God Clobbers Us All by Poe Ballantine

Author:Poe Ballantine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hawthorne Books
Published: 2011-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

16.

MR. CLOSE IS A CHRONIC PUKER WHO LAUNCHES LEMONY WHITE lunch every time you turn him. Tonight I’m running late and before I switch on the light in his room, I can smell his sour-catch signature in the air. Disgusted, I rake the curtain aside and snap on his bedside lamp. Mr. Close is a big rubber doll of a man with a paralyzed mouth in the shape of a bent trumpet part; his left arm is clamped in a withered Roman salute against his chest. I dread Mr. Close and the endless volume of his vomit. He grunts and honks at me urgently, pointing his finger. The front of his bed shirt and his sheets are sopped with puke. I am the type of person who when he sees and smells the gag is inclined to gag himself. If I were not in love with Norma now I would be giving my farewell to society from the rail of a steam freighter bound for Australia.

I drop the near bedrail, strip his bedclothes, and push him against the opposite rail, where he immediately clutches a bar and begins to retch over the side. Holding my nose and periodically crossing my eyes to keep the flap over my stomach closed, I think about Norma, whom I have been seeing every night since the housebreaking party with Pat. I can’t thank Pat enough for ransacking her apartment and trying to steal Norma from me. How better to cement a bond than to save your date from getting crushed on the couch by an amorous Blackfoot Indian girl? Best of all, Pat does not remember what happened – classic blackout profile – though how she explains the wreckage to herself the morning after, I couldn’t begin to tell you.

Mr. Close barfs as I roll him south. He barfs again to the north, honking at me all the while and jabbing his finger at the air. I don’t change his sheets; I just roll him back and forth until he’s empty. By the time I have clean linen under him, his face scrubbed, fresh bedclothes buttoned to his chin, floor mopped, laundry bagged, and my hands washed thoroughly three times with pHisoHex, I’m ten minutes late to check out. The Administrator doesn’t like unauthorized overtime (well then don’t admit chronic vomiters). I’m the last one out. The creepy graveyard aides are assembled at the nurse’s desk, pallid and ring-eyed, ogling me, coveting my organs and personality, which were both formed by sunlight, a substance wholly alien to them. I hurry past them to the time room and dunk my card down into the clock.

I have only one thing on my mind, Norma Norma Chlormaforma, my every love song on the radio and moon rocket orbiting the stars. I am to meet her at her house in the acre of aromatic gum trees at the foot of Mt. Helix and we’re going to drive out to Palisades Park, which Norma has never seen despite its

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