Hob Broun - Inner Tube

“Let go of it,” I said.

“What?”

I put my palm over her bladder, pressed hard, and the gin came hosing out of her, splattering her thighs and pooling on the upholstery. I said for her to sit still and shut up. She cried without a sound and as I turned north on Fairfax, reached between my legs.

You cringe and recoil? Very well. But here was a compatibility, awesome in its precision, from which she and I could not turn away. An absence of imagined pearls. What cleaved us to each other and ultimately cleaved us in two were these types of closeness, progressive as a disease. More thankless wisdom, but in time, in desperation, wouldn’t we have intertwined mortally, choking in unison? Isn’t that true?

Distinctions again, goddammit. Habit of a lifetime, whereas rigor truly is not. Sure enough, there’s more to this than erasing the old tapes and inserting the new; those work habits — automatic exchange, alternatives on request — worse than useless now.

A reprise of the wind flattens grass outside and rattles the boards. I’m shivering again. The hotplate’s taped cord throws off a few sparks while I heat water for soup. I pull the zipper tab, empty the foil pouch of its yellow powder and dehydrated shreds of chicken. Black birds are skirling, angered by the turbulence. I drink hastily from the bowl and burn my tongue. Clouds are knotting and the wind shifts constantly, erratic as a drunken driver. Still not warm, I feel cloaked and cozy in this unlikely place with its rust-stained toilet and splintery pine walls. I am the fox in her den, the beaver in his lodge.

Before me on the floor I start to empty boxes newly brought from the car, arranging items in no system, improvising a collage of books, postcards, cufflinks, matches, a piece of rose quartz. My fingers are cool and smooth. Objects fall smartly into place, Sir Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial abutting a broken watch, horseshoe magnet perfectly centered in an ashtray from the Beverly Wilshire hotel. The more I unload, the stronger my impulse to give it all away. That biker’s little girl could play with my rubber dinosaur, and Dag, the military man, might appreciate Bernal Diaz’s memoir of his years with Cortés. Potlatch at the Pronghorn. Too bad, but I can’t fool myself. This is a fatuous ruse, like someone cleaning out the closets after a divorce. Rare things, pretty things, favorite things — standing for themselves alone, all are things and no more. Their addition or subtraction does not transform. Okay, one more issue to give up on: shortcuts. Progress. Elimination process.

Extra socks and a sweatshirt with the hood up aren’t helping my shivers any. Muscles down my back contract, recalling New York winters, the snow and ice I haven’t missed once in all these western years. “No seasons,” transplants to L.A. were forever complaining. Sometimes I bought them one of those Citizen Kane paperweights in which you can shake up an artificial blizzard. Usually I just said, “See you at the beach.”

I heat more water, drink more soup. The black birds have gone. From here no trees are to be seen, no cliffs. Maybe they’ll find some roof eaves for shelter, or a dry culvert. The wind is repetitious now, singing an autistic little song. Salt from the soup feels to be crystallizing in my belly; the pains are sharp and quick. I get into bed and pull the blanket up to my ears. There, far below, it seems, my possessions are scattered on the floor. I feel weak in mind and body. No rigor. No vigor. Maybe I’ll never get out of here.

Padilla, what I’m asking is this: If it’s such a great country, why is everything so hard?

TIME ALL HASHED UP. Lying here how many cycles of light and dark? How many sweats and chills? Wondering must mean I’m coming around, emerging. Every ligament and muscle packed tight with exhaustion. Diaphragm a belt of pain from heaving, mouth a compost hole, hair crisp with evaporated sweat. But now at least stilled, floating like a lily pad, no more shakes and spasms. After much spinning, mind becalmed as well, regaining assessment capability.

Idiot’s delight. I’ve seen faces in the window, heard quiet, repetitious music. A menagerie of stains has galloped and bucked, sometimes browsed in the ceiling pasture.

In troughs between deliria, I’ve contemplated this bungalow as a place for dying, or rather as a place in which to be found all stiff and yellow like a wax icon. There’d be head-shaking and sucking of teeth. Another friendless derelict. Mercy, but they get younger all the time. Tag him and bag him, another one for the county. Then they’d interview Dag:

“You know how they is nowadays, can’t figure which sock to put on first. This boy here, he was leastwise handy. I mean he knowed which end of a screwdriver goes where. But for most of it, he was just as green as the grass we ain’t got.”

I collapse halfway to the sink, too dizzy even to crawl. Expansion of lungs painful. Eyeballs a half-dozen sizes too large. Safest course is to stay put, lie here like a thumbsucker.

Linkage between sickness and childhood: relinquishing power. A sublime gauze curtain descends and your face may go blank behind it, your voice disappear. Incapacity, given in to, means entry to a private realm where you float around, or through, obstacles on a silent barge.

So here in this shabby drifter’s cabin I am a little doll. Time all hashed up, let me repeat. And on gusts of fever these streamers have flapped within reach….

I am a gasping little doll with clotted chest and my mother sponges me with alcohol. She is party ready, smoothly powdered, silhouette enlarged by a fur jacket, her glowing orange lips my night light.

I am eating pureed carrots and gray crumbling meat. Have to finish — while I watch Circus Boy, the maid Amanda watches me. “They can’t have gone far,” says the snake charmer. “Go on, it’ll put hair on your chest,” says Amanda.

I am nested in the back room of a summer rental that smells of creosote, waiting out the same cold as everyone else. The motorboats on the lake, even Gordo’s high-pitched sneezing, seem far off to my congested ears. I have baseball magazines, Green Lantern and Andy Panda comics. I watch ice melt in the ginger ale.

I am lurking in the doorway of my sister’s bedroom where she lies in state, in shadow, peppered with measles. She is typically kempt, bundled in white terry cloth, but spews eager germs with every breath. It is forbidden to go in. From my side of the border I whisper bad news, see her rapidly blink, then turn toward deeper shadow. Carla will not be well enough to attend the final performance of the Ice Capades.

Reaching the sink is no triumph, the basin scummed with bile like the foam that dries inside a milkshake cup. Should I risk a trip outdoors? A galvanized tin stall, a narrow stream of rusty water. Anything to slough this fetid skin I’m in. But getting into pants takes all my strength, leaves me marooned on the mattress again. I don’t want to sink back. Enough indoor mirages. But I haven’t the will of a doorknob. Except to bare my teeth at the dented, demented smile hanging in the windowframe.

Glad of the invitation, in walks Dag just as real as the tear in my pants.

“Shitfire, son. Look like a curse been put on you.”

“A virus,” I find myself saying, “is the simplest life form.”

From what I can hear, my voice is of an automated gun-slinger in a penny arcade.

“That’s right, simple but smart,” Dag says, picking through my canned goods.

“What day is it?”

“We need some lunch.” He slaps the air decisively. “So where’s the damn opener?”

Watching him empty creamed corn into a bowl is all the lunch I need. Cautiously, I sip from the cup of water he brings over, dribbling it down my bruised throat. Ice Capades. I see myself facedown, skimming the length of the rink.