PANGS IN THE P.M
“My son’s name was Diablito Leyner. Diablito—‘little devil.’ At three years of age he was five-seven, had body hair, a deep voice, read books, danced when you took him to Isadora’s, used stick deodorant, had sex with people’s housemates, had a receding hairline, drank too much now and then, and worried about things constantly. In fact, he was almost identically like myself. He was conceived on a spring night in a first floor alcove of the geology building where I’d found a janitress stooped in front of a display case of quartz specimens, completely transfixed with an annular sample of lapis lazuli. I tip-toed in back of her, lifted her skirt up, and we mated. So, one day I was defrosting my freezer. I’d put two or three bags of frozen vegetables in the back of the toilet tank to keep them cool. Diablito approached me from behind with a copy of Paradise Lost and read a passage: ‘O foul descent! that I who erst contended / With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrain’d / Into a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime …’ I stopped hacking away at the ice and told him it was time he hit the road and find out where he was at. ‘Take a bag of peas,’ I said, ‘and remember — eat where the truckdrivers stop, the food’s bound to be good.’ That was the last I ever saw of him. He’s changed his name to Richard Finestein. And he’s failed in half a dozen business ventures. The stock market, real estate, retail clothing, insurance, you name it. People say ‘Richard Finestein — he’s got a magic wand up his ass — everything he touches turns to shit.’ Well, I’m not the kind of guy who blubbers over spilled milk, if you know what I mean — but for weeks I’d just sit in that dilapidated Boston rocker and sweat buckshot and dumdum bullets and every night at the same time, a bus passed under my window followed, three minutes later, by a harried little man running with an overnight bag. Every night. You could time an egg by it. He’d run a few blocks and then stop, take a deep breath, turn around and walk back. One night I couldn’t contain myself — I flew downstairs just in time to collar the guy as he rushed by. ‘You again!’ he raged, ‘Every night you make me miss my bus!’ And he broke my grasp and ran, as was wonted, a few blocks, stopped, took a deep breath, turned around and walked back. As he approached me, he tipped his hat and bowed, ‘Excuse my behavior before,’ he said, ‘but I was in a terrible rush,’ and walked away … and I’m left standing there and I’m thinking — I’m like the guy who’s rummaged through a ton of glazed popcorn for something to hock and comes up with nothing but a sticky hand — and I’m thinking — what the fuck am I doing — I’m an asshole … and I was drinking so much V-8 juice that I always had diarrhea and I couldn’t find a razor I liked — the twin blades would get jammed up with hair and the little disposable single blades would cut me to ribbons …”
“Mark … Mark … Mark,” Barbara said, “like, what’s really bothering you?”
That department store signal was in my head — Ping Ping Ping Ping.
“Aaaaaaaw Barbara … I may have killed two or three Tai Chi students with that Datsun of mine.”
“You could use some more tea. Say when.” she said, bending at the waist and pouring more hot water into the cup that shook in my trembling hand. Her breasts fell forward against the printed calico of her blouse. But even this movement seemed alien and incidental as did the movement of the drapes that seemed to inhale and exhale in the breeze through the open living room windows, as did the sound of the plastic knobs at the end of the drapery cords bouncing against the wall, as did the sensation of scalded flesh as tea spilled over the top of my cup onto my hand.
“When.” I said.
“Is Joe Safdie’s head loose?” Barb asked.
“No Barb,” I said, “he just waves his head around that way when he talks — it’s just a habit.”
“Is it attractive?”
“I don’t know, Barb — you’ll have to ask another girl that question.”
“Well tell me how it happened.”
“It’s just a mannerism that someone develops … an idiosyncrasy.”
“Mark … Mark … Mark … Not that. How did the accident, that you may have had, happen?”
“Aaaaaaaaaw Barbara.…”
Then the phone rang. It was Lisa.
“I can’t talk now. I’m in the shower. Bye.”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaw Barbara.… It was between Cascade and Baseline. I was on my way to Chautauqua. They move so slowly. They crossed the street so slowly.”
“Did you kill em? Did you kill em?” she asked and her eyes got real big.
“I don’t know. They move so slowly it’s hard to tell if they’re dead or alive.”
“There’d be dents in your car if you hit anyone.” Barbara said, blending some soy sauce into a bowl of mayonaisse with a wicker-handled whisk.
“I don’t know. They’re very thin — like sparrows — almost not there — with awful anorexic pallors. They’d fall like candle-pins.”
From the window I could see my Datsun. And I could see the balled-up mimeographed sheets that teased and capered about its full tires. I kept a megaphone near the window so that in case a youth leaned on the hood or set a milk dud on the windshield and poised his fist above, I could broadcast my vehement anger below and watch him flee. The car was, after all, my responsibility. From the window, I could see the Flat-irons, not quite piebald with snow and rock and not quite hypertrophically lush with green growth — but in between. I used to stand on the balcony and watch the setting sun imbrue the sky with its puce and blue-indigo stains and then fall down, deep in the Rockies where it would rattle around in the night like a black roulette ball. Then I’d go back inside and watch the news. Then maybe make chopped-meat and Rice-a-Roni, then have coffee. Then later take a glossy girl from the stack, from my seraglio of magazines, and rock against the cool sheets in a cool sweat and fall asleep before I could even mess.
“There’d be blood on your car if you hit anyone.” Barbara said.
“What?”
“There’d be blood on your car if you hit anyone.”
“I don’t know. I think I went right to a car wash. And then I went to Baseline Liquors.”
“What happened there?”
“The guy there said ‘How ya doing today?’ and I said ‘I can’t believe how much beer costs’ and he said ‘It’s really something’ and I asked ‘Does it just keep going up all the time or what?’ and he said ‘Every time they bring the fuckin stuff in — it’s gone up …’ ”
“Wait a second,” Barbara said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“And then I said ‘It’s always because something else from somewhere else is costing someone else more,’ and he said ‘The big companies got their heads together on this thing,’ and I said ‘The oil companies sure do’ and he reached over the counter and grabbed my lips and pulled them apart so that all my gums were showing and I had him shred one of those free entertainment guides across my teeth and with two of the shreds, I demonstrated how asymptotic lines and hyperbolae never meet and I said that this also shows why Mendel, the Austrian botanist, and Joe Tex, the American singer, would never meet — and then he began to weep. ‘What is it?’ I asked ‘I’m weeping,’ he said, ‘because I’m sad that Mendel and Joe Tex will never meet.’ ”