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"You don't think I'm really a secretly sensitive and Christlike manifestation of perfect
love?"
"No way, dude," Denny says. "You're an asshole."
And I say, "Thanks. Just checking."
And Denny stands up using just his legs in slow motion, and in a pie tin between his
hands is another reflection of the night sky, and Denny says, "Bingo, dude."
About me in the church I tell him, I'm more disappointed in God than in myself. He
should've hammered me with a lightning bolt. I mean, God's god. I'm just an asshole. I
didn't even take off Paige Marshall's clothes. Still with her stethoscope around her neck,
dangling between her breasts, I pushed her back on the altar. I didn't even take off her lab
coat.
The stethoscope against her own chest, she said, "Go fast." She said, "I want you to
stay in synch with my heart."
It's not fair how a woman never has to think of shit to keep from coming.
And me, I just couldn't. Already, that Jesus idea was just killing my hard-on.
Denny hands me the beer, and 1 drink. Denny spits out a dead slug and says, "Better
drink through your teeth, dude."
Even in a church, even laid up on an altar, without her clothes, Paige Marshall, Dr.
Paige Marshall, I didn't want her to become just another piece of ass.
Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
Because nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.
Breathe in. And then, out.
"Dude," Denny says. "This is got to be my nightcap. Let's get the rock and head
home."
And I say, just one more block, okay? Just one more round of backyards. I'm not
near drunk enough to forget my day.
This is such a fine neighborhood. I jump the fence to the next backyard and land on
my head in somebody's rose bush. Somewhere a dog's barking.
The whole time we were up at the altar, me trying to get my dog hard, the cross,
polished and blond wood, was looking down on us. No tortured man. No crown of thorns.
No flies circling and sweat. No stink. No blood and suffering, not in this church. No rain
of blood. No plague of locusts.
Paige, the whole time with the stethoscope in her ears, just listened to her own heart.
The angels on the ceiling were painted over. The light through the stained-glass
window was thick and gold and swimming with dust. The light fell in a thick solid shaft,
a warm heavy shaft that spilled on us.
Attention please, would Dr. Freud please pick up the white courtesy telephone.
A world of symbols, not the real world.
Denny looks at me stuck and bleeding from the rose thorns, my clothes ripped, lying
in a bush, and says, "Okay, I mean it." He says, "This is, for sure, last call."
The smell of roses, the smell of incontinence at St. Anthony's.
A dog's barking and scratching to get out the back door of the house. A light comes
on in the kitchen to show somebody in the window. Then the back-porch light comes on,
and it's amazing how fast I tear my ass out of that bush and run to the street.
Coming the other way on the sidewalk are a couple, leaned together and walking
with an arm around each other. The woman rubs her cheek on the man's lapel, and the
man kisses the crown of her head.
Denny's already pushing the stroller, so fast the front wheels catch in a sidewalk
crack, and the baby's rubber head pitches out. Glass eyes staring wide open, the pink head
bounces past the happy couple and rolls into the gutter.
To me, Denny says, "Dude, you want to fetch that for me?"
My clothes shredded and gummy with blood, thorns stuck in my face, I trot past the
couple and nab the head out of the leaves and trash.
The man yelps and pulls back.
And the woman says, "Victor? Victor Mancini. Oh, my God."
She must've saved my life, because I don't know who the hell she is.
In the chapel, after I gave up, after we were buttoning our clothes shut, I said to
Paige, "Forget fetal tissue. Forget resenting strong women." I say, "You want to know the
real reason why I won't fuck you?"
Doing up the buttons of my britches, I told her, "Maybe the truth is I really want to
like you instead."
And with both hands above her head, making her black hair brain tight again, Paige
said, "Maybe sex and affection aren't mutually exclusive."
And I laughed. My hands tying my cravat, I told her, yes. Yes, they are.
Denny and me, we get to the seven hundred block of, the street sign says Birch
Street. To Denny pushing the stroller, I say, "Wrong way, dude." I point behind us and
say, "My mom's house is back there."
Denny keeps pushing, the bottom of the stroller making a growling sound against the
sidewalk. The happy couple are drop-jawed, still watching us from two blocks back.
I trot along next to him, tossing the pink doll head from hand to hand. "Dude," I say.
"Turn back around."
Denny says, "We have to see the eight hundred block first."
What's there?
"It's supposed to be nothing," Denny says. "My Uncle Don used to own it."
The houses end, and the eight hundred block is just land with more houses on the
block after that. The land is just tall grass planted around the edges with old apple trees, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]