|
Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Last Rights : Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 I woke up at five. Gene was already downstairs in the kitchen. He’d made coffee and there were cinnamon buns heating in the oven. "Smells good," I said. Then I saw the white legal pad. "Trix, please, just look at the outline." I grabbed the pad and rushed out of the house clutching it to my chest. I threw it in the back of Hammy’s car and screeched out of the driveway. Gene chased the car halfway down our street in his underwear. I floored the Merkur up Monte Avenue, the legal pad in the back seat, and buried the document with Hammy in his shallow grave behind the Fox Gap Mall. Then I drove home, scrubbed the dirt out of my nails and made a sandwich. Gene crept up behind me. "It’s all up here, Trix," he said in a gravely whisper and tapped his skull. "I don’t need a synopsis. I got it all up here." I spread some Hellmann’s, rolled up a Kraft slice and gently folded over a piece of Levi’s Rye Bread, just the way I like it. Gene was asleep on his side with the covers pushed to the bottom of the bed. I mixed some crystal Drano with warm water in the bathroom and filled a syringe. I watched him sleep for a moment. His lips moved silently the same way he read the newspaper. I leaned over, moved the elastic band of his briefs aside and stuck the needle in the top of his right buttock. He leapt up, complaining of a Charley Horse and ran to the bathroom. "Zowie, that smarts!" It was wrong to have attempted the injection during the light sleep of the morning hours. At three or four in the morning Gene was usually out cold so I waited up the next night. But Gene watched one video after another and never went to bed. "Aren’t ya tired?" I kept asking. "Nope," he said, rewinding Darn Pets! Around dinner time it became clear that Gene had some ideas of his own about me. We stayed awake three nights. I went to five doctors for five prescriptions of Benzedrine but Gene had his own rolodex of prescription-friendly doctors. On the fourth day we began to hallucinate. Gene bought dog food and fed Smarty-Pants, the springier spaniel we had back in the fifties. Hammy was all over the house. He shoved his leg under his arm and marched room to room like a soldier with a bayonet. His head was the Water Pik Shower Massager and told me I was ugly every time I got in the tub. And it was true. My stream of spittle had returned with the cold front from Canada and black circles had formed under my eyes. I looked like a sad, ridiculous Hammy. On the fifth day, Gene foolishly accepted a bowl of my homemade vichyssoise which I’d thickened with 10,000 milligrams of Unisom. Now that he was out, I felt I could relax . That was the wrong thing to do. I did the laundry and watched The Frugal Gourmet. While the sheets were drying, I went upstairs to get the Drano and syringe and blacked out on the steps. Two days later I woke up in a pool of urine with my dress up to my neck and no feeling in my legs because I’d been lying upside down. I heard Gene moving around the kitchen tidying up and singing the Lemon Pledge commercial. "Hello?" I called out. "Hello!" He rushed to the stairs. I looked up and saw his large glabrous head. "Trix, the most amazing thing. You’re not going to believe it." His hand was behind his back and I was certain he had a knife. "Brace yourself." He whipped his arm around and showed me something extraordinary. "A double banana!" Two fruits in one skin, like a pair of edible Siamese twins emerging from the Botticelli scallop shell. "How did it happen, Trix? A freak of nature gone sublime." I reached my hand up to touch the pulpy twins and he let me hold them, their yellow peel draped over my fist like a mink stole. Then we both cried from the shear beauty of the fruit. "I’ve decided not to write the book, Trix. You were right. Our family name has been besmirched enough. We need to move on." I smiled, happy to have my brother back. Then he wrinkled his forehead. "Trix, don’t you think you oughta go upstairs and sponge off?" |
||||
