The Minotaur: Takes a Cigarette Break

by Steven Sherrill

  The engine will not run. The Minotaur puts the key into the ignition and presses his thumb to the start button. The engine turns over once, then fires with a detectable torque to one side as the heavy cam throws the pistons out into the cylinders and yanks them back. The engine sputters, resists the throttle, then stalls. Common sense leads the Minotaur; he checks the easiest things first. He tries the engine again, and the smell of gasoline fills his nostrils, creeps into the back of his throat. It took him decades to get used to this smell. The carburetors are flooded, but that means they are getting fuel. The engine will not run, but it will fire; there is sufficient spark coming from the battery. The Minotaur thinks of the possibilities.

  He takes his toolbox from the back of Shane’s car, finds the ratchet and the spark plug socket easily because his tools are well ordered. When he takes the plug out of the right-side cylinder and reattaches the wire, he holds it close to the finned cylinder head and presses the start button. A minute white spark arcs back and forth.

  On its kickstand the BMW leans to the left. When the Minotaur takes the spark plug from that side its threaded tip is black with carbon and wet from unburned fuel. The plug is fouled. He doesn’t even have to check it, but he does anyway. There is no spark when he holds it to the cylinder and presses the ignition. This is why the motorcycle will not start—the Minotaur knows it beyond doubt. But he knows, too, that he is more comfortable here alone with the engine than he will be with the young men in the apartment. The Minotaur tinkers aimlessly until he can muster himself to face them again.

  The instant he steps up to Robert’s door the Minotaur knocks. He wants to avoid the potential of overheard conversation. Inside, the apartment is nearly frigid. It is also darkened, the blinds closed to thin slits. An air-conditioning unit all but fills the large window at the back of the room. It struggles mightily as it spews, in addition to ice-cold air, a cacophony of rattles and loose-belt squeaks. Shane and Mike sit at the kitchen table, its Formica top chipped and splintered at one corner, the Naugahyde seats in need of upholstery. Shane keeps pulling the curtain aside to look out the kitchen window. They both clutch beers, and there are already empty cans in the sink. After letting the Minotaur inside, Robert returns to the long desk opposite the kitchen table. Chair swiveled to face Mike and Shane, he perches nervously, drinking from an anodized aluminum cup, its yellow color refracted in the condensation coating its surface. A computer that nearly covers the desk top hums and flickers in the half-light.

  As clearly as he can the Minotaur explains to Mike about the fouled spark plug. Mike takes the problem seriously. Too seriously. With exaggerated determination he flips through the phone book and locates a motorcycle repair shop, then convinces Robert that he has no hope of selling the motorcycle without a new plug.

  “Unnhnn,” the Minotaur says, his watch now showing one o’clock; he’s wasted too much time.

  “Well …,” Robert says. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

  “Aw, man! It’s way too hot to go driving all over town looking for a spark plug,” Shane protests. “You go.”

  “It is your motorcycle, Rob,” Mike says. “And you are the guy trying to sell.”

  “Unh,” the Minotaur says, mostly to himself.

  “And you guys are going to stay here? In my apartment?”

  “Jesus Christ, Robert.” Mike feigns offense. “What do you think, that we’re going to rip you off?”

  “How about this?” Shane offers, looking out the window again. “We’ll take a dip in your pool. Stay there until you get back.”

  “It’s really only for residents,” Robert says.

  “Anybody asks,” Shane says, “we moved in yesterday.”

  “Apartment 3C,” Mike adds.

  “Unnnhh.”

  Shane grabs the remainder of a six-pack from the refrigerator before leading them out the back door. The Minotaur doesn’t want to be alone in the apartment. He feels a little hostile toward the big computer, its omnipresent humming and the periodic machinations from its bowels. Although he’s never told anyone the Minotaur feels hostile toward most things electronic, even the cash register that talks to him at the grocery store. There is a threat in the very existence of such minute and exact circuitry that touches something primal in the Minotaur. He can barely tolerate the small black-and-white television he keeps on the kitchen counter of his trailer. The Minotaur follows Mike out the door, lagging behind and wishing he were helping David, or even at work, where things are more or less predictable.

  It’s the middle of the day. A summer day. A weekday. The Minotaur is surprised at the dozen or so people scattered around the pool, a painfully blue and painfully rectangular gouge in the earth, made even more cramped by the cement and the chain-link fence that rings it. Shane takes off his shirt as he’s walking to the pool. He bunches it in his hands and, just as he jumps in the air from the side of the pool, tosses it back over his head toward the two empty chairs by the gate. Shane lands—knees drawn up, head tucked—with a big splash, whooping as he hits the water. Of the few people already in the water—two clinging to the side and talking, a couple flirting loudly in the shallow end, a woman dressed for competition and swimming the butterfly stroke—only the latter registers Shane’s intrusion. She is powerful and graceful, although completely unsuited for the confines of the small unlined pool. Her body undulates in the blue water as her arms sweep the sky once, twice before she turns and kicks off the wall. It’s silly, the Minotaur thinks, how seriously she takes herself.

  Mike kicks his sandals off beneath one of the empty chairs, drops his keys and wallet beside them and dives in. The Minotaur sits. The sun hangs directly overhead, scrutinizing, sweltering. The Minotaur isn’t bothered by the heat even though he is unshaded and wearing a buttoned shirt—the long sleeves rolled up his forearms—his work pants and black steel-toed shoes.

  When the Minotaur comes among people unexpectedly it is inevitable that his presence is disturbing to some—the woman swimming laps, for instance. When she, after completing a lap, clings to the concrete lip of the pool by the diving board catching her breath, pulls the amber-lensed goggles from her eyes, the rubber strap holding them tight to her forehead, and then sees the Minotaur, she is disturbed. Argus-like, there by the edge of the pool, she scowls with her four eyes. The woman hoists herself from the deep end, water spilling off her broad shoulders, channeling down the hard V of her trapezius, taut and dramatic beneath the black swimsuit, and fanning out over the small of her back before riding the hump of her solid buttocks as they rise from the pool. The woman does not look at the Minotaur again, and in not looking he is all she can see. She grabs a towel hanging over the chain-link fence, drapes it around her neck, walks all the way around the pool to avoid passing the Minotaur. She walks, dripping, up the concrete path with palpable indignation. Five thousand years ago the Minotaur would have devoured her, literally. But the Minotaur doesn’t remember this.

  For most the reaction isn’t so strong. Conversations stop abruptly, then begin again awkwardly, with self-conscious determination. Someone says something funny, and people try not to laugh too loudly at it. Most just ignore him.

  It is the hottest hour of a hot day. Around the pool people talk, drink, read or lie quietly in their bathing suits in the baking sun. Some are sheltered behind dark glasses and headphones hooked to compact radios lying beside them. The smells of sweat and coconut oil compete in the dense air. There was a time when the Minotaur was unfazed by the sight of flesh.

  When Mike and Shane emerge from the pool the Minotaur gets up from his seat so they can both have chairs. He stands against the fence behind them, his mouth dry, sweat glistening in his bullish nostrils. Mike and Shane rate all of the young women in the water and at the pool’s edge according to several variables.

  “What do you think, tit man? See anything you like?” Shane asks.

  “Lighten up, Shane,” Mike says. “Why don’t you go get us a smoke?”

  Shane rolls his eyes
and walks out of the fenced pool area and around the building. In fact there is much around the pool that the Minotaur likes.

  “You want to go for a swim?” Mike asks. “Robert’s probably got some trunks that’ll fit you.”

  “Unnh.” No. Chlorine stings his skin. Nor will he bare so much for strangers.

  Shane returns with a lit smoke hidden in his cupped hand. The smell of marijuana immediately attracts the attention of the group sitting just down from them. Two girls lie side by side in webbed lounge chairs, one on her belly with the full length of her thin golden back exposed to the sun, the other supine, the fabric of her already scant swimsuit tucked into itself so that as much of her flesh as possible is available. A young man in cutoff denim shorts sits at the foot of the chairs spraying both women with a mist bottle; the water beads on their slick oiled skin. He has a tattoo on his shoulder. When the Minotaur squints the tattoo looks like Pan squatting on his haunches, pipes to his grinning lips. But when the man turns the Minotaur sees that instead it’s a bulldog in a spiked collar; USMC, it says. On the ground between the two lounge chairs a girl sits cross-legged on a folded towel. She wears a straw hat and completely fills a one-piece floral-print bathing suit. She leans forward, wrists resting on her knees; her ample breasts and the cleft between them are the whitest things in the Minotaur’s field of vision. At her thigh lies a fat and tattered paperback.

  Shane walks over and offers to share the smoke with them. They accept, and Mike joins the group. The Minotaur finds a twig, sits and begins cleaning between the treads on the thick soles of his shoes, scraping out bits of food and dirt packed in from night after night at work. The Minotaur feels the heat of the sun mostly through the metal disk of his wristwatch.

  There is laughter from the group, loud and barbed. The Minotaur knows they are laughing about him. He refuses to look in their direction, concentrates on his task, working the stick in and out of the rubber grooves. They laugh again, and the Minotaur senses someone approaching in his blind spot.

  “Oops,” she says.

  It’s the girl in the hat; she’s dropped her book by his feet. The Minotaur can’t read the title upside down—something about Love—but he sees that on the wrinkled, torn and taped cover is a couple from some other time and place embracing on a rocky beach. Written in blue ink on a small red sticker in the corner is 50¢. The Minotaur does not look up.

  “Sorry about that,” she says, bending to retrieve the book.

  “Unnh,” the Minotaur says. He hopes she will go away.

  “I’m Christy,” she says, sticking her hand out.

  “Uunnh,” he says. He gives her hand a quick shake, then lets it go.

  She smells of patchouli. The Minotaur doesn’t know the name, but the scent is familiar, thick and almost solid. Her calves are lean and long, and circling the finely boned ankle is a tattoo of the alphabet: ABCDEFG … The Minotaur concentrates on not breathing too loudly through his nose.

  “Listen,” she says. “Why are you over here all by yourself? Why don’t you come sit with us? Have a friendly toke, maybe.”

  The Minotaur loosens what seems to be a small piece of gristle from between the treads, holds it up to his eye on the tip of the stick. Christy kneels at his feet. She takes the twig and flicks it over the fence. Christy moves her head until the Minotaur is looking directly into her eyes.

  “Your friends tell me you’re a tit man.”

  He hears Shane giggling.

  Christy, kneeling, leans forward, close; she presses her breasts together with her arms. Christy grins slyly.

  “Do these,” she asks, inhaling, filling and lifting her diaphragm, “meet your approval?”

  The Minotaur is slow to anger. Most of the time he prefers to just endure, knowing that each painful moment will inevitably pass away. The Minotaur doesn’t answer Christy. The apple-white flesh of her breasts, moving almost imperceptibly with each beat of her heart, is mere inches from his mouth and his flared nostrils.

  More laughter.

  Christy rises, takes the Minotaur’s hand, places it on her belly just beneath the ladder of ribs. With both of her hands she guides the Minotaur’s hand up until it cups her breast. The left breast. The breast that protects her heart. The fabric of her swim-suit is damp and cool, reptilian. The Minotaur cannot feel the heartbeat.

  “Of course,” she says, “if you need a closer look …”

  The Minotaur is slow to anger. But when Christy bares her tit, her right tit, and lifts it not like a part of her body but more like an item of merchandise, teasing the Minotaur with its round, chalk-white closeness, when the laughter of Shane and the others storms his eardrums, when the stink of patchouli and sweat and tanning lotion clots in his throat, takes his breath, the Minotaur angers. Five thousand years ago he would have devoured them all. These pitifully arrogant boys and girls would have quaked at the mere mention of his name. One by one they would have been tossed into his chambered pit, oblations to rage or scapegoats to what is most base in man. Five thousand years ago Christy’s milk-white breast would not have been so willingly procured for the Minotaur’s black mouth. Five thousand years ago he would have welcomed it, would have tasted it on his thick bull’s tongue, taken it between the fleshy lips and into his very capable teeth. Five thousand years ago the Minotaur would have bitten her breast off, chewed through her ribs and eaten her heart.

  “Unh!” the Minotaur snorts loudly, then stands.

  Christy, surprised and afraid, stumbles backward and falls into the pool, her bare breast flopping. The Minotaur takes a deep breath and turns to the others. For a split second they are quiet. There is a flash of fear in Shane’s eyes. The potential for chaos exists.

  “Be cool, M,” Mike says, and laughs nervously.

  The man with the tattoo helps Christy get her hat out of the pool. Shane remains silent. There was a time when this would not have—could not have—happened. The Minotaur leaves the pool.

  Robert is coming out the door with a single spark plug in his hand as the Minotaur walks up.

  “Unnh,” he says, grabbing the plug. The Minotaur’s head is thick with anger and embarrassment; thoughts race and refuse to be made sense of. But he is used to this state of mind. He walks into the parking lot and twists the spark plug into the cylinder head of the motorcycle.

  Mike walks up just as he is about to press the ignition. “Hey, M, Shane was just being his normal jerky self back there.”

  “Unn,” the Minotaur says, and starts the bike. He props it, idling unsteadily, on its kickstand and climbs into the backseat of Shane’s car to wait.

  CHAPTER 6

  Sorry,” the Minotaur says with great effort when David opens the door.

  By the time he gets to the apartment, deep in the city’s east side, it is raining; summer heat boils up into the sky, liquefies, and returns to earth only a few degrees cooler. Everything steams.

  The Minotaur stands on the porch, hot rain riding down the curves of his horns and disappearing in multiple rivulets into the folds of flesh at his neck. The morning’s altercation has soured his stomach as well as his mood.

  “Late,” he says, believing that it’s important to acknowledge one’s failures.

  David, wearing sneakers, slacks and a short-sleeve pullover, the daytime equivalent of his maître d’s tux and cummerbund, has the perpetually out-of-place look of a man for whom everybody and everything comes late. He is weary but forgiving.

  “Come in out of the rain, M.”

  Most of what remains in the apartment is stacked or piled in the front room.

  “I’ve taken everything except for the big stuff and my few treasures,” David says.

  The Minotaur stands in the open door and looks at the empty walls of the small apartment. A blue bookcase, bare, skeletal, leans to one side against a stack of boxes. Two, maybe three trips, he thinks, even with the hatch open and things tied to the roof. Outside, the downpour intensifies momentarily, then lessens at the precise moment when the clou
ds break high above the city skyline. The sun spills through the crack, shafts of brilliant yellow-white penetrating the gray rain and falling solidly to the earth below. Backlit for an absurdly mythical instant, the Minotaur casts a shadow across the room. David’s ottoman, the small upholstered rocking chair with sagging springs and swan’s neck armrests, carved heads embedded with faux jewel eyes, the coffee table, an old tattered map with skirmish lines and notes for battle pressed beneath its glass top, the boxes of books stacked and in order, the drab padlocked footlocker—all of David’s possessions are consumed in the belly of the Minotaur’s shadow. Across the naked wall opposite the door the silhouette of the Minotaur looms, horns stretched from one corner to the other.

  “Ooo,” David says. “The Devil must be beating his wife.”

  “Unnh?” the Minotaur asks.

  “When the sun shines and it rains at the same time they say the Devil is beating his wife.”

  “Mmm.”

  They decide to wait until the rain subsides before moving anything. David doesn’t want his stuff to get wet.

  “Come help me for a second,” David says.

  The Minotaur follows him down a short narrow hall to the bedroom. The tiny closet is empty. The bed stands against one wall and extends into the center of the small room, covering all the available floor space but the narrow aisles along one side and at the foot. The headboard, a shallow arc divided by white enameled bars, rises beyond the stacked pillows and disappears behind heavy drapes on one side.

  The Minotaur manages a smile, but it’s unrecognizable on his black lips, so David can’t tell.

  “Unnh.”

  “Like them?” David asks, knowing right away to what the Minotaur is referring.

  David’s sheets are illustrated with pro wrestlers—nearly life-size, muscled, outlandishly costumed, garishly colored, names emblazoned beneath them. Hulk, Bonecrusher and The Claw grimace, flex, glare from David’s bed.