David Wallace - Broom of the System

“…”

“Rick, are you all right I said.”

“Maybe just the effects of trying to relate a difficult and emotionally intricate story in the face of your complete insensitivity you bitch!”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What did you say to me?”

“Please, forget I said anything. Let’s just walk back along the lake.”

“We really need to talk, buster, and I mean now.”

“Just trust me.”

“What the hell are we even doing out here? Andy was right.”

“Have I not earned some trust?”

/e/

“I don’t like this at all,” Lang was saying. He squatted on his hams in the bow, resting his elbows on his knees and looking through the binoculars. “Not one little red bit, good buddy.”

Obstat took two Pop Tarts out of their wrapper and tossed the wrapper into the lake. “At least they’ve stopped for a second,” he said with his mouth full. “My arms are fucking numb, Wanger.”

“Something’s up,” said Lang. “The little dung beetle’s up to something.”

“What’s he doing?”

“It’s not so much what he’s doing.” Lang shifted up into a seat. “It’s the way Lenore’s looking, here.”

“How’s that dress doing in all this heat, is what I want to know,” Obstat said eagerly. “She got that little V of sweat at the chest yet? I love that little V.”

“Fuck off,” Lang said.

“Hey now Wanger, you said I could look at the legs, and the V too if there was one!”

“Stop whining goddammit Neil,” Lang said angrily. He looked at Obstat, who was looking at him as he chewed. Lang rolled his eyes. “Here, then. Just take a fast goddamn look if you have to.” He passed the binoculars over to Obstat and rubbed his face.

Obstat scanned with the glasses. Lang could see that he was getting Pop Tart filling on them. “Oh Jesus God I’m in love,” Obstat whispered. “This is it. Mommy.”

“I told you to cut that shit out about Lenore.”

“Who’s talking about Lenore? I’m talking about this totally unbelievable babe under a sun umbrella that Lenore and the little double-chinned guy just went by.”

“Just went by?” Lang sat up. “Where’re they going?”

“They just turned around, looks like. They’re going back the way they came I guess.” Obstat was still aimed at the beautiful woman, in a black swimsuit, under an umbrella.

“Turned around? The fuck. Give me those things.”

Obstat looked up from the glasses, pissed off. “Hey,” he said. “Look here. If my ass gets dragged all the way out here and then gets made to row a stupid boat so you can try to read people’s lips, and if you’re going to get all hinkey about Lenore and not let me express feelings, you can at least let me scope a little bit.”

“You little skull-head,” Lang said. He yanked the binoculars out of Obstat’s hands and scanned the black rim of the Desert. “Holy shit, they are goin’ back,” he said. Obstat munched his Pop Tart in a funk. “I don’t like this at all,” Lang was saying. He reached out and knocked the Pop Tart out of Obstat’s hand into the water.

“Hey!” Obstat said.

“Row!” yelled Lang. People in the other boats looked over. Lang squatted back in the bow. “Turn this fucker around and row back the way we came.” He looked through the binoculars again as Obstat muttered and picked up the heavy oars.

“And also start gettin’ us in closer to shore,‘” Lang said, pausing for just a moment to look back at what was undeniably a really unbelievable woman, in that swimsuit. “I want us a whole lot closer to shore.”

/f/

11 September

“So where do you get off, Fieldbinder?” Slotnik said, crossing and uncrossing his legs on the love seat.

The living room smetled vaguely of burn. Fieldbinder sat in wet clothes, shivering, the black wires of his burnt hair protruding up in a fan from his head, his hands full of stiff black feathers.

“What can I say, Don?” he said.

“An excellent question, Monroe, ” said Slotnik, glancing over at Evelyn, in a new dry robe and nothing else, looking at her reflection in the dark living room window and trying on wigs. Slotnik turned back. “]ust what can you say, my friend, with your wet wrinkled clothes and smelly, kinky head? What can the universe say, when my supposedly good and respectable neighbors worship my children on the sly, and my supposedly good friend and colleague balls my wife, pokes and punctures the object of my every non-professional thought, tries to take my wife away, from me, to whom she rightfully belongs. ” He stared at Fieldbinder. “What is to say, Monroe?”

“Don, you’ve raised a number of interesting points, ” said Fieldbinder. He glanced up at the staircase and saw two sets of pajama-feet, the children‘s, as the Slotnik children stood at the top of the case and listened, and perhaps sucked their thumbs.

“Just where do you get off, is what I want to know, ” said Slotnik, crossing and uncrossing his legs, jangling a pair of open handcuffs. “Because, for your own information and files, you’ve gotten off for the last time. This is the end. This is it. ”

Fieldbinder grinned coolly, then wryly. “Is it, ” he said. He slowly felt at the feathers with his good hand.

“Yes, ” said Slotnik, returning Fieldbinder’s smile with one equally wry. He went to Evelyn, at the window, and in a single motion calmly handcuffed her wrist to his wrist. Evelyn said nothing; she continued to put on wigs, making Slotnik’s arm rise and fall with her own. Slotnik stared past his wife at Fieldbinder’s tiny reflection in the dark window.

“Yes, ” he said again. “This is it. You’ve let yourself in for it, Monroe. ” He turned. “You’ve put your precious, prodigious self in connection with another. And now I’m taking the other back. Evelyn and I are now joined together, forever, in discipline and negatian. ”

“Discipline?” Fieldbinder said, removing some mud and a twig from the crease of his slacks.

“She is now gone, the connection severed, and so you are done, ” said Slotnik, holding up his handcuffed wrist for effect. Evelyn’s arm moved with his.

“I see, said Fieldbinder.

“Yes I’m sure you do, ” Slotnik said coolly. “The connection is severed, you are yourself punctured, you are done. You will bleed out of yourseif and rise like a husk on a dry wind. There will be less and less of you. You will grow smaller and smaller in your stylish clothes, until you disappear altogether. ” Slotnik grinned wryly. “You will return to the night sky with your satanic bird, and every dawn and dusk the horizon will run with your juices. ”

“What an interestingly absurd theory, Don, ” Fieldbinder said coolly.

“I’m afraid he means it, Monroe, ” said Evelyn into the window. “Don has always been a man of his word. ” She turned and cocked her head, modelling a blond wig. “What do you think of this one, before you have to go?”

Fieldbinder moved to look at his watch, but it had already slipped off his wrist onto the carpet without a sound.

/g/

“What’s this? Are we checking out today?”

“….”

“Is that what we’re doing, Mr. Beadsman? Checking out?”

“Yes.”

“Well I have a form for you to sign right here, and then I guess off you go into the blue.”

“… ”

“We usually don’t release on Saturday you know Mr. Beadsman. I had to get this form out of a locked drawer you know.”