Steve Toltz - Quicksand

Outside, the air is surprisingly warm. We’d been kept

on ice. Under the awning stubborn smokers defiantly suck their cigarettes next to bins full of butts. The sky seems

fresh, feverish. We loiter next to a man with a kebab obstructing his airway, down near the hospital garbage bins containing

bloody smocks, foreskins and a flock of breasts. Neither of us stop trembling.

Stella walks over to the smokers

and comes back with two cigarettes and a lighter. It’s been a decade. The mutiny an emphatic

success. We suction nicotine and release trapped anecdotes into the wild, forage for old feelings. Ex-husband and wife, two

old lovers, two old friends. The nucleus is intact. The problem with having a new lease on life is it is a non-binding

contract. Neither of us changed

by our life-changing experiences — our lost baby, my lost mobility.

The stubbornness of personality will win out as it always does and

whoever we were before we would always remain, yet

I still have the feeling that at last, at last,

at last my formative years have

finally begun.

XXVII

As you know, it’s a classic ploy to wait until three days after you’ve been profoundly institutionalised before depriving you of the institution, Your Honour. When the hospital administrator strode in beside one of my doctors and congratulated me on being stable enough to leave, I delayed. I was not eager. In my prior life I’d grown comfortable with my fears, of death, of sexually transmitted diseases, of public speaking, of train derailments. But now my terrors included being left alone in the street. A puncture in my tyre. Not to mention fear of my own body — I distrusted each organ equally. I feared spasms, blood clots, embolisms, bedsores, autonomic dysreflexia. One gets used to having experts on call in case of emergencies. An allergic reaction, haemorrhaging, unexpected drug contraindication. I wondered: Who will interpret my faeces? Reduce the swelling? Stop the bleeding? Who will resuscitate me? I was already dreading Sundays and public holidays when emergencies invariably arise. I thought: If my doctor plans a vacation I will know the universe is scheduling a life-threatening episode during that exact period, from which without urgent medical attention I will emerge further crippled. In truth, I felt a monumental timidity, terrified of taking this flimsy version of myself anywhere outside the most sterile and well staffed of environments. Problem was, I had to make room for the constant stream of incoming paraplegics and quadriplegics, but where would I go? My old apartment, with its narrow hallways and standing-room-only kitchen was out of the question, so social workers had found me an acceptable one-bedroom with the requisite ramps and handles, yet it was at the moment of my departure, having hyperventilated adios to the ghost of my truncated roommate, and being unable to bid the nurses a special farewell as they were all busy with ambulance-loads of unpleasant arrivals, that the thought of suffering alone, my new bugbear, became overwhelming. This led me to accept last minute, against my better judgement, Mimi and Morrell’s invitation to live in the residence, at least until my reckless-driving-resulting-in-bodily-injury trial. I wheeled myself outside and into Liam’s squad car. The only upside I could think of: Anyone fucks with me now, it’s a hate crime.

He turned the siren on for me. An incompetent policeman/artistic failure and a failed businessman/paraplegic, two divorcées, two old friends, set off. I wanted him to drive us back to our youths.

— 1990 and step on it, I said.

As we threaded through the city, my eyes could not compute. Everything was hyper-real. The unpalsied populace smug in their pace. Bored faces in stuck cars. Buildings under construction, as if a freeze-frame of collapse. I did not open my mouth for fear of whimpering. Neither did Liam, though at traffic lights he took my hand and squeezed it, as if in an attempt to transfer power from his body to mine. When we hit the meandering coastal road, the horrific number of wreaths and service-station flowers on what seemed like every third telegraph pole spoke of split-second tragedies and ghastly second acts. Liam told me he’d been out to the residence a couple more times to see Morrell. The thought that they were still entangled in some sort of protégé—mentor tango was patently absurd.

Morrell, a bearded stranger to shampoo, was standing at the door as we arrived.

— When you have a serious medical problem, depending on the prognosis, you either quit smoking or take it up, he said, dropping a carton of cigarettes in my lap.

The residence was overflowing with artists who seemed even more like sulky adolescents than I’d remembered. I felt the sting of Darwinism, an innately inferior specimen with no evolutionary purpose.

— And I have a nice surprise for you, Morrell added. Let me introduce our newest artist.

Standing with her beautiful smile and wind-chime earrings was Stella!

— I live here now, she said, beaming.

— Then you’ll be breaking your own restraining order on a 24/7 basis, Liam said.

Her sweet laughter wafted over like perfume. I used to see the light side of everything too.

— Where’s Clive? I asked.

— With Craig, she said, her smile tightening.

— Would you like to see how my exhibition is shaping up? Morrell asked, crouching down in front of me as if before a child. I’ll give you a tour of my latest works.

— Not before he eats something, Mimi interrupted, whisking me into the kitchen where we ate cold meats and bread and cheese and Liam and Stella and Mimi and Morrell all spoke as if divided by soundproof partitions they couldn’t see; there was a hush at least as loud as the conversations. I experienced such hostility towards everybody, I didn’t quite know how to orient myself. I felt like a grown-up ward of the state facing his old abusers.

Mimi and Stella helped me into my north-facing room — I was frankly relieved not to have to stare at that ocean — where someone had made the en suite accessible by taking a mallet to the doorframe, leaving jagged edges, exposed wire and sediments of plaster. Ten minutes of swallowing medications later, I undressed and Mimi and Stella helped me onto the most incredibly depressing piece of plastic furniture invented, the shower chair, where I sat under a stream of water that was in turns scalding and freezing, without being able to move quickly out of the way, while the women were silent and solemn and even a tad annoyed, and it made me imagine disciples come to wash the feet of Christ who have to settle for Judas in a wig. This I thought mainly to distract myself from the two loves of my life pretending not to stare at the suprapubic catheter entering an actual hole in my actual stomach and at what is now accurately called ‘my junk’. They were thinking the same sad thing: Could he ever again? And would he ever again? I had spent many months wondering the same thing.

Later, Morrell carried me in his arms downstairs into his bright studio to see his oil paintings, all vaguely sexualised interiors of domestic spaces: erotic chairs, curvaceous couches, labial curtains with picture-window views of period-red skies with the nippled sun and moon as interlocking spheres. They seemed perfectly fine if not exceptional works — or maybe they were masterpieces. What do I know? Morrell was haunted by the spectre of no red dots — of an utterly dotless opening night. He was trying to decide if, due to his age and experience, he should refer to himself as a promising beginner or a mid-career artist, a late starter or a late bloomer. I predicted I’d be forced to accept invitations to Morrell’s studio, meaning I’d have to regularly acquiesce to being carried in the bastard’s arms to this den of frustration. He had, at last count, fourteen pieces in total. The room could bear twenty but he feared he had too many already.