The Taste of Penny

by Jeff Parker

  And this is when Jeremy stops. Sam stops too, figuring that Jeremy is bearing the brunt of this thing.

  Jeremy holds up the piece of paper he’s been working on and clears his throat. The Two Men eye them from across the parking lot like in an old Western. Jeremy begins to read:

  “Mr. Jack Maldon shook hands with me; but not very warmly, I believed; and with an air of languid patronage, at which I secretly took great umbrage…A wife…who properly conducted her economy, should take no umbrage at such little fancies of her husband, but be always certain that he would return…”

  Sam ignores what he thinks he mistakenly perceives as a tremble in Jeremy’s voice. He is not mistaken.

  “How fathers should not draw too ready rein/Nor sons take umbrage in a trice/At father’s counsels…”

  Sam recognizes fully the miscalculation made here when the Two Men recommence their approach and the sound of footsteps in hasty retreat appears first from beside him, where Jeremy was just a moment ago standing, reciting his speech, then from further and further behind him. On his stocky legs, Jeremy trucks through the parking lot. He moves well through the morning. Sam wonders where exactly he plans to go. Jeremy figures he was on his way out anyhow.

  The Two Men stand in front of Sam.

  “There’s so many things you can do with a truck,” he offers.

  Just one of the Two Men, the one who looks like he used to be a cop, takes his shot, which Sam manages to block, but then the other hand of the one Two Men comes out of nowhere because the eye patch makes for this huge blind spot. Sam stays where he falls on the wet asphalt. His teeth feel pushed. His mouth, drowned in blood, tastes of penny.

  The Two Men look down on him as the grocery store cop waltzes over.

  “This poor guy’s keeling here,” says one of the Two Men.

  “Must of just fell,” one of them said.

  “Must of,” says the other.

  They both high-five the cop.

  He dreams about the Red-haired Girl’s fingernails. In the dream he vividly experiences the crack as they snap between his teeth…to gauge he puts his own thumb in his mouth and pushes around on his teeth. They are all there, but the front ones give, roughly as much play as the steering wheel on the F-150…the cop returns with a fat man dressed in grocery store manager clothes. They look down at him. “Might be he’s a vagrant,” the cop says. “Hey,” the manager says. “You speak English? No loitering.”

  For a little while Sam has all at the same time a scratched cornea, a penny impacted in his esophagus, and a mild concussion. Not to mention loose teeth. A nurse has coated his fingernails in iodine interpreting them as injuries based on their assumption that he’s homeless. He tells him about the penny. Then he’s in the radiology suite and the doctor is cramming a balloon down his throat (fluoroscopic balloon catheter extraction), then inflating the balloon (which is like taking a deep breath without taking the breath), and pushing the penny into his stomach.

  They put him in a bed next to a kid who has swallowed a small light bulb. They apparently group like injuries together in emergency rooms. They want to keep him there for a couple hours, and since no one has brought up the whole insurance thing yet he doesn’t talk too much. If they figure he’s a charity case let them figure he’s a charity case. The kid keeps hogging the bathroom in their area to vomit. And after one trip he emerges smiling and holding a little unbroken bulb between his thumb and index finger.

  When Sam takes his turn, he has what you would consider to be your standard, normal bowel movement. There is no plink, nor any feeling like you might expect with a penny coming out of your ass. He does not even think he’s expelled it, but he checks anyway, and there it is submerged in the bottom of the pot. It seems larger and shinier than he’d expected. Sam has never seen a penny so bright and shiny.

  He uses the back end of the toilet scrubber to slide it up the porcelain. Once he gets it near the rim he reaches in and peels it off. He washes the penny and his hands under the cool water from the hospital sink. He dries off with the thick paper towels and holds the penny up to the fluorescent light.

  In that light Sam catches sight of his fingernails. Underneath the hot sauce and iodine they are beginning to grow over, maybe for the first time, with small but definite frosty white tips, still jagged but smoothing. The trajectory is clear. They will grow up and through the inflamed pink cuticle. They will have to. There is nowhere else to go. This will be painful, but the final result is something that Sam wants to admire. He wants to see that. For the time being at least, he thinks, I am holding in my hands eleven accomplishments.

  An Evening of Jenga®

  “ FOUNDATION,” VADIM SAID. “BASE,” HE SAID.

  “When it gets right down to it,” I said, “if you’re taking middles, you’re encumbering a piece is what you’re doing.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m glad you’re not an architect.”

  “Vadim, allow me to enlighten your Russian ass: Skyscrapers sway. Did you know that skyscrapers sway, Vadim? Why is it do you think that skyscrapers sway? They sway because they are flexible, and flexible structures are less likely to fall.”

  “Bad analogy. Jenga isn’t a building. It’s a game in which one must, on occasion, take middles.”

  “That wasn’t an analogy,” Inna said. “That was a statement.”

  “I thought we were going somewhere for dessert, babe,” Liza said.

  “Bad statement,” Vadim said.

  “Let’s just play one more game, the four of us. Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  “Hand me that level,” Vadim said. He put it on the table beside the tower. “Satisfied?”

  “Bring this side up another tick,” I said.

  Vadim tapped a wood chip under the table leg with a riveting hammer, and I said, “Stop. Perfecto.”

  “Cheesecake,” Liza said, “is fun.”

  Vadim’s retarded brother Bipkus pounded on the wall, which is how he asks for more pizza. They keep Bipkus locked in his room whenever we’re over so he doesn’t creep everybody out.

  “His Lowness calls,” Inna said but didn’t move. Then someone knocked on the front door and she scurried across the hardwood floor.

  “Mehmet,” she said. “You came.”

  “I forgot to tell you about this guy,” Vadim said.

  Mehmet came in. He’s scrawny but with a hard face, the skin on his nose and cheeks the texture of bricks. Inna told him to grab some pizza. She dabbed grease off a piece then delivered it into Bipkus’s room. “Want your tip, lady?” Bipkus said to her. “Don’t eat yellow snow.”

  “You’re welcome,” Inna said, “you turbid shit.”

  Vadim’s ears turned red and he said to Mehmet, “Hey, neighbor, come and get your Jenga on.”

  “Where are you from?” Liza asked Mehmet.

  “Turkey,” he said.

  “Mehmet moved here after his family died,” Inna said.

  “Maybe you heard about this,” he said, “big earthquake.”

  “An earthquake,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “How do you play?”

  “We’re trying to build this tower as high as we can,” I said. “The person who knocks it down loses.”

  “The best one to start with,” Vadim said, “is this one right here.” He poked out the bottom middle. It skidded across the table and landed on the soft white carpet. I shook my head.

  “When was the earthquake?” Inna asked.

  “We thought the whole world was crackling to pieces,” Mehmet said. “I was under a hot tub—I worked in a hot tub store. It was the only thing that saved me.”

  “A hot tub,” I said.

  Liza took a middle and smiled at me. Bipkus sang Kid Rock into his karaoke machine behind his closed bedroom door.

  Inna said, “Vadim.”

  “Sorry guys,” Vadim said. “He’s bored.”

  “Tell him to come out,” Liza said. She looked at Inna.

  “I’m so happy to have my own
bathroom. It’s like I have my own life again,” Inna said. She bobbed a grape from the glass of sangria.

  “Hey buddy,” Vadim shouted. “Can you cut that shit out?”

  Bipkus screamed, “Bah wit da wah.” He turned up the volume on the karaoke machine.

  “Isn’t it Bah wit da bah?” I said.

  “I don’t understand this song,” Vadim said.

  Mehmet reached for the tower. From the bottom row, which was already missing its middle, he pulled a side. It capsized. A block bounced into Liza’s sangria glass and it spilled onto the white carpet. Mehmet held the block stupidly where the tower just was.

  “Let me clean it with something,” said Mehmet. He carefully placed the block on the table.

  Liza told him no, she’d get it, but Inna told her to sit down. Inna got up, came back with the pitcher of sangria, and refilled Liza’s glass.

  “We’re not even going to bother cleaning,” Inna said. She sat back down and started rebuilding the tower. “Living here with”—she pointed at Bipkus’s room. “Living here with this person is living with stain. One more won’t kill us.”

  “That’s not fair, hon,” Vadim said. “You know, he’s my brother.”

  Inna pressed her finger into the middle of the red blotch then looked at her finger, licked it.

  “I’m sorry,” Mehmet said. “It’s a hard game.”

  “Didn’t take much physics did you?” I say. “I’m just kidding. Listen. That was an impossible move. If there’s three blocks making up the row, and the middle one’s gone. You can’t take either side. That row’s done. Similarly, if one or both side is gone, you can’t take a middle. See what I’m saying?”

  “It’s the nature of a disagreement between us,” Vadim said. “The object of the game is to build the tower as high as possible without knocking it down. So there’s this constant negotiation between sturdiness and potential height. My friend thinks that you should never take a middle, but, see, that makes for a teetering tower. Every five or so levels, you need a stable one, and you get a stable one by taking a middle.”

  “Look, Mehmet, speaking of obvious, if you’re going for height, you don’t take middles. Unfortunately some people don’t subscribe to the Theory of the Obvious.”

  “Thank you, Herb, for The American Perspective,” Vadim said. He poured glasses of vodka for the three men.

  “It is just a game, boys,” Liza said.

  “I think that I am now getting this,” Mehmet said.

  “Can we go get dessert now?”

  Inna finished stacking but the walls were uneven. Vadim trued it with the straightedge. I went first, taking a bottom side.

  “Liza, you’re a sweet girl,” Vadim said. “If it was Liza, I know Liza would accept your brother in her home. If you had a brother like Bipkus, Herb, she would take him in and things, like little things, he did that were kind of weird she would just accept because he’s your brother. I swear, you know, I love Inna.” He reached under the glass table and touched her foot. “But if I didn’t have Inna, and you weren’t with Herb, I would fall in love with you, Liza. I’m just saying.

  “Seriously, you guys are our best friends,” Vadim said. “I wanted to tell you that. Even you, Mehmet. Collectively you make up one unit of best friendedship. You plural are our best friend. We mean that. Let’s drink a toast.”

  We clinked glasses. Vadim poured more vodka, and Liza took an easy middle from right in the center of the tower.

  Mehmet stared at the tower for a long time. We drank vodka and sangria while we waited. Vadim tried to show him which ones were easy.

  “See,” Vadim said, “like these.” He illustrated. He poked casually at middles up and down the tower. Then he poked them all back in. I didn’t say anything about the middles even though there were sides that would come out just as smooth.

  Mehmet nodded.

  “And it’s just a game,” Liza said. “Don’t worry so much.”

  Mehmet hovered his finger near the center of the tower. He moved his head around like a praying mantis.

  “What do you mean by that, it’s just a game?” I asked Liza. “I don’t really understand what you’re trying to get at by saying that all the time.”

  “I mean we’re playing something. There’s no deep meaning behind it.”

  “If it’s just a game, then why do you always take middles?”

  “I take middles, Herb, because they’re the easiest ones to take.”

  “It’s funny,” I said. “If you really thought it was just a game, wouldn’t it be rather coincidental that you always take the pieces that I believe shouldn’t be taken? Wouldn’t you just once take a side, for variety?”

  “Middles are easier. I like easy. But if I really thought, I would think that I want some dessert.”

  “It is a game and it isn’t,” Inna said.

  Mehmet dropped his hand to the bottom row, poking out the load-bearing middle, and the tower crashed to the table.

  “I am sorry,” he said, blushing. “It is difficult one.” He went to the bathroom.

  My normal mode: Take world as literally as possible, observe each action, hear words, respond when response is necessary. Resist ponder. Repeat.

  After the second time Mehmet knocked down the tower, I began to do something I don’t normally do until more vodka: I thought. I thought, What the fuck? Here I am, I thought, in a room full of foreigners, including my wife. And this guy is trying to fuck with me and my country with this game.

  “Who the hell is this guy?” I said.

  “He smokes by the dumpster,” Inna said.

  “Do tits fly in Turkey?” I said. “Does gravity operate? Did you move to the all-immigrant complex?”

  “Don’t be rude,” Liza said. “It’s almost eleven.”

  “No, I heard about this,” Vadim said. “There was like this coal mine in one of these southern places or Africa, and they wanted the native workers or whatever to pick up the coal when it fell out of the carts. They didn’t speak the language though and they didn’t have people who spoke the language. Don’t ask me how they got them to work. Don’t ask me how. They made this little comic, like a poster but with comic frames, and it showed a guy reaching down and picking up a piece of coal and putting it in the cart. Of course…we read left to right. These people read right to left. So they started taking the coal out of the carts and dropping it on the ground. Cultural relativism. I shit you not.”

  Bipkus emerged and kicked at the bathroom door. We heard Mehmet saying something but none of us could tell if he was saying, “Mehmet, Mehmet” or “minute, minute.”

  “Hey buddy,” Vadim said. “It’s our across-the-hall neighbor in there.”

  Inna put her face in her hands.

  “Ba wit da wah,” Bipkus said. He drooled. He needed not drool, but he turns the retarded on when there’s company.

  “Just give him a minute. He’ll be done in a minute. Have some more pizza. Help yourself.”

  Bipkus looked around the corner at us. “Oh, hey, Herb, Liza.” He disappeared and the door to his room slammed shut.

  Inna scraped the backs of her fingernails underneath her chin.

  “Inna,” Vadim said, “when we decided to bring Bipkus over we knew—”

  “We decided to bring Bipkus over?”

  “Inna,” Vadim said, “we’ve discussed it. He’s my brother.”

  She laughed and sipped the sangria. “Teasing. I love cleaning piss out of the bathroom sink.”

  “You want to do this in front of our friends?” Vadim said. “Inna is still adjusting to living with Bipkus,” he said to us. “This space is helping.”

  Mehmet came out of the bathroom and looked strangely at us.

  “Sorry, neighbor. My brother. He’s demanding about his bathroom.”

  Bipkus threw open the door and blew by Mehmet into his bathroom.

  “It’s I should be sorry,” Mehmet said. He’s smirking, I thought.

  “No way,” Vadim said. “One more
game. We’re getting this thing right.”

  I built the tower up that time. I described in plain language the spaces that open up in the crevices between the blocks. “The weight shifts,” I said to Mehmet, “and certain ones come out at certain times and certain other ones at certain other times.”

  “You actually look more retarded than your retarded brother,” Inna said to Vadim. This is something that Inna had said before about her husband to me when she was drunk.

  “Inna,” Liza said.

  I guided Mehmet’s hand—the skin was brown and smooth and hotter than I’d expected—and slid out a side. Mehmet stationed it at the top of the tower. Liza and I erupted in applause.

  “If we stood you next to Bipkus in a line-up for retards, you’d get picked over him hands down,” Inna said. “Your face is oblong. One side of your head is like an old balloon.”

  Vadim took a middle in silence. Bipkus pounded on the wall.

  Mehmet’s hand flashed toward the remaining bottom block, but my hand was faster. I snagged his wrist.

  “Don’t do it, motherfucker. There are no hot tubs here to protect you from the Earthquake of Herb.”

  “What are you doing?” Liza said. “How much did he drink?”

  “Herb, let him go,” Vadim said.

  “I’m not letting him go, Vadim.” I tightened my grip. “Correction, you want me to let him go, you ask him this question for me. Go ahead and ask him. Ask him if he’s knocking this tower down on purpose. Ask him if he’s trying to say something. Ask him.”

  “Say what, Herb, what is everyone trying to say?” Liza said.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” I said.

  “Sir, please, release my arm,” Mehmet said.

  “You’re being too touchy, Herb,” Vadim said. “It’s an interpretation.”

  “It’s a little—it’s not so fun for me,” I said.