiness with other aspects of his life.
Maybe he needed a new job.
Or maybe he just wasn’t in love with Veronica anymore. Maybe he just thought he was in love with Veronica because he had once been in love with her and nothing particularly bad had happened since then that would have clearly altered or ended that love.
Walter decided he needed to take a walk.
Not even a walk to Eleanor’s, but just a standard, good old-fashioned walk. To get blood and thoughts circulating.
As he pulled on his shoes, he heard Twin’s stabbing footsteps approaching along the hallway.
“Can I go with you?” Twin asked with an innocent eagerness that grated Walter’s every last nerve. Walter stood up and looked back at Twin’s teetering body taking up but a minor sliver of the universe’s vast space.
“You don’t even know where I’m going,” Walter explained.
“I’d like to go anywhere,” Twin replied.
Walter took a breath.
He pushed down the surge of disdain all but over-
whelming him.
Then he nodded.
For some reason.
It was probably that Goddamn seemingly irrepressible piercing glimmer of excitement and hope emanating from the little mutant bastard’s eyes.
“You really need a name,” Walter explained as they made their way out the door.
Twin just nodded, which made more of a diagonal motion than a traditional nod did, since his spine did not seem to be aligned even close to properly. But Walter knew what the guy meant, anyway.
Out on the street, Twin lit up like an ugly, jagged jack-o-lantern.
Every sight, every smell, every sensation a miraculous and singular event.
The cars were miracles of engineering.
The hot dog vendors were touched by the culinary gods, the plumes of hot
dog aroma a free gift to all passersby.
The gray, cracked sidewalks were demonstrations of profound human creativity and ingenuity.
“Rather than just dirt,” Twin explained to Walter, as though neither of them had ever seen concrete before, “they paved the streets and lined them with this brilliant innovation.”
“Hello, sir,” Twin greeted a man at a crosswalk. “Where are you headed?”
The man’s initially cold, annoyed grimace instantly softened upon seeing the malformed, seemingly struggling and pained source of the question.
“To work,” the man explained gently, as if to an adorable child.
“And what do you do? My brother here is in sales. Sales of hotel amenities.”
Even though Twin used the exact same words that Walter used to describe his job, when Twin spoke them, the words somehow made Walter’s work sound not only exciting but vitally necessary to the continued functioning and sustenance of all humanity.
“I work at a coffee shop over on Blicker Street,” the stranger offered.
“Szpilman’s?” asked Twin.
“That’s the one.”
“Szpilman’s is a great place to work. It’s one of the more profitable privately owned service businesses in the area. You guys run pretty lean, which helps.”
“Oh,” puzzled the man, just as the crosswalk light changed. “Thanks?”
The man crossed the street.
So did Walter and Twin, but at a slower pace, due to Twin’s limp and Walter’s not really having anywhere in particular to be.
Twin took Walter to a lunch spot where he had discovered a smoked fish plate that he adored with a passion tenfold exceeding any emotion Walter had felt in the past decade.
“I really would like to share this with you,” Twin had urged.
“I’ve never noticed this place,” Walter conceded from a table on the patio in front of Frill Café.
“This is truly a remarkable city you live in,” Twin added. “Are all cities this wonderful?”
“I have a sense that you would think so,” Walter replied.
“It must be just too much for you to take in. Everything being so remarkable. That must be why…” Twin fell suddenly and suspiciously silent, locking his eyes on the ground and nodding his crooked nod.
“Why what?” Walter asked.
“Huh?” Twin asked, broadcasting feigned innocence.
“Why what, Twin?” Walter dug in. “You were saying something.”
“No. I wasn’t saying anything other than what I was saying.”
“After everything,” Walter stated pointedly, “I think I deserve at least your honesty.”
Twin fell silent.
He sighed and shrugged his one mobile shoulder.
“I just meant that must be why you don’t seem as excited as I am. About things. But I misspoke because I think you’re great the way you are. In fact, I look forward to someday not being quite so worked up about everything I see…”
“Maybe,” Walter cut in, unable to suppress the tidal wave of bitterness stirred up by this judgmental and ungrateful little prick, “if I were a freak mutant who came into the world at age thirty-five, everyone would be super supportive of my every whim like a baby. And maybe then the world would look great to me, too.”
In instantaneous hindsight, Walter was willing to concede that he had significantly, perhaps even grossly, overstated his objection to Twin’s observation, even if it had felt remarkable to unleash a little bit of his larger outrage at the entire situation.
Try though he might, Twin could not stifle his tears which, rather than stream down his cheeks, sort of semi-squirted from the outside corners of his eyes in little pulses. The trajectory of the squirts ultimately landed the tears on his cheeks, but three to four inches further down the face than would a conventional tear start its path. Twin’s face constricted towards its center and his lips extended an inch or so outward while his tongue seemed to hover, cowering, in between his open teeth. This was unquestionably the most pathetic facial expression Walter had ever witnessed, in large part because it absolutely did not communicate the sadness that it was created to express, thereby rendering its awkward ugliness completely moot. It read nothing singularly coherent at all, really, summing up nothing readily recognizable in the existing canon of human emotions.
And then the sound came.
A bellow of sorts, simultaneously high-pitched with a baritone undercurrent. The sound was almost spasmodic, certainly jarring. Gut-wrenching even. It rang of a deep, tragic sorrow impossibly incongruent with the actual amount of sadness that Twin must have felt as a result of Walter’s verbal roundhouse.
“I’m sorry,” Twin managed in between erratic spurts of tears and gasping wails. “I shouldn’t be upset. You’re just…” gasp, wail, gasp, gasp, “…being…” gasp, wail, gasp, “…honest.”
Were it not for every other eye and ear in the crowded café having descended upon Walter and Twin’s table, Walter might have actually taken an instant to steep in the pleasure of this most rare sight of something actually impacting Twin adversely. As it was, however…
“What did you do to him?” demanded an older woman at a nearby table.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” offered a mother, leaving her three-year-old son unattended at her table to approach and console Twin, placing her hands on his uneven shoulders.
“Do you feel good about yourself?” an effeminate man having a lunch meeting jumped in.
Soon enough a not insignificant faction, daresay a majority, of the restaurant’s clientele had gathered around the table, their kindness only making Twin more emotional as he attempted to offer reassurances in between his child-like yet animalistic and primal sobs. “It’s okay…” gasp, wail, wail, gasp, “I’m okay…” gasp, gasp, gasp. But each effort at protest was so pathetic it only reinforced the crowd’s self-righteous belief in their decision to intervene.
“This is a helpless man,” an obese, bald, and pale patron chimed in.
“Where do you get off, sir?” a faceless voice came forth from the crowd.
These verbal grenades, coupled with Walter’s dumbfounded silence, spurred on more and more outcry until Twin finally seemed to manage to breathlessly blurt out, in between diaphragmatic convulsions…
“He’s my brother.”
And just as quickly as they had descended, the mob and its bloodthirst abated, with some patrons even shifting gently apologetic as they retreated.
The older woman placed her slight hand on her chest while raising her eyebrows.
“Sorry to interrupt,” offered the mother, returning to her table just in time to scold her son, “Justin, don’t play with the olives!”
“Enjoy your meal,” offered the effeminate man.
The obese man just waved his paddle-paw of a hand at the whole situation and returned to his table, which was clear across the opposite side of the patio.
As Twin stifled his remaining wail-sobs, Walter found himself focused upon a pesky tinge of remorse.
“I’m sorry,” Walter explained.
“I…shouldn’t…have…” Twin barely managed words in between hyperventilated gasps, “judged…you. I…just…”
“Stop talking,” Walter insisted, offering up his glass of water, from which Twin took several sloppy gulps, most of which ended up in his lap after making its way messily down his chin and chest.
“You’re not…” Walter searched for words to replace the words he did not now want to repeat, but he came up with no suitably gentler synonyms, so he settled upon “…what I said you were.”
“I know I’m different, Walter,” Twin had calmed enough to explain. “I understand that my circumstances are not normal.”
Twin took another couple of slovenly pulls from the water glass before going on…
“But I choose
to focus on what I’ve got going for me, which I feel is still quite a lot.”
For some reason Walter would never understand, this string of words and the simple sentiments they conveyed, stung Walter’s eyes with a swell of tears, which he stifled without any external trace just as the waiter arrived with their lunches.
Twin’s smoked fish plate was elegant, rustic, and unthinkably delicious, an undeniably inspired choice, of course. Walter’s club salad looked pathetic: iceberg lettuce with blocky chunks of cheese and turkey. Twin had advised him against ordering it. But Walter had insisted. Mostly because Twin had advised against it. Walter forced a breath into his lungs, constricted taut with frustration, and pledged to himself that he would eat every last bite of this salad no matter what heinous gustatory experiences he encountered therein.
5.
When Monday morning came, Walter sat up in bed and seriously contemplated quitting his job for perhaps the thousandth time in the past two weeks.
He would need to pay his bills, sure. But if it meant he did not have to go back to that job, he would be just fine to do away with most of his bills anyway. Except for maybe Eleanor, if he even needed to pay for her. He presumed that call girls required payment up front, which she certainly did not seek prior to their encounter. But this presumption was admittedly based only on what Walter had seen in the movies. For all he knew maybe some of them invoiced their clients. Moreover, even if their relationship was rooted in authentic emotion, he worried that his being unemployed might impact his perceived viability as a suitor overall.
Walter wondered whether Eleanor had ever wanted to date a rock star. He guessed that she might have at some point in her life. Maybe just a teenage crush. Maybe something more. He wondered what music she liked.
He also wondered if she ever thought of him at all.
If he ever came up in the mundane stream of thoughts that narrated her days.
He would go see her. It had been too long. Maybe she thought he didn’t like her anymore. He would call her on his way to work.
He had decided it best to instate a two block rule, requiring that he achieve at least that distance, in any direction, from his apartment before he would ever call her. He figured it best to keep Veronica sheltered from this entire circumstance until he had a better sense for what, exactly, the entire circumstance was. And keeping all communication with Eleanor out of his home, he figured, was best for everyone at least until the circumstance was more clearly defined.