Monsters

by Karen Brennan

  The knees and elbows of the squatting Millbank jutted at sharp angles—mantis-like, in Ruth’s opinion—and there might have been antennae hidden beneath that hair. She imagined such antennae creeping out unexpectedly, like worms.

  Somewhat ceremoniously, he drew back the luxurious fabric from one tray. There indeed lay a gleaming row of knives, each in its narrow coffin. You’re a knife salesman? said Sam, laughing now. I sell nothing, said Millbank. My business is in trade. Only barter goes into this bank, said Millbank, inexplicably tapping his head.

  We don’t need any knives, said Ruth coldly. It had dawned on her that this was not a prank engineered by one of their friends and she was annoyed. Sam, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Show me what you got, he said, pointing to the tray. All in good time, said Millbank. He made a show of revealing another tray of knives, lifting the corner of the fabric with the slightest trepidation, as if what were beneath might jump out and attack him. In this tray, the knives were larger, their blades fatter and presumably sharper; they seemed to be grinning inanely at the ceiling. No thank you, Ruth said. We have enough cutlery. Unbelievable knives, said Millbank, ignoring Ruth.

  Millbank kept at these activities for a time, removing fabric from each tray, wherein the knives got successively larger, the blades thicker, longer. When it came to the last tray, he paused and surveyed his audience. Ruth was staring into space, her aggravation visible in the two vertical lines that appeared between her eyes. Sam leaned against the wall, and smiled faintly. He continued to be amused, but truth be told it was Ruth’s irritation that amused him most: it served her right. She was always doing things like this, inviting strangers into the house. She had a bizarre notion of entertainment, which he’d never understood, and now she was getting her comeuppance.

  Ruth was only half-listening. She had been thinking about her cooking show. There was a boy she liked who created dishes with flavored foams. He looked to be a small-boned boy with large liquid eyes behind his black-framed glasses. She imagined the foams to be like the boy—intricate, slender, dreamy. It was not true that one couldn’t taste the dishes on the cooking shows.

  May I present you with the pièce de résistance? Millbank said. With a flourish he revealed the contents of the final tray. There lay a massive knife whose blade dazzled as if lit from within. I call this knife my Sugar Momma since she’s given me so much in the way of reward, said Millbank. Ruth rolled her eyes. Huh, she said.

  Millbank regarded Ruth affably. Well, well, young lady, what would you say if I told you that this knife can cut glass? Ruth shrugged. She didn’t know much about knives and their cutting power. You can tell me whatever you want, she said. We don’t need a knife to cut glass.

  Millbank grinned. It’ll cut bone too, and porcelain. Why this knife could cut your toilet bowl in two! he said. We don’t need knives, repeated Ruth. Her voice had taken on that flat quality which brooked no argument.

  We really don’t, agreed Sam. It’s getting late, he added.

  Millbank stood. I suppose it is, he said, clearly disappointed. The large knife, the Sugar Momma with its gleaming, luminous blade, hung slackly at his side. For a moment, he took in the pictures on the walls, pausing at the colorful acrylic of the blue gorilla over the sofa. I like that painting, he said sadly, very much. And I also like this one. He pointed to a small oil of a ballerina that Sam had acquired from a New York gallery. He’d spent most of a full month’s pay on it.

  You’re an art lover? asked Sam, despite himself. Oh yes, said Millbank, oh yes I certainly am. I like the moderns—Klee, Klimpt, Rauschenberg, Picasso, of course, but also his countryman Juan Gris and Dalí, for fun, and Rothko, Hockney. His voice faded. The swimming pools, he said vaguely. The chapel.

  Well, well, said Sam. You know your stuff apparently. There are not many of us, agreed Millbank, looking at the floor with such intensity that Sam followed his gaze to a spider making its way along a floor board.

  Ruth was not a collector. Moreover, she failed to understand the mentality of collectors—a kind of greedy, grasping mentality if you asked her. Collectors and their ilk longed to gobble up the world, believed Ruth. Courtesy of Sam, she was the beneficiary of a home with fine art on the walls. Every day she could feast her eyes. To be honest, she soon grew tired of each piece. She could almost count the days until a work of art became invisible to her, though she never mentioned this to Sam.

  There was the Goya intaglio from the Capricios on the mantel; the signed Siqueiros drawing over the bed; in the powder room, three watercolors of Parisian street scenes by Jacques Villon; a 16th century Japanese woodcut in their entryway; and more, more. For Ruth, it was as if they no longer existed.

  Dimly, she heard the host of the cooking show congratulate the winner.

  Millbank sniffed loudly, as though aggrieved. May I use the facilities? he inquired.

  Sam led him to the small powder room off the hall. Then, by silent consensus, Sam and Ruth stood by the front door holding the big green coat and the scarecrow hat, poised to escort Millbank from their home. There they determined to stand, even while he reassembled his knives in the plaid suitcase.

  Sam whispered, This is all your fault. You didn’t exactly do anything to discourage him, said Ruth. He’s taking a long time in there. Perhaps he’s shooting drugs, offered Sam. Or pooping. Ruth laughed. Maybe he’s cutting our toilet in two, wouldn’t that be funny? Not so funny, said Sam, recalling that Millbank had taken the knife into the bathroom with him. He took the knife? Ruth said, horrified. Probably just afraid we’d steal his Sugar Momma. As if.

  Another episode of the cooking show had begun to air; tonight’s marathon would go on for hours. The slightly accented voice of the moderator could be heard, a languid, sultry voice that nevertheless had the capacity to harden when displeased by a performance or dish. Briefly, Ruth entertained the notion that the cooking show might never be over, that it would go on and on into perpetuity, that the small-boned fragile boy who moved her would continue forever to concoct his flavored foams, to present them with trembling lips to the table of judges. That no one would win or lose. What would life be like, she wondered aloud, if nothing stopped?

  That’s why I collect art, Sam said. It’s eternal. Don’t you see that? He contemplated trying on Millbank’s coat and hat, for a joke. He thought it might make Ruth laugh. More than anything Sam was gratified by Ruth’s laughter. But it would have been just his luck if Millbank emerged from the bathroom the minute he’d gotten his arm into one of the voluminous sleeves.

  But Millbank didn’t emerge. They waited, Sam and Ruth, until they tired of standing, at which point they resettled themselves in the living room and listened to strains of the cooking show from the sofa until finally they were drawn to the TV room in time to witness the fragile boy who made foams narrowly escape elimination. The judges were displeased, but not enough to tell him to Pack up your knives and go home.

  This, the show’s repeating mantra, suddenly struck each of them as hilariously apt. Pack up your knives and go home! shouted Ruth. Sam joined in, Pack up your goddamned knives and go home! Because Millbank had still not left the powder room. He could be on the floor, bleeding to death for all they knew. Or he might have chopped apart their toilet—two giant halves of porcelain on the bathroom floor and water everywhere.

  Knock-knock, Sam said, pounding on the bathroom door. Come out come out wherever you are, said Ruth. She picked up one of the smaller knives from the array in the living room to defend herself. Pack up your fucking knives and go home, Sam was shouting. He said it again, this time shooting a gob of spit at the bathroom door. Then he kicked the door once or twice, Your fucking cocksucking knives, pack them up and GO HOME!! Your cunt-faced knives!! Ruth chimed in. Faggot, faggot, faggot! Sam was screaming and waving his arms around, in a kind of frenzied rage.

  After a while he collapsed on the hall floor and Ruth bent over him. He was weeping and gasping for air, trying to scream but his voice
was so hoarse that all he could manage were the words ass-wipe and faggot. His hand was clutching her arm and she had an impulse to dig into it with the knife. To carve her name deep into skin and muscle and bone.

  But the moment passed. He released her arm and stood and she set the knife carefully on the hall table.

  They regarded each other coolly, almost the way you’d regard a total stranger who had interrupted your evening television watching and tried to sell you something you did not want or need.

  The good thing about this, said Ruth, is that we’ll look back years from now and it will make us laugh. Laughs in the bank, agreed Sam.

  The cooking show marathon went into a fourth and fifth hour. The fragile boy of Ruth’s heart bore it bravely when, at the penultimate show, he was eliminated. As if sensing his delicacy, the judges were kind and spoke in soft, cajoling voices when they announced his failure to win the competition. You have a beautiful talent and a beautiful spirit, said the moderator in her sultry accent, but now you must leave the premises.

  As for the knife salesman, he never materialized. He’d squeezed through the bathroom window, cutting an immaculate aperture in the bubbled pane (no doubt with his excellent knife) and taking with him the three Jacques Villon street scenes of Paris. In addition to the hat and coat, he’d left behind the case of knives, but these were never much good, either failing to cut smoothly or snapping off at the hilts.

  10 BIRDS

  1

  When I woke up, birds were entering the room, their voices flutey & sharp-witted. The pillow’s fine creases had imprinted themselves on the skin of my cheek. I checked myself for the feeling of dread. This is like taking a temperature and involves a body scan but no instrument. As usual, I remind myself of the bed’s great comfort due to expensive memory foam purchased to disguise lumps. Soon everything in the world will duplicate, memory foam as hat.

  2

  I was struck by the presence of birds tiptoeing across the floorboards (bedspread?). I actually despised this pillow & the way it rebounded from my head’s weight seemed to herald the dread I felt. As if we have power to affect nothing. I scanned the room—a little light scurried up the walls. The man beside me was dead to the world. If I had to duplicate myself I wouldn’t know where to begin but I can imagine clones walking among us, even waking beside us.

  3

  The man beside me rolled over as was his custom. It was as if he were telling me to go back to sleep. Too many birds in the room, now they were beside me flicking their feathers. I never cared for their song which was unmelodic but let’s face it the birds were a metaphor for the dread I felt. I scanned the back of my hand for some kind of indication that time would heal all wounds. My pillow had slipped to the floor and with it one of the smallest birds upon whose face I read an expression of weariness.

  4

  At this point, I believed things had changed places with other things. In place of the man beside me was his pillow. This was curious because I knew the pillow was a metaphor for weariness & the birds seemed to be hiding. I wondered about the light, its creases within other creases felt like one more duplication, like a memory unmoored from its moment, a phrase that occurred to me as I regarded the man beside me. Also there was an impression of a series of objects floating across the room. Something melodic here.

  5

  Sunlight seeped through the wooden blinds & I heard the birds rattling around in the trees. I heard the two-tone note of the mourning dove, a sound residing in my memory & ushering in a cluster of images from that era—brown dust of backyard, the apricot tree which someone cut down. How the birds loved those apricots. There was another man beside me. The walls mint green, not a good choice.

  6

  Dread was ushering in my body, dead to the world, as if on all four corners the birds were bearing with me. Where had I been that such melodies prevailed? There’d been a time, I felt certain, that duplicated this time, but was not remembered. The two-tone notes of the mourning dove—a cluster of mourning doves—were as ghosts, some shadowy particle of half-tone objects that flew by too fast. I tried to awaken the man beside me but in his place the creases on the pillow were transferring themselves to the air, whipped up by birds’ constant feather flicking. How comfortable was the bed with its memory foam, as memory is always a comfort, ushering in feelings of a life well-connected & aptly metaphorized by a series of floating objects.

  7

  As though I had never slept at all, so stationary were the room’s accouterments. The man beside me let out a groan & I knew for certain that this time was an exact duplication of another time, a time in which I’d been sleeping beside another man in a room whose walls were mint green. For a moment, then, I felt dread creeping along the pillow & imprinting itself on my cheek. I was aware of an hallucination of birds but these I knew were symptoms, not exactly metaphors, since they existed outside the window in a chorus.

  8

  I woke to sleeping on my hand instead of the pillow & what I’d thought were the pillow creases imprinted on my cheek was actually a map of my future, complete with luck lines & love pits. The man beside me seemed to have vanished but the memory foam held his shape like a saucer holds a cup out of which a cluster of objects might suddenly spring & proceed to float across the room. I too was thirsty. The two-tone note of my dream accompanied the light which scurried up the walls which were not mint green but interrupted by the slatted blinds through which sunlight seeped. I perceived a little cornice of dread in my body scan but I dismissed it as a shadowy column bearing the weight of memory (foam).

  9

  It was green & frightening. Who was I kidding, the birds had arrived & they were insistent. Although there was no instrument involved, the scan of my body proceeded as mournfully as the little two-toned notes of the mourning doves. I was searching for the man beside me, eyes closed against the light seeping through the slatted blinds, but encountered only the memory foam, the place where he’d been before he rolled over. Such melodies prevailed in a manner that came closer to a cluster of floating objects flicking against the scurried light on the walls. The birds were metaphors for ghosts & I removed my hand from beneath the creased pillow.

  10

  It was in this particular room & bed, in no particular order. If the man had been a bird, his voice sharp-witted, flutey instead of dead to the world. My feeling of dread so familiar it is an old friend like the light which exists in & out of creases whose creases are two-noted & definite as opposed to the shadow play of objects I made up for this occasion. The man may or may not be beautiful, the mint green walls of my past should not be inflicted on anyone & the birds have fled. In another less metaphorical sense everything duplicates & reduplicates which makes memory foam redundant & antithetical to waking at all, either beside or not beside a person who has rolled away or who has moved a pillow to replicate what may occur to him, unmoored to the moment, remote & indispensable.

  SHOPPING

  We are shopping and the proprietor is entertaining us with a flute. After the flute playing, he stalks us from table to table whilst chanting. We do our best to ignore the chanting, hovering proprietor though he clearly wants our admiration. The chanting is very charming, very well-executed to be sure, but we did not ask for it. We examine a Mexican retablo replica and a Tibetan altar cloth replica and a Russian icon replica. The man stops chanting in order to share with us the story of his first date with his wife. They were traveling to Las Vegas and he left his credit card in a gas station and on the same trip the hotel they were staying in burned down and then they were stuck in a snow storm. We believe now that the man wants to be admired for the disastrous first date with his wife. More admiration! Again, we feel victimized since we did not request to be amused by the tale of this man’s first date with his Brazilian (it turns out) wife. In fact, the more we peruse the items in the man’s shop—all replicas! all fakes!—the more we realize that we want nothing from this man and that we will give him nothing—not pity, admirat
ion or money. In the end, though, we purchase a little box of incense.

  A THEFT

  The Nanny stole a tweed suit from Banana Republic, a cashmere sweater (pale grey, my favorite), a bite-sized digital camera, an iPod, a sheet of checks and other things that I have not yet discovered missing. She was a blond girl with a wandering eye, almost black in color, an eye that rotated wildly, like a little agitated wheel in the upper right-hand corner of her face, whenever she spoke. Because of the eye, I was tempted not to trust her, which made me decide especially to trust her because if we all went around suspecting a person with disability, where would we be? The answer I now know is that we’d be richer by almost one thousand dollars.

  ON BLISS

  Beautiful things occur to those who wait. I was told this as a child and I can still see laundry floating like ghosts on the line—our shirts, socks, underpants—as my mother spoke. Behind which (words, laundry) the city stationed itself, building upon building, like a mountain range.

  I never wanted to be a maid. In my heart of hearts, what I wanted was music, that is to be enveloped like the saints were enveloped. The world seeming all of a sudden immensely large or small and I a perfect teardrop or grain of sand or preposition. Maybe I wanted to be a saint.

  Around us were fire escapes and laundry, laundry and fire escapes, the subway sound like rockets or bombs zooming in then out of hearing. Just the way frying bacon can sound exactly like TV static or traffic like the ocean, all sounds fell into each other in the city, so that I got the idea that the essence of the world was to stir itself up like a stew.