As he tried more vigorously to wrestle free, elbows pinned his arms against the bottom of his rib cage. Twisting his head to discover whose they were, he caught sight of the short-shanked guard waddling toward him. He looked as if he were trying to run on his knees. From somewhere a tall guard came sprinting, followed by another, a burly fellow. When the tall guard pulled up and positioned himself between him and the wall, he gave up the struggle to release himself.
“He cut that painting out of its frame.” The voice, so hoarse it sounded disembodied, was emphatically accusatory. Lips were close enough to his ear for him to feel the breath carrrying the words, along with a spray of spit he wished he had a free hand to wipe off. “I caught him in the act. It must be somewhere in his raincoat.”The three guards positioned themselves so they were hemming him in.
Beyond the rosette on the shoulder of the tall guard’s uniform, he could see the sun, a black dot in a field of oyster gray inside the gilt frame. Then the clasping hands let go, pinioning arms fell away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a forefinger pointing at the wall. Its hand issued from a black cuff. The tall guard grabbed his right wrist and wrenched it hard enough to make him wince. He didn’t cry out in protest.
“Let’s go, you,” the tall guard snapped, jerking his arm up behind his back and jostling him forward. “March!” His voice was a deep growl. From other rooms people were gravitating toward the little procession. He had to tell his feet to move.
“Stand back! “ the burly guard snarled, “all of you get back.” Gesturing with their palms, he and the short-shanked guard herded the curious crowd toward another room. Beneath the ringing of the bell, which continued, he could hear a low murmur.
Keeping him in a hammerlock, the tall guard steered him through the doorway. At the pace he was being propelled, he was having trouble staying upright. Wobbling along, he wondered whether he might be thought to be drunk. As he was hustled across three more rooms, which he’d passed through on his way in, the bell continued to ring. In the grand court inside the great bronze doors that opened onto the portico, he was turned left and maneuvered through a scattering of people. All eyes were following him, he could tell.
All at once the tall guard stopped, yanking his arm so that pain shot up into his shoulder. With his free hand the guard threw open a door with a frosted pane, then thrust him into a small office. The tall guard and the burly guard entered behind him. After the burly guard slammed the door closed, the tall guard relinquished his hold on him with ashove. Again a wall prevented him from going down.
“Kill the goddamn alarm,” the tall guard growled. The burly guard scurried to a fixture behind a desk. The instant the ringing stopped, he heard buzzing in his ears.
“You,” the tall guard commanded, “take off that coat.”
Feet astride, the man was standing close enough for him to smell garlic on his breath. His left eye was hazel, his right brown. Pockmarks covered his cheeks.
“I don’t know why you’ve brought me here. I’ve done nothing wrong.” He heard his voice as an echo. The ceiling, he noticed, was very high.
“You take off the coat or we’ll take it off for you.” The tall guard didn’t raise his voice but it was full of menace.
When he tried to slip out of the raincoat, to his surprise he couldn’t. The belt was tied. Distinctly he remembered opening the coat to allow air inside the musuem to warm him after his walk through the cold rain. Fumbling, he worked the knot in the belt loose, reached up behind with his left hand, and lifted the coat by the collar. As he dropped his right shoulder, he wriggled that arm free. The coat swung down behind him.
While he was wrestling his left arm out of its sleeve, a rolled-up canvas fell to the parquet floor. Holding the coat in front of him, right hand grasping the left cuff, fingers of his left hand pinching the middle of the collar, he visualized himself as a magician about to wave his cape and make a rabbit disappear. In wonderment he stared at the canvas.
The burly guard squatted, as though to defecate, then reached around the bulge of his belly. Lifting the canvas by its edges with his fingertips and holding it at arm’s length, as though it were noxious or stank, he let it unfurl. From the right-side-up sunflower he could tell the painting was hanging upside down. There in the blue floated the black sun. The burly guard stretched the canvas flat on the desk top. His fingers were plump sausages.
“Let me have that coat,” the tall guard demanded, thrusting out his opened right hand. His fingers were very long.
He surrendered his coat. Draping it over his right forarm, the tall guard wormed his left hand into one of the pockets. To watch someone else’s fingers poking around inside what was his raincoat made him feel he was being violated. The hand came out empty.
Slinging the coat over his left forearm, the tall guard plunged his right hand into the other pocket. After fishing for a few seconds, his fingers emerged holding an object. The guard flung the raincoat on the chair behind the desk, as if he were disgusted by it.
“I suppose this box cutter isn’t yours.” The tall guard jabbed the point of the blade at him.
The mottled gray handle the man was clutching was similar to that of an implement he had at home, but he was certain he hadn’t brought that to this city. Besides, he recalled, while his hands had been jammed in as he’d been walking from the rooming house to the museum, both pockets of the raincoat were empty.
“No. That tool does not belong to me.”
Fluttering his blubbery lips, the burly guard made an obscene noise. The tall guard banged the box cutter down on the desk beside the canvas.
Just as he was about to add that he couldn’t account for the cutting tool’s being in the pocket of his raincoat, the short-shanked guard came huffing into the office.
If it hadn’t been for the interruption, he’d have gone on to honestly say, he hadn’t seen anyone, perhaps the man in the black raincoat, who so far as he knew had been the only other person in the room, slit the canvas and remove it from its frame. Nor, he’d have acknowledged, could he claim to have felt someone, most likely the same person who had clasped him from behind, slide the rolled canvas up his sleeve and slip the box cutter into the pocket of his raincoat. Now that man, his accuser, was nowhere to be seen.
Before he was able to throw off a weariness that had seized him and find the words he wanted, the short-shanked guard began to whine in the voice of a prepubescent boy.
“Every afternoon the past coupla weeks he’s been showing up around four and just stares at that picture till closing. It’s the only goddamn thing in the whole place he ever looks at. I been keeping my eye on him.”
Striding behind the desk, the tall guard plumped himself down on the raincoat, whose skirt was trailing on the floor. Then he snatched the telephone from its cradle and began punching numbers. While he was waiting to hear the tall guard’s voice, it struck him. This unfortunate contretemps might keep him from his own work for a considerable period of time. But when he did get back to it…
IT
As new members of the club, he and his partner had to settle for a six a. m. slot. Though hardly a desirable hour, it did allow him to get to the office by eight thirty. While caught up in the game, he hadn’t noticed it. Of course, two torsos in tee-shirts, two sets of privates in jockstraps, four feet in sweat socks and gym shoes, running, stopping, pivoting, lunging, whacking a ball for an hour and a half inside a 20 x 34 x 16 foot court had to be pouring out sweat. The damp heat generated by their stoked-up bodies created a fertile atmosphere for rancid bacteria.
The instant he left the court it hit him. As he showered, it wasn’t neutralized by the powerful disinfectant the custodian used. Nor by the commercial-strength detergent in the towel the club provided. Nor by the clean shorts, undershirt and socks he put on. Even if the air of the city didn’t carry the sweetness of new-mown grass, the outdoors ought to have seemed fresh after he’d left the locker room. So when he stepped
outside, he was expecting to leave it behind. It went with him. As if the gym bag dangling at his side were filled with rotting mushrooms.
When he slammed the door of his Porsche closed, as he sat behind the wheel, it didn’t diminish. After starting the engine, he quickly lowered his window. While driving across the parking lot, he pressed the button that dropped the window on the passenger side, to let in some fresh air. That did nothing to counter the odor. At the stop sign he tossed the gym bag, which he’d thrown on the seat beside him, into the back. Just beyond the first traffic light, he pulled to the curb, reached around, snatched the bag, and got out. Walking to the trunk, which he opened, he flung in the bag and slammed the lid closed.
Gunning the engine, he shot off as if he were being chased. Though implausible, it seemed to be penetrating the metal and upholstery between the trunk and the car’s interior, as well as the canvas of the gym bag. Either it was increasing or he was finding it more and more offensive. Certainly he wasn’t imaging it.
Instead of heading up the ramp and crossing the bridge leading to the avenue on which his office building was located, he turned right on River Street and parked. Getting out and opening the trunk, he grabbed the bag and strode to the end of the bandstand pier. Pivoting like a discus thrower, he whirled the bag, then let it go. He watched it sail through the air and splash in the river.
When he drove on, it went with him.
#
“Oh damn,” she said out loud, as she pushed off the snooze button, “my period’s starting.” That evening she had a date with Zach. The curse was more than a week early, and she hadn’t had the usual two days of cramps. In the bathroom she discovered it hadn’t begun after all. Worried it was about to, she put on a pad that she’d sprinkled with deodorant powder when she’d finished her shower.
All morning she was aware of it. It seemed so much stronger than usual that she was afraid she might be offending, especially in closed spaces—on the bus, in the elevator car, in the coffee lounge, which she hurried into and out of. To discover whether it had yet begun, she made two visits to the WOMAN’s. It hadn’t. As an excuse for not lunching with Ashly, Jerry and Josh in the deli around the corner, always jam-packed at noon, she pleaded some necessary shopping.
And she did shop—bought a “new and improved maxi-strength powder at the cut-rate next to McDonald’s. Then she picked up a burger and a Coke to lunch on at her desk with everyone else gone from the office. After eating, she checked herself again. Still no period. She applied the maximum-strength powder generously. All afternoon she avoided her co-workers as as much as possible.
Back in her flat, while a TV dinner was heating in the microwave, she phoned Zach. Much as she’d been looking forward to the film, then making love after they’d return to her place, she begged off. She was coming down with a migraine, she told Zach.
While she was washing, drying and putting away her tableware, she filled the bathtub with warm water. After undressing, she poured in scented bath salts, then soaked for half an hour or so. Before climbing out, she washed all over with deodorant soap. After drying, she massaged herself with body lotion. She checked herself again as she was about to go to bed. No period.
When the alarm woke her at seven, it greeted her again. Anxious to find out, she didn’t push the snooze button and did hurry into the bathroom. No other indication of her period. She showered, then massaged herself with a fragrant natural oil. In addition to dousing the pad with maxi-strength powder, she gave both armpits half a dozen shots of antiperspirant spray. Contrary to her custom of not wearing perfume to the office, she applied profuse amounts of the least subtle stuff she had—strong and fragrant as cider. The faceted bottle containing it had been a present from Lew, the man in her life before Zach.
All that day she made contact with people only when necessary and stayed in proximity as briefly as possible. Finding it even more offensive than it had been the day before, she hoped to goodness she was covering it up.
Still no sign of her period.
#
Ours is a residential section of the city. Most often the prevailing wind carries the effluence from the industries to the east away from us. When the wind does shift, however, we West Enders are reminded that the factories are there, belching out noxious fumes. Occasionally a wind from the east will set in, and the nuisance will last two or three days.
But this was different. First of all in intensity—to such a degree that you wanted to pinch your nostrils closed and breathe through your mouth. Then too it didn’t seem to be coming from the east. Or for that matter, from any direction. When we awoke that morning, there it was, apparently having descend on us while we slept. It seemed almost tangible, as if you might grab handfuls of it from the air, pat them with your palms, and toss them like snowballs. Which is preposterous, of course.
On the other hand, you might say it had risen from the earth beneath us. And while seeming dense enough to be grasped, it also was rare enough, in the chemical sense, to pervade whatever we might use to try to protect ourselves from it. As though our city were standing on top of a vast vat filled with some putrefied byproduct and the vat had sprung a massive leak.
There was still another difference. The way it seemed to infiltrate our person, permeating clothing, hair, even skin, suggested it was something more than a chance visitation by some errant air currents. The fact is there has never been any perceptible movement of air during this time.
When it struck we were annoyed by what we took as a passing nuisance. No oneimagined it would persist until it would become a threat to the existence of our city. After the fourth or fifth day, only someone whose olfactory receptors had gone dead could have failed to realize it was ominously intensifying.
Yet well into the second week our elected officials, while offering groundless assurances, refused to acknowledge the facts. “There’s no cause for concern,” “it will soon pass” “just be patient and put with it,” we were told. We, by which I mean an ad hoc citizens emergency committee (CEC, we call ourselves), had to force the release of the truth: no scientifically credible explanation could be found. At that point had to insist that outside experts be consulted. We had to demand that an appeal for aid be made to both our state and the federal governments— aid for which I might say we’re still waiting And yet, after we’d compelled those in positions of authority to take such steps, all that we’ve learned is that instrumentation has confirmed what any normally functioning sense of smell can detect.
The consequences for our citizenry have been profound. On morning one, imagining it would soon dissipate, most of us merely ignored it. With those with whom we weren’t intimately acquainted we chose not to acknowledge its existence. By the second day people had begun avoiding one another. When contact was inescapable, we would discreetly turn our heads, as if we were looking at and speaking with someone who was not present. On day three it became the talk of the town. By the hour, it seemed, mutual distaste—to mix the senses metaphorically, although it is a scientific fact that the two senses involved are inextricably connected—was increasing. Before the first week had ended, the desire to be isolated had begun to manifest itself. Progressively, when separation was impossible, tension, anger, conflict, in some instances physical violence ensued.
To this point, at which citizens still hadn’t fully comprehended the gravity of what was happening, only those whose lives intertwined were permanently affected. Supposedly unbreakable families and lovers thought to be inseparable were falling apart. Gradually it began to take a toll on all those who worked, played, were schooled, and worshipped together. Before long law and order commenced collapsing. Along with the already unruly East End, the whole of our city was fast becoming a disintegrating community.
When our elected officials showed themselves to be ineffectual, naturally more and more citizens took measures of their own. Supplies of perfume, deodorants, and disinfectants were rapidly exh
austed. Additional quantities couldn’t be shipped in quickly enough. Those whose responsibility it was to devise a system of equitable rationing adamantly refused to do so, asserting that supply and demand would provide the most efficacious and fair system of distribution. The issue, however, is moot. Such products, it turns out, offer only minimal short-term relief. Those still carrying perfume and deodorant kits and regularly dousing themselves provide protection only from themselves.
More sophisticated expedients have proved to be no more effective. Nose filters and blockers, in such short supply they too were rapidly bought up, have proved worthless. Industrial and surgeon’s masks are also useless. Only the few who somehow have been able to procure chemicals that affect the limbic system, benzodiazepines, for example, can speak to the performance of such pharmaceuticals. To this point these persons have been conspicuously silent.
A short time ago the members of CEC initiated a petitionary process that mandates a referendum on the recall from office of those who bear responsibility for denying, misleading, evading, refusing to act until compelled to, etc. Contrary to what has been bruited about by these officials and their political allies, this action has been taken not just for the well-being of the privileged few. It’s true that most of those who comprise CEC reside in the West End. But equally true, we West Enders pay the lion’s share of taxes that support our municipal government and fund the city’s services. Mindful that all citizens, no matter their financial status and where they happen to dwell, are affected, our initiative speaks for the aroused conscience of the entire community.
As our petition, which already bears almost the requisite number of signatures to set the legal process in motion, makes clear, we are aware these officials are not the cause of our affliction. We are not scapegoating or merely venting frustration. Rather our focus is on the dereliction of office holders who are charged to maintain the safety, protect the health, and promote the welfare of the citizenry.
The exodus from our city is difficult to calculate with any exactitude. But the proliferation of For Sale signs on residential properties in the West End alone is one indicator that an alarming number of citizens have left or are intending to leave if they are able. To be sure, there are no newcomers to our community; no one is purchasing housing. No doubt those who have already gone have widely reported what has struck us. The effect of these demographics has been devastating. Every day we become more of a ghost town. Even the flow of visitors who initially came out of curiosity has trickled virtually to a stop.