Authors: Brian Martinez
A Chemical Fire (2 page)
My echo: “What’s bothering you?”
“Just thinking.”
“Please don’t speak,” the operator says. I shift under the plastic and metal of this thing rotating around me, searching for injected isotopes; a tracer of Methylene-disphosphonate that gathers where I’m fractured.
I hate prisons unless it’s her. I tell her, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Click, the air hums.
More to herself she says, “I was thinking how everything’s a song.”
“I didn't realize you were giving up Music History to write greeting cards.” I regret it as soon as I say it. “No, tell me."
“You really can’t talk right now, sir,” the operator says. “We’re trying to get an image of how your bones are healing, but if you move all I get is a blur. See this device is called a Gamma Camera-”
“Also called an Anger Camera. Scintigraphy, I know all about it. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
I stop when I see their faces.
“I’m sorry. The thing is I hate being held down. I feel like I’m in a coffin. I’ll go crazy if my wife stops talking, you know?”
He adjusts his glasses and he’s human for a second. “Your doctor saw something in your bones he didn’t like, just try not to move and we’ll get through this.” Click. The air hums.
“Gala?”
The operator sighs.
“I’m still here. So every sound you hear, everything is a note, right?”
My mouth opens, shuts.
“Right?”
I peek up at her, sitting in the chair with her eyes focused far past the gray walls of this room. She’s not like me; the car would’ve gone right through her.
She says how every sound that happens, a footstep, a slap, a wing flapping, they all have their place on the musical scale.
“Like a car crash in D minor,” I say.
She shakes out of her stare with a smile. “Nice. So every sound, every word spoken, every one is a note. Really everything we say is singing. Not always the nicest melody I guess, everyone has their own range, but that doesn’t mean they’re not singing.”
She’s fighting with herself.
“I knew there was a reason I married you,” I whisper.
“Sir, please.”
“Don’t stop me,” she waves, pretending dismissal. “So you can take any conversation, this one right here, or maybe your mother screaming at you for breaking a light bulb, and you can make music out of it. I mean really, record any five minutes anywhere on a tape recorder, on the street, at a soccer match, in a funeral, and all that you hear, all of it can be translated note by note into a song.”
Click. The air hums.
“A really shitty song though,” I add.
“Mr. Cotard,” the operator pleads.
And she says, “Well yes, but still a song.”
I’m lost in her until I die.
Click. Hum. Click.
Home
“I feel ridiculous,” I say.
“I don’t mind you stinking.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been dying for this.”
“Then this is the price.”
I look down. I'm standing in the dry shower, wearing nothing but a cast on my leg and around that a big, black garbage bag wrapped and held in place with tape.
“What do you think about God,” I ask her.
“He seems different lately.”
“You know what I mean.”
She laughs, “You think God did this to you?”
“I think a Camry did this to me, as for who was driving...”
“Well if God was driving then he’s a prick for doing a hit-and-run. And if they ever catch him, or whoever else actually did it,” she meets my eyes, “you can be sure they’ll have my full wrath to deal with.”
I think of the accident. The momentary face behind glass that never stopped, never came back. The damage was done but they could have helped, could have called an ambulance; minutes matter.
“Really, John, are you okay?"
“Yeah. Great.” I turn the water on, get it to temperature then pull the knob to get the showerhead going. The water plicks and thacks into the garbage bag, loud and running down the curves and trickling off.
Gala watches me for a minute. Then she pulls her green sweater up over her head and off, leaving the green bra and pale skin and birthmark constellations behind.
“What are you doing?"
“Taking out the recycling, obviously. I always get nude for garbage day.” The bra coming off and then the rest.
“You don’t need to do this,” I tell her.
She steps in. “I happen to need a shower right now, it’s not always about you.” She grabs the soap and holds it out to me, waiting, face just smiling.
“Thank you,” I say, taking it and leaning back to get under the stream.
***
“Can you come help me with the car?”
“Hello to you, too.” I hug him. “It’s still giving you problems?”
“With all the parts I’ve put into it I could sell it as new, and the goddamn thing still won’t start.”
Gala kisses Dad on the cheek. “I think it’s time for a new one,” she says.
“If everyone had that attitude, I wouldn’t have my hellcat,” he motions to the kitchen, alive with the sounds of boiling water. "She should have traded me in a thousand times over by now." He turns back to me.
“I’ll meet you in the garage,” I say. He leaves and we walk into the kitchen, the room humid with the heavy smells of cooking.
“Hello, little ones,” Mom says, her hair wild. She turns up the heat before kissing both of us. “You two look great."
"And you look..." My eyes move to her hair.
"Beautiful, I know. Did your father ask you about the car yet?”
“That's funny, he didn’t mention it. Should I have asked him?”
“It’s just his nature. Once he gets into something there’s no stopping him.”
Gala turns and says, “Well, you’re officially not adopted.”
I leave the two of them talking and limp for the garage, my father already dipping his shiny head under the hood. On the wall above him is a framed picture of our black Labrador, the dog I grew up playing with.
“You still have that up?”
He takes his head out, bending his neck to see it. “Of course. I love that picture. That was the day we made lobsters, remember how he stole one before we could even boil it? And we had to chase after him while this thing is thrashing in his mouth. Your mother took that picture when we finally cornered him."
“I remember. He was a great dog. I thought it would kill you when he died.”
“Well, I knew better. It was time for him to leave. Just time.”
In the picture he’s holding the lobster in his teeth, his ink-black coat shining under the living room lamp.
Dad turns back to the car. “Anyway you’re better at this than me, or you think you are. See what you can do.”
I take off my jacket and get my arms into the grease and the metal. “How are you and mom doing these days?"
“Well you know how it is, some days are better than others.”
“And these other days, are they your fault?”
He shrugs. “She has less and less patience for my shit. The car, everything else, you know how I am. But God bless her she holds on.”
“You’re lucky the accident didn’t kill me or you’d have to take this to an actual mechanic,” I say into the radiator.
“I guess there’s a bright side to it after all,” he smirks. I close the hood and get behind the wheel. He says, “You'll have to keep your head under that hood for about twenty more minutes before I can take you seriously."
I turn the key and it starts. His eyes open wide. “I gave birth to a magician,” he says. I laugh. “Machines have always made sense to you. Too bad you threw your life away with this teaching thing.”
“I’m just good with cars." I wipe my hands off as he pats my shoulder, then head back out.
I stop at the bathroom to wash my hands and take one of my painkillers, swallowing it with water from the tap. The bottle is halfway into my pocket when I stop. I have to take them, yes, but they're not without their euphoric upside. I'm thinking if one feels good then two should feel better. So I take it back out and swallow a second, then return to the kitchen to find Mom and Gala cooking side-by-side.
“Can I help?"
“You can stir that.” Mom points to a small pot on one of the stovetop’s glowing coils. I grab a spoon and stir the sauce, bubbling lava with a layer of orange grease swirling around on top.
Dad comes into the kitchen wiping his hands. “Did he tell you he got the car started?”
“You know he’s not one to brag,” Mom says. Then she turns to me and says, “You could brag a little, you know.”
“Don’t let him know that,” Gala laughs as I feel the painkillers kick in. It’s like a liquefying that starts in my eyelids and works its way down.
“I’m serious, exceptional people can sing their own praises every so often.”
“Mothers always think their kids are exceptional,” I say, stirring a little too hard. Some sauce spills over the top of the pot. It hits the hot stove and flares into a grease fire, shooting up at my hands as I pull away. I grab a towel and fan it, the flames roaring under the wind. The towel catches fire too and instinctively I drop it, right onto the pot.
Gala runs over and grabs the handle, opens the window with the other hand and tosses the whole roaring mess out onto the grass.
“My sauce,” mom shouts as it bounces and snarls, burning the lawn.
Gala says, “You’re welcome, Mom.”
One Every Four
I figure if two feels good three must be better. And it is, rolling eyes good. That’s perfect for a while, until three isn’t having the same impact it used to, then it’s four and four is perfect. Four is like being reunited with a leg I never had.
But then I’m running out because my prescription is only good once a month, so I start calling up friends I haven’t talked to in years, the ones I used to get sloppy with; drinking and smoking our way through the nights, summers of a thousand laughs, of falling asleep on weird floors and waking up with words on our faces. Getting to know each others refrigerators and toilets on an intimate level, cleaning out resin with paper clips while driving through neighborhoods to find places to park. Walking through school playgrounds after dark with cold feet while watching for cops. Making paranoid trips to convenience stores acting like we were fine, no pupils here just picking up some snacks. It was all so natural and fun and young.
Then it was Gala and marriage and that slowly left, just weekends at first, friends saying to stop by more and me agreeing. I left behind the wave-crash walking and veins in the eyes. I sold out to be with my wife. Some friends understood.
I got old and boring and discovered being married was a drug itself, and then a speeding car brought me something far quicker. A perfect drug measured out in precise milligrams, swallowed in public without looks, no signs of use, no damage to the lungs only the liver and that regenerates like no other human organ. Dry mouth, that’s the only side effect and that just means drink more water. I can drink more water, that’s easy. We should all drink more water anyway.
Paul is the one who hooked me up with Janet.
Bottle of a Hundred
“Can anyone tell me what a hormone is?”
Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later for full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.
Everyone avoiding my eyes, I say, “They’re chemicals, released by cells in your body to affect other cells.”
Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later for full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.
“They’re usually carried in the blood,” I say.
Take four at noon, eat forty minutes later. Full effect with no nausea. Wait seven hours, take four, eat forty minutes later. Good chance to re-up without getting sick. Seven hours. Two am, four pills, food forty later. Go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up really, really groggy. Do best to wake up fully by twelve.
“You can also say they’re messengers, carrying signals between cells. And believe me, it takes just the slightest bit to do what they do.”
