The Quick & the Dead (23 page)

“There’s food on it, I think.” The work had not escaped spillage.

“That’s the crow’s nest from a wrecked ship. The artist’s name was Church, a famous landscape painter a century ago, but when he exhibited
The Icebergs
, no one exclaimed over it. The reaction was so reserved that Church lugged the painting back to his studio and painted in that tiny little smashed-up crow’s nest to give it a little human dimension, see what I’m saying? Like, man was here, even though he was destroyed, he got to see this cold, immense, monumental thing and was ennobled by his very inconsequentiality before it.”

“Did they like it any better after he put the wreck in it?” It was the smallest of corrections, Alice noted.

“The public? No, flotsam and jetsam didn’t do it for them. Flotsam and jetsam just reminded them of their own paltry selves, that they were tramps and drifters and vagrants in this life, nothing more. The public hated the painting. Church was crushed. Frederic Edwin Church. Of the luminist school.” He regarded Alice thoughtfully. She was sexless but troubling. He wanted to go away and then send for her, that’s what he wanted. He wanted to leave and have her follow. We are in exile here. We are strangers and pilgrims in this place. Two on a party, a solitude of two. He wanted to twist her to him.

“Note the cruciform shape,” Sherwin said. “It’s a very persistent symbol. The symbol of symbols. The cross represents a way out; it moves, renews, implies further voyaging. But Church used it cynically. The painting disappeared. It got lost for one hundred and sixteen years. Then it was found. In some stairwell at a school for bad boys.”

“Why not bad girls?” Alice said. She was listening to a story that wasn’t true, maybe, a story that could still be altered. Annabel had told her not to encourage him by believing him.

Sherwin laughed. “Bad girls! They would’ve torn it apart with their long, painted nails. They would’ve wanted to see it burn. It was a kind providence that kept it out of the bad girls’ school.”

“Well, what did the bad boys do to it?”

“They didn’t harm it, except for one bad boy who signed it.”

“That’s nice!” Alice exclaimed. “What happened to him?”

“Forget him, he’s dead by now. Don’t you want to belong to me?”

Alice took a swallow of her iced tea. It tasted like the smell in Fury’s ears. Some of these herbal teas went too far.

The waiter came up. “Impossible to sleep, impossible to stay awake,” he said. “You want anything else? A nice mud pie?”

“Maybe my wife does,” Sherwin said.

The waiter looked at her, amused. Alice reddened and shook her head.

“Naw, that’s it then.” Sherwin took a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and gave it to the man, who wore white clinging plastic gloves.

“Have a nice remainder of the rest of your life,” the waiter said. “Gotta cough.” He turned away.

Sherwin shook his head. “The last act begins inauspiciously.”

“I don’t get this place,” Alice said.

“That’s because you’re a child of the dominant culture.”

“I’m nobody’s child,” Alice said.

“We won’t come here anymore.”

“Good.”

“Sometimes I prefer the haunts of criminals, but sometimes I like to avoid them too.”

Alice glanced at the two women. They were sprinkling more sugar on their food just to make sure. Tarzan Zambini had been dismissed.

“No criminals patronize this place,” Alice said.

“Just you and me.”

“I wish,” Alice said fervently.

Outside, a man in harlequin rags was screaming at the empty street, declaiming against a world that cared a great deal less than he imagined.

“Yeah,” Sherwin said, “you and me.”

Alice nibbled more bread.

“What are you going to do about that tooth?”

“I’m getting an oral implant,” she said guiltily.

“You’ll be tracked down through your teeth. You won’t be able to call your life your own.”

“I don’t have a Social Security number,” Alice said.

“I thought you were going to unhinge things. You don’t need perfect teeth for that.”

“I never even had a cavity before,” Alice said.

“Soon you’ll be getting bone-density scans. Time goes by like this.” He snapped his long fingers. “But still, I want to confess something to you. I never intended to live this long. You want to cuddle with me in a bathtub?”

It didn’t sound wholesome. “Sure,” Alice said. “But you don’t have a bathtub.” She remembered that there was no tub where he lived; instead, a shower stall of that somewhat flexible consistency.

“You know anyone with a tub?” Sherwin lit another cigarette, and his hand shook a little. He’d tried it before. There were names for people like him. Attempters. Parasuicides. He preferred Attempter. If you were successful, you were called a Completer, although they avoided the word
successful
. He’d known guys … Larry, a Completer if ever there was one. He’d gone out in the most beautiful leather coat. None of them had known he even owned such a thing. It was unborn calf, or some buttery, ineffable creature. Larry had employed pills and Absolut, and what a presentation their Larry had made: fresh haircut, pedicure, a dash of glitter on his eyelids, Purcell playing over and over on his distinguished audio system
. Cave, Cave, Dominus videt …
Larry had actually thought God was watching!

“How about your friend Corvus? She got a tub we could borrow? She’s always seemed mystical and pessimistic to me. It’s an intriguing combination.”

“You and Corvus should never ever meet,” Alice said.

“What do you mean? We’ve met.”

“You can’t talk to her this way, the way we’re talking, this I-love-you stuff, this words-are-just-noise stuff, this bathtub stuff.”

“You know to what I allude,” Sherwin said. “This is wonderful for me.”

“You’re kind of like a disease,” Alice said sincerely, “an immunizing disease, which I like. But Corvus, no, no, no.”

“An immunizing disease,” Sherwin said.

“Corvus is … I don’t want you to talk about Corvus.” She stood up. “I want to go.”

The horrible waiter reappeared, seemingly transfixed by the sight of them together. Sherwin looked at
The Icebergs
on the way out. There was something on it, Alice had been right, not food itself but the stains of food. The crow’s nest really was a nice touch—a little desperate, of course, but Sherwin had always found the shape of a cross to be pleasing. The cross was the symbolic image of death, a death distinguished from mere biological anonymity, a death surrounded by an aura of hope and uncertainty.

Out in the street, the man in the harlequin clothes was screaming, “The word
God
shits some people’s minds!”

“The word would be
shut
,” Sherwin said to him mildly. “Don’t you mean
shuts?
”

E
mily Bliss Pickless lived with her mother, whose most recent boyfriend was a man named John Crimmins. They had met at a gun range, where Emily’s mother met most of her boyfriends, although she made herself a rule of never double-dipping them. Emily’s mother thought this John Crimmins was “darkly intelligent.” Emily did not share this opinion, but she didn’t mind him. When he wasn’t around, she didn’t miss him either.

The first thing he told Emily in confidence was that he might be the Son of God. “It’s a hypothesis I’m checking out,” he said. “I got the same initials, don’t I?” He grinned at her. He thought Emily was as dumb as is.

“I could never be the Son of God,” Emily said, not caring much.

“No, you couldn’t,” John Crimmins agreed.

He had many things he didn’t like, whole lists of them, and urged Emily to be equally discriminatory in her life, though he warned her against adopting his particulars. Emily didn’t like him enough to adopt his particulars. J.C. didn’t like mayonnaise, dogs, or beer in cans.

“Why don’t you like dogs?” Emily had asked.

“Do you know anything about the Son of God?”

“Not much,” Emily admitted.

“He was nailed to a cross of wood and left to die hanging in the air.”

“Well, I know that,” Emily said. “Everyone knows that.” To most people, it was the most compelling part of the story. She also had heard that he had
come back
, been
resurrected
, which she found extremely revolting, repugnant, and impossible.

“What else do you know?” J.C. demanded. He was sitting hunched over the breakfast table watching some cereal turn the milk blue. Her mother was still asleep.

In the first few weeks of their acquaintance, Emily had pretended that she didn’t know how to read. She’d ask him what signs said, billboards, magazine covers, newspaper headlines, and the like, and he’d always render them incorrectly. He’d change only one word sometimes but often entirely alter the meaning. They’d amused themselves each in their own way in this manner, for some time. Emily didn’t think he’d ever caught on.

“Nothing else,” Emily said. “I forget.” You had to act dumb around adults, otherwise there was no point in being around them at all.

“When the Son of God died, there wasn’t any of him left to bury. Even his bones disappeared. Every last scrap of him vanished. Do you know the whys and wherefores of that?”

Emily shook her head ever so slowly back and forth. Her mother lacked all discrimination when it came to men.

“The dogs took everything. The dogs that were always hanging around crucifixions. The crucified hung there as food for dogs, grim pickings for dogs. The reason the Son of God disappeared from the tomb was that he was never in the tomb, he was in the bellies of dogs. And to this day, you know, a dog will eat you. If you’re in a room with a starving dog and you’re powerless for some reason or another, he’ll eat you.”

“Not if he likes you, he won’t,” Emily offered.

“
Likes
you,” J.C. snorted. “Even if he
loves
you, he will.”

Emily’s mother walked into the kitchen. She looked at Emily as if she didn’t know how she had gotten there for an instant, but then she looked pleased. Though her mother loved her dearly, this was a way she often looked at her after the separation of some hours, particularly night’s hours. Emily didn’t mind it much, feeling like a little flower that had just come up to everyone’s surprise.

“Another thing that I don’t like,” J.C. went on, “is other people’s soaps.”

“You haven’t been using my duck and chick soap, have you?” Emily had her own tinctured soap, which she didn’t like using as their distinctive shapes would be blurred if she did. Because of this reluctance, Emily’s person was always somewhat soiled. “Mom, don’t let him use my soap.”

“J.C. wouldn’t touch your soap, honey,” her mother said, and yawned.

J.C. and Emily watched her yawn hugely. Emily was worried that one day her jaw would lock open like a sprung door, and there they’d be: her mother wouldn’t be able to work, and Emily pictured them wandering around in rags, begging, a little veil over her mother’s mouth to keep people from pitching coins in and keep the bugs out.

“I hate watching you wake up,” J.C. said. “Woke up you’re a fine, delightful, good-looking woman, but your waking up is a process I don’t believe any man should be subjected to.”

Holding her hands in front of her mouth and still yawning, her mother retreated back into the bedroom.

“She should take medicine or something for that,” J.C. said.

“So is that the only reason you don’t like dogs?”

“Isn’t that enough of a reason? I’m telling you something historically accurate. Dogs have been getting away with too much for too long.”

“Have you ever bitten anyone?” Emily asked. “I wish I could bite someone whenever I felt like it.”

“You look like a biter,” J.C. said. “You feel like biting me?”

But Emily demurred.

“Come on, come on.” The arm J.C. extended had black hairs growing on it up to the elbow, where they abruptly stopped. “Not everyone would allow you this opportunity.”

Emily continued to demur, suspecting that if she did sink her teeth into his arm, he’d swat her across the room and right into the boneyard. She had things to do in this life, although she was unsure as to what they were.

W
e must see things we do not see now,” Nurse Daisy would say off and on throughout the day, “and not see things we see now.” Alice was assisting the nurse in the bathing of poor Fred Fallow, who weighed close to 350 pounds and had to be hoisted into the tub via block and tackle. Her duties were to scrub him with a long wandlike stick.

“I always think when I do this,” Nurse Daisy said, operating the lift, “of a dolphin being moved to its new home in an aquarium. I saw a picture of it in a magazine once. How you doing there, good boy? How’s the warm water feel on the old bottom, Freddie? How’s it feel on the old tush?”

Freddie gave a piercing, strangulated cry.

“Upsy, downsy, back and forth, looking good, Freddie,” Nurse Daisy crooned as she feathered the gears and swished Freddie back and forth through the water. “Isn’t water a remarkable element? It’s exempt from getting wet. It’s as exempt from getting wet as God is exempt from the passion of love.”

“I’ve heard that,” Alice said, working the brush. “The first half anyway, somewhere.” Sherwin, probably, who admired exemptions in general.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Nurse Daisy said. “Thoughts are infusorial.”

When she had first made the nurse’s acquaintance, Alice wondered why she wasn’t working in rehabilitation since she was so strong and tireless in exhorting her lumpen charges, but each time Alice assisted her, it became clearer why she wasn’t. Nurse Daisy had more grim homilies about a bland, absentminded God than Alice had ever heard, and she poured them enthusiastically into the ears of those without hope. God had the maternal instincts of an alligator in regard to its spawn, was
Nurse Daisy’s opinion. By effort and good works ye are not saved. It was hopeless to struggle, hopeless to strive. We live and die like little seeds that come to nothing.

She swished the moaning Freddie back and forth while Alice daubed worriedly at his back with the brush. The nurse was stout and sallow with a melodious voice, and hair the softness of concertina wire. Nurse Daisy did not cohere—her personal characteristics were at once pronounced and very much at odds with one another. There was even the possibility that she actually believed she loved the hapless souls gathered beneath her cold and comfortless wing.