JoAnna Novak
I am a man who has twice in recent days received purses. A quilted bucket bag, lambskin, and a straw clutch, tortoise bracelet handle, interior label reading MADE IN BRITISH HONG KONG. Yesterday, the woman, my doctor, described these days as smoking cigarettes in the fog. I found a pack, too. Tiny rifles in my purse.
My partner Michel Parks metes out tiny rifles from an orderly drawer, enough for everyone in the household. The rifles come in square maroon tins. Some buy rifles for their tins only, if, as Michel is, they are fond of souvenirs.
It is approaching school time, and he is wrangling our daughter, Jeanne. That necessitates rifles, and rabbits. There are six rifles in Michel's last tin, I know—I checked—six remaining once he arms me and Jeanne. Jeanne gets a tin with ten; one with one is slipped in my tortoise-handled clutch. There is also the arsenal I keep at my desk.
To grasp the tininess of a tiny rifle, think thumbtack. Think one needle of a Douglas fir. Think the fat torpedo of a bee's stinger. The more one thinks of tiny rifles, the tinier they become. One hardly worries over them. I find this a mercy.
Michel is tying Jeanne's shoes: Whenever he does this, she thumps the hall bench. Her shoes have thick white soles, a good layer of buttercream for a birthday cake.
R-ey, rascally rabbit, he repeats. R-old r-or r-orses.
No one bothers me in the corner of the kitchen we call my office. I follow the rules, of our society, which say that earning money is a noble and respectable pursuit, that work equals discipline, bearing arms is lawful, fatigue is an invitation to rise earlier. This is what I see: The California fan palm is a five-pointed star. Fronds reach out in every cardinal direction, and one more. Mine is another subjectivity, palm fronds like a waltz partner's grip. The branches stand stiff. Washingtonia filifera is another name for the species, its ribboning fronds, like hair, Jeanne's, tousled in the wind. The sky lightens. The hidden sun sets things right. Blowing from the east, striking the westerly side of the palm first, blowing so forcefully that the northwest- and southwest-reaching fronds blow over, heaping on northeast and southeast, the wind is so strong this morning that I feel tossed about and the compass misguides me. What looks north is south, west, east.
"Goodbye, you," Michel calls. "Jeanne, say goodbye to Daddy."
"Tata," she yells. Through the door, under the door, her voice a blast of Hermès 24 Faubourg, we do not bother Daddy when he's working. The more we let Daddy be, the deeper he goes. The deeper he goes, the quicker the tears.
I unclasp the clutch, take out the tin, open it. There is the one rifle. I flick all Michel bestows upon me with my pointer nail. Back and forth it rolls in its little box, pale-bodied and brown-tipped as a pirouette cookie.
I open my desk drawer and move aside a pattern sheet for a table runner: "Colorful hexagons dance around the edge." I never made the runner. Underneath the instructions is my well-stocked pack. Before I grab it, I read "Tools: rotary cutter, mat, ruler." Were I a quilter, the happiness I'd sew, I told the doctor yesterday. She led me in a meditation, but I only moved my mouth, praying for discipline.
The front gate rattles shut, a vermillion ribcage. Michel and Jeanne pass the pygmy palms in front of our neighbor's craftsman: I can picture our neighbor, the fan collector, who took me and Michel out for ropa vieja five years ago. Michel and Jeanne skip by the white mansion that's played plantation in two dozen movies. Michel and Jeanne greet Philip the Barbadian janitor, always pushing a broom around government housing called The Chateaux.
It was only a few months ago I was still making the walk.
Now?
I set the full pack next to the one Michel left me. One tin covered, one tin open. I flick again: the lone tiny rifle dings against the tin wall. It has a tiny barrel and trigger, and it comes preloaded with one tiny bullet. I pick it up, careful, like a raindrop. It has an unusual smell, warm and chemical.
I try to invade myself every day. I try to maintain some self-respect. But I am a man with a mind full of plans and no ability to execute. Me? Messy. Unsuspecting. Censorious. Humble. Discipline is not the gold star chart that Michel made for me when we moved in together: stickers for showing feeling. I hate emotion, I used to say—yesterday, I reminded the woman this. What I meant, I explained, was the shadow play of emotion. But Michel was the sort of person who went to a funeral, excited to see people cry. Michel the private keener. Michel, Michel, Michel had known how Jeanne would floor us. I could have never predicted.
Consolidate, I decide. That is one decision I can make, and the foretaste of it steadies my breathing. I take the top off the full tin. Correction: almost full. There is room for one more tiny rifle.
For the last eleven months, I've been taking a long walk to the pueblo, by Union Station. I stopped when the nervousness became unending and I started dreaming of contamination, a rash erupting, pinking the flesh off my ankles. Not even a full pack of rifles in a lambskin bucket bag could protect me. Not even the tiki fibers of a straw clutch. Not zipped in an alligator fanny pack with a 30% off code GUCCI4U. I'm sick, I told the doctor yesterday. I'm certain. She put a long swab in my mouth and the cotton tip came out Peep pink.
The body doesn't give a fuck, I told Michel last night, in bed. I was pretending to bite his chin. If you want to outrun emotion, don't move to the City of Angels: She'll deliver you a man who eats teardrops like Cheerios.
Michel had dislodged his chin from my mouth and angled it toward the ceiling. He interlaced his hands over his bare, beautiful chest. My love for you is a burning yes, he said. Soon, my lips were around his cock and he was getting hard.
I tap out, fingering chopsticks on the edge of my desk, looking at my choices. One rifle to numb the pain, two to give the nervous system a joltlette, a mosquito bite of morphine.
"Bye bye, Jeanne," I call to the empty house. The ice machine in the refrigerator hoses on. Our landlord always boasts, it was installed for the ambassador of Chile. A powerful man with delicate cheekbones and silk dressing robes.
What is right? Courage? Dirty courage? I do not want to be sick nor do I want to be weak. I am wearing a black crushed velvet pajama shirt and there is mucus on the collar, shining the fabric.
One in the throat, one under the chin. Our bland, beautiful ceiling. When Jeanne was a baby, ceiling fans transfixed her, twirling big brown daisies. I love you, I love you not, I love you, I love you.
I tip the tin, and four rifles fall out onto my sketchbook. I have not drawn a pattern. I have not drawn a figure. Two pages back, I have drawn an exponential curve. I have written a few words. My cursive can be very moving.
Outside, an airplane throws a plume into the sky above the filifera. I close the blinds. I gather my rifles and open my mouth. I trust Michel, all the trust he has in Jeanne. Now is the time for scalable action. Not a table runner, not a kerchief, not a dust bag. What you would never guess is that each tiny rifle weighs two pounds. Bigger and smaller than one would think.