Hot Pink

  “There’s no other way to sign a letter,” you said.

  “Would you have preferred a duck? Should I have given it to your buxom office-mate instead?”

  “A duck?” you said. “I don’t work at an office.”

  You didn’t get my meaning—how could you have, really? I didn’t feel like explaining. Doesn’t matter, I thought. Had it been the letter you deserved to receive, it never would have gotten to you—you were not the wrong girl.

  The following morning, at the diner, Tom reported on the Stranger. “The first few times it works pretty well,” he said. “I think after a break it’ll work well again. For now it’s lost its charm.”

  I asked him for the rubberband.

  He gave me a pink one.

  I said, “This is pink. It’s not the one I gave you.”

  “The color,” he said, “doesn’t make any difference. After work the other day, I tried the one you gave me—the blue one. Then I went to the drugstore and bought a twenty-five-pack. I tried green and red and orange. The best time was with red, but only because I’d learned the trick of it by then and I wasn’t too chafed. It was my first exercise in mastery, and so it was the best.”

  “And after that?” I said.

  “I tried yellow this morning. Yellow was good, exactly the same as red, really, but not as good as red. Tomorrow or the next day, for the sake of science, I’ll try the rest of the colors—there’s still purple and black and white and pink—but I’m sure they’ll be the same as the red, and just as good. The mind does not forget the mind and the hand does not forget the hand, but the mind forgets the hand and the hand the mind or some shit.”

  I told him to give me the blue one.

  “The blue one’s gone, dude. I threw it away. I’m telling you, though—the color doesn’t matter.”

  I explained why it did.

  He said, “Sentimental value. You should have told me that before I jizzed all over it. She must really be something, this girl,” Tom said. “A firecracker, huh? Atomic pussy. A real hot number. A whip-cracking piece. I hope I’ll get to meet her.”

  “Come out with us tonight,” I said. “I think we’re going bowling.”

  “I’m in,” said Tom.

  Then I asked him for a pen to invent the religion with.

  “Okay,” I said. “I think first of all it’s good to come up with a fetish because—”

  “A fetish?” Tom said. “Like sucking on toes?”

  “Like a totem,” I said. “Some kind of object to worship.”

  “Oh,” Tom said. “You know, that’s not bad. The religion catches on, we could get rich selling them.”

  “Selling them?” I said.

  “The totems,” Tom said. “Trademarked totems. Little keychain totems. Idols sewn into the garments of every last worshipper. Make a fucken mint.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I—”

  “No. It’s good—totems. It’s a great idea. But so the first thing we need is to come up with the bad guy. The guy who the totems protect you from, right? Yeah. That’s good. Let’s start with the bad guy.”

  We didn’t start with the bad guy. We didn’t start with any guy. All we had to write on were paper napkins, and the only pen Tom had was a floaty pen: there was a flat ski-slope in the water cylinder and when you turned the pen to write with it, a flat man in a flat ski cap descended the slope in slow motion. The pen was intended to be a souvenir of some place mountainous and fondly remembered. It was never meant to function as a writing utensil. Its cheap ballpoint would roll only under a heavy hand. I tore through the napkin, scratched a line into the countertop. The cook skipped the gratis cheese squares that morning.

  That evening, we all went bowling together. We bowled four games, then Tom noticed how late it was. All of us had to be up for work early. Of the three of us, I lived closest to the lanes. Tom, who was driving, mentioned that to us—I’m sure you remember—and he said it made sense to drop me off first. I wasn’t sure it made sense, but by then we were only a block from my apartment.

  Today, at my mailbox, square envelope in hand, staring down at my many-seriffed, hand-addressed name, I needed a cigarette like never before, and was digging in my pocket with my free hand, blindly, in search of my lighter, when I underwent a sudden, whole-body spasm (I’m fine), and the hand in my pocket closed on everything in there—keys, receipts, change, etc.—then upwardly jerked and dumped it all on the floor. I didn’t find the souvenir pen among the spillage—why would I? it’s been years—but I thought I should have. I thought it would have been nice to kind of round things out.

  I guess I’m probably too old to invent a religion now, too. But thanks for the invitation. I’m regretful, can’t make it, best of luck to the both of you.

  SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

  1

  A crack in the wall behind their bed oozed gel. Neither knew what to do, what it meant, who to call. The man called their painter. “A crack?” said the painter. “A crack oozing gel,” the man said to the painter. “I’ll be there,” said the painter, “at once.” He was. He arrived by himself, with a brush, after breakfast. This was on a Sunday, and the man, who’d liked the painter, liked him even better now for coming straight over.

  The woman let the painter in—the man was in the bathroom—and showed him upstairs to the crack behind the bed. “Where’s the gel?” asked the painter. “I wiped it,” said the woman, “and threw it away.” Hearing this exchange through the bathroom door, the man blushed for no reason he was able to discern. “Well, this will be simple,” the painter told the woman. “Is the paint where I left it?” he asked her. It was.

  The painter went down to the closet in the basement, took the can of paint he’d left, and brought it upstairs. He painted the crack till the crack disappeared. He slid the bed back to where it had been, and returned the can of paint to the closet.

  The man had fixed coffee. He poured two cups and walked the painter out front. “So you’re not in your whites,” he said to the painter, who wore a pair of slacks and a button-down shirt. “I was on my way to church when you called,” said the painter. “Church,” the man said, “that’s something, that’s something… We really appreciate all that you’ve done.” “Not at all,” said the painter, “it’s only decent. A brand new house? A nice young couple? A pit bull who acts like a Labrador retriever? A crack in the wall behind the bed oozing gel doesn’t fit in that picture—could drive a man crazy. This coffee, by the way, is completely delicious.” “Rwandan,” the man said. “Rwandan,” said the painter.

  They briefly discussed the painter’s new car, which was silver and German, a car the man was happy to see that a painter—any painter at all, and especially their painter—owned. Prior to this, he’d only seen their painter’s van. A high-performance model, this silver German car was. The man had been poised to purchase one himself, just prior to learning that the woman was pregnant, at which point he’d settled on a rounder green car, a larger and Swedish, responsible car. He wanted, the man did, to share with the painter, toward whom he was feeling fraternal warmth, the story of how he’d nearly bought the German car, but because his wife wasn’t far enough along yet (she’d miscarried once, and they both feared jinxing) and the story would not be much of a story if he left out the reason why he bought the Swedish car instead, the man decided not to mention it at all. He could tell it some other time. Maybe at the baptism. Yes, at the baptism. The man would invite the painter to the baptism. He ran it by his wife at dinner that night. She agreed that the painter was a likable person, but said it wasn’t safe yet to talk about the baptism. They talked about the dog. How handsome it was. The way its muscles rippled its shiny, fawn coat.

  The crack returned. The crack oozed gel. That the problem wasn’t paint was easy to deduce. The man called their builder. The connection was bad, fuzzing their voices, cutting in and out. “Call me back,” said the man. “Sometimes that’ll fix it.” “_____ ____gel?” said the builder. “Oozing from the wa
ll behind the bed,” said the man. “Gel where?” said the builder, and, “Merf merf merf.” “Call me back,” said the man. “It’s the walls are cracking, or ______merf?” said the builder. “One wall,” said the man, “and the paint as well, but it’s not the paint. We painted it over. It must be the wall.” “I’ll send someone merf,” the builder told the man. “When?” said the man. “Merf,” said the builder. Here the call ended. The man redialed. He went straight to voicemail, waited for the prompt, identified himself, asked the pertinent question, and ended the call. What if the problem was on his end, though? Or what if the problem was a satellite problem? His message would sound like merf merf merf. He went to the patio and called once more, left the same message.

  Then he drank water from the garden hose, nervously. Why should he be nervous? He shouldn’t be nervous. He tightened the spigot and tried to think of something to calm himself down. He thought of some breasts, all the breasts he could picture, their various cleavages, hang-styles, and nipples. His wife had great nipples, pink and uninvertable, a little bit upturned, the best he’d ever seen. He wondered if the mouth of their baby would ruin them, hoped it wouldn’t, then feared that he’d never get to find out, that the baby wouldn’t make it into the world, would die in the womb, a forbidden thought. A forbidden thought that did not calm him down.

  Where was the dog? He slid the door open and called for the dog. The dog came running. He threw toward the fence a short length of rope that was tied in a bone-shape and scented with beef spray. The dog brought it back, laid it at the man’s feet, looked up in his eyes, expectant. This dog was a pit bull, a breed that sometime in the mid-1980s, back when the man was still in grade school, had acquired a reputation for killing babies.

  “You wouldn’t, would you?” the man asked the dog.

  It rose on its hind legs and leaned on the man, pressing its paws to his nipples. They danced.

  The builder arrived at noon with a worker. “Let’s have us a look at this hole,” said the builder. “It’s really just a crack,” the man told the builder. “A crack, a hole, leaks paste, what have you—needs to be looked at by us,” said the builder. At the words leaks paste, the worker made a face that seemed, at first, to signify disgust, but the worker was foreign, the man soon determined (the mustache, the hairline, the fit of the pants), an Eastern or Central European of some kind, and what looked like disgust might not have been disgust but firm resolve: steadfast, unbending, workerly resolve to ascertain the source of the problem at hand, and execute, unflinchingly, by any means necessary, the procedures required to solve that problem. Toward the foreign worker the man felt warmth, fraternal warmth. In his country of origin, he’d likely been a scientist, advanced degree in physics, or a structural engineer, and when he’d fled to America, where he didn’t know the language and couldn’t find a job in his specialized field, he’d had to suck it up and take what he could get, and here he was now, doing just that, the best that he could, making lemonade, no excuses, no whining, no annoying self-pity. That the worker looked like someone who liked his liquor and slapped his wife around (not to say simultaneously, the beatings and the drunkenness)—that was cowardly, nationalistic, Other-fearing stuff on the part of the man. The man rejected it outright, admired the worker. This worker was a person who could work with his hands and his brain the both—a noble person. The man wondered what he drove and hoped it was German. He doubted it was German, but still, it seemed possible, considering the car the painter drove, and the fact that both men were employed by the builder. The man felt grateful. Good men were on the job. He led them upstairs.

  “Where’s the paste?” said the builder. “I wiped it,” the woman said. The woman’s voice came through the door of the bathroom. The man, for some reason, was embarrassed, and blushed, and the worker muttered something, and the builder chuckled. “What?” the man said. “It really doesn’t translate,” the builder told him. “Try me,” the man said. “He says, ‘The wettest goose squawks loudest in the drought.’” “What’s that supposed to mean?” the man said to the builder. “Exactly,” said the builder. “No,” said the man, “because who’s the wettest goose?” The worker, his eyes bright, smiled at the man. “I enjoy your strong animal,” he said to the man. “My what?” said the man. The worker looked puzzled, or maybe aroused, and reached out his hand. The man thought the worker wanted to shake, but the worker had reached out to let the dog smell him—the dog had snuck into the master bedroom to be among people, to stand near the man. “He’s not supposed to be here,” the woman said to everyone; she’d finished in the bathroom; she stood in the doorway. “Are you,” she said. “No you’re not, are you.” The dog sat back and sniffed at the air. The worker said, “Polyp,” and shook the man’s hand—the man, in his confusion, had proffered his hand. “Polyp?” said the man. “How terribly rude of me,” the builder announced. “I come,” said the builder, “from a not-so-classy background, which isn’t to say my parents weren’t gems who helped put me through business school, just that the sociable graces as the wife says aren’t exactly most foremost in my noodle, and sometimes I forget to do the right thing. This here is Polyp, best crackman around. What do you say, Polyp?” “Please meet you,” said Polyp. “And we you as well,” said the woman to Polyp. “I am,” Polyp said.

  Then he tore down the wall and put up a new one. There wasn’t any gel to be found in the wreckage, and Polyp’s sledge was bare of gel, too.

  The builder told the man, “The painter’s free to come in first thing in the morning.” “He’s a good man, your painter,” the man told the builder. “Best painter in town—how’s eight o’clock tomorrow?” “Eight o’clock’s perfect.” “Perfect,” said the builder. “I thank you,” Polyp said. “You’re welcome!” the man replied. He shook Polyp’s hand, and the builder’s hand, too.

  No sooner had the man closed the front door behind them than he remembered his wife had a doctor’s appointment; he had to drive her in the morning to her twice-monthly checkup with the obstetrician. The thing to do—the thing he’d normally have done—would be to open the door and shout out to the builder before he drove away, but the idea of that—of turning the knob, pulling it toward him, raising his voice, comparing daily schedules till gaps coalesced—struck the man as repellant, and, all at once, he seemed to himself to be a great imposition, not only on the builder but on his wife, the whole world, even his unborn child. A sense of failure, a sense of being useless, a feeling of unmanliness, of inhumanity, even—a sense that he was less a person than an obstacle, demanding from others to be climbed or jumped over, to be worked around—nearly overwhelmed him.

  What could he do, though? Paint the wall himself? He moved money for a living, money on screens, tiny black digits in spreadsheet cells, his skills were abstract, his work was figurative, he bought and sold debt, he grew and shrunk numbers. He hadn’t held a roller since the summer preceding his senior year of college, when he worked a few weeks for University Painters, a company from which, he now recalled, he was fired not because he was bad at painting walls so much as because he just wasn’t very fast. According to the beer-drunks and potheads on his crew, he was overly concerned about primer. “You’re a compulsive fucken uptoucher, man,” the boss told him. “The tip of your nose should not be white and the tip of your nose is always white cause you look so closely for dings in the wall you just finished priming, your nose pushes up against the wall and removes a patch of primer so that now you’ve gotta re-prime, and after you re-prime, you do another ding check, and the cycle, it whats? The cycle repeats. And repeats and repeats. My advice for you is you should dial down the tight-ass cause that’s why you’re fired.”

  He could paint the wall himself.

  He bought tarp and a roller at the hardware outlet. The leftover primer and paint were in the basement where the painter had left them. He primed the wall and painted it, untaped the taped parts. His wife said, “Impressive. Didn’t know you had it in you. My husband, my man.” They embraced be
side the wall and ate a late dinner, then the man called the painter.

  “Good news,” he told the painter. “You’ve got the morning off. I painted the wall.” “Oh, buddy,” said the painter, “I’d have been happy to do that.” “I’ll gladly tell the builder you showed so he’ll pay you.” “No, no, no—seriously. No need at all. Don’t.” “An honest man!” the man ejaculated. “Yeah, well,” said the painter. “Not to say I ever doubted it!” the man quickly added. “Well, you’ve still got my number, so you call if you need me,” the painter told him. “Will do. Thanks again,” the man said. They hung up.

  The man called for the dog and they went for a walk. They walked in the park. In the middle of the park, between a couple of hills, they played some fetch with a fallen branch till he tackled the dog and they rolled in the grass, and the dog barked and growled and licked the man’s face, and the man growled back and spoke all the taglines he was able to remember the pro-wrestling heroes of his youth once growling, and his arms got scratched, and the grass stained his shirt, but the stains and the scratches were worth it.

  The new wall cracked. The crack oozed gel. The couple didn’t know who to call. A lawyer? No. The rest of the house did not ooze gel. There were no cracked walls in the rest of the house. They didn’t want to sue and they wouldn’t sue, wouldn’t know what to sue for if they could sue—maybe the crack oozing gel was their own fault somehow—but they knew who they’d sue if they’d wanted to sue, and he was, their builder, a decent man who’d tried his best to do what was right: he had put up the new wall at the first opportunity, not to mention free of charge, and above all he’d done so with total humility, without even hinting that replacing the wall in so timely a fashion was anything more than that which dutiful builders must do for clients whose walls have cracks gels ooze from. Plus the house, on the whole, was a very good house, a strong, handsome house, entirely predictable, completely sound, creakless and dripless, sturdy and sealed, proud in the daylight and safe in the dark.