Читать книгу Yield - Lee Houck - Страница 15

Louis can’t decide whether to serve the quiche at room temperature or steaming hot. So it waits on the counter, having been in and out of the oven a few times already. “You’re going to dry it out,” I say. “Make up your mind.”

“Leave me alone,” he says, reaching up into the cabinets. He pauses to touch his hip, grimacing for a second with the pain that I’m sure is spiking up and down his side. I watch him take the next few movements more slowly.

“Take it easy,” I say.

“I’m fine. I just forget sometimes.”

My head feels slogged with mud, and my nipple is pink and tender around the ring. I can only half remember why that is. Only half remember which guy was tugging on it.

My feet crack as I move toward the table, ligament pulling dryly over bone. There are blue cloth napkins that I’ve never seen before folded in triangles on the plates. Shiny new silverware on top of that. The caramel smell of onions wanders through the room, bumping into me as I walk, savory but mostly sweet. Louis hops around, tidying, touching up. He holds two different color pillows, each out at arm’s length, one green, one blue, seeing which belongs where. A cigarette hangs from his mouth, unlit.

“Why are you making such a fuss?” He decides on the green pillow, setting it on its side, laying it warmly on the couch. “We’re not expecting the queen.” He pulls the curtains shut, opens them again, then pushes them behind the chair so they stay out of the way.

My apartment is three rooms. One room serves as the kitchen and the dining room and the living room. The kitchen itself is along the wall, all the parts in a line—countertop, sink, stove. Unmatching cabinets, randomly placed here and there, above the stove, between the fridge and the heating pipes that snake into the ceiling. A table sits left of center, then a few places to sit opposite the television and the Nintendo setup—a tangle of cords and controllers. A skinny bathroom separates the first room and the bedroom. The faucet fills in the center of the tub, which, from endless repairs to the tiled floor, is slanted more than a few degrees, and drips. The drain gurgles in the middle of the night. The bedroom is only the bed scooted into one corner and a chest of drawers. Overall the place looks kind of empty, as if I’m not finished moving in, only there’re more accessories than actual furniture: candle things, miniature lamps, containers—Louis and his Home Shopping Network obsession.

“Simon, wake up.”

“I am awake.” He pushes past me with a bowl. “What is that?”

“Fruit salad.” He places the bowl on the table and covers it with a napkin, as if it were bread dough needing to rise. “Jaron has to eat something. He won’t eat the eggs.”

I fill a glass of water and chug it. Farmer says you should drink a liter of water before breakfast. “Jaron will have a fit if you make a big deal out of him. You know how he hates to be the center of attention.” And then I remember the trips to the hospital, the portable IVs, the tiny stitches running up and down his arms.

You learn about the body when you do what I do. How pain and pleasure are delicately interchangeable, often indistinguishable. How incredibly resilient we are. And how easily, sometimes invisibly, we slip away.

“Simon, you—”

“I’m grumpy in the morning.”

“You’re always grumpy.”

“I like to be grumpy.”

“Shut up already. Take a shower or something.” He twists a rag and pops it on the back of my thigh.

Then, finally, Louis brings the quiche out of the oven for the last time, carrying it with two large oven mitts, and places it onto a wooden trivet. He pushes the other dishes aside, making room for whatever else he has planned. I lean against the sink, watching him move. Watching the vein pulse in his neck, the way the hair is growing back on his chest. Taking a quick, motherly inventory of his body. His injuries are healing. Slowly, but they’re healing. I wonder what’s going on in his head, however. Sometimes he feels so far away.

The buzzer announces their arrival. I scurry over and pick up the receiver. “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” they say in unison—the ubiquitous New York buzzer declaration.

I scratch between my legs and realize that I’m not wearing any pants. I slip into the bedroom. I pull on a pair of Louis’s jeans, stuffing my boxers down into the leg so they don’t bunch up around the waist.

The door opens and Jaron says, “Well, this place looks fabulous. Louis, you really have done a number in here. Quite the improvement.” Of course, his place is a landfill. Stacks of never-used take-out menus and credit card applications. Only it’s never stinky or dirty—no food waste that might cause that. “Farmer, don’t you just love this tablecloth? Is this linen? Where’s Simon?” Jaron herds us like sheep.

“It’s very neat,” Farmer chimes in.

I hear them chatting quietly, and I worry that I’m missing something. Like they’re talking in code, or my shoes are on the wrong feet.

“Come on out. We’ve seen it all before,” Jaron says.

All this polite blather makes me nervous. Why is everyone being so considerate, so gentle? Usually we’re like a pack of starving baboons, gnashing teeth, a flurry of prehistoric birds. The violence, the fear perhaps, the crushing anxiety of one attack on the news after another has made us strangers.

“Good afternoon.” I sit down at the table, figuring that’s where I’m best suited. Any closer to the kitchen and I’d just be clumsy and in the way. “Jaron, what’s going on?”

“Nothing. All is well.”

Louis says, “I made a big fruit salad.” He gestures at the bowl, snapping the napkin off like he’s unveiling a work of art. I notice the way he’s moving, the consciousness in his gestures—he’s aware of the hurt in his body, and it pains me a little to watch him.

“Thank you for thinking of me,” Jaron says.

“No nuts,” I say.

Jaron says, “My grandmother used to put nuts in her fruit salad and it always felt to me like crunching a tooth.”

Louis says, “Well, you know, I just—”

Jaron says, “Thank you.”

Farmer bolts up. “I love nuts in fruit salad.” We all look at him like he’s from another planet. He recoils.

I lean back, annoyed by all the civil banter. I want to knock over my drink, dig my hand into the fruit, get naked. Louis’s hand on my shoulder quiets everything, his touch like antibiotic—he can sense when I get like this. I calm.

“Farmer! What’s doing?” I sound like some over-compensating father-in-law. Like some straight-acting family member from another dimension.

Farmer reaches into the bag at his feet. Farmer carries this blue zippered bag—I have never seen him without it. Once, on the subway, a drunken frat boy tourist had cut his finger, and was wandering through each car asking for a Band-Aid. Farmer reached into the bottom of the Blue Bag and produced not only a sterile bandage, but antibiotic ointment. He produces a glossy postcard. “Look,” Farmer says. “The Museum of Natural History recently acquired a forty-seven-foot giant squid. Dead, of course.”

“Really?” I’m genuinely interested. “Will you take me to see it?” The card is dark, with a jumble of suckers and tentacles surrounding hours and admission prices. And, of course, that lone gleaming eye, big as a dinner plate, staring out of the deep, staring right through me. The squid looks like he knows something the rest of us don’t.

“Of course.” He takes a sip from his glass. “They’re having a hard time with things in the natural specimen departments. Especially the African mammals.”

Jaron cuts his eyes at me. He mouths “boring” and rolls his head around. I watch him swallow a strawberry.

Louis says, “What do you mean?”

Farmer resituates himself, feeling more confident now that he’s in a situation he can handle—exploring the goings-on at various scientific not-for-profit institutions. “Well, you see what kind of animals there are in those exhibits? Elephants and such. See, those are real animals. And they’re very old, decades. Naturally, they’re not doing so well. Fur is falling off, noses are pulling away from the faces, the skin isn’t holding up like they’d hoped.”

Jaron says, “Sound familiar?”

Farmer ignores him. “The museum is at an ethical crossroads. They have to ask whether they should go out into the wild and gather new specimens. Find a family of African elephants, kill them, taxidermy and all that, which, never mind morality, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then replace the existing grouping. These animals are now endangered, threatened, or protected, mainly.”

Louis says, “They can’t kill living animals for the sake of a motionless zoo.”

Farmer says, “No, of course not. That’s why they’re stuck. It’s practically impossible to collect dead animals from the wild, I mean you don’t find things lying around in salvageable condition. The question becomes, how do we preserve the current specimens so that future generations will be able to see an elephant up close? There won’t be real living elephants forever.”

Eventually everything goes extinct. Animals, technology, languages, fashion. Culture and community. Queers, maybe—these attacks are speeding us along.

We all look at each other. Jaron breaks the silence. “Way to bum everybody out.”

Louis slices the quiche and I realize how hungry I am, not even remembering the last time I ate. My stomach growls. And this is what Jaron feels all day.

Farmer says, “I’d like to know how it’s coming up there, but I can’t seem to get anyone to get into it with me.”

Louis says, “I thought you were well-connected there.”

Farmer says, “Not in that department. It’s very cliquey. I’m more of a stars and space guy and those people don’t always get along with the life sciences.”

I say, “Why don’t the departments get along?”

Farmer says, “It’s all about funding. Astronomy gets a new planetarium, world famous, and the agriculture exhibits still have the PRESENT labels noting the 1950s.”

Jaron says, “I don’t understand why they don’t run out into the peaceable kingdom and jerk off a bunch of elephants, then bring the spooge back to the elephant fertility clinic and get some lonely old chick elephants knocked up.”

Farmer says, “It’s far more complicated than that.”

Jaron says, “Anyway, how boring is this topic?” Farmer stuffs his mouth with quiche and gulps at his water, silencing himself. “Simon, what’s up with you?”

I say, “Nothing.”

Then the table goes quiet. The air gets sticky while we’re all looking at each other and chewing. Silverware clinks down onto plates. The whirring white noise of the refrigerator. Are we going to talk about it? I decide to throw a wrench in.

I say, “So, what’s up with all these people getting beat up?”

Louis and Farmer say, “I know.”

Jaron says, “Seriously.”

I say, “Pretty scary, huh?”

Louis says, “After seeing what they did to the other people, I know how lucky I was.”

Farmer says, “Lucky is sort of relative here.”

Everyone is looking at Louis, waiting for some kind of reaction. “Simon has found a new love interest, a bearded fellow across the street,” he intentionally changes the subject. “Mr. Laundry, we call him.”

Jaron says, “Tell me about him. Tell me everything.”

“First of all,” I say, “I never mix business with pleasure. And two, he’s extremely hot. And the way I see it, it would be nice to have a regular who lived across the street. Easy money.” I try to be vague here. I don’t normally tell people the details. It helps me to forget them.

Louis says, “Tell them how you hang out the window on Friday nights and watch him go in and out of his building.” Everyone smirks.

Farmer says, “You should be locked up.”

I say, “He’s hot. What can I say?”

Jaron says, “Oh, Simon, come on. Forget it. You’re head over heels in mad sweet love.” He flutters his hands around his face, like tissue paper butterflies on strings.

I say, “I don’t even know him.”

Louis says, “Exactly. You do better at unrequited love than you do at regular love.”

I say, “Ouch. Thanks a lot.”

Louis says, “Need I remind you of the imaginary liberal activist boyfriend?”

Jaron says, “What is this?”

I say, “It was nothing.” Farmer laughs and leans back in his chair.

Louis says, “Simon had this client who worked at the United Nations—”

I say, “I never found out what he did there.”

Louis says, “Anyway, they were doing it, what, a couple times a week on his lunch hour? This guy, he worked for the Anti-Defamation League, and he happened to always be sitting in the park on Simon’s walk home. And so we went crazy trying to find out anything about him, we were all over their Web site, trying to find any shred of information.”

I say, “I learned a lot, actually.”

Louis says, “You talked about him all the time. And you used to drag me out there to see him and he would never show.”

I say, “He was gorgeous. Real sharp jaw. Eyebrows. I spent all day fantasizing about his armpits.”

Farmer says, “I forgot you were into that.”

Jaron says, “You’re so kinky.”

I say, “I’m not really. Anyway, that’s over.”

Louis says, “We have replaced him with the bearded Mr. Laundry across the street.”

I say, “I’d fuck him if it came to that, that’s all.”

Farmer says, “Good for you. At least if you’re getting paid to fuck, it might as well be with someone hot.”

Jaron says, “I know. You should see the creeps I do it with.”

The fruit bowl is empty, the quiche has been devoured. And we sit looking at the plates and forks and glasses. Farmer is looking around at the apartment, sucking and crunching on an ice cube. Jaron is picking at his fingernails and Louis is looking at me.

Jaron says, “And I do it for free.”

We all get giddy. I smile and Jaron smiles and Farmer smiles. Even Louis smiles. And everyone laughs.

While I’m standing at the window he appears.

Every Friday night the heavy door swings open and Mr. Laundry carries his dirty clothes to the Laundromat. He drags the army-green bag down the stairway and then, with one thick heave, using his shoulder like a crowbar, he brings the load to rest behind his head, arms stretching out to the edges of the bag. Tonight he’s wearing a red T-shirt with the sleeves torn off and I can see a tattoo on his right arm. Worn jeans and frumpy tennis shoes. I want to rake my hands underneath his shirt, feel the soft warm fibers against the tough tight sinew of his body. Snake my mouth along the textures of his chest—smooth and hard near his shoulder, mushy padded sweaty near his armpit, the relaxed weight of his pectoral, the delicate change of flesh around his nipple, sensitive and flooded with blood. Slowness, a gentleness, pours out of every pore of his body. I wonder if this is who he really is.

I’m bored and kind of horny, but no more than usual. Then Louis comes in.

“What are you looking for?” He’s half-naked, sucking on an unlit cigarette again, and the filter has gone all soggy.

“My Laundry Man is out again.” I wonder what his name is, but I don’t say this to Louis.

“How long have you been lusting after him?”

“About two months,” I say, which is a lie. It’s been four.

“Damn.” Louis slides his hand down into his underwear, scratching at his dick. “Want to play Nintendo with me?”

“No,” I say. “I’m going to bed.”

“Did you see the new poster?” he asks. “At the place?”

There is a store about a block down that sells windows, screens, custom radiator covers. The owner is an avid member of the Republican party, and voices his opinions on the current state of the union by way of neon poster board and permanent markers. He has newspaper photos of the president, blown up to look like headshots, hanging on the walls, in the windows.

“No, what does it say?”

“Pinkos Go Home.”

“Is that supposed to mean us?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess.”

Louis turns and walks back into the living room. I watch his ass. He yells, “I think if I were ever to commit an act of terrorism, that would be the place. Farmer could build a bomb.” And I picture it: the storefront demolished, sparkling glass thrown into the street, blaring trucks, news cameras and gawkers.

Louis yells at me from the living room again, but I don’t understand him, it all sounds mush mouthed and vague. Out on the sidewalk, life continues. A homeless man is lying half asleep on the steps of the bank. On the corner is a South American woman selling I don’t know what from a plastic cooler in the bottom of a shopping cart. She lifts the lid, rearranging the curved shapes of steaming aluminum foil.

It begins to rain. Umbrellas open by the dozen, mostly black. Men with briefcases, women with the Daily News on their heads, enormous strollers with giant plastic covers. A woman, completely bald, ducks into a doorway.

When I look back toward the Laundromat, Mr. Laundry isn’t there. I stretch my neck from one side of the window to the other, but I don’t find him anywhere.

While I’m asleep I have a short dream. I have heard that your dreams, even if they seem to last forever, are all dreamt in only a few minutes. So all those times where you’re naked in front of your high school reunion, or you’re falling off a cliff, or you’re screaming and no sound comes out, all that really only lasts a few seconds. Something about your REM cycle. Something about certain chemicals in your blood that calm down your muscles and program them to repair themselves. Something about how the brain needs to process the actions of the day. The way it decides what’s worth storing in the long-term memory, and what can be thrown out.

Anyway.

Here’s the dream: I’m standing in the middle of the street. And I couldn’t say which street, because it was one of those nameless places like that—you don’t know where you are but you’re somewhere familiar, somewhere you might have been before. It’s not a city street, it’s a deserted highway, flanked by lush green fields, soybeans, rows of corn, and brown dirt in all directions. And I look up at the sky, which is purple and orange, the way the sky looks right before a tornado. Only I’ve never actually seen a tornado, but dreams can deliver truths to you like that. And it looks like there are birds falling down toward the highway, falling the way leaves fall, without any sense of urgency, pulled only by gravity and the moods of the wind. But as the birds get closer, I see that they aren’t birds at all. They’re typewriters. And they lose their lazy sway and fall faster, like they’re being thrown down at me from the sky, fired from cannons. And they crash into the street, crumbling the pavement, digging craters into the dirt, shattering the wooden fence that separates the street from the field. And hundreds of them, lying there on the ground, start clicking their metal teeth. And the clicking gets louder. And louder.