The Ruined House

by Ruby Namdar

  Andrew showered in lukewarm water, without soap. He couldn’t stand anything too hot or cold. Although this left him feeling somewhat better, he didn’t really feel clean or refreshed. His closet looked half-empty. The stack of fresh shirts had shrunk and all his summer pants were creased and stained. When would Angie be back? In a week? A week and a half? He took the first pair of pants from a hanger, grabbed a polo shirt, dressed quickly, and went to the kitchen, not looking at the four living-room windows that were on fire with an intense, pre-sunset orange light. He automatically went to the coffeemaker, then removed his hand from it suddenly. No, not coffee. It would keep him up all night. Another night like the last one and he would collapse. He must buy sleeping pills.

  He opened the refrigerator and surveyed its contents apathetically. There were a few bags of rotting vegetables, some cheese, and an empty carton of milk. Should he order delivery? No, he had to eat right away. He surveyed the meager pickings in the closet. On the middle shelf were a can of coconut milk, a jar of palm hearts, some jams and jellies, and a few bottles of sauces, vinegar, and oil. The top shelf had several boxes of cereal; their bright colors wove an airy fabric of childhood memories, some better than others, in his suggestible mind. He picked a box and started for the table, stopping at the refrigerator for milk, but, of course, it was empty. What should he do now? Although it was strange to think of cereal without milk, he took a bowl and spoon and continued to the table, sitting with his back to the living-room windows to keep his eyes from being blinded by the light. Emptying the remains of the box into the bowl, he dug the spoon into them and stuck it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, dutifully, finishing a spoonful and starting on the next. The stale cereal turned to mush in his mouth. How long had it been sitting in the closet? It tasted of cardboard.

  He needed to drink something. Returning to the refrigerator, he hopelessly examined several bottles of white wine. A spasm in his stomach warned him not to open any. It would be foolhardy to drink wine now. A forgotten container of orange juice lay in the back. He reached for it, informed by its weight that it, too, was half-empty. Thirsty, he unscrewed it and brought it to his mouth, then decided to drink from a glass. He brought the glass to the table, filled it with the lurid, neon-colored juice, and drained it in several gulps, trying to ignore its sour, bitter taste. He poured himself a second glass, shaking out the last drops from the container, and chewed another spoon of the dry, flavorless cereal. He was beginning to get used to it, though he would have thrown it out under any other circumstances.

  The orange light of the setting sun spread from the living room to the kitchen. It colored the memories evoked by the cereal, the juice, and the half-empty bowl on the table, conjuring up details long consigned to oblivion. It’s early in the morning. The kitchen window looking out on the yard is flooded with sunlight. Linda is packing Rachel’s lunch in a bright lunch box, carefully arranging the sandwich, fruit, and dessert. Half-empty bowls stand on the table between crumbs of toast and puddles of milk. Sesame Street is on. Although the characters are hard to make out in the strong light, their voices give them away. They’re Ernie, Bert, Big Bird, and Oscar the Grouch. There is a clatter of breaking glass. Grover, playing a waiter, has slipped on the floor of the restaurant. The dishes shatter, one by one on his blue head. His big, round eyes roll upward with comic despair before he passes out. The little girl is laughing out loud with short, breathless yelps of pure joy. “Rachel, darling, get a move on! Finish your cereal. The school bus will be here in ten minutes and you haven’t brushed your teeth or hair.” The amount of sugar they put in those breakfast cereals! Longing. Regret. Pity. A moist, orange, sunset-colored feeling. It overwhelmed him, breaking through the barriers of self to a tender inner core. His desperate, embarrassed longing was entwined with bright floral patterns, painted with their colors, fiery with the light that trickled through their petals. What had happened to his passion for freedom? For the empty geometry of black-and-white space? For straight, infinite lines? The arrogance of it. The banal, childish immaturity. He blushed with a bitter, self-pitying sorrow that pressed on his overflowing sinuses.

  Andrew jumped to his feet as though his chair were on fire and pushed the table away, his spoon clattering in its bowl. He must go to a pharmacy and buy sleeping pills! He had to, right away! He hurried to the door, not breaking stride as he worked his bare feet into the shoes he had left on the floor two days ago. He patted his hair nervously, sweeping aside his discomfort at stepping out, unkempt and unshaven. He had enough to worry about as it was. His need to get to the drugstore was growing more urgent by the minute. His sole desire was to feel the little box of sleeping pills in his pocket. His mind clutched at it as if it were a talisman that could cure him and restore his control over his life, over himself.

  18

  Andrew crossed the marble floor of the lobby quickly. With every step his sweaty, sockless feet broke loose with an embarrassing squeak from the sticky leather of his shoes. The glass doors glowed radioactively in the orange sunset light. Although he knew the drugstore on the corner of Broadway was open around the clock, he was in a rush to get there, as if it might close at any minute.

  “Professor!” The doorman’s ironic voice tracked him down like a hunting dog just as he was stepping into the street. “Professor, just a minute!” Andrew, nonplussed, turned around. The doorman’s mustache lifted with a smirk, revealed a missing molar. “There’s someone here for you, Professor!” He pointed, for some reason highly amused, to a deliveryman holding a plastic package from Citarella’s. Andrew reentered the lobby, abandoning the hot sunlight for its sour, air-conditioned chill. The deliveryman held out the bag with the ceremonial submissiveness of a tribute bearer. Bewildered, Andrew leaned forward to receive the mysterious gift, vainly racking his mind for the source of it. What could it be? Why was it being given to him? The deliveryman’s expressionless face offered no clue. The package was heavy. It held something sinewy and snakelike that felt neither alive nor quite dead. It sent a current of shock through Andrew that went straight to his helpless brain. He jerked his hands away, dropping the package with a splat that sounded like a slap in the face. Stooping embarrassedly to pick it up, he bumped heads with the deliveryman, who had bent to retrieve it, too. The doorman, enjoying himself more and more, crossed his arms over his chest with a superior smile.

  The package was in Andrew’s hand again, its long, cadaverous contents, possibly bruised from their fall, more ominous than ever. With a self-effacing murmur that could have been either a thank-you or an apology, he pried its sealed top open and peered inside, uncertain of what he would find there. The tentlike interior, held up to the light, contained a second plastic bag in which, wrapped in pink tissue, a large, long object was steeped in a small pool of blood. Andrew turned away from the shocking sight, barely able to stifle a cry of fright and keep from dropping the package again. What could it be? The object looked like an amputated limb. The momentary conviction that he must be dreaming came and went, leaving him none the wiser. No, it was definitely not a dream. He was wide awake. He must get a grip on himself! There had to be some logical explanation. He took a deep breath and peered into the package again. At its bottom, he noticed, was a neatly folded sheet of paper. Trying to avoid contact with the bloody bag, he carefully put down the package, wiped his hands on his pants without thinking, shakily extracted the folded paper, and opened it. It was a receipt from Citarella’s for advance payment by credit card for a cut of Black Angus beef tenderloin, dry aged for twenty-one days and weighing seven and a half pounds, at $39.99 a pound. A small credit card voucher was stapled to the receipt.

  Andrew caught his breath at the sight of the astronomical price, blushing with surprise and embarrassment. Suddenly, it came to him. Of course! How could he have forgotten? He had, in a moment of hubris, ordered the meat at Citarella’s shortly before that awful meeting in Bernie’s office. How long ago had that been? A year? No, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t have been more than
two or three weeks ago, a month at the most. He must sleep more at night if he was going to function during the day. It couldn’t go on like this. He must start taking sleeping pills, now!

  Thinking of Bernie made Andrew feel sick to his stomach. Bernie! He was to have been the guest of honor at the festive dinner whose pièce de résistance was the tenderloin. Andrew pictured it in full, mercilessly realistic detail: the president seated at the head of the table like a king at a royal feast, sinking his teeth into the tender meat, sipping Andrew’s choicest wines while shamelessly flirting with Andrew’s young girlfriend . . . Ann Lee! The thought of her on the brown leather couch, her bathrobe clinging ravishingly to her body, sent a warm wave of renewed desire running through him. It was dashed to the ground by the hard fist of memory. Ann Lee was gone forever. There would be no dinner, no guests, no anything.

  What now? Andrew expelled an involuntary groan. What should he do with the damn tenderloin? It was no longer possible to return it. How much was $39.99 times seven and a half? The full amount, including taxes and delivery charges, was on the voucher. No, he wouldn’t look at it now. It would be too humiliating, exactly what the doorman was hoping for. With unsteady fingers he searched for the pen in the breast pocket of the jacket he wasn’t wearing. The deliveryman stared at him in deferential silence. Andrew tapped his breast again and asked as casually as he could if he happened to have a pen. Producing a cheap, greasy ballpoint pen from behind his ear, the deliveryman handed it to Andrew with a smile. Andrew took it warily, scrawled a shaky signature on the voucher, and handed it back. A tip, he had to give him a tip! He reached for the wallet in his back pocket while glancing sideways at the doorman, who kept shamelessly staring at him. What did he have against him? What did he want? Lately he had been acting as if he knew something about him that everyone but Andrew was aware of.

  The wallet, which hadn’t been opened in days, was stuffed with twenty-dollar bills. Andrew rifled through them frantically, looking for something smaller. A twenty-dollar tip was insane. Who gave that much to a deliveryman? He would ask for change. No, he wouldn’t! The goddamn doorman was standing there, listening to every word, following every movement. Quickly snatching a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet before he could change his mind, Andrew folded it to keep the doorman from seeing it and put it in the deliveryman’s hand. The deliveryman, overcome with gratitude, murmured two or three thank-yous, and disappeared in the dimming orange light of 110th Street, leaving Andrew alone with the doorman and the heavy package on the floor.

  19

  The orange light had retreated westward toward the river. Sweat, gasoline fumes, and an acrid gray soot coated the streets of the city. The night brought no relief from the heat. On the contrary: the sunset had stoked the air even more, making it almost impossible to breathe. Andrew hurried eastward toward Broadway, his feet sticky in their leather shoes. He was carrying the package from Citarella’s by its two plastic handles. The striated cut of red meat was creased like a long tongue that curled upward at the bottom. Something about its serpentine form evoked a dim, frightening, and for some reason sea-tinted memory. He hadn’t wanted to leave the package with the doorman, who was sure to examine it the minute he was gone—and although he could have gone back upstairs and put it in the refrigerator, he felt this would have aroused the man’s gossipy instincts even more.

  He had to get to the air-conditioned pharmacy quickly. A few minutes of this heat was enough to ruin the meat. Eating spoiled meat was dangerous, very. But who was going to eat it anyway? What was he going to do with it? It was better to concentrate on the sleeping pills. He reached the corner, turned quickly down Broadway, and entered the drugstore through automatic double doors.

  The store was unbearably cold. Even the meat in the package seemed to stiffen, as if undergoing a second rigor mortis. Feeling frozen and weak from hunger, Andrew tottered like a drunk from shelf to laden shelf. What was he doing here? What was he looking for? Right: sleeping pills! Where could they be? The long, symmetrical rows of shelves were endless. Their brightly packaged products made Andrew’s head spin. Should he ask someone? Embarrassed to approach another customer, he looked for a salesperson, yet none of the usually available help was anywhere to be seen. He would have to inquire at the checkout counter. Tentatively, he approached the line, debating whether to cut or wait his turn. He decided to wait. The heat-stricken New Yorkers did not look welcoming—and besides, the thought of asking his question with them as witnesses made him uncomfortable. A request for sleeping pills might be taken as a sign of weakness or helplessness. He stood there uncertainly, trapped between an angry older woman who kept muttering about the wait and a tall, young, anemic-looking one whose pimply skin was the same sallow color as his own in the dull fluorescent light. Although the package of meat kept getting heavier, he did not want to rest it on the dirty linoleum floor, which looked afflicted with an incurable disease.

  The minutes dragged on. The cashier took her time, passing the same purchases over and over through the red beam of the scanner. Andrew felt hollow and sluggish with hunger. He surveyed the shortening line, trying to guess how long he still had to wait. The rack by the counter was the usual candy bar trap. Feeling as though an inner scaffold he was standing on were about to collapse, he left the line, depositing the meat on the floor to mark his place, and went to the crude, machine-made candy bars. Although he generally avoided rich desserts and never ate junk food, he felt an urge to stuff himself with chocolate, caramel, and sugared nuts. Snatching all he could hold like a greedy child, he rejoined the waiting customers while ignoring the grumbling behind him. He pushed the package of meat ahead of him with one foot, reached the cash register just in time, and dumped the candy bars on the counter, where they scattered like dice in a children’s game. The cashier gathered them impassively and passed them one by one through the scanner, which beeped indifferently with every sweet.

  There was a final, longer beep. The cash register rattled and printed out the bill. The operator took Andrew’s twenty dollars, handed him his change and a receipt, and pushed the bag of candy bars with its stiffly rustling wrappers in his direction while staring at some point in space behind him. He shoved the money into his pocket without bothering to count it and headed for the door with the bag. Halfway there, he heard the irritable voice of the older woman call out, “Mister! Mister, you’ve forgotten your package!” He returned, blushing, thanked the woman, who snapped something unclear, lifted the heavy package from the floor to which it felt almost stuck, and hurried out, feeling faint.

  Andrew staggered back into the hot, noisy street that sunk in thick twilight. Jostled by the crowds to the corner, he rested a hand against the pole of a traffic light and bent over a nearly full trash can, prepared to vomit whatever remained in his stomach. But though the hot, stinking fumes rising from the can made him retch, that was it. He straightened up and looked around to get his bearings. It was a pointlessly frenzied, smoggy, smothering New York summer evening. Whoever could flee the city had done so long ago. Only the pariahs had stayed behind to pick at the leftovers and rummage through the garbage. As he shifted the package from hand to hand, a rustle of wrappers reminded him of the candy bars. Reaching into the bag of them, he pulled out the first one, tore off its wrapper, and stuffed it whole into his mouth. Its gooey sweetness was overpowering. His scalp tingled. His palate felt fossilized by the soft substance. His teeth, sinking into a morass of caramel and nougat, stuck fast to one another, reeling from the sudden sugar rush.

  He chewed the dense bar, swallowed it too quickly, and reached for another. The traffic lights changed. Cars honked. The day faded, yielding to the electric halo of the night street. The defrosted meat in the heavy package, which felt about to give out, was a limp mass rotting in its juices. Andrew stood on the southwest corner of Broadway and 110th Street, tearing off wrappers and bolting one candy bar after another, frantically gulping the industrial chocolate that was melting in the heat. His eyes raced in all di
rections. He was sure he was being stared at. What would happen if someone he knew spotted him, sweatily bent over a trash can while chomping on candy bars mass-produced for children and the sugar-addicted poor? As appalled and revolted as he was—couldn’t he at least have waited until reaching the goddamn apartment?—he couldn’t stop his mad gluttony. He ripped off the bright wrappers with his teeth, throwing them in the can like an alcoholic hiding empty bottles while gobbling chunk after chunk of candy, all the time aware that an inner cry as uncontrollable as his lust for chocolate was building up inside him, turning into a scream as he reached into the bag for the twelfth time, ransacked it, and found nothing.

  Andrew crumpled the empty bag, threw it disgustedly in the can, and headed back to the drugstore to buy more candy. The large glass doors slid open, greeting him with a violent burst of cold air that snapped him out of his trance. He halted, took a few short breaths, and turned back toward the street, his wild hunger yielding to a sick, sticky feeling. Gripping the smelly trash can, he felt about to vomit into it, spawning a great, brown, excremental blob that would lie there half-alive like a horror creature. Breathing deeply, he tried to overcome the desperate craving for still more sugar, turned westward, and made his way home.

  20

  He got there quickly. The toxic chocolate quickly entered his bloodstream and percolated through his sugar-drunk body. He felt light-headed. His bouncy steps lengthened. His glowing eyes took in the dimming remnants of the sunset on the horizon. Swinging the package of meat by its handles like a schoolboy swinging his bag, Andrew covered the block from Broadway to Riverside Drive in no time and skipped into the building, ignoring the doorman, with a playful wink at the cunning, pug-nosed demon grinning at him from the entrance. His sugar-tipsy mind was hard at work. Why not? Why not throw a grand dinner? He would invite an especially interesting complement of guests and serve the extravagant tenderloin. Tapping out a jazz rhythm on the lobby’s floor, he whistled merrily as he waited for the elevator. He would live dangerously, aging the meat still more, bringing it to the very brink of decay before broiling it to such perfection that it would be studied in the future like a trailblazing cultural text.