Holy Water Read Free

trickling down anxious underarms. Sixty percent water, with traces of sodium chloride, ammonia, calcium chloride, copper, lactic acid, phosphorous, and potassium. The universal metaphor for hard work. It ’ s sexy. It ’ s disgusting. And if you happen to be the vice president of underarm research for the world ’ s largest maker of antiperspirants, it ’ s gold.
     
    The world is sweating and it ’ s Henry Tuhoe ’ s job to stop it. Or at least make it smell better.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    The rush-hour walk through Grand Central. Madness or beauty, entertaining or terrifying, depending on who you are, where you ’ re going, which path you choose to spit you out onto the concrete of the city, the ambiguity of career.
     
    Not long ago, even before his unfortunate move to the suburbs, Henry would consciously alter his route to avoid the main concourse because he was certain that it would be attacked. Smart-bombed or dirty-bombed or lit up with the rush-hour gunfire of a martyr. He used to try to arrive extra early or a little late to avoid the prime-time crush of people, because only an amateur would bring down a landmark off-hours. He used to walk up the ramp from the lower level by the Oyster Bar or take one of the side halls to the east or west. They wouldn ’ t attack there, would they? Could the Oyster Bar ramp have been in their recon photos, their crude schematics? But now he just walks the shortest distance, not because he ’ s suddenly become courageous or defiant or because he feels invincible or the least bit safer. He does it because he ’ s been trying to convince himself that he no longer gives a shit.
     
    The brush of shopping bags against his wilting quadriceps. The smell of fresh bagels and overpriced coffee from the market on the Lex side. A blur of suits. A swirl of skirts. Hints subtle and nauseatingly acute of every imaginable varietal of sweat. Once in a workshop they asked him to smell it. They passed around beakers.
     
    He obliged.
     
    At the base of the mezzanine stairs a crew is trying to film stop-motion footage of the crowd for a TV commercial, but in a subconscious expression of what they think about the cinematic cliche, commuters keep bumping into, getting too close to, the camera. Bustling, time-lapsed Grand Central? Show us something we haven ’ t seen. The director, his powers useless in the real world, throws up his hands.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Some days Henry glides through the crowds in perfect sync. Sometimes he plays a game in which he tries to avoid physical contact for the entire workday. On the train he ’ ll sit near the window on a three-seater without fear of being bothered, because on good days people would rather stand than take the middle seat between two other humans. He will dodge bodies walking through Grand Central, and on the sidewalks leading to his office he will slip and slide, juke and glide, eluding contact like a tailback, a Formula One driver, a xenophobic, germ-phobic, paranoid freak.
     
    However, on other days he ’ ll find himself jammed three across on the train and slamming into everyone off of it. He ’ ll attempt to bob and weave, to synchronize movement, to change speeds and anticipate footsteps, but nothing will work.
     
    Today is one of those days. Gathering himself after blindsiding an angry businesswoman while sideswiping a SWAT cop with a bomb-sniffing dog, he wonders if there is any kind of correlation between the cemetery-waking days and the awkward-passage days, or how about between the level of difficulty of the walk to work and the level of difficulty of the day that follows? He decides to make a note of it, which means he ’ ll never think of it again.
     
    He ’ s listening to “ Subbacultcha ” by the Pixies.
     
    A trade show in the old waiting room, Vanderbilt Hall. Well-scrubbed, blond white girls in old-fashioned Dutch dresses and kerchiefs handing out tulips and four-color travel brochures. Henry thinks Grand Central is so much