Skinny Legs and All (38 page)

Love always,Boomer

I’d rather drink parasite soup than drop by Ultima’s
, thought Ellen Cherry, but eviction was staring her in the face like a deviate on the subway, so on her next day off she braced herself and walked down to Fifty-seventh Street in the snow. There were as many art galleries on East Fifty-seventh as there were sushi bars on East Forty-ninth, but she tried not to notice. She hadn’t been eyeball to pigment since before Thanksgiving, unless you could count the paintings that leaned against every wall of her apartment, flaunting their blank backsides as if mooning David Hockney. Nor had she paid a visit to Turn Around Norman, an omission painfully clear to the objects beneath St. Patrick’s. Whether or not Norman was aware of her absence was anybody’s guess.

She expected Ultima to keep her waiting—gallery dealers made a practice of that in order to make themselves seem as busy as doctors and as important as lawyers—but the snowmelt had not completely evaporated from Ellen Cherry’s red vinyl boots when she was summoned. As she followed the saleswoman to Ultima’s office, she shielded her eyes against the Leon Golub lithographs on the walls. Artburn. She forgot the perils of art, however, when confronted by the perils of dog. Three dogs to be exact, three beribboned, perfumed, but untamed little hellhounds that came shooting across the room, howling, leaping, and baring their fangs. Ultima appeared in a cloud of silk and chic, and shooed two of them away. The third continued to snap at Ellen Cherry’s heel. She found herself thinking of Jezebel and protecting every part of herself except her skull, her feet, and the palms of her hands.

“Baby Butts!” called Ultima in a stern but affectionate tone. “Naughty doggy!”

“Homicidal doggy,” said Ellen Cherry under her breath. She could swear she detected morbid suds in the corners of the doggy’s mouth.

Ultima squatted on the polished hardwood floor. The disproportionate weight of her bosom caused her to tilt forward, but she righted herself before she, too, took a bite out of Ellen Cherry’s boot. “Come on, Baby Butts, upsy me,” crooned Ultima, and the pooch, still frothing and snarling, leapt into her arms. “Give mums a smootch.”

Jesus weeping Christ!
thought Ellen Cherry.
Do you suppose Boomer kissed the mouth that licks that mad dog’s chops?

Although she was chilled from the long walk, Ellen Cherry refused coffee, tea, or sherry. She was cordial about it, but she obviously wanted to pick up her money and get out of there. Ultima obliged her. Cuddling Baby Butts while the other dogs tussled beneath the Frank Lloyd Wright desk, she pulled a check from a metal box and passed it to Ellen Cherry, who managed to snatch it away without losing any flesh. She did, however, lose color.

“Is something unsatisfactory?”

“Uh, well, aside from the fact that Baby Butts drooled on it, I guess I was expecting more.”

“More than seven thou?”

“The show sold out. It must’ve grossed a hundred grand.”

“In excess of a hundred. But then there were deductions.”

“Your commission.”

“The gallery’s commission, yes. State and federal taxes. And Mr. Petway has had needs. I gather that steel is quite dear in Palestine. He’s making—”

“A big sculpture. Yeah, I know.”
Does she think Boomer doesn’t write to me?

The women stared at each other for so long and with such will that Baby Butts began to whimper. He seemed surprised and hurt to learn that he hadn’t a monopoly on power in the room. Eventually, Ultima smiled and produced a second check. “Congratulations,” she said.

“What’s this?” Ellen Cherry took the bank draft slowly, deliberately, daring the pup to interfere. It was in the amount of eighteen hundred dollars.

“Two of your works sold,” said Ultima. “As you’re well aware, there’s been a rekindling of interest in the pictorial landscape. I mean, there’s so little of it left
outdoors
. Collectors have preferred, of course, naturalistic pictures, but the supply of first-rate
oeuvre
is running thin. In any case, I showed your paintings to a couple from Rochester who didn’t seem in the least put off by your, ah, excesses. So, congratulations, my dear, on your first New York sale. Perhaps you should fetch in several more.”

“Thanks,” said Ellen Cherry. “Thanks. Maybe I will.” Not wishing Ultima to be further entertained by how stunned she was, she excused herself and sailed for the door.

Trudging home in the snow, a check in each fist like Chinese hand warmers, she could only think,
Now I have an excuse for Mr. Cohen why I can’t put any work in Ye Olde Art Shoppe in Westchester
.

Ellen Cherry didn’t take any more paintings to the gallery, not even one of the Boomer nudes (oh, how she would have loved to see the look on Ultima’s face!), but she stewed about it for weeks. She lay awake nights debating the pros and cons of it.

Should she resume her identity as an artist? Could a person choose to be or not to be an artist? Once certain childhood forces were set in motion, you either were an artist or you weren’t, and if you were, you might choose not to exhibit, you might even choose not to produce; you might, in other words, reject an art career, an art life, but you were still an artist. Right? Or was that just semantics? According to egalitarians, everybody had artistic talent. On a hobby level, that was possibly true. So what? It struck her that while a great many people wanted to want to be artists, they didn’t actually want to be. A girlfriend in Seattle once said to her, “I’d give everything if I could paint like you,” and Ellen Cherry had replied, with only a trace of pomposity, “I
did
give everything.”

Talent was merely the underpinnings. To be an artist, you also had to have nerve. And to maintain nerve, you had to have drive. Apparently, she had lost her drive. Yet if she’d truly lost it, why was she fretting this way? Furthermore, if it was impossible to shed her art skin, no matter how she might twist or squirm, wouldn’t it be only sensible to take financial advantage of her lot, to relax and enjoy some modest success? Or was it the “modest” part (in light of Boomer’s triumph) that galled her?

On and on she would stew, until, in desperation, she’d reach for her vibrator so that she might distract herself.

To a lesser extent, she stewed over Buddy Winkler. Shortly after the holidays, she had taken Roland Abu Hadee aside and asked him what would happen should zealots attack and destroy the Dome of the Rock.

“War,” replied Abu, matter-of-factly. “War would happen.”

“You mean the Muslims would retaliate against synagogues and stuff?”

“No,” said Abu. “I mean war. Syria, Libya, Iran, Lebanon, probably Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, perhaps nations as far away as Pakistan and Indonesia would declare war, jihad, holy war, against Israel. That is how strongly Muslims feel about the Dome of the Rock. They are prepared one and all to die for this. The Israelis would be so outnumbered that they would be forced to resort to nuclear weapons. In which case, the Soviet Union would probably be obliged to supply Islam with nuclear warheads. And that most certainly would draw America into it. Oh, yes, were the mosques on the Temple Mount destroyed, there would be a great thunderclap. Both polar caps would rattle like saucers, babies would be born smelling of sulfur. The terror within would then be without. The egg of fire would finally hatch. Armageddon. World War Three, if you prefer.”

As soon as Abu left the kitchen, Ellen Cherry went directly to the wall phone and dialed Buddy. Normally, she might not have had the stomach, but she was disturbed, and it didn’t matter to her that it was after midnight.

“Ummm.”

“Hello. Uncle Buddy?”

“Doll baby. I was jes’ dreamin’ ’bout you. Or some little play-pretty equally as sweet.”

“Listen up, Uncle Bud. Do you know what’d happen if the Dome of the Rock was destroyed?”

Buddy Winkler knew, all right. He might be in pajamas, a nightmask of ointment on his boils, an anchovy paste of sleep in his eyes, but he knew. “It’d precipitate the ultimate struggle between good and evil that’s prophesied to precede the Second Coming and the redemption of man. Hallelujah. Amen. What time is it, anyways?”

“It could start World War Three.”

“Dang tootin’ it could. That’s the whole point of it.”

“You mean to tell me you’re willing to gamble with the lives of innocent people, billions of innocent people, risk the lives of everybody on earth, animals, trees, little children, have them roast in fire storms, have them covered with sores and burns, dying of radiation sickness, all that horrible, horrible pain and suffering—”

“Hold on. You jes’ hold on now, little miss bleedin’ heart. It ain’t a gamble. The word of God is not no lottery ticket. It
shall
come to pass. Shall! His admonitions are as plain as the nose on your painted face. And sure it’s gonna be horrible. The Lord God designed it to be horrible. But the righteous’ll come out of it jes’ fine, thank you. Jesus’ll gather unto him the faithful to his breast, and they’ll enjoy sweet everlastin’ life. Them burns will heal, and them sores will vanish away. As for your careless and wicked, they’ll jes’ be gittin’ what’s due to ’em. They’ve had their fair chance, they’ll burn by their own iniquity. So let the war trumpets sound. Let the missiles rain. It’s God’s will, and
he’ll
decide who’s innocent and who ain’t, not you or the ACLU.”

Ellen Cherry was incredulous. “You’re so damn sure of yourself that you’re willing to take a chance on starting World War Three. You’ll put that weight on your shoulders?”

“You got a hearing problem? I already explained to you that—Never mind. Your heart is hardened. I don’t know where you’re at at this ungodly hour, but I beseech you to get yourself home and read your Scriptures and kneel beside the bed outta which you’ve driven your lawful husband, and pray. ’Repent ye therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come, from the presence of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus.’
Acts
, three, nineteen.”

“’The time of refreshing’ they call it?”

“Yes, indeedy. Refreshing as a Co’-Cola.”

“I have a good mind to tell the cops what you’re up to.”

Buddy chuckled. “What cops? The
po
-lice here got no authority over it, and the
po
-lice in Israel are, most of ’em, on my side. Your righteous Jew wants this as bad as your Christian. ’Course, after the Second Coming, them Jews that are worthy will be forcibly converted. We’ll all of us be Christians in the New Jerusalem.”

“How about the Muslims? Or the Buddhists and Hindus?”

“Fried meat.”

Ellen Cherry slammed down the receiver. She stewed about Buddy throughout the night and for many nights thereafter, when she wasn’t stewing about artisthood. What with Buddy’s shenanigans, what with the I & I’s raison d’être, what with Boomer’s dallying over there doing who knew what, it was getting harder and harder to carpet-tack the Middle East to the living room floor of her mind.

In all the years that Ellen Cherry had known Buddy Winkler, she had never heard him utter a sentence that didn’t amount to a cliché. She concluded that that was what organized religion did to people. It limited them to thinking secondhand thoughts. It caused them to live secondhand lives. Wasn’t that what religion had in common with totalitarian politics? Nazi Germany, the Inquisition, Stalinism, the Crusades, these were what happened when reality was allowed to give way to cliché.

Behind the sixth veil, like a pearl behind cheesecloth, was the realization that “the end of the world” was the most dangerous cliché of all. Incapable of penetrating the veil, unaware of the veil’s existence, Ellen Cherry could only stew—and wonder why Buddy had such a hankering for apocalypse.

1. Because it would mean that his side had finally won?

2. Because the messy, unpredictable imperfection of life/life would solidify once and for all into the perfectly ordered, totally controlled, solid-gold monolith of death/life?

3. Because he was lonely?

If Bud was prepared to act out some reckless biblical fantasy in order to alleviate an unbearable dissatisfaction and loneliness, then there was something that she could do about it. No, no, not even were it that simple, not even were she as versed in dissatisfaction and loneliness as she believed, could she spread herself out on an altar such as that. Impossible. Ridiculous.

The next morning, as soon as she had replaced the vibrator in her underwear drawer, the panties ceased their girlish gossiping and began to chirp, “Who? Who? Who?” Who had it been this time? Whose name had she called aloud when she straddled the white pony of orgasm? Norman? Raoul? Was it Boomer again? “Who, Daruma, tell us who?”

The vibrator would reveal nothing until the panties settled down. He lay there beside a mortified Spoon, chanting Japanese syllables over and over in a low, deep monotone:
"Wooga go nami ne, Wooga go nami ne.”
When at last the drawer was still, he said, “A single cloud floating in midday sky contain no duck sauce.” He waited to see if the panties would protest, and when they did not, he said, “Good. Name my mistress call aloud was . . .”

Spoon hummed a tune to herself, hoping to drown out the name, but despite her efforts, she heard it anyway.

“Buddy,” said the vibrator. “She call out ’Uncca Bud.’”

Spoon, too, spent much of her time in a stew. A metaphoric stew. She hadn’t been eaten with in so long it made her heartsick. Whatever else happened when they reached Jerusalem, she would be eaten with there. Yes! She would see to it. Upon entering the Third Temple, Spoon would go directly to the cafeteria. Interject herself between a priest and his pudding. Now that she was shiny and silvery again, perhaps the Messiah himself. . . . She could not entertain the sacrilege of crossing the Messiah’s lips, but she could imagine being cradled in his big healing hand of hide and satin. The Messiah was feeding fish soup to the blind. Ice cream to starving orphans. The Messiah used her to draw a magic circle in the honey pot. “There,” he told his apostles. “That will keep the flies away.”