Short Fiction: Lines
Lines
by Alec Brownstein
“You just don’t get it, Carl. Billy and I are in love. Love. You never did know what that was.”
“What are you saying, Gwen?”
“Damnit, Carl! Why do you have to make this so hard?” Madeline slapped her palms on the unmade bed. Her bare breasts heaved up and down as she covered her face with her hands and sobbed noisily. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving you tonight. Soon it will be spring, and as flowers emerge from the barren earth, so will my life begin again. And so--”
“Begin all over again.”
“What?”
“The line is: ‘and as flowers emerge from the barren earth, so will my life begin all over again.’” Huxley leaned over and showed Madeline the script. He leaned back against the headboard and ashed his cigarette into a glass of apple juice on the bedside table.
“Why did you stop me for that?” Madeline sat up irritably on her knees. She crossed her arms in front of her naked midsection. She had a thirty-year-old face with the body of a woman ten years younger.
“Because it’s the line. You didn’t say it right.” Huxley exhaled a thin stream of blue smoke through pursed lips and pulled the covers up over his belly button. ”Every word has meaning.” He laced his fingers behind his head.
“It’s the same both ways. It makes no difference. Don’t stop me for that, it ruins my energy. Okay?” Madeline closed her eyes and made a guttural humming noise. Once in character, she resumed the pantomime and buried her face in her hands. “So will my life begin all over again. And so, now we say goodbye, Carl.”
“Gwen, don’t go.” Huxley read with the eagerness of a patient waiting for a colonoscopy.
“Please, Carl, don’t make this any harder for me. Our minutes pass like kidney stones through the bladder of time, and that’s all we have, minutes and hours.”
“What about the children, Gwen? Won’t someone please think of the children?” The second line was lost as Huxley inhaled deeply on his cigarette.
“They are growing older. With each—“
“They are getting older.” Huxley exhaled.
“What?” Madeline looked up from her hands at Huxley.
“Getting not growing. Getting older.” Huxley tossed the script across the bed. “See?”
Madeline ignored the script that hurtled past her head. “Jesus Christ. What did I just say to you?”
“Why are you asking him? You were talking to me.” Huxley chuckled at his joke. Madeline did not.
“Oh, fuck you. You know what? Fuck you.” Madeline stood up and searched under the bed for her underwear. She stepped into them and began looking for her bra.
“Madeline. Come on.” Huxley brushed his black, gray speckled hair behind his ears.
“No.” Madeline stopped searching and faced Huxley who sat up and dropped his cigarette into the cup of juice. “I’m sick of this. You know how important this audition is for me, but you just don’t care.” As she spoke, Huxley stared at her bare breasts. Watching his eyes she said, “You aren’t even listening to me, are you?”
“Yes I am!” He replied, his eyes still fixed on her chest.
“Okay, what did I just say?” Madeline crossed her arms in front of her and tapped her manicured pink toes on the thick gray carpet. Huxley raised his eyes.
“You said that I need to be more understanding of your feelings.” Huxley gave Madeline a wry smile.
“Fuck you, I’m leaving.” Madeline gave up her search for the bra and pulled on a t-shirt and jean shorts.
“Madeline. Wait.” Madeline slid on her platform sandals and started towards the door. “Madeline.” Huxley threw off the covers and stood up, then noticed that he was completely naked. “Fuck. One minute. Just wait.” He pulled a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around his waist like a towel. “Madeline!” The door to the apartment slammed shut as Huxley slid to a stop in front of it. He turned completely around and ran to the window overlooking the front door to the building. As he stuck his head out, Madeline emerged and starting flagging passing taxis. He shouted, “Madeline! Hey! Madeline!”
“What do you want?” she screamed back.
“Just wait! Don’t go. I have your…” Huxley stared frantically around the apartment. His eyes fell upon a large serving spoon that Madeline had brought over for a dinner party he had held a few weeks earlier. He ran, snatched it off of the kitchen counter, and returned to the window where he waved it excitedly. “Your serving spoon!” A taxi slowed and stopped in front of Madeline. “Your spoon, your spoon, your spoon!”
“Take that spoon and shove it up your ass.” Madeline dropped from his view and slammed the back door of the cab. Huxley hung out the window, brandishing the spoon to the city night.
“That’s a helluva’ nice piece of cutlery you’ve got there, Mr. Winters,” shouted the building doorman who had stepped outside to hear the commotion.
“Thank you, Gerald.” Huxley slid back into the apartment and closed the curtains. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! Shit.”
* * *
“Hitler, party of two, your table is now ready. Hitler? Party of two.” The restaurant quieted as heads turned toward the entrance. The hostess bellowed again, “Hitler, party of two!”
“You fucking prick,” Huxley whispered hoarsely and elbowed Marlow in the ribs as the two walked toward the hostess. The line parted silently as gray heads turned and stared. “I can’t believe that you did that again.”
“It’s an entrance.” Marlow followed the hostess to a small booth in the back corner of Moishe’s Delicatessen. He smiled and nodded at the gaping faces in different phases of chewing and swallowing their whitefish and lox platters. He slid into the booth and shirked his shoulders out of his brown suede overcoat. Huxley sat across the table and opened his menu. The hostess glared at the tandem then turned and left.
“They’re not going to let us come in here anymore if you keep doing that.” Huxley looked over his shoulder and grinned at a few glaring senior citizens. “And look at how you’re dressed. Jesus Christ.” Marlow looked down at his leather pants and Mickey Mouse tank top.
“Please, call me Marlow.”
“I’m not kidding. It’s eighty degrees outside and you’re wearing leather pants and a jacket.”
“I am subject to the same sumptuary laws as everyone else.” Marlow opened a packet of sugar and poured it over his hands. He slid the peppershaker into his pocket. “What’s bothering you anyway? You’re even more anal then normal.”
“I’m sorry. It’s Madeline. She left me.” Huxley straightened the front of his blue knit polo shirt.
“When?”
“Last night. We got in this stupid fight. She was reading her lines for that play about the crime fighting nun.”
“All or Nun?” Marlow looked up from his pile of sugar.
“No, that’s playing cross town, she’s reading for “Nun of That. It’s opening on forty-seventh. Anyway, she kept messing up her lines, and when I corrected her, she lost it and stormed out.”
“How did you correct her?”
“What do you mean?” Huxley tore his paper napkin into little equal sized pieces.
“I mean, did you tell her she was wrong?” Marlow licked his fingers clean.
“I guess so.”
“No, no, no! Women never want to be told they are wrong. You’re not the teacher and she is not the student. You are learning together.”
“That’s true.” Huxley straightened his back as he listened to Marlow.
“When you tell her she is wrong, you are telling her she is not worthy as an actress, a woman, and a lover.”
“I agree with that.” Huxley nodded his head.
“Understand that she wants to do a good job, and help her achieve that as a partner and an equal.”
“Wow. That is really insightful.”
“Yeah, and once she trusts you, you go for the anal bonanza.” Marlow upper-cutted the air in front of him.
“Fuck you.” Huxley shook his head in disgust.
“What are you doing later this afternoon?” Marlow opened another packet of sugar.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“I’m going to the doctor and getting some blood results back.”
“Is everything alright?”
“I’m sure things will be fine.”
“You want me to come with?”
“That would be swell.”
“Swell?”
“Where is our fucking waitress?” Marlow scanned the restaurant for a server. “Are they hiding?”
“Maybe if they didn’t think you were Hitler’s progeny they’d be more eager to come out and serve.” Huxley played with the napkin tatters in front of him and closed his menu.
“Everyone has to eat.”
* * *
“Do you mind if I use your phone?” Huxley leaned through the counter window at the clinic. In the waiting room behind him sat Marlow and half a dozen men reading magazines and fidgeting.
“Local call?” The nurse eyed Huxley suspiciously.
“Local call? Why do people always ask that? Do you pay the phone bills here, Nurse…?” Huxley scanned her white tunic for a nametag.
“Payne.”
“Nurse Payne, you don’t pay the bills do you?” Huxley gave her a smug look, and then stopped. “Did you say Nurse Payne?”
“That’s right.”
“Pain. P-A-I-N like the sensation?”
“No. It’s P-A-Y-N-E like John Howard Payne.”
“Who?”
“You’re obviously unfamiliar with one of the leading playwrights of the mid nineteenth century.” The nurse leaned back in her chair. “After completing The Fall of Tarquin in 1818, one critic described his prose as ‘tastily refreshing yet unrefined.’”
Huxley gaped at the literature savvy nurse. “Nurse, may I use the phone.”
“Local call?”
Huxley bit his knuckle. “Yes yes yes. Local call. Local call.”
“Go ahead.” The nurse slid the phone towards the opening on the counter then leaned back in her chair. Huxley snatched the receiver off of the hook and began to dial. He glared at the nurse who sat three feet from where he would make his call. She threw her shoulders forward, widened her eyes, and locked onto Huxley’s challenging gaze. Huxley blinked twice, then pulled the receiver as far from the phone as possible, out into the waiting room where he crouched over a chair, the phone line between his legs.
The phone was answered after the fourth ring. “Madeline. Madeline, it’s me, it’s me, it’s Huxley. Don’t hang up. Madeline. No. No. Don’t hang up. No. It’s Huxley. Madeline. Wait. Wait. Just wait.” He wiped perspiration from his brow. “I have something I want to tell you. Please, we’re both students. We’re learning together. What? No. Just wait. I’m talking about the fact that I’m not the teacher and you aren’t the student. What? I know. Wait, just wait. What? No. No. I haven’t taken codeine in ten years. No. Madeline. Madeline. Wait. You’re a worthy actress. Okay? You’re worthy. Madeline? Hello? Hello? Shit.” Huxley closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. He opened his eyes and returned the phone to its cradle. The nurse shook her head and clicked her tongue. Huxley shuffled across the room to where Marlow sat in the corner reading Boy’s Life. Huxley stared at the cover picture of a young boy surfing. “Why do they have that magazine here?” The only other magazine appealing to children was Newsweek, which boasted a cover story about the positive and negative effects of sniffing glue.
“They don’t. I brought it from home. I have a subscription.” Marlow turned the page.
“Fine. Fine. So the advice you gave me really crashed and burned.”
“Seltzer didn’t get that stain out?” Marlow didn’t look up from his magazine.
“No. Not that advice. The advice about Madeline. I said everything you told me. She’s even angrier now, thanks to you.” Huxley buried his face in his hands.
“You weren’t supposed to mention the anal bonanza, you know. That will just happen after time.”
“I’m not talking about the anal bonanza!” Huxley spat the words out with contempt. A few heads turned and looked at the pair sitting in the corner. “I’m not talking about the anal bonanza.” Huxley repeated the words in a whisper. “I’m talking about all of the teacher student bullshit you were telling me.”
“She didn’t buy that?” Marlow lowered his magazine.
“No. And she got even angrier.”
Just then, a doctor emerged from a swinging door next to the window. He scanned the waiting room and called out, ”Marlow Rider?” Marlow raised his hand. The doctor replied, “You can come back now.”
Marlow elbowed Huxley in the ribs. “You want to come back with me Hux?” Marlow looked like a child before getting a shot.
“Okay, buddy.” Huxley put his hand on Marlow’s shoulder.
The two followed the doctor through the swinging door down a thin hallway. At the end of the hallway, he led them into a small consultation office lined with bookshelves. “Please, sit down. Mr. Rider, we have the results of the blood tests that you requested. May I speak in front of your friend?” The doctor motioned towards Huxley.
“Yes. Please continue.” Marlow gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
The doctor looked down at the folder he had brought with him. “Well, Mr. Rider, all of the tests have come back negative. You have neither African American, Puerto Rican, or Cuban blood in you.”
“And Mexican?” Marlow responded shrilly, his hands still clutching the armrests of the chair.
“No. None of that either.”
Marlow’s entire body relaxed. His hands released from the chair, where perspiration had sunk into the fabric. Grinning, he leaned forward and grabbed the doctor’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Thank you, Dr. Alvarez. You’re a lifesaver. You have no idea how relieved I am.” He tried to control his histerical laughter by covering his mouth with his hands. The doctor just shook his head. “You wanna get tested, Hux?”
Huxley tried to make eye contact with the doctor as if to say, ‘I had nothing to do with this,’ but the doctor left the room, and the two were left in the office with Marlow wiping tears from his eyes.
* * *
“Madeline. It’s Hux-- Madeline. No. Wait. Wait. Just meet me somewhere. No. Not at my place. Unless you want to come here?” Huxley’s face brightened. “No. Of course not. Not here. No.” He frowned. “Starbucks? They have those. No, they’re good. Vanilla I think. Yes. They are. Starbucks. Six thirty? Hollywood Squares doesn’t come on until eight. Okay. Okay. Okay. I will. No, I won’t. I said I won’t! Okay. Fine. Goodbye.” Huxley punched off the cordless phone and licked his lips. “Okay. She’ll meet me.” He looked at Marlow who sat clipping his toenails on the steel framed black leather couch. “Do you have to do that here?”
“I’m going to move.” Marlow didn’t look up from his clipping.
“Okay, go do that in the bathroom.” Huxley straightened a crooked frame containing a picture of himself with Charles Barkley. Huxley was giving two thumbs up. Charles was looking over his shoulder.
“No, move out of my apartment.” Marlow picked his nose with the nail clipper.
“I thought you were the superintendent of your building.” Huxley sat on the windowsill and faced Marlow.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know how much longer that will last.” Marlow dropped a small pile of toenails on the corner of the coffee table.
“What happened?”
“There’s this handicapped lady on the fifth floor, and last week the elevator went out right in the middle of the James Bond marathon.” Marlow rolled his eyes. “So she’s down in the lobby ringing my phone, saying ‘the elevator doesn’t work, how can I get upstairs in my wheelchair? I have to take my insulin.’ And I’m thinking, if I go try and fix that elevator now, there’s no way I’m going to catch the end of Goldfinger. And I had just gotten to the scene where Bond arrives at Fort Knox.”
“So what happened?” Huxley leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Bond got handcuffed to a railing in the main vault. And Odd Job was about to--”
“Not in the movie, moron. What happened with the woman?”
“Oh her.” Marlow lost interest and started cleaning between his toes. “Well I just laid some wooden boards over the steps. I built her a ramp.”
Huxley sat up. “A ramp? You built a ramp, five stories up? Don’t you have spiral staircases?”
“Yeah, tell me about it, it took me almost thirty minutes to lay down all of that wood!”
“Marlow, what the hell is wrong with you? Crippled, diabetic women can’t wheel themselves up five flights of stairs.”
“Jesus, you sound like the paramedics. So now I know. Okay?”
“So they’re firing you?”
“Yeah, and I think they’re evicting me, too.” Marlow slid the nail clipper into his pocket. “No big deal.”
“No big deal? Where are you going to live?” Huxley’s voice raised a few octaves.
“I hadn’t thought about it.” Marlow calmly tweezed the hair on the knuckles of his toes. Huxley stood and paced.
“Everything will work itself out, you just have to be patient in these situations.” He leaned back on the couch and sunk into the cushions.
“Patient? Marlow, you could end up on the street!” Huxley ran his hands through his hair and stared at Marlow in disbelief.
“Is that the worst thing that could happen?”
“That’s pretty fucking bad.”
Marlow leaned forward. “Why are you thinking about the worst case scenario? Why don’t you say, ‘Marlow you could end up in a better apartment.’ That could happen too, couldn’t it?”
Huxley blinked then looked at his feet. “I guess.” He toed the ground in front of him. “It’s just that you don’t seem too worried by the situation.”
“What is ‘worried’? Do I have to pace the floor and pull my hair out like you? What’s the point of that?”
Huxley stood halfway across the room from Marlow where he had stopped pacing. “I don’t know.” His shoulders sagged. “I just sort of do it.”
Marlow looked over at Huxley who was still staring at his feet. “Hey! It all turned out okay, I got back to Goldfinger in time to see Odd Job electrocute himself with his hat.”
Huxley shook his head and allowed a smile to creep across his lips. “You’re out of your mind. You know that?”
“I am a man who likes James Bond movies. If that makes me crazy, I don’t want to be sane.” Marlow looked out the window toward the setting sun. “Shouldn’t you be meeting Madeline?”
Huxley looked down at his watch. “Yeah.”
“Do you know what you’re going to say?”
Huxley thrust his hands into his pockets. “No clue.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
Huxley chuckled and shook his head. He opened the door and called back, “Thanks, Marlow.”
Marlow leaned over the coffee table and picked up the cordless telephone. He scratched his armpit with the antenna and said, “Remember, if a shark had no tail it would die, but if a monkey had no tail, it would be a human.”
Huxley shook his head then looked at Marlow sternly. “Don’t call any more of those porno numbers from my phone.” Marlow frowned and dropped the phone onto the couch next to him. The door clicked shut as Huxley headed down the hall and out into the dusk.
* * *
Madeline sat in the back corner of the Starbucks, reading a magazine at a round wooden table decorated with colorful stripes. Huxley stepped through the swinging door and adjusted his eyes and ears to dim lights and canned rhythm and blues music. The walls were littered with blown up prints of native Sri Lanka and Kenyan residents picking coffee beans with grins spread across their faces. The photographer must have caught them at the beginning of their seventeen-hour workday. Huxley crossed the floor and sat across from Madeline. “Hi.”
Madeline looked up from her article. “Oh. Hello.”
“How are you?”
“I’m great. Is that what you wanted to meet here and ask me?”
Huxley ignored her comment. “What are you reading about?”
Madeline seemed dismayed that Huxley was not engaging her confrontation. She looked down at the magazine. “The therapeutic effects of sniffing glue.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. It’s supposed to relieve stress.” Madeline appeared to soften just a little. Huxley made his move.
“I’m sorry about the other night. I shouldn’t have corrected you like that.” He looked down at his hands, then up at her face.
Madeline contemplated his response for a few seconds. She surveyed his clean knit polo shirt and his tan pants with a ketchup stain near the crotch. “You know, seltzer will get that stain out.”
Huxley looked down at his pants. “So I’m told.” He sat quietly for a few seconds. “Well, what do you say Maddy, do you forgive me?”
She sighed deeply. “Yes, yes. I forgive you.” She let a smile spread across her painted lips. Huxley broke into a wide grin. Her smile faded. “I didn’t get the part in the nun play.” She looked down.
Huxley extended his hand across the table. Her hand fell on top of it. “I’m sorry, Madeline. I feel like it’s partly my fault.”
“No it’s not.”
“No, I think maybe it is.”
“No, seriously, it isn’t.” She looked Huxley in the eyes. “I didn’t know that my character was supposed to be Korean and have Tiret’s syndrome.” Huxley suppressed a laugh. “Which reminds me, did you hear about my cousin Shirley?”
“Shirley… Shirley… Oh yes, I remember her. Why, what happened?”
“Apparently, her wheel chair flipped over and she fell down four flights of stairs.” Madeline shook her head with pity.
“Four flights of steps! How did that happen?” Huxley’s eyes were wide with disbelief.
“The elevator in her building wasn’t working so she tried to wheel herself up to her apartment on the fifth floor.” Madeline frowned. “The poor woman, she made it to the fourth floor before her strength gave out. She fell all of the way down the spiral staircase.” She looked over at Huxley whose mouth was wide open. “It’s okay, honey. She’s going to be fine. The doctors say that in another few weeks, she will be able to administer her own insulin again. But right now, they don’t think it’s a good idea for her to be handling hypodermic needles.”
Huxley took a few seconds to compose himself. “My god. That is so—“ He paused. “Terrible.” He looked Madeline in the eyes. “So what’s next for you?”
Madeline smiled. “Well, I’m really interested in a play that is opening next March. It’s called The Fall of Tarquin.”
Huxley squinted. “The Fall of Tarquin… How do I know that title? Fall of—“ Huxley opened his eyes. “Wait, is that written by John Howard Payne?”
Madeline’s face brightened. “You’ve heard of him?”
Huxley leaned back in his chair. “Of course! The man was only one of the leading playwrights of the mid nineteenth century.”
“Huxley Winters, I am impressed!” Madeline beamed across the table. “I didn’t realize that you knew his work.”
Huxley looked up at the ceiling as if pondering the issue very deeply. “I find his work to be… tastily refreshing, yet unrefined.” He nodded his head slowly.
Madeline leaned across the table and kissed Huxley on the nose. “I knew that there was a reason why I loved you so much!”
Huxley grinned. “So, if you wanted to come over later and start going over your lines for this new play, I am sure that I could provide some valuable theatrical insight.”
The CD changer clicked and the rhythm and blues was replaced with the soft strumming of an acoustic guitar. Across the room, an elderly man slipped on a piece of lemon and hurled a large cup of scalding mint tea onto an unsuspecting group of trendy, thirty-something movers and shakers. As they shrieked and clawed at their Prada jackets and Gucci shaded eyes, Madeline and Huxley looked one another in the eyes and planned their night together.
by Alec Brownstein
“You just don’t get it, Carl. Billy and I are in love. Love. You never did know what that was.”
“What are you saying, Gwen?”
“Damnit, Carl! Why do you have to make this so hard?” Madeline slapped her palms on the unmade bed. Her bare breasts heaved up and down as she covered her face with her hands and sobbed noisily. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving you tonight. Soon it will be spring, and as flowers emerge from the barren earth, so will my life begin again. And so--”
“Begin all over again.”
“What?”
“The line is: ‘and as flowers emerge from the barren earth, so will my life begin all over again.’” Huxley leaned over and showed Madeline the script. He leaned back against the headboard and ashed his cigarette into a glass of apple juice on the bedside table.
“Why did you stop me for that?” Madeline sat up irritably on her knees. She crossed her arms in front of her naked midsection. She had a thirty-year-old face with the body of a woman ten years younger.
“Because it’s the line. You didn’t say it right.” Huxley exhaled a thin stream of blue smoke through pursed lips and pulled the covers up over his belly button. ”Every word has meaning.” He laced his fingers behind his head.
“It’s the same both ways. It makes no difference. Don’t stop me for that, it ruins my energy. Okay?” Madeline closed her eyes and made a guttural humming noise. Once in character, she resumed the pantomime and buried her face in her hands. “So will my life begin all over again. And so, now we say goodbye, Carl.”
“Gwen, don’t go.” Huxley read with the eagerness of a patient waiting for a colonoscopy.
“Please, Carl, don’t make this any harder for me. Our minutes pass like kidney stones through the bladder of time, and that’s all we have, minutes and hours.”
“What about the children, Gwen? Won’t someone please think of the children?” The second line was lost as Huxley inhaled deeply on his cigarette.
“They are growing older. With each—“
“They are getting older.” Huxley exhaled.
“What?” Madeline looked up from her hands at Huxley.
“Getting not growing. Getting older.” Huxley tossed the script across the bed. “See?”
Madeline ignored the script that hurtled past her head. “Jesus Christ. What did I just say to you?”
“Why are you asking him? You were talking to me.” Huxley chuckled at his joke. Madeline did not.
“Oh, fuck you. You know what? Fuck you.” Madeline stood up and searched under the bed for her underwear. She stepped into them and began looking for her bra.
“Madeline. Come on.” Huxley brushed his black, gray speckled hair behind his ears.
“No.” Madeline stopped searching and faced Huxley who sat up and dropped his cigarette into the cup of juice. “I’m sick of this. You know how important this audition is for me, but you just don’t care.” As she spoke, Huxley stared at her bare breasts. Watching his eyes she said, “You aren’t even listening to me, are you?”
“Yes I am!” He replied, his eyes still fixed on her chest.
“Okay, what did I just say?” Madeline crossed her arms in front of her and tapped her manicured pink toes on the thick gray carpet. Huxley raised his eyes.
“You said that I need to be more understanding of your feelings.” Huxley gave Madeline a wry smile.
“Fuck you, I’m leaving.” Madeline gave up her search for the bra and pulled on a t-shirt and jean shorts.
“Madeline. Wait.” Madeline slid on her platform sandals and started towards the door. “Madeline.” Huxley threw off the covers and stood up, then noticed that he was completely naked. “Fuck. One minute. Just wait.” He pulled a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around his waist like a towel. “Madeline!” The door to the apartment slammed shut as Huxley slid to a stop in front of it. He turned completely around and ran to the window overlooking the front door to the building. As he stuck his head out, Madeline emerged and starting flagging passing taxis. He shouted, “Madeline! Hey! Madeline!”
“What do you want?” she screamed back.
“Just wait! Don’t go. I have your…” Huxley stared frantically around the apartment. His eyes fell upon a large serving spoon that Madeline had brought over for a dinner party he had held a few weeks earlier. He ran, snatched it off of the kitchen counter, and returned to the window where he waved it excitedly. “Your serving spoon!” A taxi slowed and stopped in front of Madeline. “Your spoon, your spoon, your spoon!”
“Take that spoon and shove it up your ass.” Madeline dropped from his view and slammed the back door of the cab. Huxley hung out the window, brandishing the spoon to the city night.
“That’s a helluva’ nice piece of cutlery you’ve got there, Mr. Winters,” shouted the building doorman who had stepped outside to hear the commotion.
“Thank you, Gerald.” Huxley slid back into the apartment and closed the curtains. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! Shit.”
* * *
“Hitler, party of two, your table is now ready. Hitler? Party of two.” The restaurant quieted as heads turned toward the entrance. The hostess bellowed again, “Hitler, party of two!”
“You fucking prick,” Huxley whispered hoarsely and elbowed Marlow in the ribs as the two walked toward the hostess. The line parted silently as gray heads turned and stared. “I can’t believe that you did that again.”
“It’s an entrance.” Marlow followed the hostess to a small booth in the back corner of Moishe’s Delicatessen. He smiled and nodded at the gaping faces in different phases of chewing and swallowing their whitefish and lox platters. He slid into the booth and shirked his shoulders out of his brown suede overcoat. Huxley sat across the table and opened his menu. The hostess glared at the tandem then turned and left.
“They’re not going to let us come in here anymore if you keep doing that.” Huxley looked over his shoulder and grinned at a few glaring senior citizens. “And look at how you’re dressed. Jesus Christ.” Marlow looked down at his leather pants and Mickey Mouse tank top.
“Please, call me Marlow.”
“I’m not kidding. It’s eighty degrees outside and you’re wearing leather pants and a jacket.”
“I am subject to the same sumptuary laws as everyone else.” Marlow opened a packet of sugar and poured it over his hands. He slid the peppershaker into his pocket. “What’s bothering you anyway? You’re even more anal then normal.”
“I’m sorry. It’s Madeline. She left me.” Huxley straightened the front of his blue knit polo shirt.
“When?”
“Last night. We got in this stupid fight. She was reading her lines for that play about the crime fighting nun.”
“All or Nun?” Marlow looked up from his pile of sugar.
“No, that’s playing cross town, she’s reading for “Nun of That. It’s opening on forty-seventh. Anyway, she kept messing up her lines, and when I corrected her, she lost it and stormed out.”
“How did you correct her?”
“What do you mean?” Huxley tore his paper napkin into little equal sized pieces.
“I mean, did you tell her she was wrong?” Marlow licked his fingers clean.
“I guess so.”
“No, no, no! Women never want to be told they are wrong. You’re not the teacher and she is not the student. You are learning together.”
“That’s true.” Huxley straightened his back as he listened to Marlow.
“When you tell her she is wrong, you are telling her she is not worthy as an actress, a woman, and a lover.”
“I agree with that.” Huxley nodded his head.
“Understand that she wants to do a good job, and help her achieve that as a partner and an equal.”
“Wow. That is really insightful.”
“Yeah, and once she trusts you, you go for the anal bonanza.” Marlow upper-cutted the air in front of him.
“Fuck you.” Huxley shook his head in disgust.
“What are you doing later this afternoon?” Marlow opened another packet of sugar.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“I’m going to the doctor and getting some blood results back.”
“Is everything alright?”
“I’m sure things will be fine.”
“You want me to come with?”
“That would be swell.”
“Swell?”
“Where is our fucking waitress?” Marlow scanned the restaurant for a server. “Are they hiding?”
“Maybe if they didn’t think you were Hitler’s progeny they’d be more eager to come out and serve.” Huxley played with the napkin tatters in front of him and closed his menu.
“Everyone has to eat.”
* * *
“Do you mind if I use your phone?” Huxley leaned through the counter window at the clinic. In the waiting room behind him sat Marlow and half a dozen men reading magazines and fidgeting.
“Local call?” The nurse eyed Huxley suspiciously.
“Local call? Why do people always ask that? Do you pay the phone bills here, Nurse…?” Huxley scanned her white tunic for a nametag.
“Payne.”
“Nurse Payne, you don’t pay the bills do you?” Huxley gave her a smug look, and then stopped. “Did you say Nurse Payne?”
“That’s right.”
“Pain. P-A-I-N like the sensation?”
“No. It’s P-A-Y-N-E like John Howard Payne.”
“Who?”
“You’re obviously unfamiliar with one of the leading playwrights of the mid nineteenth century.” The nurse leaned back in her chair. “After completing The Fall of Tarquin in 1818, one critic described his prose as ‘tastily refreshing yet unrefined.’”
Huxley gaped at the literature savvy nurse. “Nurse, may I use the phone.”
“Local call?”
Huxley bit his knuckle. “Yes yes yes. Local call. Local call.”
“Go ahead.” The nurse slid the phone towards the opening on the counter then leaned back in her chair. Huxley snatched the receiver off of the hook and began to dial. He glared at the nurse who sat three feet from where he would make his call. She threw her shoulders forward, widened her eyes, and locked onto Huxley’s challenging gaze. Huxley blinked twice, then pulled the receiver as far from the phone as possible, out into the waiting room where he crouched over a chair, the phone line between his legs.
The phone was answered after the fourth ring. “Madeline. Madeline, it’s me, it’s me, it’s Huxley. Don’t hang up. Madeline. No. No. Don’t hang up. No. It’s Huxley. Madeline. Wait. Wait. Just wait.” He wiped perspiration from his brow. “I have something I want to tell you. Please, we’re both students. We’re learning together. What? No. Just wait. I’m talking about the fact that I’m not the teacher and you aren’t the student. What? I know. Wait, just wait. What? No. No. I haven’t taken codeine in ten years. No. Madeline. Madeline. Wait. You’re a worthy actress. Okay? You’re worthy. Madeline? Hello? Hello? Shit.” Huxley closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. He opened his eyes and returned the phone to its cradle. The nurse shook her head and clicked her tongue. Huxley shuffled across the room to where Marlow sat in the corner reading Boy’s Life. Huxley stared at the cover picture of a young boy surfing. “Why do they have that magazine here?” The only other magazine appealing to children was Newsweek, which boasted a cover story about the positive and negative effects of sniffing glue.
“They don’t. I brought it from home. I have a subscription.” Marlow turned the page.
“Fine. Fine. So the advice you gave me really crashed and burned.”
“Seltzer didn’t get that stain out?” Marlow didn’t look up from his magazine.
“No. Not that advice. The advice about Madeline. I said everything you told me. She’s even angrier now, thanks to you.” Huxley buried his face in his hands.
“You weren’t supposed to mention the anal bonanza, you know. That will just happen after time.”
“I’m not talking about the anal bonanza!” Huxley spat the words out with contempt. A few heads turned and looked at the pair sitting in the corner. “I’m not talking about the anal bonanza.” Huxley repeated the words in a whisper. “I’m talking about all of the teacher student bullshit you were telling me.”
“She didn’t buy that?” Marlow lowered his magazine.
“No. And she got even angrier.”
Just then, a doctor emerged from a swinging door next to the window. He scanned the waiting room and called out, ”Marlow Rider?” Marlow raised his hand. The doctor replied, “You can come back now.”
Marlow elbowed Huxley in the ribs. “You want to come back with me Hux?” Marlow looked like a child before getting a shot.
“Okay, buddy.” Huxley put his hand on Marlow’s shoulder.
The two followed the doctor through the swinging door down a thin hallway. At the end of the hallway, he led them into a small consultation office lined with bookshelves. “Please, sit down. Mr. Rider, we have the results of the blood tests that you requested. May I speak in front of your friend?” The doctor motioned towards Huxley.
“Yes. Please continue.” Marlow gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
The doctor looked down at the folder he had brought with him. “Well, Mr. Rider, all of the tests have come back negative. You have neither African American, Puerto Rican, or Cuban blood in you.”
“And Mexican?” Marlow responded shrilly, his hands still clutching the armrests of the chair.
“No. None of that either.”
Marlow’s entire body relaxed. His hands released from the chair, where perspiration had sunk into the fabric. Grinning, he leaned forward and grabbed the doctor’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Thank you, Dr. Alvarez. You’re a lifesaver. You have no idea how relieved I am.” He tried to control his histerical laughter by covering his mouth with his hands. The doctor just shook his head. “You wanna get tested, Hux?”
Huxley tried to make eye contact with the doctor as if to say, ‘I had nothing to do with this,’ but the doctor left the room, and the two were left in the office with Marlow wiping tears from his eyes.
* * *
“Madeline. It’s Hux-- Madeline. No. Wait. Wait. Just meet me somewhere. No. Not at my place. Unless you want to come here?” Huxley’s face brightened. “No. Of course not. Not here. No.” He frowned. “Starbucks? They have those. No, they’re good. Vanilla I think. Yes. They are. Starbucks. Six thirty? Hollywood Squares doesn’t come on until eight. Okay. Okay. Okay. I will. No, I won’t. I said I won’t! Okay. Fine. Goodbye.” Huxley punched off the cordless phone and licked his lips. “Okay. She’ll meet me.” He looked at Marlow who sat clipping his toenails on the steel framed black leather couch. “Do you have to do that here?”
“I’m going to move.” Marlow didn’t look up from his clipping.
“Okay, go do that in the bathroom.” Huxley straightened a crooked frame containing a picture of himself with Charles Barkley. Huxley was giving two thumbs up. Charles was looking over his shoulder.
“No, move out of my apartment.” Marlow picked his nose with the nail clipper.
“I thought you were the superintendent of your building.” Huxley sat on the windowsill and faced Marlow.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know how much longer that will last.” Marlow dropped a small pile of toenails on the corner of the coffee table.
“What happened?”
“There’s this handicapped lady on the fifth floor, and last week the elevator went out right in the middle of the James Bond marathon.” Marlow rolled his eyes. “So she’s down in the lobby ringing my phone, saying ‘the elevator doesn’t work, how can I get upstairs in my wheelchair? I have to take my insulin.’ And I’m thinking, if I go try and fix that elevator now, there’s no way I’m going to catch the end of Goldfinger. And I had just gotten to the scene where Bond arrives at Fort Knox.”
“So what happened?” Huxley leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Bond got handcuffed to a railing in the main vault. And Odd Job was about to--”
“Not in the movie, moron. What happened with the woman?”
“Oh her.” Marlow lost interest and started cleaning between his toes. “Well I just laid some wooden boards over the steps. I built her a ramp.”
Huxley sat up. “A ramp? You built a ramp, five stories up? Don’t you have spiral staircases?”
“Yeah, tell me about it, it took me almost thirty minutes to lay down all of that wood!”
“Marlow, what the hell is wrong with you? Crippled, diabetic women can’t wheel themselves up five flights of stairs.”
“Jesus, you sound like the paramedics. So now I know. Okay?”
“So they’re firing you?”
“Yeah, and I think they’re evicting me, too.” Marlow slid the nail clipper into his pocket. “No big deal.”
“No big deal? Where are you going to live?” Huxley’s voice raised a few octaves.
“I hadn’t thought about it.” Marlow calmly tweezed the hair on the knuckles of his toes. Huxley stood and paced.
“Everything will work itself out, you just have to be patient in these situations.” He leaned back on the couch and sunk into the cushions.
“Patient? Marlow, you could end up on the street!” Huxley ran his hands through his hair and stared at Marlow in disbelief.
“Is that the worst thing that could happen?”
“That’s pretty fucking bad.”
Marlow leaned forward. “Why are you thinking about the worst case scenario? Why don’t you say, ‘Marlow you could end up in a better apartment.’ That could happen too, couldn’t it?”
Huxley blinked then looked at his feet. “I guess.” He toed the ground in front of him. “It’s just that you don’t seem too worried by the situation.”
“What is ‘worried’? Do I have to pace the floor and pull my hair out like you? What’s the point of that?”
Huxley stood halfway across the room from Marlow where he had stopped pacing. “I don’t know.” His shoulders sagged. “I just sort of do it.”
Marlow looked over at Huxley who was still staring at his feet. “Hey! It all turned out okay, I got back to Goldfinger in time to see Odd Job electrocute himself with his hat.”
Huxley shook his head and allowed a smile to creep across his lips. “You’re out of your mind. You know that?”
“I am a man who likes James Bond movies. If that makes me crazy, I don’t want to be sane.” Marlow looked out the window toward the setting sun. “Shouldn’t you be meeting Madeline?”
Huxley looked down at his watch. “Yeah.”
“Do you know what you’re going to say?”
Huxley thrust his hands into his pockets. “No clue.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
Huxley chuckled and shook his head. He opened the door and called back, “Thanks, Marlow.”
Marlow leaned over the coffee table and picked up the cordless telephone. He scratched his armpit with the antenna and said, “Remember, if a shark had no tail it would die, but if a monkey had no tail, it would be a human.”
Huxley shook his head then looked at Marlow sternly. “Don’t call any more of those porno numbers from my phone.” Marlow frowned and dropped the phone onto the couch next to him. The door clicked shut as Huxley headed down the hall and out into the dusk.
* * *
Madeline sat in the back corner of the Starbucks, reading a magazine at a round wooden table decorated with colorful stripes. Huxley stepped through the swinging door and adjusted his eyes and ears to dim lights and canned rhythm and blues music. The walls were littered with blown up prints of native Sri Lanka and Kenyan residents picking coffee beans with grins spread across their faces. The photographer must have caught them at the beginning of their seventeen-hour workday. Huxley crossed the floor and sat across from Madeline. “Hi.”
Madeline looked up from her article. “Oh. Hello.”
“How are you?”
“I’m great. Is that what you wanted to meet here and ask me?”
Huxley ignored her comment. “What are you reading about?”
Madeline seemed dismayed that Huxley was not engaging her confrontation. She looked down at the magazine. “The therapeutic effects of sniffing glue.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. It’s supposed to relieve stress.” Madeline appeared to soften just a little. Huxley made his move.
“I’m sorry about the other night. I shouldn’t have corrected you like that.” He looked down at his hands, then up at her face.
Madeline contemplated his response for a few seconds. She surveyed his clean knit polo shirt and his tan pants with a ketchup stain near the crotch. “You know, seltzer will get that stain out.”
Huxley looked down at his pants. “So I’m told.” He sat quietly for a few seconds. “Well, what do you say Maddy, do you forgive me?”
She sighed deeply. “Yes, yes. I forgive you.” She let a smile spread across her painted lips. Huxley broke into a wide grin. Her smile faded. “I didn’t get the part in the nun play.” She looked down.
Huxley extended his hand across the table. Her hand fell on top of it. “I’m sorry, Madeline. I feel like it’s partly my fault.”
“No it’s not.”
“No, I think maybe it is.”
“No, seriously, it isn’t.” She looked Huxley in the eyes. “I didn’t know that my character was supposed to be Korean and have Tiret’s syndrome.” Huxley suppressed a laugh. “Which reminds me, did you hear about my cousin Shirley?”
“Shirley… Shirley… Oh yes, I remember her. Why, what happened?”
“Apparently, her wheel chair flipped over and she fell down four flights of stairs.” Madeline shook her head with pity.
“Four flights of steps! How did that happen?” Huxley’s eyes were wide with disbelief.
“The elevator in her building wasn’t working so she tried to wheel herself up to her apartment on the fifth floor.” Madeline frowned. “The poor woman, she made it to the fourth floor before her strength gave out. She fell all of the way down the spiral staircase.” She looked over at Huxley whose mouth was wide open. “It’s okay, honey. She’s going to be fine. The doctors say that in another few weeks, she will be able to administer her own insulin again. But right now, they don’t think it’s a good idea for her to be handling hypodermic needles.”
Huxley took a few seconds to compose himself. “My god. That is so—“ He paused. “Terrible.” He looked Madeline in the eyes. “So what’s next for you?”
Madeline smiled. “Well, I’m really interested in a play that is opening next March. It’s called The Fall of Tarquin.”
Huxley squinted. “The Fall of Tarquin… How do I know that title? Fall of—“ Huxley opened his eyes. “Wait, is that written by John Howard Payne?”
Madeline’s face brightened. “You’ve heard of him?”
Huxley leaned back in his chair. “Of course! The man was only one of the leading playwrights of the mid nineteenth century.”
“Huxley Winters, I am impressed!” Madeline beamed across the table. “I didn’t realize that you knew his work.”
Huxley looked up at the ceiling as if pondering the issue very deeply. “I find his work to be… tastily refreshing, yet unrefined.” He nodded his head slowly.
Madeline leaned across the table and kissed Huxley on the nose. “I knew that there was a reason why I loved you so much!”
Huxley grinned. “So, if you wanted to come over later and start going over your lines for this new play, I am sure that I could provide some valuable theatrical insight.”
The CD changer clicked and the rhythm and blues was replaced with the soft strumming of an acoustic guitar. Across the room, an elderly man slipped on a piece of lemon and hurled a large cup of scalding mint tea onto an unsuspecting group of trendy, thirty-something movers and shakers. As they shrieked and clawed at their Prada jackets and Gucci shaded eyes, Madeline and Huxley looked one another in the eyes and planned their night together.
posted by alec at 10:21 AM
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