by Lydia Millet
—Yes Bucella, may I help you?
—Excuse me, I’m leaving for the day. I sent you the last Iowa PSU age-structure mortality file.
—Go ahead Bucella. Everyone else is doing it.
—Yes. Thank you. Just so you know, Phillip’s wife is staying with me temporarily. He may be upset when he comes in.
—So you two hit it off?
—Hardly Alice, said Bucella, pursing her lips. —She is very challenged. I am offering a helping hand.
—Teaching her the scriptures?
—Preventing spousal abuse, said Bucella, and turned on her heel.
—Oh my, said Ernie. —I find that hard to believe.
—Most underreported crime in America, said Alice.
—So what do you think, the barrettes or a hairband?
—Neither Ernie. Keep it simple. I have to go send flowers to my mother.
1:45
He had decided on a stealth approach, both to Statistical Diagnostics and to the harlot herself: the only viable option. To that end he waited in his parking space for her cigarette break. When she came out the front door he followed her on foot for four blocks: then she entered a flower shop, and he waited in the shadow of an awning. After she emerged from the florist’s she looked up at the sky and then stooped her shoulders to light her cigarette. Soon, flattened underfoot, that foul cancer stick would become a butt smeared with pink and crawling with miniscule germs: a public nuisance. The mouth was notorious for its virulence. He himself brushed vigorously and gargled antiseptic Listerine six times daily. Caries would find no purchase in his molars. Nor viral agents in his tonsils. Still, her penchant for cigarettes was currently the last of his concerns. The first was to unveil her, before she reached the office. Force the shy brides into the light.
He walked softly behind her. She took a shortcut through a paved alley lined with green garbage cans, around which fruitflies were circling. Passing an old floorlamp put out to pasture for the municipal sanitation workers, shade askew, beside a pile of carpet scraps, she drew to a halt and turned to look at it, touching the edging on the shade. As she turned Phillip concealed himself behind a hanging branch. Then she resumed her walk, throwing her cigarette onto the pavement without stubbing it out. He felt her carelessness like a bee sting.
Clearly the dominant personality had charge of her now: a callous, cold strumpet, a blond she-devil sweeping the terrain with her insidious arms, her caramel-colored slim arms that hung now beside her shapely hips swathed in black cloth ah yes the black of witches and of Beelzebub himself: she wore the black cloth as a flag of her impurity. It cradled her weapon, the mouth of the hot and angry volcano where magma flowed and rushed in the underground caverns of the damned, the salty peach of the virgin self turned to filth and entertainment. It hid the mound of naked heathen Venus who spread her legs for all without discernment, even the ancient Greek Sodomites, those Three Tenors for example, pedophiles to a man, lazy European pedophiles with swarthy skin, masquerading as Catholics while they drooled over the buttocks of innocent choirboys and were sponsored by AT&T in the commercials, filling their pockets at the expense of honest hard-working Americans—Venus yes who offered up her succulence to hedonistic revelers in immoral Bacchanalia, her black hips swinging as she walked, a dance of lust and sultry silent whoring performed for passers-by, the dance that lured stalwart men into the dominion of her appetites and then consigned them to exile. She was laughing all the way to the bank, a vulture and a Medusa. She should be gutted like a fish, slit open, penetrated and dismantled, thrown down, forcibly suppressed and manfully violated, stripped of the tools of her guile, plunged and riveted at the core.
Only that would bring the virgins fluttering to air.
It was hazardous, yes. He would be placing himself in peril. His very life was at stake, his own purity in terrible jeopardy. Yet he was acting in defense of the spiritual domain, of the world of decency and sanctuary. He was sacrificing his honor for the protection of the weak, for the pursuit of virtue. Bring the virgin brides to the surface, force off the mask, expose beneath—the wet ripe fruit. The luscious pit. There was a saying for this occasion. —It is a far, far greater thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known, he whispered under his breath.
This was the test. He would conquer the earthly by courage and will, quell matter by dint of his spirit’s resolve.
She stopped again and leaned up to pick a blossom from a trailing bougainvillea, precisely as Eve had plucked the apple. He could feel her influence already. She pretended to be unaware of him as he gained on her from behind, but her vice was touching him in tentacles of scent, brushing against him with crass caresses. Blood was rushing to his extremities. He was engorged. Oh yes. The python strained against fabric. Still this baseness was necessary if he was to triumph. He was wielding the spear of righteousness. It felt good, oh it was good. It pressed him onward. It steeled him for the surge. Penetration was imminent. He walked faster. It resisted containment. It was a dog of war. It pulsed and pushed, feeling the teeth of the zipper. Rule, extirpate. He was running. The fabric brushed against it, again and again, with his strides. Oh my yes. But wait.
—Phil? What—
She had turned. The pink lips for sucking. The edge of a breast, luscious, with a sharp tip—sharp tips—red tip. Ah no. No! The surge! He stumbled and tripped, covering his groin with his hands. The spasm. Beyond control. Another. Wetness. Sticky on the cotton. He was dizzy. Lights in his eyes. He crashed against a wood fence and fell, uncupping his hands and raising his elbows to shield his face.
—Phil? Are you okay? Do you need help?
—Get away from me! he choked, eyes squeezed shut.
—Are you sick to your stomach?
With the palms of his hands he could feel the fabric. Not wet on the outside. Shame invisible on the surface. At least safe from that. Not visible. The underwear. Thank God.
—Where is my wife? Where is she?
—Phil? I have no idea where your wife is.
—Liar, he said. Oh no. Tears in his eyes, the shame filling them. Stop! Betrayed again by meat. —I found your note. The second note. Don’t lie just tell me where she is.
—Phil I didn’t write you any note. Take my hand, let me help you up. I think you’re confused. It’s the nausea, it makes you dizzy. Just let me help you up.
—You liar! Where’s my wife?
—No wait. I do know. I remember! She’s staying with Bucella. Phil—is there anything I can do?
2:16
The man at the Salvation Army stared at his clipboard, flipped over the top page and shook his head. —Sorry lady but you gotta schedule the pickup aheada time. We can maybe do it the end of the week. All the trucks got routes. They got preassigned routes from the schedule. You see there? We only got two of the big trucks.
She had to do it today, for it was a grand Gesture that would start the ball rolling. It was the Momentum she needed. She was beginning afresh and no Worldly Possessions could deter her purpose. She would throw herself into the arms of the Mother Superior carrying only a suitcase and tell them how she gave it all up, even the spice rack that was carefully organized and her collection of Love Is . . . and Precious Moments plates and figurines, and they would have to let her in because she would be Poor. She would be alone and poor in this world, except for the Sacred Tragic Love with Ernest and her Faith.
—I would like to speak with your supervisor.
—Help yourself lady, she’ll tell you what I told you. Back there.
She passed many elderly women picking at bins of used clothing and knocked on the door at the back.
—Yeah it’s open.
—Excuse me but are you the supervisor?
It was another old lady, with glasses and dyed magenta hair. The gray was showing at the roots.
—What can I do you for.
—It’s very important, I couldn’t call ahead for personal reasons to schedule a pi
ckup but I really need one of the big trucks to come to my house today and take all my material possessions. I promise it’s worth it. Some of them are quite valuable and the furniture is in excellent condition.
—Sorry but they’re already out on their rounds. Maybe nearer the end of the week.
—No please, you have to help me. It has to be today. Tomorrow I am entering the service of the Lord.
The supervisor took off her glasses and rubbed the lenses with a balled-up Kleenex from the pocket of her yellow pants.
—Where do you live?
—Culver City.
—Lemme take a look at the routes. I’ll be back in a minute. Have a seat while you wait.
Bucella perched on the edge of a plastic chair, knees together, hands on her purse. On the wall was a calendar with deers on it in the snow. There was a framed service award and the gray metal desk was covered in papers and a white coffee mug that said #1 MOM.
Anyway the children of #1 MOM became graffiti artists and drug dealers and impregnated twelve-year-old girls. They sat and watched television while #1 MOM was at work and their heads were filled with senseless violence and if they didn’t deal Drugs, buy Guns and shoot each other Dead in the street in a gang war or spend all their time playing videogames where all they did was blow up things then they were adults and turned into electricians, computer programmers or insurance claims adjusters with no vision of a Great Sacred Tragic Love.
While the #1 MOMs were churning out their bank tellers and software engineers and shoplifters and Drug addicts and serial rapists driven mad by the noise of the city and the litter in the gutters and the spread-legged fallen women in Dean’s filthy magazines, she Bucella and her holy sisters would be living chastely in the Field of Flowers, farming their bees and waiting patiently for the day when all the machines were gone, the concrete was gone, the smog was dispersed, the rapists slept in cemeteries nationwide and there was no more I FUCKED or CHILD MOLESTER and no more highways or ITT Tech commercials or music full of bitch this and motherfucking that and no more pubescent boys in baggy jeans, boys that had just been sweet little babies a short time ago, swearing on the sidewalk and drinking malt liquor from wrinkled paper bags.
And also there would not be fathers leaving little boys in the kitchen in funeral suits who loved their mothers so much that they slept all night in the bed with her crying, when she was already dead.
Bucella would hear the matins bells and cross the cobblestone courtyard in her serene robes, Meditate in small rooms like Julian of Norwich with the Light streaming in, they would write letters at night with a single candle burning on old wooden desks, they would eat quietly in halls of Arches and sing Hymns. They would wait there until all that was Wrong was washed away in the cool rain of Jesus’s tears.
—Good news, looks like we may be able to work you in. One of the trucks rejected a dinette set, he’s driving pretty empty and he’s right around Centinela now so he should be able to swing by in about an hour.
All would be well, and all manner of things would be well.
3:02
Unworthy. The mistake—but it was honest. He had wanted to see virtue where there was only pitch. Yes, pitch. His first anger had been righteous.
She was nothing to him. Common dirt.
The other woman had Barbara. The busty Catholic. She was to blame for all this: hence her overtures, the dinner and always something at work. Begging and bothering. Clearly she was nurturing an obsession with him, a pitifully inappropriate lust. Understandable but of course completely disgusting. He would set her straight and then reclaim his wife.
He drove quickly, running a stop sign. Possibly Barbara could still be brought into line. He had dismissed her prematurely. She was a work in progress, that was all.
3:33
Unceremoniously expelled from paradise.
Expulsion was becoming predictable, and as such a rhythm as regular as tides. First The Quiet Man, then Bucella, now this. Bucella was chief culprit. She at least should know better.
He sat beside Ken on the parking lot, drinking in the shadow of a chain-link fence. Ken had stuffed the deflated love doll, a pink plastic bundle, into his pants before they left HQ. No small feat of dexterity. Now he was blowing her up again. She took her shape awkwardly, head angled into the sand.
—Ken! The camcorder!
—Sorry I forgot it Decetes.
His kingdom, traded for a horse.
—Damn it Ken! After all we went through to get the damn thing! How will we make the movie of my life?
—So what, you’re just a liar Decetes.
Mutiny. Swords and plowshares!
—What are you saying Ken?
—You’re just a liar like the public defender.
Ken had stopped blowing. He cradled the love doll against his chest.
—Them’s fightin’ words Ken. Far be it from me to defend the public. Explain what you mean.
—You said I would meet July: Jezebel. But I never did. You don’t even know July: Jezebel I bet. You’re a nobody is all.
The worm had turned.
—You don’t understand the politics here. You know not, Ken, whereof you speak. July: Jezebel is out of town right now. That’s just the way it is. She’s on a shoot in Vegas right now. But I tell you what Ken.
—Oh yeah what.
—You like my sister, don’t you Ken?
—Yeah I guess. Big bazooms.
—Well Ken, I have a secret to tell you.
—What?
—She likes you too.
—She does?
—She does Ken. She whispered it to me this morning. My sister would like nothing better, Ken, than for you to press your suit upon her.
—Press—?
—She wants you Ken. If you go now, you may find her at home for lunch. Ken, don’t take no for an answer. Whatever she says Ken, she wants you.
—Geez!
Two birds with one stone. Bucella would swat away the poor dwarf like a fly, but not without a fit of pique.
3:59
They were fighting and this time it was a big one. They started after breakfast when her mother said couldn’t he be late just this once because they needed to have a discussion.
First she tried putting on her Sony Discman and cranking up the volume but she got a headache. Then she phoned Mitch because he was always cutting class, he was never at school so he wouldn’t know about the scene with her mother so she could actually face him, but she only got his answering machine. She was sick of her room. She put on her Discman again so they would think she couldn’t hear and opened the door.
They were in the bedroom but the door was cracked open. She only saw the chest of drawers with the vase of silver spray-painted pussy willows on it and her dad’s suit in slow passes of gray as he paced back and forth behind the door.
—Forget the counselor Riva the guy’s a schmuck and it’s not doing any fuckin good, he said.
—Well then what are you saying Jerry? asked her mother in a whiny voice.
At breakfast she’d already been wearing normal clothes or at least normal for her, not the gross robe for once, plus she was wearing that wack blue eyeshadow and the disgusting Paloma Picasso perfume. That was a tipoff that something was up.
—I mean Jerry, you’re the one that can’t—
—What I’m saying Riva is once Ginny’s gone off to school I think it would be best if we separated and thought about getting a divorce.
3 - 1 = 1. Her mother was left behind like old trash because she was so pathetic.
He was a mean asshole but he always wore a suit and acted normal so he thought he was hot shit. Who kept their trash? No one.
She took the stairs three at a time and then the ones to the basement and ran outside, slamming the sliding door behind her. She crossed the patio and the grass and went to the very back of the yard, where there was the picnic table to sit on beneath the avocado tree. It was the furthest possible away. Now she could play the Discman at r
egular volume which wouldn’t give her that ringing in her ears.
But there was a pang in her like a cramp. Maybe she was also a mean asshole since she thought bad stuff about her mother. Such as secretly wanting the Terminator to blow her head off with a submachine gun. That was not too nice. Even though the bullets turned out to be blanks. If her mother knew that thought, her feelings might be hurt. Luckily she didn’t know it and she never would. But also she always made her mother feel bad to her face. It was true she was irritating and stupid but she couldn’t help it.
There was a little blue tent in the pervert’s backyard between the trees at the back, and a geeky-looking cross-eyed lady was sitting on the ground in a wack bikini in front of it. Reading a magazine. Barely five feet away. Maybe her parents were splitting but at least she wasn’t an ugly cross-eyed lady reading a magazine.
She climbed onto the table, crossed her legs, turned on Britney and closed her eyes. To make things even she thought of the Terminator mowing down her dad. With him the bullets were also blanks. But then the Bad Terminator turned and aimed his grenade launcher from the shoulder and blew up her dad’s car. That was real. Her dad screamed and ran around squawking and gobbling like a turkey.
Now the geeky lady was gone and there was a little man lying there, naked on his back without moving. How weird was that.
—Ginny? yelled her father from the back door. —I need to talk to you. Ginny honey? Can we have a talk?
Squawk gobble gobble.
4:24
It was a sports bar, but empty save for Decetes. No heavyset warriors beating their shields, no cymbals ringing out as combatants hacked at each other with axes, no flaxen-haired Viking maidens striking their breasts in appreciative blood-lust. Bear-baiting in Valhalla was reserved for weekends. Instead, a dim brown torpor reigned and the TV behind the bar was tuned to local news.
Decetes toasted the whiskey itself. No other toast occurred to him. —Whither thou goest, he told it, —I also go.
But it had a sour taste. Decetes complained to the barkeep and got a second glass free, from a new bottle. It tasted just the same. The stench of rotten lemons, old skin decaying.