Personal tabu: a

POOROCHONDRIA

MONSTERS EXIST

Dag has just driven in and looks like something the doggies pulled out
of the dumpsters of Cathedral City. His normally pink cheeks are a dove
gray, and his chestnut hair has the demented mussed look of a random
sniper poking his head out from a burger joint and yelling, "I'll never
surrender." We can see all of this the moment he walks in the door—
he's totally wired and he hasn't been sleeping. I'm concerned, and from
the way Claire nervously changes her hold on her cigarette I can tell
she's worried, too. Still, Dag looks happy, which

is all anyone can ask for, but why does his happi-

ness look so, so— suspicious? I/ think I

know why. l've seen this flavor of happiness

before. It's of the same phylum of unregulated

relief and despondent giggliness I've seen in the

faces of friends returning from half-years spent in

Europe—faces showing relief at being able to indulge in big cars, fluffy white towels, and California produce once more, but faces also gearing up for the inevitable "what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life?" semiclinical depression that almost always bookends a European pilgrimage. Uh oh. But then Dag's already had his big mid-twenties crisis, and thank God these things only happen once. So I guess he's just been alone for too many days—not having conversation with people makes you go nuts. It really does. Especially in Nevada.

Hypochondria derived from not having medical insurance.

small rule for living, bordering on a superstition, that allows one to cope with everyday life in the absence of cultural or religious dictums.

"Hi, funsters! Treats for all," Dag yells to us, reeling through the door, carrying a paper loot sack across Claire's threshold, pausing briefly to snoop Claire's mail on the hall table, and allowing a fraction of a second for Claire and me to exchange a meaningful, raised-eyebrow glance as we sit on her couches playing Scrabble, and time enough also for her to whisper to me, "Do something."

"Hi, Cupcake," Claire then says, click-clicking across the wood floor on platform cork wedgies and hamming it up in a flare-legged lavender toreador jumpsuit. "1 dressed as a Reno housewife in your honor. 1 even attempted a beehive do, but I ran out of hairspray. So it kind of turned into a don't. Want a drink?"

"A vodka and orange would be nice. Hi, Andy." "Hi, Dag," I say, getting up and walking past him, out the front door. "Gotta pee. Claire's loo is making funny sounds. See you in a second. Long drive today?" "Twelve hours." "Love ya."

Back across the courtyard in my clean but disorganized little bun­galow, I dig through my bottom bathroom drawer and locate a prescription bottle left over from my fun-with-downers phase of a year or two ago. From the bottle I extract five orange 0.50 mg. Xanax brand tranquilizer tablets, wait for a pee-ish length of time, then return to Claire's, where J grind them up with her spice pestle, slipping the resultant powder into Dag's vodka and orange. "Well, Dag. You look like a rat's nest at the moment, but hey, here's to you, anyway." We toast (me with a soda), and after watching him down his drink, I realize in an electric guilt jolt in the back of my neck, that I've misdosed him—rather than having him simply relax a bit (as was intended), I now gave him about fifteen minutes before he turns into a piece of furniture. Best never to mention this to Claire.

"Dagmar, my gift please," Claire says, her voice contrived and synthetically perky, overcompensating for her concern about Dag's distress-sale condition.

"In good time, you lucky lucky children," Dag says, tottering on his seat, "in good time. I want to relax a second." We sip and take in Claire's pad. "Claire, your place is spotless and charming as usual."

"Gee, thanks Dag." Claire assumes Dag is being supercilious, but actually, Dag and I have always admired Claire's taste—her bungalow

is quantum leaps in taste ahead of both of ours, furnished with heaps of familial loot snagged in between her mother's and father's plentiful Brentwood divorces.

Claire will go to incredible lengths to get the desired effects. ("My apartment must be perfect.") She pulled up the carpet, for instance, and revealed hardwood flooring, which she hand-refinished, stained, and then sprinkled with Persian and Mexican throw rugs. Antique plate silver jugs and vases (Orange Country Flea Market) rest in front of walls covered with fabric. Outdoorsy Adirondack chairs made of cascara willow bear cushions of Provençal material printed by wood block.

Claire's is a lovely space, but it has one truly disturbing artifact in it—racks of antlers, dozens of them, lying tangled in a brittle calciferous cluster in the room adjoining the kitchen, the room that technically really ought to have been the dining room instead of an ossuary that scares the daylights out of repairpersons come to fix the appliances.

The antler-collecting obsession started months ago, when Claire "liberated" a rack of elk antlers from a nearby garage sale. A few days later she informed Dag and me that she had performed a small ceremony to allow the soul of the tortured, hunted animal to go to heaven. She wouldn't tell us what the ceremony was.

Soon, the liberation process became a small obsession. Claire now rescues antlers by placing ads in the Desert Sun saying, "Local artist requires antlers for project. Please call 323....' Nine times out often the respondent is a woman named Verna, hair in curlers, chewing nic­otine gum who says to Claire, "You don't look the the scrimshaw type to me, honey, but the bastard's gone, so just take the damn things. Never could stand them, anyway."

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23