This is the third installment of the novella The Useless Consolation of Hydrophobia

Wednesday, July 3, 3:53 P.M.

The boy vanished.

At the mercy of solitude, despite my strides, like a ceaseless treadmill, the remote horizon eluded my approach.

The sun cast long shadows as if marking time's unwilling passage. 

Another figure appeared beside me, a man in his mid-twenties whose age proved hard to gauge.

I had an immediate aversion to him, and for good reason. He began narrating a tale of victimhood—his teachers, peers, and parents all conspiring against him. He expressed his grievances with sophistication but with a peculiar childishness. He declared his creativity vehemently, yet when questioned about his creations, the wind played tricks with his words:  

"Discard everything you carry, dear. The vibe thrives on criticism—music, films, art. My secret philosophical musings are like a legitimate minute-long conversation. Brian Eno, Radiohead, Gustav Klimt—remember The Mark Bar? Polaroid pictures? Yes, I enjoy bikes, garages with Minis, Korean dumplings while waiting for a new ride, and organic caffeine—navigate it," he mumbled in a disjointed litany.

Convinced of his indispensability, he repeated his assertions verbatim. 

A passing young boy, overhearing the self-praise, shook his head in disdain.  

The twit boyishly bemoaned his lack of funds.

“I'm cash-poor, and my girl left me," he moaned.

Jealousy, I thought.—jealousy on this desolate pier?

"They will know me now!" he declared before impulsively leaping into the waters below.

Standing at the railing, I watched him thrashing in the waters. I became aware that I was the sole spectator. No one cared to witness the hopeless struggle unfolding beneath the pier.

I, too, felt little or no pity. I'd only known the man for a few brief moments but seemed to hate him instantly. I was happy to see each ripple of water surround him. 

As I watched him die, a peculiar stillness settled over the pier, broken only by the rhythmic lapping of the waves against its pilings. 

Casting elongated shadows in the late afternoon, the sun lingered on the horizon. 

Questions swirled. What events had led these people to this pier? 

I looked down. He was gone, and I was glad, but I wondered what he meant in his ramblings.

Was he unappreciated?

It didn't feel like a tragedy.

I continued to walk.

A low air encircled the pier—such strange encounters. The manchild was gone, and I seemed giddy yet alone and haunted by the waters below. 

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This is the second installment of the novella The Useless Consolation of Hydrophobia

Wednesday, July 3, 3:49 P.M.

I'd had enough and closed the laptop, ignoring the shattered windows…

I imagined myself striding through a cool littoral village, picturesque with fluffy clouds and ships boasting glossy, towering masts. Seagulls squawked in the distance. The sand, too, was cool and golden, enhancing the charm of the painted walls; their allure further heightened by the absence of a nearby parking lot or sewer drain. Laughter echoed through the wind, mingling with the distant sunlit cliffs.

The evening approached, and a bandshell was set for music. Church steeples ascended in the distance, along with that striking red and white lighthouse that stood heavy and tall on a rocky outcropping engulfed by the salty foam.

Now, rain dribbled into the cracked pavement of the cobbled, forgotten streets. It was all the same to me, whether in my mind or when I was here.

Behind the waterfront loveliness were the inviting dim-lit dives. Old concert posters clung to lifeless walls, and the rusty hoardings lay on the dusty floors of a long row of warehouses, all devoid of windows, and behind them was a long, splintery pier.

I strode toward it, and the town hollowed behind me.

Approaching, I saw the pier filled with solemn figures dressed like elderly Europeans tarrying for winter ice cream.

Then, a fight broke out, and a rasp rose from the rusty nails inside the pier's boards. Men and women squeaked and squawked; their hands grasped each other’s wooly shirts as legs were hoisted toward the railing in an attempt to toss their owners into the sea. Fists swung and connected with cheeks and chins. Children recoiled from the horribleness of it all.

"They do this every dusk," a mournful voice lamented from somewhere behind me.

What ended it was a loud shriek that seemed to come from the end of the pier, followed by crude laughter. Hands were released, and legs were set free. The horribleness ended as swiftly as it seemed to begin.

The combatants pivoted to the west and monitored the sun as it slowly relaxed on the watery horizon.

To get closer to the sunset, the small crowd, with confidence and purpose, slowly moved toward the end of the pier.

Without question, I began to move along with them.

A disheveled youth, dead-eyed and glazed over by some drug, slurred, "Have you ever made it to the end of the pier?"

He mumbled other words, but they merged with crowd noise and scattered in the breeze. Then, they became clear again.

"What?" I said.

"Did you enjoy the fight?" he said.

"What?" I said.

"The fight, you fool. You were here. You saw it," he said.

I gazed at him, dumbfounded.

"You think you're better than us?" he said.

"Yes," I said, surprised at my words.

"The pier doesn't end. There is no end," he said.

"I can see it. It's right there," I pointed.

"You're just another fool," the boy said. "You watch those films with the girls and their pouty lips."

"What?"

He sneered smugly. He wasn't as young as I had first assumed. His grey eyes were almost fossilized, and the skin behind his ears looked like creased parchment, dirty and worn.

"They cannibalized those old cartoon silhouettes. And the Chateau Marmont. And that minx, you know, that tight yellow thing. Those lips and eyes, big, knowing. Whistling your name? Oh, no, my son, not your name." he said.

I wondered how he knew. We continued our stroll. The village dissolved behind us, though not wholly, into the shadows cast by the orange blob that sank into the murky sea.

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This is the first segment of the novella: The Useless Consolation of Hydrophobia

Wednesday, July 3, 3:47 P.M.

When I was a kid, AIDS would kill you. You can’t depend on anything no more. In this void, something must be reliable.

AIDS is small now. I know that’s good, and I should be ashamed of thinking about it. I am sorry. I worry too much.

I read once that we were just animals that crawled out from the sea.

It’s getting hotter in here, and I need to get somewhere, but my laptop’s charged, and I need to kill some time.

They told me I was born in a Porta-Potty at a Moby Grape show. That was funny to them. I want to spear them with a ram’s horn.

They told me some good stuff, too, like how it’s easier to suffer a couple of yards back than with people around. That’s good advice for a kid.

They said I was lazy. I am, of course. Always looking for the easy way. I accept the suffering that comes with the tack, but I see and feel. They didn’t give me that. That’s all me.

I’ve always been back behind and away. That’s how I see things. I read too. They hated that.

We’re in between something. I don’t know what. It’s some Dark Age, now.

I have internet access. All the world’s knowledge. Anything you want to know. Like a plot to one of those old gyne-in-bottle movies. But people want fun, and it hurts. I see what they watch.

I heard a song on the radio; this is years back. It was good and I went to the computer to hear it. I’ve been watching it ever since. And I’ll watch it again because, as I said, I have to be somewhere and have the time to kill.

I writhe, hungover, staring at my off-white walls, the nothing in my apartment. I’ve gotten used to this. It’s my only friend. For years, nothing got loved. I felt sad when I lost all interest in the heavy metal drums and nothing has replaced it. But I feel like I’m closer to a proxy, so, I take a chance, and with true purpose, I click play.

She has big new lips. She has thick hair. So beautiful. I fall in love, again. She’s all the lost girls I knew.

Her knees are to her chest, and I believe now, after over a decade of watching her, that she wants to hide.

Then the bells. Bong-bong-bong. We’re off to church. Harps strum. The tape is grainy; I forgot to say that. Then out of nowhere, young hipster kids ride mopeds down a treelined Tuscan road. And then (I hate them) these dudes jump into an autumn swimming pool as the harps continue. Everyone is thin and beautiful, and alive. Everyone had a great summer.

An American flag flaps in California.

I was young once, but not in California.

I knew swimming pools, but was never comfortable in them, not like these kids.

They’re thin and intelligent. They’re drinking but not fat. I know they do the funniest drugs. I watch, and it is all right there, within my reach. All that joy, is right there for the taking.

I look up. “No good, no good,” I say. A broken window, cans of everything, bottles of sesame seed oil, and rotted expired olives.

Let’s keep going. We’re only sixteen seconds in. I want to bend her to me. I unpause.

An old cartoon. Silhouettes in front of golden conductor music. From the Hollywood Bowl, perhaps?

Now a sign for the Chateau Marmont. The minx looks right at the camera, a tight yellow thing with her back to a whitewashed wall. Her eyes and lips knowing and big. She begins to do her throaty thing through those lips. Oh, god.

Whistling my name.

A time-lapse flower blooms and an awful hipster does a backflip off a swing.

I look up at a broken window, then back down at my cigarette. I can’t stop now. I unpause.

They plunge into the deep cool pools. Now we’re on the Sunset Strip.

(I have no friends.)

She is so beautiful it almost…

Back to the cartoon and more golden music and a sign, again, for the Chateau Marmont. California! Hollywood! Yes, yes!

She’s now in a tight yellow thing and she peers at me, her back, again to that whitewashed wall. Her eyes know something. She sings, throaty through those lips. Oh, god, sublime! Yes, yes.

Then a drunken woman stumbles in a gold dress with limos all around. She’s being led to them. 86ed and drunk. Flash bulbs burst. Through those lips: Take that body downtown.

I can’t stop watching. This has gone on for eleven years. I can’t stop clicking play.

Back on Sunset, we pass a massive iPod (that’s how long this has been intruding on me) billboard. On it, a girl leans back with a big smile, grooving inside headphones. More super cool kids. One does a backflip, and now the fuckers are skateboarding.

Then the voice:

You the bestest. Lean in for a big kiss.

I pause and take a pull. I need to get somewhere, but I have bars and battery, and I need to kill the time.

This is the first segment of a novella. Please follow the timestamps.

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The Greyhound trudged east.

"I bought this in Danville."

She waved a scratch off.

Cold, wet air pushed through vents.

The worn woman pulled her jacket over her shoulders and stared out the window. Up front, the obese driver appeared happy. Above his wheel, a small, powerful fan blew air across his bald head.

Cell phones burned.

The bus stopped at the Vince.

The worn woman bought more lotto, urinated in the restroom, and skimmed her phone. The driver knew the Helix would be clogged and needed to stretch.

Discount airlines circled above and teased the blinky skyline whose sheathed glass refracted a cheap filmy glare. Inside the bus, a young passager prayed for one of them to crash.

Forty minutes later, the bus still had not entered the tunnel.

The worn lady sat tiredly in her seat and ate a stale blueberry muffin. She fingered her scratch-off.

"The city offers us such promise," the worn lady tried to say out loud. "Someone said that somewhere."

Now her scratch-off was half bent, and her shabby nails tried hard not to peel the gold-opaque latex which hid the magic. "I've always loved lotto," the worn lady said. "So much promise."

The bus was under the heavy Hudson. There was no advertising on the tunnel walls.

"Are you both from New York?" the worn woman asked my partner.

"Yes."

"You look like you're from California.”

"No," my partner said.

"Those flat hats," she said. "They wear them there."

"Yes," I said.

"New Yorkers are the best," the worn woman said. "I'm coming back from Michigan. No good, no good."

She seemed drunk, but I knew that wasn’t it.

"You have family here?" my partner asked.

"Kinda," she said.

"Do you work out?" she asked my partner.

She told us she worked out when she was younger. She wished she had a picture to show us as proof. But now her "waistline" had “expanded.” She said she didn’t have the cash to keep up with her body. She told us that when she got nervous, she ate.

The bus emerged onto Manhattan Island. The river at our back.

Outside, the streets were dirty. Bums hunched over hydrants. Shacks outside bars were graffiti-strewn. Parking tickets flapped onto dried wipers.

The roofs were high in Times Square as we pulled into the Port Authority terminal.

"Plenty of lotto here," the worn woman said. “The best in the country.”

The bus driver applied the air brakes.

"You play Keno?" asked my partner.

"Whenever I can. Played a bunch when I was holed up in Paw Paw.”

We stepped off the bus into the wet pretzel air. The worn woman looked back at the grey and blue Greyhound 86430 and smiled.

“Love a new bus.”

The passengers seized their bags.

My mouth went dry as I looked over both shoulders. My partner sucked on his Juul.

I clutched the bag and walked towards 42nd.

A large hand clasped my shoulder as a handie-talkie squelched in the distance.

"Come with us," the cop said.

My partner bolted but was quickly taken down.

The worn woman paid little mind, clutched a quarter, and scratched.

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It was hot. They carried themselves through the sharp thistles to the pond, where they smoked e-cigarettes and listened to the darkness.

He bored them with talk of the night birds: cuckoos, flycatchers, warblers, vireos, thrushes, orioles, sparrows. He lusted over their names; it indicated deep reading and paying attention to nature and stuff.

Later, the moon appeared, and the air cooled. Birds he couldn't name flew above. Bessler and Cora giggled and gossiped as the beautiful Marie stretched out on a still-warm rock. The seductive night was rackety and humming. He said nothing of the buzz of cicadas, crickets, and katydids. He cursed himself for not remembering their names. They heard trucks on the highway, which ruined everything, and Marie's mannequin movements were misplaced on the rock. They all stared, which made him feel accepted.

They manipulated each other to escape the tedium and false rhythm of the conference. Their hips contorted in Humanscale Liberty seats despite the elegant, intelligent counterbalance recline mechanism and form-sensing mesh. In the end, the chairs (they couldn't stop talking about the chairs) finally forfeited to the sinister sulfites they sprayed on the salads and the bowel-seizing Stumptown blend that was never quite hot enough.

He clicked on every slide. He kept them late, then wandered with Marie around the unconscious hotel like a doltish Afgan Hound. They all knew but said nothing but didn't resent Marie despite her beauty and duplicity.

On the last night, he brought her down to the moist pond; alone. Moon shadows stained the water yellow. They heard sirens from the slippery highway. He lied about divorce and how there wasn't enough money to go around. She believed him because it was easier. She'd done this all before. She knew it didn't matter. She had no real friends or family and didn't care what others thought. She did these things to feel alive; broken, and oozing.

Marie saved their text messages and scrolled through them when she was alone. The light blurbs communicated the quality service retail drudgery of it all; volume accounts, embarrassing photos, drunken emojis, and cheap summer midriffs.

The conference finally ended, and they all returned to their apartments and townhouses and split levels and tried to forgive and forget.

Marie kept on in the seclusion of her tilted condo in Four Points, and he remained burrowed in a managed community in Round Rock. In late fall, they began to quarrel. 

He felt sick about letting her go but picked up Pickleball at Barton Creek, and his knees seemed okay, which helped a lot. He was lonely at first, but the kids played along, which was all he ever wanted from anyone. His wife kept busy with… 

Marie found quality consulting work and decided to buy a Bright Blue Chevrolet Bolt EUV Premier 2LZ 4-Door FWD hatchback. She'd earned it. The insurance was pricey, but those new tax credits aided and encouraged her to do the right thing. She was finally ready for something new. The microdosing helped, but this new electric car permitted her to be an unbiased witness to herself. It would allow her to be more accepting and aware, open and curious and trusting, more apt to let go and be young and vibrant, to pay attention in a particular way, to be "on purpose" and present enough to continue to grow. Above all, she would be mindful and without judgment.

- “Is there an income limit on the EV tax credit?” Marie asked the cute curly-haired salesman as she pulled those delicious watery vapors from her teal Vuse.

- “I know, I know! It's complicated but intentional in all the right ways. If you give me a moment, I can explain everything," he said with an alluring smile.

Wow! She knew she'd made a conscious, deliberate, and correct choice. Was this what it meant to finally lay down one's burden? Either way, things were looking up.

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If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. - C. S. Lewis

I didn’t want him here. He keeps in touch with them, not me.

I barely remember cousin Bobby. He got in a car accident down in Florida. Banged up. I was sorry when I heard about it, but it ain’t my business.

My brother sticks his nose where it don’t belong. He told everyone Bob could come up with us.

A people pleaser, my brother. Mr. Good Guy. He did the right thing when everyone was looking. If you want to know what kind of guy my brother is, ask his ex-wife or one of his kids.

Now a cripple’s coming, and we don’t have a ramp.

My brother remembered everything.

“Ya remembah yo-yo season?” he’d ask.

He gets all mad if you don’t.

“You don’t remembah yo-yo season? We had one every spring.”

“Membah Tupper’s on Flatbush? They wizz 15¢ each. We’d sprint outta there wit them yo-yo’s. Slam em off da sidewalk. Membah when the loop fell off ya finggah? Bounced right inta da sewwah. A red one. Cheerio, right? Ya don’t remembah?”

“Nope.”

“Remembah da smell of Ebbinger’s on a Saturday?”

“Yeah.”

“Remembah goin’ ta see da double features at da RKO Kenmore?”

“Yeah.”

“Remembah da old graves at da Dutch Reformed Church?”

“Yeah.”

“Kenmore Lanes?”

“Yeah.”

“Da dances in Prospect Park?”

“Yeah, I remembah da dances.”

“Remembah when we got dat free meal at Pancake Alley?”

“No.”

“What was da name a dat little record store on Atlantic next ta Brighton Billiards?”

“Dat was on Rodgers!”

“Dat was on Flatbush!”

This would go on day and night, year after year.

One morning, he’d handed me photos from an old Bostonian shoebox.

“Yeah, see dat’s Bob and me and you up in da Catskills when we whizz kids. What whizz da name a dat place?”

I rubbed my forehead.

“Come on! You remembah?”

“Da Pines?” I said.

“No!”

“Da Friar Tuck Inn?” 

I just wanted coffee and peace.

“Yeah, dats it! Da Friar Tuck Inn!”

I nodded and prayed he’d leave me alone.

I poured a cup and opened the paper. Again, he hovered. More pictures. I pretended to care. You had to. Very sensitive.

My brother called Bob after his crash. As I said, he’s good like that.

“Stay with us.”

My brother doesn’t ask; he insists. He takes ‘no’ personally. The family knows this. He don’t know they all know.

Then he put me on the phone.

“Yeah, sorry, Bob. Feel better. God bless.”

What the hell else could I say? I handed the phone back. My brother went on and on about his ex-wife, and how the kids didn’t talk to him. Then a few old cop stories, then back to his old lady.

“Get off da fuckin’ phone!” I yelled. “We’ll see ‘em when we see him.” 

Three weeks later, my brother, phone to ear, scribbled a flight number and hung up, giddy.

“LaGuardia?” I said. 

“LaGuardia.” 

“This prick’s really comin’?”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so?”

He was coming.

I walked out of the kitchen, and down the little hallway to mom’s bedroom.

I got boxes up from the basement and cleared the place out.

After, I drove to the medical supply store on Ralf Avenue and bought all the cripple stuff: rails to put around the shitter and the shower, rails for the bed, and those stabilizer things. For all I knew, Bob could have been three hundred pounds. I also got one of those seats for inside the shower. They got everything you need for cripples at that store on Ralf.

When I got home, I set it all up.

As I drilled and screwed, I thought about Bob having to sit down to piss; a grown man—Jesus! Then I wondered how we would get the wheelchair up the steps in front. No ramp.

The day we picked up Bob, I asked my brother if he needed to rent one of those special vans with the lifts.

“Nah. He says he's good.”

“What about the wheelchair? Is it gonna fit in the trunk?”

“He told me it folds right up.”

“They fold dat small? He’s got the bags and stuff.”

“Yeah, if it don’t, I’ll trow it in da backseat.”

My brother drove a big Crown Vic, so I knew there’d be room. Drove it like Willy Sutton.

“What time ya leavin’?” I asked.

“Now.”

“Okay, I’ll see ya, lata.”

When he was gone, I watched the Yankee game. I hate the Yankees, but I like the baseball, you know? The Mets are my team, but they weren’t on till later. By the third inning, it was already 9-0, with Clemens on the mound for Boston. It felt good. Then the Yanks started chipping away and ended up winning 12-11. Wayne Tolleson hit the game-winner off Schiraldi. Stoddard got the win. Mattingly had four hits. It was a good game.

It was early evening when I heard the Crown Vic pull up. I peeked through the curtains. My brother got out of the big car and headed for the trunk. I couldn’t really make out Bob. I wondered how we’d get him out of the car. Then they saw me.

“Dare-e-is,” my brother said. Then he waved me out to help.

Bob slouched at a weird angle in the passenger seat. I put my hand out to him.

“Hey, Bob,” I said. “How da hell ya doin’?”

“How do I look like I’m doing?” he said.

“Ya look good.”

He looked like shit. Old. Dirty. Broke. Crippled. I had to look away. Some mope stared from across the street. My brother wheeled the chair to the passenger side.

“How ya wanna do this?” I said.

“Swing his feet around.”

“Will dat hurt em?”

“No,” Bob said.

I pulled his legs out of the car, nearly puking from the sour rancid stink coming from his crotch. But I stuck in. Grabbed his dirty white Velcro sneakers and pulled them out of the car.

“Now get under his armpits and pull him up inta da chair,” my brother said.

It was all too much. I stepped away and watched my brother bury his face into Bob’s sunken chest. Somehow he ignored the awful smell, pulled him from the bench seat and into the chair. I don’t know how he did it.

I stared and hated them both.

Now we had to get him up the fucking steps without a ramp, a brutal ascent to our four rooms.

“How ya doin’, Bob? Hangin’ in there?” my brother asked. 

“Sure, sure. All good. All good.” 

My brother started to push. Bob almost went ass over.

“The brake!”

Bob looked down, trying to explain how to unlock the brake.

“There’s tension to it. Hold it there and pull it toward you. No, the other way!”

Thick bastards. Pathetic. When I looked up, I saw that Pakistani.

“Take a picture, ya fuck!” I yelled.

“Neighborhood’s changing, huh?” Bob asked.

Somehow the brake released, and my brother pushed Bob toward the steps.

“Let’s get dis big lug inside for a beer.” 

“Sorry, we ain’t got no ramp,” my brother said.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Bob said.

Bob didn’t have to worry.

We dragged him up the steps. I thought we’d die. We took a blow after each one.

Next, we had to get him through the door. It was tight, about half an inch on each side. Somehow we made it. We took another blow in the four-by-four foyer.

“Well, here we are.”

“Thanks, guys.”

“Family’s family,” my brother said.

We wheeled Bob into the living room. Now the Mets were on. Kiner explained how Philadelphia scored three runs in the second and three more in the third and how Lance Parrish hit a two-out bomb off of El Sid, and Johnson yanked him and put in that bum Doug Sisk.

“Fernandez been pitchin’ like a mamook all month,” I said to nobody.

“They let ya drink, Bob?” my brother asked.

“Sure,” Bob said.

I grabbed three Schaefers from the icebox and handed them out. We watched the game in silence. Fine with me. Then I felt bad, so I asked Bob a question.

“So how were things goin’ down in Florida before ya had da wreck?” 

Bob looked away and tapped his wheelchair.

We stayed silent for a whole inning, including commercials. Fine with me.

I stared at Bob as he watched the game and drank his beer. What a mess. Those dirty khakis a hundred times too big, and a stained (ketchup, mustard, whiskey) and wrinkled white Oxford with a terrible Eisenhower-era paisley tie. He looked like a crippled, defrocked, pederast priest who dressed up for a plane ride. He’d failed shaving too: nicked up, dried blood everywhere, patches of thick grey stubble. His dilapidated wheelchair looked North Korean, all rusted tin and dried rubber. But old Bob didn’t seem to mind. He had my brother, a beer, and the ballgame.

I gulped my Schaefer. Bob saw me and did the same. I got up and got another round.

HoJo homered. I yelled from the kitchen. Nobody said a word.

“Ya boys don’t smoke no more?” Bob asked after the game.

“No, we quit,” my brother said. 

“Oh.”

“Why? Ya need smokes?” I asked.

What was I saying?

“Well,” Bob shrugged.

I couldn’t believe this fucking guy.

“I’ll make a run,” I said. 

“No, no, that’s not what I was sayin’. I was just askin’, you know, like if you had em around maybe. It’s no big deal.”

“I’ll go out and get ya a pack,” I said. “Whatta ya smoke?”

“Lemme give you some money.” 

I was gone quick, and I knew that made him feel bad, which made me feel bad.

I headed over to O’Bannon’s on U and drank a glass of Bud with a Dewers on the rocks. The 10 o’clock news was on.

“What’s up?” Jerry nodded at me. “Ya see da game?”

“They gotta get rid a dat fat bastid.”

“Come on! He’s been pitchin’ great.” 

Jerry won the novice Golden Gloves at 152 in 1959.  

“Cousin’s in town,” I said.

“Jimmy?”

“No, Bob.”

“I don’t think I know Bob.”

“Thank God.”

Jerry shrugged. “Hey, family’s family.” 

I watched the news and finished my drinks. 

“Lemme get a pack of Lucky’s.”

“You back smokin’?”

“Nah, they’re for Bob.”

He slapped the pack down on the bar and took my ten.

“Lights?” I asked.

“Sorry.” Jerry slapped the matches on the red circle. 

I left the change and took off.

“Take care, Jerry.”

“Havva, good one, pal.”

It was late now.

That gap-toothed moron was on. Bob chain-smoked like Gleasson and drank five more Schaefers. He hadn’t pissed, yet. That worried me.

“Well, guys, I think I gotta take a piss.”

“Ya think, or ya do?”

“I do.”  

My brother gave me the ‘you take him’ look. I nodded toward the cigarettes.

“I’ll show ya to da can,” my brother said.

My brother wheeled Bob down the tight hallway and stopped at the bathroom. There was no way the chair would make it through that door. I watched my brother squeeze past Bob and into the can. The lights went on, and then my brother’s big head poked out. He hooked his arms under Bob’s pits. He was going to drag him over to the shitter. 

How many times a day were we going to have to do this? 

Bob wrapped his arms around my brother’s neck, and then, though I couldn’t see, he must have shimmied him on the toilet. I heard grunting and giggling, then a few seconds later, I heard the sound of piss hitting the water. Gallons of it. It went on for ages. When he finished, he somehow tossed him back in the chair and rolled him to the living room.

“I feel like a million bucks,” Bob said.

I wanted to go to bed. 

Bob lit another Lucky.

The show went into a commercial, and they both went back down memory lane.

“At this hour?” I yelled.

“What’s with you?” my brother said.

They went on and on. The past is the past. Let it go.

I got up and put on channel 13. They showed a program about the Erie Canal. I wanted to watch it but couldn’t concentrate. They kept talking. I turned up the volume. My brother got up.

“I’m off. Goodnight, men.” He put his hand on Bob’s shoulder.

“The room’s all made up,” he said.

I made it up, not him.

Bob lit his seventieth cigarette.

We sat in silence. I could hear my brother snoring. Bob looked drunk. I knew he was going to have to go again. I didn’t know what they did in there. Would I have to shake it and put it back in? Would there be tubes?

I don’t like touching people. I never have. And I don’t like being touched. I like being left alone.

I panicked. I thought I might cry. I never hurt anybody. I think I’m good, but I know what they think of me. People can’t mind their own business. Always poking. He brought him here, not me.

I looked around: empty beer cans, the old plastic ashtray from the Concord Hotel filled with wet butts. The smoke back in the curtains.

“Hey, you okay?” Bob said to me.

I turned to him. “I still got my legs.” 

“Yeah, good. You think you could use ‘em to get me another beer?”

He waved the empty and smiled. He was trying to be funny, so I wouldn’t feel so bad about what I’d said.

I grabbed the last Schaefer from the icebox, handed it to him, and sat back down.

The TV flickered. The narrator’s voice spoke over an old painting of somewhere in upstate New York by the banks of the canal. In it, a guy in a top hat held hands with a broad in a bonnet. All around them were trees and green rolling hills and, some kind of party, and fireworks over the canal.

“Work was completed in October of 1825, and there was much fanfare. Cannons were fired in succession for the entire length of the canal, from Buffalo to New York City. A flotilla of boats led by Governor Dewitt Clinton sailed the route in ten days aboard the Seneca Chief. When he arrived, he poured a glass jar of Lake Erie water into New York Harbor.”

Bob dropped his beer. The foam rose on the carpet. I could smell it.

“You all right, Bob?”

“I gotta go to the bathroom.”

It all went fuzzy. I remember I shut off the TV, then wheeled Bob toward the can. 

There at the narrow door, as my brother had, I squeezed past Bob and flipped on the light.

I opened the toilet lid. Dabs of yellow piss were all over the seat. I wiped it off. 

“Sorry,” Bob said from the narrow hallway.

My hands shook. Old Bob slumped in the chair, helpless. I took a deep breath and hooked my arms under his armpits as my brother had done. I could smell his sourness, beer, cigarettes. He grabbed me around my neck. We were cheek to cheek. In one motion, I dragged him from his wheelchair and dropped him on the bowl. My heart pounded. I struggled to catch my breath. Bob unbuckled his cracked leather belt, and I unbuttoned his pants. The room stank of Bob.

“Could you give me a hand?”

“Okay.”

I pulled his pants down to his white hairy ankles. I saw a forest of grey pubic hair. I looked away, into the mirror, and saw myself.

“I’m good now,” Bob said. “Can you give me a minute?”

I retreated. The light slipped out from under the door and shone dull on my tube socks. I wept as I stared down at dry paint flakes, yellow and faded. I remembered painting this hall with my brother for mom, years back. Every part of me was lonely then, too. I leaned thickly against the wall and crossed my arms as I drifted and swooned and tried to think of a time when I didn’t feel like this.

His piss ended, and I went back in. Bob’s khakis pooled around his hairless ankles.

I did not hesitate, but went directly to him, knelt on the tile floor, and pulled his pants back up. Bob grabbed my shirt and whispered in my ear.

“I’m sorry for all this.”

I stood up.

“Don’t worry; tomorrow, we’ll get some lumbah and put a ramp in.” 

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