‘Well you better! And if you insist on being crazy and going out, wear my scarf!’
‘Okay. Good idea.’ He pulled on his topcoat and buttoned it facing away from her, so she wouldn’t see how his hands were shaking. When he turned around, Vi was just disappearing back into the bathroom. He stood there in fascinated silence for several moments, waiting to hear if she would scream this time, and then the water began to run in the basin. This was followed by the sound of Vi brushing her teeth in her usual manner: con brio.
He stood there a moment longer, and his mind suddenly offered its verdict in four flat, non-nonsense words: I’m losing my grip.
It might be . . . but that didn’t change the fact that if he didn’t take a whiz very soon, he was going to have an embarrassing accident. That, at least, was a problem he couls solve, and Howard took a certain comfort in the fact. He opened the door, began to step out, then paused to pull Vi’s scarf off the hook.
When are you going to tell her about this latest fascinating development in the life of Howard Mitla? his mind inquired suddenly.
Howard shut the thought out and concentrated on tucking the ends of the scarf into the lapels of his overcoat.
The Mitla apartment was on the fourth floor of a nine-story building on Hawking Street. To the right and half a block down, on the corner of Hawking and Queens Boulevard, was Lah’s Twenty-Four-Hour Delicatessen and Convenience Market. Howard turned left and walked to the end of the building. Here was a narrow alleyway, which gave on the airshaft at the rear of the building. Trash-bins lined both sides of the alley. Between them were littery spaces where homeless people — some but by no means of them winos — often made their comfortless newspaper beds. No one seemed to have taken up residence in the alley this evening, for which Howard was profoundly grateful.
He stepped between the first and second bins, unzipped, and urinated copiously. At first the relief was so great that he felt almost blessed in spite of the evening’s trials, but as the flow slackened and he began to consider his position ‘again, anxiety started creeping back in.
His position was, in a word, untenable.
Here he was, pissing against the wall of the building in which he had a warm, safe apartment, looking over his shoulder all the while to see if he was being observed. The arrival of a junkie or a mugger while he was in such a defenseless position would be bad, but he wasn’t sure that the arrival of someone he knew — the Fensters from 2C, for instance, or the Dattlebaums from 3F
— wouldn’t be even worse. What could he say? And what might that motormouth Alicia Fenster say to Vi?
He finished, zipped his pants, and walked back to the mouth of the alley. After a prudent look in both directions, he proceeded down to Lah’s and bought a can of Pepsi-Cola from the smiling, olive-skinned Mrs. Lah.
‘You look pale tonight, Mr. Mit-ra,’ she said through her constant smile. ‘Peering all right?’
Oh yes, he thought. I’m fearing just fine, thank you, Mrs. Lah. Never better on that score.
‘I think I might have caught a little bug at the sink,’ he told her. She began to frown through her smile and he realized what he had said. ‘At the office, I mean.’
‘Better bunder up walm,’ she said. The frown line had smoothed out of her almost ethereal forehead. ‘Radio say cold weather is coming.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, and left. On his way back to the apartment, he opened the Pepsi and poured it out on the sidewalk. Considering the fact that his bathroom had apparently become hostile territory, the last thing he needed tonight was any more to drink.
When he let himself in again, he could hear Vi snoring softly in the bedroom. The three beers had sent her off quickly and efficiently. He put the empty soda can on the counter in the kitchen, and then paused outside the bathroom door. After a moment or two, he tilted his head against the wood.
Scratch-scratch. Scritch-scritch-scratch.
‘Dirty son of a bitch,’ he whispered.
He went to bed without brushing his teeth for the first time since his two-week stint at Camp High Pines, when he had been twelve and his mother had forgotten to pack his toothbrush.
And lay in bed beside Vi, wakeful.
He could hear the sound of the finger making its ceaseless exploratory rounds in the bathroom sink, the nail clicking and tap-dancing. He couldn’t really hear it, not with both doors closed, and he knew this, but he imagined he heard it, and that was just as bad.
No, it isn’t, he told himself. At least you know you’re imagining it. With the finger itself you’re not sure.
This was but little comfort. He still wasn’t able to get to sleep, and he was no closer to solving his problem. He did know he couldn’t spend the rest of his life making excuses to go outside and pee in the alley next to the building. He doubted if he could manage that for even forty-eight hours. And what was going to happen the next time he had to take a dump, friends and neighbors? There was a question he’d never seen asked in a round of Final Jeopardy, and he didn’t have a clue what the answer might be. Not the alley, though — he was sure of that much, at least.
Maybe, the voice in his head suggested cautiously, you’ll get used to the damned thing.
No. The idea was insane. He had been married to Vi for twenty-one years, and he still found it impossible to go to the bathroom when she was in there with him. Those circuits just overloaded and shut down. She could sit there cheerily on the John, peeing and talking to him about her day at Dr. Stone’s while he shaved, but he could not do the same. He just wasn’t built that way.
If that finger doesn ‘t go away on its own, you better be prepared to make some changes in the way you’re built, then, the voice told him, because I think you’re going to have to make some modifications in the basic structure.
He turned his head and glanced at the clock on the bed-table. It was quarter to two in the morning . . . and, he realized dolefully, he had to pee again.
He got up carefully, stole from the bedroom, passed the closed bathroom door with the ceaseless scratching, tapping sounds still coming from behind it, and went into the kitchen. He moved the step-stool in front of the kitchen sink, mounted it, and aimed carefully into the drain, ears cocked all the while for the sound of Vi getting out of bed.
He finally managed . . . but not until he had reached three hundred and forty-seven in his catalogue of prime numbers. It was an all-time record. He replaced the step-stool and shuffled back to bed, thinking: I can’t go on like this. Not for long. I just can’t.
He bared his teeth at the bathroom door as he passed it.
When the alarm went off at six-thirty the next morning, he stumbled out of bed, shuffled down to the bathroom, and went inside.
The drain was empty.
‘Thank God,’ he said in a low, trembling voice. A sublime gust of relief — relief so great it felt like some sort of sacred revelation — blew through him. ‘Oh, thank G — ‘
The finger popped up like a Jack popping out of a Jack-in-the-box, as if the sound of his voice had called it. It spun around three times, fast, and then bent as stiffly as an Irish setter on point.
And it was pointing straight at him.
Howard retreated, his upper lip rising and falling rapidly in an unconscious snarl.
Now the tip of the finger curled up and down, up and down . . . as if it were waving at him.
Good morning, Howard, so nice to be here.
‘Fuck you,’ he muttered. He turned and faced the toilet. He tried resolutely to pass water . . .
and nothing. He felt a sudden lurid rush of rage . . . an urge to simply whirl and pounce on the nasty intruder in the sink, to rip it out of its cave, throw it on the floor, and stamp on it in his bare feet.
‘Howard?’ Vi asked blearily. She knocked on the door. ‘Almost done?’
‘Yes,’ he said, trying his best to make his voice normal. He flushed the toilet.
It was clear that Vi would not have known or much cared if he sounded normal or not, and she took very little interest in how he looked. She was suffering from an unplanned hangover.