The Natural Order of Things (6 page)

Suddenly he wonders if he can actually
eat
a box. All his life he has avoided a healthy diet—he abhors fruits and vegetables—but these girls are probably quite fibrous, good for his digestive system and high blood pressure. With his mouth watering in anticipation of this sumptuous feast, he unclasps the chinstrap and lifts the girl to his eager lips, but before he can chow down on the subtle mound concealed under the skirt, a terrible scream rips through the basement.

“McSweeney!”

Confused by the eerie faces shifting in the shadows, he believes that one of the models has come to life. She stands at the bottom of the stairs, teetering wildly in her high heels, arms flailing in an attempt to balance herself. Something is wrong with her; she must be defective, an aborted mock-up, a rare blunder of mass production. When she does manage to take a step forward and penetrates the sacred circle of candlelight, she reveals her myriad imperfections: her airbrushed tits have turned ponderous and faintly green with a crosshatch of veins; her buttocks bulge from the white miniskirt, the firm musculature now lost forever under an inch of pitted cellulite; worse yet, her lovely eyes, once so full of lust, are now small and pink, almost porcine, and blink with a mixture of alarm and outrage.

McSweeney’s stomach tightens, his throat goes dry. “What are you
doing
?” he croaks. “Why are you
dressed
this way?”

“Why am
I
dressed this way?” Maggie cries.

“Yes. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

For a moment his wife is silent; she looks in the mirror, adjusts her breasts, fixes her hair, and when she speaks, her voice has the old familiar tone of admonition, a thing that cannot be denied for very long. “I thought I might surprise you with this little number. I’m not stupid, you know. I see the way you beam every time that infantile ad comes on. Caught you red-handed, didn’t I?”

He clings to one of the models, hoping it might offer him some protection from these ugly recriminations. Through clenched teeth, he says, “Why don’t you leave me then? The fact of the matter is we can’t stand the sight of each other anymore, can we?”

Now her eyes soften, fill with intense pity.

“That’s not true,” she says. “You need help, that’s all. Don’t worry, we’ll get you some help. I should have recognized the signs. Let’s start the healing process. Let’s start right away.”

She grabs one of the cardboard models, breaks it over her plump knee, and like an enthusiastic Girl Scout at a bonfire, she thrusts it into the blue pilot light under the furnace.

To silence the pop and hiss of this erotic conflagration, McSweeney clamps his hands over his ears and wails, “My beautiful baby, oh, my beautiful baby!”

Oblivious to the danger, he slumps to the floor and tries to gather up the sharp cinders. Sparks cascade over cheekbones and bosoms and thighs, flames spread across the throw rug and singe the hairs on the back of his hands, but in the midst of this bedlam, he experiences a startling sense of inner calm that never abandons him, not even when Maggie comes charging across the room with a fire extinguisher and shoots an enormous load of white foam that dribbles down the bridge of his nose and drips from his chin in thick opalescent pearls.

Although it has taken many days to have this epiphany, McSweeney now understands that the model is an indestructible goddess, capable of being everywhere and nowhere, flickering forever in the ghostly light of the television, posing atop a pyramid of beer on Aisle 69 of the Select’n’Save, pressed flat against a convenience store window where homeless men squander their last few dollars on jugs of red wine. For once in his life, he actually looks forward to standing on the loading dock of the Burning River Brewery where, in the cold of another autumn morning, he will wait for Cloggy Collins to roll open the door and reveal the miraculous vision of the model resurrected from the ashes. For as long as he lives he will have her. Again and again he will have her. She will never get fat, she will never grow old, and she will never tire of bestowing upon him the heavenly blessings of physical fulfillment.

The Friday before the big game finds Bernie Kaliher broke and desperate for a beer, and he spends the next hour or two—he’s not sure how long really; he no longer wears a watch—scrounging for loose change in the pockets of an old winter coat, digging beneath the ragged cushions of a sofa, reaching behind the silent refrigerator (it no longer hums; the electricity was shut off weeks ago), looking under a throw rug, behind the toilet, inside the broom closet, his fingers creeping spider-like into every dark recess and mite-infested alcove, and, though he pities himself for doing something so obviously futile, beneath the piss-and-sweat-stained mattress where, instead of money, he unearths an assortment of dirty magazines, hardened tissues, a sports page with a photograph of his players lined up in front of the Jesuit high school like an invincible Roman legion in battle formation. The team has been described as “an unstoppable juggernaut, a ravening beast,” and at the center of this hundred-headed hydra stands the proud coach, grim-faced, steely-eyed, Herculean. The fading letters at the top of the newspaper read more like a benediction than a byline:
May the Good Lord—and this Coaching Genius—Lead These Boys to Victory
.

Kaliher sighs. It’s no use. There isn’t a single dollar to be found anywhere. With mounting frustration, he crumples the newspaper into a ball and flings it across the apartment. He goes to the bedroom window, both hands buried deep in his empty pockets, and presses his forehead against the cold panes of glass. At this time of year premature darkness bears down on the city like a firm hand closing the lid on a musty Bible box, but in the distance, through the soughing trees, he can make out the hulking structure of the Jesuit school. A yellow blaze of artificial light transforms the building into a scumbled painting of Pandemonium, the bricks glinting with quartz, the spires illumined by lightning storms and lava flows. A dark blur of golden-eyed grackles rockets across the sky. They circle the crenellated parapet of the gothic tower and roost on its narrow ledges. By closely observing the birds, Kaliher hopes to detect some kind of favorable augury. In fact, he looks for signs everywhere, just to be sure—in the appearance of a black cat, in the passage of a comet, in the arrangement of Tarot cards and tea leaves and coffee grounds, anything that might hint at the outcome of tomorrow’s game.

Some say he is superstitious, but strictly speaking he doesn’t believe in luck; he believes in a sure thing and, up until a few months ago, he always had an uncanny ability for making correct predictions. Lately, however, his instincts have failed him. He can no longer see the future as he once could. Fate shrouds the world in mystery and refuses to give up her secrets. Even now a sharp tingle like static electricity shoots up his spine: an ominous premonition, but one that comes much too late.

Suddenly there is a loud knock at the door, three solid raps with a pause between each one, a very serious-sounding knock, a knock that says he is in deep shit, the deepest in a long time, and here he is, caught without a pair of boots to wade through it. Using the tough-guy voice he has perfected from a decade of coaching belligerent prep school boys, he shouts, “Go away!” because no one ever knocks at his door except for the obvious reason: money. His ex-wife and her attorneys, his bookie, even old friends and neighbors,
they all line up at his door, looking to hit him up and suck him dry, but he knows perfectly well who is out there—it can only be one person—and although his instincts tell him to flee, to scramble down the fire escape, he understands that sooner or later he must face the fire-breathing dragon, not out of choice exactly—what kind of hero yearns for his own gruesome immolation?—but because escape is no longer an option. The entrance to the cave is blocked, the bridge burned to cinders.

Kaliher looks at his ghostly reflection in the window, tests out a smile, the one he uses to captivate audiences when delivering the keynote address at benefit dinners, but his smile falters; it looks defiant, devious, impudent, maybe even a little twisted. His eyes are blood-rimmed, his teeth caked with tartar, his tongue dry from another week-long bender. The charms of success have abandoned him entirely—a terrible thing for a man who clings to his fading celebrity as an idolater clings to a golden monkey paw. Taking a deep breath, he cracks open the door. In the hallway he hears the sound of a dozen antique keys jangling on a rusty ring, and in a slanted shaft of light he sees a thousand silver strands of cat hair shimmer, loop, and twirl.

“Why, good afternoon, Mrs. O’Neill!”

“Fuck you, Kaliher. You got somethin’ to smile about these days?”

Mrs. O’Neill, the owner and manager of the Zanzibar Towers & Gardens, leans heavily against the doorway, a long pillar of cigarette ash wobbling between her lizard lips. She is a woman with a remarkable gift for cutting through the bullshit, and her demeanor suggests not only anger but sobriety. Not a good sign. She’s wearing a green bathrobe and slippers, her Friday night “uniform,” and her fingers plough through hair so wild and wiry and bleached of color that her scalp looks like a little plot of curled cornhusks roasting under a ferocious summer sun.

“Something I can do for you?” Kaliher asks.

“Yeah, asshole, pay up. Right now. Or hit the road. Bunch of goddamn infants living here. Helpless parasites, every last one of yous. This ain’t no charity ward. And it ain’t no brothel neither.”

“I beg your pardon …”

“Give it a rest, Kaliher. I know all about you. You and that dirty whore down the hall. I’ve seen her leaving your apartment. I won’t have it. I run a respectable place.”

She thrusts her nose past the chain, her nostrils puckering and flaring, the bulbous tip covered with meandering tributaries of broken blood vessels that disappear into craters vast and deep and dark.

“That ain’t no weed I smell, is it? Cause if it is, I’ll call the cops, by God I will. Make my life so much easier. One call, Kaliher, and out ya go.”

“Weed, Mrs. O’Neill? Heavens, no!” He unhooks the chain and swings the door open. “Would you like to come in? Have a look around? Join me in a cocktail? Please, I insist.”

He takes her by the hand, but she yanks it away and wipes it across the front of her robe. Amazing that
she
is the one to wipe
her
hand! But he isn’t about to let a rude gesture get to him, no, that might disrupt his timing, and he has these innocuous little transactions timed to the nearest tenth of a second. He always thinks in terms of a stopwatch, another habit from his years as a coach. He steps aside as Mrs. O’Neill, heavy and compact as a bison, shambles into the apartment, her great, humped shoulders threatening to rip apart the doorframe.

“Okay, whadya got?”

“Um, I have Kentucky bourbon. Irish whiskey. Single malt scotch.”

She sneers. “You ain’t got jack shit.”

“No, I swear it. How about a nice glass of Cabernet?”

She snaps her fingers. “C’mon, c’mon …”

He glowers at her, his tormentor, his jailer, and opens the kitchen cupboards one at a time. She isn’t particular, she’ll drink just about anything: cooking sherry, cough syrup, even rubbing alcohol isn’t beneath her, but they both know the truth, know that his cupboards are bare and that the only thing he has to offer her is a glass of cloudy tap water. This is just a preposterous pantomime he performs each month, but even the destitute abide by certain rules of etiquette.

“Yer wife was here a few hours ago lookin’ for ya. Musta knocked on your door fer a good ten minutes ’fore I come down and chased ’er off. I can’t have some angry cougar makin’ a spectacle of ’erself. I don’t like troublemakers, Kaliher. Don’t like deadbeats neither.” She scratches the bristly black hairs sprouting on the back of her calves. They look like pine needles, sharp and shiny and covered in miniscule scales. “What’s a pretty woman want with the likes of you anyway?”

Afraid he might break down in front of her, Kaliher hides his face behind the pantry door and whispers, “I’ll win her back …”

With a loud snort of contempt, Mrs. O’Neill lumbers into the dark bedroom, her imposing silhouette framed against the window. She lets the bathrobe slide from her freckled back. Kaliher shudders. It’s like watching a snake shed its skin. The heavy ring of keys hits the hardwood floor with a terrible clatter. The glowing ember of her cigarette hovers in the blackness like the unblinking eye of a cyclops and sinks slowly to the mattress before winking out. His sleeping arrangements are primitive. There is no frame, no box spring, no down comforter, but Mrs. O’Neill doesn’t seem to mind.

Kaliher hesitates, cowed by her silence. He thinks of his children, John and Carol, six-year old twins, and recalls how, during their last weekend visit, they sobbed in their sleeping bags arranged on either side of that same mattress and begged to be taken home to their mother: “Please, Daddy,
please
.”

“Time!” Mrs. O’Neill proclaims.

“Yes,” Kaliher murmurs, “I’m coming, coming …”

Mrs. O’Neill actively seeks out male renters, losers one and all, the downtrodden, ruined, addicted, and insane. She usually captures her prey at the Stone Town Café where the city’s luckless gather to drink one cup of coffee after another (refills are free) and stare out the window as if waiting for somebody who once loved them to miraculously appear and say that all is forgiven, mistakes happen, now it’s time to start life over again. Most of these men secretly yearn to tell a woman, any woman, about their private miseries, their personal failures, and Mrs. O’Neill delights in playing the role of comforter and confessor. With great patience and understanding, she listens to these tales of woe, nods her head, squeezes a hand in a very reassuring way. She offers a warm smile when it is most needed. Then, moving in for the kill, she brings up the subject of her
apartment building, “the property,” she calls it, willed to her by her now deceased third husband.

“You come right on over, honey, and see the place for yourself. Maybe we can work out some kind of arrangement. No deposit required to rent a room.”