The Animal Hour (16 page)

Z
achary remembered how Oliver had found him. That time at the mews. It was over a year ago now. Zach had been lying in the bedroom, on the floor next to his old bed. He had been naked and the warm night air had felt like water on his sinewy body. There were images floating in that water. Swirling, drifting, dissolving. Memory become vision. He had been gazing at those images and laughing and crying. He had not even heard Ollie arrive.

Then, all at once, Oliver was there. Zach had thought his brother was just part of the vision at first. But Oliver was loud, solid. He did not swirl or dissolve. Oliver was shouting at him, telling him to get up. Zach tried to explain about the teacup. He was laughing; it was so beautiful. It was the same teacup that had lain beside their mother when she died. And he could see it, floating in the liquid air above him: an inexpensive cream-colored teacup with a brown border at the rim. Only it was changed now. Not in appearance, no—it had been metamorphosed from within. It was filled with meaning that seemed to unite it to all the meaning everywhere. It was as if it had gone from being an individual object to a pattern in the greater pattern of an endless tapestry.

Zach had tried to explain this to his older brother. “Look, Ollie,” he had said, laughing. “Filled with love. Our love. Brothers. Everyone. In the structure, the molecules. See it? Right there.”

“Get up, you stupid prick!” Oliver had shouted. Oliver had not seen it. “Come on! We've gotta get you to the hospital.”

Zach remembered this as he pressed against the wall beside his window. He was naked now too. His balls tight with fear, his dick shriveled. He was peeking out at the street, at the detective stationed below him in the street. The detective was a pasty-faced thug in a tartan windbreaker. He leaned against a blue Dodge Dynasty with a long scrape in its front door. He smoked a Camel, glancing up and down the street. Watching for Zach. Waiting to arrest him because of the body in the mews.

This was how the world was without the drug, without Aquarius. Everything grainy with details. The crumpled cigarettes in the gutter at the detective's feet. The rubble in the empty lot across the street. The lightning bolt shape of the crack in the plaster right beside Zachary's nose. How was he supposed to think with all this
stuff
cluttering his mind?

He pulled back from the window, rested his head against the wall. He
had
to think. He had to get out of here, get to Ollie. The police would be back any minute. They would search the place. Find him. Open the red overnight bag. Somehow, he had to get past that detective downstairs. Haul his ass over to big brother's.

He slid down the wall, rough plaster scraping his naked back. Down to the floor. On all fours, his bare ass high. Carefully, so he could not be seen from the street, he started crawling. He crawled back through the railroad flat, back to the bedroom. Over the dust balls on the wooden slats. Over the long gray patches where the white paint on the slats had peeled away.
Oh Jesus, please
, he thought. He was so sorry he had taken the drug again last night. He knew that God was punishing him for breaking his promise. But he could not believe that Jesus meant him to feel so alone, so detached from the tapestry.

He did not stand up until he was at the closet door again. Then he slipped back into the closet. Back among Tiffany's clothes. The trace of her smell, her delicate musk. She wore jeans a lot of the time, but sometimes, luckily, she liked skirts too. Long skirts with colorful South American designs. He selected one of these now. An ankle-length with swirls of red and blue, cultic stick figures and rude drawings of sheep. It made him flash back on an argument Ollie and Tiff had had in Lancer's, the café downstairs.

“Ol-i-ver!” Tiffany had said, musically drawing out the syllables as she strained the petals from her chamomile tea. “Are you so invested in your Eurocentric authority that you can't even accept native art's validity as art?”

And Ollie, leaning his head so far back that he was gazing at the ceiling, groaned, “I accept, I accept. Native art is art and native medicine is medicine. But give me a Park Avenue surgeon and Picasso any day.”

Zach felt dizzy. He leaned against the wall. Closed his eyes. He remembered the soggy flowers lying on her saucer. The coffee grounds at the bottom of his demitasse. The way the lines of Tiffany's sweet face turned down at Ollie, as if she were more hurt by him than angry. And the way Ollie waved her off. And himself, seated at the table between them, with that feeble grin on his face. “You know, I really do believe that a mystical reading of the New Testament can help us transcend these categories.” Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be ineffectual.

He sighed. Opened his eyes. There was too much to straighten out. He could never get everything right. The police figured he'd killed the woman in the mews. They were going to put him in jail for it. He might as well give up now.

But he didn't. Moving heavily, he tugged one of Tiffy's sweaters off a hanger. It was a bulky Guatemalan knit, gray with blue zigzag patterns.
Under the Volcano
, the label said. He carried it and the skirt to the dresser in the corner.

The dresser was by the open window. He felt the autumn air on his skin as he stood there. It made him nostalgic and sad. If they put him in prison because of the woman in the mews, he thought, he would kill himself, that's all. Even if they accused him, if they indicted him, he would kill himself. He couldn't stand it. He would throw himself in front of a subway or something.

He opened Tiffany's underwear drawer and then changed his mind. He went for his own briefs and a pair of white socks. Then he moved away from the window. He didn't want anyone to see him from the buildings surrounding Lancer's garden.

He went into the bathroom. Shaved first—super-careful not to nick himself. Then, once he had his underwear and socks on, he stepped into Tiffany's skirt. Pulled on the sweater. He knew he had to hurry but he couldn't focus his mind. At one point, he just stopped, just stared, stupidly. At the beard hairs in the sink. At the smear of toothpaste on the faucet. All this
stuff
, he thought. God! He shook himself out of it. Pulled open the mirror that covered the medicine chest.

Tiffany didn't wear much makeup. She didn't need much, she had that natural cream complexion. But there was a tube of lipstick and some eyebrow guck in there. Zach took the lipstick. Swung the mirror shut. He leaned into the glass and started to paint his lips bright red.

Do it fast
, he thought. But then he was lost in the task. Smearing the stick on carefully. Pressing his lips together the way Tiffy did. He was thinking of Tiff again. Of Tiff and Ollie, arguing. In the churchyard over at St. Mark's this time. Sipping cider, standing on the implanted memorials. Oliver had just given a reading in the church, and Tiffany's friends from the bookstore were pissed. Trish and Joyce, radical fems in studded leather. They stood behind Tiff, at either slim shoulder. Glared at Ollie from the night like specters of revenge. Zach had stood at Ollie's shoulder trying to look husky, just to be fair.

Tiff, though, had only been petulant. She crossed her arms, stamped her foot at him. “I don't know, Oliver. I think you're just being shallow on purpose …”

“Right,” Oliver had said wearily. “So if we're not biologically determined, Oh Enlightened One, what are we determined by? Little messages from our incorporeal souls?”

Trish and Joyce had snarled like pit bulls. Tiffany's doe eyes had gone wide. For a moment, Zachary thought she was actually near tears. “Damn it, Oliver,” she said. “You just do this to alienate people.”

“Why don't you two stop?” Zach had said finally, a little desperate. He had put his hand on his big brother's arm. He had hated the small, plaintive sound of his own voice. “Why don't you two ever
stop?
”

He was done. He leaned back from the mirror. He stood on tiptoe to get a look at the length of him. The bulky sweater hiding his shape. The skirt to his ankles, the white socks and clogs covering his feet. The detective was not expecting him to come from inside. It would be enough. It would have to be.

But when he finally stood in the hall outside his apartment, when he stood at the top of the stairs, looking down, the fear almost paralyzed him. It made him feel frantic and sluggish at the same time. He wanted to run. And he wanted to sink down on the top step and burst into tears.
Okay, Jesus. Please
, he thought. He was so sorry he had taken the drug last night.

He took a breath and started walking slowly down the stairs.

He had a bandanna on now. Tiffany's cotton scarf with the elk pattern on it. It covered his head, dipping down over his brow, hiding his nearly crew-cut hair. He was carrying the red canvas overnight bag, his long raincoat draped over it. Trying to think how a woman would carry it, how she would hold her arms. He worked it out as he went down. Bending his arms at the elbow. Placing his feet carefully so that his skirt would sway.
Please Jesus please.

By the time he got to the ground floor, he was a walking prayer.
Please sorry please sorry sorry please please please.
He thought he might give himself up out of pure terror. And now too, there was a windy, diarrhetic feeling in his belly. His bowels were starting to move. He knew if he turned back now, if he went back upstairs to the bathroom, he would never get away. That was another aftereffect of the drug: It turned your shit to mud. Even if Mulligan's men didn't come back for an hour, they'd still find him in there clutching the crapper rim, straining for dear life. He just had to hold his gut together until he got to Ollie's.

He pushed open the door. Stepped out onto the stoop. The pasty-faced detective was right there, leaning against the car at the curb. He was in the act of dropping yet another cigarette into the gutter. He looked up. A mean square face. Acne-pocked skin. Beady, marbly eyes. He looked right up at Zach. And Zach, frozen in terror, just stood there like an idiot. Returned the stare.

Slowly, the detective smiled.

He's got me!
Zach thought.
Oh Jesus, I'm so sorry, help me please!

And then, with a jaunty little gesture, the detective raised one finger to his brow and saluted him. And Zach understood. The cop was
flirting
with him! Thinking fast, he dropped his eyes shyly, shyly smiled. The detective's grin widened. He straightened against the car, shifting his shoulders manfully in his tartan coat.

Zach held his breath. He knew he was going to make it. His fear was turning to excitement. His groin was hot with it.

Holy shit!
he thought. If he had an erection, he was dead.

His heart hammered at his chest as he came tripping sweetly down the stairs. The detective's eyes were glued to him, following every step.

Zach tossed him one last saucy look. Then, the red bag swinging with casual feminine grace, off he went, his skirt switching behind him.

N
ancy opened her eyes. She took a long, slow look around her. Then she began to cry.

She couldn't hold it in anymore. She let loose; she cried as if she were alone. Her mouth was wide open. Her eyes were shut tight. Her head was thrown back against the thin pad. Her body shook as the tears poured out of her.

Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, is this me? Is this who I am?

She gulped the air, sobbing.

She was strapped to a gurney in the middle of a narrow room. A coarse gray blanket lay on top of her legs. Her coat had been taken away and the sleeve of her cream blouse had been rolled up to bare her arm. An IV bag hung on a hook above her head with a clear tube running from it to the crook of her elbow. The needle had been pushed into the vein there. It was taped down to hold it in place.

Nancy moaned. She opened her eyes. She stared through her tears at the white tiles of the ceiling, the hazy fluorescent light. She sobbed and her chest heaved against the strap that held her. She could not stop crying.

The room she was in was long, more of a corridor than a room. Along the walls were molded plastic seats. Hospital issue, blue, all linked together. Most of the men and women in the seats were black. They sat heavily, chins on their chests, mouths hanging open. Collapsed into themselves as if they'd been plopped down there, pats of dough off some big spoon. One old man with a grizzled beard was drooling. One fat woman was talking to herself. She wore a T-shirt that said: “Life-styles of the Poor and Unknown.” Her huge breasts lay on the rolls of her belly flesh. “
I
understand,” she kept saying. “
You
don't understand,
I
understand perfectly.”

These patients sat on either side of Nancy. She was strapped to the gurney right in the middle of the room, right in front of everyone. The nurses had to turn their bodies when they wanted to get past her. One nurse smiled down at her as she squeezed by.
Poor crazy thing.
Nancy couldn't stand it. She turned her face to the side. Her tears spilled across the bridge of her nose.