What Comes Next

TEN

July 23

I’LL BE TAKEN by the Army in ten days. I have two weeks at most. Practice marching, salute myself in the mirror. (Nothing else to do here but sleep.) It makes me tired. I take off like an astronaut in my sleep. Listen to my heartbeat, write myself fan letters.

Call Parks. No one answers.

An old war movie on television. I like it when the hero holds off the whole enemy army himself, machine-gunning them as they come over the hill. His sidekick feeding him the ammunition and telling jokes. “The Marines’ Hymn” on the sound track.

I feel trapped in this place, cut off from what I have to do. Five strange rooms to myself. An oversize double bed. Too much comfort. Other reflections (not mine) in the mirror. In the walls. Like wearing someone else’s clothes. (My mother once made me wear the suit of a cousin who died. She said it was a shame to let a perfectly good, almost new garment go to waste.) I pace around, touch everything — padded chairs, porcelain figurines, the fiber of the rug. My fingers numb. I don’t go out. Too much violence in the street. Except sometimes to find out what’s happening. I’m growing a mustache, a whole new face.

CITY WARNED

ON RAT DANGER

A city health official has warned of a “potentially explosive condition” if the city’s estimated 8-million rats are exposed to bubonic plague and typhus from returning servicemen.

WOMAN EATS OWN CHILD

U.S. WILL REDUCE

MISSILE ARSENAL

BY DROPPING TITAN

TWO SISTERS FOUND

STRANGLED IN PARK

The butchered bodies of two missing little sisters who “never stayed out after dark” were found today partly nude and apparently strangled and sexually molested in Central Park on the periphery of the Sheep Meadow.

GI’S FLUSH ENEMY FORCE

IN FIRST BATTLE OF BIG DRIVE

NEGRO Gl SMOTHERS MINE WITH OWN BODY;

WILL RECEIVE COUNTRY’S HIGHEST AWARD

HONOR STUDENT

SLAIN IN B’KLYN

SLAIN STUDENT “A PERFECT GUY”

“I wouldn’t have minded if it were in the war,” his mother said in a radio interview, “but to have it in the street this way seems such a waste.”

BRIDE KILLED ON WEDDING BED

BOY KILLS FATHER

AND FATHER’S FIANCEE

GRANDMOTHER IS ALSO SHOT

CHEMIST KILLS DAUGHTER, SELF

A Columbia Heights chemist apparently killed himself last night after strangling his daughter to death and pouring nitric acid on her boyfriend during an argument over the youngsters’ romance.

NEW BLOWS SEEK

TO SHORTEN WAR

BORDER VILLAGE LEVELED

IN PRECISION RAID

AIR EMERGENCY CALLED

POLLUTION BURIES CITY

People with weak hearts or lung trouble were cautioned by the Mayor not to leave their homes except for an emergency during the current crisis. Deaths attributed to the poisonous air are at nine.

A-TEST IN BIG CAVE

MAY HIDE EFFECTS

BROOKLYN POLICE

PRESS KILLER HUNT

GO ON 12-HOUR SHIFTS AFTER

FIFTH WOMAN IS SLAIN

The police went on 12-hour shifts in an intensive manhunt for a sadistic killer blamed for five rape-stabbings of cripples in the Brooklyn area during the last three months.

The latest victim, Miss Rose Pimpsel, 79 years old, was found last night in her home near the downtown area, extremities grotesquely mutilated.

I saw Curtis Parks or some guy who looked like him going into a church basement. Called his name. He didn’t turn around. Ran after him. Someone running behind me, the sound of his steps in my head. Followed him into a dark room.

“No smoking,” some guy at the door whispered. “Not even straight cigarettes. Whose friend are you?”

“Professor Parks’.”

“Whose?”

I got a seat in the last row. The projector just behind me, to my right. The inside of a garbage can on the screen, a maggot crawling across a piece of meat. Eating its way into the meat. The cover of the can blacks out the scene, THE END.

The lights went on. Clapping. A girl with long hair sitting next to me, yawning. I stood up to look for Parks, didn’t see him. In the first row, one of the men who had been following me. The lights out.

“Quiet,” she said. “It’s beginning.”

The heat of the projector on my neck, it begins.

AIR, BREASTS, WATER

A shot of a breast. The nipple of a breast. A mouth. The breast again, a hand covering it. (A nipple peeking between two fingers.) A boy of about ten diving into the waves (at Coney Island). A shot of a crowded beach. A couple sunbathing, the boy’s head on the girl’s stomach. The figures together make a cross. A shot of a cross on a church. A shot of a cross on a chain around a girl’s neck, the cross between her breasts. A shot of the girl’s mouth, open, closed, open. She sticks out her tongue. A shot of a cow’s tongue in a butcher’s window. A shot of the boy diving into the waves, a breaker washes over him. A shot of a middle-aged woman, her head in her hands, sobbing. A shot of a sign: NO PARKING ANYTIME. Another sign: NO SMOKING. A hand-written sign: NO PETTING. Another: NO FUCKING ANYTIME. A shot of an old man on a bench, asleep. He wakes up with a start, looks around. A shot of the front of Israel Zion Hospital. (Someone laughs.) A shot of a billboard: YOU’RE IN THE PEPSI GENERATION. The ocean. A shot of waves breaking, of a boy jumping up and down in the waves. The same boy doing a dead man’s float. The couple on the blanket, arms and legs entwined, kissing. A sign: NO BALL PLAYING ALLOWED. Waves breaking against the rocks. A shot of a stormy sky. Droplets of rain falling on the surface of the water. Rain. People on the beach running for shelter. A shot of what looks like a tidal wave. A hand sticking out of the water. A hunter with a gun shooting at something in the sky. A clip from a war movie: the explosion of a bomb in the ocean. A lion (like the MGM lion) roaring silently. A shot of an elegant double bed with a canopy over it. A shot of a couch — the couple we had seen on the beach lying back to back on it. A shot of a well-curved leg, a stocking being taken off. Very slowly. The action reverses itself — the stocking is on again. Then again very slowly, even, it seems, more slowly than before, a pair of hands take the stocking off. Before it is completely off, the stocking is on again. A shot of a penis. Then an eye. A close-up of a kiss. The man, sleeping on the bench, lurches in his sleep, seems about to fall off. A soundless scream. A mouth. A clip of a gunfight from another movie. One man is hit, falls, shoots as he goes down. The other falls. A shot of something that turns out to be the nipple of a breast. A close-up of a breast. A light seems to be coming from it. Flame. In the flame it says: NOT THE END.

There is applause, six or seven people clapping. A few hisses. We sit in the dark. A voice in front of me saying something about breasts. The lights go on. The one who was Parks is gone.

Mrs. Parks calling me. “When are you coming back?” she wanted to know. I said I had to prove myself first, but that I would return. Not to worry. As soon as the fucking war is over. “It’s indelicate,” she said, “to talk of war in mixed company. Have you no shame?”

He was holding her from behind. “Hit her in the face,” he said. I pulled her away from him, knocking her into a wall. Went for him. He stumbled back, scared of me. I pointed a finger at him and he disappeared.

“Are you all right?” I said to her. She was sitting at the base of the wall. “He won’t bother you again.” She made no sound. I shook her. “Are you all right?” I was shaking her. Her head rolled from her shoulders, cracking open on the sidewalk. Her body limp like cloth, her flesh surgical rubber. I held her against me like one of Phyllis’ broken dolls.

I’m not afraid to do what I have to do. I’m not afraid of it.

A blond man in a light-gray suit stopped me, asked if I had a cigarette. I gave him the pack, which had one left.

“It’s a most generous gesture to give a stranger your last cigarette. I must say I’m touched.”

He was standing in my way, looking at the cigarette in his hand. “I’d like to reward such unstinting generosity. Come with me to my place, I’ll give you ten dollars.”

He looked familiar. I asked him if he had been following me.

“I would certainly like to follow you, if that’s what you want. I would have no objection to following. Fifteen dollars, which is what I used to pay my analyst for a session. That’s absolutely my best offer.”

“What are you?”

“You won’t have to do anything. Just keep me company for an hour. Twenty dollars.”

“You’re a liar. You’ve been following me, haven’t you?”

“I’d like to,” he said. “I’d genuinely like to have the pleasure of your company. I’m being totally honest and above-board with you.” His hand flew toward my shoulder.

I brought my fist into his stomach, the knife like a rock in my hand. He bent forward. I hit him in the side of the head. Four times. Four times I hit him, twice in the head and twice in the neck, until he went down. He was smiling, drool on his lip. Pants bulging. A big smile on his face as he went down.

A woman yelled “Police,” was calling “Police,” running up and down. Heads out the window, staring. A man tried to grab me but, pumping him in the mouth with my fist, I got away. I ran two blocks, not looking back, running heavily, legs like weights. A police siren somewhere. Blasting my mind, following me. I couldn’t shake it out.

I got into a phone booth and sat down on the floor to catch my breath. My chest aching. Thousands of cracks in my chest, aching, like slivers of bone out of place. I kept my head down. Something sticky under me. Orange peel. Hard to breathe without pain.

His wife lying on her back. Entering her. Digging deeper and deeper. Trapped, I watch a cop car cruise toward me, its lights flashing in reflection, its siren in my head. I think of flying somewhere. Holding my breath. The glass walls on fire. Letting go. Her hair like a veil covering my face. A blanket of her hair. God help me.