• • •
Phil went to the bathroom to drain some margarita, and when he came back into the bedroom Veronica had already taken off everything except for her jewelry and was on the bed on top of the pastel-colored patchwork quilt Phil’s mom had made, half sitting propped up on the pillows, still drinking her margarita. Her clothes were strewn all over the bedroom floor, except the candy-apple-red jacket, which she had hung on the back of a chair. Pictures of his three kids, of himself and Diane on various vacations, of himself and Garrett with various fish, of various relatives he barely recognized by sight, of his parents and Diane’s parents, were all over the walls, peeping down at them, as if watching. Let them watch. Veronica put her margarita down on one of the two matching bedside tables, and Phil unbuttoned his short-sleeved Oxford shirt, took off his khaki shorts and his underwear, and, thusly naked, climbed onto the bed and fucked her.
The windows were open, and a hot salty breeze blew in off the gulf over their bodies. Their two naked bodies lay spent and slack on top of the quilt, and they fell asleep together without even bothering to cover themselves.
• • •
Phil was woken up by noises coming from downstairs. First he noticed that his tongue was dry and he had a mild headache. Then he looked at the red numbers on the screen of the digital clock next to the bed, which said it was three thirtysomething. The second two digits were partially obscured by the saguaro cactus-shaped stem of the empty margarita glass on the bedside table. The red numbers of the alarm clock illuminated the margarita glass with the green cactus-shaped stem and made it glow as red as if it had just been pulled from a furnace. He turned his head and looked at Veronica. Her fat pale breasts were flopped over to the sides of her chest, and a sparkling rivulet of drool had slid out of the corner of her open mouth and made a spot of dampness on the pillow under her head. He heard noises of banging, shifting, rattling downstairs. He heard footsteps. He heard something being scooted around. He thought he could hear breathing. He was being robbed.
Then he panicked. He wondered if he had remembered to lock the doors before going to bed, and concluded—being as he had been at the time somewhat intoxicated and preoccupied with Veronica—that no, he had not remembered to secure the premises. And now there was someone downstairs, inside his house.
Phil eased his body off the bed, trying to get up without rocking the mattress too much, without waking Veronica. No need to freak her out. He would go downstairs to investigate. His junk was glued to his thigh with their fluids, and Phil had to wiggle around a little bit to shake everything loose before tugging and yanking his underwear and shorts back on. He crept, fastidiously and silently, out of the bedroom.
There was definitely someone downstairs. He grew surer of it with each step.
From the top of the stairs he could see down into the living room. There was nobody in it at the moment. There was a wall in front of the couch, where there should have been a flat-screen TV. Instead, there was just a naked white wall. Yes, he was being burgled. The light from the streetlights made orange rectangles across the floor of the living room. Phil made it to the bottom of the stairs and curled around the corner into the living room, hugging close to the wall. He heard a noise coming from the other side of the house, in the kitchen. He crouched behind the marble countertop that separated the kitchen from the living room. The kitchen was glowing with blue-white light, which meant the refrigerator was open. Phil peered above the countertop.
Phil had never been robbed before. Frankly, he had been expecting to find a black person of some sort. Instead, it was a white guy who was standing in his kitchen. He had his back turned to Phil. The guy was tall, skinny, and gangly, in a white T-shirt and jeans. He had an ugly, narrow shaved head, like a baby bird’s, with wiry little prickles of hair sticking out all over his pink scalp. Phil rose to his feet and walked noiselessly into the kitchen. The burglar was standing in front of the open refrigerator, with one hand holding the door open and the other dangling down by his side, so Phil could see both his hands, and assumed this meant he was unarmed. He was just standing there, looking into the refrigerator.
What the fuck kind of burglar was this, who would steal his TV and then decide to make himself a snack? With the door open like that, the refrigerator kicked on and began to hum. He heard the icemaker dump a cluster of ice cubes into the ice cube reservoir in the freezer.
The burglar continued to stand there, motionless, gazing into the bright space of the open refrigerator, as if temporarily mesmerized by the combined sensory effects of its chill and hum and light. Phil stood behind him in the kitchen. Slow, careful, no sudden movements, no noise. He thought about sliding open one of the kitchen drawers and grabbing a knife. He decided against it because the noise of the drawer opening would probably alert the burglar. He looked at the kitchen counter and saw the following objects: the empty plastic sack that had contained the ice, a dirty blender, a cutting board on which there lay a few chopped-up, dried-out limes, the knife Veronica had used to cut the limes—which was sharp, but much too small to adequately threaten a burglar with—a bottle of mezcal that was empty except for the bloated worm at the bottom, a bottle of Cointreau, and a rolling pin. Phil picked up the rolling pin.
The part of the rolling pin that had been lying on the counter was wet from the ice dust that had skittered across the counter and melted. He held the end of the shaft with the handle butted against his palm. Phil walked up behind the guy with the rolling pin. He swung as hard as he could and cracked the rolling pin against the back of his skull. He raised his arm to do it again, but the guy crumpled under the first blow. The guy additionally banged the front of his head against a shelf in the refrigerator on his way down and caused a half-full bottle of white wine to tumble out of the refrigerator and explode on the kitchen floor. The guy was knocked out.
• • •
“Phil?” Veronica called from the stairs.
Veronica came downstairs and into the kitchen wearing Diane’s robe, a slippery and shiny thigh-length thing made of blue silk.
“What’s going on?” she said. “I heard a noise, and you weren’t in the bed.”
She came into the kitchen.
“Phil?” she said, and snapped on the light. They both cringed at the sudden brightness. She saw Phil dragging the inert body of an emaciated young man across the kitchen floor by his feet. She screamed.
“Who the fuck is that?” she said.
“Veronica, meet Julian.”
Phil dragged Julian by his skinny ankles into the living room. He was white-knuckled with rage, and still talking.
“The little fucking asshole’d probably think he can blackmail me if he knows daddy’s having an affair. Fucking asshole.”
Veronica thumped through the house in bare feet, turning on lights. Phil dragged Julian through the living room and lifted him—Julian was so skinny, so dangerously light, much easier to lift than a twenty-four-year-old man should have been (was that right?—was he twenty-four?—twenty-five?)—and laid him out on the couch that faced the wall that used to prominently feature a very expensive fifty-inch Pioneer Elite Plasma HDTV.
The kid looked like complete shit. His arms and neck were spectrally thin. There were gray bags under his eyes. His skin was pale and sickly-looking. His head and face had pimples all over them. There was about a four-inch purple streak running up one of his forearms. He had new tattoos on his arms now, which Phil hadn’t seen yet. He smelled like cigarettes. He was out cold.
The front door of the house was open. Outside, Phil saw Veronica’s sparkly toothpaste-blue Mazda Miata parked on the street in front of his house. Then there was a nondescript little white car that Phil had never seen before parked in his driveway. Phil looked in the backseat of the white car. It was a shitty little old Toyota Tercel. A dim overhead light came on when he opened the back door of the car. There, sitting on the tan backseat of this mysterious off-white Toyota Tercel, was his TV. Phil carried his TV back inside, set it down
on the floor—goddamn thing was heavy—and slammed the door.
Julian had woken up. Julian was sitting up on the couch and vomiting into a small plastic garbage can that he held in his lap. Veronica was down on the floor on her hands and knees next to the couch, wiping up vomit from the hardwood floor with a damp rag. Diane’s blue robe was too small for her. Veronica was bigger than Diane in every dimension and direction, and the bottom of the robe rode up above her ass, and in the position she was in Phil could see her pussy peeking out between her plump, naked haunches. Julian’s body twisted up in a hideous way as he emptily retched a few times before dumping another torrent of puke into the garbage can in his lap.
“I’m sorry,” said Veronica from the floor. She climbed from kneeling to standing with the rag wadded in her hand. “As soon as he woke up he started throwing up. I got him the trash can from the bathroom.”
“Thanks,” said Phil.
Julian looked at him from over the rim of the garbage can. His eyes were swampy and bloodshot.
“You done?” said Phil.
Julian nodded, weakly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and swallowed. His hand was shaking. His whole body was shaking. Phil took the trash can from him.
“How you doin’, son!” he said, in a voice chipper with sarcasm. “Good to see you! Been a while, hasn’t it? Long time no see. Yessir. Matter of fact, nobody’s known if you were alive or dead for a month. Heck, it’s been so long, seems everybody just quit giving a shit one way or the other. Good to know you’re still feeling well enough to come on back home and steal my shit.”
“I’m sorry,” Julian said, or maybe croaked. He held his face in his hands and started to cry. His protrusive shoulder blades trembled. He cringed into himself, drew up his knees, and cried.
“Boo-hoo-hoo!” said Phil in a sweet little voice. “Boo-hoo-hoo! Boo, hoo, fucking, hoo. I see you’ve already met Veronica. Or should I introduce you formally? Veronica, meet Julian,” he said, gesturing from Veronica to the miserable figure crumpled on the couch, a pantomime of manners. “My deadbeat junkie son. We’re all very proud of him. Julian, Veronica.”
Phil was still holding the garbage can full of vomit. Veronica was standing to the side, about ten feet away, with her hands clasped in front of her.
“You’re cheating on Mom?” said Julian.
“Fuck you,” said Phil, and upended the garbage can into Julian’s lap. “Got a lot of high moral ground to stand on, don’t you. What with robbing your parents and all. The little boy who was just too special for this wicked world.”
Julian stood up. When he got to his feet, his eyes rolled back in his head until his pupils disappeared and his eyes were only bloodshot whites, and he passed out again, falling forward onto the floor.
“Goddamnit!” Phil screamed, and gave the again-unconscious Julian a savage kick in the side.
“Jesus Christ, Phil!” said Veronica. “Calm down! It’s okay now. We’ll deal with this. Come on. Calm down.”
Phil threw the empty garbage can at Julian’s body. It bounced off him and brattled across the floor. He flung his hands up in the air and left the room. He stomped into the kitchen with a plan to steady himself with a drink and immediately stepped on broken glass. He heard the kiss and crunch of it under his bare feet right before the pain registered in his nerves.
“FUCK!”
“Jesus Christ, what now?” Veronica called from the living room.
“I just cut the shit out of my feet on all this goddamn glass all over the floor!”
Phil sank to the floor, sat down cross-legged, and began to try to pick the shards of broken glass out of the bottoms of his feet. Already bleeding like a stuck hog.
“Good God, Phil,” said Veronica, stamping into the kitchen. “Lemme see it.”
To avoid the glass on the floor, she quit stamping and instead tiptoed over to Phil, sat down in front of him, and put one of his bloody feet in her lap.
“Try not to get blood on that thing,” said Phil, referring to Diane’s blue silk robe.
“You can get her another one.”
“Not by Monday. It’s monogrammed.”
“It’s not that bad,” she said. “Show me the other one.”
Phil switched feet.
“I think you got all the glass out. Look, it’s not that bad. Lemme get you cleaned up. Have you got Band-Aids and alcohol?”
“I think there’s some stuff like that in the drawer under the sink in that bathroom.”
She went down the hall into the bathroom. Phil heard drawers squealing open and rolling shut, heard her digging around in the contents of the drawers. She ran the water in the sink for a moment. She came back balancing in her arms a damp washcloth, a brown bottle of rubbing alcohol, a bag of cotton balls, some cotton pads, and a roll of gauze tape in her arms. Veronica sat down in front of him. She wiped his feet with the wet washcloth, then put a cotton ball to the neck of the brown bottle, dumped it once upside down, and stung his wounds with the alcohol.
Phil winced.
“It’s okay. The bleeding’s already stopping.”
She pressed the cotton pads to the bottoms of his feet and wound the gauze tape around them, securing them in place.
“What did you hit him with?” she said.
“A rolling pin.”
“It’s not a good sign that he threw up. He might have a concussion.”
“What, did you used to be a nurse or something?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Oh.”
Veronica got up and gave him her hand and helped him climb to his feet.
“Sonofabitch.” He grimaced at the pain.
“It’s not bad. Your feet’ll be fine in a couple of days. I’m more worried about your son.”
“Fuck him, the fucking asshole. Haven’t seen him in a year. Haven’t heard from him in a month. No phone call, nothing. Could’ve been dead for all anybody knew. Then he comes back in the middle of the night to steal my goddamn TV.”
“Do you love him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have a broom or something?”
“In the pantry. Down the hall to the right.”
Veronica swept the broken glass on the kitchen floor into a dustpan and poured the tinkling debris into the big garbage can under the kitchen sink.
“The hell with him,” Phil said. Remembering his original intent on coming into the kitchen—a drink—he opened the liquor cabinet, uncorked a bottle of Scotch, and took a slug from the bottle. He coughed and cleared his throat. His breath was staggered and shallow, his hands were trembling with anger, and now his feet hurt like a motherfucker.
“Shhh,” said Veronica.
Phil was leaning with his back against the kitchen counter. The floor swept, Veronica walked over to him, wrapped her arms around him, and said, “Shhhh.”
She stroked the arches of his wounded bare feet with her own bare feet. She entwined her legs with his, and he felt the skin of her smooth, thick young legs rubbing against the skin of his thin hairy legs, and felt the smooth coolness of the fabric of the silk robe against his bare torso. She reached her face up to his and kissed him seriously on the mouth, and bit his lower lip as she disengaged. She reached around him, grabbed the open bottle of Scotch, and took a drink from the neck of it.
“Let’s calm down, okay?” she whispered carefully, and wiped a trickle of Scotch from the corner of her mouth. “We’ll clean him up, put him on the couch, and deal with it in the morning. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Phil.
Phil and Veronica went back into the living room. It didn’t smell good. Julian was lying on the floor in front of the couch, right where he had passed out the second time, with his cheek pressed flat in the vomit. They took off his shirt—God, he was so skinny—and wiped him down with the rag, then mopped up the puke that was all over the floor with the shirt, threw the rag and the shirt in the plastic garbage can, and dumped the whole mess in the garbage. Then they picked h
im up—he got the arms and she got the feet—and laid him out on the couch again. They covered him with a yellow wool afghan that Phil’s mom had knitted, which had been draped over the back of the couch. Julian, sleeping under that yellow afghan on that couch—despite his shaved head and skinny, bruised, tattooed junkie arms—looked like he had when he was a kid, home sick from school, watching TV all day: It was the same yellow afghan, same couch, same kid. Phil and Veronica turned off all the lights and went back to bed.
• • •
When they got up in the morning he was dead. Phil, for his part, hadn’t slept well. Veronica, amazingly, even after all the hubbub in the middle of the night, had just conked right out again and slept like a baby—but Phil had sweated and thrashed around in bed with an angry heart hammering at his ribs, guts in a snarl, and blood galloping in his temples until the windows began to grow light and the birds began to tweet, and Phil finally decompressed into a nauseated vertigo of half sleep that eventually became full sleep, and he woke up just a few hours later at about nine in the morning, with his headache from last night still not completely gone and the bottoms of his blood-blotted-bandaged feet swollen and smarting.
Phil and Veronica showered and dressed in turn. Veronica rebandaged Phil’s injured feet for him after his shower. Veronica put on the clothes she had worn yesterday, and Phil put on another pair of khaki shorts and a pink short-sleeved Oxford, clothes that were very similar to, but different from, what he’d had on yesterday. Phil shaved, spritzed his armpits with deodorant, and combed the hair that over the course of his life had thinned to near baldness but stopped with enough left over to still comb. They went downstairs and inspected Julian, who still lay supine beneath the yellow afghan on the couch in the living room. His eyes were closed, and his face was pale and bluish, with a mouthful of white vomit that was leaking out of the corner of his lips and had dribbled down onto the couch beneath his head. It seemed that in the night he had thrown up again without waking up, choked on it, and died.
Veronica checked his pulse, though it was so obvious just from looking at him that he was dead that there was hardly any need to, and confirmed that there was nothing moving in him. The blood was cold; the organs were motionless. The electricity that had animated this matter was gone. He had stopped.
The Fat Artist and Other Stories Page 16