When I hung up Betty was looking at me with a Buddha smile. I believe I detected in her eye a spark that dated back to prehistoric times-to the days when guys sweated and groaned to prepare a shelter for their mate standing there smiling in the shadows. In some strange way it was nice to think I was obeying an instinct that went back to the dawn of time. I felt I was doing something good-contributing my drop of water to the great river of humanity. Plus, a little puttering never hurt anybody. You’d have a hell of a time these days not running across a sale somewhere in the electric drill and saw department. It allows you to lift your head up a little-feel good about things like shelves. The real secret lies in not blowing every fuse in the house.
“Okay, you happy now?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Hungry?”
We ate, watching a horror movie-some dudes who came out of their graves and went running around in the night screaming. Toward the end, I started yawning-nodding off for two or three seconds-and each time I opened my eyes the nightmare was still going on. They’d found this old lady in a deserted street and were eating her leg. They had gold-plated eyes. They were watching me peel my banana. We waited until every one of them had been roasted with a flamethrower, then went to bed.
We carried the cushions into the bedroom and I swore that the first thing I’d do tomorrow was go buy a mattress-I swore on my mother’s head. We made the bed in silence. We were wiped out. Not one speck of dust showed as the sheets came down like parachutes, stirring the air in the room. We would be able to sleep on our pillows without risk of inhaling a germ.
Early the next morning I heard somebody drumming on the door. I thought I was dreaming. I saw the pale glow of dawn floating timidly behind the window, and the face on the alarm clock was still lit. I had to get up. It gave me a stomachache, but I got used to it. I made sure not to wake Betty and went down stairs.
I opened the door, shivering in the early morning cold. There was this guy standing there, an old guy with a two-day beard, looking at me and smiling. He wore a cap.
“Hey there, I hope I’m not bothering you,” he said. “But are you the one who put that mattress there, by the garbage cans?”
I spotted a garbage truck rolling along slowly behind him, a yellow light revolving on top. I made the connection.
“Well, yeah. Something wrong?”
“We don’t handle them things. Don’t even want to know about them.”
“So, what am I supposed to do with it? Cut it into pieces and swallow it? Take one a day…?”
“Don’t know. It
The street was empty and silent. The day seemed to be stretching like a cat come down from an easy chair. The old man lit a cigarette butt in the golden light.
“I realize it’s a pain,” he said. “I can put myself in your shoes. Nothing more annoying than getting rid of a mattress. But after what happened to Bobby, we don’t mess with them anymore. Plus, it was one just like that, gray with stripes. I can still see old Bobby trying to push it into the compactor. Bang-took his arm straight off. Get the picture…?”
He brought me up short. My eyes were still half glued shut from sleeping. Who was Bobby, anyway? That’s what I was going to ask him, when the guy behind the steering wheel started yelling from the other side of the street.
“Hey, what’s going on? He giving you a hard time?”
“That’s him-Bobby,” the old man said.
Bobby kept it up in the truck. He had his head out the window, making little puffs of steam.
“That guy giving us a pain in the ass over the mattress?” he yelled.
“Cool down, Bobby,” said the old man.
I was cold. I noticed that I was barefoot. There were even a few layers of fog here and there, floating in the early-morning air. My brain was going in slow motion. Bobby decided to open the door of the truck and get out, whining. I shivered. He wore a bulky sweater with the sleeves rolled up. One of his arms sent off light reflections-it ended in a giant hook. It was one of those cheap artificial limbs made out of chrome-totally reimbursed by health insurance, fitted like a shock absorber. I was startled. The old man was looking at the end of his cigarette. He crossed his legs.
Bobby came toward us, rolling his eyes, his mouth twisted into a frown. For a second I thought I was back in front of the TV, watching a scene from the horror movie, only now it was in 3-D. Bobby looked totally nuts. He stopped when he got to the mattress. I saw him clearly-there was a lamp post just over his head, as if put there on purpose. The tears on his cheeks looked like tattooed lightning bolts. I couldn’t hear too well, but I think he was talking to the mattress-whimpering. The old man took a last drag on his cigarette and spit it out, looking into the sky.
“We ain’t come across one in a long time,” he told me.
The cry that Bobby let out pierced my ear like a javelin. I watched him lift the mattress with his one good hand, as if he were grabbing someone by the neck. He stared into its eyes, as if he were holding in front of him the person who had ruined his whole life. He drove his arm into the thing. The hook came out the other side, sprinkling little pieces of stuffing onto the sidewalk. The revolving light gave me the feeling of a giant spider weaving its web all around us.
The old man crushed his cigarette butt, Bobby tore the prosthesis out of the mattress, sobbing. The poor guy tottered on his legs but didn’t go down. Day was breaking. He let out another shriek. This time he aimed a little lower-around stomach level and his moving arm went through it like a howitzer. The mattress bent over in half. Without missing a beat, Bobby freed himself, then went for the head. The cloth must have been brittle-it cracked open with the sound of a pig getting its throat slit.
While Bobby continued to let loose on the mattress, reducing it to bits, the old man looked away. The sidewalk was deserted, with one foot in the night and one finger in daylight. I had the feeling we were waiting for something.
“Okay. That ought to do it,” said the old man. “You want to give me a hand…?”
Bobby was completely exhausted. His hair was plastered against his forehead, as if he’d dunked his head in a tub of water. He let us guide him back to the truck. We sat him down behind the steering wheel. He asked me for a cigarette. I offered him the pack. They were filtered.
He started shaking his dull head.
“Hey, those are faggot cigarettes!”
“Right.”
I could see that he didn’t even remember what had happened. Just to be sure, I glanced over at the mattress. These kinds of people sometimes make you doubt what’s real and what isn’t, and that’s hard enough to deal with under normal circumstances there’s no reason to make things difficult on purpose. By now my feet were completely frozen. The old man tossed a full garbage can into the compactor and I went inside quietly to put some shoes on. Betty was still sleeping. I heard them start down the street and asked myself why I had bothered to put my shoes on, when it was only seven o’clock in the morning. I had nothing special to do and was still pretty sleepy.
16
We worked on the house for a good two weeks, Betty astounding me at every turn. It was a pleasure to work with her, especially now that she’d adopted my pace. She left me alone when I didn’t feel like talking. We stopped regularly to down a few beers, It was nice out. She restocked my mouth with nails, she never screwed up, and she was finally able to use a paintbrush without the paint running up to her elbow. I noticed a million little things that she took care to do correctly she was a natural. There are girls like that-you wonder how many more rabbits they have in their hat. In these eases working with a girl is the best, especially if you’re clever enough to have
