“He said that Teacher Josh can now feed and fuck us,” Alma said. “I beg your pardon: feed us and fuck her.”
“Please, stop!” Ana said.
“I’m just saying what your husband said.”
There was still a way to explain this into some acceptable shape: pathologically jealous husband plus excessively devout teacher equals terrible, terrible misunderstanding. Kimmy panned from Ana to him and back—like guilty children, the two of them conspicuously avoided eye contact. Why was it so difficult to dissemble? The one thing that parents need to give their children to increase their survival chances in this punishing world is the skill to lie blatantly and unflinchingly. Bernie was good at lying, like many a man of his age and generation; yet he failed to teach Joshua how to look a woman in the eye and deceive.
“I see,” Kimmy said. “Teacher Josh. Yes.”
“All I’m saying is I’m just saying,” Alma said. She sat down, evidently relieved to have contributed to the comprehensive unmasking. Teenagers should be rounded up and forcibly trained in lying; it should be part of the high school curriculum. We must learn to be concerned with the meaning of utterances, not with their truth. Script Idea #151: Subterfuge Summer Camp, where everyone’s a liar, except for one boy, who keeps getting punished for his suicidal honesty, providing a lesson for the rest. Title: The Lies of Others.
Ana sat down on the sofa to fully dedicate herself to weeping. Joshua had never heard her crying; he’d never even imagined her crying—she was suddenly someone else, someone whose throat was convulsing as she emitted high-pitched yelps that couldn’t be construed as anything other than hurt. Even Stagger looked up from the book he was flipping through—Female Perversions it was, too fittingly.
“Is there something you would like to say to me, Jo?” Kimmy asked. There was a time when Joshua’s mother had often delivered the very same line, expecting little Josh to grovel apologetically. One day he’d had nothing to say, and he’d said it and it was poetry.
“That was not me,” Joshua said.
“What’s that?”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Try again.”
“Her husband was in the war in Bosnia,” Joshua tried again.
“Let’s first agree on some facts: you had sex with his wife, who is also your student. Yes?”
“He was in Special Police.”
“Did you or did you not?”
The ice in her voice started cracking. Joshua wanted to grab her hands and bathe them in kisses, but he knew it wouldn’t have been a prudent move. He said:
“I was trying to help.”
“Did you or did you not?”
“He did,” Alma said, and Ana, tears streaming down her cheeks, swung from the sofa to backhand Alma’s biceps. There was going to be a bruise there.
“He’s an extremely dangerous man,” Joshua said.
“Well, shall we call the police, then?” Kimmy said.
“No police!” Ana yelped.
“The police would deport us,” Alma said, holding her biceps. She had an Abercrombie and Fitch shirt, her hair gelled into a cool misshape. You could tell high school boys followed her around like lemmings.
“No worries. I’m not going to be the one to call the police,” Kimmy said. “You are now Teacher Josh’s responsibility. He can now feed and fuck whoever he wants. Except for me. I’m out.”
Uninterested in the drama, what with all the pain murdered inside him, Stagger kept operating on the fringes: now he was reading postcards and notes on the fridge, including the smiley-sun Post-it Kimmy had left for Joshua. Stagger struggled to open the fridge with the hand in the cast, eschewing for some reason doing it with his left one.
“Actually, you know what? You, Teacher Josh, are out,” Kimmy said. “Yes. Get out.”
It was utterly amazing to Joshua that he was still standing and speaking, while his true and only self curled up on the filthy floor of his being to writhe like a fetus in a frying pan. The little man at the desk noted that down as well. Also, the beckoning hook above the table.
“Out!” Kimmy said.
Stagger finally succeeded in opening the fridge and clasping a bottle of beer. He was as indifferent as the vase and the flowers and the Lord.
“Do you have a bottle opener somewhere?” Stagger shouted from the kitchen.
* * *
Were this taking place in a movie, here would be a nice cut: all of them winced simultaneously as Kimiko ferociously slammed the door behind them. “This is crazy,” Stagger said, the beer bottle between his hands. He attempted to bite off the cap, but Alma took it from him and opened it with a cigarette lighter she magically pulled out of her pocket. Stagger high-fived her, impressed. They bonded in disengagement, in their absence from the moment.
“I’m sorry,” Ana said. There were many questions Joshua could have thought of asking her: Why in the world did you come to Kimiko’s? Did you not understand that consensual sex is a completed transaction? Why didn’t you mind your own business, stay away from mine? In this country everyone is constitutionally required to mind their own goddamn business. The way we do business here is mind our own. Otherwise, the social contract is as good as toilet paper.
“It’s okay,” he said, disingenuously.
CUT TO: A fortress-sized SUV rolling into the frame.
It parked right in front of the house and Rachel and Janet emerged from it. Mom stopped in her tracks to stare at her son, unable to parse the foreign presences around him. Janet opened the trunk to get out a large pie, but before she closed it, she noticed Joshua and the incongruous others: half-naked Stagger with one hand in a cast and a beer in the other; a woman with smeared mascara; an Abercrombie-and-Fitched teenager.
“Rhubarb,” Janet proclaimed, pie in hand.
All stood motionless, contemplating the rhubarb pie. When I find myself flummoxed and bound by death’s ties, and the agonies of the abyss something something, when I am wound up in misery and grief, please, Lord, let my ass slip free without serious repercussions.
“Are we not supposed to have dinner tonight with Kimiko and you?” Janet asked. “Did you not invite us? It was tonight, right, Rachel?”
“Tonight,” Mom confirmed.
“Fuck me,” Joshua said.
“Joshua!” Mom said.
“Where is your duffel bag?” Stagger asked.
“Please explain,” Janet said.
Joshua trawled his mind for something to say, something that would allow him to avoid explaining, but nothing came up.
“Now is not a good time,” he said.
“Now is the only time,” Janet insisted.
“You left your duffel bag back there, Jonjo,” Stagger said.
“We should probably get out of here,” Joshua suggested.
“What duffel bag?” Janet asked. “Who are these people? Why don’t I know what’s going on? I don’t like this one bit.”
They all packed into the car but went nowhere, sitting in silence until the windows fogged up. Janet started the car and the heat, and turned to face Joshua and Ana in the backseat. The Abasement of Joshua Levin, by Yahweh Asshole.
“Okay, Jackie,” Janet said. Mom was facing him too. “What’s up?”
“Jan…” Joshua whimpered. Why was it so hard to speak? Stagger was in the far backseat with Alma, who was eating the pie with her fingers, feeding some to him. She must be high, Joshua reckoned. That must be the bond.
“Don’t Jan me! Talk!”
And he talked, necessarily omitting certain salacious details. But he let the story come out of him as it was, relating in spurts and umms its confusion and twists and the absence of a comprehensible narrative arc. He did own up to the fact that Ana’s husband—as well as Kimmy—was justified in being severely pissed. “Acts were committed,” he admitted. “Feelings were hurt.” His honesty made him want to vomit. If he lived through this, he would never stop lying. He rolled the window down, then rolled it up. Rolled it down, rolled it up. Down, u
p. Seven times up, eight times down.
“You haven’t been my little brother since you were my little brother, Jackie, but it seems to me you’re fucking it up big time here,” Janet said.
“Janet! Language!” Mom said. She used to have a swear jar: Janet and Joshua had had to put in a quarter each time they’d uttered a curse word. They’d never found out how she spent it. The heyday of Janet’s teenagehood would’ve paid for a vacation in France.
“Shut the fuck up, Rachel!”
Mom rolled her eyes at the language. It was her default gesture of helplessness—she rolled her eyes through her marriage and divorce; she’d probably roll them at the Messiah.
“Listen, Janet—” Joshua interjected.
“No, you listen, Joshua. I know what I said about Ms. Mitsubishi—”
“Matsushita,” Joshua said.
“Okay, Matsushita. The point is: she’s good for you. She’s a serious person.”
It had never been clear to Joshua why Janet disliked Kimmy. He used to think they’d get along splendidly, being professional successful women and all, but something had gone very wrong at some point, which point Joshua had entirely missed.
“This is a great pie, ma’am,” Stagger said from the back.
“Thank you,” Janet said, not bothering to look at him. Ana was looking out at Magnolia: the barely budding brown trees, the somber tendrils of April grass, Kimmy’s orderly porch. Stagger and Alma kept eating the pie, as if it were a wedding cake.
“It is not his fault—” Ana said.
“Please stay out of this,” Janet said.
“We had passion,” Ana said.
“Passion?” Janet scoffed. “Passion is a fragrance brand.”
“What’s done cannot be undone,” Joshua said.
“Yes it can!” Janet shouted. “It can be undone. Everything can be undone. Go back in there and fall on your knees and undo it. Tell her that this woman”—she pointed at Ana—“drugged you and raped you. Tell her it wasn’t you who did it. Tell her you’ll never do it again. Show some leadership. Un-fucking-do it!”
“The cat is dead,” Stagger said, his mouth full of rhubarb pie.
“Excuse me?” Janet said.
“The cat is dead,” Stagger repeated, having swallowed.
“What cat?”
“Kimiko’s cat. It’s in the duffel bag. Which is in the house,” Stagger said. “I reckon the cat is a huge problem for Jonjo. In this particular situation.”
“The cat?” Janet turned to look out the windshield at a winter-exhausted squirrel that froze halfway up a tree.
“Curiosity didn’t kill the cat. It was Ana’s crazy husband,” Stagger said, and Alma giggled. She was a little patient, Joshua thought, growing up to be a very big one.
The squirrel spiraled speedily around the tree trunk, first down, then up, as if remembering something important—it must have been the absence of the cat, the gratuitous freedom. Janet started slamming the steering wheel with the palms of her hands. Many years ago, during an apocalyptic teenage tantrum, she’d smacked Joshua’s aquarium with a soup ladle, then proceeded to crush with her foot the tropical little fish flapping on the floor.
“What is it with you people!?” she hollered. “Why is every single man in my life a fucking idiot? Why can’t you just quietly go about ruining your life without getting me involved? I don’t want to deal with your dead goddamn cat in the middle of my fucking separation!”
She pounded at the steering wheel with terrifying fury, the SUV shaking. When she stopped, the soundless aftermath was even more terrifying.
“Okay,” Janet whispered. “Everybody out.”
Alma opened the door and stepped out instantly, as if she’d been waiting for the command all along. Stagger had a hard time getting out, what with his broken arm, but Alma helped him. Joshua stored away the weirdness of their quickie friendship for a future better understanding.
“Thank you for the pie, ma’am!” Stagger said.
“You’re welcome,” Janet said. “Should’ve poisoned it.”
The backseat was covered with pie debris. Joshua was reluctant to leave the car, because he didn’t want to be outside, exposed. At some point in human history, someone somewhere thought of making rhubarb pie. How does humanity arrive at such decisions? If there is no God, who made the first rhubarb pie? Mom nodded understandingly, approving of Janet’s instructions. Back in their adolescence, Janet and Joshua had conducted long debates trying to determine which one of them had been better loved and understood by their mother. In the end, they split the difference: Joshua had been better loved and Janet better understood.
“Out. All of you. Get out,” Janet repeated.
“Janet!” Mom pleaded. Ana opened the door and stepped out.
“Enjoy rest of your day,” Ana said, unsarcastically. She was hard to hurt, Joshua realized, because she must’ve been hurt hard. It was then that he recognized that what happened between them couldn’t just be about sex. She was right: the transaction had not been completed. There was more.
“You too, Rachel! Get the hell out,” Janet barked.
Joshua still could not move, but Ana held on to the door handle, keeping it open for him, and he followed her out.
“Out, Rachel!”
Mom got out, grunting. Stagger offered his broken hand to help her descend from the SUV’s high step. The moment she landed back on earth, Mom turned to Joshua and gave him a scolding look—many years ago, that look would’ve meant no movies for the rest of the school year. Janet shifted into gear and drove away.
“Janet did it again,” Joshua said.
“Oh no, Joshua Levin, you did it again,” Mom said. “And it’s the best one so far.”
“Fuck off, Mom,” Joshua said.
She was just about to roll her eyes when Kimmy’s screams arrived from the house to bang on everyone’s eardrums. She must have discovered the most valuable thing in the world.
INT. BASEMENT LAB — NIGHT
Woman, wearing latex gloves, prepares a syringe. She sucks something out of a petri dish with it. She pushes the air out of the syringe, taps on it. She turns around to face a cage, with Boy in it, obviously zombified, MOANING with hunger. Major Klopstock sleeps in the other cage, but its door is open. Woman approaches Boy’s cage. When he reaches for her between the bars, she grabs his hand at the wrist to avoid his long nails and plunges the needle into his forearm. Boy HOWLS as she empties the syringe, thrashing around in horrible pain. Then he stops. Woman watches him. The undead Boy looks pretty dead, his overgrown hair spread around his head like a halo. Woman closes her eyes in defeat and takes off her latex gloves. She looks over to Major K’s cage. His sleep is so deep it looks like he might never wake up.
Joshua was in the dark at the bottom of the stairs; up at the top there was light. He needed to climb toward it, but Bushy dug his claws in his calf, clinging to it as he stepped on the next stair. Joshua smacked him to shake him off, but Bushy kept clawing up his leg, progressing toward his eyes with the intention of scratching them out. If Joshua could reach the light, Bushy would be burned by it like a louse with a cigarette, and Joshua would be safe. But he also didn’t want to kill Bushy. The only thing he could do, scared and angry, was ascend in the hope that the situation would resolve itself. Before it did, he woke up.
* * *
His first fully conscious thought was of Kimmy, and the plain truth presented itself to him: he hurt her, callously. She put her love and trust in him, and he wagged his dick at it all, betraying her. From here on in, whenever she thought or spoke of him she’d have a gut-tearing feeling in her stomach; like a memory of food poisoning, he’d be to her. Where there had been love, now there would be hatred, and hideous stomach cramps. She would have no compunction telling all of their friends—her friends, really—about the sordid magnitude of Joshua’s assholeness. For as long as she lived, there would be at least one person in the world—and likely many more—considering Joshua lesser than a salmonel
la bug. It was a problem: the goyter of her judgment would forever bulge out of his neck, forcing his head to bow.
Then he thought of Bernie and his evil cells; but then, he couldn’t think about that right now. There was nothing he could do now; not even call Janet. Bernie was a big boy, able to fend for himself until Joshua recovered.
He heard the bedroom door opening; the toes on the floor, the pee twinkle in the toilet. He could tell it was Ana: the self-effacing care not to wake him up; the discomfort in her step; the grace. She was hurt too. With how many layers of hurt has the Lord encrusted us?
In one of Joshua’s half-ass scripts a scientist, Dr. Oldenburg, discovered gateways between many parallel universes, where the same events took place, only with slight delays. Dr. Oldenburg figured out how to transport himself between the universes, effectively traveling in time, which came in handy when he had to prevent the death of the woman he loved. But then he discovered that the number of universes was infinite, as was the number of differences among them. Dr. Oldenburg was a superhero in one universe and helpless in another—to save his beloved he had to find the right universe. The Right Life, the script was called. It didn’t work because all of the worlds were tediously confusing, the differences among them obsessively minimal and thus boring. Also, he never got anywhere near finishing it. But now, who knows?
He pretended to be sleeping as she was making her way back to the bedroom.
He heard her stop and he knew she was looking at him, perhaps hoping he’d be awake. What did she see? A salmonella man in his thirties, sleeping on a sofa in a T-shirt and underwear. There was at least one way to measure the quality of a life: if you slept on a sofa in your own apartment at the age of thirty-three, things were not going well. She stood there (where, exactly?) for a while and Joshua made himself stay so still that he endured a beastly itch spreading all over his scalp down to his spine, or whatever was left of it. Just as he gave in and decided to scratch his dandruff off to the point of bleeding, she slipped back into the bedroom. He’d once seen a hair-care commercial in which one of the ecstatic shampoo users was identified as a dandruff survivor.
The Making of Zombie Wars Page 15
