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{the anthrax concerto} j. boyer I try to catch a shower, which isn’t a bad idea when you’re hustling for tips at a snooty Westwood restaurant. When I get out, he’s sitting like an Indian, watching himself on TV. The TV sets on a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. The show is from five years ago, before it went off the air then came back from the grave thanks to Netflix. I say, I have to go to work pretty soon. Okay? The restaurant, okay? I mean, one of us has to bring in some cash. Okay? Okay?! He acts as if he doesn’t hear me. He is fixed on the TV. Rapt attention, I think this is called. I have to look twice to see what he’s seeing. He is wearing the same clothes on the show that he’s wearing this evening. These are same clothes he’s worn for a month. He refuses to take them off. He sleeps in them, wears them day and night, even showers in them, so the suit has lost its shape, the shoes are runover at the heels and torn at the instep, but it’s the same glen plaid suit, same expensive loafers. Pure Botany 500. He has cards in his hands on the show, a stack of 5 X 7 cards that he taps on the podium. The podium’s in the middle of two little desks. Behind the desks are contestants. Behind him, over his head, letters are made up of tiny little light bulbs, the name of the show, WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE. If you answer the question correctly, you win trips and home appliances. Beneath the arc the letters make, there’s a cage in midair. It has a wooden stool, a microphone, and there are neon tubes where you’d expect to find bars. That’s the way the game is played, always three contestants, the loser of the last round up there in the monkey house. I was one of the prize girls. My boyfriend—Why do I call him my boyfriend? We’re finished, kaput!—was the host. Right, I say. That was when life was still sweet. It’s the oldest show business story: Once you’ve tasted fame… When I have my things together, I go over to where he’s sitting and put a knee on the bed so I can kiss him goodbye. I kiss him on the cheek and say into his ear, I don’t want you here when I get home. We’re finished. Get out. He hasn’t left when I return. While I was at work, he’s gone out and bought a record player. the phonograph is an RCA-- it’s little, two-toned brown, circa 1955-- with a thick plastic spindle, just a cylinder an inch or two wide. Great find, I say. You’re into junk suddenly? Good to know. I pick up a shopping bag. The shopping bag’s large, plastic, and yellow. It has HOLLYWOOD STAX OF WAX on both sides. I turn the bag upside down holding it by its bottom, and records spill onto the carpet. They are all 45s. Look, I say, I’ve got to get some sleep, all right? You’re going to have to find someplace else to spend the night? Did you look for a new place to live today? He tosses the records at the spindle until he’s fresh out of records, then turns to me to bring him more. I come over to where he’s sitting. I bring my face to his so he’ll have to acknowledge my presence, that the place belongs to me and not us anymore. You can’t stay here tonight. All right? We’re kaput. It’s over. I pick up a few of the 45s that have rolled beneath a table. “OOOO-POOOPA-DO” by Huey “Piano” Smith. “SHOTGUN BOOGEY.” Something by the Fleetwoods. Does it work? I ask him. I say this to hurt his feelings, knowing he would not have thought to try it in the store. He looks at me at last. That, I say. That. I point to the record player. I’ll bet you didn’t know I liked music, he says. Everyone likes music, I tell him. What did you do to your hair? I ask. He’s shaved his head clean except for a row of sharp pikes. I run my hand over his head, six slimy pikes, a pike at a time. You can see that he’s been crying. I say, I’ll get you a Kleenex. I call from the bathroom, Jennifer didn’t show up of course, so it was double the work, but tips were out of this world. This is a lie. I mean by this, I will not be blackmailed. You’re not the only one who’s ever been rejected. I myself was on TV. I was once a prize girl. Scattered about the floor of the bathroom are wadded up Kleenex. In the light, the Kleenex are rose colored. They look to me like those Kleenex flowers that you sometimes see at proms. I think of some great bush struggling to get out of the heating ducts overhead, mangling itself in the process. I imagine shrubs in the plumbing, crabgrass in the circuitry, bushes in the heating ducts. I imagine the two of us found side by side in the bed, strangled to death by rare and wonderful hydrangea working their ways through the reebar. My Lady Schick is in the sink. There’s hair all over everything. I call from the bathroom, We’re all out of Kleenex. I bring him a washcloth instead. As I fold the washcloth in two, I say, Why are you doing this? Well? Say something. Washing his face, I say, When’s the last time you ate? Are you hungry? I’ll get something at the all-night market, would you like that, something to eat? Then I say, I’ll take that as a Yes. The all-night market is at the end of the street, and the walk is just short of a nightmare. The streets in this part of L.A. are so dangerous they have to be patrolled from the air. Cops in cars wouldn’t last a full shift. High over the buildings, a police helicopter shines a floodlight that moves across the pavement so that the light forms a circle of ever-increasing diameter as the helicopter rises. There are gimps, spooks, geeks, trolls, three legged dogs. Imagine a microscope. Imagine anthrax spores. When I get back, the apartment’s in shambles. The walls are smeared, the prints ripped down from their mountings. One thing’s piled on top of another into a huge, impossible heap almost as high as the ceiling. The chair, the bed, the trunk and TV. Everything. I look for some sign of life in the kitchen. I go to the bedroom. My clothes have been cut with pinking shears while still on their hangers. Savaged, dismembered, they hang limp and lifeless from the rod in my closet. I tiptoe to the bathroom, afraid for my life. The floor is fresh with glass. There are tubes, razor blades and powders, all of my cosmetics and soaps, all of it ruined, unclaimed on the floor. A man’s form moves from behind the shower curtain. I draw the curtain aside. My boyfriend is standing there naked, wearing only his shoes. He has covered himself with make-up. He has drawn circles around his eyes in lipstick. He has shaved his chest and has covered skin in lightening bolts and arrows. He has covered his privates in rouge. I say, There’s nothing left of us. There’s nothing of me in your coming and going. Are you blind to that? There’s water where once there was wine. Okay? I offer him my hand and he takes it. I say, I hope you have an explanation for this. And the story had better be good. |
