Cassingle: Five Stories

by Jim Hanas

  "Mind if I take a shower?" Todd asked.

  "Go right ahead," Kent said.

  Todd disappeared down the hallway and Kent fumbled with the alarm clock. Deana and Kiki lay down in the bed. Kent lay down beside them, and the entire family was asleep by the time Todd returned to the spare room and lay his damp body down on the cool sheets.

  JULY 4: EASTER

  Two years ago today our relationship was reborn, which is why we call it Easter. Or that's why Karen calls it Easter. I call it Easter because Karen does. It's not really Easter of course. It's the Fourth of July. It's Easter for me and Karen only.

  Karen calls it Easter because it's the anniversary of our first acceptable date. Our first actual date occurred two days earlier, on July 2nd, but it didn't go well. I tried too hard, according to Karen. I relied heavily on long, well-rehearsed stories and she felt I wasn't listening. So after that first date—on what Karen (and therefore I) call Good Friday—our relationship died before it even began.

  I crucified it, basically, by not listening.

  The next day Karen slept with Doug, a guy from her work who was not particularly nice to her, but who was always just sort of there. That was two years ago yesterday. Holy Saturday. The day Karen slept with Doug.

  The day after that, she gave me another chance.

  This is our second Holy Week together and it has been difficult. But then it should be difficult, Karen reminds me, since it is how we honor the blessing of our relationship, which was given to us despite great odds—and my not listening—to deliver us from our solitary suffering.

  Our observance began 47 days ago on May 18th. Our Mardi Gras. I cooked gumbo and did the dishes. Then I gave Karen a long back rub to prepare us for Lent, during which we vowed to deny ourselves the comforts of our relationship. I denied myself by sleeping on the couch, while Karen denied herself by going out almost every night with her friends Monica and Jessica—just like she was forced to do before our relationship brought us together. Sometimes she didn't come home at all, to give you some idea of her devotion.

  The day after Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, Karen overslept—because of the Hurricanes I made, I think, and because Ash Wednesday fell on a Monday this year. When she finally woke up, she made a little cross on my forehead with ashes from one of the ashtrays she keeps hidden in the bathroom. She told me (like last year) that I should keep them there all day. I asked (like last year) if she would like me to make a cross of ashes on her forehead, but she said no, because it would make her eyes cross and everyone at her office would laugh at her. (This was prophetic—as Karen often is—since everyone at my office did laugh at me.)

  And so our sacrifices continued, with me sleeping on the couch and Karen piously going to bars and movies and dance parties—with a brief reprieve on June 4th, the Feast of St. Peter's Chair, when Karen allowed me to cook, clean the dishes, mix more Hurricanes, give her another back rub, and sleep next to her, provided I remained on top of the comforter.

  The problems didn't begin until Palm Sunday, which fell on a Friday this year. Palm fronds are hard to find this far north, and although I ordered two dozen from a florist in Honduras in what I thought would be plenty of time, the day came and I didn't have anything to put down in the foyer of our condo to honor Karen when she arrived home from work. I panicked a little, I admit, and plucked a few broad leaves off Karen's rubber plant, just so I would have something. I knew Karen would be disappointed because the leaves didn't extend down the hall, past the bathroom, and into the living room, like last year, and also because the fronds weren't technically fronds, but leaves I had plucked off her rubber plant. She was extremely disappointed. She questioned my faith. She prayed for me, and for our relationship, and then spent a long time out at a Bhangra party, atoning. I pledged to make the rest of Holy Week go smoothly.

  As Maundy Thursday approached, I became anxious. I hadn't seen much of Karen since the rubber plant incident. She stayed out late on Holy Monday (a Saturday) and Holy Tuesday (last Sunday), and we only spoke for a moment on Holy Wednesday (Monday), when she explained to me that this year she would observe Holy Saturday by sleeping with a guy named Ron she had met at the Bhangra party, because Doug—who was always just sort of there—had in fact left town. Fortunately, I was too involved in the preparations for our last supper for all this to bother me much. I would need bread and wine, of course, and this peppermint balm Karen likes me to wash her feet with.

  There was lots to do.

  I ordered Middle Eastern food and bought a bottle of Argentinean wine that the clerk at the store recommended. I had everything set up for Karen's arrival when she called and said she was going to be late. Monica (or maybe Jessica) was having some sort of freak-out over Ryan, and although I barely knew these people, Karen said she would be home as soon as she could. She didn't come home until after nine, and she didn't seem as interested in the last supper as she was last year. She was quick with the pita (her body) and wine (her blood), and she wasn't impressed by the foot washing or the peppermint balm. She didn't even insist that I reenact Judas' betrayal by posting a naked picture of myself on my high school reunion's webpage, like last year. Instead, she said I could betray her by cleaning up and leaving her alone while she went into the bedroom and talked to Ron for a long time.

  Good Friday is a solemn day, of course, even when it falls two days before the Fourth of July. As is our newly established custom, we went camping on Karen's uncle's farm. I carried the equipment, to signify Karen's suffering, and all the way into the woods I was supposed to talk non-stop—talk about anything that came into my head—like I had two years ago. Sometimes I got out of breath, from the walking and the talking and the weight, but Karen prompted me to keep talking. Talking had been important enough to sacrifice our relationship, she reminded me, so there was no reason I shouldn't be able to keep it up all the way to the campsite. After the tent was set up, we built a fire and Karen declared silence—a whole night of silence—to commemorate our relationship, which I had just figuratively killed with my blather.

  Karen forgive me, for I know not what I do.

  In the morning, I packed up the tent, and Karen led us out of the woods. At home, she took a shower, then went to Ron's house to endure her final terrible temptation.

  Now everything is set. I have hidden colored eggs and chocolate bunnies everywhere—chocolate bunnies that I have kept hidden in the back of the freezer since actual Easter, because it really is impossible to get them at any other time of the year. I saved some Peeps and some plastic grass too, to avoid last year's fiasco, when I thought it would be cute to observe the resurrection of our relationship with bottle rockets and sparklers. Karen did not think this was cute, so this year I have followed her instructions to the letter, which she has set out in detail in a spiral notebook.

  This notebook contains all sorts of things: pictures of us together and smiling, and pictures of me, alone, sleeping. It contains the liturgical calendar for the next four years and instructions for observing the obligatory holidays. These run for pages in Karen's tiny, precise handwriting. I don't know where she finds the time.

  I thumb through the notebook, forward into the future and backward into the past. The notebook has a picture of Boy George on the cover. It is older than our relationship. Much older.

  It gets dark and then late. Karen does not call, but she will be here very soon—when it is time. She is later than she was three nights ago, and much, much later than last year. But she will be here. I know it. I have faith.

  She will not forsake me.

  NOSE

  The sommelier's hand stalled in mid-air and hung there, frozen and limp, above the midpoint of the table, above the salt and the pepper, and above the single pink rose in the flat black vase. He looked at his hand as though it were a recently discovered artifact before slowly folding his forefinger back into his palm and returning his attention to the bottle of wine he had yet to open. A man of obvious composure and reserve, he seemed surprise
d by the action and by its discontinuation, as if he had only suddenly become aware of both.

  He pulled the cork, presented it, and poured two glasses, all without looking up. He was understandably ashamed although the man, her date, understood.

  It was striking.

  The man (her date) reassured the spooked attendant with much friendly talk and extra thank-yous. If she excused herself, the man decided, he would make a point of formally pardoning the lapse.

  He had been looking at it himself all night, at its perfectly formed, severish curve. At how it was not all diminished by the silver rectangular frames resting across it. It suggested royalty, although in an entirely non-specific way, lacking reference to any particular kingdom or people.

  It was her outstanding quality.

  She was not beautiful. Apart from this, her outstanding quality, she was plain. Her thick black hair was, maybe, a little too thick. Her pale skin was too pale, although she had made none of the typical compensations. Her clothes were not revealing. Her voice was not loud. Her gestures were in no way theatrical. She showed no signs of a struggle. She knew that people stared, the man—her date—could tell, although she didn't seem to know why. Maybe it was her hair.

  Her only affectation was a complicated hair flip that involved thrusting her shoulders back and gathering her thick hair into a bundle, like a bath towel, and draping it—presenting it really—over her left shoulder. She performed this every two minutes or so. It had once been based, perhaps, on an actual experience; on seeing a photograph maybe in which she seemed particularly appealing to herself. The man considered the evolutionary value of such a procedure and did not doubt there was one, although he could not imagine what it might be.

  They hadn't said twenty words all night. She had smiled and he had smiled. He had talked to the waiters and she had smiled. There wasn't anything to say. Her outstanding quality tolerated no space, no reasons to talk. There was nothing to say that couldn't be said with shrugs and smiles and this sublimely articulated hair flip.

  Her date stared over his glass. She smiled. He leaned forward on an elbow, and she continued smiling.

  He set the glass on the table and leaned forward further still.

  The smiling continued, but he could tell by the thrust of her shoulders that she was headed into another hair flip.

  "Would you mind?" he asked.

  She gathered her hair and placed it over her shoulder.

  "Would you mind?" he managed again, helplessly watching as an exotic, trembling hand reached out across the table.

  THE ADVENTURES OF BAD BADGER

  They had no idea what he was talking about. No one ever did.

  "C'mon. You know. He's a badger with a hat," he said, certain he was offering a decisive clue. "Wears dark glasses?"

  His face was red and his eyes beat back and forth. His voice cracked with frustration. The two women at the bar looked at each other, shook their heads, and wordlessly made plans to move to a table.

  Jones had always wanted a tattoo. It was only a matter of figuring out what he wanted a tattoo of. It was not to be taken lightly, he often explained to tattooed friends and acquaintances, after making clear his absolute willingness to get a tattoo, just as soon as he'd figured out of what. It had to be perfect, symbolically speaking. It had to cut to the core of his morally variegated belief system and drag to the surface some part of him he knew would never change, or at least meaningfully represent the structural impossibility of any such thing. They, the tattooed friends and acquaintances, had no idea what he was talking about. Even then.

  He consulted a variety of reference works: Graves' Greek Myths, Lives of the Saints (in several competing editions), The Complete Tarot, 6 Weeks to Reading Japanese, Untying the Celtic Knot, an illustrated history of Marvel Comics, and a seemingly exhaustive omnibus of real and proposed traffic signs issued by the Illinois DMV. Nothing. Every possibility he hit on was too specific to last or too general to be unique. More than once, he'd made an appointment to sit for the needle only to find that the Korean characters for "decay" or Dionysius emerging from the thigh of Zeus or even the old school Teutonic Seyn (under erasure, naturellement) were way old news in the tattoo world.

  Then came Bad Badger.

  The Adventures of Bad Badger appeared one day on the comics page, in between The Wizard of Id and Beetle Bailey. The strip's protagonist looked like you'd expect a cartoon badger to look. Imagine a mouse; then imagine Mickey Mouse. Note the mental processes in between, perform them on a badger (the crude etching in the deluxe color second edition of Webster's New Twentieth Century Unabridged Dictionary, or any comparable work, will serve), and you have the basic idea.

  Bad Badger was otherwise unremarkable. His dark glasses were reminiscent of Steve Dallas and his dangling cigarette was pure Andy Capp. His adventures consisted mainly of his being tired and grouchy and nasty to other woodland creatures, whose difficult dialects suggested they might be characters from Pogo.

  Jones wanted to be Bad Badger. He developed an entire cosmology around the character, as if he were some sort of tragic hero, like Oedipus or the Silver Surfer.

  Slow-moving yet quick-witted.

  Esoteric yet accessible on many levels.

  Apodictic yet robustly a posteriori.

  These were the beatitudes of Jones' peculiar religion.

  Convinced that the badger perfectly summarized the human condition, Jones had his likeness injected into his left bicep in four glorious colors. It was perfect. At the tattoo parlor, every last one of patrons confessed, after extensive interrogation, that they'd never seen or even heard of Bad Badger.

  A week later, Bad Badger was gone. The Wizard of Id and Beetle Bailey again shared a border, making room for an extra Cryptoquip at the bottom of the page. Jones tore up the paper that morning, and many mornings after, in frantic pursuit of his missing hero.

  After a week with no relief, he called the paper. The explanation he got depended on who he talked to. The strip had been cancelled, the cartoonist—Bill something-or-other—had died or disappeared or quit drawing. Jones went to the library and looked through papers from other cities, but nothing.

  "See?" he said, peeling back his sleeve so they could and squinting through the smoke that rose from the cigarette twisted into his lips.

  The women stared blankly at the figure on his arm, shaking their heads. As they hustled their napkin-wrapped toddies to a far away four-top, his voice cracked into a crescendo.

  Solipsistic yet radically transpersonal.

  Unified yet totally torn asunder.

  Cruel yet fair.

  ***

  She had an interesting face, with smooth, pale skin and eyes that were disarmingly bright for being so brown. Her hair was short, artificially auburn, and wrapped in a formless scarf the color of eggplant.

  She talked about her immigrant parents—they were Czech, which explained the face—and about how her father, a psychiatrist, had rejected Freud and her mother, in that order.

  She talked about how her husband's cousin had taken people hostage in a trailer park in middle Indiana a few years back, and how it had not ended well. About how she had met her husband at art school in Milwaukee when they were both eighteen and how they had been married after graduation at twenty-two and about the country and western band that played at their wedding. She didn't mention where he was now, while she was talking to strange men in a Chicago loft apartment lived in by another art school friend, who had in fact been her maid-of-honor. He could be anywhere.

  She said she had drunk much too much the night before and had become depressed. Apocalyptically so. She wondered if he thought she had a problem.

  He said he couldn't say.

  "I have this fear," she whispered past the 120mm cigarette she held never far from her lips, "that just before we die it's not our whole lives that flash before our eyes, but only the parts we've tried to forget."

  "It's so horrible," Jones said. "It must be true."

 
He had no idea what she was talking about. No one ever did.

  THE ARAB BANK

  It had been a beautiful spring in Cannes—the most beautiful Marco could remember. It had rolled in slowly and remained mild, even in the afternoons. At night the air embraced the bodies on the Croisette without conflict, gently blowing everyone's defenses away. Marco cruised the beaches in a pearl white Land Rover, punishing the speakers with music from Marseilles and Compton. It had been particularly easy this spring, and it had always been very, very easy.

  Marco wasn't even seventeen when he discovered that if he tilted his shoulders just right, he could squeeze his body into the alcove between the Arab Bank and the Gucci store, just as he had learned to do in a dozen similar places along the Croisette. Thus arranged—mangled, really, in a contorted contrapposto—he could observe the users of the bank's ATM without himself being seen. Then, after a certain hour—when Campari and brazed goose had lulled most foreigners into a carefree stupor—he could emerge, as if from nowhere, and scare the foie gras out of them.

  They never asked what he wanted. They were too terrified by the sudden appearance of a young, brown tough to even wonder as they handed over their withdrawals without a word. The authorities were no use. The Algerian paid well and the police considered the Arab Bank Surprise to be one of a thousand harmless operations aimed at levying an informal tax on tourism.

  Marco had scared the foie gras out of Scandinavian newlyweds, snotty English businessmen, Persian playboys, and Americans of all kinds—including many among the army of publicists, critics, producers, directors, agents, stars, and hangers-on that invaded Cannes one week each spring. One year alone he had scared the foie gras out of Messrs. C_____, T______, D________, P______, and a foppish companion of Mlle. O______, all of whom (save the companion) he had once idolized in the multiplexes outside Nice.