High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel (27 page)

“He sits there next to the tub. He’s talking to me about eggs. There are garbage bags in the hallway, full garbage bags.”

A hot dog cart was on the corner. There was a radio, badly spray-painted white, blaring beneath the umbrella. A game announcer said, “Be sure the Babe is rolling in his grave.” I walked over to an apartment building and sat on the stoop. “I think he’s in pain. And I think I have to call an ambulance or force him to go see a doctor.”

“Or the police.”

“I’m not calling the police. There’s no
crime
.”

“I mean to help him. Or the hospital for help.”

An elderly woman gave me the stink-eye as she walked by and into the building. “Talk to me about something else,” I said. “Just for a second. What are you doing? What room are you in? Describe the room.”

“I can’t believe now I have to worry about you.”

I said, “I’ve never seen your apartment.”

“I’m in my kitchen, the lightbulb over the stove. I’m dipping, as we speak, a bread heel in tomato sauce.”

“I’m starving. Tell me something else.”

“I’m reading Revelation again. Because it’s my job to read. It feels like a peek inside your brain. Every book in Hebrew is eaten by this book. It leaves nothing. I also happen to be translating a book of Hebrew poems, so I’m especially sensitive. I’m thinking of teaching it next semester.”

“You’re wasting your time with Revelation.”

“William James, by the way, you should read him if you haven’t. You’d love him. He says if you want to see the significance of a thing, you look at the exaggerations. The perversions of a thing. This is your book.”

“It’s not my book. What’s your Greek’s name?” Because I didn’t yet know.

A pause. “His name is Nikos.”

“That’s ridiculous. Are you serious? Totally predictable.”

“He’s a colleague.”

“Well, I hate Nikos.”

“The book is fascistic. And fetishistic.”

I held the phone away for a moment.

I said, “What’d you have for lunch?”

“I had a kiwi smoothie and this. A long run before my flight. We’re going to see my parents.”

“We.”

Another pause.

I said, “
We
never went and saw your parents.”

“I know.”

Both of us were silent.

“But he’s not there now,” I said. “You’re alone.”

“All alone, just the way you like it.”

“Why say things like that?”

“I happen to be having a very tough year. But why would you know anything about that? I called my father and told him I wanted to see him. I’m trying to replace your dad with my dad.”

“He’s an asshole, your father.”

“I know.”

“And your mother—”

“We’re still fighting. And not to mention the book is kind of beautiful in its own terrible way. Like
Texas Chainsaw
is beautiful. The lighting is perfect.”

I lit a cigarette, and a fat black pug came sniffing at my feet. She looked up at me, panting, tilting her head. The owner mouthed, “Sorry,” and pulled her away.

“I heard the lighter. Stop smoking. Take this trip as an opportunity.”

I said, “More about the book, please, if this is what keeps you on the phone.”

“I quote, and when the End comes the blood will be as high as the horses’ bridles, or something like that. Why horses?”

“God’s army rides on horses.”

“But why horses? Why not as high as tank treads, if this is supposed to impress me? Or as high as a Chevrolet’s side mirrors, and for two thousand years the faithful are wondering, What’s a side mirror? What’s a Chevy?”

“I’m picturing you behind a pulpit.”

“Think of all those futuristic movies in the sixties and seventies. Everyone’s walking around in a toga like it’s the Roman senate. What togas? Here we are forty years later in the future. Show me a toga. Just one toga.”

“You’re in a mood.”

“It’s my mother. Do you need some help down there? And don’t think I’m offering my services.”

“You mean out there.”

“What out there?”

“Out there. You said down there like I’m in Mexico or Texas. I’m out here, to the right. Pretend you and your hairy boyfriend are facing a road map.”

“Oh, my God.” She hung up the phone.

I bought a knish at the hot dog stand and stood there looking up at the brown wide building, at the fire escapes that climbed and covered its face. I looked down at the food in my hands, a knish nestled in a moist napkin. I totally knew the joy of an artfully knotted potato cake baked by a bearded Orthodox on the Lower East Side, but this was a different thing entirely. Scorchingly hot on the inside, lukewarm chewy breading, a waterlogged wallet smeared with mustard. Perfectly imperfect. Just like marriage, I thought. Then I caught myself. You were an asshole. And so she hung up. I chewed, thinking of her, of her walking, talking on the phone, Sarah with a smoothie spill on the leg of her jeans, her glasses in one hand and rubbing at the bridge of her nose, Sarah in her tiny black socks and neon running shoes, her eyes going red from sad TV movies. Sarah rushing downstairs in an angry huff and slamming our front screen door. Sarah calling me a pitiful, selfish shit, and swinging a steel utensil hard against the back of my neck. I thought of how we hate and love everyone we love. And I thought of her all alone in her new apartment sitting there with her laptop, drinking coffee alone just fine without me, the Greek on his way over for some friendly consoling, and my heart broke open like a sugar bowl fallen from a shelf. I started crying, let it happen for a few seconds, and then I put a swift end to that.

I walked for blocks and watched the blur of passing cars and the people, the overwhelming spectacle of street sounds and color, and I felt not quite a part. Almost, but not quite. Swimming above the city noise somehow, I finished the knish. I stepped around a construction crew and a large black hole in the street. I watched the steel-on-rock stammer of the jackhammer, and the hop of the man’s orange helmet as he broke through rock. A small Asian woman approached a hot dog cart. Shock-white bowl-cut hair. She wore purple sweatpants tucked into black leather cowboy boots and pressed a shoulder bag against her belly.

The vendor waved her off before she got to speak.

She came over to me, pulling something from her bag. She looked at me blankly. “DVD?”

“Excuse me?”

“Good quality.”

I looked at the cover, at the plastic sheathing in her hand, and I saw running along the bottom like blunt baby teeth the tops of block letters spelling out the sentence
NOT FOR RESALE.
I stared at this until she lost patience.

“Five bucks.” She showed me the palm of her hand.

I continued to look at the case until she snatched it back. She disappeared around a corner down the street.

I shook myself, and called Amad.

He said, “Where are you?”

“I’m sitting on a beige brick step at the foot of a tall apartment building in Queens, not so far from the airport, I think. There’s a hot dog cart in front of me. Construction across the street. A large bug is stuck in the rut of a sidewalk square.” Oily water from who knows where drained along the curb and toward the sewer grating.

“And what is on your mind, my friend?”

“A woman just tried to sell me a pirated DVD. I thought of you.”

“She was Indian?”

“Chinese. I think.”

“The immigrant makes you think of me. The shady newcomer. Very nice.”

“The software, you idiot. How’s today? Any better? I’m trying to be a better boss.”

“I have a cousin on my mother’s side, he disappeared ten years ago muling CPUs in his rectum from Eritrea. This woman with the DVDs, she could be screaming inside for help. Did you buy anything from her? Did you give her any money at all?”

“No.”

“Good. I have regretted almost every purchase from these people. The quality is very often bad.”

“I may be here a while.”

“And I am here.”

“My father’s really sick.”

“I had a feeling.”

“And I really do need you. You know that, right?”

He said, “More than you ever could.”

“Good.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“Josie.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“Perfect.”

We were quiet again.

I said, “Make sure you give Teri my love. Rub her belly for me.”

“I’ll do that.”

“So I’ll be here, then,” I said.

“And I am here, my friend.”

I crossed the street and walked by the construction workers, by the bright orange cones, the yellow tape. I looked at my phone: six o’clock. It was rush hour. Six o’clock? The day had gone by so fast! No way Dad was still sleeping. I headed toward the main avenue a few blocks away, toward the subway stair that opened like a hell’s mouth down inside the sidewalk, and I saw the bobbing heads. The bobbing rise of people coming from the trains, and they just kept on coming. They were shoulder close and moving fast, on cell phones sharing with their spouses, and they were coming fast my way. I used to look down on them, people like this. I said they were already dead. I said, Let them walk along their walls like rats in search of scraps. But now I saw not some marching millipede, khaki-legged and gruesome—no, I saw the quivering, the miscellaneous, the crowded and alive, busy soul of humanity. They came at me, surrounding me and passing like a stream flows around a fallen tree. I stayed very still—actually, I was in the way, and I enjoyed every last muttered complaint they made. Every curse. Then I turned and joined them, I walked, and I would go wherever they led me. Not because this was the true way, or the right way, but because this was just one way among how many ways alongside other people right here on this planet and, my God, that sounds so dramatic but really it just felt nice. I couldn’t remember the last time I was so fully alive. Everyone’s head was bobbing, and I saw the front doors of every building, and the TVs through first-floor windows. I felt warm air on my skin, wafting up from the sidewalk grates. The sun was going down orange in the alleys. Evening was on its way, and I was suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of dread. Six o’clock? Why was I out and about gallivanting? With a sick father at home? Who needed me, more than he knew, and was possibly looking for me, and calling out my name at this very moment? I hailed a taxi, and told the cabbie I was in a hurry.

The bathroom door was open and red light poured into the dark hall, the red pooling on the floor and seeping up the opposite wall. My father was on the cot, his arms limp like snapped wings, belly pressing upward like a boil. There was a bottle of wine beside him, an empty glass. He was breathing. It was labored and thin, but he was breathing. I lowered the toilet lid because open it seemed too portentous, too hungry. I sat. I touched his head and his fine hair. It was nearly seven. I told myself I would call an ambulance if he didn’t wake in the next thirty seconds. I’d bought some groceries from the convenience store down the street: a frozen pizza, crackers and cheese, a soft apple. I put the groceries on the floor. I dialed 911 and asked for an ambulance. He opened his eyes.

“How you doing down there?”

He smiled. “You remember?” He stuttered a bit. “Preaching from door to door?”

“I do. Some.”

“You were what?”

“Maybe seven.”

“You were speaking the old language, and that only comes from one place.…”

“Hey, I called for an ambulance.”

He closed his eyes.

I arranged his legs on the cot and folded the pillow under his head, raising his head.

He pressed his hand to his side. “The body doesn’t want to go.”

“Maybe you should listen to it.”

“No reaching God in a monkey suit.”

The red was all around us. Everything was suffused with dark light. He made a look of disgust, and said, “What’s all this to me, anyway?”

“There’s me.”

He touched my knee. “Of course.”

“Good dreams?”

He laughed. “I was standing right there,” he said, pointing with his finger at the tiled wall, up in the corner by the ceiling. But he couldn’t move his arm. “Right there was Rockaway Beach. You remember Rockaway Beach?”

“I do.”

“We went with your mother.”

“I remember. You threw me in the water.”

“I didn’t scare you?”

“Of course not. We were playing.”

He pointed at the ceiling, and it seemed to take all his strength. “I was hot inside, and light in my belly, and a hand comes taking me to Heaven. Your mother’s all light. And you’re all light. And all your kids are light.”

“I don’t have any kids.”

He said, “You were an old man standing next to them.”

“And Sarah’s where?”

“She was light.”

I drank some wine from the bottle and held it up to the red bulb to see how red, my father on the floor, at the bottom of a deep red gorge. I was supposed to save him, to stop anything like this from happening. I had failed.

He asked, “What time is it?”

“About seven.”

“A few more hours till Sunday.” He looked at my glass.

“You promised you’d eat.”

“I will, come Sunday. At midnight.”

“That’s five more hours. The ambulance will be here by then.”

He tried to sit up. “I’m not hungry. Not thirsty. And swallowing hurts.”

“You need food and you need water.” His face looked flushed. There was a dappling of purple spots along his arm. “I think you have a rash.”

“Fine.” His eyes were lazy, starting to loll in their sockets.

“You’re not fine.” The skin around his mouth was cracked.

“Okay,” he said. “Go ahead. Get us some bread. And wine.”

I helped him sit up. “I got groceries.”

“Rip me a piece and bring water. Pour me wine.”

“Not a good idea.”

“You want me to fight when they get here?” He leaned against the side of the tub.

I brought the bread and the pitcher from the kitchen.

“Pour me a glass.” He tried to tear off a piece of the bread. “You do it.”

I poured the wine and tore off a piece of bread. I gave it to him. He took the bread in hand, raised it slightly, and said: “The Body of God.” He tried to take a small bite, pulling at the bread with his jaw. He dipped the bread in water and sucked at it. He raised his glass of wine.