I hopped out of the cab, barked my shin on the runner. I limped over to the woodpile, looked back at Nick, shrugged, yanked the lightest-looking beam to my shoulder. My knees buckled. I staggered to the truck bed. Nick sat bent over the steering wheel, heaving. For a moment I thought it might be a coronary. Then I saw him wipe the tears from his eyes, roll down the window.
"Hurry up, you prick!" he said, his voice breaking.
I rushed back to the pallet. It took me an hour to load the truck. My hands peeled and bled. My shoulders burned, my legs quivered, my vision grew blurry. I puked on Nick's grille.
It was time to start work.
"I'm so sorry," said Maura.
She rubbed ointment into my neck, some over-the-counter heat cream, and I recalled how much I'd loved this very scenario as a child, that commercial about an aching jackhammer operator and his masseuse of a spouse. I'd always figured the secret to life had something to do with brutal vibratory stress and a wife handy with balms. This crap, however, did nothing but crank up my nausea.
"It's okay," I said, kneaded my hands together, my wounded gerbils. "I guess I'm not cut out for this kind of work."
"What kind of work?"
"The physical kind. You know, the kind that all humans once had to be capable of."
"I believe in you. You will be a mighty deck builder yet. Just pray to the spirit of the spirit level."
"That's good," I said. "But how can you believe in me? You don't believe in God, but you believe in me?"
"I had certain expectations with God. Come on, let's go to bed."
She laid her hand on my shoulder, slid it down toward my crotch.
"I thought you were touched out," I said.
"Maybe you could touch me back in."
"You mean an appointment? A real appointment?"
"Yes."
The fluttery ear kisses, the sweet pull and bend of Maura as I tugged on the brass hoop of her belt buckle, the downslide of her jeans, the up-peel of her sweater, the sweet chalky stubble under her arms, these are the things I wanted to remember when memory was all I had left, besides catheters and hospital lasagna, awkward visits from stunned progeny. There was no God and being was just a molecular accident, but I still hoped my crawl through the illusory tunnel of retina-annihilating light would end with my face buried in some post-life facsimile of Maura's ass.
Our lives hinge on these moments of quiet tenderness. We stand or fall on them. I passed out on mine. Even as I slipped off my sock I dropped into soft buzzy sleep. A deck builder's slumber. Maybe Maura kept the appointment with herself.
I woke up with a heart attack. It was definitely a heart attack. Death was definitely a battering ram. My fortress doors creaked with each strike. I was really dying now. Death was a punch in the chest. Death was also, strangely enough, an odd slurping sound, a rustling of sheets. There was no tunnel, no annihilating light. No ass, even. Maybe it was not a heart attack. Maybe, in fact, it was Bernie, lying between us in bed, nursing, firing mule kicks into my sternum with each suck.
Kid had rhythm.
"Baby," I whispered. "What the hell are you doing? You weaned him. He's weaned."
"I know he's weaned."
"What are you doing?"
"We're snuggling."
"He's sucking."
"No, he's not."
"I'm not," said Bernie.
"Maura, come on, stop it."
"It's okay. It's just a little regression. It's normal. I read about it. I don't have any milk anyway."
"That makes it worse."
"Go back to sleep, Milo."
"Yeah, Daddy, go back to sleep."
I rolled to the edge of the bed, listened to the soft, wet noises behind me.
My phone throbbed on the nightstand. Purdy's name glowed in the sea green display.
Twelve
An hour later I stood in a bright, enormous candy shop on the East Side. It was late and the clerks seemed eager to close. Purdy shuffled down rows of bins, sampled the designer licorice and mocha clusters, scooped all manner of lacy goo into baggies. He was unshaven, his linen shirt soiled, limp. The look rather suited his ravening.
"Try the caramel turtles," said Purdy.
"That's okay."
"Really. Try them. They melt in your mind. Do you like that? That's funny"
"Purdy."
"Ever been to this place? It's amazing, right? I come here every few months. Whenever I'm just itching to score some blow, which I know would be a bad thing, and really piss off Melinda, and fuck me up for like three or four days because, let's face it, I'm not a young man anymore, even though I look like one, I come here instead. You've been here, right? This place is famous."
Purdy tacked down another aisle, tossed handfuls of chocolate-dipped filberts in his sack.
"I've seen it before," I said. "From the outside it looks like that giant makeup store in SoHo. They are both like these overlit oases of-"
"Sonofabitch."
Purdy stood before one of the last bins with a queasy look.
"It's that marzipanny shit. I don't like it."
"Skip it," I said.
"My flow is broken. I won't get it back. Let's go to the register."
We walked back up the gleaming aisle. Purdy's mania seemed to subside, the dope scorer's calm after the dope has been scored. He clamped his hand on the back of my head.
"What's that you were saying about oases? I love it when you rip into those eighties pomo raps."
"Oh, it was nothing."
"No, really, I enjoy them. They bring me back. I remember, I couldn't sleep, I'd just track you down, feed you some bong hits, and you were good to go. We kept it hyperreal, didn't we?"
"Don't forget Charles Goldfarb," I said. "That guy could talk your ear off."
"Pretty dry. All theory. No poetry."
"Billy Raskov was the true king of bullshit, though," I said.
"Billy Raskov! I just saw Billy Raskov!"
"Yeah? How's his Parkinson's?"
"Huh? No, really, he was just in town. He had a gallery show. I'm helping him make his movie. Shit, we should all get together, Milo. I should call him now."
"It's two in the morning."
"Bet the fucker's up. He's not a sleeper. He's like me. You're a sleeper, Milo. That's the truth about you."
"Lots of people sleep," I said.
"It's okay," said Purdy. "The main thing is you got out of bed. You came."
We reached the counter and Purdy dumped the candy on it, tossed a credit card onto the pile.
"So," said Purdy. "Should we talk?"
We walked the night city. Purdy gorged on his sweets. I outlined some ideas about his give, careful not to corner him on numbers. We needed a new screening auditorium, maybe a digital art center. These could be significant naming opportunities for Purdy. We wanted to get global, create programs in Europe and Asia and the Middle East, establish alliances with other mediocre universities around the world.
"Sure," said Purdy, pinched a mass grave's worth of gummy frogs into his mouth. "We can do that."
"Which?" I said, waited for him to finish chewing.
"I don't know. All of it?"
"All of it? No disrespect, but-"
"You don't even know, man," said Purdy. He sounded a little sugarshocked. "My pockets run deep. Even these days."
He turned out a pocket and a few loose red hots popped to the pavement.
"Did I pay for those?"
"I think so," I said.
I had to take him at his word about the give, at least for now.
"This is great news," I said. "This is fantastic. We can go into greater detail later but it sounds like what you're saying is-"
"Shit, Milo, don't give me the boilerplate. Let's be people. I didn't hear you say anything about painting. Figured that'd be your interest. Need new studios or something? How about a huge prize? Don't be bashful. You want a sour worm?"
"No, I'm cool."
A police cruiser slowed beside us as we made our way down Madison and I wondered what the cops made of us, if they could see how much fucking candy Purdy was eating, if there were any laws about that. The cop peeled away and Purdy coughed. Dark gobs sprayed out of his mouth.