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Just a flat out great story. What is language?
How powerful is it, really, in the face of violent
indifference? - Editor
I
live in the big city. One night, right outside
my building two men began to argue so loudly I
could barely hear my TV set. When they finally
stopped, the street grew quiet again, but a few
seconds later my downstairs buzzer rang. "It
must be those men," I thought, so I let them
in. They came right up to my door, knocked on
it, and when I asked who it was, they said, "Us."
That was good enough for me.
When
they walked in, I thought I recognized one of
them, the one with the tangled hair and thick
red eyes like tomato juice. Maybe it was from
college that I knew him, I thought. "Can
I get you fellows anything?" I asked them
as if we had been friends for years and in a way
I wanted that, I wanted them to think I cared,
that I had no evil intentions towards them.
"We
don't want nothin'," Tangled Hair said, eyeing
the TV set, the stereo, the VCR, and the CD player.
Then the other one, the one whose face looked
like a torn envelope stuck his nose into my refrigerator
and said, "Jesus Christ, he ain't got no
Meisterbrau!" This made me think of my college
English teacher, Mr. Bloom. "Beware of men
using the double negative," Mr. Bloom used
to say. "They're not only out for no good,
they're out for double no good."
Then
Tangled Hair said, "Got anything else to
drink?" so I handed him my last bottle of
scotch. I figured it would make them feel at home
since I had always noticed men just like these
drinking scotch in my doorway. Then Envelope Face
looked at me and said, "Are those your real
teeth?" I laughed, but he was serious and
when he reached out to touch them with his fingers
I shut down my mouth real hard like the lid of
a piano.
The
two men really smelled bad, and this more than
anything reminded me of college and the old days
of not showering and wearing torn, dirty clothes.
Tangled Hair drank down his scotch from the bottle
like it was lemonade on a hot day and even Envelope
Face shook his head in amazement and when he did
things flew out of his hair, some dead some alive.
Then Envelope Face went to work. He grabbed the
scotch from Tangled Hair, swigged down the rest
of it, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve like
in the old Westerns. Then he took out his knife,
brandished it around the apartment for a while
and said, "Now what do you got around here
that I can cut up?" I thought about the cat
my neighbor left here for the weekend so he could
go upstate and visit his girlfriend. I thought
about all those girlfriends who for some reason
or other live upstate and how now a cat was going
to die for it.
"Put
that damn knife away," Tangled Hair told
Envelope Face. At last, I thought: A voice of
reason. "There's plenty of time for that
later," he went on. "We've got to get
some pussy first." He really seemed determined
to stick to a schedule. This gave me some time
so I excused myself to go to the bathroom. They
might have stopped me but they seemed to like
the idea there was a bathroom. "Bathroom!"
Tangled Hair shouted. "Well, don't we live
in the lap of luxury." Then I exhorted them
to make themselves at home and went looking for
the cat.
In
the bathroom I noticed the cat was right where
I expected it to be, right in the litter box.
The cat tried to get away, so I grabbed it and
tied a note around its neck. I had a note for
every occasion for life in the big city. This
one said, "Help! I am being tortured in my
own apartment. Please send help. Sincerely, Weinstein,
4A." Perhaps I was getting a bit ahead of
myself but I couldn't find my "Help, I'm
being threatened" note, or even my "Help,
I'm being held hostage note," and there was
no time to look for either one of them. But then,
suddenly, all the cat wanted to do was play. It
licked my face and then rubbed its cheek against
it. It looked into my eyes and I became totally
consumed by it. Perhaps I would speak to my neighbor
about this when he came back.
My
neighbor was grossly misinformed about cats. Cats
did not sit on window sills all day looking out
at cars blurring by but studied human beings in
action in order to determine whether or not they
were worth being saved. I thought about how they
already must be getting tired of us, of that superior
"you'll eat when I'm ready to feed you,"
attitude and how it was just a matter of time
before they abandoned us completely. I remembered
how I had often trembled when coming upon a cat
in some deserted alley when it simply walked past
me, not once stopping to stare into the deepest
core of my soul. "What have I done?"
I had thought to myself." Whom have I offended?
And how do I get back into the good graces of
the world?" Questions like these had gone
through my mind, which I like to think of as a
big sponge soaking up all the doubt and uncertainty
in the universe.
But
now, fighting off that special attraction between
me and the cat, I tossed it out the bathroom window
and watched it spread its legs and then land right
on top of one of the great garbage heaps of the
city.
From
the bathroom, I could hear chirping noises, as
if small birds had alighted upon the window sills.
When I came out I saw it was Tangled Hair and
Envelope Face smacking their lips at the whores
in the street. When I joined them at the window,
I noticed one looking up and around, confused,
not knowing where the sounds were coming from.
Her arms went out, her palms upward as if pleading
for more clues as to our whereabouts. Taxis stopped
for her but she kicked their doors in and spat
at their tail pipes as they sped down the street.
"Fourth floor!" Tangled Hair yelled
out. I was worried. What if the neighbors heard?
I
buzzed in the woman without asking. When she came
up the boys looked at her like they were starving
and she was the Chinese food. As for me she looked
very familiar and the first thing I thought of
was college; in fact, I wracked my brain going
over every class I ever took, but still I couldn't
place her. Then again, maybe I didn't know her
after all.
"Would
you like to wash up?" I asked the woman.
"Why?" she asked. "Do I look dirty?
Do I smell? You should have thought of that before
you buzzed me in and made me burst my lungs walking
up here. My job is a lateral one," she continued.
"It is not straight on, it is not up and
down, it is lateral."
She
seemed to enjoy using that word, and it seemed
to turn on the boys too. "That's just what
we're looking for," said Tangled Hair. "Some
lateral action." But Envelope Face disagreed.
"Up and down!" he shouted. "Up
and down!"
"Two
hundred bucks up front," she said, "and
you boys can go in any direction you want."
The boys laughed very hard.
"Since
when you been workin' on Park Avenue?" Tangled
Hair asked.
"Since
I took a look at you two," she said. "And
who are you?" she asked looking at me. "Our
host?"
"With the most," Tangled Hair said sweeping
his arm across the room of TVs, VCRs, CDs, and
other stereo equipment like he was showing off
prizes on a game show.
"I
think I'm the victim," I told her, looking
at the boys, hoping they'd laugh, but they just
kind of stared right through me and I knew that
either there would have to be a sudden and decisive
rearrangement of the molecular structure of their
brains, that is their total transformation into
kind and loving boys, boys just out for a harmless
good time, or else I would have to get out of
there as fast as possible. But I really couldn't
hope for either, so I thought that if this were
a movie we'd be just about up to the part where
the squeamish start to cover their eyes and everyone
else gets ready for the blood and gore.
Then,
just like that, Tangled Hair wanted to get started.
"The money first," said the woman, closing
up her jacket to hide her breasts more. "We
don't have no money," Tangled Hair said,
grabbing the woman's left arm. "Yeah! We
ain't got nothin' but needs," Envelope Face
said, grabbing the woman's right arm. And before
I could even suggest we all sit down over a strong
cup of coffee and talk things over in a civilized
and grammatical way, the boys had already dragged
her over to the couch and at that moment I wondered
what Mr. Bloom would have thought about all this,
good old Mr. Bloom who kept telling us how much
potential we had to be great in the world and
how it was our responsibility to make the world
a better place to live in and how you had to start
with an appreciation of good literature and a
solid foundation of grammar because the power
of the English language was the greatest power
on Earth and so forth and so on and I looked at
Tangled Hair and Envelope Face just giving it
to her like that while I stood there helpless,
although with a solid foundation of grammar behind
me, so first I tried the imperative and said,
"Stop it or I'll. . .!" and then the
conditional and said, "If you don't stop,
I'll . . .!" and finally the subjunctive
saying, "If I were you I wouldn't . . .!"
but nothing helped and then I looked towards the
open window and there stood my neighbor's cat,
the note gone from around its neck, just staring
at the woman with the boys on her. Funny how at
that moment the cat looked so much like Mr. Bloom
did back in college, the yellow and bloodshot
eyes like an exotic cocktail mix, penetrating
our poor souls soaked with alcohol and linguistic
indifference. How too, just like the cat now,
Mr. Bloom's back would arch, the fur on the back
of his neck stand up, his neck thrust outwards,
his legs spread wide as if he were about to spring
on us for all our grammatical transgressions.
And
now the cat stares and the woman screams and Tangled
Hair says, "It won't do no good screamin'"
and Envelope face says, "No way you ain't
gettin' yours today," and I say to the cat,
"Attack, Mr. Bloom, attack!" thinking
of Mr. Bloom even though I'm looking at the cat.
"You heard what he said!" I scream.
'It won't do you no good,' No way you ain't,'?
Did you hear that? Did you? Are you deaf or something?
Attack for God's sake!" But the cat won't
move. He just stands there staring at me and then
at the boys who are on the woman, and so we wait,
standing there in the middle of my living room,
in the middle of a world of doubt and uncertainty,
for the cat to make up its mind.
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