Ablutions Read online

  The wine is all sediment and the cork crumbles into the bottle and you sit at a yellow Formica table in the dingy kitchen of Peg, drinking the vinegary wine (she is picking out the cork pieces, you are chewing them) and hoping not to talk, but now she wants to talk, and to understand and suffer, and as a result become humane and wise. She leans in and is serious and meaningful and you know what question she will ask before she asks it, and then she asks it, and the asking is terrible:

  "Why did your wife leave you?"

  Discuss the sisters Valerie and Lynn, who invite you and a regular named Toby to their apartment after hours. Toby is a quiet, drowsy young man who drinks warm gin with PBR chasers; he sees the girls to the bar exit with a promise to follow close behind and returns to clap and laugh about the probability of forthcoming nudity. He urges you to hurry with your cleanup but does not offer his help. He is waving the directions to their apartment in his hand and he asks which of the pair you like better and you say you don't care and will leave it up to him. He weighs the pros and cons of each, saying that the younger of the two, Lynn, is prettier and sweeter, a bring-home-to-mom type, but Valerie looks to be more immediate, vulgar fun. And while Lynn might look nicer on his arm, it would stand to reason that Valerie would be the more skilled behind closed doors. It is all very exciting for Toby, this choosing of women, and you enjoy seeing him so happy, and you wish that you too were happy, and you have another large drink knowing there will be no noticeable effect on your disposition and that it will only make you sicker the next morning and probably render you incapable of anything sexual that night. (There is no taste on your tongue and it is like you are swallowing gusts of hot air.)

  The sisters' apartment is even filthier than you had imagined it would be (the bathroom is unspeakable). Valerie and Lynn are in transition from one trend-based lifestyle to another and there is a feeling of limbo, past and present fads and interests muddling their slang, clothes, and décor. They are both on cocaine and their chatter is confusing to follow but it appears their current hope is to find work as traveling burlesque dancers. Toby is all ears and interjects when the girls gasp for breath, offering his encouragement and complimenting the furnishings. "I think this is the most comfortable couch I've ever sat on," he tells them.

  Throughout their speech the sisters have been disrobing, an article of clothing at a time, and they now stand before you wearing only their underwear bottoms and high heels. It is all Toby can do to keep himself composed and he jabs you with the point of his elbow with such force that you cry out in pain and the girls ask if it would be all right to run through their newest routine and Toby says sure, sure, of course, goddamn, and you say sure, and they dim the lights and put on some music and perform a surprisingly well-rehearsed 1950s-style dance number that involves much breast-spinning and has Toby in a near frenzy—he cannot hide and does not seem to want to hide the fact that he has a full erection. The girls are bent over and smiling at you from between their legs and Toby like a zombie crosses the room to slap their backsides and comment on the resulting jiggle of flesh and of the two it is the younger and prettier sister, Lynn, who responds to this treatment, and she leads Toby down the hall to her bedroom. Valerie stands and is panting, her hands on her hips, and she takes you into her room and turns off the lights and lays you on her bed, asking dirty sex questions that you are supposed to answer with dirty words of your own but you cannot get started and your head is burning with whiskey and cigarettes and when she takes off your pants and lays her cold hands on your body your pulse is still and nothing happens. She abandons this project and asks if you will do her a favor and then she describes the favor and there is no time to answer yes or no before she throws a leg over your face and you are forced into action, allotting her fifteen minutes of your life before pushing her off and walking pants-less to the bathroom to wash your face, and here your heart jumps when you see your reflection because you are covered in blood. Valerie walks in and does not apologize but says you look like a scared clown and laughs as she sits to urinate. You can hear Lynn down the hall in the throes of passion (it would seem Toby knows a trick or two) and Valerie watches you scrubbing the blood from your stubbly beard with her toothbrush. "I always get the dud," she says, standing and flushing, pink swirling water in the sink and toilet.

  One night, drunk but steady, you decide you will not go immediately home but look into one of your proposed after-hours adventures. You do not suppose you will see it through but you are curious about it all the same and you bypass your neighborhood and head west on the 10 freeway, toward the ocean. There is a ways to go and you chainsmoke and drink whiskey from an emptied soda bottle as you drive. On the radio a man is imitating a chicken singing "In the Mood." You are imitating the man imitating the chicken and spilling whiskey down your shirt front as you choke and laugh.

  You park your car opposite the Santa Monica pier and find it is not dark and deserted, as you hoped it would be. The fun rides are still lit up and in the distance two security officers, a male and a female, are leaning over the railing and talking. They are standing close together and the male is pointing out at the ocean; the woman is nodding. They are near the end of the pier and you cannot see their expressions but you believe they are smiling. It is a romantic enough scene but antagonistic to your plans, and you toss out the empty soda bottle and drive north, down the California Incline, toward Malibu. The console clock reads four in the morning.

  The air is dry and warm and you find the Malibu pier deserted and dimly lit. You park the car and walk down the beach and beneath the pier. Small waves lap over the barnacled pylons and the pier lets off a long, settling moan and you reach out your hands to feel the vibration through the mossy wood. The pylons are tall as trees and seem to be leaning or falling toward one another. You bend down to touch the water and it is cold but not so cold as you thought it would be and you take off your shoes and wade in up to your ankles, feeling with your feet the hard sand of the ocean floor. As your skin acclimates to the water you know that you must see your plan through and it becomes in that instant a significant ambition and you clamber up the beach to the side of the pier and jump onto the railing and lift yourself over. You disrobe to your underwear and run twenty paces before coming to a tall white gate, its top arched and slick. Using the pier railing for support you climb around so that your body for a moment is hanging over the ocean. You run forty more paces and hit another fence, identical to the first, and you notice an elevated shack at the end of the pier. A light is glowing in one of the windows and you decide you have gone far enough. Once again you climb over the railing, only now you are facing the ocean. Looking down to gauge your height you find you cannot see the surface of the water and you search the sky for the moon, but the moon is not there. The warm wind runs off your torso and legs and your mind turns to the loveliness of narcotics and alcohol and women and you are shivering though you are not at all cold and you feel that you could cry now. You cannot see the water but the shore is a long ways off and you know it will be deep enough and so you count aloud, one, two, three, and you hold your breath and jump out into the night.

  You are sitting in your car outside the bar, drinking from an airplane bottle and smoking a cigarette. You are forty-five minutes late and there are three empty airplane bottles at your feet and you have been parked for over an hour but are not yet ready to go to work. You no longer push headlong into your shifts and it is becoming more and more difficult to enter this building and in fact it is a constant worry so that you wake up thinking of the colorless faces of the customers and the cold, wet dishrag that hangs from your belt loop and slaps at your leg. Also you are always fighting one illness or another or one endless illness that never entirely dies, as you do not give your body sufficient rest and respite from your appetites. Now your body tries to reject the airplane-bottle whiskey by vomiting but you better the body with deep, mechanical breathing of the fresh night air.

  As you exit the LTD, Junior the crack addict sneaks
up and lifts you off the ground in an embrace and roars in your ear that he is back, back, back, muthafuckas! He sets you down and you catch your breath from laughing. "I really thought you'd died," you tell him. "That little guy was going around saying he'd killed you." "Hey man, no muthafuckas killin' me," Junior says. He has been in jail for three months and was released just this morning. You ask him how it went and he bugs his eyes at the stupidity of the question. You ask why he was arrested and he bugs his eyes doubly and rests his fists on his hips. You give him twenty dollars and listen to him talk about his latest plans—forthcoming construction work, doorman work, and a management position in an as yet unopened jazz club. Where he got this last idea is anyone's guess but when he describes himself standing at the bar in a suit and fedora with alligator shoes and purple silk stockings you cannot help but believe in some part of it. It is now only a matter of months, he tells you, a matter of hanging on.

  He is eager to return to his routine and judging by his looks has already indulged profoundly in his drug of choice. He intends to make up for lost time, he says, with ninety days of his life stolen away forever when he wouldn't hurt a soul in the world, and when every day is a gift from God. He tucks the twenty away and turns a critical eye on you. He has heard you are doing poorly and asks if he might help. He infers that your job is in jeopardy but will not name the source of this information. "You're getting too deep up in it," he says. "Why do you think they call 'em depressants? You ought to do like me, see?" He points to his eyes. "Stimulants. Stimulated." Thanking Junior for his concern and insights, and promising to return soon for a longer visit, you walk to the front door of the bar. "Stay positive," he says in parting.

  The room is already full and tossing or listing as a vessel over rough waters. Simon, returned to the role of manager, catches your eye and makes a show of psychically mutilating your character from across the bar. (At first he had refused the offer to resume his previous duties but a bonus was offered, a trip to some desert resort, and he came back to work with an extreme sunburn/new attitude. You are happy that he is in command again; you felt a keen pity for him when he was demoted, to the point that you wished he might "be killed.") He throws a rag at your face and nods in the direction of the bathroom. "Clean it up," he says. He is very angry but you do not attempt any excuses or penitent greetings; you walk past the line and into the men's room where you find a large pile of excrement perched on the seat of the toilet. Though this is the personification of your work fears you do not so much as sigh but take up a handful of napkins and, holding your breath, pick up the pile to ease it into the clogged, near-overflowing toilet, only its weight is too terrible to consider and you drop it into the filthy water. This creates a splash and your thighs are covered and you inhale the smell and vomit straight away like a fire hose and it covers the toilet seat and tank and spreads across the floor. Simon is standing behind you. "You'll have to clean the puke up too, mate," he says. "That's just the way of it." The child actor is standing in the doorway laughing and calling to Curtis that he might also witness the scene. Now they are both laughing and holding their stomachs and Simon is sorry for you and pushes them back down the hall and asks you in a mournful tone to try to finish the job hastily as there is a backup of dirty glasses and after all it is Saturday night.

  You mop up the vomit and head to the bar to wash the stacks of glasses, hoping to numb your active mind in this mindless work but find that you cannot. You move sideways toward the whiskey assortment but there is Simon, shaking his head. "Not tonight," he says. Half an hour later he steps away for a cigarette and you rush to pour out three pints of alcohol, two Jamesons and one well gin, and you take these to the end of the bar where the child actor and Curtis are sitting elbow to elbow. They are still laughing at you and you nod good-naturedly before presenting a pint to each of them and holding yours high and calling it a race whereby the loser pays. They are rippling from bad street cocaine and gulp hungrily at the glasses and in three minutes they have finished up, neck and neck. You have secretly emptied two-thirds of your whiskey into the trash can but point to the remainder and say the round is on you, and the child actor and Curtis cheer, and you drink what is left in the glass and return to work.

  As you bus the room and drain the sinks and replace the limes and olives and ice and napkins and straws and liquor and juices you keep a close watch on Curtis and the child actor, for no amount of cocaine can overpower a pint of eighty-proof alcohol consumed in so short a time, and you are curious to see how the drinks will take them. At first there is no noticeable difference other than their sudden, shocked silence. Then the smiles drop from their faces and their heads look to have tripled in weight and their eyes lose all focus and the child actor reaches out for a glass of water that is not there. Ten minutes later Curtis falls from his stool and does not get up. The child actor is afraid and uses his last burst of energy to push through the crowd to the bathroom. As he rounds the corner you see vomit spray from his nose holes and Simon turns to you with the mop and says, "I'm afraid it just isn't your night." He is laughing and you should be too but you cannot laugh or smile anymore. Raymond looks up from his drawings and corrals you as you pass. He is drunk and he brings his little ruler to your forehead and drags its edge from your hairline to the bridge of your nose and says, "You are forgiven." You snatch the ruler away and whip it over Raymond's head and it fans across the room and hits an oblivious fat woman on her chin. Her male companion stands and bares his fists but he does not know where the ruler came from. The woman covers her face and starts to cry.

  Heading down the hall a man asks if you are working and you point to the mop and bug your eyes at the question and he hands you a cellular phone he has found. This gives you an idea and you do not clean up the vomit but lock yourself into the storage room and call 911 to report your suspicion that there is a bomb set to explode on the premises of the bar. You give a detailed account of an overheard conversation between two swarthy, bearded men and before you are even off the phone you can hear the shrieks of the customers and the breaking of glasses as firemen rush through the bar to clear the room. You reach up for a bottle of Jameson and break the seal, taking a long drink and inhaling deeply from a cigarette. When the evacuation is completed you let yourself out of the storage room and the bar is empty, and you walk from one side to the other drinking the whiskey and smoking, and crying softly—you cannot tell if the reason is relief or sadness. You look for Curtis's body but it has been moved. On the bar where Raymond was sitting you find a half-crumpled drawing of an adolescent boy, shirtless and in cutoffs, with a penis like a lasso. He is whipping it over his head and looks very happy to be living. You stuff this into your pocket and walk to the men's room where you find the child actor in a ball beneath the sink. There is drool draining from the corner of his mouth and his eyes are open to slits but you cannot see his pupils, only the reddened whites, and his breath is indefinable and you stand and kick him hard in the stomach and he vomits a cupful of gin and bile. Wiping the tears from your face you set your whiskey bottle and cigarette on the sink countertop and stand back against the far bathroom wall and rush forward to kick him in the center of his moaning face.

  Three

  Discuss the renting of a vehicle and your conversation with the pockmarked counter man about the cars he has to offer you and then about the cars he does not have to offer but that he wants to speak of anyway, foreign and luxury automobiles he hopes to someday sit in and drive around in and whose horns he would like to honk and whose powerful stereo systems would push air through his hair. Discuss his lewd innuendoes when you say you do not care for the color or make of the rental but only the size, as you plan to lie prone inside its walls. You make no visible response to the intimations, being medicated on fat white pills, with many more in an aspirin bottle stashed in your suitcase (you scattered a dozen aspirins atop the white pills as a diversionary tactic), and the counter man, understanding there will be no mannish banter, drops his head to tap chick
en-like on his computer.

  You select a truck with a shell or camper top and when the man asks for your destination you tell him you are driving to the Grand Canyon and he makes one last pass at friendship, asking for the purpose of your trip (he is typing and speaking at the same time, which impresses you), and as you have no real reason but only an elusive, mesmeric feeling for going, you tell him a lie, which is this: When you were twelve years old you visited the Grand Canyon with your mother and father and spent three happy days and nights in the area, camping out under the stars, burning hot dogs over a barbecue pit and watching them fall from the sticks into the fire, cursing, catching and killing lizards and snakes—all the wiles and whims of any fast-paced boyhood. Or this at least is what you have been told took place those years past because you cannot, inexplicably, remember a single thing about the vacation, not the canyon's alleged breathtaking scale or the mules that are said to carry camera-laden passengers the eight miles down a treacherous trail to the canyon's shaded floor, and you share your frustrations with the counter man, telling him how bothered you are that one of the world's wonders has been shuffled from your mind, and you tell him that at the end of the day you simply believe the Grand Canyon deserves another chance to make a proper, durable impression.