The Making of Zombie Wars (13 page)

And Bernie had goddamn prostate cancer.
My prstte Prostate like roc. Hello cancer.
Joshua had texted back:
Fuck! Sorry!
That was it.
Fuck
and
Sorry
, the Laurel and Hardy of filial empathy. What could he say? What was there to say? He was going to find something to say and then he was going to call Bernie and say it. Right now, however, he had to prepare for the class.

Ana startled him when she materialized in tall black boots, a knee-length red skirt, and a cloud-patterned shirt. She stood at a distance as if to allow him to take in the beautiful apparition.

“I have your wallet,” she said. “I find your wallet.”

Joshua waited for her to pull it out of her purse. His cards were canceled, but he had no driver's license, no PRT Institute ID, no wine-shoppe punch card with three more purchases before he could get a free bottle. Script Idea #88:
An American is mugged and pistol-whipped. When he wakes up, he discovers he was mistaken for an illegal immigrant and deported to Mexico. He has to find a way to come back home. Drug gangs, desert, border patrols, adventures, Conchita the illegally seductive immigrantess. Title:
The Pale Coyote
.

But she didn't open her purse. Instead, she put it down on her chair and moved toward him until their thighs touched the opposite edges of the desk.

“Thank you,” Joshua said. “Very much.”

They faced each other across the desk as if about to break into an operatic duet.

“I don't have it now,” she said. “I have it in my home. Esko find it.”

There was a space for reasonable questions—“Why didn't you bring it?” or “Why didn't you call me back?”—but Joshua decided not to enter it. She glanced away and he knew that she was not telling him everything. The purse was tan fake leather; it slumped on the chair like a deflated heart, and just as full of secrets. Ana the mysterious immigrantess.

“Thank you very much,” Joshua said. She gripped her elbow like John Wayne at the end of
The Searchers
. He imagined the tips of his fingers moving up her forearm and then up her biceps and then deeper into the vast, fragrant meadows of her body.

“I must give it to you first,” she said. “And then you will own me.”

Joshua was now leaning on the desk and it moved toward her an inch, with a screech.

“You mean to say, ‘You will owe me,'” Joshua said. “I already do. I owe you.”

“You owe me, yes,” she said, with a smile. How would he describe those lips? They were far more than full, much better than thick. Lips, like clouds, forced clich
é
s upon you. All the lips and clouds in the world had already been described.

“I will think of a way,” Joshua said, “to return your kindness.”

*   *   *

Captain Ponomarenko leaned back in his chair against the wall and spitefully shut his eyes. The class felt endless and devoid of meaning or purpose, like a Spielberg movie. Joshua kept pointing at the conjugation chart on the chalkboard, forcing the students to come up with their own ludicrous examples. “By the time I am sixty-five, I will have lived for very long time,” Ana said and licked her lips. The desk had moved between them, as if his lust had telekinetic properties. “Beautiful, Ana,” Joshua said, a bit too supportively.
You own me
, she'd said. It was possible that she knew what she was saying; it was possible it was an offer. Captain Prick, ever attuned to his enemy's fragility, asked: “Teacher Josh, maybe we go home early?” Not opening his eyes, he pronounced it as
errlyi.

He gave in to Captain P without even pretending to think about it, not assigning any homework, which they never did anyway. By the time the world ends, everything will have happened; nothing will have happened just as well. We'll have soon run out of happening, and then there'll be nothing but being in a void. Very slowly, he picked up his papers off the desk so that he could furtively glance at Ana's knees and boots and her skirt, so that he could see her forearm and the dangling bracelet and her long, piano-player fingers. The lump was in its place, lodged firmly, ready to choke.

When he looked up, Ana was shutting the door, foreclosing all retreat routes. She stood in front of him, taking deep breaths.

“My heart hits very much,” she said.

“Beats.”

“My heart beats, Teacher Josh.”

“Joshua,” Joshua whispered, but only because all the wind was gone from his windpipe.

“Joshua,” she repeated. “You want to touch it?” She took his hand and put it on her left breast. He could feel her heart, somewhere underneath the cloud pattern; she was alive all right. He plunged his mouth into the curve of her neck and pulled her stumblingly toward the Israel map. Their bodies knew what to do in such a situation, as they knew how to walk or open a door: his hand ran deftly under her blouse; she unfurled her tongue beyond the overbite, into his mouth; he released the saliva; she laid her long-fingered hand on his bulging crotch, raising her pelvis toward him, her moves determined and lustful, her pate rubbing against the Sea of Galilee. The lump was now throbbing inside his skull, exterminating the entire extended family of
think
.

But just as Joshua started pulling down her panties, just as he was to touch her famous clitoris, she gripped his wrist to stop him.

“What are you doing?” Joshua whimpered, bending over to ease the pain of severe erection.

“It's crazy. We're crazy,” she said. “Esko is waiting for me.”

“I don't want to know about Esko!” Joshua said. “Please don't talk about Esko.”

Now he could hear the students lingering in the hallways, the din from a remote universe. She pulled up her panties, straightened out her skirt. She fixed her bra, buttoned up her shirt, and fixed her hair. The way women restore themselves—it was something that had always mesmerized Joshua: the care, the patience, the clear purpose. Ana did it with a composure that was well beyond Joshua's panic and comprehension.

“By the time I divorce him,” Ana said, “I will not have loved him for long time.”

She kissed his forehead lightly and slipped out of the classroom, back into the world overrun with Ponomarenkos and their ilk. Next year in goddamn Jerusalem! The map of Israel, vaguely vaginal as it was, made little sense: the sharp angles, the curlicues and straight lines that were supposed to be the borders. None of it made any sense. How many worlds could there be in the world? How many worlds would the cosmic asshole have gratuitously created? Joshua's hard-on was painful; he considered manually relieving himself right then and there.

But he didn't—the temporary victory of reason was a defeat of the body. The pent-up desire hence turned into groin tension and pain in the ass, not in the least figurative, auguring many prostate problems. The regrets and shame arrived promptly, as soon as the adrenaline levels dropped, as soon as he remembered that Bernie had never sailed in the waters of Israel, as soon as the dead-endness of it all became self-evident, as soon as he saw that door close behind Ana.

*   *   *

On a tightrope stretched between arousal and despair, Joshua crossed his inner abyss to reach the Westmoreland, which he recognized only as he was locking his bike in front of it. Bega was there, still in his
Fuck
T-shirt, perched on a stool, fitting so naturally into the dump landscape he might as well have been a piece of furniture. This time around, he had beer bottles on the bar organized in groups of three, perhaps in order to count them better—there were twelve of them. He was not surprised to see Joshua, nor was he particularly happy. There was, far too appropriate for the perpetual Westmoreland circumstances, a large, stopped clock over the mirror behind the bar. Paco was watching baseball again, somehow acknowledging Joshua without actually looking at him. His goiter seemed to be a little bigger and redder than a couple of days ago. It could've been the light, or it could've been that the tumor was growing rapidly.

“Why doesn't he take that thing out?” Joshua whispered to Bega as Paco attended to two thick-armed Northwestern frat boys, who must've adventurously descended into the city in pursuit of mindless fun. Both of them had their baseball hats backward, the better to announce their partying ambition, wearing shorts and flip-flops in early April, the month not quite cruel enough to them.

“What thing?” Bega asked.

“That thing on his neck. The goiter.”

As Paco poured two double Jell-O shots for the frat boys, Bega looked at his goiter as if he'd never seen it before.

“
Goiter
. That's good word,” Bega said. “Is it Jewish word?”

“Jewish word? You mean Yiddish? No, it's not a Yiddish word.”

In truth, Joshua had no idea. Joshua inherited little Yiddish from his venerable ancestors, mainly what was already part of the English language,
mensch
,
schmuck
, and such. Paco's bulge could well be a
goyter
. What would
goyter
mean in Yiddish? Someone pretending to be
goy
? Nana Elsa used to curse her
goyrl
—her fate. Maybe
goyter
is
goyrl
's sinister fianc
é
. Or was it the word for tumors, for what Bernie's prostate was turning into?

“Goiter,” Bega said, with relish.

The frat boys emptied the shots into their gullets then slammed the glasses down on the bar dramatically, as if they'd just accomplished a brave and rare feat. Paco poured them another round. One day these wide-shouldered boys will be running mutual funds into the ground, loyally voting Republican, and supporting foreign wars while watching the Wildcats football games, their hands stuck into their sweatshorts.

“Goiter.” Bega rolled it on his tongue like a sommelier.

“I just made out with Ana,” Joshua said out of the blue, surprising himself. It could've been that he was hoping Bega, an elected representative of all the Bosnians residing in this particular universe, would understand and forgive him in one fell swoop, thereby quickly alleviating Joshua's nascent guilt; or it was that he wanted Bega to stop saying “goiter.”

“I'm sure she's dying to fuck you,” Bega submitted with what equally consisted of disgust and admiration. “Sincere congratulations!”

“I'm not interested,” Josh said. “She's my student. And I have a girlfriend.”

“Sure you do, Josh. But that is no problem if you play it right,” Bega went on. “He is her second husband, but you must be careful. Esko went little crazy in war, now he's little bit fucked up.”

“I don't want to think about Esko.”

“Sure you don't,” Bega said. “He drinks a lot. He does not get along with his stepdaughter.”

“His stepdaughter? The girl is not his?”

“No. Her father was killed in the war.”

“How do you know them?” Joshua asked.
Them
, he said.

“Oh, Bosnia is small world. I know lot of Bosnians,” Bega said and winked. “Some better than others.”

What was that wink supposed to mean? Know in what way?

“She has my wallet,” Joshua said. “I lost it at the party.”

Bega finished off his beer. “Goiter,” he said.

“What?”

Bega raised his hand to call Paco over for another round. What they did at the Westmoreland was more than just drinking; they also longed for Paco and his attention. It was what other people went to holy temples for. Paco, for his part, was impervious to their prayers, ever looking up at the TV as at a celestial body. There must be a place in the world where there would be monks serving as bartenders, communing with spirits, mixing martinis to help you transcend your consciousness and fall facedown into enlightenment.

“Listen to me, I give you free advice: never, not even if they torture you, you must say anything to your girlfriend,” Bega said. “If she has video of you having sex with Ana, you look her in eyes and say: ‘That is not me!' Never guilty, always innocent.”

“I just got carried away. It was a mistake. I have no intention of having sex with Ana,” Joshua said. “Whatsoever.”

“Whatsoever?”

“Whatsoever. She has a teenage daughter.”

“She does.”

The frat boys were high-fiving each other. They looked exactly as the ones Joshua remembered from his college days: the same arrogance acquired by way of torturous football drills; the same unblemished skin and well-organized bodies; the same victoriously sparkling eyes; the same unquestionable confidence in the arrival of the cozy future. There ought to be a scene in
Zombie Wars
where chesty fratboys are quartered by the undead. Paco finally came around to take an order.

“Red wine,” Joshua said.

“No way,” Bega said, ogling the goiter. “Give him Jack on the rocks. He's real man now.”

Joshua was too busy examining the
goyter
to object. It looked just as it sounded:
goyter
. Bernie used to speak Yiddish growing up. Joshua must learn Yiddish. By the time I'm sixty-five, I'll have written unproducable scripts in unspeakable Yiddish. Bega was staring at the
goyter
too.

“What're you looking at?” Paco asked them testily.

“Goiter,” Bega said. “We're looking at your goiter. Why you don't take it out.”

“Take it out?” Paco the
goytermonk
said. “That's where I keep my spare head.”

*   *   *

The Westmoreland Jacks should have rendered the Ana experience as distant as a medieval battle, yet Joshua spent much of his walk home (home?) searching for the exact way to convey the taste and texture of her lips: red licorice? tuna sashimi? a warm, split red-bean mochi ball? It was all wrong (why did only food come to mind?). He could not perfectly recollect the sensation, because his hands had been too busy exploring her skin and groin. He should've paid more attention to the lips—the stupid adolescent habit of always going for the deeper bases. He opened the front door like a burglar, hoping that, if Kimiko was sufficiently tranquilized by late-night television, he could slip into bed so that Ana and her lips would by the morning dissolve into the untroubling past.