Patrick deWitt - Ablutions

It is September 15, the day Simon is to be murdered in his front room, and a group of regulars and bar employees gather in his apartment to watch over him throughout the night. The Teachers arrive bearing medical supplies, margarita mix, and a blender. Next comes Curtis. He is wearing his usual policeman getup along with a pair of silver and gold spurs attached with string to his worn brown loafers. "They blow the look but still sound cool," he says. He is saving up for a pair of motorcycle-cop boots. Behind him is the child actor. He looks a little yellow and you rush over to ask about his health. Is he experiencing any lapses in energy? Any pains in his right side beneath the rib cage? Does he find that surface wounds are taking an abnormally long time to heal? He says he is feeling fine. He is on call for a Where Are They Now game show that pays fifteen thousand dollars per episode. He will never forget what you've done for him, he says, and when the checks start rolling in you can be sure he'll be spending his money at the bar. You sigh, and return to the corner with your whiskey. You notice a familiarity between the child actor and Curtis and it dawns on you that they spend time together outside of the bar. You can see them sipping morning beers in San Fernando Valley strip clubs and you dig your palm heels into your eye sockets and make a long wheezing sound. Curtis finds a NASCAR race on television and turns this up so loud it sounds as if the cars are in the room with you.

Merlin shows up with a case of warm Pabst and is grudgingly admitted — there is an unspoken belief that he has an unnatural hand in Simon's forthcoming demise. Simon has already drunk a bottle and a half of wine and his eyes are glazed and he is confused by Merlin's arrival. "What are you doing here?" he asks. Merlin shrugs. Simon will drink himself into oblivion tonight. "What are you doing here, mate?" he asks you. "I'm here to kill your killer," you say, and he smiles, and thanks you. He is drinking from the bottle now.

The doormen arrive and display their weapons: Flick knives, handguns, brass knuckles, Mace, a sawed-off shotgun, and a canister of tear gas. The notion that someone may soon be killed is intoxicating to the group and they gather around a large pile of cocaine like wiggling piglets on a tit. All are indulging save for Merlin and Simon and yourself. You are watching Merlin who is watching Simon who is watching the door. Merlin is smiling with smug satisfaction; Simon looks as though he will cry or shout out in pain and for the first time since you have met him you can read his true age, the untold years lingering about his eyes and mouth. You are not sure if it is the lighting in the apartment or his present concerns but he does look like a man about to die. "What are you doing here?" he asks again. "You're going to be murdered tonight," you tell him. "Oh," he says. He looks at Merlin and then back at the door.

The room is nearly full when two prostitutes arrive. No one will admit to ordering them but you suspect Curtis and the child actor are responsible. They say nothing, lest they are forced to pay. When the women are inside, a doorman fluent in their language steps forward to begin the haggling process. He says he wants to go "around the world," and you, not understanding, envision a kind of pinwheel to which he will be attached and, you suppose, flayed. The prostitutes name a price and the doorman asks what it will cost for everyone other than the suddenly silent Teachers to also make the trip, and after a head count and private conference between the two professionals a price of two thousand dollars is reached. The doorman takes up a collection and hands over one thousand in mangled tens and twenties. He says he will return in half an hour with the other thousand; he orders the prostitutes to strip and dance in the interim and he exits the apartment at a run, whooping shrilly. (This noise is upsetting to Simon. In the back of his mind he knows there is some approaching danger and wonders if this sound is the indication of its onset. He is gripping his chest and panting and this is when you fall platonically in love with him.)

The prostitutes are now naked, and the uglier of the two — they are both very ugly — sits on the armrest of your chair and asks in a husky voice how exactly you are going to fuck her. She is not interested in your answer and is only looking for a simple adjective before moving down the line but her breasts are like rocks in socks and a purple cesarean scar divides her belly and you are laughing uncontrollably. She calls you a slimy faggot and moves on to Curtis, who is beckoning from the couch, waving a phony police badge. She sits on his lap and he takes out his erection — patchily depigmented, you notice, like his hands — but the prostitute will not touch it until the doorman arrives with the rest of the money. The child actor is watching Curtis's erection and barking. He pours beer on it and Curtis howls over the roar of cars on the television. The child actor begins howling. Everyone is howling.

The doorman shows up with the money — he will not say how he got it, though it is understood it was not taken from his own savings — and the prostitutes get on their hands and knees beside each other. They are penetrated from behind while fellating men in front of them and you watch this much in the way one watches gory surgery on television. Everyone is on cocaine and cannot ejaculate and the prostitutes cannot get a word in edgewise and are being worked like plow horses. There is a hiccup in the party when Curtis begins sodomizing one of the prostitutes without first asking; he is reprimanded and sent to the back of the line to change his condom. He is still wearing his sunglasses and loafers and you tell him how much you like his spurs and he thanks you. He is listlessly masturbating.

In the far corner, away from the others, sit Merlin and Simon and The Teachers. You walk over and Merlin reaches for your whiskey but the thought of his mouth on your bottle displeases you and you snatch it away, handing it to Simon before emptying it yourself, saying to Merlin's glare, "Did you want some? You should have said so." Merlin says nothing but shows you his teeth. The Teachers are upset about the presence of the prostitutes and Terri says that they are nothing but a couple of whores. You think it is humorous to call a prostitute a whore, and you laugh, and Terri tells you to shut up and begins trembling and then crying and you do not know why, and you do not care why. You return to your chair.

One by one you hear the men drop off until only the child actor is left pumping away. His body is red and hairless and he looks like an enormous newborn baby and his prostitute's grunting face is buried in the carpet — her thighs are trembling and it looks as though she will soon collapse. At last he finishes and falls in a heap by the front door, which you notice is slowly, evenly opening. A small black boy is standing in the doorway looking in at the party and Merlin, seeing this, jumps from his chair and screams, "Mean little nigger!" The boy is shocked by what he has just been called and by the state of the room — the child actor groaning and cursing, the prostitute with her flushed backside still in the air, the pile of cocaine and weapons on the coffee table — and his mind rushes to make sense of it all. But he has little time to ponder as the doormen, some partially clothed, some still naked, are gathering weapons to slay him. He is chased down the street and you hear him shrieking as he goes, and Simon staggers after them, shouting that the boy is only his neighbor's son and that he isn't mean at all. "He wouldn't hurt a housefly," he tells you. One of his eyes is closed, the other is bloodshot.

The two prostitutes are standing naked in the kitchen, gargling with mouthwash and wiping themselves with tissues. They are talking about the finer points of common-law marriage, also the difficulties of child rearing. "Once the state gets ahold of your kids, there's nothing to do but say a prayer and make some more," one says, and the other slowly nods. Crossing back to his seat Simon gets his feet tangled in a pair of pants and falls head-first onto the corner of the table, knocking himself out. The curtains are illuminated with the first light of the morning and Simon's blood spreads across the floor and toward the walls. The door is blue. You look for a telephone and find a red one on the floor beside the couch. You jump when it begins ringing. Simon's feet are twitching and Merlin rushes out the door with his few remaining Pabsts under his arm. You pick up the telephone and say hello. The Teachers enter the room and begin screaming.