by Robert Lopez
Everyone said they were a lovely couple and everyone was probably right.
MORNING EXERCISE
* * *
FINALLY, IN THE THIRD GRADE, OUR TEACHER MISS CANSINO, who was something of a psychic herself, had all the third graders write down a secret word on an index card at the beginning of the last day of class. At the end of the day she had each student read his or her secret word. Eighteen of Miss Cansino’s twenty-two students had the same word written down. The other four were; window, baseball, transfusion and flabbergasted.
YOUR EPIDERMIS
* * *
THEY KISS.
I am disappointed in you, she says.
I am a disappointment, he says.
You should know better, she says.
I am trying, he says.
She likes the way he walks, like an ape with his arms barely moving, his shoulders alternately rising and falling and his knuckles dragging on the floor behind him. He lumbers. He has a bucket head and wears black boots.
He likes how she isn’t scared of him.
His hands are resting on the lower part of the steering wheel. He is breathing evenly. The day is brilliant and blue and he is looking at it through the windshield. She is next to him.
Perhaps I should employ the Watkins method, he says.
Spare me the Watkins method, she says.
The Watkins method is proven, reliable like a Volkswagen, he says.
Lovely, she says. A Volkswagen, she says. Do you ever listen to yourself? she says.
That is something I’m working on, he says.
That is something you are failing to improve upon, she says. I just don’t see improvement here, she says.
The results of the work are not necessarily tangible but they’re there, he says. He runs his hands through his hair then places them on the lower part of the steering wheel, like they were before.
You sound like you work for the government, she says. Or Gertrude Stein, she says.
I sound like I work for Gertrude Stein?
You sound like Gertrude Stein, not like you work for Gertrude Stein, she says. Jesus, who would say such a thing? she asks.
How is it I resemble a dead lesbian? he asks.
You are the missing link, she says.
And what does that make you? he says.
The day before:
He is watching a baseball game with the sound turned down because sports announcers should be neither seen nor heard. He is reading a jaundiced copy of Das Kapital borrowed from the library and chilling the last two beers left in the refrigerator in the freezer and telling himself to remember to take them out before they freeze solid. The trouble with motel refrigerators is they are always too small. The empties are all lined up on the dresser except for the one he is using as an ashtray. He rolls his own because he likes to say he rolls his own and he likes when people watch him roll. He rolls his own, also, because it is less expensive. He is wearing a pair of cut off sweatpants with no underwear underneath. He is not wearing a shirt. He sticks his left hand inside his cutoffs and leaves it there, cupping his belly.
She is in the bathroom. She has been in the bathroom for nearly an hour. On the door one towel hangs for her hair and another for her body. She likes the water hot enough to turn her skin pink. She presses fingers to flesh to see the pale mark it leaves. She applies an array of lotions and creams to various parts of her body. When she washes her hair she tears knotted clumps from her head and sticks them on the wall. The clumps look like spiders. Once he tried to kill one with a sandal.
The two people here met at a bookstore. She was the assistant manager and he was ripping the clear plastic cover off a men’s magazine. She was the one to catch him.
She said, I can’t tell if this is childish or perverted behavior.
He said, Probably both.
She grew up an only child but always thought the phrase was lonely child. She said it out loud once, to a guidance counselor, and was laughed at. She would go to playgrounds by herself and climb the monkey bars and slide down the sliding pond and swing on the swings, always looking at the un-lonely children as if they were aliens.
His own childhood was uneventful. Most of the other children were afraid of him so he rarely socialized. There was the time he and his cousin played naked war upstairs at his cousin’s house. Running from room to room and hurling balled up sock grenades he sported a gorilla’s erection. Whenever he disrobed he would spring to life, like it was a reflex. He worried this was a permanent condition that would prevent him from a normal life. Clearly, that was something one had control over, or one should have control over. He was sure there was a meeting he missed in school where this information was covered.
Other than that he learned to shave against the grain and sign as many as twenty words.
She eats microwaveable lean cuisine meals standing up, usually while doing something else, talking on the phone, straightening things in the kitchen. She likes living alone in her own apartment without the hassle of a roommate constantly under foot. She holds her independence close to her, wears it like a vest.
She opens the car door and sticks her right leg out of it.
Would you stop it please, he says.
I’ll walk, just remember that, she says.
How is it I sound like Gertrude Stein? he asks.
Fuck Gertrude Stein, this has nothing to do with Gertrude Stein, she says.
I’m confused, he says.
You are a grown man, she says.
Grown men get confused, he says.
That is not what I mean, she says.
He reaches across her to retrieve the black notebook. The black notebook is kept in the glove box and he will reach across her to retrieve it from time to time. He will never let her see what he’s writing. The way he holds the pen between his middle and ring fingers reminds her of an illiterate making his mark.
Will you close the door, it’s cold, he says.
You are a child, she says.
He continues to write. She tries not to look at him. She fidgets with the buttons on her blouse. She takes her left foot out of its shoe and stretches her toes. There are no other cars in the parking lot. She slams the door shut. He is angry when she slams the door but says nothing. Her floor-length coat gets caught so that part of it is hanging outside the car, but she doesn’t realize it and neither does he.
The day before:
He can’t remember if he’s taken his allergy medication. Sometimes he loses track. The prescription says take once a day on the bottle but he takes it every other day for two reasons. One is he cannot afford to spend money on allergy medication. The other reason he got from an underground newspaper article concerning the Food and Drug Administration. When he doesn’t take his allergy medication he can feel his throat closing. He thinks he might quit smoking.
She comes out of the shower with one towel wrapped round her body and another around her head. She smells clean, a mixture of fruits and oils. She looks over to him reclining on the bed closest to the door. He is reading a newspaper, which is spread out over an ugly floral bedspread. She considers asking him a question and then reconsiders.
He does not look up when she comes out of the bathroom. He knows she wants him to look up so he keeps on reading. One story has a teacher sexually abusing students and another has three kids being killed by a drunk driver. The story about the teacher has him thinking about high school. He can hardly recall the names of any teachers, although he wants to think of one that could be a sexual abuser. He can think of several candidates. The trouble is nothing like that ever happened in his high school. It was like the statistics they’d always recite: this percentage of people are gay, this many teenagers get pregnant, etc. There weren’t any gays in his high school and no one ever got pregnant.
The two people here drive used cars and don’t vote in any election. His, a vintage Volkswagen Karmann Ghia he spent thousands of dollars on restoring, hers is a rusted Nissan Sentra, reliable and utilit
arian. She has an antique settee and odd-looking thumbs. They are half the size of normal thumbs and are dwarfed by her other fingers. Sometimes she wears pants or skirts with pockets so she can hide her thumbs. He has a beer gut and only two pairs of pants. She called it a leaky gut once and he cursed her. She is a staunch believer in the American way of government. He once vomited bile after a four-day binge during a pilgrimage to Mexico in an attempt to find the exact place where they killed Trotsky.
This is the first relationship she’s had with a stranger, something she has always wanted to try. His ideal mate is someone who is smart but not smarter than him, attractive, but not someone who would illicit remarks from strange men in bars.
As she settles into the seat her floor-length coat swings open revealing her legs. She leaves herself like that. He has finished writing. The black notebook is resting on the dash. His hands return to the lower part of the steering wheel. He drums his fingers like he is typing. There is no music playing. The car is not running.
Your epidermis is showing, he says.
Does it bother you? she asks.
You have sexy legs, he says.
Everyone says that, she says.
Everyone, he says.
You said it, she says.
Who says that about your legs? he asks.
You don’t want to know, believe me, she says.
Perhaps not, he says.
What is it about my legs that make them sexy? she asks.
Under the floor-length coat she is wearing a skirt that stops several inches before her knees. She rubs her thighs.
This isn’t a good idea, he says.
It’s worked before, she says. She hikes her skirt up almost to the hip.
I can’t do this, I’m sorry, he says. He reaches over and pulls her skirt down as far as it will go. When he feels her body start to slide down the seat he stops.
I don’t understand, she says.
Are you working tomorrow? he asks.
What is wrong with you, she says .
The day before:
Now it is his turn to shower. He always lets her shower first as he thinks it gentlemanly.
He hangs a mirror around the showerhead and shaves his face. He is careful to leave his goatee even. One of the first things she said to him was about his goatee, that it was crooked. Before finishing the shave he cuts the skin between his goatee and lip. He waits for the bleeding to stop but it doesn’t. He tears the complimentary soap out of its package. He is careful to keep the lip away from the water stream while soaping his upper torso. After scrubbing his legs he drops the soap and while bending to retrieve it the stream strikes his lip. He curses. He shuts the water off and snatches the towel from the rack. He dries himself inside the shower stall because it is steamy and it facilitates decongestion. Sometimes he will masturbate to ease congestion but he doesn’t this time. He is always congested and will do anything to decongest. He presses the towel to his face leaving a drop of blood in its center.
She gets into the bed furthest from the door and pulls the blankets over her. She still has on the towels. Damp bedding doesn’t bother her. She is tired. She is often tired, but rarely sick. She doesn’t know why this is. She presumes sleeping boosts her already impenetrable immune system but she’s never seen data. Sleeping is one of her best things. She can sleep for ten hours without stirring. She can sleep anywhere; in her own bed, others’ beds, couches, backseats, waiting rooms. She considers this her greatest talent.
What do you remember about high school? he asks.
Not much, she says.
Did anyone ever get pregnant? he asks.
What a thing to ask, she says.
I think there were two such souls, she says.
What about abuse? Did any of the teachers sexually abuse the students? he asks.
What do you have in mind? she says.
He can go days without sleeping or eating and blames his job as a bartender for this. Drinking five nights a week and eating only deep fried food has his system in upheaval. Amongst his health problems are tinnitus, a duodenal ulcer, the chronic nasal congestion, atavism, and an overactive bladder.
She will never discuss his ailments.
She is on her way to graduate school to study psychology. When asked why psychology she answers because she wants to help people, specifically women who’ve suffered debilitating trauma. Past that she admits nothing.
What are we doing here? she asks.
I was hoping you would know, he says.
Do you remember what we talked about yesterday? she says.
What was yesterday? he says.
The two people here spent the previous day driving through upstate mountain roadways. They both took turns driving and spent the night in a motor lodge. They were to use this time to get a few things straight. There would be after all an understanding. Today they are sitting in a parked car in the middle of a parking lot where no other cars are parked. His hands are resting on the steering wheel and he is breathing evenly. She is sitting with her legs crossed and covered up by a floor-length coat, part of which is hanging out the passenger side door.
THE ALLERGIES
* * *
FOR YEARS I WENT TO BED EVERY NIGHT. This is when I was like everyone else in the world. I had a job, I knew people. I ate meals, bought gadgets, kept up with current events. I owned a sedan. Now my life is dry toast for breakfast and the allergies. That’s the entirety of it, all I can muster. Some think I have a disorder, a syndrome, something along those lines, but I know it’s allergies. I’ve been tested. The doctor confirmed it. What happened was I went to the doctor and said help. The doctor examined me. Then the doctor took me into his office and explained what was wrong. I couldn’t understand him, what he was saying. But it doesn’t matter, in the end, it doesn’t. I keep the windows shut but the allergies get inside anyway. They get in between the cracks in the walls or up from the basement or down from the chimney. The doctor said there’s no stopping the allergies. I think the only thing in the world I’m not allergic to is a down comforter, which is what I sleep on now. The bed I’m allergic to, even the dry toast I’m allergic to. I can never sleep in bed and never feel right after eating dry toast is how I know this. But now it’s all gone; the meals, the people, the gadgets, the job, the sedan. Now come evening I lay a down comforter on the floor and sleep on it. This is after suffering all day with the allergies. Sometimes, yes, my eyes work long enough to read a magazine or watch a little television. Sometimes I can listen to music for a few minutes before the ringing in my ears becomes unbearable. Yes, I am grateful for those days, it’s true. But I know it’s hopeless. I know I’m getting worse. Even the doctor said so. It was the only thing I understood from our conversation. What the doctor said was sometimes this sort of thing happens to people, these kinds of allergies, and in this particular case, out of millions of other cases, I happen to be the worst kind of people.
THE BE ALL END ALL
* * *
A WOMAN SAID TO ME ONCE IT ALMOST DOESN'T FEEL LIKE IT'S TWO-THIRTY.
I’ve kept this in my brain ever since, next to where I keep particular lines of poetry, but away from pertinent information. I can’t recall what prompted the statement, although it may’ve been in response to some confession I’d been dying to confess.
Women have a way of leaving their mark, of staying with you.
When lacking a satisfactory answer I always manage to compose a stoic look on my face. Brooding, even. This is because I am no good on the spot or off the cuff. I usually need days to respond to a question to anyone’s satisfaction.
This woman was beautiful in a way that makes you sorry you were born.
Example of typical exchange between myself and woman who said, It almost doesn’t feel like it’s two-thirty.
What is wrong with you?
Stoic look on face. Brooding, even.
A pregnant woman was walking her dog in the middle of the night in a park where I was sitting on a bench contemp
lating death and masturbation. She walked the way pregnant women walk, particularly when they are out in the middle of the night walking dogs. It is the same way fat women walk to the bathroom, halfway between a waddle and a cry for help. I don’t know if she did this every night, walk the dog this way. There are things you know about her, though, without having to ask. Mostly, she wouldn’t appreciate this kind of recognition.
If you see her say I’m sorry.
At that moment she was the object of an affection I cannot describe nor explain. I thought maybe it was misplaced. I thought maybe the affection should’ve been directed elsewhere. That is my tragedy, if I have one. Otherwise it’s not being able to make sense of such things. The pregnant woman is her own tragedy and I have almost nothing to do with it. But mostly I regarded her as a subject. Of what, I’m not certain.
In the end, I’m not sure I can differentiate between subject and object.
One could ask, What were you doing in a park in the middle of the night sitting on a bench contemplating death and masturbation? And what exactly does contemplating death and masturbation entail? And what kind of a person engages in such activity?
Stoic look on face. Brooding, even.
Perversion is one of those eye-of-the-beholder things.
I watched her walk the dog. It was a kind of ballet.
I have no real need to express anything and certainly no affinity for it. I’d rather look pensive and have others misinterpret whatever countenance I’ve affected.
All this until I am left with a pregnant woman walking her dog in the middle of the night. There was no exchange between myself and the pregnant woman walking her dog in the middle of the night, typical or otherwise. If there had been it would’ve concluded quickly.
Example of imagined exchange between myself and pregnant woman walking her dog in the middle of the night:
