CRACK ’EM WITH A FINGERNAIL, THE STINK OF THE
blood, fuckin’ lice. The colder it gets the harder it is to dig ’em out. Plus I smell like shit. Shit and that other smell. Like cheese. I smell like a piece of cheese with shit in its pants. Vodka’s the only thing that cuts through it.
Encrusted and hallucinating, Billy wanders, scolding the street lamps, pissing in the shiny enameled doorways of the rich, rummaging Dumpsters. The cops take one look at his size and beat him down, make him kiss the pavement. It’s raining billy clubs. And the sidewalk is a cold, hard bed. But anything’s better than being stuck inside with the loonies.
If I could find the van I could get back to the farm. It’s always something, isn’t it? A world of hurdles. Hurdle-world. No money. With money, even the Koreans let you in to buy a candy bar. No money, you’re not getting in anywhere. Guy points a gun at me. Blabbing at me like a monkey in heat, how am I supposed to know what he’s saying? Just walk away. Walk away. And in this city, there’s plenty of money. People drop it on the street, problem is, it takes all day to find it. Quarters, dimes, pennies lots of pennies, once in a while a crumpled dollar bill, might as well be a twenty. But don’t let anyone see the money, because the others are always out there, always trying to frisk the pockets. Sleep during the day is the best thing. Tired. Hard to stay awake. Waitin’ all night for the Burger King to close, just to get the lukewarm fries.
And how’s a guy supposed to sleep anyway with rats sniffin’ my asscrack and kids stickin’ firecrackers up my goddamn nose? People walkin’ their dogs right past my face! Just everybody step back. Step fuckin’ back. Way back. Another good reason to stay away from water. Stink-factor. Touch me, touch my shit. Who said that? Someone said that. Someone also said, go to the soup kitchen. But you can’t just take whatever they hand you! Who knows what they’re serving out of those pots? I saw mouse pups in there. Water bug larvae. Baby snappin’ turtles.
Get a couple of bucks together, pick up the cans and bottles, bottles and cans, a real egg salad sandwich is a possibility. Salt and pepper. Maybe a cup of coffee with half and half. Ten packets of sugar as long as the chink-o doesn’t see. Who knows? Who can know if he can’t think? Air horns blowin’ my ears out. Bike messengers going the wrong way on a one-way street. Bunch of foreigners delivering chop suey. Baby strollers. Dogs, sniffin’ and barkin’, pissin’ and waggin’. And the spooks and the Jews. You can always tell a Jew, ’cause he’s the one giving the free advice. “Why aren’t you working? Young man like you?” Just me give me the money, Abraham, I don’t need a lecture!
Billy nabs a rolling canvas bin from the garment district, keeps a change of clothes, bottles and cans for deposit, blankets, cushions from a discarded couch. And of course the Reba archive. The collection has grown cumbersome but when something’s essential, you gotta make do.
He spends most of his day moving from one recycling mound to the next, searching through the bundled magazines and newspapers set out by the curbside. Collecting Reba, now called Rena. The perfume ads, the department store ads, all of it. Even the swimsuit ads. If I don’t do it, who will?
Billy studies her now under a blanket tent, deep into the night, like a Talmudic scholar, his flashlight illuminating her saintly, virtually naked self. He surprises himself when the jism spurts out from his clenched fist. How’d that happen? The little devil, making me do bad things. Of course. You can’t escape the devil.
My own damn sister. But what can I do? Forces beyond my control. When I see her looking at me like that, I can’t hold back. I love her like a brother, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? She isn’t really Reba anymore, is she? So it doesn’t count, does it? Where’s my bottle?
Billy emerges from a blackout, frozen solid to the sidewalk. He can’t peel himself up off it. His spilled blood stains the ground like solid black syrup. The pain needles its way into his fingers, his toes. He groans.
Fucking cold. Like someone’s stomping on my fingers. Need a drink. A pint of wine right now and I could go to sleep. Fuck! Like having my legs in a vise. Isn’t freezin’ to death supposed to be sweet like fallin’ asleep?
Billy flops his head sideways, tearing a patch of skin off his nose. He smells the fumes of a car idling nearby. The frozen exhaust drifts by his face, inches from the ground. It’s only feet away. Shut off your damn headlights!
Billy goes blind. He screams again, pushing up hard against the frozen swill and blood. Paralyzed, no movement. Pisses his pants and feels the damp warmth become more numbness. Turning again, he squints his eyes and can almost see past the brilliance. There’s the car, two silhouettes watching him. Warm inside, they don’t want to be bothered. Then the door pops, and someone is standing over him. “Buddy, get up.”
“Fuck you!” It comes out, “Fuh-ya!” Billy doesn’t mean to say “fuck you” but that’s what comes out. What he meant to say was “Who are you?” or “Help me.” But it comes out “fuck you.” Fuck you is easier.
“Yeah, well, you stay out here any longer you’re gonna lose the tips of your fingers or maybe your nose. You might even die, you understand that, pal?”
“Fuh-ya.”
“Look. I’m not touching your scabrous ass. We called EMS.”
“Fuh-ya.”
“Dude, you keep telling me to fuck myself, you’re gonna hurt my feelings. Now it’s either the men’s shelter or the island, which is it gonna be?”
“Shah.”
“What’s that? I can’t understand you. Say it louder.”
“Fuh-ya.”
“You speak English?”
“No.” Urine ice crystals are forming around Billy’s testicles, biting into him like giant lice. He sobs.
“All right, dude. Ambulance will be here in a few minutes. Hang in there, try not to croak on us.”
Coming out of the blackout, Billy finds himself standing in line at the shelter, drool all soaked through the front of his shirt. No cops. Might as well stand in line, at least it’s warm. But even if they let me in, which they probably won’t, not gonna be here long. I know the drill.
A tap on his shoulder. “Hey, big guy, keep it movin’. Don’t want to be here all night.”
Behind Billy stands a cocoa-skinned muscle-bound fireplug with a black moustache, five four, five five at most. Guy has a gap in his front teeth and bloodshot eyes. Unlit cigarette cocked behind his ear. For a second, Billy thinks of old Frank Decker, then realizes that this guy is probably a Negro and Frank is probably white. But maybe I’m wrong about Frank, come to think of it. Maybe this is Frank, for god’s sake! “Frank?”
“You retarded or something? Move your fat ass, son.”
Billy croaks, “Don’t touch me.”
“I’ll touch you all I want, motherfucker. Don’t you be telling me what to do.” The fireplug glowers at Billy.
“Fugoff nigger.”
“Believe me, you don’t want to be telling me none of that shit. You know what I’m sayin’?”
Billy turns his back on the little guy and steps forward two feet. The guy nips at his heels, like a poodle. A poodle looking to be beat with a stick. “You smell like shit, you know that, big boy? You smell like dog shit. You been lying in dog shit? Or maybe you been eating dog shit. You been eating dog shit? Or maybe eatin’ your old lady who is full of dog shit. Is that true? Is your old lady a pile of dog shit?” Billy sniffs through his beard. It’s true I do stink. So what? Good. A shove nudges Billy from behind and Billy stumbles forward. He ignores it. Another shove. “Go on, get outta here, stand outside, dog shit. Go.” Shove. Shove.
Billy turns to face the little guy. “I said don’t touch me.”
The fireplug knits his fireplug brow. “I touch you all I want, motherfucker. Big fat stinky honky motherfucker. Smell like somethin’ dead.” The line is long. The security guard at the front can’t hear the little guy. The other men shuffle away, making space, tracking the tormentor and tormentee with sideways glances. “Stinky!” The little guy laughs, smiles at his compadres, then thrusts out with another shove.
Billy turns, swings. He clocks the poodle fireplug full face and the little guy drops like a sack of sand. His head hits and the cigarette bounces off his ear, rolls away. The fireplug stays down. Billy turns his back one last time and takes a big step forward, muttering to himself, “Troublemaker.”
The security guard walks over. “You.” Billy faces away from the guard. “Who hit this guy? Hey you, chief, you hit this guy?” The guard is prodding Billy with his nightstick. Billy leaves the line and walks off into the night.
“Fuck you,” he thinks. But he doesn’t have to say it.
RICK STANDS NAKED BEFORE THE MIRROR. LAURA HAS
gone to visit her mom for the weekend. Taken the kids. Rick’s waited all week for this and now here it is and he’s alone in the house and so far all he’s managed to do is take a shower and stare at his naked self.
He cups his scrotum and juggles his balls. He thinks, I’m shrinking. They’re no bigger than cocktail olives now. And look at those arms. Like sticks. Neck like a turkey, chest flat as a pancake, virtually concave. Clumps of hair in the drain every morning now. And it’s been years since I could make out the fine print on the medication bottles without glasses.
This is how it arrives, like a hyena hanging out on the fringes of the herd. Waiting for the weak one. Because death is patient. It waits for fragility. And it doesn’t have to be physical weakness, it can just be a lack of desire, a lack of will. I’ve seen it at the clinic. You have to want to be alive, want to exist. Maybe I don’t want to be me anymore, maybe I don’t want to move forward anymore. So I get weaker and weaker and poison invades my tissues, toxifies me while I am unconscious, inch by inch while I sleep.
Because I am dying (Did I ever want to live?) I have lost my need for sustenance, including sleep. The absurdity of accomplishment becomes obvious. I don’t even need lust. My seed-shooting period is over. I’ve done my job dispersing my genetic code. Time to wilt like a cut rose, wither and turn brown. Infidelity is an aberration, an anomaly. Women flirt with me out of boredom. There won’t be any more adventures in my life. It’s time to find a good walking stick and a sun-warmed park bench.
Rick gets dressed and wanders out to the backyard. A spring breeze slips through the budding maples and the iridescent clouds scud over a star-blotched void. The windows of the neighboring homes emanate TV-blue light and the moon hides behind the thick foliage, leaving shadows like tar pits over the lawn. Rick lights a cigarette and smokes. This is my yard. My house. My lawn. My dirt. I own the dirt all the way to the center of the planet. That’s got to be a lot of dirt.
The cigarette tip glows like a signal from a distant friend. Everything falls into place and Rick can’t recall what’s been making him so anxious. He lets the butt fall onto the unseen lawn and crushes it into the cool leaves of grass.
Domestic dialogue echoes off the walls of a nearby kitchen. Rick wanders to the edge of his acre and watches. The bodies of his neighbors swim through the fish tank glow of their home. The indistinct voices refuse to adhere to their movements and gestures. Are they arguing? Or just being emphatic?
Rick steps over the property line and enters their yard, fairly certain they have no dog. The border of shrubs and trees makes him invisible. He steps closer, and the sound synchs up with the moving mouths. What are these people’s names? Ed and Jane, I think. Moved in about six months ago. No kids, no way to know them. Never bothered to visit and introduce myself. Why should I? They’ll be gone soon. Ed is rarely home. Jane comes and goes all day in her Beemer, cell phone stuck to her pretty head.
Tonight, Ed is wearing a button-down oxford and his tie is loosened. Jane snatches dishes from the dishwasher and sorts them onto shelves, into cupboards. She’s sexy because she’s thin, taller than average, possessed of slightly droopy, full breasts. Her hair has been streaked blond like almost every woman’s in the neighborhood (every woman this side of the Hudson, probably). Her face holds no emotion, as if restraint is a positive trait. Ed, also tallish, also coolish, gives the impression of what? Having piles of money? Balls the size of lemons? How old are these people? Late thirties? Why don’t they have kids?
Although he can hear them, he still can’t understand what they’re saying. Ed keeps repeating something about “over there.” And Jane shakes her head, “No.” Whatever it is, it seems important to them. Or not. Maybe they’re going to adopt a child from South Korea. Or maybe they’re discussing politics. Or maybe they’re trying to decide what they’ll be doing next weekend. Or maybe they’re planning to rob a bank.
Abruptly, they leave the room and Rick guesses they are heading upstairs. Maybe they’re going to their bedroom, to fuck. How does that joke go? “What’s foreplay for a WASP? Answer: Drying the dishes.”
Rick finds a set of stairs leading from the patio flagstones up to a cantilevered sundeck. Breathless, he creeps up the stairs, and now, much more exposed, crosses the deck and peers into the sliding glass door of the second story. Ed and Jane wander around like sleepwalkers. Rick steps away from the house into a patch of darkness. He observes the couple with the detachment of a Kinsey Institute researcher.
Ed and Jane strip to their underwear. She applies cream to her hands and leaves the bedroom. Ed pulls off his boxers and stretches out on the bed. Fools around with his flaccid penis, pinches a nipple, stares at the ceiling. What do you see up there, Ed? The penis flops to and fro, to and fro. What is taking Jane so long? Is she getting out the handcuffs? Lubing the sphincter? No. Here she is! Naked and sullen, almost defeated. She lies down beside her husband. A perfunctory kiss. Then she flips her hair, gives Ed a little shove and when he lies back, takes him into her mouth. Her butt is angled toward Rick, he can just make out the fellatio. He sizes up Ed’s member. Pretty average.
If Rick had planned it, it couldn’t have worked out this well. The perfect voyeuristic moment. He focuses on Jane’s wonderful buttocks, discovers he’s tumescent, unzips and starts to play with himself. Three human animals move rhythmically toward climax.
Rick’s semen spurts out over the deck railing. Oblivious to Rick’s contribution, Ed and Jane are still at it, helpless and pale, nothing like the people in porno videos. With no awareness of their participation in the ménage à trois, they begin a frenzy of awkward spasms. As the energy drains out of him, Rick recalls a nature show he once saw on PBS. Something under water. A jellyfish or a prawn, reflexively spritzing its goo into the frigid brine as friendly kelp wafted to and fro.
Finally, Ed whinnies while Jane’s glazed eyes aim directly at the spot where Rick stands. They lie still and Rick feels pity for them. Feels pity for himself. Feels pity for every dumb prick and cunt on the planet. He sees that he’s left a few drips of jism on their cedar deck.
Rick descends from the porch, crosses his yard and returns to the familiarity of his own well-lit home. As he steps back into the tenderness of his own space, he feels the pinch of his dried cum glueing the tip of his dick to his underwear. He thinks, I should call Laura.