Bob Fingerman: Pariah

“You don’t have to be so unpleasant, Abraham .”

“Is that supposed to chasten me, ‘ Abraham ’? What, I’m a five-year-old and saying my whole name is a scold I’ll abide? Abe, Abraham, call me whatever you like. Call me Ishmael, for all I care. Sleep. Sleep’s a sweet memory.”

“I’ll call you a shit, how’s about that?”

In the blackness, Abe smiled in triumph. In all her years, Ruth was never one for cursing. It was beneath her, such vulgarity. Swearing was for the common folk, the hoi polloi. But take away amenities like food, running water, electricity, hygiene, etc., and even Emily Post might call you a cocksucker at dinner.

“I’m sorry, Abe. Abe , is that better?” Ruth’s voice was croaky and plaintive. It sounded like it was coming from something not quite human, something rattle boned and cotton mouthed. Something mummified and meager. Oh wait, it was. Ruth, once a breathtaking, slightly Rubenesque ringer for a young Ruby Keeler was now a crinkly sack of bones, nearly bald, with craters like eggcups holding her dulled, gummy, gray eyes.

“Abe’s fine,” Abe mouthed, almost silently. Why raise one’s voice? Gone were competing noises, like traffic and planes roaring across the sky. Gone were the cries of children, or mugging victims, or brawlers from the bar catercornered from their apartment. Gone were the ghetto cruisers with their booming systems, the bass so deep you could feel it in your colon. Gone were the nightly aural assaults from the garbage trucks, the thunderous growl of the crusher mechanism, the clash and clang of the emptied cans being slammed back to the pavement, the inarticulate badinage of the sanitation workers. Who’d think you’d miss that crap? “Abe’s fine,” Abe repeated, as much to reassure himself as Ruth. It felt better to talk about himself in the third person, made him think of himself as not quite real. Reality sucked. Abe’s not fine , he thought. Who the hell is fine nowadays?

“I can’t sleep.”

“Really?” Abe said, the sarcasm creeping back, edging out his miserable attempt at tenderness. “You could knock me over with a feather.” The fact was, you could knock either of them over with a feather, and not a particularly large feather at that. Two skeletons with a soupçon of withered meat held together by decrepit membrane lying side by side in a dilapidated sarcophagus.

One flight down, on the fourth landing, ear pressed against the door of 4B, Ellen Swenson clasped a hand over her mouth, suppressing the urge to call out to her husband, Mike, who dozed sporadically in their apartment, behind their currently unlocked door. Ellen had left her left flip-flop wedged between the door and the jamb and tiptoed across the narrow hall to eavesdrop. Mike didn’t believe her assertions about their neighbors, the jocks-the former jocks, at any rate. They were regular guys. Beer guzzlers. Hockey players. Bullies. Republicans. Regular guys, for crying out loud . Guy’s guys. Because they were so surface, to Ellen they also were something of a mystery. Mike’s argument, by way of Freud, was that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but Ellen didn’t buy it. With empty apartments still available, why’d they choose to live together when they arrived here? She didn’t just accept things at face value.

She had her theory, she needed proof and this gave her something to do when insomnia hit, which was almost invariably every night, especially since nights became interminable. No light, no entertainment, no conventional diversions. So Ellen made her own fun. As a girl she’d been a fan of Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, and even Scooby-Doo, so this meddling kid would tumble the jocks’ game if it killed her. If it didn’t, the boredom might.

The plus of a nearly silent world was that sound traveled. Sometimes that was a minus, but not right now. They must be in the living room, Ellen surmised. They sounded close. Really close. Like, right by the door. But sound had a way of tricking you in the absolute dark. All she wanted was to hear something incriminating. Something to lord over Mike, to prove she was right.

“I don’t even know why I listen to you, Mallon,” came Eddie’s voice. Eddie, Ellen figured, was the alpha dog. He barked louder, seemed scarier. He was the one Ellen feared. Pasty, ginger Dave just kind of annoyed her. “You’re wrong about everything.”

“Dude, you need to take it easy on the water.”

“ Vaffanculo , dude. Don’t mother hen me.” Eddie slammed the jug down on the counter to emphasize his dominance- case closed . “Fuckin’ twerps across the hall,” he spat. “Fuckin’ Swensons!”

At the sound of her name, Ellen stiffened.

“We should just beat the shit out of Mike and take his woman. Make her our sex slave. Only two fuckin’ women in here-”

“What about Gerri?”

“ Only two fuckin’ women in here and one’s like ninety and the other’s married and monogamous. Fuckin’ monogamous! What kinda selfish outmoded shit is that, anyways? Don’t the Jews share everything on those kibbutz things? This is like that now, yo. This here. I’m tellin’ you, bro, it ain’t right .”

“Hey, chill out,” Dave scolded in a hushed voice. “Sound carries, you know?”

“I don’t give a shit,” Eddie boomed. “Let her hear. Let ’em both hear. Hey, Swenson, I’m gunnin’ for your woman, bitch !”

At that, Ellen’s insides felt like they were imploding. It wasn’t funny anymore. Though neither Dave nor Eddie were the strapping behemoths they once were, both still were formidable. Mike and she wouldn’t stand a chance against them in a physical confrontation. Sex slave . As she began to tremble, Eddie let out a burst of loud, bellicose laughter.

“I’m just fucking around, Dave. Chill.”

Chill, indeed. Even in the stultifying heat, Ellen’s skin erupted in goose pimples, sweat turning cool on her forehead. Like a silent movie blind man she extended her arms and groped back toward her apartment door, slipped in and triple locked it in case Eddie wasn’t “just fucking around.”

Alan massaged his temples, removing his glasses, which were streaked and stained with sweat and skin oil. His “T-zone” was working overtime, his eyebrows smearing translucent patterns onto the lenses. Candles flickered, adding to the already oppressive temperature, but what was he supposed to do if he couldn’t sleep, just lie there and stare into the tenebrous void? He wasn’t in the mood to draw, so reading was the only thing left to do since television and the Internet became extinct. All his batteries were dead, so no more Walkman or iPod. Music was becoming but a sweet memory, along with regular meals, luxuriously long showers, movies… hell, everything.

Alan kept rubbing, feeling his pulse throbbing away just under the gauzy layer of dermis stretched over his skull. He contemplated dipping into his dwindling supply of store-brand ibuprofen, acetaminophen, or aspirin. Eyestrain. His mother always warned him about ruining his eyes by reading in inadequate light. She also warned him about sitting too close to the TV, but that advice was now moot. He wanted to keep reading. This was a good book, a real page-turner. His father used to lecture him about wasting his mind on junk. He’d urged Alan to read the classics, to broaden himself, to refine his mind. But Alan persisted in reading potboilers. Alan liked escapism when things were still good. Now escapism was his only luxury. His collection of sci-fi and crime paperbacks was worth its weight in gold. Scratch that; gold wasn’t worth anything any more. It was better than gold. Sorry, Dad. Maybe Chaucer or Dickens or Goethe or Balzac or Sartre or whomever would have made me a better person. Hard to say. But right now I’ll take my fantasy, thank you very much .