Thomas Disch - 334

Just nonsense, but it taught directions, like north and south. Boz, who had no patience with Science, always confused north and south. One was uptown, one was downtown—why not just call them that? Of the two, uptown was preferable. Who wants to be MOD, after all? Though it was no disgrace: his own mother, for instance. Human dignity is more than a zipcode number, or so they say.

Tabbycat, who was just as fond of sunshine and out-of-doors as Boz, would stalk along the prestressed ledge as far as the rubber plant and then back to the geraniums, very sinister, just back and forth all morning long, and every so often Boz would reach up to stroke the soft sexy down of her throat and sometimes when he did that he would think of Milly. Boz liked the mornings best of all.

But in the afternoons the balcony fell into the shadow of the next building and though it remained almost as warm it didn’t do anything for his tan, so in the afternoon Boz had to find something else to do.

Once he had studied cooking on television but it had nearly doubled the grocery bills, and Milly didn’t seem to care whether Boz or Betty Crocker made her omelette fine herbes, and he had to admit himself that really there wasn’t that much difference. Still, the spice shelf and the two copper-bottom pans he had given himself for Christmas made an unusual decorator contribution. The nice names spices have—rosemary, thyme, ginger, cinnamon—like fairies in a ballet, all gauze wings and toeshoes. He could see her now, his own little niecelette Amparo Martinez as Oregano Queen of the Willies. And he’d be Basil, a doomed lover. So much for the spice shelf.

Of course he could always read a book, he liked books. His favorite author was Norman Mailer and then Gene Stratton Porter. He’d read everything they’d ever written. But lately when he’d read for more than a few minutes he would develop really epic headaches and then be a complete tyrant to Milly when she came home from work. What she called work.

At four o’clock art movies on Channel 5. Sometimes he used the electromassage and sometimes just his hands to jerk off with. He’d read in the Sunday facs that if all the semen from the Metropolitan Area viewers of Channel 5 were put all together in one single place it would fill a medium-sized swimming pool. Fantastic? Then imagine swimming in it!

Afterwards he would lie spread out on the sofa that looked like a giant Baggie, his own little contribution to the municipal swimming pool drooling down the clear plastic and he would think glumly: There’s something wrong. Something is missing.

There was no romance in their marriage anymore, that’s what was wrong. It had been leaking out slowly, like air from a punctured Baggie chair, and one of these days she would mean it when she started talking about a divorce, or he would kill her with his own bare hands or with the electromassage, when she was ribbing him in bed, or something dreadful would happen, he knew it.

Something really dreadful.

At dusk, in bed, her breasts hung above him, swaying. Just the smell of her is enough, sometimes, to drive him up the walls. He brought his thighs up against the sweaty backside of her legs. Knees pressed against buttocks. One breast, then the other, brushed his forehead; he arched his neck to kiss one breast, then the other.

“Mm,” she said. “Continue.”

Obediently Boz slid his arms between her legs and pulled her forward. As he wriggled down on the damp sheets his own legs went over the edge of the mattress, and his toes touched her Antron slip, a puddle of coolness on the desert-beige rug.

The smell of her, the rotting sweetness, like a suet pudding gone bad in a warm refrigerator, the warm jungle of it turned him on more than anything else, and way down there at the edge of the bed, a continent away from these events, his prick swelled and arched. Just wait your turn, he told it, and rubbed his stubbly cheek against her thigh while she mumbled and cooed. If only pricks were noses. Or if noses …

The smell of her now with the damp furze of her veldt pressed into his nostrils, grazing his lips, and then the first taste of her, and then the second. But most of all the smell—he floated on it into her ripest darknesses, the soft and endless corridor of pure pollened cunt, Milly, or Africa, or Tristan and Isolde on the tape recorder, rolling in rose-bushes.

His teeth scraped against hair, snagged, his tongue pressed farther in and Milly tried to pull away just from the pleasure of it, and she said, “Oh, Birdie! Don’t!”

And he said, “Oh shit.”

The erection receded quickly as the image sinks back into the screen when the set is switched off. He slid out from under her and stood in the puddle, looking at her uplifted sweating ass.

She turned over and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Oh, Birdie, I didn’t mean to … ”

“Like hell you didn’t. Jack.”

She sniffed amusement. “Well, now you’re one up.”

He flipped the limp organ at her self-deprecatingly. “Am I?”

“Honestly, Boz, the first time I really didn’t mean it. It just slipped out.”

“Indeed it did. But is that supposed to make me feel better?” He began dressing. His shoes were inside out.

“For heaven’s sake, I haven’t thought of Birdie Ludd for years. Literally. He’s dead now, for all I know.”

“Is that the new kick at your tutorials?”

“You’re just being bitter.”

“I’m just being bitter, yes.”

“Well, fuck you! I’m going out.” She began feeling around on the rug for her slip.

“Maybe you can get your father to warm up some of his stiffs for you. Maybe he’s got Birdie there on ice.”

“You can be so sarcastic sometimes. And you’re standing on my slip. Thank you. Where are you going now?”

“I am going around the room divider to the other side of the room.” Boz went around the room divider to the other side of the room. He sat down beside the dining ledge.

“What are you writing?” she asked, pulling the slip on.

“A poem. That’s what I was thinking about at the time.”

“Shit.” She had started her blouse on the wrong buttonhole.

“What?” He laid the pen down.

“Nothing. My buttons. Let me see your poem.”

“Why are you so damn hung up on buttons? They’re unfunctional.” He handed her the poem!

“It’s lovely,” she said. “You should send it to Time”

“Time doesn’t print poetry.”

“Some place that does, then. It’s pretty.” Milly had three basic superlatives: funny, pretty, and nice. Was she relenting? Or laying a trap?

“Pretty things are a dime a dozen. Twelve for one dime.”

“I’m only trying to be nice, shithead.”

“Then learn how. Where are you going?”

“Out.” She stopped at the door, frowning. “I do love you, you know.”

“Sure. And I love you.”

“Do you want to come along?”

“I’m tired. Give them my love.”

She shrugged. She left. He went out on the veranda and watched her as she walked over the bridge across the electric moat and down 48th Street to the corner of 9th. She never looked up once.

And the hell of it was she did love him. And he loved her. So why did they always end up like this, with spitting and kicking and gnashing of teeth and the going of their own ways?

Questions, he hated questions. He went into the toilet and swallowed three Oralines, one just nicely too many, and then he sat back and watched the round things with colored edges slide along an endless neon corridor, zippety zippety zippety, spaceships and satellites. The corridor smelled half like a hospital and half like heaven, and Boz began to cry.