Jonathan Lethem - The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

“Danny-boy?” said John to the lieutenant. She nodded sagely.

“He’s taken up position on a porch,” said the admiral, and then added, “As per my orders,” and shot a fierce look at the sergeant.

Judith opened her mouth to say that he wasn’t actually on the porch anymore, that he’d been moved inside. But she didn’t speak.

“So what’s the problem?” said John, his eyes on Judith.

“Communication is poor-to-nonexistent,” said the admiral, with a hard look in his eyes.

“Snoring, however, is highly satisfactory,” japed the sergeant.

“Admiral, why don’t you buy the young lady a drink?” said the lieutenant. “I hate to see her empty-handed.”

“It’s fine,” said Judith.

“Make it a round for the house,” said the sergeant. “That’s the only way I’ll ever get a drink around here.”

“We’ll reestablish communication when we need to,” said John to the admiral. “For the time being let’s leave Danny-boy where he is. Deep in mufti.”

The woman in overalls suddenly laughed.

“In mufti?” said the sergeant puzzledly.

“A round for the house,” said John. “I’m buying.”

“Mighty white of you, General,” said the lieutenant. But John was already headed back to his table.

“Mighty white of you, General,” echoed the sergeant in a mocking whine.

“Young lady, I wonder if perhaps you would accompany me to a booth?” said the admiral to Judith.

“No thank you,” she said. “I have to go.”

In another day the cactus had grown extra knobs, on the side that faced him. Almost like tumors, she thought. The needle-fur over the new growth was downy, like a baby’s first hair. It was overweighted on that side now, and nearly tipping its pot. She turned it so the new growth faced away from him.

The other three had proliferated too. The spiderplant had cast new trailers over his ankle, and the fern and the succulent were both turned towards him, and thicker and shinier on his side. He was like Ring Arthur, she thought. The land, the crops, grew when he was well and died when he was sick. Or was it the other way? Ring Midas, maybe that was righter. Golden touch. She wanted him to have a title or rank, like the others from the bar. Danny-boy didn’t seem enough.

Porch Ring. Arthur Midas, Porch Ring. Maybe she should move him out to the porch again.

Instead she moved the plants all a little farther away, then stood back and looked. She was embarrassed for him, somehow, in a cozy chair surrounded by the eager foliage. It was too feminine, not really kingly at all, let alone military. She thought of the famous painting of the Midwestern farmer parting the cattails to find the nude sleeping there. He was still as inappropriate, as unexpected as that. The plants seemed to make it worse.

If she took him and the plants out together to the porch, they would be camouflage, not decoration. But it was too cold; the fern would die. And she wanted him inside. So she took them away to their original spots in the house. They’d basked enough, and what was happening to the cactus didn’t necessarily seem so healthy anyway. Denuded of the plants he looked dead again, but she had an idea.

In the closet was her television, on a rolling metal stand. She didn’t watch it anymore. It had gone from all news about militias forming and dinosaurs to replaying old shows that weren’t about anything at all. She rolled it out of the closet to a spot in front of his chair and plugged it in, set the volume low, and stepped behind it to watch him. Perfect. He was transformed, restored. The flickering glow seemed to animate his features. It reminded her of when she found him, that first day, on the porch.

She went to the closet and took out a large cardboard mailing tube. It was still marked with stamps and stickers. She put one end in his lap and pointed the other across his shoulder, and arranged his arms around it as though it were a rifle. She tipped his head forward a bit so he seemed more attentive. If the dinosaurs looked in her window, they would see him keeping watch, waiting. Though it was hard to see it really as a rifle; they would think he was holding a bazooka, a flame thrower. Or a cardboard tube.

Finished, she knelt and let her head rest against his knee briefly. His breathing was soft and steady, as always. He was a good sleeper, she thought. He was getting good sleep. She touched his thigh. It felt nice. But that part of their relationship had to wait, she decided. He shouldn’t be undressed now, she shouldn’t be thinking of that.

“He made the plants grow.”

She’d just learned that in one shop 70-watt lightbulbs were selling for two dollars and fifty cents apiece, while in another shop, a few blocks away from the first, they cost almost ten dollars. Then she’d called Eva.

“They all do that, I told you.”

“Do you — have you known a sleepy person?”

“Well—” Eva giggled.

Out of the corner of her eye Judith saw Tom go from his cubicle to the door of Eva’s. “Just a sec,” said Eva.

Judith could make out their talk, though Eva must have had her hand over the mouthpiece. “Who’s on the phone?” said Tom.

“It’s Judith. We’re talking.”

“Hurry up, I want to go to lunch.”

Eva came back on the line. “I have to go,” she said.

When she got home, Judith saw that the new growths on the cactus had sagged, like little deflated balloons. The hair on them was thin and disordered. She brought the cactus back into the living room and put it on the floor at his feet, in front of the television.

That night from her bedroom, just as she was drifting off to the sound of the voices on the television, she heard him pad to the bathroom and pee. The sound of his urine falling into the little pool went on forever, and the tone rose, as if he were filling the bowl completely. Finally it stopped, and there came the sound of the faucet, then a slapping and slurping noise that she decided meant he was drinking from his cupped hands. He left the bathroom without flushing the toilet.

In the morning she saw he’d gotten to his chair and retaken the tube into his arms, though he was holding it more like a pillow than a rifle, hugging it to his chest, his grizzled cheek resting against it. A little stream of drool was soaked into the cardboard. She restored the tube to rifle position, then turned the television off for the day.

The cactus had already reinflated nicely.

At work she found that her phone couldn’t be used to call the other cubicles anymore.

They arrived while she was brushing her teeth before bed. She was in a robe. It was a warm night. His television was on now, a reassuring monotone of chatter. They broke the front window with a rock from the yard. When she came out of the bathroom to look, someone had a foot through the broken window, tangling in the blind, and someone else was pounding on the front door. She opened it, and they came at her.

It was a group of dinosaurs, five of them, three male and two female. They looked young, younger than dinosaurs looked in the news. She wondered if any of them were even twenty. The first two through the door grabbed her by the arms. One pulled her wet toothbrush from her hand and threw it under the table. The last stepped in and closed the door.

“Drop it,” one of them yelled. His hair was fluffed into an enormous Afro, and he wore a pumpkin-colored satin jacket with a fluted waist and sleeves. He poked a small knife toward the sleepy man and said again, “Drop it.” Another dinosaur, a teenage girl, dashed forward and jerked the cardboard tube out of the sleepy man’s arms, releasing it to clatter to the floor beside his chair.

“He’s asleep,” said Judith.

Keeping the knife at waist-level, the dinosaur with the Afro squinted at the sleepy man. “Sure he is,” he said. “Be rough with her. We’ll see how he likes that.”