The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (67 page)

CALL IT A JOKE, a twist of fate, that after Max had endured hours of “Wheelie’s” rambling wet-dream scenarios in the Veterans Hospital, Leah should, years later, have an affair with Trigg, the Realtor in a wheelchair. Steak-in-the-Basket was what Max called Trigg. Leah had made it her practice to alert Max to her love affairs, and to give Max the names and descriptions of all business associates she was planning to see during the week. Max did not ask, but Leah had done this as a courtesy to Max. It was also a precaution. Leah did not want the security men to shoot a business client or new lover.

Max did not ask Leah about her lovers because he had no interest or curiosity about the men or anything these men did in bed with his
wife. Max could imagine innumerable sexual postures and practices without feeling the least hint of arousal. Max had tried imagining himself anywhere with anyone doing anything, but nothing worked. It was as if folds of wet, pink flesh were as ordinary as the sky or the sidewalk, though Max could remember when he had got hard-ons every time he saw a pair of big tits. But Max had been more curious about Leah and Trigg because Trigg was a loudmouth in a wheelchair. Trigg considered himself a “legitimate businessman,” but in Tucson that only meant no firearms were used. Trigg had a specialty with zoning laws and property that was worthless unless the zoning changed. Trigg bragged once he got started, it was too late, no one could stop him. Leah pointed to red pencil dots on blocks of downtown real estate. The grid of blocks and lots on the Tucson city map was a chessboard. Trigg was buying downtown block by shabby block. Trigg had started out with ratty bungalows near the university, and Trigg had got one of the houses rezoned to allow Blood Plasma International to lease the building from Trigg. Naturally Trigg was Blood Plasma International. Trigg bragged to Leah that blood-plasma donor centers busted neighborhoods and drove property prices down without moving in blacks or Mexicans. With property prices down, Trigg came and cleaned up, buying most property at forty cents on the dollar. Max didn’t blame Leah for her interest in Trigg; in fact, Max himself was interested in Trigg. Max wanted to know the deals and schemes in Trigg’s mind.

“Wheelies” had something to prove. Short men needed to prove themselves, but for men sitting in wheelchairs, the need was absolute. Leah confided to Max that she had taken full advantage of the manhood Mr. Trigg had managed to resurrect between his legs. Trigg had managed to squeeze the blood flow to his groin with both hands until Leah had got what Trigg called his “rod” to ride. Leah had ridden herself raw the first afternoon. Trigg could not ejaculate, but claimed he felt orgasms inside his head. Leah had not intended to bring up sex, but there had been something in the way Max loathed Trigg for being paralyzed that had infuriated Leah. She hated how little sex mattered to Max. Leah had no intention of drying up just because Max had. Leah had gone after sex with the same confidence she had when she made her first real estate deal. Leah had thrived on afternoons in Phoenix with male clients who later invited her for drinks or dinner.

The first words Trigg had ever whispered into Leah’s ear had been a little breathless. “My cock gets real hard,” he said, the scotch smelling bitter on his breath.

Trigg had been in a wheelchair since his freshman year in college. He had spent eighteen months in hospitals and intensive physical rehab. He had read all the books in the hospital library and had asked his father to use his connections at the country club to get Trigg access to the doctors’ medical library at the university hospital. Trigg was adamant about the eventual miracle of medical science and high technology for spinal-cord injuries and nerve tissue transplants. It was only a matter of time and Trigg would be out of the chair.

Leah thought sex with Trigg might be interesting. She had not been disappointed. Trigg’s desire had a sharp edge, as if he still hungered for all he had lost. After Max Blue, Leah found she had enjoyed the fervency of Trigg’s desire almost as much as she had enjoyed the durability of his erections. Max had not been able to resist a bad joke. How lousy a lover was Max Blue? So lousy his wife replaces Max with a paraplegic lover. Leah had preferred sex at the Arizona Inn because it was elegant and neutral ground. But after six or seven weeks Leah had yielded to Trigg’s insistence that she come to his “condominium.” Trigg never used simple words such as
home
or
house
as long as words such as
condominium
or
town house
were available. Trigg didn’t just want sex with Leah, he wanted Leah to get to know the “
real
him,” “the man inside.” Although picking up men on the university campus was potentially dangerous to amateurs, sex with strangers did have a few advantages; at least you did not have to be bored with self-revelations.

Trigg’s condominium had been even worse than Leah had imagined. The development itself was no worse than other pseudo—Santa Fe stuccos, but Trigg had decorated the penthouse himself. Trigg had dragons everywhere. The front door knocker was a brass dragon’s-head knocker. The hat rack in the foyer was a black lacquer dragon with hat poles for spines. The dark red rugs had black and green dragons running their length. The draperies were fake oriental tapestries of intertwined gold and green and black dragons. Trigg kept the draperies closed carefully so the dragons could be clearly seen. The table lamps were writhing red and black dragons of plaster. The only decent object seemed to be a small jade incense bowl with a dragon’s head and tail for handles. Even the shower curtains had been custom-made to match the dragon pattern on guest bath towels.

All doorways were wider to accommodate the wheelchair. In the kitchen, the refrigerator and the shelves and counters were all at wheelchair height. Trigg wasn’t dependent on anyone for anything except “one thing,” and Leah had been too shocked to respond when Trigg
had slipped his hand lightly over her crotch. When Leah had warned him never to touch her like that again, Trigg had been puzzled at her anger.

Leah hated handicap-designed toilets because they were so high off the floor to give easy access to the wheelchair. She sat on the toilet and only her toes touched the floor. Leah wondered if Trigg had thought about a custom development strictly for the physically handicapped. Was there “soft money” available from the government specifically for the disabled?

Trigg had already got out of his chair and undressed. From the bathroom door, the huge four-poster bed looked like a Viking ship, and the red dragon lacquered on the headboard was the mainsail. Leah slid into the bed beside Trigg pretending to squeal because the sheets were cold. She did not mention the idea she’d just had in the bathroom. She did not know how much further she and Mr. Trigg were actually going to travel together, and she wanted to get first crack at any preferential loans for housing the handicapped. The Viking ship tossed and rolled, and Trigg bragged later about all the ideas he had for future developments. The sky was the limit. Leah had enjoyed Trigg after they had fucked and smoked a cigarette because he had a childlike enthusiasm for all the schemes and plots he had. The word
conglomerate
had the same gravity as
condominium
for Trigg. He wanted to create his own conglomerate in southern Arizona. Cover all the squares. Touch all the bases. Own a hospital, an ambulance service, and a mortuary as well.

“Diversification,” Leah had said when Trigg had stopped talking. He had covered all her squares and touched all her bases, and Leah was in a tolerant mood. She let Trigg keep talking. Trigg claimed most of his ideas were outgrowths of his months in the hospital, and the medical texts he’d read. Trigg was convinced he was a genius. All his ideas and the connections with the accident, the months in the hospital and the wheelchair—
all of it was in his diaries.

Trigg had reached into the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a thick three-ring binder. Trigg had pointed at a closet door. He had all the other notebooks stored there—notebooks all the way back to the accident. As he talked to Leah about himself, his diaries, and his accident, Trigg’s eyes sought Leah’s eyes urgently, as if he feared Leah did not understand the extreme importance of the diaries. He wanted Leah to know the person he was deep inside. All Leah could do was to nod when Trigg said this. The notebooks in the closet were stacked three feet high. Leah resigned herself to sitting in bed naked surrounded by
dragons, reading the story of Trigg’s life on lined, loose-leaf paper. She was mixing business with pleasure, and Trigg’s diaries were homework. She was fascinated with Trigg and his “orgasms in his head.” Orgasms had to be in his head. The scars across his lower back looked as if Trigg had been chopped in half and sewed back together.

But when Leah had reached for a notebook to settle back with and read in bed, Trigg had had other ideas. She could take the diaries home with her to read. Right now, though, Trigg said he wanted to talk about “diversification.” The health-care industry is a sleeping giant, Trigg said. His plasma donor centers had got Trigg thinking about alcohol and drug treatment centers. There were millions and millions to be made from treatments for people addicted to alcohol and other drugs. That had been what Trigg wanted to talk about.

“Talk?” Leah had said in a teasing voice. “Who said anything about talk? This was all I came here for.” Leah laughed. She had not felt so good in months. Trigg had fucked her one way, and in typical Tucson fashion he was ready to try to fuck her with a slick real estate deal too. Trigg wanted Leah’s Blue Water group to finance and build his detox and addiction treatment hospital. In return, Leah’s Blue Water Investment Corporation would receive stock in the blood plasma business as well as stock in the detox hospital. Leah said she’d have to think about it. She did not want to see Trigg’s tacky dragon logo within ten miles of her dream city. But if Leah herself took over planning and design, then the addiction treatment center might be one “jewel” in a triple crown of high-tech medical care facilities, within the first luxury community designed for the handicapped and the addicted. When Leah had finally got loose from Trigg, the trunk of her car was full of loose-leaf notebooks, pages filled front and back with Trigg’s urgent scrawls in pencil and ink.

MAX HAD NOT BEEN ABLE to resist Trigg’s diaries. Leah had not seemed interested. “Go ahead, save me the trouble—let me know if there’s anything juicy,” she said, and then laughed at the memory of Trigg, his face wet from his own saliva, grinning at her crotch.

Trigg’s diary entries appeared to begin in a rehabilitation center. The diaries were obviously kept for mental hygiene or group therapy. Max had experience with therapeutic diaries himself. Therapists were Peeping Toms. Your dreams and fears were their windows. Therapists were merely satisfying themselves though they claimed they were helping you.

Trigg had only ever had one thing on his mind, and that was the meat dangling between his legs. The accident had only served to intensify Trigg’s attention to his cock. The diaries were page after page of notes on attempts to get pretty girls from his college classes to go to bed with him despite the wheelchair.

Max shuffled through the stack of notebooks; the older they were, the more filthy they were. Max had started in the middle and flipped through the pages to the beginning, then fanned back through to the end of each notebook.

From Trigg’s Diaries

The black and Hispanic orderlies hate their jobs. Women’s work. They wipe shit off butts and mop up puke. They always smile for no reason when they lift me out of the bath.

My mother smiles that smile too. I catch her staring into mirrors behind my back to see the width and length of the scar.

Cut you down to size, I hear the orderlies say when I wheel by the nurses’ station late at night. I can’t sleep because I have the same dream every night.

Helpless baby.
I don’t dream anything but the words themselves written in white on black. The whole dream consists simply of those words. Nightshift orderlies close the nursing station door and smoke reefer. I am the only patient with enough of a brain to know. The others are snoring.