Ablutions Read online

  Your wife hears you walking up the steps. She has been waiting for you and is angry and her eyes are fierce as you enter the bedroom and so without a word you turn and walk back down the steps with your bicycle over your shoulder. Your wife is calling your name but you do not answer. You are racing down the steep hill toward Sunset and the rush of cool morning air plucks your cap from your head and drags teardrops across your face and you cannot stop laughing and you wonder why you have not done this before. Cars swerve around you and honk their horns as you veer into traffic; your balance is gone and you hop a curb and soar over the handlebars onto the sidewalk. Looking up at the sky you decide you will ride your bicycle to and from work every night. In a month's time you will be in excellent physical shape and your eyes will glow golden with all they have seen.

  You remount the bike and pedal east on Sunset toward downtown. There is a shrieking in your eardrums and you locate a rising lump on your forehead but your fingertips come away free of blood and you carry on. Broadway is in transformation as the shop owners roll up their metal shutters to begin another day of commerce while the addicts, winos, and prostitutes head for their hotels for a few hours' rest. You follow these night crawlers and call out to them in greeting but they do not call back. They are tired and uninterested in all you have seen or think you have seen. They have seen more and their eyes are not glowing golden but gray and lifeless.

  Now you too are tired as you pedal back up Sunset. It is warmer and you are dripping with sweat that smells of whiskey and cocaine. Your vision is half black from the blow to your forehead and your body is ringing with pain and you remember your angry, waiting wife and the long hill that you will now have to climb and you wonder why you ever went out for this ride on your bicycle. You will never ride this bicycle again, you decide, and once more you hop a curb and spill over the handlebars. You flag down a man delivering papers in a pickup truck and offer him twenty dollars to take you home and he accepts the money and loads your bicycle in the truck bed atop the newspapers. He does not speak English but whistles at your lump. "No bueno," you say. "Muy borracho." The man nods, and smiles. "Muy borracho," he says. "No bueno." He makes a show of holding his nose at your smell.

  Each time you kneel to open the floor safe you think of a rigged heist whereby a friend would rob you and wallop your eyeball to wound you. You would telephone the police and point to the empty safe and your ugly eye and perhaps you would earn a reward for boldness in the face of virulent danger. You imagine a rendezvous afterward, a fine dining experience, a pyramid of money stacks through which you and your friend would spy each other, saying, "Oh boy, oh boy." There would be steak blood and red wine spilled on the restaurant linens and there would be laughter into the night and people would think you were a rich man, and a handsome man—a good enough plan, all in all, except you do not have any friends who would lovingly wallop your eyeball for two thousand dollars. Or rather, those who would could not be trusted to return with the money. But it is a magnetic thing to think about, the emptying of the floor safe, and the image of the creeping blood and wine will always bring a hopeful smile to your face.

  Discuss the child actor, now grown, who frequents the bar. He is red and bloated but beneath the bleached hair and tattoos you see traces of the baby face that brought him stardom in his youth. You have trouble looking at him even peripherally and you will never look him directly in the eye for fear that you may come to know him, or that you will see for a moment his inmost being, which you are certain is a staggering, desolate, evil work of nature. His money is almost gone and his former agency no longer sends birthday or Christmas greetings and he buckles down for a suicide bender and asks that the employees of the bar assist him in this. No one knows what to say; no one says anything.

  He is often recognized and will always make a fuss about it, as though his prior fame is the last thing in the world he wishes to discuss, when in fact it is the only topic he can speak of with any sort of insight or clarity. He calls you by name and makes sport of his decline, as if it is all in fun that he is drinking himself into a hospital or else to death, and you, hating him, are inspired to help him along: You give him an unlimited supply of well rum and confide that you will never charge him so long as he drinks the rum straight and without any water or cola backs and he agrees to this and can often be found on the floor of the men's room with dried vomit on his oversized flame-patterned button-up shirt. The doormen drag him onto the sidewalk after last call and you step over his sleeping body on the way to your car.

  Weeks go by and he shows no sign of slowing down. One night he actually weeps at the bar and you hear him repeating lines from films he starred in and you still cannot look at him and now the sound of his voice is also poisonous. He screams himself hoarse and slaps the bar for another rum; you have just slashed your finger on a broken pint glass and the dripping blood gives you an idea to help him along further. As you pour his drink you point your wounded finger downward and blood trickles in as a mixer. You do this because you hope to give the child actor hepatitis C, a liver disease from which you suffer and will eventually die from. It looks as though you have added a dash of bitters to the rum and this is just what you tell the child actor when he grimaces at his drink's coloring. He tosses back the cocktail and moves to the bathroom to lie on the floor and gurgle, and Curtis drags him past after hours and you watch the child actor's hanging gut and visualize the hepatitis moving toward his liver and covering the inflamed organ like a velvet cloak. His will be a strong disease and he will not know he has it until it is too late, and then he will die, and never bother you for glasses of rum ever again.

  Discuss Junior, the black crack addict whose whole world is the sidewalk in front of the bar. He claims to have been a promising college football player with an eye on the NFL. This is probably not true but you must admit he looks the part: He is six and a half feet tall and weighs 350 pounds; that he continues to pack on weight despite his never-ending drug spree is a testament to his miraculous physical inner workings. True or not, you find this story of squandered athletic talent endearing and so decide to believe him or pretend to believe him. Because of this, and because you give him money to wash your car windows when you are drunk, and because you are so skinny and so white, Junior falls platonically in love with you. He picks you up and shakes you and you peer into his open mouth like a boy looking through a hole in a circus tent.

  He stammers when he is high and you smile as he struggles to tell his story. He speaks of his therapist and asks for money to visit her and you are quick to support him in this but you wonder does he mean to see her in the morning? Or is she on call twenty-four hours a day? You ask if he is making any progress with the woman and he says she is a great help and that he will continue to see her as she is superbly talented, and after all he is a special case and cannot go to any random therapist. You ask how his case is special and Junior shows you his pendulous, ungainly purple organ. It is one foot long, flaccid. "It's n-not every lady in this world c-c-can sit on that," he tells you.

  There are other street elements competing for the crumbs from the bar patrons and Junior struggles to maintain his crowd. You sometimes visit with these others and find them to be base creatures devoid of charm or hustle. One young addict in particular is utterly stupid and criminal, with nothing behind his eyes but malice and gluttony. He requests cigarettes and money and alcohol in a mumbling monotone and receives them without giving thanks and there is probably something wrong with his brain but you hate him for his uninspired dealings, unlike Junior, who smiles honestly and is happy in his work and with his lot in life and who will wash your car so that it shines brand new.

  The young addict corners you and tells you that Junior is a snitch who will be killed and that you should stay away from him because any associates may also be killed. The young addict is just out of jail and says that the car will soon arrive to gun Junior down, who at that moment walks past and the young addict says to him, "Tonight's the night, I hop
e you're ready to go." You do not believe anyone is coming for Junior and tell him as much, but he is afraid and you return to the bar after he takes you aside and admits he did in fact snitch and that six or more people had gone briefly to jail as a result. There is nothing worse in the world than a snitch and now you are confused in your feelings toward Junior. At midnight a car backfires and you crane your neck to look but you do not hear any screaming on the sidewalk and you bow your head to return to work.

  The death car never arrives but at the end of the night you find the young addict and another, older addict blocking Junior's path in the parking lot. They insult him and spit on him and you learn that for all his size he is a coward. His head is down and the spit rains on him and when you ask if he needs a ride the young addict turns and swears to kill you if you do not go away. When you do not leave he moves toward you, and Junior comes to life, swinging his heavy arm and knocking a Budweiser tall boy out of the young addict's hand, and the beer can hurtles into the night sky and the four of you watch it soar over a billboard and onto the roof of the bar.

  The young addict's hand is hurt and he is in a rage and he points to your car and identifies it as yours and says that tomorrow night he will set it on fire. You have every reason to believe him for his eyes are insane with hatred and narcotics, and he turns to Junior and says he will slit his throat as he sleeps, and he names the place where Junior keeps his mattress. Then he brandishes a knife and moves toward Junior in a crouching spider walk and the older addict, following the knife with his custard-colored eyes, says, "Stick him, stick him, stick him," and you shepherd Junior into your car and race off with the two addicts howling at your heels.

  Junior cups his head. He is angry with you for your tentative role in his impending murder but you say nothing because you know there is no solution except for him to walk off into the night and hope the young addict is not brave enough to kill another man. You pull the car over in an alley south of Hollywood Boulevard and Junior gathers his rags and Windex bottles and pulls from his bucket a halved machete blade with a duct tape handle. He secrets this beneath his shirt and says goodbye, and you wave and watch him go. There is nothing you can do for him now.

  You are often drinking or drunk but lately are dependent more on beer than whiskey. Your motive is to give aid to your liver, flush the redness from your face and neck, and appease your wife. For a time the campaign is a success: You feel healthier and an unknown energy illuminates your eyes and limbs and your sleep and appetite are restored, but the beer is fattening and you gain ten pounds; the weight sits like a cat on your stomach and your slim profile is blemished. When some happy-hour funnyman asks how far along you are your vanity is wounded and so it is with great relief and enthusiasm that you return to whiskey, but in your hiatus you have lost your tolerance and the whiskey poisons you and after a week everything tastes like milk. The whiskey itself tastes like milk, cola tastes like milk, anything you eat or drink leaves a taste of milk in your mouth. This has happened before and you are not alarmed, it is merely a sign that you have passed into the arena where your body has divorced itself from your mind. The mind is the master, the place where appetites are formed and born; the body is the servant. The mind has proven to be an unfit leader and the body is taking measures to protect itself from the mind's desires. For reasons you don't understand or care to understand this has affected your sense of taste.

  While the forces of body and mind battle it out, you comfort yourself with the thought that after all you like the taste of milk and always have, ever since you were a greasy little baby.

  Discuss The Teachers, Terese and Terri, who have been regulars for thirteen years, since the bar first opened under the present ownership. They are both over six feet tall and have matching tattoos of worm-ridden apples on their lower backs that they hide from their students and co-workers but display proudly in the bar. They find you sweet but unattractive and so you become one of the girls and they let you in on all their secrets. Between the two of them they have slept with most every doorman who has ever worked at the bar and they tell you which ones have mirrors on their ceilings and which insist on videotaping their sexual encounters. These tapes are traded back and forth and the doormen throw parties where they watch the tapes together and afterward eat barbeque and critique one another's performances. Some take steroids and are suffering the drugs' side effects: Their genitals have shriveled away to nothing and they have grown small breasts, which The Teachers call bitch tits. One doorman has become particularly buxom and is said to wear a sports bra that he made at home from Ace bandages.

  The Teachers drink salted margaritas one after the other until they are cross-eyed and you cannot imagine them instructing and caring for young children in the preschool where they work but this is just what they do. They pride themselves on never drinking on the job (you think this is a lie) and they say that if you too would refrain you might see yourself promoted and they remind you how old you are and how long you have been working at the bar and they shake their heads out of pity for your wife. They say you wouldn't be half bad-looking if only you would work out. If you could add, say, thirty pounds of muscle to your upper body, the chest in particular, you would be something of a catch. You thank The Teachers for their stories and advice and you promise to bring your to-be-born child to their preschool and they say they would be happy to have him/her but they hope you will hold off procreating until you have been promoted, and until you have given some thought to what they have said about your weight. "A father should have some muscle behind him," Terese says.

  "You don't look like a father to me," Terri tells you.

  They hold up their hands for two more margaritas.

  Discuss Monty and Madge, a pair of drifter types made strange and unknowable by a lifetime of vodka and cold shoulders. Monty is thirty years old and unwashed, his glasses Scotch-taped, his burgundy corduroy dress coat dirty at its cuffs; he gives off the unmistakable psychic odor of a man who has lived in institutions and by-the-hour motels. He is eager to talk but his conversations are limited to the subjects of alcohol and movies, his obsessions and apparent motives for carrying on. He drinks double vodka tonics from the well and becomes animated when describing a stunt or special effect from the latest Hollywood blockbuster. When he insists you see these movies you tell him you do not like the genre and he asks what other kinds there are and you say there are the slow ones and foreign ones and your personal favorites, the sad ones, and he blinks and says that there are two types of people: Those who want to cry, and those who are crying already and want to stop.

  Madge has never said a word to you or (as far as you know) to Monty and you believe she is presently insane. A light-skinned mulatto, she resides beneath a ratty gray beehive hairdo and behind a pair of neon-green gas-station sunglasses. Her face is heavily rouged, her lipstick smeared over tiny gray teeth; she is perhaps twenty years older than Monty and the exact nature of their relationship remains clouded. He orders her drinks (well bloody marys) and always pays and she accepts the drink in her hand but has not once thanked him and in fact has never looked in his direction. She drinks slowly but steadily and Monty anticipates each drink's completion so that she is never left wanting or thirsty. She chainsmokes unfiltered Lucky Strikes and her fingers are stained an unladylike yellow-brown.

  When happy hour is over and prices double it is time to go and Monty taps Madge's shoulder and without moving her neck she stands and turns and walks out the door. Madge embarrasses Monty and he apologizes each time they visit. "She's just a shy girl is all," he explains. "Time's been hard on her." Then he settles the bill, and here is the most curious thing about Monty: He is a good tipper. If he saved the tips from a single happy hour he could buy himself a nice secondhand coat. A week's worth would get him a new pair of eyeglasses. But he enjoys the pageantry of public drinking and appreciates your remembering his name and interests, and when he reaches for his wallet you want to refuse his money but can see how much the gesture means
to him and so you only thank him and stuff the cash in the tip jar.

  You are alone in the bar with Monty and Madge when a man walks in and sits on the stool nearest the television. He is of medium height, brown-haired, muscular and tanned, the archetypal Southern Californian in shorts and a frayed T-shirt advertising a marlin-fishing tournament in Baja. There is a baseball game on and you peg him for a sports fan when you see how intently he watches the screen, but then he is interested in the commercials too, and when you walk over to take his order he jumps at the sound of your voice. He turns his washed-out blue eyes to you and you see he is simple or crazy or drunk or on drugs. He looks to Monty and Madge (Monty waves, Madge makes a wet, farting noise with her mouth) and back at you. The game has resumed and he points to the screen.

  "How much do these baseball players make?" he asks.

  It seems an innocent-enough question on its surface but the fact that he is unaware each player is paid a different salary worries you as it reveals the man's separation from reality. Anyway you do not believe he is interested in the actual answer and so you say, "Plenty more than you or me," and he grins crookedly. He flattens several crumpled bills on the bar and asks what he can get for six dollars and you pour him a vodka tonic that he drains in a gulp. He does not tip but pulls more bills from his pocket and likewise flattens these and asks what he can get for ten dollars. You make him a double vodka tonic and again he does not tip. He drains the glass and asks what he can get for twenty dollars and you are becoming frustrated and tell him for that much he could buy the whole bar a round, but the man is confused and then offended by your joke, and his eyes flash and he stares at your chest and says, "Why would I buy you all drinks when I don't even know you? When I don't even know your names? Why in the fuck would I give you a goddamn thing?" His fists are clenched and he has stood and kicked aside his stool and it looks as if he wants to jump over the bar when Monty calls out from across the room: "Just give him a drink on my tab. Give him whatever he wants."