Lava Seeped From Under His Trousers

LAVA SEEPED FROM UNDER HIS TROUSERS

Charlie Ivory waited patiently in the small cubicle for the doctor to enter. He looked round. There were pictures of various parts of the human body with different diseases. He couldn’t imagine that so many things could go wrong. Most problems centered around the heart and brain. It reminded him of pictures in the gas station. That his mechanic had stuck to the walls. Pictures of carburetors and pistons. Was the body just a machine? A machine with a heart. That didn’t sound right. But the body, like a machine, was something that could be tuned up, broken down, worn out? Charlie’s head began to spin. Like last minute Christmas shopping. The door opened. And in stepped the doctor holding a clipboard. Like Moses with his tablets. He was reading the form that Charlie had filled out.

“Why have you come to us today?” the doctor asked. His eyes rose up his forehead.

“It’s on the form.” Charlie responded. Not wanting to sound like a smart alec. Though he’d never met an Alec with much upstairs.

The doctor looked up from the clipboard.

“I’d like to hear it from you directly.” The doctor smiled. His teeth glistened.

Charlie stared. Nobody’s teeth are that white.

“I’m paralyzed.” Charlie picked at the sequins on his jeans.

“You can’t move?” The doctor leaned against the door. Like a dame in a tight skirt in a drug store waiting to be discovered.

“Metaphorically,” Charlie explained.

The doctor nodded, repeating the world metaphorically in his head. Sounded like a thought that had slipped out of one’s fingers and bounced down the stairs.

“It says here that you haven’t had a bowel movement in a week. That’s a long week.”

Charlie nodded.

“You eating a lot of cheese?”

“Allergic to cheese,” Charlie explained.

“Have you tried eating fruit?”

“Finished a barrel of apples off yesterday. Didn’t help. Look doctor, I feel as if I don’t have something happen down there soon, I’m going to blow up.” He wanted to ask if that was possible.

“We’ll certainly have to do something about that, Mr. Ivory.” The doctor looked at the clipboard again. “I could give you an enema.”

Charlie thought the doctor had said Aunt Ema and asked him to repeat himself. And then Charlie noticed. The doctor’s hands. They were huge. Maybe he could ask his pretty little receptionist. And there was one thing more. He had his hand wrapped. His thumb in particular. A cast. Was that his enema thumb. Had someone bitten it off.

“Is there any other alternative?” Charlie asked. He could see that the doctor was having trouble writing.

“We have several medications that can loosen up your bowels. But I’m concerned as to why you have this interruption.”

Charlie did not speak. The doctor waited. The silence became uncomfortable.

“I’m paralyzed.” Charlie smiled meekly. He sure wanted to ask about that thumb.

“What do you mean by paralyzed?” the doctor asked.

“I’m afraid of dieing,” Charlie said.

The doctor nodded as if he understood. He did not. He felt as if Charlie was wasting his time. And he was still worried about his thumb. He’d had in reattached. But would it take?

“I see.” The doctor glanced at the form on his clipboard again. “I take it that you feel as if you are paralyzed because your fear of dieing is preventing you from leading a normal life.”

Charlie thought about that for a moment. Maybe that was it.

“I tell jokes,” he said.

The doctor smiled.

“You what?”

“I tell jokes. Compulsively.”

“Jokes?”

“Bad jokes.”

The doctor asked Charlie to tell him one of his jokes. Charlie told him a joke about a chicken and a priest in a bar. It wasn’t funny.

“And you can’t stop telling jokes because you are afraid of dieing?” the doctor asked.

Charlie shook his head.

“Not that,” Charlie said.

There was a puzzled expression on the doctor’s face.

“I can’t stop telling bad jokes because I’m afraid of dieing,” Charlie explained. “If I wasn’t paralyzed by the fear of dieing, I think I’d start telling funny jokes.”

“Have you talked to your family physician about this?”

Charlie nodded. “She got angry with me. The third time. It’s the enemas. I think…” Isn’t there some kind of mid-wife for enemas. Someone would could consult without having to see a doctor.

Charlie hesitated. The doctor leaned forward, encouraging him to continue.

“I think she believes I’m looking for some kind of… sexual gratification. I’m not,” Charlie cried. “I’m just afraid of dieing. I think it could happen at any time. And I feel so vulnerable when I’m in my toilet. Like that could be the moment when the attack begins.”

The doctor looked at his patient impatiently.

“What attack?”

Charlie was by now almost in tears. He looked up at the doctor. His hands were trembling. His lips quivered. His eyes always sad were about to burst with tears.

The doctor smiled and slowly turned away. Then suddenly turned. And screamed.

“Boo!”

Charlie’s mouth dropped open. For a moment he smiled. Relief. Then both the doctor and Charlie realized that a terrible mistake had been made. Charlie looked down. Molten lava seeped out from his heart. And down under his trousers. The doctor looked down. He saw the same thing. From a different perspective. The smell was lethal. Charlie’s head slumped. The doctor’s eyes began to burn. He fled from the room. Charlie could not. His heart had given out.

Ballad of a Heart Attack

Women Gone Mad #10

BALLAD OF A HEART ATTACK

Looking. He lay there looking very much like he was dead. Like he’d found. The happiness he had always sought. A crowd gathered. Gathered around his unlucky feet. That pointed up toward the heaven. Not to say that was where he was headed.

Fu. The young man nicknamed Fu, whose real name was Alexander Dumas. Lay with his cheek on the cement. Stared from his parallel position. At the dead man. Was he really dead? One could always imagine. What it must be like. To be gone. Cold as a stone. Owning nothing. Except your last breath. That was headed toward Neptune. At full speed. Fu smiled. One of those Zen moments. As he explained it later. Hard to describe. There it was. There. The moment.

Mrs. McGuire moved over to the wall where she could get a better view. Isn’t that the point of watching a drama. There it was like television. A reflection of the drug store front window. She took a seat. Thought to herself. I wonder if he could see it coming.

Mr. Martins moved through the crowd and asked everyone to move back.

“Give the fellow some air,” he pleaded.

Someone laughed.

“I think he’s used up his share,” Louie added. Then bent down. Put his ear to the chest of the man. On the ground. He looked up. And pleaded.

“Go and call a doctor.”

Paul, the stock boy. Growing an invisible moustache. Untried as a man. Sent out by his boss to clear the crowd from the front door. Rushed back into the store. Slid down one aisle. Caught his balance. Stuttered stepped. Into the doctor’s office. Catching his breath. The receptionist cried. Take a number. But the boy pushed passed her. Into the doctor’s office. Who was treating a middle-aged woman. For wearing shoes two sizes too small. Grabbed the doctor’s gown. Begged him to come quick.

“Someone has had a heart attack!”

The doctor turned to his middle-aged patient.

“I can smell heaven,” he sang.

Outside on the sidewalk stepped Luigi Manco. Owner of the Canadiana. Was reassuring himself. Inserting his feet into the crowd wondering. If the poor victim was a frequent flier. He didn’t recognize his dentures. Or the skin that was now grey. Looked like he was turning into cement. Then he noticed Mr. Martins’ concern.

“A friend of yours?” he asked.

Mr. Martins looked up. There was a tear in his eye. “Could have been.”

Mr. Martins’ secretary put her arm inside his. Like they were shipmates. Whispered something in his ear. The two of them melted from the crowd. In the drug store Mr. Martins took a call. From his ex-wife. Who was sitting in her Lexus. In the parking lot, weeping.

“Take me back,” she cried. God, how she cried. “I promise I won’t show you so little disrespect in the future. I’m having so much trouble balancing the books. Your creditors have threatened to take away the house. Where will the dog sleep?”

Looking. Mr. Martins nodded. Across the drug store the widow pushed her walker Through the aisles. Slipping small bottles of perfume into her purse. But it wasn’t the widow that caught his attention. It was the golden cat. Prancing. Like a ballet dancer across the top of the hair colour shelves. And there were ants crawling up the glass of the counter. Thousands of them. And moths flew out of the vents. Of the air-conditioners. And a mouse skittered across the shiny floor. Between the legs of the cosmetologist. Looked up. Saw something that looked like home.

The doctor and the stock boy rushed down the aisle. Followed by two small children. Screaming for their aunt. Lost in another aisle. In her thoughts. Thinking about the lyrics that bled out of the speakers. And the father that had disappeared Christmas eve. And the last moments of her mother’s breath. At Grace Hospital. Where her mother had grabbed her hand from her hospital bed. And she held on tightly as her mother was lowered down into death.

Lifting his ear from the corpse’s chest, Louie looked up.

“He isn’t dead! Is the doctor here yet?”

And the stock boy arrived guiding the doctor into the centre of everyone’s attention. And the doctor pushed everyone aside, listened to the corpse’s chest. What was it saying? Then turned and gave his new patient a kiss.