Pariah

by Bob Fingerman

  Ever.

  He knew it was good because even with things the way they were he was reticent to give it away. In his gallery of death he’d managed to create a single image that was, of all things, both tragic and optimistic. Ellen could see Alan was debating inside his head. For the first time in months she felt like she wanted something that wasn’t just a staple. But maybe this was a staple; one she’d forgotten a woman needs. This fed her sense of self. This fed her vanity. How long had it been since she’d applied makeup or thought about her body as anything other than a rundown, withering collection of deprived tissue? Alan had painted a twiggy but eminently fuckable woman, and that woman was her. Twiggy. Ellen’s mind raced back to the waifish ’60s icon. Small tits perched on a rack of bone—Keane-eyed and shaggable.

  “Yeah, of course,” Alan said. It seemed like an eternity of deliberation, but only a few moments passed.

  “I’ll cherish this,” Ellen said. “I didn’t think I was capable of cherishing anymore. Or coveting. But I couldn’t bear to not have this painting. And besides, you’ll get to be with it every remaining day we have. Mi casa es su casa, remember?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  As Ellen reached for the artwork Alan stepped between her and the canvas.

  “Wait a little while. Oils take forever to dry. I can’t just pluck it off the board without wrecking it.”

  “I’ll take the board.”

  “I need the board to paint on.”

  “Are you reneging?” Ellen’s expression was puzzlement with a hint of dander.

  “No, not at all. Just let it dry a while longer. I’ll bring it up later. Or tomorrow.”

  “You’re sure you’re not reneging, because . . .” There was an edge to her voice.

  “No, no. I swear,” Alan said. “I don’t want to mess it up or tear it. Later. Scout’s honor.”

  As Ellen went up the stairs, touching the wall to guide her, she felt a curious combo of up-till-now dormant emotions. She felt flattered, acquisitive, manipulative, feminine. She’d already manipulated Alan into cohabitating with her. Isn’t that what she’d done? Fresh on the heels of Mike’s demise she’d played on Alan’s compassion and hoodwinked him into her tender, needy trap. And it felt good. At first she’d felt she’d been pathetic, but now, in light of Alan’s painting, she retroactively amended that take. She’d used her feminine wiles. She beamed. She still had feminine wiles. She’d seduced him. Maybe it was with shock, grief, and tears, but he’d taken the bait.

  She still had it.

  And there were hoops for Alan to jump through before they all collapsed into nothingness.

  “Here,” Alan said, handing Eddie a dashed off, slightly altered pastel copy of the painting. In it Ellen was more robust, her buttocks rounder, her spine less protruding.

  “Pfff,” Eddie sniffed, his disdain slap-in-the-face obvious.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Alan sighed.

  “It’s too nice.”

  “Nice?”

  “What’s the word? Tasteful. How’s The Comet supposed to get his jerk on with something like this? I want you to draw me humping the shit out of her.”

  “No. Nuh-uh. No can do.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s totally disgusting. Listen, this is too high school for me, okay? I used to con my way out of schoolyard beatings by drawing naked girlies for jackasses like you, but forget it. What’re you gonna do, take my lunch money?”

  “I’ll beat the shit . . .”

  Alan arched an eyebrow.

  “I’ll spread the word that that whore is spreading for you like Velveeta. You think she wants to hear that shit, the widow lady in her hour of grief?”

  As Eddie smirked in triumph, Alan’s indignance slackened to indifference.

  “You know what?” Alan said. “Whatever. Do whatever you want. I did you a nice piece of work and you didn’t like it. I used to get paid good money for art like that. The one aspect of the apocalypse I kind of dig is assuming all those unappreciative art directors are dead. I’d hand in a beautiful piece of art and they’d either grunt approval or pick it apart. I don’t need bad reviews from a scrawny ape. You know what else? You can tell whoever you want that Ellen guzzles my cock morning, noon, and night. Tell them whatever you want. Make up any kind of deranged shit your feeble mind can come up with. Who cares? Be a gossipy little bitch. Everyone knows your ‘secret,’ so why should I protect Ellen’s? She’s a big girl. It’s the end of the world, Eddie. No one cares who’s diddling who. No one even cares that you fuck Dave, or vice versa, or whatever.”

  “That’s a fuckin’ lie!” Eddie growled. “The Comet don’t play that!”

  Laughing, Alan snatched the drawing from Eddie’s table and walked out the door.

  “The Comet. What a retard.”

  “Oy, my sciatica,” Abe muttered, rubbing his thighs at the top of the stairs to the roof. He unlatched and pushed open the door and stepped onto the puckered surface. The bubbles in the tar paper reminded him of pizza, with its enticing puffed-up, reddish orange surface, peaks and valleys of sauce and cheese. Up the block from his office in the Shtemlo Building was a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria that made the best sauce—not too sweet, not too bitter. Perfect. The Punchinellos who worked there were torn straight from the pages of an Italian joke book, stereotypes all—bushy eyebrows and mustaches, arms hairy as apes’, speaking in Dese’a, dems’a, and dose’a spumoni-Inglese. For twenty-two years Abe had gotten pizza there and never knew their names. That was New York for you. Intimate anonymity. You could see the same people day in and day out and never know a damned thing about them.

  “You know the latch was closed.”

  “Yeah,” Dabney said. “I forget who was up here last, but sometimes I get locked out. S’alright. Not like I come down anyway. Knees bugging you, Abe?”

  “Knees, back, everything. Bursitis, arthritis, a little bronchitis, you name it. I’m an old Jew. Everything hurts. What doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.”

  Dabney laughed. “Don’t have to be Jewish for that shit.”

  “Oh yeah? So what hurts you, Mr. Non-Jew?”

  “No, I don’t want to have that conversation. I’d rather keep this on the upbeat tip, if it’s all the same. Whyn’tchoo come on over and park your narrow behind?”

  “Suits me.” Abe, clutching Alan’s Phil Dick paperback, stepped over to the shady spot where Dabney sat, his back against a low wall. With some difficulty Abe took a seat on that wall, the top of which was capped with curved tile. “I can’t sit on the floor like that. I’d never get up again.” He propped open the book and slipped on his smudgy reading glasses. Dabney took the cue and fished out his own book and was about to read when Abe slapped the paperback closed and said, “How can it never rain and be so goddamned humid? It’s getting maybe a little gray on the horizon, do you think? Or am I crazy?”

  “No, there’s some gray. Could just be haze.”

  “Haze. Yes. Yes. No cars and we still got smog.” He trailed off. “What are you reading?”

  Dabney held up a copy of Time Out of Joint, by Philip K. Dick. Abe showed Dabney his borrowed copy of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. They both smiled.

  “Courtesy of that Zotz kid, am I right?” asked Abe.

  “You are correct.”

  “I think maybe that’s all that kid has is Dick.”

  “No, that would be those meatheads in 4B and C. They got all the dick they can handle.”

  The two men laughed.

  “I don’t know who those schmucks think they’re fooling keeping separate apartments. You can hear their mishegoss whenever they get up to it. When I was in the service we had some fellas like them: straight laced and hard as nails on the outside. Guys with the pictures of femmes fatale of the big screen and so on. But they didn’t fool anyone. Once they were safely away from home, they were off to the races. You know that’s why New York and San Francisco are, um, were knee deep in faygelehs, right? All these fellas come home
and they’ve got a choice: go home to Podunk and step back in the closet, or stay in the port town and make a new life. They chose wisely, I think.”

  “So you think it’s okay to be homosexual?”

  “I don’t care one way or the other. Never did, so long as their attentions weren’t on me. I had a few make goo-goo eyes at me; that I didn’t care for. But live and let live, I say. And now, what difference does any of it make? People are going to expend energy on carnality come what may, and use the available outlets—or inlets. Whichever. I’ll tell you, the best thing about getting old was that my libido, which controlled me all my post-adolescent life, finally died. Too bad it came right along with all this mess. I never got to enjoy my belated Age of Reason. And the hell with Viagra. Viagra’s only good if you’ve got a young honey waiting in your bed. No pill in the world could make me want to shtup the pill I’m married to.” Dabney snickered. “Yeah, easy for you to laugh. That woman is no picnic.” After a reflective pause, Abe looked up and, rubbing his knees, said, “I need to take my constitutional. Want to join me?”

  Dabney helped Abe up off the wall and the two men strolled the roof. After two circuits of their building, Abe suggested they walk to the end of the row, assuring his companion he could make it over the walls. Dabney was in no mood to carry Abe back home. He liked the old geezer but would just as soon spare himself the piggyback routine. When they reached the north end of the line, Abe needed to sit down again. There was a rusty folding chair near the two oxidized bicycles permanently bonded to a metal guardrail. With their tires rotted away and everything glazed in a multihued orange patina, they looked more like modern art than defunct transportation. Abe was huffing and puffing like he’d run the marathon. Twice.

  Dabney looked at Abe, who sat there panting, hands gripping his quaking knees. Though the geezer’s face looked all right—partly because it was enshrouded in beard—his hands were cadaverous, the skin like yellowed tracing paper speckled with liver spots. His fingertips came to disturbing points, the skin so close to the bone it barely masked it. A drop hit Dabney’s nose and he wiped it away with annoyance.

  A drop?

  A drop!

  Annoyance transformed to rapture, his eyes shooting up from the old man to the sky above, which was thick with dark gray clouds. Another drop plopped right in his eye and Dabney’s grin was so broad he feared his face might halve itself. More drops began to pelt the two men. Abe stopped rubbing and looked up in disbelief. Within the minute a downpour was dousing the two men, who clasped each other around the biceps and jigged. After a few waltzing rotations Abe broke free and began to unbutton his shirt. “Modesty be damned,” he cried.

  “Damn straight,” agreed Dabney.

  Both men peeled off their clinging duds and basked in the refreshing deluge.

  “We have to tell the others!” Abe said, eyes wide.

  “I’ll do it. I can get to the building faster than you, old timer.”

  Dabney raced across the rooftops doing the low hurdles in record time, the water streaming down his naked body. When he reached the stairwell he threw open the door only to be greeted by a scream. He stepped back and there stood Ellen and Alan, both clutching stacked containers to collect water.

  “I’m sorry,” Ellen said. “I didn’t mean to scream. You just surprised me. I’m not used to having a naked man greet me on the roof.”

  “S’alright,” Dabney said, stepping out of the way.

  They quickly arranged the assortment of pots and cans, which joined the garbage cans, buckets, plastic drawers, and file boxes already there, then stripped nude and joined Dabney in the aqueous bacchanal. Alan handed Dabney a bar of soap.

  “You don’t miss a trick,” he said, accepting it gladly.

  Dave appeared at the door, followed by Karl, who had escorted Ruth upstairs. Straightaway everyone was naked, except Ruth, who looked away in embarrassment.

  “Where’s Abe?” she moaned.

  “Oh shit,” Dabney snorted, midlather. “I’ll go get him.” Trailing suds, Dabney tore ass across the roofs. When he got there, Abe was sitting in a concavity full of water, like a shallow tub, kicking his feet like a toddler in a wading pool. Dabney tossed the soap into the basin and soon Abe was lathering up, his eyes closed in euphoria.

  “You forget the simplest of pleasures when you’re denied everything,” Abe said. “Bathing. Being wet. It’s marvelous.”

  “Ruth was wondering where you were. She’s up on our roof.”

  “Is she naked?” Abe gasped, his beatitude shaken.

  “No.”

  “Oh thank God. No one needs to see that, least of all me.”

  “It would be kind of a buzzkill.”

  Four rooftops over, the tempest orgy continued. For the first time in months laughter was the dominant sound—that and the roar of torrential rainfall. Karl and Dave had erections, but neither thought of sex. They were just pleasure boners from the sheer joy of being wet. The cloudburst was luscious. Karl and Dave were splashing each other with bucketsful of water. Their bodies, virtually hairless except for rain-matted pubes and armpit patches, glistened in the diffuse light. Ellen looked at Alan’s hairy body, his thin chest carpeted in wet black fur. Even dissipated, his was a man’s body. The others were boys’, not that that was a bad thing. Even Dave looked enticing. Eddie was the one who really frightened and offended her.

  She was delighted he wasn’t present, but his absence was peculiar. Still, her answer for now: who cares? His loss.

  Safely on the other side of the stairwell housing, Ruth tilted her head up and let the cataract wash over her cataracts. She’d been scheduled to have phacoemulsification the week after martial law was declared. Now she was stuck with cloudy vision of a cloudy sky. She pulled some matted strands of hair away from her eyes, her fingers straying up her forehead, which seemed to go all the way to the back of her head. Maybe it was better she couldn’t see that well. In her mind she could still picture herself as she was. Abe, too.

  “Hey,” Abe said, making Ruth flinch.

  “Oh, you scared me.” Even with muzzy vision she could see he was starkers. “Ucch, Abraham. Even you?”

  “Even me what?”

  “With the nakedness. Isn’t it bad enough those youngsters are doing it? And the colored? From them I expect it, but you? Oy, there’s no fool like an old fool.”

  “Even in the rain you manage to rain on a parade. Uncanny. Suit yourself.”

  Abe joined the others as they clasped hands and gamboled around.

  “This feels so . . . pagan,” Karl cried with glee.

  The others agreed and Karl basked in the moment. Big Manfred would vomit if he ever saw his son cavorting like this: naked, turgid, wanton. After a while the rain subsided to a light drizzle and various moans of disappointment rose from the group. The air actually smelled fresh. Dabney trotted over to his customary perch, lay on his belly in a deep puddle, and peered down. The horde hemming in his wrecked van was soggier than usual, but otherwise unaffected by the rain. They stumbled and jostled same as ever. Seeing his van always made his stomach ache. Dabney looked away, not wanting to dampen his spirits. A rainbow spread over the buildings to the west.

  It was so corny he couldn’t believe it.

  February, Then

  “Come on, man, move that shit!”

  Dabney leaned on his horn again, knowing full well it was an act of futility. Traffic was snarled in every direction. He’d decided to take the FDR, but what a mistake that had been. After a few hours he managed to exit onto York Avenue. His home, a two-bedroom apartment on the twelfth floor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Houses on 110th Street and Lenox Avenue, awaited, his terrified wife, Bernice, holed up therein with three guns—all of which were legal—and sufficient ammo, if not skill, to protect herself. Already, within hours of the crisis’s advent, looting and street violence were rampant. Road rage was devolving into something worse, every face of every driver and passenger in every vehicle transformed by primordi
al fear. This wasn’t merely anxiety. Even panic would be a step toward calm.

  The sidewalk traffic wasn’t any better. Dabney looked out the side windows and saw donnybrooks everywhere. Store windows were being smashed both accidentally and on purpose. Some just gave when too many bodies pressed up against them, causing explosions of cubed glass, like geysers of diamonds. Mixed in with the hysterical humans were these new bloodthirsty monstrosities. Across the hood of a car jutting diagonally half in and half out of its space a woman was being disemboweled and devoured by a trio of dead-eyed freaks, her fluids splashing onto the asphalt. Dabney fought the urge to open his door and try to help. Help what? She was dead. And if what they were saying was true—and he believed his own eyes, so yes, it was—whatever was left of her when the threesome were done eating would get up and join them. A quartet. Now multiply that over and over, ad infinitum. All up and down the avenue similar scenes were happening.

  And no one stopped to help.

  The few cops that remained were looking out for their own welfare, and Dabney couldn’t blame them. Pop-pops erupted from all over, some of the bullets downing the cannibals, others ricocheting off hard surfaces. A slug pinged off a lamppost and put a dime-size crater into Dabney’s windshield, small fissures radiating from it. Dabney took a hand off the steering wheel and pressed a finger to the spot, feeling cool air passing through a tiny hole. He hoped the integrity of the windscreen would maintain. Just long enough. He had to get home. He fished out his cell phone again and tried to call, but nothing doing. All circuits were tied up. Please try again. There was nothing to do but keep pushing northwest.

  Something heavy slammed onto his roof and Dabney felt as if his blood stopped circulating for a moment and a vacuum formed in his lungs. A body rolled down his windshield and under all the noise of chaos he heard that twinkly crackle of the glass straining under the body’s weight. If the windshield broke, those crazies would get in and get him. With mere inches between his and the next vehicle, Dabney accelerated, then reversed, bumping both cars to his front and rear. The body rolled off his hood, its smashed face casting a dead glare his way as it dropped out of sight under the van. The door of the car to his front flew open and the incensed driver starting walking back toward Dabney, slapping a five-cell Maglite flashlight against his open palm. Dabney couldn’t believe it. In the eye of the shitstorm this moron was going to give him grief about a tiny bumper thump.