"Writer "
The Skeleton Dance
T
he delicately carved marble box with the inlaid pearl-flowersits on the wooden, polished bar. Robert eyes it while watching the
others both real and in the mirror.
David finally made it to Benjamin’s, a Toronto nightclub in the
fashionable Yorkville district. Robert hadn’t planned on stopping
here. But a good place to show off the box. All he has left of David. It
was the largest marble box Robert could find in Chinatown. He had
asked the store clerk to seal it with clear packing tape. Sprinkling
David’s ashes throughout the city was not his intention though it had
been impossible not to hear the bits and pieces of David’s skeleton
dancing on the inside of the box. A musical bone box. Robert hears
David’s voice saying those words. From the Chair to a Chinese musical
bone box.
What next? Robert didn’t know. Maybe use the box as a musical
instrument the next time he played a bar. Amplify it. Say it was a
strange new musical instrument from China.
Dance for me David. He nudges the box, hoping for warmth.
The movement catches the attention of those around, who stare.
David they are not staring at you, Robert says. Yes they are, David
says. Yes they are.
He knew David was terminal this last trip to the hospital. The
chronic bowel infection coupled with high blood pressure and a
stomach aneurysm had turned David, gray, and an odd, old man,
though only thirty-five, Robert’s age.
That last night, with a summer storm crashing around the hospital,
David had reminded him of some Shakespearean king, approaching
his final moment. Now David resting (not necessarily at
peace) on top of the shining bar in Benjamin’s, free finally of his
wheelchair.
The cremation had been at nine in the morning; his watch had
just beeped midnight. Gin swirls the inside of Robert’s mouth, numb
and sweet. He’s mute, shakes his head at himself.
Always something breached, open, some wound, hole. Some
bleeding problem. Some box you’re trying to get out of, or into. Some
slippery energy you’re always trying to hold.
Energy a problem, always is in nature, David’s voice again. Too
much, not enough.
David had conserved his, by not working, though trained as an
architect. He accepted what the government would give, to be as free
as he could, turning inward, sitting with his books, joining his obscurities,
playing with Derrida and McLuhan.
Just as he was sometimes assaulted by the smell of David’s
colostomy bag so sometimes was Robert assaulted by the mass of
facts and contradictions that came out of David’s pain-twisted mouth.
But funny too, and so friends, once upon a time. Both orphans. Both
a family of sorts.
Now the box, and ee cumming’s line, he’s a wet dream by
Cezanne. The faces in the bar take on the same golden sexual glow
that he associates both with the line and the painter. A golden, wet
dream if not for the actual words breaking him.
“She’d fuck her own father for an eighth.”
“Tramp in the dust, that’s all she is.”
“The operation, penis folded back into a vagina, all sense strays
in the brain.”
Gradually the words falling into themselves, the faces filling the
spaces, a smear of yellow-stained flesh, ready to be wiped. Maybe his
mind rorschaching the words, the scene, what with the gin his blood,
blurring him, them.
The main doors opening more frequently; a rush of warmer,
more humid air. More white limos in front stopping. Women in
leather miniskirts hopping out and he feels the turning. A push from
behind, head snaps forward. Feels like a lash of a whip as the long red
nails scratch his cheek. Stands up drink in hand, always with the box,
the question, Robert too drunk to answer, he wants to be led, not sure
if he tells, the sheheshehe laughter (the slaughter) and then a taxi, a
drive and then…