Part I. Chapter 1. Rejection (1998)

Du traitement à la cire froide

I had no more idea what the hell was going on in the heavens than did Job. These things came about when I was just minding my own business inside of this tiny shotgun apartment in the bowels of a termite infested house. I had to strain to read the console above my Remington Noiseless typewriter where an e-mail posted another rejection from a New York agency. The screen read, “Please be assured I have carefully considered your project, Max…” said the e-mail, “Unfortunately I have to pass on your manuscript. One thing that concerns me is the length of the manuscript; however, I felt the voice was strong. I planned to request more but after reviewing your query and seeing that your protagonist, Mick, had instigated and participated in a rape, I felt I couldn’t invest in him.”

“Eeeoooow,” Homer, a Persian cat, stretched out on the top of the old monitor seating himself on an undisputed throne. I’d once been concerned about the cat’s hairs getting all over and into it but had given up shooing him off.

I relit a butt from an overfull ashtray on top of a stack of three hundred pages and, held a near empty fifth of Jack to my lips like a microphone and tried to Marconi my voice through the wall across the continent to New York City, “Hey you… yes, you over there on Agency Island! I’m not the rapist. Mick, my character, is the god damned rapist! You wouldn’t have been investing in the friggin’ Mick. You would’ve been investing in me, Max!”

I looked up at Homer, “Tell me, oh Persian Magi, does she think I’m the rapist in my story?”

Homer said nothing.

“I mean, it’s a redemption story. I needed to have a sin real enough for Mick to be redeemed from.”

Homer was unmoved from his throne.

“C’mon Homer, people forgive everything these days... murder and theft... but rape is still an unforgivable sin, isn’t it?”

Homer’s face was fixed with a smiley cat smirk, as though ready to ask, “How about boxing champs or politicians?”

The phone rang. Homer didn’t answer the question, gave the phone a nod, and then waited patiently for me to do something about that damned noise. I listened for the answering machine to kick in.

“Max? Are you there? Hey, peek up the phone…” It was the Fu. I took a pull off the pint as she insisted. “Max, please, peek up the phone.”

I changed my mind thinking, let her speak dammit… after all, she is the Fu. Holding the receiver up to Homer, I answered, “Okay, hello.”.

I’d dubbed her the Fu on one of my morning visits to do a carpentry job for her back when we were pretending to be Just Friends. Adrienne was casual about nudity and it didn’t matter to her whether she was at home or among strangers at the beach, she was most comfortable wearing as little as possible. I’m a product of the sixties and had no hang-ups about nudity but was more than intrigued after she stepped out of the shower, sat on a chair, and began applying some sort of sticky goop and tape around her already neatly trimmed pubes.

“What are you doing?”

“You never heard of cold wax? Eet ees, uh, le traitement. It works better than using a razor on my Fou-Fous-nette.”

I laughed, “Your what?”

“Fou-Fous-nette. My mother calls it that. We French take care of our... oh, it means,” she pours on the accent sometimes when she jokes. “How you say? Ees slang for a seelly boy... net, you say... another word for net? A trap, eh? Oui, a silly boy trap.”

“I thought it had something to do with Kung Fu,” I paused a minute while trying to imagine what that mother/daughter talk might have been like, “but, either way, I’m trapped my dear.”

“Why... what do you mean?”

“Never mind, it’s a most appropriate and beautiful name,” I grimaced in anticipation of that which I was about to see.

“For me or the trap?” She ripped the tape from her groin letting out a karate shout from her belly, “Ki-Yah!”

Shocked at the shout I chuckled, “Both.”

I smile to think of her that morning. The Fu’ fit her so very well because loving her had been a martial art of the heart… kung-fu; with feints, jabs and round-house kicks. Besides, I liked to honor the cuteness of it; the name, Fu, and her deadly silly-boy trap.

The memory of little scenarios of this kind stirred me as I listened to her trembling voice from the other end of the line.

“Max, we need to talk,” She said.

“Girl, I’m too old for this.” I parried. Too often in the past I’d heard this phrase. It was the phrase Celeste employed when she told me she wanted more space… a divorce. It is always bad news, “We need to talk? Does that mean, I listen, while you talk?”

She objected, “It’s not what you think.”

“Not what I think?” Shit, she’d put me in limbo a few times before. Every time we got close I’d get this call. I complained, “I get enough rejection from…”

“... Max, listen to me.”

“Okay, what is it this time?”

“Nicky saw us. He watched us last night.”

“Oh?”

“He said he stood at the door for twenty minutes or more… we were asleep…”

“Ah…” I hoped Nick hadn’t seen the action. It’s a big house and Nick was on the couch in the music room when I slipped out that morning, “Kind of creeps me out, you know?”

“I know. I was drunk and… I don’t remember… Did we do anything?”

“…and so was I… I don’t know.” But I did know. Still combing the cob-webs out of the darkness between my ears and behind my eyes I remembered every sob, caress, and paean of sweet surrender! My God! I would never forget… No, I couldn’t forget… but she … did she? ... How could she black-out and forget last night?

“We can’t do this again… I mean, Nicky and I are through but…”

“…but what?” I hated to admit it but I’d done something with the Fu that I had not done since Celeste. Max a bottom-feeder, had fallen in love and I’d fallen for a married woman at that. I wasn’t sure what falling in love meant but I had done it and, once it was done, it couldn’t be undone. They call it falling for good reason. You can’t stop a fall until you land on your ass. My patron saint was a Kachina cat doll I’d bought from a tourist curio shop in Taos. I’d kept it over the years because, I supposed, a cat might help me land on my feet in times like these.

She ignored the question, “My God, I can’t stand looking at him. He sulks around the house with hurt-puppy eyes saying nothing. He is in the living room now with the TV on but he isn’t watching it. If only he would get mad!” She spat out with an air of contempt compounded by the castration that came so natural to her French accent.

I knew what she meant though. I’d known poor Nicky less time than I knew the Fu. Nick was usually coked up or drunk… in and out of all the Twelve Step programs. So was I; well, drunk, though I’d eschewed the Twelve Step bit. Whatever the case, I thought of Nick as being so much more a shithead than me.