Upright Beasts Read online

“We both watch TV,” I say, but she’s already out the door.

  I chew my grapefruit and do my push-ups. Spick claws at my calf, and Span stares out the window at the birds chirping in the trees.

  Afterwards, I put on my tie and walk downstairs to Earl’s apartment. It’s a bright day, and the sun pours into the hallway. Earl’s door is partly open.

  “Earl,” I say, walking in, “I’m trying a new Thai recipe and was wondering if you had any sweet paprika that I could—dear god!”

  Earl is standing on the kitchen table, beer cans rolling around his feet. An extension cord has been tossed over the revolving fan. The end is tied around Earl’s neck.

  “What the devil are you doing?” I ask.

  “I’ve decided to end it all,” he says. “I can’t just keep waiting for nature to do it for me.”

  “No, Earl, you can’t do this! Think of your family. Think of the butcher and the barber who depend on your patronage. Think of your dogs, the happy wagging of their tails.”

  “Yes, there are those considerations, but is that enough? Life is so very hard.”

  The revolving fan twists slowly with the weight of the orange cord, pulling it tighter around Earl’s neck. He’s standing on the toes of his leather boots. He looks ready to drop off the table.

  “Life may be hard,” I say. “Yes, life might be a rash on your anus, but there are always things on the horizon to wait for. There are balloons and candy bars, if you like candy bars. There are cloudless days and bottles of sunscreen. There are many things I’ve forgotten about but will tell you later. And then there’s love in the end, yes? The great hope? Love in the end.”

  Earl’s face is contorted in shame. I think I see tears peeking from the edges of his eyes. “I never thought about it like that,” he says.

  He gets down and slips a five-dollar tip into my hand, asks me if I want some coffee. Earl is one of the ones who likes to talk afterwards. We discuss the weather, the recent home team’s victory against the visiting team, politicians and the interiors of their bedrooms.

  The routine varies.

  In bed, Patricia tells me how the people in the city aren’t happy, and the mayor is nervous. The election is only months away. The mayor spends his days shouting into the red telephone.

  “Paul, you have to get me out of this one!” he says. “Stephanie, you’re my spin queen. Spin it for me, baby, please!”

  Patricia says she commissioned a study that reached a tentative conclusion: the people in the city feel detached from their surroundings. “More and more, people are sticking to themselves and only staring into their screens,” Patricia says.

  “The city is an alien thing,” I say. “If it weren’t for my job, I wouldn’t even know my neighbors’ names.”

  Patricia clicks off the light, and we go to sleep.

  Soon the mayor creates a plan for “aesthetic interactivity” to bring people closer to their city, their home. Patricia sets up the whole thing. She orchestrates a network of cameras and projectors to display the images of the people on the street onto large screens draped between the buildings. This way, people can’t help but view themselves as part of the city’s ecosystem.

  I don’t leave my apartment much, yet I wonder how the people take it. Do they like watching themselves as they go about their chores? Do they wave and perform? Do they see their images in the sky and think of themselves as stars? Most are probably caught unaware.

  At night, our cats meow out the window. The image of a young woman angrily hitting her lover with a handful of flowers is projected from the street onto a screen right outside. Autumn has begun, and leaves disrupt the picture as they fall.

  With the election looming, Patricia has been called on to work longer hours. Most days I’m awoken by her clicking shut the door.

  I have my regulars in the building, but people always come and go. After lunch, I have a new customer who marks herself down for razors. I make a turkey and cheddar sandwich with too much mustard and crack open a tin of tuna for the cats. I eat the sandwich as I climb the stairs to the fifth floor. When I knock no one answers.

  I figure this girl doesn’t know the rules, even though they were explicitly spelled out on the consent form. Either that or she got a date with a cute boy and has given up on the suicide drama.

  “Fuck it,” I say, and almost turn to head back to my room. Instead, I sigh and use an old debit card to jimmy the door open.

  The apartment is a clean one, with blue walls and bright light pouring in through the blinds. I don’t see my client anywhere. I close the door and go through the act, say, “I’m just the power man casually checking the meter.” I don’t hear any response.

  “Daphne Bankhead?” I say. It’s moments like these that remind me why this job was open and how lonely even attempting human contact can be.

  Then I find her draped over the toilet with red trickling across the floor. She’s wearing a green dress, and her hair is pulled back with yellow barrettes.

  I rush over and lift her off the toilet. I yank off two wads of toilet paper and press them to her wrists. She gives me a little smile.

  “I thought you were supposed to be here at two thirty,” she says.

  “You put down three.”

  “My bad,” she says.

  I lean her against the side of the bathtub and grab a washcloth to wipe away the blood. The wounds are thin slits across her wrists, although not in the right direction to finish her off. Not unless I’d left her bleeding there for a week or so. Still, the whole thing puts me on edge.

  “You’re not supposed to go this far with it,” I say. “I’m not licensed in any medical capacity.”

  I look at her face, trying to decide if I’ve seen her in the building before. A thin sheet of sweat is making her forehead shine. I grab a handful of Band-Aids and wrap them one by one around her wrists.

  “I guess I got carried away,” she says. “I used to be a bit of a thespian in high school.”

  Outside I can hear dogs barking and cars honking by. Daphne smiles and lifts her face to mine.

  I might have made a miscalculation earlier. There were certain facts I hadn’t taken into consideration: the French calling the orgasm “le petite mort” or “the little death,” certain theories of Freud’s, autoerotic asphyxiation, and so on. Sex, which is in some sense life, is forever caught up in the struggle with death.

  Daphne, with her eyes like fistfuls of diamonds, was yet another mistake.

  Patricia in a blue dress. Patricia making me cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off for lunch. The cats, Spick and Span, rubbing against her leg as Patricia feeds them the crusts. Patricia with her slanted smile teaching me to dance. Walking down the street arm in arm, an old friend, “Patricia!” Patricia taking cooking lessons. The phone rings, I pick it up: “Patricia?” Patricia fed up. Patricia fed up with my fucking drinking. Patricia: “I know all about it, you asshole. I know all about that fifth-floor slut, Daphne.” Patricia with a suitcase. Patricia with a large yellow suitcase at the door. The door closing. Patricia. Patricia. Patricia.

  I lie in bed most nights, thinking of things.

  This suicide problem is becoming a real crisis. Especially with the recent deaths (human error crops up everywhere).

  I myself am dragged before a judge after Mrs. Murmur finally succeeds. I’ve been drinking since Patricia left, and when the alarm went off, I punched it off the bedside table. A few hours later, I stumbled into Mrs. Murmur’s room, and she was turning blue, her hairdryer’s power cord snug around her powdery neck. Her eyes were still open and staring at me.

  The judge asks me how I let this happen after all my training.

  “Training, Your Honor?”

  “For your certification.”

  “Certification, Your Honor?”

  I lose the job and am sentenced to five months of community service at the homeless shelter. It’s pretty much the same gig, except it doesn’t pay.

  My absence doesn
’t stop things. Two days later, Upstairs Jack is in the hospital getting his wrists stitched up. My job is reinstated under the table.

  This kind of thing is happening all over the city. People are taking matters into their own hands. The countryside seems immune to the problem, but the city is slowly falling apart. You can’t even turn on a talk show without hearing competing experts shouting their different theories.

  The election is looming like a wolf at the gates. The mayor has to do something. When he appears in public, he yanks his tie.

  Interrupting a college football game, the mayor announces a plan that I know is Patricia’s. The mayor talks about a great entrepreneur named Dr. Sam. “Dr. Sam has a stunning new product to innovate his native city,” the mayor says. “He will use a series of chemicals to turn our great river into a chromatic display of the city’s emotions. An algorithm will squirt the chemicals into the river based on our citizens’ social media activity. It will create a mood ring flowing all around us.”

  Dr. Sam takes the stage wearing a lab coat over his polo and jeans.

  “Imagine the innovative rainbow of our collective emotions disrupting the stagnant waters of our beloved river! Samples of the river rainbow can be purchased in-app for $29.99. City Hall will even throw in a free tote bag.”

  I turn off the TV and head to my mandatory community volunteering.

  The whole city has gone to hell. My cereal is soggy, the citrus is sour. I get lonely. The cat, Spick, meows constantly. Patricia took Span with her, along with the computer and most of our books. She left me the flatscreen though.

  The workload is unbearable as more and more people sign up. Now, when I make my rounds, I say, “You idiot! You big dumbo! Stop that, just stop it right now!”

  Sometimes Daphne comes to my door. “I was wondering if you wanted to go to the ceremony.”

  “Which one?” I say.

  “At the Remembering Day Memorial Bridge. Dr. Sam is going to perform the river trick today.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Then,” she says, “perhaps I’ll see you there.”

  “Perhaps.” I clink the ice in my glass until she closes the door.

  By the time I get there, the bridge is packed as tightly as a supermarket shelf. I sip a flask of whiskey as I listen to the recycled speeches and watch the middle school talent shows. Finally, a woman in a sparkly dress cuts the ribbon with three-foot scissors.

  Everyone around me looks nervous. I look for Patricia but don’t see her. Dr. Sam yanks the large lever, and the blue chemicals jump free into the river. Everyone grows silent. Several mothers hoist their babies high in the air.

  We fidget and wait.

  The river begins to glow a bright yellow.

  There are reports that where the yellow river crashes into the sea, seagulls fly away in fear. There are reports that fish near the river’s mouth leap out of the water to die on the rocks. These reports are not considered credible, and only 40 percent of people polled believe them. Still.

  It should be no surprise that timelines and status updates are filled with jokes at the expense of the “yellow river,” but I don’t find them funny. I find the whole situation sad and take to drinking even more.

  Time passes in that way it likes to pass, without you even wanting to notice. I do my job for the people who want it, but many move on to more intense experiences. Daphne moves to another city by another river. The mayor is defeated in the election by a younger man with a bigger smile. The new mayor’s mood doesn’t transfer to the citizens though. The river slowly turns back to its traditional brown as the chemicals drain away.

  Then one day I run into Patricia as I’m walking alongside the river looking to buy some tomatoes. She looks a bit older and a bit sadder.

  “Hello,” she says.

  “Long time,” I say.

  We walk together up the riverside, reminiscing. We talk for a long time about this and that. Up on the bridge, I can see many people with wide-open eyes. I can almost make out the fear in those eyes, and the tears glinting in the sun. The people carry armfuls of bricks or old appliances to weigh them down. I see Earl and Upstairs Jack standing on the rail. Earl gives me an embarrassed wave.

  “Can’t we just start over?” I ask Patricia.

  “Will you drink less?”

  “I could hide it better.”

  “Will there be children?”

  “Two of them. The patter of their little feet will keep us awake all night.”

  A policewoman comes up and tells us to move along. “Nothing to see here,” she says. “Not even that stuff you’re looking at.”

  Patricia and I walk across the road. Her hand brushes mine.

  One by one the people on the bridge hurtle into the cold waters, their arms wrapped around microwaves and cordless vacuums. They fall straighter than I ever thought possible.

  “Will there be love?”

  “That I can’t promise,” I say, “but we can try to fight our way through it together.”

  And perhaps seconds later, the people come rocketing back to the surface, having abandoned their appliances. They bob and gasp. And maybe they will have found something down there while starving for air. On the surface, they will seek each other out and cling tightly, saying, “This is what I need. This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

  I’m not sure. Patricia and I have walked too far away to see.

  LITTLE GIRLS BY THE SIDE OF THE POOL

  “Did you see what Suzy did when her father tossed her into the air?”

  “No, I was looking at Jimmy.”

  “She screamed. She screamed like a little piglet right until she hit the water.”

  “My father is really good at tossing me into the water.”

  “Yes, my father can toss me so high I’m afraid I’ll never come down.”

  “My father once threw me like ten feet out of the water, and I did two cartwheels in the air before splashing.”

  “My father once tossed me so high into the air that I was at eye level with the top of a tall tree, and in that tree was a bird, and that bird unfurled its wings and looked at me in a loving way, like a sister.”

  “When I see you and your father in the pool, he is not tossing you or throwing you. Rather, he is holding you under the water, and you are trying to swim between his legs to twist him up, or else clawing his knees, trying to reach the air.”

  “Yes. My father is good at tossing, but he is also good at holding.”

  “Does he hold you only in the water?”

  “No. Many places. Sometimes I will walk into a room and his hand, lying on the armrest of his chair, will begin to twitch.”

  “I don’t think I like your father.”

  “I hate all fathers. It is the way they touch you.”

  “Their hands are swollen. When you are born, they can carry you in their palm. You grow older and taller, and yet their hands never shrink. When one wraps around your shoulder, the weight immobilizes you.”

  “And those hands, they can take control of you. You will be standing in the doorway to the kitchen, and on the kitchen table is something wretched, some burnt meat, and in the chair at the table is someone wretched, a boy that has been invited over to talk to you, but whom you already talk to in school and despise. Your mother has dressed you up too, in some frilly dress that would look stupid even on a doll, and you are standing in the doorframe about to retreat, to flee back to your room, where you cannot see or smell any of the wretched things in the kitchen, but as you are about to turn, the hand of your father appears on your shoulder, and it moves through you, it pilots you, and suddenly you are walking into the kitchen even though you didn’t want to go into the kitchen—or maybe it is the dentist’s or a therapist’s office or piano lessons—and the hand just appears there and wills you to enter without your father even speaking, wills itself over the will of your own bones, forcing you into the room even though the hand itself does not move, does not even flinch.”

 
; “. . .”

  “But even so, those are also the hands that send you cartwheeling through the air above a body of water the exact color of the bottom of a Bomb Pop.”

  “My father is not the only one who tosses me out of the water.”

  “Oh? And who tosses you? Your filthy brothers?”

  “Yes, my brothers. Tossing me together, one on each side, a leg and arm held in the hands of one, the other leg and other arm gripped in the fists of the other. They look at each other and count to a number while swinging me. When they reach the number, they release me. I never know what the number will be. That is part of the game. They tell me a number, but the number they tell me is never the number that prompts my release.”

  “Brothers are even worse than fathers. Brothers are fathers in training. They carry a father around in their bellies, and the beard of this father irritates the walls of their stomachs. This is the reason they are angry, all the time, when they see you.”

  “I have noticed their hands twitching in a familiar way.”

  “They are not the same hands as the hands of fathers, but they share the same hardness.”

  “Well, my father and my brothers are not the only ones who toss me out of the water. Sometimes I will wait until the lifeguards rotate shifts, and when Jimmy gets his turn to take a break, he will slide off his white tank top and pull off his red whistle. When I see him do this, I slip into the water. I fill my lungs with as much air as I can and swim underwater from the deep end to the shallow end where Jimmy will be standing, leaning against the wall of the pool, really, when I emerge. He does not say anything, and I cannot look him in the eye. I look down at his stomach. The sun reflects off the mix of water and sunscreen on his chest in a way that hurts my eyes, yet makes me feel protected.”

  “And then he tosses you out of the water?”

  “Sometimes. If I open my eyes wide enough.”

  “He tosses you away.”

  “. . .”

  “. . .”

  “I can only see his eyes vaguely behind the sunglasses. They are like two beautiful fish in the depths of a muddy lake.”