Asunder Read online

  MAN ON TRAIN WITH FLOWERS

  * * *

  ON TRAIN WITH FLOWERS then next to me sits woman even much prettier than woman I buy flowers for so she’ll love me and cure my situation. My situation needs attention more than what I can give it. And I think about my situation more than what is probably healthy. Must be I was born that way.

  The woman I buy flowers for I hope will think about my situation and want to help cure me. She is nice woman with cloudy eyes and soft legs, almost like she ain’t got no bones and the muscles have decided to lay down and die.

  Let me talk about my situation. My situation is complicated. It can have a life and or a mind of it’s own but almost never rarely sometimes gets me in trouble. That is all I want to say about my situation.

  Instead let me talk about nice woman who I hope might help me and cure my situation. She has light blonde hairs all over face and is one of those kinds of woman that almost knows what it feels like to have situation. She knows it sometimes often needs attention.

  No. I should talk about woman even much prettier than nice woman with soft legs and maybe flowers. Turns out this woman has same last name as me before she got married to some other guy and devote herself to his situation. We can’t decide what any of it means except no good. The way this woman look at me says she wishes things was different. The way I look at her says loose lips. She is on train going to meet husband and friends for dinner. I ask about married life, should she need Lancelot or King Arthur or James Cagney. She says it’s good but not what you expect. This means she has second thoughts or cold feet. Then she says she has brother that looks just like me only with hair and taller. This means she could see herself falling head over heels so it’s good we can never see each other after this train ride. She asks about flowers and for whom they are for. I tell her about nice woman with soft legs and light blonde hairs on her face. She approves but is devastated beyond repair. She turns ring on left ring finger so diamond points up. I could love this woman regardless.

  The flowers I hold directly over my situation so no one can see but there is nowhere to hide neither. The train stops and the woman and I leave together but in separate directions.

  I present woman with soft legs flowers at door. She is on third Chivas Regal and barefoot. Soon she passes point where she is willing or able to help cure my situation. The flowers go in vase and I go back to train station. Before that I tell her about woman even much prettier on train but leave out what needs to be left out. She approves but is devastated beyond repair. Then supposedly she passes out on futon. She will never love me.

  On train ride home no one sits next to me, which is probably what I want but wouldn’t mind should a woman come help cure my situation.

  Somewhere else in restaurant pretty woman tells husband and friends about man on train with flowers. Whatever it is she says is her business but make no mistake this is me she is talking about.

  BLEEDERS

  * * *

  SHE CAN'T BELIEVE HE DOESN'T WANT TO CELEBRATE HER BIRTHDAY.

  Closer to home, I’ve been bleeding.

  Every time I brush my teeth or shave it’s a bloodbath.

  She and he are they to me. Them. A man and a woman walked into a bar. Hopeless.

  If I were a hemophiliac I’d either be dead or God knows what is the bottom line. By that same logic I’ve often said if I were an Eskimo I’d kill myself, so where that leaves you I don’t know. Although I’m not sure if that is in fact the same logic.

  She has black hair and a gold wristwatch. He is wearing red suspenders. Near as I can tell neither of them is bleeding.

  My fingernails when I clip them don’t bleed. Removing thumb-tacks has on occasion caused bleeding beneath the fingernail.

  They are not talking loudly but loud enough for me to overhear. Apparently she is upset over his not wanting to celebrate her birthday. Why I am listening to this is because there’s nothing else. Just them and the bleeding. The bar is empty. She is drinking an apricot sour, he’s having a gin and tonic and it’s tequila shooters for me.

  A man and a woman and a pint of spilling blood walk into a bar.

  One of the most painful is the biting of one’s tongue.

  Other than that it’s my appalling lack of a sex drive. It probably has something to do with the bleeding. The blood that should be flowing to the important areas has been tragically re-routed. Perhaps I should grow a beard. Not brushing my teeth is not a viable option.

  I come from a long line of people with bad gums.

  I am in this bar drinking and for the time being not bleeding. I’ve just come from the library. There I bled.

  Doing research on blood and bleeding. I have yet to pass out, which I’m sure is next. I’ve been lightheaded. I drink a lot of orange juice to replenish blood sugar.

  Some boxers are known as bleeders. They’ll bleed around the eyes or from the nose. If I were a boxer I’d rather be an Eskimo.

  She and he are boxing. She is ahead on points.

  I hear him say, “You’re being ridiculous.” She says, “I just don’t see the point anymore.” She is strumming her nails against the glass.

  I should want to have sex with her.

  They order two more. I think about sending over the next round on me. This one has distance written all over it.

  The three of us are in this together.

  I try not to look at them. His back is to me and she is more or less facing me. From behind he looks old. At some point stamina will become an issue.

  She looks like someone I could lose sleep over, lose money over, bleed over.

  He says, “What is wrong with you?”

  She says, “You are wrong with me.”

  Now it’s vodka martinis. Ordinarily I don’t mix drinks. She presents her arguments in a straightforward, almost methodical manner. He is scrambling. What he needs is for her to drop her hands, stick her chin out, something.

  They are both oblivious to my involvement.

  I am rooting for her, but I also want it to be competitive.

  She says, “That isn’t even the point.”

  He says, “Maybe it’s all pointless.”

  I do incur nosebleeds from time to time. Often it is the right nostril, which in boxing parlance means trouble but not as much trouble as a cut above the eye.

  Once he goes down there might be an opening. I could throw my hat into the ring, see what happens.

  She takes her jacket off and re-positions herself on the barstool. He runs his fingers through his hair and lets out a breath.

  They can’t tell that I’m bleeding to death here.

  He staggers past me on his way to the men’s room to regroup.

  She dismisses me with one look when she catches me staring at her. She realizes I’ve been in on it from the beginning. That I know the whole story. From one look she knows I’m a bleeder and would be no match for her, too.

  I tell her I can’t believe it either.

  He comes back for more.

  She lets him have it.

  GEOGRAPHIC TONGUE

  * * *

  A MAN WITH A GEOGRAPHIC TONGUE IS IN THE CORNER. This is where they keep him. I don’t think he is allowed outside his corner. People can approach him, people are free to approach him, but no one ever does. I did. I approached the man with the geographic tongue. This was before I knew he was the man with the geographic tongue, although I doubt that foreknowledge would’ve prevented me from approaching him. Nor was it the reason I did approach him. I did not intuit a geographic tongue. I didn’t sense any abnormalities or malformations from across the room. Truth is I don’t know why I approached him. Perhaps it was because no one was approaching him, though everyone was free to do so. No one was told not to approach the man with the geographic tongue. At least I wasn’t told this. Sometimes I assume what happens to me happens to everyone or what I think occurs to everyone. Sometimes I make that mistake. The world goes away whenever I sleep or turn my back, which is why I make that mist
ake, I think. It is the same mistake God makes. God always thinks he’s God, that’s his problem. Perhaps I felt sorry for him, the man with the geographic tongue. It is not like me to feel sorry for anyone but perhaps this was an exception. At any rate, I did approach him, the man with the geographic tongue. It was the first thing he said after I’d approached him. He said he’d a geographic tongue and then explained what that meant, what the condition entailed. Apparently the condition manifests itself with inflammation and lesions, although I could be misremembering this. Otherwise it has to do with milky discharge or bleeding. By the time I made it back to my corner I’d forgotten exactly what a geographic tongue was. I had my own problems and didn’t ask questions. Also I didn’t want to pry. I didn’t want the man with a geographic tongue to feel like a freak. Too many of us are made to feel like freaks. Otherwise it didn’t occur to me to ask questions. I’m not sure which is accurate, but I don’t think it matters. Had I thought to ask questions I would’ve asked why they call it a geographic tongue. What do inflammation and milky discharge have to do with geography? Do you catch it by sticking your tongue in the dirt? Why isn’t it called topographic tongue? Those are the questions I would’ve asked had I thought to ask questions or felt like prying. The other thing he said was that he’d fuck a snake if he could keep it still. I don’t know why he said that, either. I hadn’t asked about snakes and I don’t think it has anything to do with geographic tongues. What I mean to say is I don’t think there is a causal relationship between possessing a geographic tongue and fucking snakes or that there is any relationship whatsoever. Although, I could be wrong about this, too. Perhaps snakes have geographic tongues themselves. Snakes do have distinctive tongues, they are usually long, nimble and bifurcated. I imagine snakes are prone to lesions and inflammation like everyone else. Perhaps the condition is sexually transmitted. Perhaps the man with the geographic tongue caught it from a snake he fucked. Perhaps he came across a slow-witted snake and fucked it good and long and caught the geographic tongue from it. From the opposite corner he didn’t look like a snakefucker, but who could tell with the geographic tongue people. I listened to his intentions vis-à-vis the snakes. There was no mannered way to respond so I excused myself and retreated to my corner. The rest of the evening I watched the man with the geographic tongue and the people who didn’t approach the man with the geographic tongue. I thought about the snakes and in particular the old decrepit snake the man with the geographical tongue caught his disease from. I considered how that snake must’ve felt; violated, soiled, taken advantage of, beautiful, jubilant, sexy, vindicated, human. Everyone in the room was thinking the exact same thoughts. I think even the man with the geographic tongue was of like mind. Not one of us came to any conclusions. Being only one of God’s creatures we try hard not to judge the others.

  EVERYONE OUT OF THE POOL

  * * *

  THE CLOSEST THING TO TUMBLEWEED IN NEW YORK CITY ARE THE PEOPLE.

  I say this out loud to the woman next to me because I think she is from Arizona.

  Whenever it starts to rain I think end of the world. Whenever the telephone rings or someone calls me by name I think Leonidas at Thermopylae or Custer at Little Big Horn.

  What this speaks to I try not to think about.

  Don’t try to trick me into being happy, is what the woman says back.

  We are in a museum when we say this to each other. This particular room in the museum has windows for walls and you can see the weather from anywhere inside it.

  This is not just me talking, I say. I pause a moment and then keep talking about the weather until I hear myself say, One bolt of lightning and it’s everyone out of the pool time.

  I think I’ve known this woman for years. I think we met in college and have tried since then to get away from each other. The problem is one or the other of us has nothing better to do at any given time. Then I think we came to New York two months ago to help the poor or feed the poor, something with the poor.

  The trouble with me is I think too much and don’t know anything.

  I don’t know why this is, though I suspect it’s my own fault.

  Outside the rain is coming down like it’s angry with someone. Like someone had made fun of the rain’s mother.

  We are sitting on a bench surrounded by twenty giant speakers arranged in an oval. From the speakers a children’s choir sings in a foreign language that might be Latin. When you walk from speaker to speaker you hear a different voice, which is why it’s in the museum, I think. When you are outside the oval you can’t distinguish one voice from the next. To me, the voices all sound the same, even the different ones.

  The woman next to me is looking out the window, watching the passersby tramp through gaping puddles, watching the rain like she’s never seen it fall down before.

  This is when I say something about the homeless, something that sounds like at least they’ll have a bath today. Why I say this is because I don’t know how she’ll react and I’m curious.

  Between the choirboys and rainfall the woman can’t hear me, though, and from the look on her face I can tell she’s making her mind up about something, something that might include leaving me here on this bench to go play in the rain, eventually finding her way west to feed the poor of Tempe or Phoenix or wherever it is she’s from and that maybe if I’m lucky she’ll call when she gets there.

  SCAR

  * * *

  THIS DEBORAH TALKS OUT OF THE LEFT SIDE OF HER MOUTH, as if she’s trying to keep what she says secret from her own right ear. She wears three or four earrings in each one. Two hoops of equal size and little silver balls that trail up her lobes like tracks.

  I see the tracheotomy scar immediately. She leaves the top two buttons of her blouse undone like she’s saying, Here I am, beaten and scarred, take it or leave it.

  I’ve decided not to say anything, pretending either not to notice or care. Whichever she decides.

  She talks a lot out of the left side of her mouth, which is good. The little I say I’m tired of hearing myself say it. And this Deborah doesn’t seem to care one way or the other, which is even better.

  Just as we are pulling up to a red light she says like she is accusing me of something, You’re not wearing the seat belt. I answer, I only put it on when it rains. Out of the left side of her mouth comes, You’ve never gone through the windshield.

  There are only a few cars on this road to wherever it is we’re going. Some exotic barbeque place well off the beaten nowhere. She spends most of the ride going through her purse like she is looking for something. She pretends to be preoccupied most of the time, I think. Otherwise she is preoccupied most of the time and I’m making her out to be clever in a way she isn’t. I turn the radio on and scan the stations, pretending that finding a good song is important to me. She stops going through her purse without having pulled anything out of it.

  I don’t know whether or not she is expecting me to defend myself, my position on car safety. I keep going up and down the dial, pausing to hear the end of a Willie Nelson song and most of It’s All Right by the Impressions.

  Because I don’t have a lot to say people tell me I’m a good listener. But I don’t think that’s right, either.

  I haven’t gone through a windshield, never even come close. I’ve never been injured or seen anyone seriously injured. I was at a party once as a teenager where someone was killed in a backyard brawl but it happened after I had left. He got his shoulder or his neck slashed with a beer bottle and bled to death.

  All during dinner I try to imagine this Deborah going through the windshield, the mechanics of it. I try to see her head making contact with the glass and shattering it. I try to see her body careening off the hood and landing on the concrete.

  The thing is she doesn’t look like someone who’d gone through a windshield. If anything she looks like someone who’d been robbed at gun-point, maybe assaulted. (One of those that takes a self-defense class and carries a gun afterwards.) Nothing where she w
as hanging onto a thread, hooked up to machines with one foot in the morgue. I’m guessing about that part, but it stands to reason.

  She wears a lot of make-up but not enough to cover up any facial scars. She flaunts the one on her neck like it’s a piece of jewelry.

  We go back to her place, which has two bedrooms and hardwood floors. On the ride over I fastened the seat belt but I don’t think she noticed. She opened her purse but didn’t go through it like she did before, probably just making sure the gun was loaded and accessible.

  This Deborah’s hair is thick, more or less straight and dry to the touch. There’s a spot on the back of her calf that’s irritated from shaving. I think her left leg might be longer than the right leg but that could be my imagination making her more interesting. The feet are bony so I leave them alone. Stomach needs work. I’m guessing the nipples aren’t sensitive because she seems bored when I work them.

  I try to decide if she reminds me of someone.

  I don’t know what she sees in me, if anything. My body is smooth and unbroken. No runs, no hits, no errors. I don’t have anything to say and though I listen to people when they talk, I don’t know if that makes me good at it.

  She searches me up and down, says, I’m exploring you. Who knows what she is looking for but her exploration doesn’t bother me, so I let her explore. I tell her to let me know if she finds anything worthwhile. For whatever reason the line, Close your eyes and think of England, comes to me. I am Queen Victoria or whoever it was with my eyes closed and she is Magellan in search of god knows what.

  She pushes her tongue against mine like she’s angry at it. The sound she makes is between a moan and a sigh. Every so often she pulls back and has a playful grin on her face. Eventually I start mimicking her, so that each time our lips are about to touch I pull back.