David Wallace - Broom of the System

“Harumph,” the Antichrist said, sliding open his drawer. “Clint Wood and bonds to the rescue.”

“Five minutes is up, Antichrist,” said the Breather.

Cat’s chin was resting on his chest. One of his arms was incongruously outstretched, with a finger pointing at the stairs leading up to the social room’s bathroom.

“Has he done it?” asked LaVache.

The Breather held up the bottle. “The merest smidgeon left.”

“More than a smidgeon on his shirt, though, I see,” Heat said, lifting up Cat’s head to have a look at the dark field of vodka-soaked shirt on his chest.

The Antichrist rubbed the leg thoughtfully. “I say if Cat consents to suck on his shirt for the rest of the show, which is about five more minutes, he’ll have acquitted himself in his usual thoroughly admirable way.”

“Congratulations, big kitty,” the Breather said softly, tucking part of Cat’s shirt in Cat’s mouth, caressing a cheek under fluttering eyelids. “Still the undisputed prince of Hi Bob.”

“Did you come alone?” LaVache asked Lenore. “Did you come by plane, or by toy?”

“I came via the Company jet,” said Lenore.

The Antichrist’s eyebrows went up, so it looked like he had more hair.

Lenore continued, “I came with a friend, who’s also sort of my boss at Frequent and Vigorous.”

“Mr. Vigorous.” The Antichrist nodded his head. “The one Candy told me about.”

“What did Candy tell you, when?” asked Lenore.

The Antichrist looked away, drew a smile-face on the plastic of his leg with his pen, wiped it away with a moist finger. “That your boss was also your friend, so you were lucky. In July. Please don’t have a spasm; I sense Cat really not feeling well at all.”

“Is Candy the Mandible babe you blasted?” Heat asked the Antichrist with a grin.

Lenore looked at her brother with wide eyes. “You and Candy? Blasting?”

LaVache turned slowly and rested absolutely icy eyes on Heat. Heat’s clothes seemed suddenly to get roomier, as if he’d developed a slow leak. “Sorry,” he muttered. He closed his eyes.

The Antichrist looked at Lenore. “Heat knows not whereof he speaks, as I will no doubt be explaining at considerable length later. Heat, don’t you have some math you better do?”

“Shit,” Heat whispered. He sucked on the Antichrist’s joint.

Lenore stood up. “May I please ask a favor?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure it’s an imposition, but Rick and I don’t get to check in at the motel till five, and it’s been a really long day, and also sort of a dirty one, what with travel….”

“I understand entirely,” the Antichrist said soothingly. The “Bob Newhart Show” credits came on. The Breather went to the television and changed the channel. LaVache beamed at Lenore. “There is a clean, neatly folded towel for you in the bathroom, a bathroom which you’ll be happy to know you can secure for a brief period with the hanger on the door, although in a crisis Cat may find himself forced to impose, and there is on the towel, for your personal use, a crisp new bar of soap.”

“What, is she going to take a shower?” the Breather asked from the television, where he was twidgeling the vertical-hold controls.

“If it’s OK,” said Lenore.

“Hubba-hubba,” said the Breather.

“Steady, big guy,” said the Antichrist. “Lenore’s traveling companion is, I understand, fanatically jealous.”

Lenore looked at her brother.

“Where is this Mr. Vigorous, anyway,” LaVache asked quietly, looking back down at the leg.

The phone rang. The Breather reached over and picked it up. “It’s Nervous Roy Keller for you, A.C.,” he said to LaVache.

The Antichrist’s eyes lit up. “May I please have the lymph node?” The Breather handed him the phone. Lenore, not sure if she should stay around to explain where Rick Vigorous was, stood awkwardly, hefting her suitcase, hurting for a shower. Heat lay curled up on the sofa, apparently alseep. The Breather quietly went over and removed the red eye of the burning nubbin of the joint from between Heat’s fingers. Cat lay crumpled against the wall under the window, his shirt in his mouth.

“Nervous Roy Keller,” the Antichrist said into the phone. “Is it possible that I have not yet seen you this year? Are you spending all your time in the library again? In spite of what we talked about last spring?”

Nervous Roy Keller said something.

“Nervous, Nervous Roy,” laughed LaVache. “OK. I sense that a certain limb and I can do something for you. Right. You’re what? You’re taking Hegel? With Professor Huffman? I thought that got canceled for lack. He turned it into a tutorial? Just you and Huffman, and Hegel? That’s going to be death and destruction, you huge guy you. Well I’m sure sorry, is all. Uh-huh. Obliteration of Nature by Spirit? That’s the first assignment? What’s he going to do for an encore I wonder.” The Antichrist looked up at the Breather from the phone. “Breather, you want to be a good Sancho and go get me my Phenomenology of Spirit?”

The Breather went up the little set of stairs from the social room into the bedroom/bathroom area. On the television, marred only by a few vertical flutters, Marilyn Munster was bringing a date home, and the date saw her father, Herman, and ran away and climbed a telephone pole in sped-up motion, which Herman and Lily interpreted as a reflection on Marilyn’s seductive charms, and the audience laughed. The Breather reappeared and handed the Antichrist the book.

“Obliteration N by S, let’s see,” LaVache said, thumbing through. He stopped. “Bingo. Let’s see…. OK, look, N.R., why don’t you come by the room right before dinner, and we’ll talk Sublation Through Concepts. OK? Right. The leg will of course be positively growling with hunger by that time. Verstehen Sie? Right. See you then, then.”

The Antichrist hung up the phone and put it on the floor. “A tutorial on Hegel with Huffman,” he said to the Breather. “The leg likes that.”

The Breather grinned and manipulated his eyebrows at Lenore.

“Rick’s taking… walk around… alumnus… intense emotions washing…,” Lenore was muttering.

The Antichrist looked at her. “Why aren’t you in the shower this very moment?” he asked. “Take until four, and ‘The Munsters’ will be over, and my catharsis will be effected, and away we’ll go, leaving Heat to his homework.”

“Right,” said Lenore. She undid the straps of a suitcase and dug through Rick’s underwear and got her washcloth and toothbrush, and headed for the stairs.

“Need any help, don’t hesitate to call,” said the Breather.

“Thanks,” Lenore said. She shivered.

“Guess I might as well have a Quaalude, too, A.C., since there’s going to be no one left to play with,” the Breather said to LaVache.

Lenore unhooked the wire hanger bent and fastened to keep the bathroom door open and closed the door against the noise of the television and low voices and the sliding of the drawer.

/h/

I’m not exactly sure how I arrived at the Flange, at three o‘clock, and I really have no idea when the Flange became a gay bar, although I do know it was sometime after 1968, during which year a group of marginal Psi Phi fraternity brothers — including myself — would come every Wednesday to hoist a few and play pool and try, in our tweed jackets and white socks and Weejun loafers, to blend in with the public-university- and townie-crowd. A crowd that I can say with all confidence was at this point not the least bit gay.

But the bead curtain at the inner room clicketed and in I came, feeling warm from my walking and with a sneezy, burning afterdust of dry leaves in my nose. The place was relatively empty on this Monday, apart from some couples dancing and a group sitting at one end of the bar watching an episode of “The Bob Newhart Show,” a program I’d always enjoyed. The place did not scream gay bar, as so many gay bars seem to, not of course that I’ve personally been to many. In any event, here the choice and placement of posters and mirrors, the planty, velvety decor, the male bartender with orange mascara, the dancer-gender situation, told me all I needed to know. I didn’t care. My plans were simple. I wanted a Canadian Club with distilled water, then I would go initial-hunting in the restroom. I was sure I had left myself here. I sat on a stool, away from the television crowd, feeling a bit childish. Barstools make me feel a bit childish, because my feet do not quite reach the supports; they dangle, and sometimes swing, and my thighs plump out from the weight of the dangling and swinging legs, and my feet sometimes go to sleep.