The toilet in the light of morning sparkles, peach enamel, polished chrome, half-filled with water clear as crystal. Leaned over it Becker shirtless one hand braced on porcelain tile, sweatpants sagged below his buttocks and his other hand, his arm works quickly, with a rhythm, breath gone ragged rough but quiet, quiet, held, expression gripped with effort, a swallow interrupted.
The first jet splots the rim, the underside of the upraised seat. The second’s less of a jet than an ooze that heavily falls to mar the water, a whitely oily bolus that unskeins itself apart, a creamy cloud thinning to watery milk, and Becker shivers. Sighs as he catches sight of his sticky fingers. Tears away a couple of squares of toilet paper to fold and wipe. Eyes the splotch left slickly glistening on the toilet rim as he drops the wadded paper in the bowl. Flushes. Lowers the seat, the lid, to hide it away.
Dressed now, grey trousers, blue-striped shirt, hastening down the stairs into the parlor, shoes in one hand, leatherette portfolio in the other. A messenger bag slumped on the floor there, and with a green-socked foot he toes open the flap of it to tuck the portfolio within. “Hail, the conquering hero!” calls someone from the dining room beyond, Jimmy, baggily soft pants in a zig-zagged profusion of bricky, earthen reds and oranges and yellows, his sideless T-shirt printed with a smiling cartoon, a monocled brown face under a limp-brimmed yellow hat, a signature that says Panama Jack.
“That’s what you’re wearing,” says Becker, slipping on his shoes, hoisting one onto the overwhelmed sofa to tie it.
“You know,” says Jimmy, “it’s a pleasure? To see your grasp of the obvious remains as firm as ever.” Stepping into the parlor, dubiously eyeing the pile of coats, the crumpled cardboard box of books that Becker’s trying not to dislodge. “You really think Oz wants you stepping on the cushions?”
“You told me to wear a tie,” says Becker, setting both feet on the floor, tobacco wingtips, cracked but shining.
“I did,” says Jimmy. “You have a job interview, and ties are appropriate for interviews. I, on the other hand, already have gainful employment, and this?” a gesture, for his own ensemble, “is appropriate for attending a riverfront carnival, which we shall do together, upon the conclusion of today’s job of work.”
Becker stoops, buckle-jangle as he scoops up the messenger bag. “You really think I’m gonna get it.”
“Arnie,” says Jimmy, brushing off Becker’s shoulders. “They hired me, didn’t they?”
•
Last of the water crashing about her feet, she leans a moment against the stained shower wrap, one hand on the knob, dripping head hung low until a growling ratcheting cough drives her up to hawk and spit at the drain.
Sunlight slices through an otherwise unlit office to brightly strike abandoned cubicle walls, slash shadows across empty aisles. At the one end, glass doors look out on a dusty lobby, and one of the cubicle walls has been wrestled into the stark hot light, meanly nubbled panel of it knocked out, and damp dark clothing draped over the top rail to dry, black jeans, a T-shirt, briefs and a limp grey bralette, a pair of once-white socks. Jo sits tailor-fashion on the carpet before it, back to the sun, hair still wetly dark despite the light, mud-colored eyes hooded in shadow. Laid before her a black glass phone, screen cracked, and a limp black leather sheath under a long lean knife, hilt wrapped in dark wire, blade of it tapered to an ineluctable point, but streaked and blotted with darkening orange. A stained bit of cloth wadded in the one hand on her knee. She lifts her other arm to sniff the black-haired pit of it. Tips back her head. Gets to her feet, snags the damp briefs from the rail to yank them on.
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Quickly across a small and empty parking lot toward the overgrown verge, through high stiff grass, dark clothing mostly dry, small grey T-shirt plastered to her, it says something like Bicholim Conflict Diamonds in cracked and fading letters. Hair dried a stiffly indifferent brown. Jo crouches in the scrub and waits, as whipping past the road ahead, from left to right cars trucks and vans until a pause, a gap, she darts across the pavement to the narrow median, clutching the slender trunk of one of the shortly neat young trees planted there at regular intervals, watching, waiting for another gap in the traffic that roars by now right to left.
Crossing a wide field under a cloud-scraped sky, she’s headed for the caravanserai in the far corner, the tilted sedan, the hatchback, the trailer rocked back on its wheels, all paying court among the tents and mounds of junk to the motorcoach stranded before the far line of trees, wheels tangled in scrub, sheet pinned to the side of it, a sign, The Last of the International Harvesters, letters greenly sprayed. Someone’s calling, “Chit-chit!” A dumpy woman, shaking an enormous tub of kibble in both her hands, “chit-chit!” Her sweatshirt says The Thing, What Is It? in letters red and green across the front. Heavy black spectacles seal her eyes away. She sets the tub in the rutted dirt track as Jo approaches, and turns for one of the lawn chairs there before the motorcoach, as rustling threads through the grass all about and junk rattles and clinks, a draped tarp lofts, and cats, a dozen or more, streaming leaping mewling flowing yowling spitting gyring about as she sets the lawn chair by the tub, marmalade and mackerel, lilac and chocolate, spotted, ticked, tuxedo and torbie, cinnamon, silver, and scrabbling over the roof of the motorcoach an extravagantly filthy cream, one eye screwed-up and lost in a flat-nosed face. The dumpy woman sits herself, unlocks the lid of the tub, and reaches for a makeshift scoop, a milk jug with the bottom of it hacked away. She scatters kibble to the ground, over the roil of fur at her feet.
“Jellyroll,” says Jo, pointing. “Handsome Boy. Whitman, Elimiel?” Squatting at the edge of the frenzy. “Elimiel. Jetson, Sir Snugalot. Tony P and Tony Q.”
“Other way round,” says the dumpy woman, “chit-chit!” scattering another scoopful.
“Tony Q,” says Jo, revising her point. “Tony P. Hot Soup. Moonsault, Heisenberg, but I don’t see Springbok?”
“She’s around. Chit-chit!”
“That’s Suplex, and there’s the Majestic Mister Freel, right? And Archibald, and Inquiline, Ersatz, and this,” as that filthy white cat ripples up to her, butting her knee, “is Malocchio, the Great and Terrible.”
“Chit-chit!” The dumpy woman tosses one more scoopful, currents shifting among the cats to follow its pattering fall, and drops the scoop in the tub, starts locking its lid back down. Kibble-crunch and crack, an outraged hiss or two, a scuffle there, “So,” says Jo, “ah, May? You maybe have something that’s good for cleaning knives?”
“What do you have to clean off a knife?” says the dumpy woman, her eyes unreadable behind lightlessly opaque lenses.
“Rust,” says Jo. “I think.”
“Well, rust. You just need some vinegar. Let it soak a bit, then rub it down. It’ll come right off.”
“Vinegar.”
“Might have some, under the sink.” A calico leaps into May’s lap, turns about once and leaps off again as she lift her hand. Almost immediately a blue tabby leaps up to luxuriate in her stroke. “Help me get this inside,” she says, nudging the tub of kibble as Jo gets to her feet. “We’ll see what we can find.”