Work till sunset in a city where you never see the sun? He laughed. Fuck them if they expected him to get all this stuff to the basement! He ambled, panting, through dressers, easy chairs, day beds, and buffets. The thought occurred to put it in another apartment on the same floor. His next thought was: Why not?
He turned, gigantic, in the belly-high furniture forest. There was no one else, for practical purposes, in the building. Who would know? Who would care? His bladder suddenly warmed; he started down the hall.
At the end of an alcove, a hint of tile over the doorsill identified the bathroom. Inside, he flipped a light switch: lights stayed off. But, as he turned, his shin bumped the toilet ring.
It was pitch dark but he thought, what the hell.
The particular sound of his water, reiterated by sudden, hot wetness against his foot, told him he’d missed. He varied his aim without the rattle of water on water to sing success. Stop his stream? The memory of the yellow burst of pain at the base of his penis…He’d mop later. And let it run.
He lurched from the darkness and said, “Shit!”
His wet foot left its spreading print on the notebook, where it lay outside the door. Had it crept after him for soiling? No; he remembered (black and white; no color…like some dreams) carrying it with the intention of writing something down. When the lights hadn’t worked, he had dropped it there.
3
“IT’S ME, KIDD.”
“Oh, hey, just a second.”
The chain fell. The door opened.
Behind her, candles flickered on the phone table. The light from the living room tossed unsteady shadows on the rug. A doorway up the hall let out wavering orange. “Come on in.”
He followed June to the living room.
“Well.” Mr. Richards peered above the Times, folded small. “You worked on a good bit past sundown I’d say. How’s it going?”
“Fine. There was a whole lot of broken glass in the back room. A vanity turned over.”
“You got the furniture out?” Mrs. Richards called from the kitchen.
“Everything’s in the front room. I can do all the back floors tomorrow, and get the rest of the stuff out of there for you. It’s not going to be hard.”
“That’s good. Arthur…?”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Richards said. “Mary’s put out a towel for you. Go right in and run yourself a bath. Do you use an electric razor?”
“No.”
“I have one, if you want. I put out a safety, for you, anyway. Blade’s new. We’d like to invite you to stay for supper.”
“Hey,” he said, wanting to leave. “That’s very nice. Thank you.”
“Bobby, you put candles in the bathroom?”
Bobby went Umph over his book.
“Life by candlelight,” Mr. Richards said. “It’s really something, isn’t it?”
“At least the gas isn’t off,” Mrs. Richards called in again. “That’s something too.” She stepped to the door. “Bobby, Arthur, both of you! This isn’t enough light to read by; you’ll ruin your eyes.”
“Bobby, put your book down. You heard your mother. You read too much anyway.”
“Arthur, he can’t read too much. It’s just his eyes.” She went back into the kitchen.
On top of the bookcase by Mr. Richards’ chair (neither he nor Bobby had ceased their reading) between an edition of Paradise Lost that said “Classics Club” and something thick by Michener, was a volume, thinner than both, with white letters down a black spine: “Pilgrimage/ Newboy.” He pulled the book loose. The candles flaked light across the cover. “Did Mrs. Brown ever come?” He turned the book over. From the case, black ceramic lions looked somewhere else and glistened. The back blurb was only three uninformative lines. He looked at the front again: Pilgrimage by Ernest Newboy.
“She’ll be here by the time we eat. She always is.” June snickered, waiting for Father or Mother to object. Neither did. “That’s by that poet they told about in the paper. Bobby got it for Mother from the bookstore yesterday.”
He nodded. “Ma’am?” He looked in the kitchen door. “May I look at this?”
“Certainly,” Mrs. Richards said, stirring, at the stove.
He went into the bathroom; probably laid out the same as the one he’d peed all over upstairs. Two candles on the back of the toilet tank put two flecks on each tile; and there was another candle up on the medicine cabinet.
He turned the taps, sat on the toilet top, and, with Newboy on his notebook, read at the “Prolegomena.”
The water rushed.
After a page he skipped, reading a line here, a verse paragraph further on. At some he laughed out loud.
He put down the book, shucked his clothing, leaned over the rim and lowered his chained, grimy ankle. Steam kissed the sole of his foot, then hot water licked it.
Sitting in the cooling tub, chain under his buttocks, he had scrubbed only a minute before the water was grey and covered with pale scalings.
Well, Lanya had said she wouldn’t mind.
He let that water out, and ran more over his feet, rubbing the gritty skin from his insteps. He’d known he was dirty, but the amount of filth in the water was amazing. He soaked and soaped his hair, rubbed his arms and chest with the bar till the chain tore it. He ground the balled washrag beneath his jaw, and then lay back with his ears under water, to watch the isle of his belly shake to his heart beat, each curved hair a wet scale, like the shingled skin of some amphibian.
Sometime during all this, Madame Brown’s high laughter rolled into the hall; and a little on, her voice outside the door: “No! No, you can’t go in there, Muriel! Someone’s taking a bath.”
He let out the water, and lay back, exhausted and clean, occasionally wiping at the tub-line of grit, wider than a garrison belt. He pressed his back against porcelain. Water trapped there poured around his shoulders. He sat, wondering if one could will oneself dry. And, slowly, dried.
He looked at his shoulder, peppered with pores, run with tiny lines he could imagine separated each cell, fuzzed with dark down. He brushed his mouth on his skin, licked the de-salted flesh, kissed it, kissed his arm, kissed the paler place where veins pushed across the bridge from bicep to forearm, realized what he was doing, with scowling laughter, but kissed himself again. He pushed to standing. Drops trickled the back of his legs. He was dizzy; the tiny flames wobbled in the tiles. He stepped out, heart knocking to the sudden effort.
He toweled roughly at his hair, gently at his genitals. Then, on his knees, he did a slightly better job washing away the hairs and grit and flaky stuff on the bathtub bottom.
He picked up his pants, shook his head over them; well, they were all he had. He put them on, combed his moist hair back with his fingers, tucked in his shirt, buckled on his sandal, and came out into the hall. Behind his ears was cool, and still wet.
“How many baths did you take?” Mr. Richards asked. “Three?”
“Two and a half.” Kidd grinned. “Hello, Ma—Mrs. Brown.”
“They’ve been telling me how hard you’ve worked.”
Kidd nodded. “It’s not that bad. I’ll probably finish up tomorrow. Mr. Richards? You said you had a razor?”
“Oh yes. You’re sure you don’t want to use my electric?”
“I’m used to the other kind.”
“It’s just you’ll have to use regular soap.”
“Arthur,” Mrs. Richards called from the kitchen, “you have that mug of shaving soap Michael gave you for Christmas.”
Mr. Richards snapped his fingers. “Now I’d forgot. That was three years back. I never did open it. Grew a beard since too. I had a pretty good-looking beard for a while, you know?”
“It looked silly,” Mrs. Richards said. “I made him shave it off.”
Back in the bathroom, he lathered his jaw, then scraped the warm foam away. His face cooled under the blade. He decided to leave his sideburns half an inch longer. Now (in two distinct stages) they came well below his ears.