My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist

15. in a black blur of nightsticks

I'm like so thrilled. You won't believe who's coming over. Geoffrey Tasner. He's like the greatest archer in the whole country! He won a

gold medal in Seoul… He's got endorsements from all the

major archery equipment companies in the world. There's like a quiver named after him. And this really big apple company — I think it's Granny Smith or Golden Delicious — is supposed to use him in a commercial where he's like this William Tell guy who's standing on top of the World Trade Center and he shoots a Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apple off the Statue of

Liberty's head with this laser beam crossbow… Oh God, Mom,

there's the doorbell! It's him! I gotta go. OK, Mom. OK… OK… OK. OK. OK, Mom… gotta go. OK… OK… OK… OK. OK, Mom… OK. OK, I will… OK. OK. OK. OK. Gotta go, Mom. OK. OK… OK… OK. OK… OK, Mom. OK. OK. OK. OK, Mom. Gotta go… OK… OK… OK… OK. OK, Mom. OK… OK, I will. OK. OK. OK… OK, gotta go, Mom. OK. OK. OK. OK, bye.

— Geoffrey, how wonderful to see you!

— I get no thrill in seeing a constipated person take risks that people say are foolish, and yet get away with them.

— How true… I get no thrill in seeing a constipated

person take risks that people say are foolish, and yet get away with them, either. But Geoffrey, what's wrong? What's wrong, baby, you seem so distracted, so preoccupied. Was Seoul really weird? Did the Koreans fuck with your head? Tell me, baby. You can really talk to me.

— Dirty plates sometimes race through my head! Do you have any idea what that's like?

— Geoffrey, I want you to sit down right now and I want you to relax. Would you like a snack? I know from the Sports Illustrated article that you're on a completely liquid diet, so I made you a calf's liver frappй with onions on the rim of the glass just the way you like it. There you go. Good? Nice and smooth, right? Would you like to see the rest of the house? I've got all the latest do-it-yourself diagnostic equipment so that I can do my own home stress EKGs, myelograms, pelvic sonograms— I've even rigged the rec room so that on overcast afternoons when I'm feeling especially introspective I can self-administer my own lower GI endoscopies. Oh, do you like that sculpture? I took a sculpture class at the Y and that was my final project. It's called Father Shaking Flea Powder on His Daughter's Long Greasy Hair with the Indifference of a Sinatra Shaking Grated Parmesan Cheese on a Pile of Linguine. I was trying to capture that weird kind of indifference, y'know.

— Well, I'm not a critic, I'm an archer — but I think you've definitely captured that sort of very weird… well, I think "indifference" does say it. Oh, by the way, I got new tattoos on my buttocks, would you like to see them?

— Yes, Geoffrey, I'm always interested in seeing anything new that you've done to your buttocks, you know that.

— Well, here they are — what do you think?

— What's that one on the right cheek?

— That's jumper cables entwined around a baguette.

— And what's that one on the left?

— That's the 1040 short form.

— Geoffrey, have you ever given birth to two infants with whiskers and great big bulbous noses like Jimmy Durante and Karl Maiden, and every morning you had to shave them before nursing them? Have you, Geoffrey? Have you? Have you…

Tasner stared out the window. From telephone pole to telephone pole, pendulous drops of rainwater dangled from the wires like ornamental money. The meadow was filled with police. Each cop's vaporous breath hovered about his head — a foul nimbus — a nauseating blend of mint mouthwash and rancid coffee — the corners of his mouth glued together with hardened egg yolk. Bored, horny, hung over, underpaid, undereducated, hypoglycemic, the cops ambled through the meadow knocking daffodils off their stems in a black blur of nightsticks.