The Leaking
Sam felt his shirt was wet. There was a filmy liquid trickling from his armpit. Sam comprehended that he was leaking. He wedged a purple hand towel under his arm to absorb the liquid. He fumbled into a pair of jeans and walked to the parking garage across the street to get his car.
He drove to Bushwick and parked on the street in front of Dr. Zingori’s office. The street was littered with plastic bags. A dilapidated tractor stood gathering rust.
Sam buzzed the door. He held the side of his dampening shirt and pressed on the drenched hand towel. More of the mysterious liquid oozed out. He felt lightheaded and wispy, as if he ate a number of flies and they were floating around in his head, chattering and loose. He pounded on the door, or rather, he fell into it.
“Come in,” said Dr. Zingori. His white lab slunked around his outstretched arms - the half-shaved grizzly bear was looking for a big hug. Sam awkwardly leaned in and obliged the doctor. The side of Zingori’s glasses rubbed against Sam’s head uncomfortably as he embraced him tightly. They were very cold.
“Where’s Emilia?”
“I had to let her go on leave. Her husband recently came down with a frightful case of cerebral palsy. He needs full-time care and clearly lots and lots of rest. Clearly, I cannot force her to be my receptionist here against her will any longer,” Zingori laughed to suggest that he was joking. “I mean, until he gets better from the palsy.”
Sam said nothing.
“I am clearly saying I believe he can make a full recovery.”
“OK.”
“I want you to understand that, Sam, you sweet man. I truly believe that he can recover from his cerebral palsy. You’re a good guy, you’d understand. It’s just a matter of the correct….what’s the word?”
“Treatment?” Sam said.
“Yes! Treatment! That’s what he will get!”
Dr. Zingori nudged him on the shoulder and laughed.
“Now what’s wrong with you today?”
Sam explained the leaking and Zingori nodded and went into the kitchen. Zingori moved like a badger who had recently learned to walk upright. The doctor returned and gave Sam a large plastic orange cup. He had to use both hands just to hold it steady, and felt like it had just come out of a microwave.
“Now the water has to be warm, otherwise it won’t help. This is the first step to your treatment.”
As Sam drank it he noticed the water was much dirtier than he. He put it down.
“No, no, you have to drink all of it, or it won’t take.”
Sam drank some more water. It had a foul acrid taste. He stopped.
“Well, it’s just that,”
“Sam, I’m your doctor, please drink the water.”
Feeling pressured, he immediately started to drink the water quickly. But it tasted horrible. As he continued drinking from the very, very large plastic cup, gathering more of it into his mouth, he became flummoxed. He looked to Zingori, who shook his head sternly to ward him from spitting it back into the cup. He wasn’t sure he could swallow the large amount he had filled in his mouth, his cheeks ballooning like a chipmunk. As he motioned to spit it back, Zingori snatched the cup from his hand.
Sam was at crisis choice between swallowing the polluted water that had filled his mouth or spitting it out onto the floor in front of Zingori. And this comprehension made him more flummoxed and feeling weirdly obliged, again, and with an acute guilty sadness, Sam gulped the water down, his eyes watering up.
“Good, good, yes, that should help.” Zingori said.
Sam felt his insides churning and convulsing, and could sense his organs close to his stomach shivering and shrinking. He felt nebulously poisoned.
Zingori went into a drawer and removed a large piece of gauze. It had the resemblance of a band-aid but the aura of a diaper. He mounted the waterproof bandage under Sam’s armpit in a sling and fastened it with a bandolier.
“You’ll have to change that once a day. Each bandage costs twenty dollars.” Zingori said in a chipper, matter-of-fact voice.
Sam swallowed audibly. To say he lived in squalor was an understatement - every night, he slept underneath a strangers bed.
“Well, how many do you think I’ll need?”
“That’s entirely upon you, Sam. Like I’ve said, you seem like a good guy. How many do you think you’ll need before you are done leaking?”
Sam did the math in his head of the most he could potentially afford and still be able to eat.
“Five?” Sam said hesitantly.
“Five? Well, alright...but, what will you do if you need more?”
“I’ll buy some more, I guess?” he said with a concerned chuckle.
“Oh.”
The doctor stood up and walked and stretched his arms. He paused for ten seconds and gazed out the stained window. He held a pregnant look.
“I see.”
“So, what do you think is causing this, Dr. Zingori?”
Dr. Zingori gingerly walked backwards and dropped himself onto the leather couch he kept in the operating room.
“I am having so many problems these days. It is absolutely unreal. It is unreal, Sam.”
“Alright.”
“And that, don’t get me wrong, this is relevant to your problem. I am answering your question right now, just stay with me. It would help you understand your own problems if you better understood mine. We have the same thing, when it really comes down to it. We both suffer from life.”
He put his leg across one knee and scratched his ankle as if he had been bit.
“Did I tell you about my eldest, Zara? She wants to continue pursuing this acrobat thing! Unreal, is what I tell her, it is absolutely unreal. I tell the young lady, you are buying yourself a death sentence, a clear death sentence. I tell her I know no old acrobats. Maybe, there are a handful of old acrobats in the old country. Maybe three. Maybe four. But here? In America? They simply do not have the years of training like the angels she saw fly when we visited the old country. Those acrobats, they are trained from birth, they were raised as acrobats. They came from acrobat families. Nothing could change them.”
“Alright.”
“Now Sam, a true acrobat doesn’t choose to be an acrobat. They simply are acrobats. Do you understand the distinction?”
“Sure, yeah I think so, we have very limited free-will when it comes to our identities, yeah, alright”.
Zingori wasn’t listening. He watched Sam clutch the bandage to keep it in place. The bandage was already loose and one side was peeling off.
“Is that working?”
“Not so well.”
“Well, do you want another one or what?”
Sam hesitated.
“Maybe...later? I don’t know.”
“I have lots of bandages, Sam, don’t be afraid to ask.”
“I am aware that you control the bandages.” Sam said, in a plaintive voice. As if it were so blatantly obvious, that if you didn’t say it out loud, it could easily be forgotten.
The doctor stood up and cleared his throat.
“Can I get you anything, maybe some more of the water?”
“I’m alright, really.”
His stomach seized and turned over at the thought of the murky, metallic water.
“Perhaps a soft drink?”
Sam was sorely thirsty, but he figured if he drank more, he would leak more, and if he leaked more, he’d need more bandages.
“No, I’m really alright.”
“Do you want some cereal, my mother left some here after she had breakfast this morning.”
Sam was also deeply hungry but could not confess to that, because hunger is a weakness to him. This feeling made him hungrier.
“What kind of cereal?”
“The best. Honey Nut Cheerios. But get this, you are going to love this. It’s not a normal kind of Honey Nut Cheerios. You know what kind of cereal it is? Go ahead, ask me.”
“What kind of cereal is it, Dr. Zingori?” in the same plaintive tone as before.
“It’s the kind of cereal that I’ve been getting shipped in daily from China.”
Dr. Zingori went and rummaged through the makeshift kitchen and returned with a box of Chinese Cheerios. It was identical colors but with Cyrillic symbols and the signature bee was not like the signature American spokesbee. It was a rude little spokesbee, wearing a felt hat with dim stars, wielding a loud magical wand. The graphic illustrated the bee firing a lightning bolt at a an enormous Cheerio with conspicuously jagged edges.
The actual cereal itself was laden had tiny sharp metallic spikes. Sam could hardly look at the nearly full bowl of dry cereal. The metal glinted in the swath of sun coming through the window.
“Go on, have some.”
“No, thank you, Doctor, I’m really not too hungry.”
“But don’t you see how that bee is blasting it with flavor?”
“I do.” said Sam in the same neutral voice. “It’s absolutely exploding.”
“Not even milk will dampen this stuff. It’s unreal. Absolutely unreal. This stuff is so dry, you have to try it.”
“Why isn’t the box in Chinese characters?” Sam asked.
“Ha! They make the boxes in Siberia! Then they send them to China and then they send it to Alaska and I get it on a plane and have it shipped here. You couldn’t get a human being here faster than I get this cereal here.”
“Jesus, why would they go through that whole process. What a waste! What’s wrong with the world these days?”
“What do you mean? It’s not ridiculous at all, everyone knows how they do it! This is the world we live in today, and your whining, your little opinion, it isn’t going to change anything!”
Zingori slapped him scornfully on the shoulder.
“What are you, some sort of knave? An ingrate? C’mon Sam! The world is going on all around you! You should run up to the world and hug it! Like a girl you want to touch!”
Sam allowed a sheepish laugh. He had to agree with Zingori. There was a whole world out there he could explore. Life was short. He had been spending too much time staring at ceilings and tables, hoping for answers to emerge from the spatter and wood. He wanted life to announce itself through a bulge in the wall, a thread to loosen in his heart. He had to tackle the situation himself. Yes, he felt good. He hoped this realization wasn’t fleeting.. He really hoped this understanding would stick. He thought positive thoughts, he imagined blue skies and a clean mind. It was really important to him to not forget this good feeling. He concentrated on how major this could. He subsequently lost touch with the good feeling from trying to connect to it. Something else could happen to stain this moment. Something could stain every moment. His stomach turned over again and he felt nauseous.
“I think you may be on to something, Zingori.” he said, trying to put on a good face and hiding a grimace.
“Thank you, Sam. We’ll see if some diet and exercise and a little mental conditioning will be good for your life, and maybe, your problem.”
“Let’s hope so. So your daughter. Is she, like, a talented acrobat?”
Zingori shot Sam a shocked look and lowered his eyes.
“Why do you have to bring her up?”
“Well, I’m sorry but you, you brought it up, earlier. I figured you wanted to talk about it, but you changed the subject.”
“I did change the subject. I didn’t want to talk about Zara.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just that,”
“I used the anecdote to make a point for you. I used her as an example and made a transition away from that.”
Zingori rolled his eyes and folded his legs and coughed. Sam felt his stomach more.
“Then why did you bring it up, and say you were having problems, if you didn’t want to talk about it?”
“I was done talking about it. It’s very simple, Sam. I changed the subject. How could I be more clear than not talking about it anymore?”
“Well, I guess, I kind of see,” Sam said.
“Do you want me to point out social cues in the sand of the playground for you with a stick?”
Sam put his arms defensively.
“Hey, look I apologized, you can back off.”
Zingori took a deep breath and lowered his head and put his arms up in tacit defeat.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I am sorry I got touchy you know, it’s just my daughter has been a lot of stress and sometimes I get a little short.”
“It’s alright, I guess.” Sam said and rolled his eyes.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
Before Sam could even begin to think to reply, or even think whether he cared, Zingori had ripped open a pack of Scouts and had one lit.
Zingori stood up and loafed around the room around the room, puffing smoke and carefully parsing through the drawers in the office, dropping ash onto the floor. He left one drawer open and dropped his ash into it as he looked around. After a few minutes, he found a box behind the sink and from it he removed a long, thin wooden examining stick.
“Now you see, Sam, you’re going to have to watch that bandage.”
Sam realized the special bandage he gave him was actually just an enormous Band-Aid and really not water insoluble in any helpful degree. It had sprung a pin sized hole rather rapidly and shot a small stream the size of a hole in a sprinkler head. Sam felt panicky.
“If you are doing good, you’ll leak less.”
Zingori prodded it with the stick and leaned over to monitor the leak closer.
“And if you doing bad, you’ll leak more.”
Zingori pushed the bandage harder and it broke and the liquid splooshed to the floor. Zingori hopped back, yelling.
“Aw, did you really just shoot that stuff on the floor! I just had the clinic cleaned last week!” Zingori said.
“What are you talking about? You pressed at the bandage! You were the one!”
“My cigarette is ruined!” He threw the butt in the drawer and slammed it shut.
Zingori swore under his breath and crossed his arms and drummed his finger on his lab coat. It looked a like an attitude had burrowed under his skin and laid eggs.
“You really are all over the place, Sam. Maybe we need to get you back on those brain pills we had you on?” he said in a threatening tenor.
“The Glamorall?”
Life shot through Sam’s body. His experience taking Glamorall was both enlivening and horrifying. It was like if Santa Claus gave your whole family ecstasy on Christmas morning. It was a classic high-risk/high-reward decision with intoxicating effects. Even thinking about the Glamorall, and it’s stupendous effects, took his mind off of his stomach.
“No, we could do the Glamorall too, but I was thinking instead,” Zingori began.
“Well, I dunno about the ones that aren’t Glamorall, but I know that I shouldn’t have the Glamorall, because, well I want the Glamorall, and you know the Glamorall, it's Glamorall.”
“Yeah, that Glamorall was a little too good, you know?”
Sam nodded.
“Not that I am complaining about the Glamorall.” Sam said.
“No of course, not but you know, but, what that does that word even mean anymore, right? Complaining?” Zingori said with a laugh.
“Alright Sam, let’s get down to brass tax. You don’t seem to be holding up well. You look awful. Like you haven’t slept in a couple days, or perhaps that you have been sleeping entirely too much – you know how bears get really groggy when they first wake up? You kind of are like that but without any of the threatening mannerisms of bears. It seems like you are eating a lot of cheese and that could explain the sluggishness. What kind of cheese are you eating? “
“I‘m not eating any cheese, I’m too depressed to eat cheese.”
Sam was stunned he even admitted to himself he was depressed. Sam hurt himself inadvertently. He thought he was doing rather well in his emotional recovery. But the honesty seeped out. This happened when he was hungry and feeling ill.
“Maybe…just maybe, this depression is why you sprung a leak.”
“Well, what do you think I should do? I mean, what’s your diagnosis?”
Dr. Zingori paused briefly, then lowered his thick head and slicked back his wiry gray wild hairs.
“Have you done any community service recently?”
“Community service?”
“You know, helping sick people? Walking old people around. Helping kids. Standing in a place for a person and collecting money. That kind of thing.”
“No, I understood, just that no I can’t say I ever have.”
“Well there’s your problem right there.”
“Well, I mean today, I helped a nun with some directions, but I’m pretty sure she was just testing me to see if I was a good person. I dunno. I heard from my friend Stockton, who used to be a bishop, that they did that as some sort of…comical engagement.”
“Odd. Very odd. But entirely unplausiinibibilt, Sam.”
“I’m sorry what did you just say?”
“That was nothing, I will let you know if I hear anything about that.”
“About what? What word did you just say? What was that?”
“Oh you know what, it’s no big deal. You know what? Have you talked to our mutual friend Vernon recently?”
Sam took a deep breath. He couldn’t win with Zingori. His stomach sunk deeper with the thought of Vernon.
“No, you told me Vernon left Brooklyn after his mother passed.”
“Oh, no, I must have misspoken. Vernon came right back after the service. That very day as a matter of fact. I think right after the last rifle shot, he got right into his Geo Metro, they lowered the casket and he sped off. Or at least that’s how I remember that funeral. There are so many funerals.”
Zingori urped a sigh.
“Anyway, Vernon’s family was pretty offended. Vernon wanted to come home to work on that dissertation thing he blabs about. School stuff. He’s writing a rather heady academic piece on the subject of the ineffable. It sounds like it would be pretty hard to read. Being the ineffable and all.”
“Wow,”
“Now, I’ve heard from some people he’s not doing so well either. My course of treatment for this leak would be for you to see him to sort things out with him, stock up on those bandages and see if worrying about other people for a change might be of help.”
“Do you think beach towels would be good?”
“No, I need you return each bandage to me for testing.”
Sam wondered if there would be an additional charge for that, and then wondered why they needed to get tested.
“Honestly, the bandages are a little expensive.”
“Don’t worry about that Sam. Now you and Vernon, well, have, have you two spoken much since the incident last year?”
“I mean not really. It was a pretty big falling out. And I thought I saw him recently, but honestly I kind of think he’s avoiding me. I’m pretty sure he walked to the other side of the street after he saw me.”
“That’s rude, but that’s Vernon, you know.”
“Maybe, he was too busy, didn’t want to talk, with the dissertation and all. I mean, I did wave at him.”
“Ah.”
“He made eye contact with me.”
“Ah, yes. Obsession does get the best of us sometimes. We have to watch out for that. Can crawl right up your butt and destroy your insides like a giant worm. Would you like that cereal then? It really doesn’t matter with these types of choices sometimes. Life swings like a hammer across a gymnasium. No way to predict anything. Nothing much is surprising these days.”
He came back and handed him the bowl.
“That’s right Sam, eat up, nothing matters.”
Sam leaned down and stopped at the smell. He made a face and pulled back.
“What? What’s wrong with it?”
“It smells like manure.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be. They moved that whole factory two weeks ago. They packed the whole thing out on trucks. I helped them hose it down. It’s just an empty lot now.”
Zingori pointed out the window and Sam saw an empty lot with patches of concrete and four large holes scattered around. There was a family of rats asleep in the back two holes. They were stacked upon each other. It looked like a dog pile. But instead it was a rat pile and it filled the hole to the brim. They were sleeping in unison.
“Well, that is rather horrific, now isn’t it, Sam?” Zingori said and patted him on the leg. Sam had to do everything he could to stop himself from vomiting.
“How do you think they know when they’re flush with the ground?” Zingori asked.