I Smell Esther Williams (13 page)

I made up my mind not only to relocate but to assume a new identity. To weather the future under cover. To lose myself in the great anonymity of the mid-west. I applied to an exchange program that would place me with a mid-western farming family. And with greater dispatch than I could have hoped for, I received notification that I’d been accepted and that I was to join my new family at the first opportunity. The speed with which my application was processed was due, I think, to the unassailable discretion with which I’d answered the application’s queries. Where it asked why I wanted to live with a farm family, I wrote, “Because I like farmers.” Where it asked why I liked farmers, I put, “First the farmers angered Washington residents by trampling the mall and driving their tractors into the reflecting pools, but then really charmed them by plowing capital motorists out from under that uncharacteristically heavy snowfall. And some farmers even sought a brief respite from controversy beneath snowy monuments and dashed off
impassioned letters to wives and sweethearts.” And on the part of the application where it asked what kind of letters the farmers sent, I put: “Dear Helen, If you got telephone cable and wrapped it around all the planets and stars so that if you wanted to you could call other galaxies and universes you would not speak to a finer prettier best-cookinest gal than you are Helen. I mean it too, brown eyes.”

Needless to say, I was delighted at the sudden prospect of being able to live quietly, and without constant foreboding.

I called my friend Bianca and invited her to the Boulderado for a drink. It’s funny, y’know I even remember what we had—she drank Spanish coffee and I had bourbon and soda. And while we were drinking, the waiter brought a telephone over, “It’s for you, sir.” It was Lisa.

“I can’t talk now,” I said, “I’m insulating. I’ve got fiberglass all over me. Bye.” I hung up and called Barbara.

“Listen Barbara, I’m having a drink with Bianca at the Boulderado. Call up the airline and make a reservation for me.”

“Forget it,” she said, “If it’s so important to have a drink with Bianca, let her make your calls.”

“Look Barb, do as I say or I’ll read
your
letters to a room full of English 119 students.”

When I got back to the apartment, Barbara was on the floor, filling a syringe with soy sauce and mayonaisse. She clenched and unclenched her fist a few times, looped her belt around her arm and pulled it tight with her teeth.

I could see the words at the bottom of the glass I’d been drinking from.

Barbara turned to me, “There are cops in the kitchen.”

There were four cops disguised as three cops. One cop was part wasp, part fascist pederast. One cop was short and fat. One cop was drenched in Aqua Velva. They were in my kitchen.

My heart hit the linoleum like a clump of dough, with a real bottom of the ninth splat that evaporated into a cloud of valerian vapor, a real gaseous calm, a real back-to-mom, a real relieved throb. Cause being caught for the wrong thing is the loftiest exoneration there is. And maybe they got me for stealing cigarettes from King Soopers, or stealing books from Brillig Works, or reading other people’s letters in the mail room, or stealing newspapers from other apartment complexes, or lying without let-up, lying about the woman I love without question so other women will sleep with me, or napping when most of the citizenry is slaving away, or keeping my sea-onion in the closet or overbreading my chicken or being myopic and algophobic and predatory.

“Big deal,” I said. “Big shit. What’s the big fuss all about,” I said, as they led me outside to the car.

I stopped walking and tilted back my head and for a minute just felt the rain fall on my face and for just a second it felt like being very young again … another little kid who’d skated in his dress shoes across the frozen ponds that had formed on the settlement’s big plans, for a big future, for big thinkers, with big wallets, on big behinds.

“Asshole.” I said.

Taken off the face of the earth.

From its static electricity and unctuous detergents.

“Face of the earth!” I swore.

I swore at the crowd of things I knew.

And someone yelled from a window, “Is it hockey season or baseball?”

“Asshole season,” I said, “Asshole season.”

WAITRESS
: Sir, I’m sorry but we’re out of Thousand Island. You can have French, Blue Cheese, Russian, or the house vinaigrette.

IRTZY
: Alright … French. (Then hissing to himself.) Oh bold stalk of enmity. Phototropic tattersall of crimson and black. Lopped far above root by the blunted edge of compromise’s loose desultory scythe! You shall stretch forth again. And nourish the air with fragrant revenge!

LEIBMAN
: Your stalk, sahib, is still redolent of that wench’s soiled hole.

IRTZY
: That is no wench, Leibman, that is my dear wife.

(Enter
IRTZY’S
wife,
MUE
)

IRTZY
: What bulletin do you bear, faithful partner?

MUE
: Only this, dearest.

IRTZY
: What?

MUE
: This.

IRTZY
: What do you mean this? This what?

MUE
: The Hebrews, and that means me and you, are dispersing to a heavy beat.

IRTZY
: Like what beat, you thing.

MUE
: Just snap your fingers and get it, get to it. Get it to it. Uh shma yip uhh yich yisro ya yaka!!!!

(Exeunt)

VOICES FROM THE CROWD
: He doesn’t take the static concept of time seriously!

He’s hyper-heroic!

He’s like menacingly good-looking!

ENVOY
: You are loved by my country’s people, Mr. Premier.

TRANSLATOR
: “Bilos derung zha afshler biobnz, Di. Premebnz.”

PREMIER
(nodding and smiling): Er vagator ma wot; af gevunt ben hadis menoritz gool āā pen sodrana helopants banistrosa eeko vantrick al put, shen so glisso va lamotor ben mu fak. Hhaa … Hho hho!

TRANSLATOR
: “This makes me warm; there are those in my country’s neighboring regions who would decorate me not with laurels and medals of valor, but with a tight noose around my throat. Haa … Ho ho!”

(A massive asteroid collides with Earth.)

TRANSLATOR
: “Yaaaaaaaah!”

PREMIER
: Yaaaaaaaah! Yaaaaaaaah! Yaaaaaaaah!

(Fade)

Look in my closet. There is a blue double-breasted blazer with gold buttons. It is the afternoon and someone is watching us from their sofa and eating cheez doodles. O.K.? Do you hear the anvil falling from the sky and striking you on the head? Now you’re an accordion. I’m putting on my blazer and I’m skipping along the river bank, playing a polka on you. The crippled mice are tossing away their crutches and dancing behind me! The cute mouse women are screaming and fainting. But someone with a big vacuum cleaner is chasing us, and sucking the mice up. There goes the last one! Thup! Now I’m sitting alone on the edge of the river in my blue blazer, and you’re an accordion. Assume your old shape and let’s go for a drive in my motorboat, or else we will die.

Look. I’ve just returned from a used bookstore. It’s run on the honor system. You pay at the main store across the street. It’s easy to steal the books. There are economics textbooks, volumes of Shakespeare filled with sophomoric underlining and marginalia, books that people probably purchased in drugstores and supermarkets before going on vacation, marriage manuals, and stacks and stacks of National Geographies. That’s clear, isn’t it? I’ve given a partial list in order to generally characterize the store’s stock. Once I stole an art magazine from the place. I felt guilty. After all, it’s commendable that someone has faith in other people these days, and it’s commendable that someone is offering books at such cheap prices. More people should read, right? So this time I didn’t steal anything. I simply went through a few piles of Modern Photography magazines and ripped out all the photographs of nude women I could find. When I got home, I tacked them up to the walls of my study. Are you following me so far? Now I am looking out the window of my study. I am going to try to make you see what I see. With me? O.K. A red car just drove by. A blue one. And then a white coupe with a black vinyl roof. A man in a white v-neck undershirt just leaned out his door and took his mail out of the box. His house is painted a kind of
olive-green color. The house to the right of his is a very muted salmon-pink. The house to the right of that is a deep scarlet with white trim. Now, what color is the house next to that? I’ll give you a minute or two. While you think, I’ll have a cigarette and look at my new photographs. There’s one of a blond woman I particularly like. She looks like a girl named Sharon I knew in Boulder. I think Sharon’s married now and lives up in Buffalo, New York. Anyway … O.K., time’s up. How many of you wrote down, red brick with beige trim? Good. Alright, now you’ve got the hang of it. Again, I’m going to try to make you sense what I sense. Ready? Here we go. The electric heater in my study runs on a thermostat. So all day it turns itself on and off. Sometimes, though, it gets too hot. Let’s say it’s getting too hot now. Follow me? I’m taking off my flannel shirt. O.K. O.K. I’ll take off my undershirt too. Now I’m bare-chested. And for the sake of argument, I’ll tack a spare, photograph of two nudes on horseback to my chest. Ouch … there. Nice horse, huh? Now I’m looking out the window. A dog is howling. Awwwooooo. Awwwooooooo. I hear a helicopter. I lean next to the window and check the sky. Very gray. A guy with a trainman’s cap and ponytail just got out of a pick-up truck and walked up the street carrying a clipboard. Did you see him take the pen out from behind his ear? Good. A group of about fifteen African diplomats just walked by. If I didn’t know better, I’d say one of them is pointing right at me. Look at all the litter in the street. That’s terrible. Whatever happened to “keep American beautiful”? Went out with hula hoops and swallowing fish, right? O.K. Look at the beer cans. I can make out Stroh’s, Miller, a Michelob … and a Budweiser. Now I’m going to look directly beneath my window. I’m going to try to be very specific here. Next to the curb are two plastic trash barrels, green and red with black lids. Adjacent to the trash barrels is the neighbor’s hedge … it’s made up of some kind of perennial shrub, (I’m squinting now and leaning way over), some kind of perennial shrub with prickly … prickly bipinnate leaves and tiny tiny pink flowers. You are
enchanted by the tiny delicate pink petals. N’est-ce pas? You want to crush them with a mortar and pestle and massage them into your scalp. You are repeating the word “pestle” to yourself until it loses its meaning. Alright. Don’t move. Do you see the reflection of my finger in the window? Do you see the reflection of my face? Am I pointing to a dimple, a pock mark, or a dueling scar? Yell out your answer! Now we are dancing. Are you inhaling as I exhale? In other words, have our gears meshed? Are you still lashed to the cross of my thoughts? Uh oh. I’m feeling light-headed. The right side of my brain is giving a blow job to the left side. You don’t get a choice on this one—I’m going to do all four—I’m going to a. Smash my china to the music of Felix Mendelssohn, b. Drive the endless highway west, c. Collect the latex footprints that lead to this room,
and
d. Open my veins in a warm bath. Now where is my tweed jacket with a wedding band in every pocket? Where is my yiddish phrase book? My itinerary? That’s the last one. You’ll have to leave. I’m going to throw myself out the window. Put me in one of the plastic trash barrels. Tack a photograph of yourself to my forehead. Goodbye now. We part!

The exposition’s lights are pale and diffuse through the condensation, the trolley cables and pylons are lightly dusted with snow outside the big shed, downtown St. Louis, the mechanical chicken scuttles off the cutting board and the thread of gold at her ankle throws light off its turning key. The snowy streets record the trails of unnaturally bulky particles that splinter and fuse in millionths of seconds though, elsewhere, and more indigenous to this version, his prints lead to the door of a household, that he opens. “Ooooooh,” she shivers, “this earth shuttle is lonely.” “Pass over that bottle of Sniggering Walter,” he says, “Daddy’s home.” Mental months spire into the air and swerve as if pulled by the oven fan. It’s hard to forget this scene that plays and replays so often. He goes and sits at the piano and she follows and stands behind him with her arms around his neck. And they sway together as he plays. Dinner burns, giving off a warm ocher glow. In one version the woman is someone I know. In another version their bodies look like decoupage-covered wood. And although in some versions the piano is electric and they’re literally bottomless, the only one with a provocative conclusion is the version in which they affiliate themselves with a community theater’s production of
Special Yearnings
which ends with the fiery crash of a red convertible that in turn detonates a domino chain of underground nuclear reactors from St. Louis to Worcester, Mass. And in this version, I’m visiting someone in Worcester and I’m too blasted to make love, so I find a station I like on the radio and go lie on the rug. Get it, Ginger? Too blasted.

The guy smoking the cigar used to be a stunt man, sunlight glaring off the missile’s warhead, as he slips an assortment of pamphlets about cryonics into his wife’s purse. The town had just instituted a pee-wee football league. He had to drop junior off every Sat. afternoon, 1:30. The field was ten minutes away and the car had to pass the community pool’s parking lot—the side with the basketball hoops. Even the Russians knew his route. His daughter rides on top of the car, straddling the hood, with white vinyl boots on and a men’s thermal undershirt as tight as skin, she has no breasts yet, her nipples are dark wide ovals. At home, his wife draws a bath. The mirror fogs. She tests the water with her foot. They’d lived in the house for almost a year. For years before that, a For Sale sign remained jabbed in the hedge. The missile scared off prospective buyers. “That thing,” they’d grimace, turning on their heels. Walter waited in the bushes by the hoops, loosening up his wrists and readjusting his grip on the rope. As the car passed, he lassoed the daughter. And reeled her into the shrubbery. “What’s this about?” she coughed. “King Pleasure’s in one of his moods,” he said. She curtseys. “King Pleasure.… it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she says, blushing. “I’m sick of the dehydrated pussy all my available girlfriends
offer,” he says, stamping his feet. “Sing this:” she says, “Don’t think about the future / don’t think about the used to be / here’s a feeling that’s growing / feed it orally … you fool.” He kisses her. “You’re too young for any more sex,” he explains. He pats her head. “When I used to see you on top of that car, I thought you were older.” “I’m old enough! You wanna see?” she whines. Her expression is sullen. “See what?” Walter asks. “Follow me” she says, slipping the rope off her waist, emerging from the bushes onto the street. She takes him home. The walk takes about twenty-five minutes. When they arrive she leads him into the backyard, putting a finger to her lips as she relatches the gate behind her. “Shhhh … quiet, my mother’s still home.” She gets a lawn chair from the shed and unfolds it for him, “Watch.” She walks up to the missile, opens a panel, tinkers with something and dives behind a mound. With an ear-splitting howl and a dense circle of white flame at its base, the missile begins to climb. It lifts slowly at first, rising above the roofs, tree tops, and telephone poles. And then it seems to accelerate at a more severe angle and, in a matter of two minutes or so, disappears from sight. She’s crying hysterically, ripping at her hair, kicking clumps of dirt and grass out of the ground. “See what you made me do?!” she wails. Walter feels sick now. “Me and my moods …” he mutters.