by KUBOA
“You’re lovely,” Bob said. He just said it.
Honey Moser turned now, her full-on radiance blinding. A simple key, a lucky stab: she had never been called lovely before. Many synonyms but not that particular modifier. It pricked her like a fairy -tale spindle.
“Funny man, odd-duck,” Honey said.
But she was smiling.
“Yes, sorry,” Bob said again. “I’m, I’m beggared, jetsam. This is what’s left of a man once loved.”
“She broke your heart.”
“Yes, she did.”
“Join the club,” Honey said.
“No,” Bob said without thinking. “Not you—”
“Oh, yes. Left behind like a sinner at the rapture.”
That night Bob and Honey had their first date. They went to a Cuban restaurant near Bob’s home. Afterwards she did what babes -in -the -woods do. They assuaged their simple, human loneliness with contact, sweet, fleshly contact.
A month later they were man and wife.
Rick Pozgar was Bob Plumb’s best friend. A writer who worked in a bookstore, Rick was the kind of sounding board, empath, that makes for long-term friendships. Bob loved Rick and Rick loved Bob. Sometimes they even said it.
Rick could not believe that Bob had married before Rick had even met the woman. When they finally got together, Rick and his girlfriend, Sandra, and Bob and Honey, the conversation was warm and lively. Rick liked Honey immediately and Sandra and Honey went off during the evening, into the kitchen to build a bond that males could never understand. Honey and Sandra had coffee the next day. They talked lovingly about their men, their funny habits, their goony love affair with each other, even about them sexually.
It was all chirpy and blithe.
It lasted a few months, a few months of sex and shopping and renting videos. And, let’s be fair: the sex was good. Bob, for all his distractedness, for all his inertness, for all his exhausted outsiderness, Bob was pretty good in the sack. Not great, but adequate, unselfish. It wasn’t that, assassin of so many consanguinities, bad sex. No, one day Honey took a hard look at Bob Plumb and thought, oh, Holy Ghost, I could have made a better match. I’d even prefer one of the dull bankers from the cClub, thought Honey Plumb.
So, she began disappearing. Afternoons at first and then, as her boldness grew, evenings. Once she even stayed out all night, the night she hooked up with a real estate mogul named Henry De Hart. You can write the scene the next morning at the Plumbs.
“I can’t say I didn’t see this coming,” Rick told Bob a few days later over Mexican food and Tecates.
“Right. Why was she with me? One of the glittering stars.”
“That’s not what I meant.” It was.
“I know.” He didn’t.
“So, the only question now is, what do you do next?” Rick said, masticating a tough piece of tortilla. Was it tortilla?
“That’s not, of course, the only question. I can think of a good- dozen questions, some true-false, some multiple-choice. Some no-choice, no-win, no-contest. So many questions, so little mind.”
Rick stared at his plate which was as colorful as a Jackson Pollock dropcloth. He had no advice to offer. Let’s be truthful here: when one’s friend has had his (or her) heart eviscerated there is only one thing to say. That one thing is: I’m here for you. Beyond that, as friends, we are as useful as monkey fat.
“I’m here for you,” Rick said.
Bob grinned a poorly constructed and insincere grin.
So we send Bob home, where he has to take himself in. Home is where the hard is. The house now, for Bob, represented failure, an over-the-precipice- sized failure. The TV only showed movies that Honey loved. The refrigerator still held arcane comestibles that Honey loved: wheat germ, sparrow grass, propolis. The bed was the bed where Honey loved. It was all so defeating, so beyond him. Bob sat in his living room, sunk deep in a chair the color of the bottom of the sea. He sunk badly. In his living room there was no living.
There was no life left for Bob, Bob thought.
Nor had there been much sleep, Morpheus leaving Bob on the same train Honey commandeered.
Somehow, on the fourth night PH (Post Honey), Bob fell into a restless sleep. He dreamt that night that he was lying on the viscous floor of a damp cave. All around him, seemingly sprouting from the floor, writhed tall, blue, transpicuous penises, swaying as if in a gentle breeze. Bob reached out for the one nearest him, a particularly substantial and gnarly example. As he held it in his hand warmth entered his body, an electric reawakening. And indeed it was then that Bob awoke. His head was still in dreamspace. The room seemed overheated, like a greenhouse. He couldn’t shake the unsettling vision of his dream, nor the semi-sweet feeling of that botanic phallus. Suddenly, Bob was physically ill. He barely made it into the bathroom to spill.
Afterwards, Bob sat on the cool bathroom floor, a wet washcloth across the back of his neck. It was a brand of comfort Honey had taught him. Naturally, it had felt much better under her gentle ministrations.
Slowly, Bob rose and looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. He looked old and depleted. He used the damp washcloth to wipe his face. Outside, rosy-fingered dawn was turning to the title page, the day’s book unwritten. Bob reached for his toothbrush to clean the taste of vomitus from his mouth. Next to his baby-blue brush lay the toothpaste, its little majorette cap nearby. Bob stared at the composition on the edge of the sink for a long minute.
Here’s what was odd: Bob always recapped the toothpaste. Bob was fastidious. Bob was anal. To find the cap next to the tube was tantamount to discovering Charybdis in his bathtub. Bob tried to hearken back to the night before. Had he, in his dizzy grief, been so sloppy? Of course that was the answer. Even a man as driven by routine as Bob was has, on occasion, slipped off his well-worn track, if only for a moment. A slip. That’s all this represented.
Bob brushed his teeth, recapping the paste tightly.
The daylight was impending regardless of Bob’s lack of enthusiasm for it. When Bob shuffled into the kitchen and hit the light switch the bulb blew, a soft purple pop. Good morning!
That day passed like a stone. Like jellied brainchild. Bob went to work, bumped into his fellow teachers as if he were a blind man, told his students that love was a poor kinescope, told them that they could read Harry Potter instead of Dubliners if they were so inclined. He went home that day with absolutely no memory of how the day had gone, what he had done, etc. A dangerous way to run a life, but there it is.
Bob threw some ground beef, some tomatoes, some rice, and some hot sauce into a frying pan and called it dinner. He sat in front of the TV, which was showing a reality series featuring staged cuckoldry. Bob wept soft, warm tears into his dinner. As one show morphed into another Bob just sat and wept. Later, some time later, through his foggy vision he saw a woman on a desert island opening her top for the entire world to see. Her breasts were supple, blurry blobs of sexual tension. Bob felt as if he might explode, as if inside an extraterrestrial was hatching àa la Alien.
Bob threw the rest of his dinner down the garbage disposal, the same one that quit on him one time because of an overabundance of pasta. He heard the satisfying grinding swoosh of a successful disposal and he felt no satisfaction. He leaned on the counter for support: Bob felt as if the edge of forever was at his feet and all he wanted to do was jump.
Then his attention was drawn to the spice rack. Bob loved his spice rack and doted on it, constantly re-alphabetizing it after Honey used it. Here’s what arrested Bob’s attention: sage was before rosemary. How could that be? Had Honey slipped in unannounced and cooked herself a meal? No, that was foolish. No one had been in Bob’s house except Bob for five5 days now.
Bob gently put the spices back in their customary place. As he did so he felt a slight shudder in his arm as if he had hit his ulnar nerve. Someone or something had rearranged his spice rack. Now, there was a foolish thought. But, that’s what Bob was thinking as his tears d
ried up, as his house settled around him like a docked ship, ticking and rocking and trying to right itself. With the world a tilt-a-whirl Bob stumbled to his couch, diving onto it.
Somewhere basketball was being played, Bob thought. On TV. Basketball with its set rules and constant measurements. The basket was 10 feet from the floor. It had always been and it always would be. Bob surfed for a game and in no time landed in Cleveland where LeBron James was king and where, just now, as Bob reeled, LeBron was dunking on some hapless, nameless, muscle-bound power forward from New Jersey. The ship gradually stopped rocking. Bob watched the game for a full hour without ever taking it in. His mind skipped over the surface of the game like a rock on a frozen lake. Something ineffable was eating at him, as if a small rodent was nibbling the edges of his thought. Bob cursed his own clammy metaphors. But, finally, Bob’s mind came to rest. He was thoughtless.
Bob slept that night like a baby. No, not crying and peeing himself, but without disturbing dreams or flesh-hungry longings for Honey’s return. He woke the next day refreshed. Showered, shat, ate, dressed, drove to school. Only to be confronted by a near-empty campus. Apparently, it was a holiday.
At loose ends, Bob drove round the city, the city where he lived. It was all painful. Every building, every stoplight, every couple locked onto each other like grim death, reminded Bob just how alone he was. Bob was abandoned on a desert island, an island called Home. He had a brief, fleeting impulse to drive his Honda off a cliff. As far as he knew, there were no cliffs nearby.
Bob drove by Rick’s. There was a strange car in Rick’s driveway, a Volkswagen with a flower on the antenna. A woman’s car. A not-Sandra woman.
Bob drove on.
Bob went to Bob’s.
It was 11eleven a.m. and Bob wondered if it was too early for lunch. He decided not. He made himself a salmon-salad sandwich and took it and a bag of chips to the living room. Plate in lap, he turned on the TV and found a tennis match being played. Somewhere a tennis match was being played. The two combatants were foreigners with unpronounceable names that Bob had never heard before. It was diversion enough.
Afterwards, Bob put his dish in the sink. He thought about rinsing it and putting it in the dishwasher but decided to forego that stage until later. For Bob this was sloppiness akin to leaving dirty underwear on the floor. He was trying to free himself from the merciless grip of assiduousness.
Bob went to his bedroom, in search of pornographic videos. Bob needed to pleasure himself. Depression had kept him from his duties and he was backed up. A warm insistence stirred in Bob’s apparatus, a compression, a pulse in the scrotum. He found an appropriate tape—one he hadn’t utilized in a while—and took it back to the living room. The light was pouring in through the windows like honey. Honey. It was a little too bright for such a private act, but Bob was beyond such consideration.
On screen, there was no preface to the action, no buildup. The scene opened on a naked couple, spread like gutted fowl on a cheesy bed, the bleach- blonde woman mouthing the oversized linga of an athletic stud. Bob opened his own shorts. His manhood was wee. Bob could only grip it with two fingers; there was no purchase.
Bob refocused his attention on the screen. Yes, that was erotic activity. Yes, it was quite exciting. Bob’s button would not activate.
Argh, Bob thought. Distracted, is what I am, Bob cogitated until he identified his hitch. Something was bothering Bob. Then he had it: the plate was still in the sink. Bob held his pants with one hand, shambled into the kitchen, took said plate in his one free hand and shoved it into the dishwasher.
Back in front of the TV, the couple had gone on without him. Our heroine now rode the stud in what Bob believed was called the Cowboy Position. Bob’s libido awakened asudden. It was a nice session.
Afterwards, Bob lay awash in his own fluid, pants at his ankles, TV back on tennis. Bob’s mind drifted. He may have even drowsed. Without warning there came a knocking at the door. Bob arose as if he’d been caught doing something shameful. He stumbled, attempting to lift his trousers and make the door in one movement. The knocking continued.
“Wait,” Bob said.
With some difficulty he managed to rebuckle his pants. He opened the door. It was Honey.
“Jesus,” she said in greeting. “What were you doing?”
“What do you mean?” Bob asked.
Honey looked at Bob the way one might look at a dog which had tried to hump a hassock.
Bob switched gears. “What do you need?” he asked.
“Did I leave my camera here?” Honey asked, breezing by him.
It’s my camera, thought Bob. But he said nothing. The sneaky guilt he felt, incongruously or not, made Bob meek. Even meeker than usual.
He could hear Honey rummaging around in the bedroom. Oh, God, Bob thought, I left the bag of videos on the bed. Shit, he thought. And his hand went to his lower stomach where there was a good-sized soggy patch. Honey was going to smirk at him. He didn’t need that right now.
Honey emerged from the hallway, camera in hand. Her face was—it was—superior—and smirk-ready.
Bob started to speak before she could ridicule him.
Honey was too fast.
“You left a dirty plate in the sink,” Honey said, as she headed for the door. “You’re slipping,” she said, parting.
“I don’t understand,” Rick said that night.
“Dammit, I’m haunted, spooked, visited by something from another realm.”
“Because you forgot to put a dish in the dishwasher.”
“I didn’t—and the toothpaste cap. And the sage.”
Rick barked an unintentional laugh.
“Bob, the spices?”
“Yes, they’re always alphabetized, see. Always.”
“Don’t panic, buddy. You know what I think? Honey is messing with you.”
Bob thought about this for a moment.
“The spice rack maybe. But she didn’t sneak in and uncap the toothpaste. And—wait—see, she was the one who pointed out the dirty plate. Oh, wait, you think she took it out of the dishwasher? No, no, that’s not right. She didn’t know that I had just been bothered—that I had just put it away.”
“So, what you’re saying is, something unseen is at work. Poltergeists that have nothing better to do than mess with your alphabetization.”
“No, don’t you see—what if this is actually how they get you—not rattling chains or footsteps in the attic or table knocking—but by small, seemingly insignificant moves—just a little each day to make you doubt your own volition—to make you aware of them.”
“Okay, now you’re creeping me out. That’s—just, well, stupid.”
“But it creeps you out.”
“Okay, look, you wanna sleep at my house for a while? It would be cool. I think you’re haunted all right, by loneliness. You’re just not used to being alone.”
“No, no—what about—who was at your house? You had a woman—”
“Yes, right. Kathy, Kathy Faulk.”
“Kathy from high school?”
“Right.”
“And Sandra—Hhow did you—never mind. How do you ever? You’re—insatiable.”
”B—”
“Sorry, that was unkind. I’m—jealous, I guess. Anyway—I’m all right alone. Really.”
Bob went home that night feeling even more remote from sympathy, an alien to human compassion. Even his best friend who understood everything was distancing himself. Okay, it wasn’t literally true—Bob was indulging in self-pity, relishing it really. Rolling around in isolation like a rooting swine. Bob was spooked into spiraling solipsism.
The house seemed hot, as hot as love’s flaming climate. Bob was uncomfortable in his own skin—he itched. He rubbed at himself, wanting to strip away everything, everything that held him, clothed him, everything that made him Bob. He settled for pulling all his clothes off. He kicked pants, shirt, briefs into the air and let them fall where they would. He was sweating.
Bob Plumb turned around like a dog situating itself and looked frenetically about. His body felt prickly, yet alive—alive! He rubbed his hand over his oh- so- solid protoplasm—his arms, ribcage, his belly, thighs, crotch. Desire stirred momentarily. But onanism was not what Bob was seeking. What was it?
Bob lay down on the crappy carpet in his living room. The ceiling above him whirled like the souped-up heavens. The water spot in the corner resembled a head, in profile, speaking, its moist mouth permanently ajar.
And, as he lay there, Bob thought about his life, how wrong it had gone, how it was his fault partly, but not entirely. Some things had just happened, like they might happen to any man. As natural as a shower of rain.
It was then that Bob noticed his two pieces of wall art, reproductions in cheap frames. One was Chagall’s “Bouquet with Flying Lovers.” The other Larry Rivers’ “Parts of the Body: French Vocabulary Lesson.” Someone had moved them. The Chagall was where the Rivers used to be, and vice versa.
Bob considered the new placement of his prints. And he smiled.
Let’s do a gentle fade here. We’ve gone with Bob about as far as we can go. His ignis fatuus is not our ignis fatuus. Each to his or her own phantoms, his or her own hauntings, and so on. Sleep well, Bob Plumb.
The Boy Who
Used Up a Word:
Timmy Erasmus Timmers was a kid. He was just an average kid. He liked basketball, video games, and meat-lover’s pizzas. He liked Charlie Chaplin movies and Encyclopedia Brown books and The Beatles. He even liked his little sister, Annabeth.
So it was not any special, concealed, or secret magical power in the eleven-year-old that led to the strange occurrence that caused such a stir in Baileysville. And then beyond. Timmy would later say he was just messing around, experimenting. Not in the evil-scientist sense but in the kid-with-nothing-to-do-on-a-Saturday sense.
***
The truth is that Timmy Timmers used up a word. He had talked to his friend Ed “Jackpot” Burton at school that Friday about the possibility. Ed thought it was a keen idea and was anxious to help.
But Timmy wanted to do it himself.
His hypothesis was this: if he said a word enough times he would use it up. It would cease to exist, disappear even from the world’s largest, unabridged dictionary. That was his working hypothesis. Simple enough, if you have the patience.
