Homunculus

by Wintner, Robert;

  But an excellent fuck distracts sadness only briefly. They dress quietly in the atmosphere of a wake, as if Tony Drury just died, and though we suspect a reincarnation momentarily, we’re none too sure on how things will size up. She pours another round, a short one for town and supplies, because stocking up for the trail should be fun. She says, “We’ll be … dos perdidos.” The lost ones.

  He lets himself be humored, and she brightens on the way in with enthusiasm. They buy enough equipment and supplies for a column of porters but she says don’t worry, it won’t all go in one trip. She implies regular outings, as if they’ll go until he finds himself. Could he be a trail guide? Nah. He’d never make it with tourists. They’re so dull and optimistic.

  They’ll travel light, she says, like he traveled from town. Traveling light is best, she says, so they browse the pints and pick a dozen for light travel. He suggests two pints, three jugs and a funnel, for lightness and efficiency, but she says, “No. We’d lose it on the fill-ups, jugs open, pints open, hell.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  She shrugs. “Depends how you look at it. But, yeah.”

  “What fortitude you have,” he says, because it’s a day of fortitude and well wishing.

  “We’ll see,” she says, and he stops short on the sidewalk at the sight of a road-worn middle-ager looking back from a shop window. Behind his reflection is a mannequin in a new shirt. “See a ghost?” she asks. He steps sideways, into the shirt if he squints—rayon with long sleeves and two pockets in dynamic beige, his color on a good day. Eyes sparkle over the collar as if reflecting his own, suddenly young and clear again. “Go ahead and try it on,” she says.

  “A man needs a shirt,” he says, drifting in.

  The tawny-skinned clerk sweeps her raven hair behind her and undresses the wicker mannequin. He unbuttons his shirt, a once favorite, blue on blue in a weave that’s nice to touch despite the fray. He takes it off and blushes, stomach in, chest out but not too much. The clerk handles the old shirt like holy vestments. She also blushes, draping him with the new shirt, straightening, smoothing, putting the buttons in the right holes because he got it wrong. He holds it in.

  Heidi clears the air. “Relax, cowboy. It’s a shirt, not an audition.”

  Inez, the clerk, could be from Union Square, she so deftly handles an overpriced shirt and a willing customer. Her provincial limitation surfaces when she can’t quite get the bottom button that dangles just in front of the tamale con queso. She fiddles with it and looks up apologetically for nudging his pinga. He doesn’t mind, until she spoils a lovely picture with a mossy grin, teeth green as fence-posts in the shade. And the cheese is all hers.

  Yet her happiness cannot be denied. “My neh ees Inez.” She grins in a cruel display of third-world dental care but gets serious with buttons and holes and regains her beauty. She seems enchanted with gringos who have more money than anyone else in the world. She says she loves working, especially for gringos like the one who owns the shop, because it isn’t even work, not hard work, not really. The boutique job is only twelve hours a week, but she has faith that something will come to her.

  The shirt is fifty dollars, a month’s wage for her, an impulse for a gringo. “It doesn’t seem right, does it?” he asks. Inez looks troubled by the question.

  Heidi watches. “If you like it, you should have it.” He looks troubled by the statement. “We’ll take it,” she says. “You look good in it,” she confirms. “Can you clean?” She speaks like a teacher to a child, explaining a new game.

  “Sí, very clean,” Inez says.

  “You want her?” Heidi says.

  “What?”

  “She needs work. We have work. You need a playmate.”

  “A playmate? What are you?”

  “Like I say, I need free time. You give it to me.” She turns to Inez. “Can you come out in three days?”

  “Sí.”

  “Bueno. Vamanos muchachos.” She’s out the door. Taco whines and follows, ready for a bar, some drinks and old friends. Inez refolds with care while Tony draws a map in more loving detail than the one drawn for him. They exchange good-byes, and he catches up with his landlady.

  “A little rough if you ask me,” he says.

  “A little. She’ll come around. We need a maid.”

  “Seems like … Ah, nevermind.”

  “Go ahead, what’s bugging you?”

  “Nothing bugging me.” He lets it go; nothing bugs him but the groundrules for real love. “You don’t like threesomes. You told me that.”

  She laughs. “Make it work, Tony. You’re a natural.”

  He slows. She doesn’t. He calls, “How can you take care of me and be mean to me?”

  She stops and turns. “I take care of you. I take care of me, too. You call this mean?”

  “I don’t understand. You don’t feel nice.”

  She takes his arm and leads him up the sidewalk in the old silence with a new strain; time for a drink. The two blocks to La Mexa seem hazardous as a country road in the dark with pitfalls waiting to bring you down.

  But tension pales next to a war in the Middle East. The old crowd is here to cheer. It’s like the Superbowl but better, more like the old Fortyniners against Iraq. And hey, look: Heidi Heidi Heidi ho! Tony Tony Tony hey! The whoop de do and drinks down the line from friends long gone, the cash on the bar and a home-game warmth makes it a night to remember, a night on the town, a night in Tunisia. The rocket’s red glare lights up the place and the old crowd. Blow-by-blow with instant replay on direct hits blends well with many rounds for the house and America. It’s drunk until midnight, drunker till two, blotto by five.

  The hard-core stay with the action so the troops on the front won’t feel alone, until Pancho turns off the war and the troops in Mexico are forced to retreat.

  Heidi swerves but misses the ditch and it’s obviously not her fault. The slithering bastard of a road jumped out from under. So why even talk about it? Just out of town, passing three Mexicans walking down the road, Tony says, “I wonder where they’re going.”

  “Gonna pray. Get an early start. Gonna pray the sun’ll come up, and everything’ll get dry and dusty again today.” They laugh like hyenas all the way home, where each finds a place to get horizontal with one foot on the floor. Taco moans, turning a circle on the sofa.

  Waking at noon, she rubs her eyes and rakes the gravel. “See. It worked. Thaink you, Jaizus!” He opens his eyes to see her hock into the corner. “Fuck it, the new maid’ll be here in a few days.”

  “That’s disgusting,” he says, and soon they snore.

  An all-night drunk postpones departure on the first camping trip of the season. No big deal; with delay comes perspective. Sleeping till four makes the lost day a short one and besides, they’ve known since happy hour yesterday that tomorrow was a goner. They had a war to fight, homecoming and catching up. Departure is rescheduled for the next available stability, just after brunch two days down, no big deal.

  Heading out at last feels good. Nothing has changed in town. Aside from the war was news of Tomàs and Marylin in conjugation. It happened once with a rematch pending. Tomàs arrived at the thick of cocktails one day with flowers. Marylin was embarrassed. She took the flowers and left. Tomàs said, “I thought demonstrable affection was de rigeur the next day.” He called her behavior contradictory to apparent satisfaction only yesterday.

  Suey’s husband returned from Vera Cruz where he turned some money and stayed sober for a week. She took him back because he said he loved her.

  Whippet promised to love her more and attempted proof; this prior to plying Kensho with drinks and asking, Do you want to do it or not? Whippet pressed him point blank. Kensho said he would. Then why don’t you do something? Because, he said, first we must take the time to anticipate, to know each other by imagination. Does that mean you want to do it tonight? No, he said. Not tonight. I’m not ready tonight. Then he passed out.

  Whippet went to Cisco and asked wh
at he thought of her. I think you’re a fine little woman, Cisco said. He was game and unrelieved for three weeks, a record since before he was nine, he said. But once disposed, he couldn’t make it; five pounds down made her ribs stick out. You can’t trust men. Lawrence coming home proved that for Whippet it was Suey, only Suey.

  Mal was hocking up the goo and breathing none too well. He flailed and wailed over subdivision and new construction. Do you realize what easy money this is? Word was, it wouldn’t be much longer.

  Toward the end of the war for the night, Rhonda told Tony that Charles was in the hills practicing oration and simple madness. “Says who?” Rhonda thought maybe some Mexicans were who. “They know Charles?” She didn’t know who. She only heard. She lit a smoke and asked what he’d heard. He was drunk and didn’t know much either. Pancho turned off the tube and La Mexa went to patterns.

  Rolling up the mountain he says, “Nothing changed.”

  “Not much anyway,” she says.

  “So it’s cut and dried between you and town?”

  “I think so. How about you?”

  He shrugs, “I guess I reckon it is.”

  “That’s redundant,” she says.

  “No, it’s just repetitive. But we’re not.” He stares out the window, so she thinks he means the day and their direction is fresh and new, rather than meaning with his usual snide cynicism that they too suffer the same old same old. She feels flattered that a man so callous is softening in her tutelage, yet she wonders if a soft, sensitive man could rouse her for bell ringing. She doubts it; they never have.

  He hopes for the best, tempering expectation, focusing on a day in nature, a day of simple pleasure. She smiles on him like a mother whose child prepares to leave home. He takes it for sympathy, which turns his own smile sour. Taco the dog wants his family happy, so he licks Heidi and then Tony, whining, sensing pain in the hindleggers, or maybe he has to pee.

  XI

  Simple Madness All Along

  The ride up is like the ride Moses would have taken if Moses had a truck. Moses might have driven up from the wilderness to receive the law, so the chosen might know the error of their ways, not that they didn’t already suspect something askew. But people like things spelled out, enumerated and expounded, so they’ll have a point of reference in times of doubt and contrition, so they can know what is wrong. So they can choose better next time.

  Heidi pulls up, shuts it off and stares at her lodger with the same scrutiny he saw on their first morning together. “Life is hard,” he says. She gets out and walks into the scene, leaving him to comprehend and, with luck, adapt.

  He looks for intention, for what is real behind what is staged. Charles is an actor after all, cast in the lead at last, supporting himself and appreciating his performance. Like an actor fulfilled, Charles produces, directs, stars in, reviews and loves the show. What a ham.

  Tony and Heidi are welcome to the show, mind your step now, choreography is by Charles, who pulls strings so the Charlettes can get it right instead of just flopping around like they’ve done all their lives. No more pagan frenzy at this altitude; this dance is formal.

  Maybe he’s only crazy. “What’s the diff? I’m not an actor. I’m an ex-actor.” He plays the old lines before imaginary kliegs and a peanut gallery demanding more. He appears to approach his denouement. Or maybe that’s his fantasy. “Ex-actor. Exactor. I demand precision. Eggs Zactor was my stage name. They called me Eggs. Ecks in Germany. You are all Chooish … Ecks Schloctor when they didn’t like me, which came to be always because I couldn’t make it. Never and ever. Mac Fuctor on the mall. Call me Mac. Big Mac, on account of my size. With cheese!” He makes no sense; that’s the ticket, working it out, honing lines under the gifted direction of himself. From the ruins of failed characters he strives for a composite that perhaps can hold together. He isn’t sure it can play out, but he’s never been so close, and the uncertainty seems complimentary to the play’s texture, to its rich and creamy flavor, its complexity and pathos and all that …

  Action.

  Charles achieves suspension. Insane yet coherent he narrates a life of days suspended. Fragmented notions in staccato delivery mean nothing to the non-initiate, the unmad, the ungame, the undrunk. But to the unhinged he is soul-kin. Haggard and winded, reporting trouble from the front like an advance scout who’s been and seen, he wails, “Lawdy, you will not believe what happened to us.”

  Emoting nonpresence, he left town character by character down to the stumble drunk who was last man out. Revival on the mountain needs a simple set—a fire, some rags and dirt and a fur piece from the pulpit on the flats. Risen to the clouds he plays it fresh. “It’s typecast, don’t you think? I play a novitiate recluse from the Church of Christ I Need a Drink.”

  Commitment to the role appears supreme. Clarity and intensity once squandered on rote recitation now give forth with ingenuity. Charles has new material at last, as if his career and life and potential only needed a decent script, so he got down and wrote it. It allows him range and depth, so long constrained; he reaches and by God grasps the intrinsic nature of man-the-actor acting like a man, reaching the glint for all seasons, the deathly quest, the doomed knowledge, the harsh concern, the mortal pride and monstrous compassion. “Adolph Hitler was an animal nut. Did you know that? Vegetarian. Who did you eat today?”

  Charles ditches method and lines and goes for the greater repository of truth: instinct. Sober now he fumbles with sentences like a simian with hand tools. He goes back to reshape a few, bending and banging to capture the essence of his struggle. He achieves lucidity in recollection of infirmity.

  Heidi sits apart. She won’t sit by the fire or go behind the rocks for sexual relations with Charles. Not now. Not even for a quickie—even if it goes slam bam and ends with a glop in her skivvies before her skivvies reach her ankles—because she only arrived. A girl needs to warm up. She’ll go behind the rocks later, when she’s ready. She hopes Tony can see that what was once a fling is now a cause, a noble calling, a salvation. He must see it. He will see it, truth be told, because he knows she’s not blind. She didn’t walk out when he sniffed every bush in town. No; she deserves a hearing, so they can know where they are and what comes next.

  Charles leers and confides to Tony that he doesn’t mind waiting awhile, because they don’t like you putting it on them too fast, because they need time to adjust like anyone. “And it’s a hell of an adjustment if you think about it. I think premeditation lets them dilate, don’t you? Have you ever thought about that? Hell, I’m asking the head hotdog if he ever thought about mustard. Ha!”

  “I know I need time to warm up,” Tony says, watching the fire as if reason will rise from the flames. He appears calm, possibly numb and repressed, like he needs time to let the truth ooze out slowly. Difficult visions crowd the little clearing. The knife is in, and like many men he wants it twisted, to be sure.

  Jorge stares like a bump on a log in rags—a dirty bump on a dirty log in dirty rags, unlikely guru to a cult of one. Tony walks away from the fire and gazes down on the patchwork plateau three thousand feet below.

  Charles stokes the coals. “The gates of heaven are closed to me today. They’ll open tomorrow. Why wouldn’t they?” He rubs his hands over the fire like a sorcerer over a batch of hocus pocus. “They always do.” His voice resonates in the cold air, so he rides the chord on the final affirmative: “Do. Do. Dooo.” Embers pop like modern percussives for his descent to the low end: “Doooooo!” Looking fore and aft he grins, but the audience is still.

  Scene 2: “We know a woman in town, Rhonda. I was there first, you know. I had this craving to eat her. You got there but wouldn’t eat her. That’s what she said. Your loss. That’s what I said. She’s a smart one, Rhonda, but she doesn’t want to be loved for her brain. She wants to be eaten. They all do, you know. It’s up to us to eat them. You must know that. You must, you being you. Or me, I guess I should say. I ate plenty women, but this one—we had chemistry. She was
flattered, I tell you, that I’d rather eat her than talk to her. Not that she had nothing to say. She did. She’s quite a rhymer you know. I told her: just keep rhyming. She had a hard time with that, I think because she hadn’t been eaten in quite awhile. I wasn’t putting her on. I liked it. Maybe it’s a phase I’m going through. She liked it too, never was eaten so good—I’m not bragging. I don’t think I’m bad. But this one I got close to. Don’t ask why. I don’t know. She wouldn’t admit I was the only one who ate her so well. She didn’t have to. I knew. I know things, you know. I got down there and started eating her and it was the most amazing thing. It tasted like blueberries.”

  He pokes the embers, drifting from blueberries, scanning the ridge. Scudding clouds threaten but break up and drift. “Blueberries?” Tony asks.

  “Mm. Yes. Wish you had some now, don’t you? I don’t mean blueberries in a dish with cream and sugar. It was like … like this blueberry poppyseed cake I used to get at this pastry place in New York. I never liked poppyseed cake. It’s so dry—my mother makes this dry poppyseed cake and I take a big bite and give it a chew and spray crumbs all over my dog. He doesn’t care. But this place makes it so moist you can eat it plain, and then they put this blueberry stuff on top and warm it up. It’s incredible. I can eat one of those things and go to late afternoon without getting hungry. It’s that satisfying.”

  A minute passes in the clouds. Tony calls back, “Lunch.” Because no matter what tragedy befalls you, you have to eat. Heidi rummages the truck for beans or coffee, anything but blueberries. “And Rhonda tasted like blueberry poppyseed cake?” Tony sizes him for coherence, and he wants to know. Because Tony doesn’t actually mind eating a woman if he can warm up to it and it looks good and smells tolerable and, well, if he senses sparse traffic at the intersection. He knows some of them like it. He would have eaten Rhonda, maybe, but then standing up and all. She seems unlikely now, but then everything does.