David Wallace - Broom of the System

“You met Norman Bombardini?” Candy said.

“I just don’t know what you mean by love. Tell me what you mean by that word,” Vlad the Impaler said.

“You’re going to have to buy a very small gag,” said Candy.

“Candy, the guy is trying to eat himself to death because his wife left him. He already weighs about a thousand pounds. He was eating eclairs off the floor.” Lenore took her bathrobe from the bedpost and undid her bra in the sun and headed for the bathroom. Candy followed her down the hall.

“You can’t hold me to promises I didn’t make!” Vlad the Impaler called after them.

/b/

Lenore took her shower while Candy Mandible leaned against the sink and smoked a clove cigarette in the steam.

“I don’t get it,” Candy said. “How can they just let twenty patients walk out and not see them or stop them?”

“Hobble out, is more like it,” Lenore said from the shower.

“Right.”

“I’m just going to assume, I guess, that if my father knows about it, Lenore’s OK. I’m going to assume that he took her to Corfu with him for this summit meeting with the president of this other baby food company. Except Gramma’s always had about zero interest in the Company. Except Dad and Gramma more or less hate each other. Except Gramma really has to have things ninety-eight point six or she gets blue. Except there’s like twenty-five other people gone too. Corfu would have to be pretty crowded. But I’m going to assume Dad took them somewhere. Except God I didn’t even think he knew where the Home was, anymore. Even though he owns it. He always handles it through Rummage and Naw.” The shower hissed on the curtain for a moment. “I don’t know if I should wait till Dad comes back or not. I can’t just fly to Corfu. I don’t have any money. And plus who knows where they are in Corfu.”

“Rick could lend you money. God knows Rick’s got money.”

“I haven’t even told Rick about it yet. He’s hurt.” Lenore turned off the shower and stepped out.

“I think Rick sort of flipped out, a little bit, up there, today.” Candy threw her cigarette in the toilet. It hissed for a second. She began to brush her teeth.

“He seemed OK at dinner. He just wants to know where I am all the time. The one who’s flipped and landed heavily is that Norman Bombardini. He was talking about infinity, and living butter?”

“What?”

“My robe smells like the bottom of a rug,” Lenore said, sniffing at her brown robe. “It’s all mildewy.”

“You could see if Lenore’s maybe staying with anybody else in your family,” said Candy.

“And what the hell is with Vlad the Impaler?”

“You could see if Lenore’s with anybody else in your family.”

“What? Yes. That’s a good idea. Except no way she’s with John, he can’t even be reached, and neither can LaVache, because Dad told me he doesn’t even have a phone. And why would Gramma go all the way to Amherst? Maybe Clarice, I guess. Except if Gramma was still around here, which Clarice obviously is, she’d have called to at least let me know she was OK.”

“Maybe she tried and could only get Steve’s Sub.”

“God, that’s another thing, what a rotten day at work. That Peter guy who looks like a negative never came back, and we sure didn’t hear from any tunnel guy.” Lenore tried to get steam off the mirror. Candy dried Lenore’s back with a towel and took off her silver leotard and stepped into the shower. Lenore stuck her arm in behind the plastic curtain and Candy handed her the soap and Lenore gently soaped Candy’s back, the way Candy liked. “And we get call after call at the board, almost all wrong, and Prietht was laughing.”

“I’m really going to kill her. I’m going to murder her, soon. A negative?”

“And Walinda was just unbelievably mad that I was late. She was really going to fire me. She kept saying, ‘Don’t play.’ ”

“When she says ‘Don’t play,’ you know she’s really mad,” Candy said, stepping out of the shower. The steam in the bathroom was now so thick Lenore could hardly see to open the door. She opened the door. A rush of cool hall air came in and cut the steam. Lenore began to brush her teeth.

“I should shave my legs,” she said. “My legs are making that sound when I rub them.”

“So shave.”

“And then Candy what’s with Vlad the Impaler? I think he must be sick. Rick said the lady in the store said cockatiels didn’t really even talk that much, as a rule. Maybe he’s dying, and this is like the huge burst of fireworks at the end, right before the fireworks are over.”

“Clinty, the sex is great, you know the sex is great, I’ve told you how you fill me up, but sex is only like a few hours a day, you can’t let it totally rule your life,” said a raspy bird voice from down the hall.

“Little fucker sounds pretty healthy to me,” Candy Mandible said, walking naked down the hall, Lenore in the bathrobe behind her. “If Mrs. Tissaw hears this stuff, we’re really up the old fecal creek. We better start teaching him some Psalms or something.”

Candy went into her room and Lenore into hers. In Lenore’s room it was very pretty now. The floor and lower walls were liquid black, and dark tree shadows moved in the orange bath of sunset on the upper walls and ceiling.

“Sex is a few hours a day?” Lenore called to Candy.

“Clint, Clint, Clint, special-wecial,” Vlad the Impaler crooned into his mirror.

“Jesus wept,” Lenore said into Vlad the Impaler’s cage. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”

Vlad the Impaler cocked his head and looked at her.

“Lenore, Clint is just something else, I have to tell you. He’s super. He turns me inside out. He’s a horse, a camel, a brontosaurus,” Candy said from her door, demonstrating with her hands. “Like this.”

“Yes, well, ummm,” said Lenore.

“Inside out! Like this!” shrieked Vlad the Impaler.

“Shit on a twig,” Lenore said.

“But he’s so possessive,” Candy continued. “He keeps asking me to marry him, and getting mad when I laugh. He thinks making me come gives him the right to my heart. How can such a big boy be such a little boy? My eye’s on the president of the whole company, Mr. Allied.” Candy stood on dancer’s point in Lenore’s doorway and let the last orange bits of sunset fall on her cheeks. She was a really pretty girl, all curves and ovals and soft milky shine, with thick dark hair, even darker now when wet. It lay like a blanket of chocolate over her breasts and back. A plane flew over, low, rattling the windows in their frames for a moment.

“Now let’s have a night to remember, and remember each other always,” Vlad the Impaler said to his reflection.

Lenore slipped a clean dress over her head. “When does this night to remember begin?”

Candy looked at the clock just as it clicked and buzzed a new minute. “Any time now. I’m just going to go over to his place for dinner, then I imagine we’ll mate like animals for hours and hours and hours.”

“A real romantic,” said Lenore. “Jesus wept, Vlad the Impaler. The sins of the fathers. I shall not want.”

“Jesus shall not want.”

“Attaboy.”

“I’m still waiting to hear about Rick, you know, mating-wise.” Candy called from back in her room. “It’s been months, after all, and if he’s as super as you say… I’m waiting for minute anatomical tale-telling. Otherwise you’ll just force me to find out for myself.”

“Yes, well, ummm.” Lenore put on clean socks.

“Just kidding. But really, we are partners in crime after all. And describing one can make you feel closer to it. I mean him. Really. Angles and bends and birthmarks and everything. It makes you intimater.” Candy came in, in a pale old violet cotton dress that had been Lenore’s for a long time, and was just perfectly too small for Candy, and clung to the not insignificant swell of her hips. She knelt at the window in the shadow and put mascara on, looking at her reflection in the black lower rectangle of the clear glass pane. Outside, crickets were starting.