Self-Defence

28

His face appeared two feet lower than I expected. He was sitting in a wheelchair, pushed by Nova.

The famous face, long and hatchet-jawed, with a bulbous nose and deep, dark eyes under shelf brows, now white. His hair was gray-black, worn past his shoulders and held together with a beaded band: the Venerable Chief look. His skin, liver-spotted and creased, was as rough as the ceiling beams.

My eyes dropped to his body. Wasted and spindle-limbed, reduced to almost nothing above the belt-line.

He wore a long-sleeved white shirt and dark pants. Everything bagged and sagged, and though the trouser fabric was heavy wool, I could see his kneecaps shining through. His feet were encased in cloth bedroom slippers. His hands were huge and white and grasping, dangling from the thin wrists like dying sunflowers.

As Nova propelled him forward, he glared at me. The chair was an old-fashioned manual, and it squeaked and wrinkled the rug. She positioned him opposite me.

"Need anything?"

He didn't answer and she left.

He kept glowering.

I gave him a pleasantly blank look.

"Good-looking piece of veal, aren't you? If I was a fag, I'd fuck you."

"That assumes a lot."

He threw back his head and laughed. His cheeks were flaccid and they shook. He had most of his teeth, but they were dark and discolored.

"You'd let me," he said. "Without hesitation. You're a starfucker; that's why you're here."

I said nothing. Despite his crippled body and the size of the room, I began to feel hemmed in.

"What's in the glass?" he said.

"Tonic water."

He gave a disgusted look and said, "Put it down and pay attention. I'm in pain, and I don't have time for any lumpen-yuppie bullshit."

I placed the glass on a table.

"Okay, Little Dutch Boy, tell me who the hell you are and what qualifies you to be treating my daughter."

I gave him a brief oral résumé.

"Very impressive, you now qualify for a variable-rate mortgage of your IQ. If you're so smart, why didn't you become a real doctor? Cut into the cortex and get to the root of matter."

"Why didn't you?"

He pitched forward, winced, and cursed violently. Gripping the armpieces of the chair, he managed to shift slightly to the left. "William Carlos Williams was a doctor and he tried to be a poet. Somerset Maugham was a doctor and he tried to be a writer. Both sour, pretentious fucks. Mix-and-match works only in women's fashions; something's got to ebb, something's got to flow."

I nodded.

His eyes widened and he grinned. "Go ahead, patronize me, pricklet. I can chew up anything you serve me, digest it for my own benefit, and shit it back at you as high-density compost timbales."

He licked his lips and tried to spit. Nothing came out of his mouth.

"I'm interested," he said, "in certain aspects of medicine. Cabala, not calculus… A fool I knew in college became a surgeon. I met him, years later, at a party teeming with starfuckers, and the pin-brain looked happier than ever. His work; there was no other reason for him to be satisfied. I got him talking about it, and the bloodier he got, the more ecstatic- if words were jism, I'd have been soaked. And do you know what brought the greatest joy to his dysphemistic face? Describing the scummy details of exploratory surgery, while eating a cocktail frank. Cracking open the bones, tying off the veins, swan-diving into the heat and jelly of a stinking, cancerous body cavity."

He raised his hands to nipple level and turned the palms up. "He said the greatest fun was holding living organs in his hands, feeling their pulse, smelling their steam. He was a yawny idiot, but he had the power to flex a wrist and rip spleens and livers and shit-filled guts out of someone else's flesh-ark."

He let his hands fall. He was breathing hard, the remnants of his chest heaving. "That's what interests me about medicine. Dropping a nuclear bomb on certain individuals interests me, too, but I'd never waste my time studying physics. Man Ray once said perfect art would kill an observer upon first glance. Damned near close to universal truth. Not bad for a photographer, and a kike. Delaware… that's not a kike name, is it?"

"No. And it's not wop or nigger or spic, either."

His mouth ticced and he laughed again, but it seemed obligatory.

"Look what we have here, a wit- at least by half. A fucking yuppie halfwit- you're the future, aren't you? Off-the-rack Gentleman's Farterly suits pretending to be bespoke. Politically correct careerism masquerading as moral duty- do you drive a Beemer? Or a Baby Benz? Either way, Hitler would be proud, though I don't imagine you've ever studied history. Do you know who Hitler was? Are you aware that he didn't drive a Buick? That Eichmann worked for Mercedes-Benz while hiding out in Argentina- do you know who the fuck Eichmann was?"

Remembering the white convertible out front, I said, "I drive American."

"How patriotic. Did you get it from Daddy?"

I didn't answer, thinking suddenly of my father, never able to afford a new car…

"Daddy's dead, isn't he? Was he a would-be doctor, too?"

"A machinist," I said.

"Tool and die- he tooled, then he died. Tut-tut. So you're a blue-collar hero. Shaky-kneed arriviste by way of the public school system. First in the family to go to college and all that, a Kiwanis club scholarship, no doubt. Mommy's so proud in her Formica prison- is she dead, too?"

I stood up and began walking to the door.

"Oh!" he bellowed after me. "Oh, I've offended him; five minutes and he's running off to puke in the bushes, the fortitude of a mayfly!"

I half turned my head and smiled at him. "Not at all, it's just boring. The shape you're in, you should know life's too short for small talk."

His face incandesced with rage. He waited until I'd opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

"Fuck you and fuck your charwoman mother on a Formica counter! Walk out, now, and you'll eat my shit in a soufflé before I give you my insights."

"Do you really have any?" I said, with my back to him.

"I know why the girl tried to kill herself."

I heard squeaks, turned, and saw him wheeling himself forward very slowly. He stopped and spun the chair, finally managing to turn his back on me. His hair hung in greasy strands. Either Nova wasn't much of a caretaker or he didn't allow her to groom him.

"Fix me a drink, Cubby, and maybe I'll share my wisdom with you. None of that single-malt swill you yuppie pricks go for- give me blended. Everything in life is blended; nothing stands on its own." Spinning again, he faced me. I thought he looked relieved that I was still there.

"What's yellow and red, yellow and red, yellow and red?" he said.

"What?" I said.

"Jap in a blender, hawf, hawf-and don't give me that look of outrage, you buttoned-down poot. I fought in the only war that counted and saw what those scrawny-dicked monkey-men are capable of. Did you know they used to peel the faces off the Allied prisoners? Marinate human hearts and kidneys in teriyaki sauce and barbecue them? There's your sushi bar for you. Truman dry-roasted the buck-toothed capuchins, only good thing that exophthalmic rag-pimp ever did. Stop standing there, gawking like a virgin sailor at wet pussy, and fix me a fine blended drink before I tire of you beyond the point of forgiveness!"

I went to the wet bar and found a bottle of Chivas, almost empty. As I poured, he said, "Know how to read?"

I had no intention of answering. But he didn't wait for a reply.

"Ever read anything I wrote?"

I named a few titles.

"Did you have to write term papers on them?"

"A few."

"What grades did you get?"

"I passed."

"Then fuck you, you didn't understand a thing."

I brought him his drink. He drained it and held out his glass. I refilled it. He took longer with the second drink, staring at the whisky, sipping, lifting a leg, and passing gas with satisfaction. I thought of all he'd written about heroism and finally understood the word fiction.

He tossed the glass away. His throw was weak, and the tumbler landed near the wheel of his chair and rolled on the rug.

He said, "The girl tried to end it all because she's empty. No passion, no pain, no reason to keep going. So anything you do with her will be worthless. You might as well be psychoanalyzing a tadpole in order to prevent its froggy fate. I, on the other hand, have a surplus of passion. Spilling over, as it were." He made slurping sounds. "The only thing that can save her is getting to know me."

I tried not to laugh or scream. "Getting to know you will be her therapy."

"Not therapy, you limited gowk. Therapy is for moral anencephalics and hamstrung aerobi-geeks. I'm talking about salvation."

Leaning forward. "Tell her."

"I'll let her know," I said.

He laughed and raised the pitch of his voice. "Does she hate me?"

"I'm not free to talk about her feelings."

"La da la da la da la da. You claim you read Dark Horses. What was the point there?"

"The racetrack as a mini-world. The charac-"

"The point was that we all eat horseshit. Some dress it up with béarnaise sauce, some nibble, some hold their noses, some stick their faces right in it and wolf, but no one plays hooky. Best novel of the millennium. Flew out of me; my cock tingled every day I sat down at the typewriter."

He looked at the glass on the floor. "More."

I obliged him.

"Pulitzer capons thinking they were giving me something." He finished the whisky. "She hates me. I don't give a shit about her feelings. Hatred's a great motivator. I've always hated writing."

I looked over his shoulder at the animal heads, the leering warthog.

He said, "No attention span, Veal-chop? They came with the place. I considered adding to the collection- critics with glass eyes. Know why I didn't?"

I shook my head.

"No taxidermist would take on the job. Too hard to clean."

He laughed and demanded another drink. The Chivas was gone, and I poured him cheap scotch. With his body weight, his blood had to be pickled, but he showed no effects of the alcohol.

"Have you ever looked into the toilet after you've shat?" he said. "The bits of crud that are left sticking to the porcelain? Next time, scrape some of that off and place it in a dish of agar-agar. Feed it more shit and anything foul you can find, and in no time at all you'll have cultured yourself a critic."

More laughter, but strained. "A criminal- the vilest child-fucking inchworm of a mother-raper- is entitled to a trial of his peers. Do you know what kind of justice artists merit? Trial by cretin. Dickless, decorticate, petty-ante pissbladders who'd give their glands to have the gift but don't, so they take out their frustration on the blessed. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who lack the tongue motility to lick the arseholes of teachers, write reviews."

He'd finally produced saliva. A strand trickled down the side of his mouth.

He stared at me. I readied myself for another outburst.

But he grew very quiet and his eyelids started to droop.

Then he fell asleep.

I listened to him snore. Nova came in, as if summoned by the noise. She'd changed into a filmy, collarless white blouse that barely reached her waist and black shorts that showed off beautiful legs. Her breasts were large and soft and unfettered, the nipples darkly evident through the thin fabric.

She said, "No sense in your staying, he'll be that way for a while."

"Does he do that often? Just nod off?"

"All the time. He's tired all the time. It's the pain."

"Is he on painkillers?"

"What do you think?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"Everything. His heart and his liver are bad, he's had several strokes, and his kidneys are weak. Basically, he's just falling apart."

Her tone was matter-of-fact.

"Are you a nurse?"

She smiled. "No, his assistant. He won't accept nursing, would rather drink and do things his way. You'd better be going."

I walked to the door.

"Are you bringing the daughter back?" she said.

"That'll be up to the daughter."

"She should meet him."

"Why's that?"

"Every daughter should meet her father."