Slum

A brown sludge oozes from underneath the refrigerator. The air conditioner won’t condition shit. It rattles to life and harrumphs its protest, then falls silent. The shrubs around the balcony are dead and jitter like palsied fingers during storms. The exterminator came by, told me I looked like a damn boy-slut in my loose boxers and torn tank and slammed the door in my face.

And where are you? You’re upstairs fucking that guy with too many rings, the guy whose two puffball terriers yap and yap and yap while I try to sleep alone in our bed with the ceiling fan making that rhythmic thump. You’ve got a bottle of fifteen-dollar whiskey dangling from your hand while you sling your arm around some other guy who lives in a place a lot damn nicer than here.

“Baby, we gotta get out,” I beg you.

“It’s not a bad place, we’re going through a hard time.”

“I could work. You could find something better. We could do something.”

You take a long, thoughtful toke. You use a box of kitchen matches to smoke, never a lighter. You study the joint pinched between your thumb and forefinger. “You ever think about selling this shit?”

“Half the people in this complex deal drugs. We can’t compete with that.”

“You wanted to do something.”

“This whole damn building’s gonna collapse one day. Just wait. You’ll come home and I’ll be buried under the ceiling with those damn dogs humping in the rubble.”

“I told you I’d always look after you.”

I sink to the floor, my face buried against my knees. I’m sobbing. I’m still wearing the tank and those boxers that make me look like a boy-slut because one day last month I just stopped bothering with clothes. “I’m so fucking lonely!”

You stoop down next to me. The blinds in the living room window snap loose and clatter to the floor. You wrap your arms around me, and we begin to rock. I imagine we’re two scared, shivering men balanced atop a slab of debris on the Atlantic after a famous shipwreck. You whisper, “The day you least expect it, I’m gonna take you away from all this.”

“When?”

“Not now. You’re expecting it.”

“No, believe me, I’m not.”

On nights when you promise that, you sleep beside me. This particular night, a homeless woman bursts out of our bedroom closet at two in the morning and strips the sheets off our bed. I twist myself into a ball against the pillows, screaming. The homeless woman screams back at me, like I’m teaching her how. You simply roll over, turn your face to the wall. I give her ten dollars and she shuts up, blows her nose in our sheets and leaves.

The next day is like the day before and the day before that. I’ve got my knees pulled to my chest, quivering in the recliner, wearing just the tank and boxers. Our television plays only snuff films. On the screen, four men rape a blind girl and give her small, steady slaps while her big, milky eyes twitter in their sockets.

I call the landlord, but I get the recording again. It’s my mother’s hoarse, pulsing voice. She tells me what a fucking disappointment I am, that the exterminator was right about me, and all the neighbors you fuck get together at the hot tub and make fun of me.

I hang up the phone and wait for you to come home. That’s all I do now. I wait for you. My senseless, ferocious love shackles me inside this apartment, keeps me half-naked and watching evil pornography. I have to keep loving you. If I don’t, I might go to shit just like every last thing in this goddamn apartment.

The days pass, the nights pass. You sometimes glide through the room for a moment, oblivious to the pandemonium around you. You go out to meet some guy. You go out to get plastered. But before you leave, you kiss the top of my head. You tell me, “The day you least expect it.”

It finally happens. A jagged crack rips across the ceiling. The plaster peels from the walls. The spinning fan slams down on my head, and I crumple to the floor. The blind woman in the snuff film wails so loud and desperate, I can’t hear my cries over hers. Chunks of the ceiling splatter all around me. I told you this would happen! The whole goddamn place. It’s buried me.

I don’t know how long it’s been when you heave the fallen sheetrock off my body. I cough up a thin stream of blood. My skin is stained with black splotches. My right ankle throbs like a rotten tooth.

“I told you,” I whisper. “I warned you.”

You smile with a compassion I don’t recognize. You reach inside your bomber jacket and produce a box of kitchen matches. You slide it open. Still stunned, I look inside. No matches.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“Like I said, when you least expect it.”

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“You’re going to crawl inside.”

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