Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

Coffee in hand, he tried to sneak past Stagger’s door, emblazoned with a Cubs Fans Only parking sign. But it flew open the moment the first stair creaked; a soundslide of Guns N’ Roses washed over Joshua. Stagger emerged bare-chested, with sinews, bones, and muscles on full and elaborate display; his was the body of a junkie marathon runner. His ponytail was loosened so that his face was parenthesized by hair, streaked with gray here and there. He sported two shiny studs through his nipples, and, between them, a tattoo of a snake whose tail’s tip touched his navel. No doubt somewhere within his domain he had a treasure chest full of cock rings and handcuffs, and many more things unimaginable. Joshua unhurriedly ascended onto the next creaking step. He was scared of Stagger and his nipple-studded intensity, but he didn’t want to look like a coward and run up.

“Would you care to come in?” Stagger said, in a voice that only he could’ve thought alluring. “We could hang out, suck on, you know, some beer.”

“Come on, Stagger,” Joshua said, not looking at Stagger. “Jesus!”

“Leave Jesus out of this,” Stagger said. “I ask you respectfully.” He stepped back heels first into his dark den and closed the door. Relieved, Joshua proceeded upstairs through a tide of creaks, listening to what sounded like bottles being smashed to the beat of “Paradise City.” What was troubling was not so much the noise as that Stagger kept going. How many bottles for smashing could he possibly have in that place? Every little castle in the kingdom of Chicagoland includes a TV, fridge, and stacked crates of refined insanity.

Joshua’s back was tense, his loins elongated to the point of pain, his shoulders painful from the burden of the last couple of days. A sensation of a noose around his neck, stretching it, providing relief as he hung from the ceiling, emerged in his mind. He looked up to see if there was a hook above the stairs where a belt could be attached, but there was none.

His place was exactly as he’d left it: mouse-gray dust clumps patrolling the corners; the piss-sticky bathroom floor; the hunt picture slanted, the fox heading downhill. The books stood on the shelves; the two chairs facing the table like reprimanded children; the unwashed cereal bowls still unwashed; the oriental chimes not orientally chiming. How stable everything was when he wasn’t there! Everything remained in its place until he moved it. Unless, that is, Stagger haunted it in his absence, pawing his stuff, then returning it exactly where it had been.

Kimiko had visited his place (home?) only once or twice. She couldn’t abide the moldy shower curtain, the cockroach families vacationing in the kitchen, the flatulent reek of singlehood infusing everything. She may have initially found it exotic — an endearing symptom of Jo’s prolonged youth, perhaps; a recognizable point on this little patient’s trajectory, something she could work with. It had become obvious quickly that she couldn’t be turned on within the walls of this dystopic dorm-room replica. Joshua hadn’t insisted; he’d been pretty content to spend nights (and many long days) at her place. That way he’d practice being fully adult while retaining an escape tunnel into his prolonged adolescence; that way everything here could enjoy its comfortable stasis. Man reaches a point in his life when unchanging becomes a matter of pride; the habits and remnants of youth are thereafter kept in the museum of the self.

When Kimmy was gone for a conference in Orlando or some such hotel-and-Enrique-friendly place, Joshua would spend days writing at his abode, leaving it only for work and movie rentals. Back when he’d been a true adolescent, with Janet acing it in college and his still-married parents frequently absconding to Michigan for a weekend with the Blunts, he’d liked to stay at home by himself. He wouldn’t go out, wouldn’t invite his friends over, wouldn’t wash dishes or shower — he’d just read, drink, watch movies, and masturbate. It was bachelor-pad communism: producing according to one’s abilities, consuming according to one’s needs, but no commune to get on your nerves. Come Saturday night, he’d reach a utopia of abandon, a delightful blankness of mind that eradicated the outside world in all its unrewarding complications. He’d clean up the place only a couple of hours before his parents’ return. At least once, the outside world had barged in unexpectedly, Bernie returning too soon, catching him naked and deeply invested in porn. Months of indulgent therapy would follow.

He should call Bernie again, he recognized. If he called him now, he wouldn’t mention his prostate; he would simply tell him he was moving in with Kimmy; that would make him happy, maybe help him forget his cancer for a little bit. Then again, Bernie was long-winded, even when he was not terrified of dying. Besides, what could Joshua actually tell him? Everything will be okay? Maybe it would be better if he called Connie to tell her about his father’s prostate goyter , maybe she’d take enough pity on Bernie to take care of him. Or he could call Janet, she’d know what to do.

Joshua put his coffee down and straightened the fox-hunt picture. There was no sense in cleaning this mess up. A better man would say goodbye to this disarray, to this life of entropy. It was time perhaps to fully join the adult world, take responsibilities, assist his father in need, be worthy of a grown-up woman. The fact was, there was little he wanted from this place (home? nah!), except maybe some clean underwear. If somehow all this were to burn down, he’d experience no feeling of loss whatsoever; on the contrary, it would be a kind of purging. The great American cycle: catastrophe prompting reinvention; reinvention resulting in further catastrophe, and on we roll toward apocalypse and redemption. Script Idea #99: A foxhunt from the fox’s point of view .

In his bedroom, his underwear was washed and folded on his bed in a neat, unfamiliar stack. And there, next to it, was Ana, her legs crossed, her fingers entangled on her knee, wagging impatiently her shoe on the tip of her foot. She looked like she’d been waiting for him for a long time, ripening.

“I brought your wallet,” she said. “Mr. Stagger opened door for me. He is funny.”

“Funny is not the right word,” Joshua said.

She wore a white shirt with leg-of-mutton sleeves; there were chocolate smudges on her collar and her chest, even on her cuffs. The hem of her skirt cut across the globes of her knees; he could smell her, her anabashed arousal. She unzipped her purse and dug through it until she excavated his wallet. It was different, as if it had aged and become archaeological; Joshua remembered his wallet being light, but now it emitted darkness in the bedroom’s gloom. He took it and held it, deliberating whether to check if all of his cards were there. He could now prove again he was his legal self, so he decided to show that he trusted her. Stagger was still destroying “Paradise City” downstairs, but she either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Or it wasn’t happening at all. What if he were the only one hearing it, if it were all taking place in his head?

“See if wallet is okay,” she said. “I never trust Esko.”

The card catalogue of his life: library card, video-store card, credit cards, long over limit and now canceled; wine-shoppe punch card; driver’s license — the face on it appeared only vaguely familiar, as if belonging to a younger distant cousin with an overbite suggesting learning disabilities. There was no confusion, no sign of interiority in that face, nothing he could connect with the intricacies of his present self. I skip like a pebble across the surface of time, until I reach the first Tuesday of my new life.