Now that they had some kind of a goal to focus on, the buzz was fading, and for the better, except that nausea set in. Ana occupied the backseat in anabashedly judgmental silence. Joshua feared turning to look at her, after he’d done it once and her face was obscure; his revolution nearly made him sick. Did she understand how high they were? He received the wavelengths of anxiety Ana’s body emitted, her loneliness and angry worry, but did she understand? He should be doing something about all that. He should turn and understandingly squeeze Ana’s hand, rub her knee, say something funny. But his cheek hurt, and he was sure she’d have nothing but contempt for his empty gestures. And he couldn’t bear moving his head back and forth. His brain must have shrunk and was now rattling around in his cranium like a pea in Tupperware whenever he altered his position.
Nana Elsa had once sat at Seder in absolute silence, except to read her lines from the Haggadah, every one of which had targeted Bernie and sounded as if coming directly from the very pissed Lord himself. All because she’d just learned that Bernie had squandered his family on a mistress. Perhaps he could tell Ana about Nana Elsa, about her being the toughest woman he’d ever known, surviving a camp, losing all her family, trekking across Europe, sailing across the Atlantic, to come to Chicago without a person in the world and work in a button factory. But it wasn’t clear how that could be comforting to Ana. Besides, turning back and forth was not a good idea, he was nauseated. He could think of no other thing to do, so he did nothing, and was thus forced to recognize that when seriously stoned he was in no way presenting his best self, even if Ana couldn’t see he was high. His best self was way out of town right now, pretty much crouching somewhere in the cornfields of Iowa. His second-best self was helpless, deployed solely to keep the food down. He held on to the dashboard. A speed bump alerted Stagger to the existence of the street and the car he was driving, if ever so slowly. The burst of unexpected consciousness allowed him to put down the hand brake, whence the car lurched forward and sped up.
Somewhere along the way, Stagger and Joshua had come up with a plan: they’d first find out if Alma was abducted by Esko, who was still not picking up the phone. There was no way Ana could say no to that, because they were superdetermined. But their plan was immediately amended, because Stagger wouldn’t even consider going on a search mission without his weapon. Ana begged him to forget about it. Stoned as he was, Joshua knew it wasn’t a good idea, but Stagger was adamant about his goddamn sword. Adamant! Ana tried to convince him in her heartbroken English that Esko wasn’t violent (yeah, right!), that Stagger shouldn’t be handling a sharp blade with his broken arm, whereupon Stagger pressed the heels of his palms against the center of his steering wheel and honked furiously, exploding the nocturnal silence. So they were on their way to get the goddamn sword.
“Go forward,” Joshua said.
“Always straight, never forward,” Stagger said.
Kimmy’s house was only a couple of blocks up the street, yet it took them forever to get there, during which time Joshua listened to Ana whimper, redial, and gasp in the backseat. He kept working on a statement of comfort for her, but all that his fattie-addled mind could in the end come up with was: “It will probably be okay.”
She wore Joshua’s flannel shirt and looked, somehow, Midwestern. Probably was the wrong word. It will be okay was what he should have said. It shall be okay even better. Or: While there is no way to predict what will happen or what your personal circumstances will be, there are things we can do now. Kimmy would know what to say, and what to do, but she was the one person he could not call at this time, or ever again in his life. Stagger slammed the brakes and Joshua nearly cracked his nose against the dashboard. As long as the drive took, it wasn’t long enough for Joshua to figure out a way to get a samurai sword from behind the washing machine without waking Kimmy up. “Let’s think about this,” Joshua said. I remember what okay looks like and this is the exact opposite.
Script Idea #200: A woman is besieged in her house by her demented ex-boyfriend and his insane sidekick. The only weapon she has to defend herself is an ancient samurai sword she inherited from her Japanese father. After much suspense and struggle, she slices the sidekick down the middle, like a dog. In the last scene, she stands over her ex-boyfriend with the sword in her hand, deliberating whether to decapitate or castrate him. Their eyes lock. “Kill me,” he says. She kills him. The end. Title: Assholes Also Die.
“Stagger, I beg you, let’s forget about this,” Joshua tried again. “I’ll come back tomorrow and get your sword. I promise.”
They stood in front of Kimmy’s house, away from the porch light, close to some unnameable bush, leafless and devastated by the winter, in which something rustled — a fuckable hedgehog, perhaps, or a nightingale. Ana stayed in the car, calling Esko repeatedly, receiving no answer. Stagger took off his Crocs and gave them to Joshua, as if saying farewell. Then he knelt and rubbed dirt all over his face and shirt and body, including his underwear and cast, which happily retained its blazing whiteness. Joshua longingly looked back toward the car, at Ana, who was pressing her phone against her ear, shaking her head at him, mouthing: “No!”
“If you go in there, Stagger, she’ll call the police for sure, accuse you of rape. Unless she cuts you in half first. Please, let’s just forget about it.”
“It’s behind the washing machine, correct?” Stagger whispered.
“Correct,” Joshua said. “But you don’t even know where the laundry room is. I beg you — I’ll go get it tomorrow.”
“It’s my weapon. It’s a marine thing to do,” Stagger said. “No man other than me should fall for my weapon.”
“What are you talking about?” Joshua hissed in lieu of a whisper, grabbing Stagger’s cast. “Nobody’s going to fall. Come on, man! Let’s be grown up here!”
Stagger looked down at the hand on his cast, then at Joshua. Very gently, he removed Joshua’s hand. He embraced him firmly and whispered something unintelligible into his ear. Then he slipped up the stairs to the porch, stepped onto the banister, gearing up to climb the downspout under Kimmy’s bedroom window. How was he going to do that with the cast?
“Wait!” Joshua hissed. “I have a key!”
“Take your shoes off,” Stagger ordered.
“Wait!” Joshua said, and vomited.
* * *
It took him a while to find the key in his jacket pocket: movie tickets, coins, and whatnot — a lot of whatnot. Joshua pushed the door open without a single creak or crack, Stagger half-naked in his wake. Not so long ago Bushy had rubbed against Joshua’s shins; Bushy used to live here, now he’s dead, and his spirit could be anywhere, including nowhere. What did Kimmy do with his corpse? What do you do with dead animals? Once upon a time, Mom had put his green parakeet, his first and only pet, in the freezer upon its demise. For months it had remained among the tubs of kosher ice cream, and then, one day, it too had vanished.