Choke

Chapter 42

HOW IT SHOWED UP ON THE NEWS last night was just me shouting, waving my arms in front of the camera, with Denny a little ways behind me, working to set a rock in a wall, and Beth just a little behind him, hammering a boulder into dust, trying to carve a statue.

On TV, I'm jaundiced yellow, hunchbacked from the swell and weight of my guts coming apart on the inside. Bent over, I'm lifting my face to look into the camera, my neck looping from my head down into my collar. My neck as thin as an arm, my Adam's apple sticks out as big as an elbow. This is yesterday right after work, so I'm still wearing my Colonial Dunsboro blousey linen shirt and my britches. With the buckle shoes and the cravat, this doesn't help.

"Dude," Denny says, sitting next to Beth at Beth's apartment while we watch ourselves on TV. He says, "You don't look so hot."

I look like that dumpy Tarzan from my fourth step, the one bent over with the monkey and the roasted chestnuts. The tubby savior with his beatific smile. The hero with nothing left to hide.

On TV, all I was trying to do was explain to everybody that there was no controversy. I was trying to convince people that I'd started the mess by calling the city and saying I lived nearby and some nutcase was building without a permit, I didn't know what. And the worksite posed a hazard to area children. And the guy doing the work didn't look too savory. And it was no doubt a Satanic church.

Then I'd called them at the TV station and said the same stuff.

And that's how this all started.

The part about how I did all this just to make Denny need me, well, I didn't explain that part. Not on television.

For real, all my explanation got left on the cutting-room floor because on TV, I'm just this sweaty bloated maniac trying to put my hand over the camera lens, yelling at the reporter to go away and swatting my other hand at the microphone boom that swings through the shot.

"Dude," Denny says.

Beth videotaped my little fossilized moment, and we watch it over and over.

Denny says, "Dude, you look possessed by the devil or something."

Really, I'm possessed by a whole different deity. This is me trying to make good. I'm trying to work some little miracles so I can build up to the big stuff.

Sitting here with a thermometer in my mouth, I check and it says 101 degrees. The sweat keeps juicing out of me, and to Beth I say, "I'm sorry about your sofa."

Beth takes the thermometer for a look, then puts her cool hand on my forehead.

And I say, "I'm sorry I used to think you were a stupid airhead bimbo."

Being Jesus means being honest.

And Beth says, "That's okay." She says, "I never cared what you thought. Only Denny." She shakes the thermometer and slips it back under my tongue.

Denny rewinds the tape, and there I am, again.

Tonight, my arms ache and my hands are soft and raw from working with the lime in the mortar. To Denny, I say, so how does it feel to be famous?

Behind me on television, the walls of rock rise and swell round into the base for a tower. Other walls rise around gaps for windows. Through a wide doorway, you can see a wide flight of stairs rising inside. Other walls trail off to suggest the foundations for other wings, other towers, other cloisters, colonnades, raised pools, sunken courtyards.

The voice of the reporter is asking, "This structure you're building, is it a house?"

And I say we don't know.

"Is it a church of some kind?"

We don't know.

The reporter leans into the shot, a man with brown hair combed into one fixed swell above his forehead. He tilts his hand-held microphone toward my mouth, asking, "What are you building, then?"

We won't know until the very last rock is set.

"But when will that be?"

We don't know.

After so long living alone, it feels good to say "we."

Watching me say this, Denny points at the TV and says, "Perfect."

Denny says, the longer we can keep building, the longer we can keep creating, the more will be possible. The longer we can tolerate being incomplete. Delay gratification.

Consider the idea of Tantric Architecture.

On TV, I tell the reporter, "This is about a process. This isn't about getting something done."

What's funny is I really think I'm helping Denny.

Every rock is a day Denny doesn't waste. Smooth river granite. Blocky dark basalt. Every rock is a little tombstone, a little monument to each day where the work most people do just evaporates or expires or becomes instantly outdated the moment it's done. I don't mention this stuff to the reporter, or ask him what happens to his work the moment after it goes out on the air. Airs. Is broadcast. Evaporates. Gets erased. In a world where we work on paper, where we exercise on machines, where time and effort and money passes from us with so little to show for it, Denny gluing rocks together seems normal.

I don't tell the reporter all that.

There I am, just waving and saying we need more rocks. If people will bring us rocks, we'd appreciate it. If people want to help, that would be great. My hair stiff and dark with sweat, my belly bloated over the front of my pants, I'm saying the only thing we don't know is how this will turn out. And what's more is we don't want to know.

Beth goes into the kitchenette to pop popcorn.

I'm starving but I don't dare eat.

On TV is the final shot of the walls, the bases for a long loggia of columns that will rise to a roof, someday. Pedestals for statues. Someday. Basins for fountains. The walls rise to suggest buttresses, gables, spires, domes. Arches rise to support vaults someday. Turrets. Someday. The bushes and trees are already growing in to hide and bury some of it. Branches grow in through the windows. The grass and weeds grow waist-high in some rooms. All of this spreading away from the camera, here's just a foundation we may none of us see completed in our lifetime.

I don't tell the reporter that.

From outside the shot, you can hear the cameraman shout, "Hey, Victor! Remember me? From the Chez Buffet? That time you almost choked ..."

The telephone rings and Beth goes to get it.

"Dude," Denny says, and rewinds the tape again. "What you just told them, that's just going to drive some people crazy."

And Beth says, "Victor, it's your mom's hospital. They've been trying to find you."

I yell back, "In a minute."

I tell Denny to run the tape again. I'm almost ready to deal with my mom.