About Face

Infatuation

7 Infatuation Ma is her name. She is at the end—standing at the end of the hall or seated beside his bed watching the TV screen until the last of the credits scroll by—and the beginning. Because Ma is always waiting for the slightest acknowledgement of her presence, she hears the beginning of every one of his utterances with the utmost clarity. “Ma! When you go to Ed’s, buy me a box of cigarettes.” She precedes Lem. For Ma, being there for his beginning was akin to witnessing a miracle. I caused a dilemma when I dragged Di to Lem who was lying near enough but who was just too lethargic etceteras, to get up to meet her on his own accord. He is the type to stay in bed, even starve in bed, so long as he has enough cigarettes to fend off hunger and enough stamina to bring on and hold an erection if a beautiful woman happens to stroll by. I came too late. If ever he is forced to earn some money to pay for his fully blossomed smoking habit he refuses to handle any material except metals . He believes anything else, and perhaps rightly, will speed up his physical decay, or even more repugnant, coat him in the unbearable film of its own deterioration. Lem once explained that metallic by-products inlay the skin in an oily metallic dust that he thinks acts as a preservative. He works for weeks at a time at a die manufacturing plant nearby. On break, he often rubs the machine oil into his hands, face and forearms, and down the front and sides of his jeans. I have loved Lem, presumably for his supreme detachment, which I have been perpetually unable to achieve. He needs few categories for things and even fewer for states of being. I have wondered at times that he probably doesn’t even recognize that chickens with their heads axed off are hopping around the planet . . . somewhere. Today Lem showered. To do so he stands in the dark hallway of his apartment. The shower is a length of rubber surgical hose, hardened and darkened with age. He attaches the hose to a joint in 8 the water pipe and loosens the outer ring. Water leaks through the joint. He lifts away the floorboards beneath his shower. Standing on two exposed joists, he directs the water dripping off his body to the gap between. The apartment beneath his is abandoned. A couple of months ago, Lem positioned a metal basin below the hole to catch the falling water. Lem smokes as he showers. “I would fucking freeze otherwise,” he says. The ashes also fall through the hole in the floor. Di is not worth talking about. She serves something as crass as other people’s interest in her body. I am not unkind to her. If Lem asks me to bring her to his place, I never refuse. But we don’t have much to say. We really have nothing in common. For example, I can’t share in her understanding of Lem—not at all. Di is beautiful. She has a kind of beauty that hooks into you. I stare at her when we ride the train together. I am not even sure what I am thinking about. She sits across from me cross-legged and bobs her floating leg up and down like a dog. That disturbs everyone on the train. I can see that some of them would give a lot just to touch her with the tip of a finger. They can’t grasp how little she has to offer. For Di, intensity always wins over complexity. I can’t accept that kind of selfishness. She and Lem don’t talk at all. In exclusive concentration they move towards each other with controlled and efficient movement, like dancers . . . It’s not that I hang around to watch. It’s something I understand afterwards, when Di has already left. It is the way Lem pins himself to the bed after she leaves, as though he wants to remember how each part of him was involved in the performance that they just completed. Lying there, Lem draws a mental picture of himself. He likes what he sees. Thinking about their relation sends shivers down my back. I have to walk somewhere, fast, to a public place. Five blocks away is a diner. I order coffee and read the long menu and...