Down to the Dirt (5 page)

—What’s so funny? What’s so fuckin’ funny, Natasha? What are you laughin’ about?

I couldn’t stop and I didn’t want to. I glanced out the side window as we tore past the halfway flag.

No goin’ back now.

Poor little shagger. He just sat there for days on end. Barely touched his food. Rarely made it to his litter on time. No response to the endless stream of sweet-talk and rub-downs, a bag of catnip dangled in front of his nose, canned food. We assumed he’d been poisoned. Maybe a bowl of milk laced with anti-freeze. Anti-freeze said to be sweet and carrying no scent when diluted, then slowly goin’ to work on the stomach lining, thinnin’ out the blood and eatin’ at the insides of the veins. Attacking the liver, the heart and the brain. A dirty, cold-hearted trick. His eyes seemed to fog over in those last few days, tired and waitin’, no means of communicating his pain. Poor little shagger.

Muggins, Natasha’s lanky and clumsy Irish Setter, had come scratchin’ at the door one day with the cat, then only a measly kitten, clamped tenderly in his jowls. Lucky for the cat that it was ‘Tash’s little sister Becky who answered to Muggins’ scratches that evening.

—Whatcha got, Mugs? Oh my God!! Can I keep it, Daddy? Can I?

Had it been the old man answering the door, he would have
slung the kitten out over the fence into the neighbour’s yard. He might even have aimed it
at
the fence. But Becky kicked up a stink because the kitten did cute kitten things for her. Jumped and pounced, purred and nuzzled.

—I’m keepin’ it!

She fed him little drops of milk and dollops of Cheez Whiz, off her pinky finger.

A fast learner, he wasn’t long slippin’ into the ebb and flow of the household. At least he had the good sense to keep himself clear of the old man’s temperamental steel toe. More than I can say for myself.

He was a bit of a runt. Half cat, half kitten. But the kitten charm in him just vanished one day. No more play. Slide him out of the way with your foot to keep him from bein’ trampled. One day he’s doin’ backflips after horseflies in the pantry, and the next he’s dead weight slunkered on the bathroom floor.

That’s where Natasha found him in late September, surrounded by a pool of his own excrements, howlin’ a throaty protest against his pain.

We’d skipped off school at lunchtime to pick mushrooms in the Pasture Lands. I was never too big on the mushrooms and had in fact sworn, each time I did ’em, never to touch ’em again. Natasha couldn’t get enough of ’em.

—I just finds they makes me come in my pants for no reason.

Now who was I to say no to that? We picked a couple of handfuls each and counted them out when we got back down to the road. There was about a hundred. Opening up the sandwiches saved over from our lunches, we stuffed the mushrooms in between ham and cheese and forced ’em down. As
soon as they were in me I panicked and tried to throw ’em back up, but she wouldn’t let me.

—No!! Keith, no. We’re in this together. Come on, sweetie, you said you would. I don’t want to take a trip by myself. It gets too lonely.

Sweetie.

We strode on up to Sheen’s Bridge and leaned against the railing, idly wavin’ our thumbs at passin’ cars, not really givin’ a shit if we got a run or not. I felt the shrooms gurgle and rumble in my stomach. Sick. We never said much, just waited for something to happen. We’d been havin’ a racket about the past Saturday night. She’d gone off to a party in Fermeuse and got plastered, couldn’t remember how she got home.

—Well how can you say for sure you never fucked some-one?

—Because I’m not a slut, Keith. Contrary to what you might believe.

—I’m not sayin’ that. I’m not. All I’m sayin’ is that you coulda been taken advantage of. That’s all.

—What? Think I can’t handle myself? Sure I’m tangled up with the likes of you.

—The
likes
of me. Well, if you can handle yourself so fuckin’ well, how come you can’t remember how you got home?

You can’t fuckin’ win. Pullin’ teeth. We lapses into a bitter, frustrated silence. It’s the only way around it.

—What?

—What?

—Thought you said something, that’s all.

—Never opened me mouth, girl.

A big, plush Town-car stops to pick us up and as we slumps
in the back Natasha is gripped by such a powerful yawn that it seems her bottom jaw will pop off. Her eyes squints up and starts watering, her cheekbones pullin’ tight, scrunchin’ up her nose. A hungry young starling waitin’ for a worm, threatening to eat its own head. The yawn lasts about ten seconds. Before she’s done one overcomes me as well. The mushrooms are kickin’ in fast.

The old couple in the car don’t say much and I’m glad ’cause I feels so heavy and groggy, like this big cushy seat is gonna swallow me up. We rides in silence, myself and Natasha afraid to look at each other for fear we’ll take a laughin’ fit, or worse, that we won’t.

By the time we’re dropped off in the Cove it feels like I’ve lived no other life, but was born in the backseat of this Lincoln. I pulls on the handle of the door, feels something inside of it go
clernk.
It vibrates up my arm and into my head and I
understands
the door. I says thank you to the old couple and I really means it, I’m genuinely thankful.

‘Tash’s pupils are the full of her eyes and her face seems smaller, sunken and mousy. I tells her this and she tells me I looks like a girl, that mushrooms must bring out the feminine side of me, asks me if I’d like to borrow a dress. Now, she knows this’ll only upset me, and I knows that that’s what she’s trying to do. Push me ’til I makes a prick out of myself so when it comes time to lay the blame, get to the root of the racket, it all seems to have started because she made a little joke or because I said she was mousy looking. I’ll be left lookin’ like an asshole again.

I takes a few deep breaths to catch myself, knowin’ full well the only thing to be accomplished in retaliation is another racket. Maybe she is only jokin’. I don’t know. Besides, it
sounds fun. I pictures myself in one of her dresses, maybe that skimpy little black one she wore at her aunt’s wedding. The way it clung to her breasts, the sunlight shinin’ through to her bare thighs. I gives her a little curtsy.

—Why don’t I try one on then? We can take my picture. Send it in to the Buy-n-Sell.

We’ve got the house to ourselves. Down in her bedroom in the basement. Fuckin’ around. Makin’ the best of one another’s company. Really connecting. She pulls the elastic from her ponytail and shakes her hair out. She’s so beautiful. Sometimes I loves her so much I feels like screamin’. But them moments are few and far between these days. Maybe it’s just a matter of communication? I knows she wasn’t
with
nobody the other night. I knows it. She just hates havin’ to answer to anyone. She likes to live in the moment, and I tends to resent that trait in anyone other than myself. I don’t know why I have to beat things to death all the time these days. I likes to party pretty hard myself.

—See that?

—What?

—The room. It closes in on us when I breathes in and blows up again when I breathes out. Look. Ya see it?

—Your face is meltin’, Keith. There’s nothing masculine about it anymore. It’s like there’s a woman underneath your skin tryin’ to free herself.

—Fuck off, ‘Tash. Can’t we just—

—No, no. I don’t mean it like that. She’s kinda cute lookin’.

Natasha leans in to kiss me but pulls away at the last second before our lips would have touched. I digs through her closet and comes out with the dress I was thinkin’ about. She
unbuttons my jeans, pulls ’em down around my ankles. Hauls my shirt up over my head. I takes the dress and tries to step into it, losin’ my balance and fallin’ onto the floor.

—You can’t do it that way, b’y! You gotta pull it down around yourself. And be gentle.

I yanks the dress on over my head. I gets the first arm out through the sleeve alright, but when I tries the second one my elbow catches and there’s not enough room to straighten it out. I forces it, hearin’ the dress rip somewhere. I pretends not to notice.

—Don’t be such a savage, Keith. That’s a hundred-dollar dress for frig sakes.

—I’ll sew it. Calm down, girl. I’ll sew it.

—No, come on. Take it off. You’re gonna have it ruined. That’s my only good dress. It don’t even fit you.

It
is
a bit tight around the shoulders, but I don’t want to take it off. So light and soft against my legs. I hooks my finger in the belt-loop of her jeans, pulling her down onto the bed. We tries to kiss for a bit but our mouths have gotten so dry that our tongues meet like sandpaper. Out of the corner of my eye I catches something shuffle, bendin’ in on itself and vanishing when I tries to focus on it. Some devil in the room. I bolts up straight.

—See that?

—Keith, shut up. You just don’t want to kiss me.

—No, I do. It’s just that our mouths are so dry and I’m so stoned. It’s disgusting.

—Oh, now I’m disgusting, am I? Well you should see yourself in that dress.

I unbuttons her jeans and slides my hand down into them.

—I’m on my period.

I pulls my hand away like her jeans are on fire.

—How come you never told me earlier?

—I don’t know. Never knew I had to make a big announcement. We’ve done it before sure.

We have done it before. A long time ago.

There was a time between us that if one had the flu, the other wanted it.
Anything that’s in you, I wants.
That’s when it felt real, like there was no one else on the planet. I could kiss her, deep, first thing in the morning, her breath sour and shitty and me not mindin’, knowin’ I tasted the same or worse. Now I can’t look at her in the morning ’cause morning breath has become somewhat of a window for attack. You comes to a point somewhere along the way where them things are no longer accepted, but pounced upon and used against you. Like fartin’. When we first met it seemed almost like a competition of who could let the biggest one go. We were that easy with one another. Now it’s just another bad smell in the room.

My stomach turns at the thought of her menstrual blood for lubrication.

All at once I feels like my bladder is gonna let go, like I’ve been needin’ to go now for hours and just never noticed. I jumps up out of bed and rushes upstairs to the toilet.

—Keith? Sweetheart, where’re you going? I’m alright with it you know.

Sweetheart.

—I’m bustin’, girl. Am I allowed to have a goddamn piss or what?

I expects some sort of nasty response to this but it don’t come. She’ll wait for me to apologize. But I won’t. I pisses and I can see the chemical from the mushrooms, or maybe what’s left of my soul, collecting on top of the water in the toilet. This
is what I’ve amounted to. I brushes my teeth ’til my gums bleed.

On my way out of the bathroom I almost trips over the cat. He’s sittin’ in the middle of the floor, starin’ off at nothing. He’s gotten a lot thinner, but he’s still a gorgeous little tom. Charcoal grey and shiny all over.

—Hello, Puss-Cat.

Puss-Cat don’t acknowledge me. I goes back downstairs.

—We should get Puss an appointment with the vet. Or a psychiatrist. He’s weeks like that now.

Natasha don’t acknowledge me either. She’s curled up in the corner of her bed, huggin’ her pillow. Asleep. Jesus, feels like I was only gone for a minute. But it’s possible that I zoned out for a while. It’s beyond me how anyone can get to sleep so easy when they’re fried on mushrooms.

I spends the next couple of hours fadin’ in and out of consciousness, never knowin’, when it seems like I’m wakin’, if I’ve been asleep or not. Somewhere in the back of my mind a creature screams. I pictures it swingin’ around on scraps of stringy membrane, Tarzan fashion, back down deep in the creepy pockets of my brain. Now I remembers why I’ve sworn to never do mushrooms again. Comin’ down is too fuckin’ retarded.

I watches Natasha sleep. I feels sad for us. We used to be so good for each other. It was loads of fun when we first got on the go. But I s’pose you can only pack so much into it all before the bottom falls out. Now it’s nothing short of a tug-a-war, and neither of us is strong enough to win or walk away. Weaknesses, fears once confided to the other are now preyed upon. It’s all about who can take the most pain, who suffers hardest
in the face of the other’s suspected betrayals. Who
can
walk away but won’t, who
can’t
walk away but wants to. It’s a warped, miserable pattern of anger and resentment, fear and make-up sex. Always the prospect of this intense, needy make-up sex to reel you back in. Just when it feels like it’s over, like this is
it,
that there’s nothing left to give, our emotions drained, our heads and hearts about to explode with frustration, that’s when we wants each other the most.

A damp patch of drool has collected on her pillow, her eyes fluttering beneath the closed lids. I tries to imagine bein’ with her in a few years’ time. Can’t see it. I doubts we’ll even squeeze another six months out of it. But I can’t imagine goin’ on without her either. I nuzzles into her, spoon fashion, and eventually, despite the screamin’ creatures in my head, I drifts off to sleep.

What feels like ten years later I’m roused out of bed to the distinctive sound of Natasha blarin’ from the top of the stairs. Suffering Christ. At least I’m sure it’s not in my head this time.

—Keith? Keith, come up quick. I think he’s dyin’!

—What? Who’s fuckin’ dyin’? Where are ya?

—In the bathroom! It’s the cat. Come up. Hurry up.

Feelin’ so sluggish now, the mushrooms not quite worn off. Can’t believe I let her talk me into wearin’ this stupid fuckin’ dress. It didn’t even look that good on her. She keeps squelchin’ like a busted bullhorn from upstairs so I just grabs my jeans and hauls ’em on underneath the dress on my way up.

I finds her sittin’ on the edge of the tub, a mingled look of disgust and horror on her face as she stares down at the cat, sprawled out on the floor, eyes rollin’ back into his head. His little silver chest laboriously risin’ and fallin’, losin’ momentum
with each passin’ breath. Natasha drops a towel on a stinkin’ puddle of catshit. There’s a milky white froth dribbling from his mouth. Too late for a psychiatrist now, Puss.

—Sweet Jesus.

Natasha tries to stifle a low groan, her chin quivering. She loves this little cat. She’s struggling to hold back the tears, tellin’ me to do something, anything, before Becky gets home.