Ablutions Read online

  One night he is drunk and whispering into the ear of an unaccompanied woman. You cannot tell what he is saying and you do not want to know but the woman is offended and you see her jerk back and douse him with her drink and she calls Curtis a loser and his ridiculous, agonized expression somehow crystallizes the word's definition and you are traumatized to finally understand its true meaning—that is, someone who has lost, and who is losing, and who will continue to lose for the rest of his life until he is dead and in the ground. She leaves the bar and Curtis retires to the bathroom to dry his face and holsters. He returns as though nothing has happened, and before he can begin telepathically attacking you, you head for the bottle of Jameson and pour out two large shots. Curtis wants to drink to friendship but you opt for health, and he shrugs and pours the whiskey down his throat and you see his tonsils glistening as he tips back the glass to drain it.

  By last call his face is on the bar and his bald spot is slick and beaming under the lights and you feel a warmth toward him because there is something childlike about his head and skull, something innocent and fine, and you worry for the skull, propped and dozing, and you think to wrap it in cotton and set it in a cupboard for safekeeping, but when he raises his red eyes to meet yours, whatever tenderness you had for him trickles away and is gone. Now you hate him and you tell him he has to go home and he turns to the glowing green EXIT sign that hangs above the door. Following its instruction he moves out and into the night, staggering as he goes. "See you tomorrow," he calls back, and you set your teeth to grinding. The sinks are full with cold brown water and your arm is like a hook as you dump in all the dirty glasses and you hear the muted sound of glass breaking underwater and want to plunge your palms in and shred them through but you only empty the sinks and watch the mound of glass shards shining under the lurid red light of the bar.

  You like to think that if you were ever attacked by a shark you would afterward swim in the ocean without the slightest fear because statistically it would be impossible to be attacked again. This is your feeling on the subject of the ghost: Your quota of naked terror is now full and you will not be bothered anymore. You no longer see her in the mirrors or hear the rattling of bottles and you tell yourself that the weight-force on your shoulder was only fantasy, another of your bar dreams. And yet you still think of her, and from time to time engage her or the idea of her in conversation, asking questions like, "How do you think tonight will go for me?" and "What do the bosses say about me when I'm not around?" as well as "Are you cold?" and "Do you carry the woes of the world on your very shoulders?" and also, once, "Do you see how differently the young women dress today?" A voice resides in your head to answer these and other questions. It is a wise and sexless voice and you cultivate its sound and are happy to have created so fine a being, but the voice sometimes frightens you, as it seems to know things you do not. For instance, you are often poked and stabbed with broken glasses and bottles and your hands are marked with many small cuts. You invent a game where you run your hands under hot water and with eyes closed attempt to pinpoint and count them, but the pain makes the wounds blur into one another and when you open your eyes to check you have always missed a cut or two or added a cut or two, and you laugh at the silly diversion.

  One night, after hours, you are alone and running your hands under the hot water when the voice asks if you aren't through with your ablutions yet. You do not know the word but write it down to look it up the next day. You learn its definition on page 3 of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: "The washing of one's body or part of it (as in a religious rite)." You are certain you have never heard this word before as you were raised without any religion and have never set foot inside any church or temple, and you return the dictionary to the shelf and vow never to play this game of counting your wounds again.

  You drive home drunk at the end of each night but the police have never stopped you because your car, a 1971 Ford LTD, is magical. It is a twenty-minute drive through empty streets and highways from the bar to your home and by rights you should have been arrested a hundred times over, but the car's powers are such that even when police drive behind you they are rendered blind and deaf to your weaving and your squealing tires. You sometimes do not remember driving home at all and later find dents and scratches in the front and back fenders, but each morning you awake in your bed and not in a jail cell and you wonder if the car became magical only after you owned it or if it rolled off the assembly line this way.

  You believe the Ford's magic is ever growing like money in the bank, like a slow-blossoming flower, but you have had the car since you were sixteen years old and so despite its powers you do not want to drive it or look upon its decrepit exterior anymore and you retire it to the carport where it becomes host to an unfriendly stray tomcat and a variety of spiders whose many webs embroider the interior like a lace doily. You place a newspaper ad in hopes of selling the car but no one will purchase a vehicle in such a state: The convertible top is permanently down, the plates are out of state, the steering wheel has a quarter turn of slack, the doors do not open, the right rear wheel wobbles, the seats are shredded, the radio turns on and off at will, and the gas pedal sticks when you drop it to the floor. You tell potential buyers about the car's crafty, police-eluding talents, but they only point to the rust and the broken taillights and walk away thinking of their wasted time. Eventually you give up on the idea of selling the car and begin taking your wife's Toyota to work.

  The Toyota is not magical and it seems that each time you drink and drive there is a policeman lurking in the rear-view mirror. Whenever this happens you decide that if you are pulled over you will tell the policeman directly that you are drunk and ask to be jailed at once, but the red and blue lights somehow never come on and the police car rushes past you toward some fatal danger or another. Your hands tremble and you turn down a side street to park and you think of the repercussions of a DUI and swear never to drink and drive again and all the next day you feel righteous and masterful but that night you misplace your purpose and drink and drive again. It makes you sad that you can't keep a promise to yourself but you are of two minds on the matter. The minds are cleanly separated and functioning independently of each other. They are content with this arrangement and have no plans to alter it.

  Your luck is buckling. Someone gives you a handful of pills that you eat along with your nightly whiskey and as the narcotics take effect a love grows in your heart and you wonder if this isn't how saints feel. But you are drinking more and more and the feeling is hidden in ugly clouds and by night's end you are unable to speak and you walk to the gas station to purchase aspirin. You are slurring your words and the Arab man behind the bulletproof glass does not like you. Now he is standing over you and shaking you awake: You have fallen asleep in the gas station bathroom, though you do not know why you entered or how long you have been there. You return to your car and find a note on the windshield: "Where did you go?" The note is not signed and the love in your heart is gone. It feels as if it was never there at all.

  You are driving. A car is approaching in your lane and it seems you will collide with it. Both cars' brakes lock up but there is a slight accident. You pull over and a man jumps from the other car looking to attack you physically. It was not he in the wrong lane but you and his front fender is dented and he is furious. He is all muscle and it appears you will be beaten for your careless driving. Your blood is a dead weight in your veins and you are very confused by what has happened and the man asks if you are drunk and you say that you never drink, not even wine on Sundays, as you are devoutly religious and believe that alcohol is the handiwork of the devil himself. You manage to say this without a stutter and the man stands back to look at you. His anger is diffused by your proclamation and now he is searching high and low for it. If he could only reclaim the anger he would carry on with his original plan, which was to hurt you as you hurt his automobile, but now a policeman has pulled over a drunk across the street and the man's demeanor change
s. You know by the look in his eyes that he is afraid of the police and you decide he must have a warrant, or else he is drunk himself or has drugs in his car or on his person. The man says again that he suspects you have been drinking, and pointing to the policeman he asks what you would say to a field sobriety test. Knowing the man is bluffing you say that would be fine and you clear your throat to shout out to the policeman when the man lays a hand on your arm to silence you. He writes out your address and license plate number and he is cursing but his anger is gone and will not come back.

  The drunk across the street is in the back of the police car and the policeman is watching you. He is curious and it seems he will cross the street to meet you and you tell the man into whom you crashed about this and he is scared. "Let's pretend we're good friends saying goodnight to each other," you say, and you take up the man's hand to shake it. "Okay!" you say. This is what you imagine one good friend would say to another at three o'clock in the morning on the side of the road in Hollywood. "Okay!" you say again. "Okay!" the man says. He is crushing your hand and you are smiling. "I still think you're drunk," he whispers. You wink and return to the Toyota. The policeman has lost interest and is filling out paperwork on his dashboard; the drunk is watching you from the back of the squad car. You point to him and tip back a phantom bottle, and he nods. He points to you and tips a phantom bottle and you nod. The drunk then points skyward, toward heaven, and to his heart. This is a beautiful gesture from a man on his way to jail and as you pull back onto the road you decide to have a cry over it. You try to cry all the way home but can manage only a coughing fit and a few moans. You had hoped your crying would be so relentless that you would be forced to pull the car over and "ride it out," but you arrive home without shedding a tear. You fall asleep in the Toyota and when you wake up you are covered with sweat and your wife is hitting you and shrieking in what seems to be another language and you say to her, "Okay! Okay! Okay!" She is curious about the damage done to the front of the car and her sharpened red fingers stab crazily at the morning air.

  Curtis loses his job and begins bringing things from his apartment into the bar as tips: Stereo equipment, DVDs, a video camera, and compact discs. At first the gifts are wrapped and labeled for individual employees but as his possessions dwindle he begins filling a gym bag with whatever detritus is lying around his room—books mostly, mutilated, frantically highlighted texts offering too clear a glimpse into Curtis's private life: An Illustrated History of S&M, Grappling for Dummies, Homemade Explosives 1-2-3. When there is nothing left to give, Curtis stuffs his coat pockets with pornographic magazines and hands these out indiscriminately throughout the night, speaking all the while of friendship and lasting cheer and the importance of sticking together. You now bring him drinks if only to condense your conversations and divert his increasingly psychotic gaze. No one else seems to notice his decline, but you expect he will shortly crack and run rampant with a knife, or lob a pipe bomb into the bar. It will sever your body at the waist and your legs will cancan out the door, heading west toward the ocean on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Curtis is waiting by the Toyota after hours. He wants a ride home. You are drunk and cannot think of a lie to tell him and you walk around to unlock his door as if you were on a date. You are driving along in silence when he begins, out of the blue, to weep on your shoulder. You do not know what to do. You want to crash into a wall and die. He is also drunk and talking through a bubbling mask of spittle; now he will tell you his story. He has been evicted, he says, but breaks into the apartment to sleep sitting up in the closet. The new tenants are due at any moment and he lives in unending fear of their arrival and hasn't slept more than three hours a night for the past week and what little sleep he has had was riddled with nightmares. (He is standing by the sea watching two large red fish casually eating each other's faces. Soon they are but two wagging, blood-spitting tails.) You extend your sympathies but feel in your heart that Curtis has found his station in life, that he belongs in a closet dreaming of murderous sea life, that he deserves to live in a state of perpetual unease. And yet it is an awful fate, and you place a pitying hand on his shoulder and tell him that everything will work itself out.

  "When?" he asks.

  You are idling in front of Curtis's/not Curtis's apartment and he leans in gripping your hand and asks with absolute earnestness if he might live with you and your wife. He cannot pay you any rent but is handy with around-the-house repairs and will be happy to run errands. He says it will take him three to five months to get back on his feet and through the murk and fog of your drunken mind you are visited by the image of Curtis in his underwear sitting on the couch in your living room shouting at the television set. This fills you with hysterical apprehension and your ensuing fit of laughter is completely out of your control. Now Curtis is gloomy and will not get out of the car. He asks for five dollars and you give him twenty and it occurs to you that you are witnessing the birth of a homeless man, and you will never again be one of those who look upon a staggering wino and say, "How did he get to be so low down?" Curtis is muttering bitterly from the passenger seat; he seems almost to be mimicking the idling engine. Putter putter putter—it has been a long Saturday night and you are tired and the sound lulls you to sleep and when you wake up at dawn you are alone and the car has run itself out of gas.

  Discuss the apartment building across from the bar. It sits above a massage parlor and twice you see people drop from a high window to the sidewalk. You do not cross the street to view the results but your heart is hurt and confused by the sight of the falling bodies. They fall with certainty or with confidence; they seem to want to fall faster. (In your dreams, the bodies are always falling and will always fall from this building. You are always standing on the sidewalk, smoking and staring at their point of departure.)

  You do not ask about but overhear the doormen speak of the incidents and you learn that the first was a suicide, the second a homicide. A third falling body follows on a night you are off sick and you feel as though you have missed an important engagement. Tony, the man who collects the empty bottles at closing time, sits with a beer listening to the after-hours talk of the building and bodies and he leans in and tells you it is the building's will to expel its occupants. With a fluttering, arcing hand he says, "The Terrible Building That Vomits Humans."

  Discuss Simon, the managing bartender. He was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa; after winning a modeling competition he immigrated to Hollywood at twenty years of age. Now forty, his hair is still white-blond and full, his body still fit and tanned, but after two decades of alcohol and cocaine abuse his face is beginning to sag, his dreams of success as an actor growing increasingly irrelevant. He swivels at the hips like an action-figure doll and delivers clipped witticisms and superfluous personal information with shocking redundancy. If, for instance, he has decided once more to quit drinking he will be sure to tell every customer about it all through the night, whether they are interested or not. "It's a question of mind over matter, mate," he will say. A few days later he will tell the same people about his plan to abstain for three long months. He is "Givin' the liver a breather, buddy." A week later he will be back to drinking tequila and when confronted with his earlier proclamations will plead ignorance or say that he had only been joking. He is the type who drops his towel in the sauna so that if you look—you cannot help but look—you will see his chiseled buttocks and uncircumcised penis, an image that will flash in your mind's eye for days to come like a death threat.

  As manager, Simon has the unpleasant job of keeping the employees in line, and you sometimes find that he is screaming at you. He screams only when you are very drunk and so the gravity of his reproach is always misplaced and forgotten and the next day at work he will apologize and you will not know what he is talking about but you will forgive him anyway and he will bring over two drinks so that you might restore peace and you will empty the glass and think, This must be how it feels to have a stepfather.


  Each morning you wake up wondering how hung-over you will be. You are partially asleep or partially drunk or both and at first you cannot gauge your own suffering and you cast a hand outward and ask yourself, how does this hand feel? What about the arm, the shoulder, the chest, the torso? Is there any aching or discomfort in the legs? On a pain scale of one to ten (one is a finger-flick to your skull, ten is death), what is the rating from the neck up? You blink your eyes to test their sensitivity to light and crane your neck to crack your spine and gravity is pushing on your swollen, dehydrated brain and you inspect your body for wounds or tenderness. You are your own doctor, sympathetic but ultimately disconnected.

  Your wife enters the room and you sit up in bed to greet her, a sudden movement revealing that you have a spectacular hangover and are in considerable pain. Your body is humming and your blood seems to be running against itself and you can hear your blood churning and try to describe this sound to yourself: A toy engine submerged in water. A propeller plane buzzing in the sky. The plane is hidden in fog. It is ten miles off.

  Your wife is folding and unfolding sheets. She asks how you are feeling and you say the word great. She says you seemed drunk the night before, that you were singing, and you tell her you were not drunk but jolly. She heard you fall in the bathroom, she says, and you claim to have slipped on a sock. It was not your sock but hers and you could have been knocked unconscious. You could have been killed. Your wife says nothing to this but sighs, and you tell her that if she still doesn't believe you then to go ahead and count out the aspirin in the bathroom cupboard (she always counts out the aspirin in the bathroom cupboard), for if you had been drunk, as she says, you would surely have eaten some before bedtime. Count out the aspirin, you say again, and see that none are missing, but she does not budge, she only nods, and you know by the somberness of the gesture that she has already found the aspirin all accounted for. She moves to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea and there is a resonant crash as she drops the kettle into the sink to fill it and you wince at the sound and flip your pillow in hopes that the cooler cotton will chill your whiskey-warm face.