Mark Leyner - I Smell Esther Williams

(Enter IRTZY’S wife, MUE)

IRTZY: What bulletin do you bear, faithful partner?

MUE: Only this, dearest.

IRTZY: What?

MUE: This.

IRTZY: What do you mean this? This what?

MUE: The Hebrews, and that means me and you, are dispersing to a heavy beat.

IRTZY: Like what beat, you thing.

MUE: Just snap your fingers and get it, get to it. Get it to it. Uh shma yip uhh yich yisro ya yaka!!!!

(Exeunt)

B

I LOVE (TO FEEL YOUR LOVE)

VOICES FROM THE CROWD: He doesn’t take the static concept of time seriously!

He’s hyper-heroic!

He’s like menacingly good-looking!

ENVOY: You are loved by my country’s people, Mr. Premier.

TRANSLATOR: “Bilos derung zha afshler biobnz, Di. Premebnz.”

PREMIER (nodding and smiling): Er vagator ma wot; af gevunt ben hadis menoritz gool āā pen sodrana helopants banistrosa eeko vantrick al put, shen so glisso va lamotor ben mu fak. Hhaa … Hho hho!

TRANSLATOR: “This makes me warm; there are those in my country’s neighboring regions who would decorate me not with laurels and medals of valor, but with a tight noose around my throat. Haa … Ho ho!”

(A massive asteroid collides with Earth.)

CROWD

:

ENVOY

:

Aaaaaaaaah!

TRANSLATOR: “Yaaaaaaaah!”

PREMIER: Yaaaaaaaah! Yaaaaaaaah! Yaaaaaaaah!

(Fade)

Look in my closet. There is a blue double-breasted blazer with gold buttons. It is the afternoon and someone is watching us from their sofa and eating cheez doodles. O.K.? Do you hear the anvil falling from the sky and striking you on the head? Now you’re an accordion. I’m putting on my blazer and I’m skipping along the river bank, playing a polka on you. The crippled mice are tossing away their crutches and dancing behind me! The cute mouse women are screaming and fainting. But someone with a big vacuum cleaner is chasing us, and sucking the mice up. There goes the last one! Thup! Now I’m sitting alone on the edge of the river in my blue blazer, and you’re an accordion. Assume your old shape and let’s go for a drive in my motorboat, or else we will die.

Look. I’ve just returned from a used bookstore. It’s run on the honor system. You pay at the main store across the street. It’s easy to steal the books. There are economics textbooks, volumes of Shakespeare filled with sophomoric underlining and marginalia, books that people probably purchased in drugstores and supermarkets before going on vacation, marriage manuals, and stacks and stacks of National Geographies. That’s clear, isn’t it? I’ve given a partial list in order to generally characterize the store’s stock. Once I stole an art magazine from the place. I felt guilty. After all, it’s commendable that someone has faith in other people these days, and it’s commendable that someone is offering books at such cheap prices. More people should read, right? So this time I didn’t steal anything. I simply went through a few piles of Modern Photography magazines and ripped out all the photographs of nude women I could find. When I got home, I tacked them up to the walls of my study. Are you following me so far? Now I am looking out the window of my study. I am going to try to make you see what I see. With me? O.K. A red car just drove by. A blue one. And then a white coupe with a black vinyl roof. A man in a white v-neck undershirt just leaned out his door and took his mail out of the box. His house is painted a kind of olive-green color. The house to the right of his is a very muted salmon-pink. The house to the right of that is a deep scarlet with white trim. Now, what color is the house next to that? I’ll give you a minute or two. While you think, I’ll have a cigarette and look at my new photographs. There’s one of a blond woman I particularly like. She looks like a girl named Sharon I knew in Boulder. I think Sharon’s married now and lives up in Buffalo, New York. Anyway … O.K., time’s up. How many of you wrote down, red brick with beige trim? Good. Alright, now you’ve got the hang of it. Again, I’m going to try to make you sense what I sense. Ready? Here we go. The electric heater in my study runs on a thermostat. So all day it turns itself on and off. Sometimes, though, it gets too hot. Let’s say it’s getting too hot now. Follow me? I’m taking off my flannel shirt. O.K. O.K. I’ll take off my undershirt too. Now I’m bare-chested. And for the sake of argument, I’ll tack a spare, photograph of two nudes on horseback to my chest. Ouch … there. Nice horse, huh? Now I’m looking out the window. A dog is howling. Awwwooooo. Awwwooooooo. I hear a helicopter. I lean next to the window and check the sky. Very gray. A guy with a trainman’s cap and ponytail just got out of a pick-up truck and walked up the street carrying a clipboard. Did you see him take the pen out from behind his ear? Good. A group of about fifteen African diplomats just walked by. If I didn’t know better, I’d say one of them is pointing right at me. Look at all the litter in the street. That’s terrible. Whatever happened to “keep American beautiful”? Went out with hula hoops and swallowing fish, right? O.K. Look at the beer cans. I can make out Stroh’s, Miller, a Michelob … and a Budweiser. Now I’m going to look directly beneath my window. I’m going to try to be very specific here. Next to the curb are two plastic trash barrels, green and red with black lids. Adjacent to the trash barrels is the neighbor’s hedge … it’s made up of some kind of perennial shrub, (I’m squinting now and leaning way over), some kind of perennial shrub with prickly … prickly bipinnate leaves and tiny tiny pink flowers. You are enchanted by the tiny delicate pink petals. N’est-ce pas? You want to crush them with a mortar and pestle and massage them into your scalp. You are repeating the word “pestle” to yourself until it loses its meaning. Alright. Don’t move. Do you see the reflection of my finger in the window? Do you see the reflection of my face? Am I pointing to a dimple, a pock mark, or a dueling scar? Yell out your answer! Now we are dancing. Are you inhaling as I exhale? In other words, have our gears meshed? Are you still lashed to the cross of my thoughts? Uh oh. I’m feeling light-headed. The right side of my brain is giving a blow job to the left side. You don’t get a choice on this one — I’m going to do all four — I’m going to a. Smash my china to the music of Felix Mendelssohn, b. Drive the endless highway west, c. Collect the latex footprints that lead to this room, and d. Open my veins in a warm bath. Now where is my tweed jacket with a wedding band in every pocket? Where is my yiddish phrase book? My itinerary? That’s the last one. You’ll have to leave. I’m going to throw myself out the window. Put me in one of the plastic trash barrels. Tack a photograph of yourself to my forehead. Goodbye now. We part!

The exposition’s lights are pale and diffuse through the condensation, the trolley cables and pylons are lightly dusted with snow outside the big shed, downtown St. Louis, the mechanical chicken scuttles off the cutting board and the thread of gold at her ankle throws light off its turning key. The snowy streets record the trails of unnaturally bulky particles that splinter and fuse in millionths of seconds though, elsewhere, and more indigenous to this version, his prints lead to the door of a household, that he opens. “Ooooooh,” she shivers, “this earth shuttle is lonely.” “Pass over that bottle of Sniggering Walter,” he says, “Daddy’s home.” Mental months spire into the air and swerve as if pulled by the oven fan. It’s hard to forget this scene that plays and replays so often. He goes and sits at the piano and she follows and stands behind him with her arms around his neck. And they sway together as he plays. Dinner burns, giving off a warm ocher glow. In one version the woman is someone I know. In another version their bodies look like decoupage-covered wood. And although in some versions the piano is electric and they’re literally bottomless, the only one with a provocative conclusion is the version in which they affiliate themselves with a community theater’s production of Special Yearnings which ends with the fiery crash of a red convertible that in turn detonates a domino chain of underground nuclear reactors from St. Louis to Worcester, Mass. And in this version, I’m visiting someone in Worcester and I’m too blasted to make love, so I find a station I like on the radio and go lie on the rug. Get it, Ginger? Too blasted.