A moment of scrotal tingle, gastric fizz — his teeth tear lips, loosing proliferant perforations in his flesh…Felice, honey, his wife long dead unkaddished, I’ll be out, assurance, any moment now and then, another onslaught: gnash gulp hic and, finally — there’s a give, a slow slip, it’s first a rumbling, then a slick licking of insides clean, the bared mirror of the soul. Feigenbaum mouths a tongue of dreck, snakes himself a distended turd out from the tightwad of his pucker, passing whole as if — fear — it’s his own tongue he’d bitten without chewing, then swallowed down the throat, as the throat and out, digestion forsaken; this bullock’s tongue, bulrushed past reeds of pubic hair, in a stream hissing steam — his water turned to blood.
Can you keep it down in there?
A shout from the sofa.
Maybe I can’t — who wants to know?
Ben’s questioning voice, intercoming distant over the squeak of Feigenbaum’s shoes on tile, which won’t be shattered, no matter the footing. A lull, as flakes accumulate, a dusting of paper pills, dead skin, to go searching for coins under the cushions, worthless anymore. To make all our eyes into knees, then knuckle. Clasp and bow for prayer. Feigenbaum righting himself into a gag, then grubbing at the tank as his other hand armed with dignity — which are fingers kept with nails that’ve kept their neatness, despite attempts to fist himself to pure — gathers in the crumpled tissue desperate wisps of blood; stinging, lancinate…still seated, trembles, then with last honor unbends himself upright to gather his slacks to belt, cinches pinching — blood gushes down his chin, rushing out the hole, to gather thick amid the stubble. As if he’d cut himself from shaving, bum a wipe to wad it up. With a heave, he throws himself against the tank, flushes with his elbow, with his shoulder jiggles once the handle, twice; it’s locked…it’s clogged, he plunges with a shimmy of his sit, then with his fallen head; tosses his body entire into the bowl of waste, up and down again and up the suction, to flail again at flushing; it won’t, not yet; hurls himself full upon the mess, his face and mouths what word, what name, deep into that rising filth, the font fouled, a rabid stoup. He tries to say but can’t, his own mouth clogged, blood and gums and what teeth left are only dentures loosed: hardened hunks to texture stool, as if to solidify, to make material while around his head, what manner of watery dispersal; showered pissy and soglogged paper: fills his ears, his nose, and eyes, overflows his form, which is erected now with the force of plunge and suck — is finally stuffed up then straight down into the toilet’s hole, his feet kicking for the fixture, the sconce a step above his shoe; to dim discomfiture, the mothflown, heelsnapped glass. His mouth sucks blood, suckles bone…and then, an impossible mass floods up, erupts him from his shallow, to spit him out limp to the tile, grouted amid waves of putrescent wake rolling out and under the crack, to crash a floor beyond the threshold — the draft, its door, then out onto the parquet and down the hallway just polished by a sister, which…down all halls and all stairs leaky through their slots; out the doors and windows and the drains of the sinks onto, then, the scurryrattling rodents’ tail gutters, to foul the Island proper; to come, soon, to a calming tide, lapping gently at the sewered edge of the Hudson’s ice, which hardens it to death.
Feigenbaum lies small on the floor. Withered trees around His house shake, shiver, then still, their roots soaking in the rippled, dreckdappled reek…life renewing always; trunks wrapped a waste in leafy paper stained with fruit, moldy, spoiled. Feigenbaum, their shriveled fig, left sprawled for the avid plucking in an ocean of his juice, a dark milk without a wake: flooding past the closets for winter clothes and past the closets for spring clothes and the closets, the parquet to the rug, Hanna’s favorite, absorbent blue, colorfast and manufactured stainresistant, or so holds its hidden tag; flowing ambit to the frontdoor, then out it, engulfing the mat that says Shalom, down the stoop, down Nitz’s walk then, to pool around the slate islands of that path, past the dead grass and frozen sprinklerheads, the little stretch of sidewalk poured and its tiny curb of one block long if that, the limits of His recreation; up the halls to the familyroom, the halls to the livingroom, and the halls to rooms, for laundry, for guests, for company and brunch — up to lap His toes; Ben ensconced atop a couch, its cushions drenched to stuffing — to float the furnishings amid the room that would have been the den, at the height of the middle mullion of the windows. He reaches a worried hand over to the bobbing, wetly creaking endtable, to gather up the phone from its cradle; to rock to a reassuring tone; the sympathy of the directline…what to say, He dials nothing — the only call He can make, guess who pays the bills.
