T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

Walt took a break for a minute to change records and adjust the treble on his amp. In the ringing silence that ensued, we realized that the TV was emitting a thin high-pitched whistle. There was no picture. “What the fuck?” said Isabelle. She jumped up, flipped through the channels. All gray, all emitting the same whistle. Isabelle’s eyes were bleared. “Let’s try the radio!” she said. It too: the same insidious whine. “The phone!” she shouted. The phone hummed softly in her ear, my ear, Walt’s ear, Amy’s ear. It was the same sort of hum you get from an empty conch shell. “It’s dead,” I said. We stood there mute, staring at the receiver suspended from its cord, clickless and ringless. We theorized:

Maybe it’s a National Emergency—

Maybe it’s D-day — Maybe it’s the Nuclear Holocaust—

Maybe it’s Judgment Day—

Maybe it’s the Rockets they’re sending up—

But we all suspected the soundness of these extrapolations. Probably it was just some new form of pollution, and a few wires down in the storm. Gesh appeared in fresh white, smelling like a candy cane. He walked deliberately to the pipe, thumbed in a chunk of hash, and sucked the flame of a match through it. Is-abelle, quickly sedated, picked out a couple of albums and Walt ducked under the embroidered shoulder strap of his bass — the blast of music sealed the room, stopped the ticking at the panes. Alice brought in the hors d’oeuvres, and a comforting smell of exotic dishes abubble in the kitchen. I sat, smoked, and ate.

In the morning I slipped early from the warmth of the nest (Alice’s tender buttock, Gesh’s hairy satyr’s foot framed there beneath the sheets), wrapped my white robe over my white pajamas, stepped into my fluffy white slippers, and went downstairs, as I always do on Saturdays, to watch cartoons. My mind was a tabula rasa, wire-brushed with intoxicants; my dreams had been of cool colors, the green of the forest, the cerulean of the summer sky. In the living room, a pinkish light suffused the slats of the blinds. The window was like stained glass. In the early morning quiet, the red splashes drummed against it. I was stunned; and all alone there, at that early hour, frightened. Then I heard the scratching at the door: the dogs had been out all night. Without thinking, I opened the door and they rushed in, great living lumps of raw flesh, skinned carcasses come to life, slick with blood, their bellies bloated with it. “No, no, get down!” But they were already up on their hind legs, pawing affectionately at me, their fetid breath in my face. Their teeth were stained red, blood hung even in the sockets of their eyes. “Get down, goddamnit!” My robe, my pajamas, my fluffy white slippers were ruined: the blood crept through the white cotton like a stain in water. I kicked out at the dogs. They backed off and shook themselves — a fine bloodmist spotted the walls, the white rugs of the hallway, the potted plants. The dogs grunted, eased themselves down and licked their paws. Blood seeped from beneath them. I felt sick from the stink of it, and so upset with the mess that tears began to crowd my eyes — exasperated, hopeless tears. The hallway looked like a sacrificial altar, my arms like the gory High Priest’s. I would wash and go back to bed, face life later.

In the bathroom I stepped carefully out of my clothes in an effort to avoid staining the bathmat. It was no use. Blood oozed from the fluffy red slippers. I wiped my hands and face on the lining of the robe, bundled everything together and stuffed it into the hamper. Seven electric toothbrushes, seven cups, and seven hotcombs hung on the rack over the sink. We kept the seven electric shavers, each in its own carrying case, stacked neatly in the cabinet. I stepped into the shower, the tap of blood against the bathroom window loud in my ears, and turned on hot, full force. Eyes pressed tight, face in the spray, I luxuriated in the warm pure rush of the water. I’d always taken a great deal of pleasure in showering and bathing, in being clean — it reminded me of my mom and the baths she used to give, sponging my crotch, kissing my wet little feet … but there was something wrong — that odor — good God, it was in the water supply! Horrified, I leaped from the shower. In the steamed-over mirror I was newborn, coated in blood and mucus, pulled hot from the womb. Diluted blood streamed down my body, puddled at my feet. I lifted the toilet seat and puked into the red bowl. Hung my head and puked: puked and cried, until Amy came down and found me there.

Gesh sat back in the stuffed chair. He wore his white robe with the gold monogram, and his slippers. The bloodfall hammered on. “We’ve got to look at the precedents,” he said. There was a pie and a soufflé in the oven. We were in the living room, sipping apricot nectar, munching buns. Alice, in the entrance hall with detergent and scrub brush, was muttering like Lady Macbeth over the carpet stains. “What precedents?” I asked.

“Like all of that shit that went down in Egypt about thirty-five hundred years ago.”

Walt was tuning his bass: dzhzhzhzhtt. dzhzhzhzhtt. He picked a rumbling note or two and looked up. “You’re thinking of frogs, brother. Millions of frogs. Frogs under the bed, frogs in the flour, frogs in your shoes, clammy frogs’ flippers slapping at your ass when you take a shit.”

“No, no — there was something about blood too, wasn’t there?”

“Yeah,” said Walt. “Christ turned it into water. Or was it wine?”

“You know what happened in Egypt?! You want to know?” My voice cracked. I was getting hysterical. A cat jumped into my lap. I tossed it over my shoulder. Everything in the room had a red cast, like when you put on those red cellophane glasses as a kid, to read 3D comic books.

Gesh was staring at me: “So what happened?”

“Never mind,” I said.

Amy howled from the basement. “Hey you guys, guess what? The stuff is ankle-deep down here and it’s ruining everything. Our croquet set, our camping equipment, our dollhouse!” The announcement depressed us all, even Gesh. “Let’s blow a bowl of hash and forget about it,” he suggested.

“Anyhow,” said Walt, “it’ll be good for the trees.” And he started a bass riff with a deep throbbing note — the hum of it hung in the air even after the lights went out and the rest of his run had attenuated to a thin metallic whisper. “Hey!” he said. From the kitchen: “Oh shit!” A moment later, Isabelle came in wringing her hands. “Well. The breakfast’s ruined. We’ve got a half-baked pie and a flat soufflé sitting in the oven. And a raw-eggy blob purporting to be eggnog in the blender.”

There was a strange cast to the room now. Not the gloom-gray of a drizzly day, but a deep burgundy, like a bottle of wine.

“Well? What am I going to do with it all — give it to the dogs?”

The dogs glanced up briefly. Their hair was matted and brown with dried blood. They were not hungry.

Scott whined: “I’m hungry.”

I was scared. I’d been scared all along, scared from the moment I’d noticed the first drops on the window. I looked at Gesh, our leader: he was grinning in that lurid light, sucking reflectively on the pipe. “Don’t hassle it, Iz,” he said. “Mark and me’ll pop down to the deli and get some sandwiches.”

“I don’t want to go out there — I’ll lose my lunch.”

“Come on, don’t be such a candy ass. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to talk to somebody, find out what’s going on.” He stood up. “Come on, Mark, get your boots.”

Outside was incredible. Red sky, red trees, red horizon: the whole world, from the fence to the field to the mountains across the river, looked like the inside of some colossal organ. I felt like an undigested lump of food — Jonah in the belly of the whale. There was the stench of rotting meat. The bloodfall streamed down hard as hail. Under the eaves, on the porch, we were fooling with our rain hats, trying to get up the nerve to run for the car. Gesh too, I could see, was upset. Yesterday it had been a freak, today a plague. “Well, what do you think, bro — make a run for it?” he said.