David Means - Assorted Fire Events - Stories

There is a stillness that only the destitute know. And Arno felt it keenly, helping Roy get comfortable, tucking the folds of his old army coat around the man’s skull. He went out to the stairs to smoke — not out of respect or politeness but as an excuse to get out. It had been four months since summer, when nights were easy and they went to the woods outside of town and sat around the scrapwood campfire near Roy’s wigwam, enjoying the fruits of a day scavenging dumpsters. The smoke from his Camel conjoined with that of his breath as he blew it out. It was well below zero. The cloud of smoke and breath seemed to stand still. Fuck, he said softly, fuck fuck fuck, flicking the butt out into the darkness.

Around the moment when Roy died, Susan Porter-Horton was brushing her teeth, still adjusting herself to the height of the sink in their new house. The gooseneck faucet plated in real gold got in her way when she washed her face. She made a note to herself that she would have the faucets replaced as soon as things settled in; she’d wait until the pretenses of those first few weeks of being married were over and she was secure enough to make suggestions of that sort. The long, rambling split-level with postmodern flourishes had been built for Melville’s first wife. It was full of ghosts from the past. Vows weren’t simply washed away even by legal procedures, divorce lawyers or hate. She rinsed her toothbrush and slipped it back into the gold-plate holder, and stared at her face, flabby cheeks, pale, bloodless lips and eyes she didn’t trust anymore.

(In Spain, after making love to Peter, she lies in bed listening to the wind, arriving hot from the coast of Africa, draw through the windows; she then for a moment, a fleeting moment, goes over a long list of changes she made in the house — she thinks of the faucets, their elegant arches, the fine bone handles, and wonders if she’d have them back now. She gets up, silently, moves across the cool floor. On the bed the large bulk of the ex-Marine heaves and sighs, floating amid his own dreams.)

Every gesture becomes grand around death. Arno went back inside and saw that Roy was shivering violently. At a loss for what to do, he did what came naturally and, parting his shirt, lay atop the old guy, holding his weight on his knees and his elbows so he wouldn’t crush his ribs; he held this position for as long as he could until he slid down and their stubbled cheeks touched. (They’d shaved a week ago at the Baptist mission, side by side, Arno helping out, drawing the Good News razor along the sunken cheeks of his friend — swishing it in the hot water. There had been a sense then in the air of the impending death when, in the shower, Roy’s knees weakened and he slid down to the tiles under the steam. There was none of the slaphappy towel play that had — a year ago — accompanied the early stages of the love between the men, just after they swore over that bottle together. Arno showered alone, while Roy, dried off and dressed, talked to Grant, the pastor. He showered alone so he could masturbate, sliding the bulk of a bar of Irish Spring up and down the sides of his cock — no shame whatsoever coming from the sweet act. The love of his hands for his cock were as pure as any form of love available. It was clean, Godly love in the land of the lonely. It took five minutes. The water was warm to hot depending on the use of water in the soup kitchen where the volunteer ladies were rinsing the glasses as they came in. He was thinking soft, lovely thoughts. He was thinking about a girl he knew when he was in tenth grade named Wendy.) Ten minutes later he left Roy’s body to freeze.

The men outside the Hilton waiting for Roy to come out that night did so the way anybody would wait for a savior. They sat dreamily considering what was about to transpire: he’d come out brashly with a shit-eating grin and his arms loaded with booty, snaking past the high school kid in the uniform, swagging his hips in a drunkard’s dance of victory while they hooted and hollered. It was their way. They knew how to celebrate the small victories. The men with the arduous determination of stoics. Now and then, after a while, one of them muttered: “I wonder what happened to the old fuck.” And another said: “Oh give the old shit a chance, he’ll be out. I’m sure he will. For Jesus fuck’s sake. Give the guy a chance.” 1But there was no such Second Coming, of course, and all that kept coming that night and the next was the snow. It fell in great clumps. It fell in a fine powder. It fell in an edgy sleet.

THE HANDSHAKE with Hugh Lawson turned into a soft wrestling match, a quiet force of fingers against each other along with the soft pumping motion the act required. Outside, the wind-swept rain drew itself into a lull, opening a place into which the people could depart. He leaned close to her, not too close but close enough so he could lower his voice into an intimate whisper— “I’m sorry for your loss. ” She in turn said what every widow has to say to such sympathy, what she’d been saying for weeks on end to all kinds of words and advice, over tuna casseroles and cups of coffee, looking out her kitchen window (because that’s where most of the post-death rituals took place) at the long procession of the Hudson River moving through the first few weeks of November. “It’s all right, ” she said, still with his hand in hers because the whole thing really only took a second — a pause before someone said it’s stopping, and another batch of people went out the door into the cool air. “I’m fine. ”

They made the video on the last day of their honeymoon, at a hotel in Madrid, a grand four-star place with a glossy, empty, modern lobby and stairs that were too deep for her feet; the width of the stairs would remain with her forever, as would the white marble floor, the wood-polish smell of the elevator, and the porter who smiled nicely when he found out it was their honeymoon and told them, in beautiful, slow, Andalusian Spanish, not to have children right way, to hold off on all of that at least a year — granting them a wide, graceful smile full of white teeth.

Bled back onto the screen: shadows; bad lighting. The play of flesh and electronic failures along with the feeble light from the drawn curtains catching half dusk; it was around nine, which in Madrid in the summer seemed pretty much daytime. The curtains opened onto a bland view, the drive-up to the entry of the hotel, the street — busy with traffic — paled with that dry dusty sepia of a hot day, and lined with diseased trees. Resting on the dressing table, propped up on a couple of books, the camera framed the bed, leaving the invention of their lovemaking only to that particular square of poorly lit space and making it all seem — a week later when they watched it at home in New York — minute, static, dissolved in fuzz. The angles weren’t right. They were fucking in a normal manner. Seeing it later, they’d realized that porn flicks were distortions on a number of fronts: acrobatic, oddly real-looking unnatural positions provided visible mechanics of pump and thrust. Pornography was often more natural-looking than the real thing.

Two shapeshifters, godless ghosts. Ron hung over her like a long slab of pale moonlit flesh while beneath him, hardly visible, she lay restive, her outstretched hand opening and closing slowly, grasping air. It was this clawing of air that made her cheeks burn with shame when they viewed the tape together; when she saw that hand, waving like a child from the deck of a departing ship, the beauty of the moment became tarnished forever. It no longer belonged to the realm of memory.

He hovered over her with his arms out as she rolled onto her back. Then he made love to her while his ass, pale as a harvest moon, came in and out of focus. They’d laughed at that, the way the recording continued after they were finished, laying back on the tangled bedsheets — spooning each other. When she stood up, her scarless belly passed and moved away, out of sight. He got up, too, showing the flatness of his ass as he turned, bright as chalk, delineated by his dark tan, ripe from three weeks in the sun, reminding them both of those classic sad rear-end shots of concentration camp survivors, of the row of humiliated prisoners lined up in the Attica Prison courtyard after the riots were over.