Flatscreen (6 page)

“He couldn’t play it. But he wanted to. I think. He bought it.”

Something I would do.

“I’m teaching myself,” Alison said, picked up the guitar, strummed a chord, a riff, feigned smashing it, put it back in the case, took off her boots, her pants, her striped cotton panties.

Her skin was thin like rice noodle. Didn’t know stuff like this happened in real life. She covered her breasts with her arms, said, “I’m shy,” called up a playlist.

“Girls who take their pants off aren’t usually shy.”

Sounded suave. Something I’d say in my head, not out loud.

“Have sex with me?” she said, as if I needed convincing. “It’ll feel good.”

Music was right, thus wrong. An anthem of our adolescence, slow-building, violin-accompanied, electro-accented. Singer’s mumble swelled into full-voice falsetto. It was the song from a movie about lost teenagers doing drugs in basements, fucking
(Starfucked
, Panther Socks Entertainment, 2000). From the scene in which the downward-spiraling heroine, after shooting heroin, asks a creepy random to violate her, to help her escape the pain of grief.

Alison faced the wall on her knees. I was expected to make an entrance. Needn’t be a grand entrance. Licked her shoulders, kissed her back. Alison moaned, or fake-moaned, or maybe just coughed. Remembered the herpes rumor. Held her hips, moved in for a closer look. It was dark, and I didn’t have much to compare this with.

“Are you sniffing my butt?”

“Isn’t that why they call it doggy-style?” I said, though I didn’t feel like being funny anymore.

Thinking about Jeremy: blue face, rotting corpse, wood of his coffin eaten by termites, small shards of wood falling into his eye sockets. Wanted something to remind me of life. Wanted to hold Alison’s face against my own, bodies musical, melding, warm breath on my neck, soft kisses against my stubbly chin. Something that wouldn’t be sad.

Also, didn’t want herpes. Or to spend the next month worrying about possibly having herpes.

“I was just wondering, um… I know it’s a weird thing to ask … but … um… Do you have…?”

“I don’t have a condom,” she said.

Forgot about herpes. Forgot about sadness. Forgot about pretty much everything, including Alison. Thought about Jennifer Estes. Forgot about her too. Alison kept turning her head to look at me. Unreadable eyes. Expression could have been bliss or boredom, compassion or contrition. She’d look at me then look away.

Stroked her hair with my hand. Hairspray-stiff, smelled like girl. Felt fake, also intentional. Counted the notches on her spine, wondered about untreated scoliosis, measured her width on a single hand.

Moments later I was thinking about baseball. Alison reached back, squeezed my balls, dug a press-on nail into my thigh. Etc.

“Stay in me for a minute.”

Her knees buckled. Fell flat on the bed. I lay on top, spread. Her arms were shorter than mine. Held my wrists with her hands.

“It’s been a minute,” she said.

Sexual Experiences:

The 55 bus was like Alison: sad-smelling, spit-shined, a bumpy ride. Took me close to the Glent-Kahn–Aldridge’s renovated Victorian. Seymour was temporarily residing in the pool house. “Just until the papers go through,” he’d said on the phone. Didn’t ring the bell. Instead came through the garden as per Kahn’s instructions.

I’d hoped for a chance to see Sheila again. She’d been on my mind since Whole Foods. But better this way. What would I have said? “I’ve come to sell your ex-husband a small quantity of a Class D substance. Would you be so kind as to hold me against your chest until I can feel the beating of your heart against my own, thus reconfirming my belief in the existence of the human soul”?

Plus, there was the possibility that Erin, not Sheila, would have answered the door. Surely Benjy had spilled the beans, whispered in the soft light of dusk that his brother was a fuckup, killing himself slowly, immobile, moving only in minuscule steps toward eternity. She would have looked at me with an expression that said, “We get to enjoy grown-up things like dry cleaning and group social life, while you, poor boy, are locked away in paralyzed infancy by your
drugs, your inadequate hygiene, and your idle, treacherous heart.”

Knocked on the door of the pool house as I entered. Kahn reclined in a La-Z-Boy, eyes closed, head bopping to horns and upright bass. Kahn rhythmically tapped the coffee table in response to my arrival, as if we were part of the jam session, riffing off each other.

“Seymour,” I said.

“Charlie Mingus,” he replied, eyes still closed.

Small room, sparsely decorated.
Wood and Nail
poster hung on the wall. Dinged-up Golden Globe in the corner. Half-drunk bottle of scotch, vase of dead flowers on the coffee table, 40-inch Sony Bravia LCD. Only pieces of furniture were the bed, the La-Z-Boy, and Kahn’s wheelchair. Opted for the wheelchair, immediately rolled backward, knocking over the vase, spilling water on the floor. Kahn opened his eyes.

“Send me dead flowers by the mail,”
he half-said, half-sang.

“Mick Jagger.”

“Very good. Now clean that fucking water up.”

Got a towel from the bathroom. Kahn refilled his giant crystal goblet.

“I see you started the party without me,” I said.

“Kid, I started this party before you were born. This is the tail end, my friend. The dawn is coming soon. Twilight is a sad and beautiful time. I once held a woman in my arms the way the moon holds light, refracting her image for the world to enjoy. Now I can’t get a job. Now the drugs have no colors, only inertia. The women wear sunglasses to cover their eyes. You see what I’m getting at? The ghost of a party.”

Was it true I’d missed the party? I’d heard a professor
on NPR’s
On Point
talking decline of the empire. Romans and Greeks had their fun, look what happened. This was it for us: reality TV, virtual reality, planes into buildings.

“So what now?”

“Now you roll us a joint, of course.”

Rolled the illest joint I could manage. Kahn handed me my own giant crystal goblet.

“Listen to this,” he said, like I had another option.

“Chaos. That’s what that sound is. Fire and sandpaper, harsh breath, an old cargo train. Mingus understood. Listen to those notes. We’re just toys of the gods. We’re all toys.”

His speaking voice—like last time—was mannered, modulated, a performed monologue, as if always onstage, his last great act, modern-day King Lear (BBC, 1983) amid his crumbling castle. I was his remaining audience. He wanted to convince me, seduce me the way he knew how to seduce, by projecting his thunder-low baritone over the music; with the inherent jazz in his slow-heavy grin, his incongruously frantic hand gestures, the mock-lyric toughness of his carefully prepared script.

“What now is we sit still and let them have their way with us. What now is enjoying the calm that comes with epistemological impotence. Grabbing each other by the lapels, staring into each other’s eyes. You up for it?”

“You’re buying my mother’s house,” I said. “That’s not sitting still.”

“I couldn’t not buy it if I tried.”

“Yes, you could. Just don’t sign the papers.”

“There’s more to it than that.”

“We’re going to have to move to a condo or something.”

“If I didn’t buy it, someone else would.”

“There haven’t been any offers.”

The music swirled, turned, simmered into piano-only plunking with occasional human groans. Sipped scotch, single malt, not too peaty, notes of clove. I was used to cheap beer, store-brand vodka.

“This is good stuff.”

“We’re sitting in a pool house.”

“I don’t think the weather’s right for sitting by the pool.”

“Don’t you understand? My ex-wife is a carpet-muncher. She treats me like an invalid. Always has … even before this.”

Kahn lifted his left leg with his arms, dropped it like a weight on an unsuspecting ant.

“She seems like a lovely woman,” I replied, stoned out of my gourd, dreaming of Sheila’s Pilates-hardened abs.

“I used to live in the house. Not this house, but it was still a house.”

“My brother’s boning your daughter.”

“At least someone’s fucking someone.”

“I just got laid.”

“What do you want? A cookie?”

“I do love eating.”

“So does Sheila. She loves to eat pussy. That’s why I’m in this pool house.”

“They say you can’t compete with someone who has the same parts.”

“Nothing to do with that,” Kahn said. “She just likes the smell.”

Alison’s smell was still on me. Smelled like camping. Kahn pulled out a prescription bottle. OxyContin: hillbilly heroin. People were robbing pharmacies for the stuff. I’d seen a thing on PBS: kids stealing pills from their dying grandmothers, OD’ing, premature aging, death.

Kahn crushed the pill, put half up his nose. I took the straw, did the other half. Moments later, fingers tingly, Mingus pumping that bass like it was inside my heart. Smell in the air: fall: embers and Alison mixed together in olfactory sweetness.

Dreamed a Recipe for Love:

Prep:

Gather the mothers, lovers, fathers, brothers of your fantasies. Arm them with Wüsthof knives, freshly sharpened. Mix mustard, eggs (beaten), flour, panko, salt/MDMA, pepper, grated garlic, parsley. Marinate monster fish in this mixture for 6 days. Rest. Fill the belly with Mexican beer, fresh dill, pig lard. Adorn yourself in swim goggles, loincloth. Kiss Jennifer wholly on the lips.

To Cook:

Hoist monster on a giant spit, fashioned from the QHS flagpole. Burn your possessions beneath the meal. Change your name to Jonah.

Woken by a familiar hand.

“Benjy? Whatup?”

Saw Dad in Benjy’s face; a softer version of Dad, as he was when he was young.

“Want to hug?” I said.

“You look like shit.”

“I feel fantastic. Relax, brother. Sit down.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“What’s wrong, Big Ben? Want a back rub?”

“I’m supposed to invite you in for dinner.”

“That sounds absolutely lovely.”

Floors were varnished parquet. Small trees: ficus, bonsai, etc. Large Oriental tapestries. Beige paper lanterns tagged with black Japanese characters surrounded the table, casting soft light on the diners, who—in my present state—all appeared to be slightly effervescent. Sheila, in her white, Greek-goddess-style summer gown and strappy copper sandals, was especially glowy, serving heaping portions of fried tofu, asparagus, salad. Watched her hands, the way her fingers curled around the wooden spoon as if it were a long phallus and she the gentlest Aphrodite
America ever knew
(Mighty Aphrodite
, Magnolia Pictures, 1995). Felt like the world had shrunk down until entirely contained in this house; that the hallways off-shooting the dining room led to mountains, rivers, live jungles animated by sweet-scented animal sex
(Jumanji
, TriStar, 1995).

“That Feinberg is a butcher,” Mary said. “All mouth no hands. He doesn’t shut up the whole time, and you can see his hands wobbling.”