Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (26 page)

He had just decided to give them ten
more minutes before calling the police when the telephone burbled. A table was
sideswiped and a floorlamp flattened on his way to the phone. Evidently he
needed more practice in the Invacare 9000. He was not yet the starship
commander he fancied himself to be.

“Bobby! What’s happened? Is she all
right?”

“All right? Yeah, she’s fine—except
for being stubborn as a frostbit fireplug. We’re having a big fight, to tell
you the truth.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re at the video store. I’m dying
to see
Blade Runner
again—you know as good as me it’s the best damn
movie ever made—but your granny’s got her mind set on some fou-fou flick about
the expatriate art scene in Paris in the twenties. Guys with big noses sitting
around in sidewalk cafés arguing over whether Gertrude Stein weighs more than
Ernest Hemingway, or some unhappy shit like that.”

“You must mean
The Moderns
.
It’s a delicious film. You’d lick your chops over it. Why don’t you just rent
them both?”

“Because, Solomon, in case you
forgot, we agreed to play CD-ROM Monopoly with her later on, and that game
takes longer than the lemonade line in Hell. I got to fly tomorrow night.”

“In that case,” said Switters,
feeling like the vice president at a Senate deadlock, “I cast my deciding vote
for
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
Now come on home.” He slammed down the
receiver.

Bobby left the next morning. As he
zipped himself into his leathers at the front door, he said, “We really didn’t
dig very deep into your situation. We talked about how to break the curse or
whatever it is—and I’m still ready and willing to waltz down to the Amazon and
seize any operational opportunity that should arise, you say the word—but we
never got into the significance of the thing. What it means, where it came
from. Was it a well-thought-out decision, that particular taboo? Is it
traditional to ban interlopers and visiting firemen from touching certain
things, in your case the earth? Is earth-touching symbolic in some cryptic way,
or was it arbitrary, just a matter of a wily ol’ jungle wiseguy having
off-the-cuff sport with a city slicker? And how does it tie in with your yopo
trip? What’d you see or learn on that trip that was so heavy or precious or
privileged that you would have to pay for it by spending the rest of your life
with your heels elevated? And just because some goofy limey bush professor
keeled over from Kadockywocky juju, does that necessarily mean
you
would? Boy howdy! There’s a fieldful of stones we left unturned.”

“I’ve been flipping them like
pancakes myself, and suppose I’ll keep at it unless the company creates a major
distraction for me.”

Bobby chuckled. “I’d love to be a fly
on the pickle factory ceiling when you report for duty in that hospital hotrod.
At least travel for the disabled is easier nowadays. There a direct flight from
Seattle to D.C.?”

“Probably, but I don’t book it. I fly
into New York and take the train down, so that I never have to patronize an
airport named for John Foster Dulles.” After saying “Dulles,” Switters
immediately expectorated, and Bobby did likewise. In such aesthetic harmony was
their dual expulsion of salivary projectiles that they could have represented
the U.S. in synchronized spitting. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter that we didn’t
spend this all too rare reunion dissecting and analyzing my peculiar state of
affairs. There’ll be plenty of time to ponder End of Time, even if today
is
tomorrow. And there’re happenings in this life that simply don’t lend
themselves to rational interpretation. To look at them logically can be to look
at them wrongly. Logic can distort as well as clarify. What’s important
is—well, my psyche was a pregnant mouse at a cat show when you arrived, I was
in a fair amount of disarray, but you showed me a good time, gave me some
laughs, got me relaxed. Thanks to you, pal, I can now approach my prospects
with a relatively clear mind.”

“Clear enough to stay away from
little Suzy?”

“Well . . .”

Bobby shook his head reproachfully.
“I sure hope Hell has wheelchair access.”

“If not, I may have to settle for
Paradise.” (In his cerebral data base, crammed as it was with etymological
privity [some might say
pedantry
, but there was nothing the least bit
trivial about those underpinnings of modern language that were by extension the
underpinnings of modern consciousness], he knew the word
paradise
to be
derived from Old Persian for “walled garden” or “enclosed orchard”—but the
significance of this, while he was still many months removed from the Syrian
oasis, obviously would not have occurred to him.) “Heaven or Hades, as long as
Pee-wee Herman’s on the premises I’ll be content. Pee-wee may be becoming my
idol.”

“I can appreciate that,” said Bobby,
thinking of the video they had watched before Maestra bankrupted them both at
Monopoly. “It’s the innocence.”

“It’s the joie de vivre.”

They embraced in the manner that had
raised more than a few cowboy eyebrows. Bobby walked down the steps and mounted
the Harley. “By the way,” he called, “you don’t have to sweat anymore about
what to tell your granny. I talked to her last night on our ride. It’s all
taken care of. She’s cool as an ice worm in snow melt.” He roared away.

Whatever story Bobby had fed
Maestra, it proved effective. As Switters wheeled about her spacious house at
top speed, slaloming through an obstacle course of furniture, skidding around
corners—practicing, honing his skills—she smiled knowingly, approvingly, almost
with a wink. If only Capt. Nut Case had given Suzy a similar briefing!

Alas, as Bobby had hinted it might,
the wheelchair had a dampening effect on Suzy’s presumed and anticipated
passions. When she came home from school (rather late, he thought) on Monday
afternoon to find him chair-bound in his mother’s parlor, she emitted a sharp
cry of dismay and approached him tentatively, with grave concern. “Had a minor
mishap in South America,” he quipped, and she brightened. But when he,
foolishly perhaps, confessed that his confinement might be long-term, if not permanent,
her horrified frown reappeared.

Not that she was unsympathetic.
Au
contraire.
From that moment on, she was solicitous and attentive nearly to
a fault, but her ministrations were those of a nurse, not a nymph. His
condition had awakened in her maternal and nurturing instincts, altogether
admirable qualities in their place, but hardly the emotions for which he
yearned. Although those big sea-squirt eyes of hers, poker chips in Neptune’s
deep casino, still regarded him adoringly, the coquetry in them had given way
to pity. Pity. Lust’s worst enemy.

There was something else. When on
Tuesday, Suzy again was late from school, Switters inquired of his mother,
Eunice, of her possible whereabouts. “Oh,” said Eunice, “she’s probably hanging
out with Brian.”

“Who’s Brian?”

His mother smiled. “I think our
little Suzy has a boyfriend.”

It took every Asian breathing
technique he’d ever learned, and one or two he improvised for the occasion, to
rescue his brain from the Tabasco-filled birdbath into whose crimson waters it
had suddenly fallen. When the searing and flopping finally abated, he felt a
measure of relief at the way things were turning out. Almost concurrently, he
felt a disappointment so profound he thought he might weep. It was similar to
the mixture of relief and disappointment a moth must feel at the extinguishing
of a candle.

If he thought he was free of the
exquisite torture of obsession, however, if he believed fate had dictated he
lay that shining burden down, he was mistaken. When, at about six o’clock, she
came down the hall to his room with a can of Pepsi and a plate of brownies,
came in her school uniform (pleated blue skirt and loose white blouse), came
with her tiny gold crucifix twinkling like an eastern star above the twin
mosques of her breasts (my, how they’d grown! that old training bra couldn’t
begin to corral them now), came with her round rump ticking like two casseroles
in an oven, came with her smart smile and guileless gaze, he could sense the
want spreading throughout his organism like a cotton-candy cancer, and his
mania once more had the wind to its back.

Suzy kissed him on the mouth, but
without tongue or duration. “Don’t eat all these brownies now, and spoil your
dinner.”

“Did you bake them?” In his mind he
licked the spoon, her fingers, knuckles, wrists, forearms. . . .

“Yeah, but, like, not from scratch.”
She sat down on a hassock. “If you’re going to hang in your room like this, you
ought, you know, to be in the bed.”

“No, I oughtn’t. But I’d be delighted
to jump into bed if you’d jump in with me.”

She blushed, though only lightly.
“Oh, Switters! You’re so-oo
bad
.”

“That isn’t bad, that’s good. Don’t
they teach you anything at your penguin academy?”

“Next year, I’m transferring to
public school. Catholic school . . . I mean, I love the religious training and
stuff, but a lot of the rules are just so
lame
.” She closed her fingers
around her throat to illustrate in some fashion the lameness of parochial
regulations. “My dad doesn’t mind, ‘cause he got excommunicated for, you know,
divorcing my mom and marrying your mom. Switters, has your mom been married
lots of times?”

“Let’s put it this way: my mother’s
on a first-name basis with the staff at several honeymoon hotels. I believe she
may get a discount. Now, speaking of honeymoons, darling, don’t you think it’s
time we started practicing for ours?” He inched the wheelchair closer to her
hassock.

Giggling nervously, she shook her
head. She had cut her hair and wore it now in a bob that, while better shaped
and slightly longer, was not unlike a blonde version of the Amazon coif. The
effect was somewhat childish, somewhat boyish. “You shouldn’t even talk like
that. You being injured and stuff.”

“Nothing wrong with me that your
pretty little sushi roll wouldn’t improve.”

“Switters! That’s not what your
grandmother says.”

He blinked. “My grandmother? What did
she say? When?”

“Last night. Remember when we were
eating dinner and the phone rang? I ran to get it ‘cause I thought it might be
Bri . . . like, this friend of mine, you know. Well, it was your grandma up in
Seattle. She told me how delicate your condition is and that, like, if I should
ever be tempted to, like, let you do anything romantic or nasty, I should bear
in mind that it could kill you. ‘It’d probably be the death of him,’ she said.
So, you see.”

Damn that Maestra!
“That
meddling old. . . . She’s lying through her teeth, and even her teeth are
false.”

Suzy stood. “She’s just trying to
protect you.”

“I don’t need protection. I’m sturdy
as a Budweiser draft horse.”

“You are, are you? In that
wheelchair? Hello?” She moved toward the door. “You behave yourself. I’ll come
get you when dinner’s ready. We’re both just trying to take care of you, you
know. I think your grandmother’s way cool.” Suzy blew him a quick kiss and left
the room.

“She cheats at Monopoly!” he called
after her. It was all he could think to say.

This is ridiculous. I know life,
the way humans live it, is absurd more often than not, and I don’t particularly
mind. I rather like the smell of absurdity in the morning. At the onset of a
potentially dull day, a whiff of the genuinely ludicrous can be exhilarating.
But this situation is too much. It’s too much for me. It’s stupid. I admit, I
kind of enjoyed it at first, the sheer unexpected outlandishness of it, but now
the novelty has definitely worn off, it’s become a prime-time drag, it’s drying
up my syrup of wahoo.

I’m going to stand and walk away
from this geriatric golf cart. I’m going to bound down the hall like an impala
with a pack of hyenas on its butt and snatch Suzy up in my arms, which have
toned up quite nicely, thank you, since I’ve been pushing these hand rims; I’m
going to sweep her off her feet and chew the buttons right off her blouse, I
don’t care if the whole family sees me do it. I can’t take any more of this.
It’s silliness worthy of the U.S. Congress, it’s
estúpido supremo.

Bracing the heels of his hands on the
chair’s Naugahyde arms, Switters lifted himself off its seat, extending and
bending, simultaneously, his right leg until the tip of his black sneaker was a
mere centimeter or less above the oval rag rug, one of many such carpets that
contributed to the Early American decor of the rambling suburban ranch house.
R.
Potney Smithe’s death was undoubtedly a result of the power of suggestion—a
kind of extreme version of the tactics of Hollywood and Madison Avenue—and only
the mentally weak are susceptible to such psychological manipulation. Hey, even
if Today Is Tomorrow possesses some cause-and-effect magical faculty totally
unfamiliar to science, its reach surely is geographically restricted, it can’t
extend thousands of miles to north-central California.

He wiggled his toes until he could
almost feel the molecular interaction of foot with floor. Yet he didn’t quite
make contact.
Suppose it’s real, the Kandakandero magic, suppose I touch
this ugly rug and it strikes me dead: so what? I certainly can’t go on in this
manner for the rest of my life. Under such a cloud. It’s oppressive. I’m a
prisoner in an invisible jail. Worse, I’m an object of pity to the opposite
sex. Rimbaud was wrong! I’m not putting up with it. Fuck your taboo and the
snake it rode in on. I’m free! Kill me if you can, pal. Go ahead. I dare you.