Benjamin Hale - The Fat Artist and Other Stories

“I’m sorry,” said Veronica from the floor. She climbed from kneeling to standing with the rag wadded in her hand. “As soon as he woke up he started throwing up. I got him the trash can from the bathroom.”

“Thanks,” said Phil.

Julian looked at him from over the rim of the garbage can. His eyes were swampy and bloodshot.

“You done?” said Phil.

Julian nodded, weakly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and swallowed. His hand was shaking. His whole body was shaking. Phil took the trash can from him.

“How you doin’, son!” he said, in a voice chipper with sarcasm. “Good to see you! Been a while, hasn’t it? Long time no see. Yessir. Matter of fact, nobody’s known if you were alive or dead for a month. Heck, it’s been so long, seems everybody just quit giving a shit one way or the other. Good to know you’re still feeling well enough to come on back home and steal my shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Julian said, or maybe croaked. He held his face in his hands and started to cry. His protrusive shoulder blades trembled. He cringed into himself, drew up his knees, and cried.

“Boo-hoo- hoo !” said Phil in a sweet little voice. “Boo-hoo- hoo ! Boo, hoo, fucking, hoo. I see you’ve already met Veronica. Or should I introduce you formally? Veronica, meet Julian,” he said, gesturing from Veronica to the miserable figure crumpled on the couch, a pantomime of manners. “My deadbeat junkie son. We’re all very proud of him. Julian, Veronica.”

Phil was still holding the garbage can full of vomit. Veronica was standing to the side, about ten feet away, with her hands clasped in front of her.

“You’re cheating on Mom?” said Julian.

“Fuck you,” said Phil, and upended the garbage can into Julian’s lap. “Got a lot of high moral ground to stand on, don’t you. What with robbing your parents and all. The little boy who was just too special for this wicked world.”

Julian stood up. When he got to his feet, his eyes rolled back in his head until his pupils disappeared and his eyes were only bloodshot whites, and he passed out again, falling forward onto the floor.

“God damn it!” Phil screamed, and gave the again-unconscious Julian a savage kick in the side.

“Jesus Christ , Phil!” said Veronica. “Calm down! It’s okay now. We’ll deal with this. Come on. Calm down.”

Phil threw the empty garbage can at Julian’s body. It bounced off him and brattled across the floor. He flung his hands up in the air and left the room. He stomped into the kitchen with a plan to steady himself with a drink and immediately stepped on broken glass. He heard the kiss and crunch of it under his bare feet right before the pain registered in his nerves.

“FUCK!”

“Jesus Christ, what now ?” Veronica called from the living room.

“I just cut the shit out of my feet on all this goddamn glass all over the floor!”

Phil sank to the floor, sat down cross-legged, and began to try to pick the shards of broken glass out of the bottoms of his feet. Already bleeding like a stuck hog.

“Good God , Phil,” said Veronica, stamping into the kitchen. “Lemme see it.”

To avoid the glass on the floor, she quit stamping and instead tiptoed over to Phil, sat down in front of him, and put one of his bloody feet in her lap.

“Try not to get blood on that thing,” said Phil, referring to Diane’s blue silk robe.

“You can get her another one.”

“Not by Monday. It’s monogrammed.”

“It’s not that bad,” she said. “Show me the other one.”

Phil switched feet.

“I think you got all the glass out. Look, it’s not that bad. Lemme get you cleaned up. Have you got Band-Aids and alcohol?”

“I think there’s some stuff like that in the drawer under the sink in that bathroom.”

She went down the hall into the bathroom. Phil heard drawers squealing open and rolling shut, heard her digging around in the contents of the drawers. She ran the water in the sink for a moment. She came back balancing in her arms a damp washcloth, a brown bottle of rubbing alcohol, a bag of cotton balls, some cotton pads, and a roll of gauze tape in her arms. Veronica sat down in front of him. She wiped his feet with the wet washcloth, then put a cotton ball to the neck of the brown bottle, dumped it once upside down, and stung his wounds with the alcohol.

Phil winced.

“It’s okay. The bleeding’s already stopping.”

She pressed the cotton pads to the bottoms of his feet and wound the gauze tape around them, securing them in place.

“What did you hit him with?” she said.

“A rolling pin.”

“It’s not a good sign that he threw up. He might have a concussion.”

“What, did you used to be a nurse or something?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Oh.”

Veronica got up and gave him her hand and helped him climb to his feet.

“ Son ofabitch.” He grimaced at the pain.

“It’s not bad. Your feet’ll be fine in a couple of days. I’m more worried about your son.”

“ Fuck him, the fucking asshole. Haven’t seen him in a year. Haven’t heard from him in a month. No phone call, nothing. Could’ve been dead for all anybody knew. Then he comes back in the middle of the night to steal my goddamn TV.”

“Do you love him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have a broom or something?”

“In the pantry. Down the hall to the right.”

Veronica swept the broken glass on the kitchen floor into a dustpan and poured the tinkling debris into the big garbage can under the kitchen sink.

“The hell with him,” Phil said. Remembering his original intent on coming into the kitchen — a drink — he opened the liquor cabinet, uncorked a bottle of Scotch, and took a slug from the bottle. He coughed and cleared his throat. His breath was staggered and shallow, his hands were trembling with anger, and now his feet hurt like a motherfucker.

“Shhh,” said Veronica.

Phil was leaning with his back against the kitchen counter. The floor swept, Veronica walked over to him, wrapped her arms around him, and said, “Shhhh.”

She stroked the arches of his wounded bare feet with her own bare feet. She entwined her legs with his, and he felt the skin of her smooth, thick young legs rubbing against the skin of his thin hairy legs, and felt the smooth coolness of the fabric of the silk robe against his bare torso. She reached her face up to his and kissed him seriously on the mouth, and bit his lower lip as she disengaged. She reached around him, grabbed the open bottle of Scotch, and took a drink from the neck of it.

“Let’s calm down, okay?” she whispered carefully, and wiped a trickle of Scotch from the corner of her mouth. “We’ll clean him up, put him on the couch, and deal with it in the morning. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Phil.

Phil and Veronica went back into the living room. It didn’t smell good. Julian was lying on the floor in front of the couch, right where he had passed out the second time, with his cheek pressed flat in the vomit. They took off his shirt — God, he was so skinny — and wiped him down with the rag, then mopped up the puke that was all over the floor with the shirt, threw the rag and the shirt in the plastic garbage can, and dumped the whole mess in the garbage. Then they picked him up — he got the arms and she got the feet — and laid him out on the couch again. They covered him with a yellow wool afghan that Phil’s mom had knitted, which had been draped over the back of the couch. Julian, sleeping under that yellow afghan on that couch — despite his shaved head and skinny, bruised, tattooed junkie arms — looked like he had when he was a kid, home sick from school, watching TV all day: It was the same yellow afghan, same couch, same kid. Phil and Veronica turned off all the lights and went back to bed.