Bob Fingerman - Pariah

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.

“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 primordial 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.