Pariah

Italian joke book, stereotypes all-bushy eyebrows and mustaches, arms hairy as apes’, speaking in Dese’a, dems’a, and dose’a spumoni-Inglese. For twenty-two years Abe had gotten pizza there and never knew their names. That was New York for you. Intimate anonymity. You could see the same people day in and day out and never know a damned thing about them.

“You know the latch was closed.”

“Yeah,” Dabney said. “I forget who was up here last, but sometimes I get locked out. S’alright. Not like I come down anyway. Knees bugging you, Abe?”

“Knees, back, everything. Bursitis, arthritis, a little bronchitis, you name it. I’m an old Jew. Everything hurts. What doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.”

Dabney laughed. “Don’t have to be Jewish for that shit.”

“Oh yeah? So what hurts you, Mr. Non-Jew?”

“No, I don’t want to have that conversation. I’d rather keep this on the upbeat tip, if it’s all the same. Whyn’tchoo come on over and park your narrow behind?”

“Suits me.” Abe, clutching Alan’s Phil Dick paperback, stepped over to the shady spot where Dabney sat, his back against a low wall. With some difficulty Abe took a seat on that wall, the top of which was capped with curved tile. “I can’t sit on the floor like that. I’d never get up again.” He propped open the book and slipped on his smudgy reading glasses. Dabney took the cue and fished out his own book and was about to read when Abe slapped the paperback closed and said, “How can it never rain and be so goddamned humid? It’s getting maybe a little gray on the horizon, do you think? Or am I crazy?”

“No, there’s some gray. Could just be haze.”

“Haze. Yes. Yes. No cars and we still got smog.” He trailed off. “What are you reading?”

Dabney held up a copy of Time Out of Joint, by Philip K. Dick. Abe showed Dabney his borrowed copy of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. They both smiled.

“Courtesy of that Zotz kid, am I right?” asked Abe.

“You are correct.”

“I think maybe that’s all that kid has is Dick.”

“No, that would be those meatheads in 4B and C. They got all the dick they can handle.”

The two men laughed.

“I don’t know who those schmucks think they’re fooling keeping separate apartments. You can hear their mishegoss whenever they get up to it. When I was in the service we had some fellas like them: straight laced and hard as nails on the outside. Guys with the pictures of femmes fatale of the big screen and so on. But they didn’t fool anyone. Once they were safely away from home, they were off to the races. You know that’s why New York and San Francisco are, um, were knee deep in faygelehs, right? All these fellas come home and they’ve got a choice: go home to Podunk and step back in the closet, or stay in the port town and make a new life. They chose wisely, I think.”

“So you think it’s okay to be homosexual?”

“I don’t care one way or the other. Never did, so long as their attentions weren’t on me. I had a few make goo-goo eyes at me; that I didn’t care for. But live and let live, I say. And now, what difference does any of it make? People are going to expend energy on carnality come what may, and use the available outlets-or inlets. Whichever. I’ll tell you, the best thing about getting old was that my libido, which controlled me all my post- adolescent life, finally died. Too bad it came right along with all this mess. I never got to enjoy my belated Age of Reason. And the hell with Viagra. Viagra’s only good if you’ve got a young honey waiting in your bed. No pill in the world could make me want to shtup the pill I’m married to.” Dabney snickered. “Yeah, easy for you to laugh. That woman is no picnic.” After a reflective pause, Abe looked up and, rubbing his knees, said, “I need to take my constitutional. Want to join me?”

Dabney helped Abe up off the wall and the two men strolled the roof. After two circuits of their building, Abe suggested they walk to the end of the row, assuring his companion he could make it over the walls. Dabney was in no mood to carry Abe back home. He liked the old geezer but would just as soon spare himself the piggyback routine. When they reached the north end of the line, Abe needed to sit down again. There was a rusty folding chair near the two oxidized bicycles permanently bonded to a metal guardrail. With their tires rotted away and everything glazed in a multihued orange patina, they looked more like modern art than defunct transportation. Abe was huffing and puffing like he’d run the marathon. Twice.

Dabney looked at Abe, who sat there panting, hands gripping his quaking knees. Though the geezer’s face looked all right-partly because it was enshrouded in beard-his hands were cadaverous, the skin like yellowed tracing paper speckled with liver spots. His fingertips came to disturbing points, the skin so close to the bone it barely masked it. A drop hit Dabney’s nose and he wiped it away with annoyance.

A drop?

A drop!

Annoyance transformed to rapture, his eyes shooting up from the old man to the sky above, which was thick with dark gray clouds. Another drop plopped right in his eye and Dabney’s grin was so broad he feared his face might halve itself. More drops began to pelt the two men. Abe stopped rubbing and looked up in disbelief. Within the minute a downpour was dousing the two men, who clasped each other around the biceps and jigged. After a few waltzing rotations Abe broke free and began to unbutton his shirt. “Modesty be damned,” he cried.

“Damn straight,” agreed Dabney.

Both men peeled off their clinging duds and basked in the refreshing deluge.

“We have to tell the others!” Abe said, eyes wide.

“I’ll do it. I can get to the building faster than you, old timer.”

Dabney raced across the rooftops doing the low hurdles in record time, the water streaming down his naked body. When he reached the stairwell he threw open the door only to be greeted by a scream. He stepped back and there stood Ellen and Alan, both clutching stacked containers to collect water.

“I’m sorry,” Ellen said. “I didn’t mean to scream. You just surprised me. I’m not used to having a naked man greet me on the roof.”

“S’alright,” Dabney said, stepping out of the way.

They quickly arranged the assortment of pots and cans, which joined the garbage cans, buckets, plastic drawers, and file boxes already there, then stripped nude and joined Dabney in the aqueous bacchanal. Alan handed Dabney a bar of soap.

“You don’t miss a trick,” he said, accepting it gladly.

Dave appeared at the door, followed by Karl, who had escorted Ruth upstairs. Straightaway everyone was naked, except Ruth, who looked away in embarrassment.

“Where’s Abe?” she moaned.

“Oh shit,” Dabney snorted, midlather. “I’ll go get him.” Trailing suds, Dabney tore ass across the roofs. When he got there, Abe was sitting in a concavity full of water, like a shallow tub, kicking his feet like a toddler in a wading pool. Dabney tossed the soap into the basin and soon Abe was lathering up, his eyes closed in euphoria.

“You forget the simplest of pleasures when you’re denied everything,” Abe said. “Bathing. Being wet. It’s marvelous.”

“Ruth was wondering where you were. She’s up on our roof.”

“Is she naked?” Abe gasped, his beatitude shaken.

“No.”

“Oh thank God. No one needs to see that, least of all me.”

“It would be kind of a buzzkill.”

Four rooftops over, the tempest orgy continued. For the first time in months laughter was the dominant sound-that and the roar of torrential rainfall. Karl and Dave had erections, but neither thought of sex. They were just pleasure boners from the sheer joy of being wet. The cloudburst was luscious. Karl and Dave were splashing each other with bucketsful of water. Their bodies, virtually hairless except for rain-matted pubes and armpit patches, glistened in the diffuse light. Ellen looked at Alan’s hairy body, his thin chest carpeted in wet black fur. Even dissipated, his was a man’s body. The others were boys’, not that that was a bad thing. Even Dave looked enticing. Eddie was the one who really frightened and offended her.