Time's Arrow Read Free

and does his own barbering with a brutal pair of kitchen scissors. God knows what he looks like. There are several mirrors in our house, as you would expect, but he never confronts or consults them. I get the occasional hint from a darkened store window; sometimes, also, a chance distortion in the burnish of a faucet, of a knife. It has to be said that my curiosity is heavily qualified by trepidation. His body is not all that promising: the epic blemishes on the back of the hands, the torso loosely robed in flesh smelling of poultry and peppermint, the feet. We come across some fine old Americans in the avenues of Wellport, keglike granddads and strapping sea dogs, who are "marvelous." Tod's not marvelous. Not yet. He's still pretty wrecked, all bent and askance and ashamed. And his face? Well, it happened, one night, between bad dreams. He had inched his way to the dark bathroom, and stood slumped over the sink, feeling lost, depersonalized, and trying to soothe or tether himself with the running water. Tod moaned, and straightened before the dark mirror, and reached for the switch. Easy does it, I thought. It would have to happen at the speed of light. Steady now. Here goes . . .
    I expected to look like shit but this was ridiculous. Jesus. We really do look like shit. Like a cow pat, in fact. Wow. Is there anybody genuinely around in there? Yes: slowly it took on form—Tod's head. Flanked by the great guitars of the ears, his hair lay thin over the orange-peel scalp, in white worms. Greasy, too. This I'd reckoned on: each morning he bottles the gook it gives off, and, every couple of months or so, takes it to the pharmacy for like $3.45. Ditto with the sweet-smelling powder that is shrugged out by his obscurely culpable flesh. . . . The face itself: among its ruins and relics, which say nothing, there is a swirl of expressiveness around the eyes, severe, secretive, unforgivably droll, and full of fear. Tod switched off the light. He went back to bed and resumed his nightmare. His sheets have the white smell of fear. I am obliged to smell what he smells, the baby powder, the smell of his nails before the fire spits them out—to be caught in the dish and then agonizingly reapplied to his thrilled fingertips.
     
    Is it just me, or is this a weird way to carry on? All life, for instance, all sustenance, all meaning (and a good deal of money) issue from a single household appliance: the toilet handle. At the end of the day, before my coffee, in I go. And there it is already: that humiliating warm smell. I lower my pants and make with the magic handle. Suddenly it's all there, complete with toilet paper, which you use and then deftly wind back on the roll. Later, you pull up your pants and wait for the pain to go away. The pain, perhaps, of the whole transaction, the whole dependency. No wonder we cry when we do it. Quick glance down at the clear water in the bowl. I don't know, but it seems to me like a hell of a way to live. Then the two cups of decaf before you hit the sack.
    Eating is unattractive too. First I stack the clean plates in the dishwasher, which works okay, I guess, like all my other labor-saving devices, until some fat bastard shows up in his jumpsuit and traumatizes them with his tools. So far so good: then you select a soiled dish, collect some scraps from the garbage, and settle down for a short wait. Various items get gulped up into my mouth, and after skillful massage with tongue and teeth I transfer them to the plate for additional sculpture with knife and fork and spoon. That bit's quite therapeutic at least, unless you're having soup or something, which can be a real sentence. Next you face the laborious business of cooling, of reassembly, of storage, before the return of these foodstuffs to the Superette, where, admittedly, I am promptly and generously reimbursed for my pains. Then you tool down the aisles, with trolley or basket, returning each can and packet to its rightful place.
    Another thing