The Petting Zoo by Jim Carroll

Author:Jim Carroll
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101445266
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-18T10:00:00+00:00

7

Billy laid down his book on hearing the evening thunder, walked to the window, and watched the clouds above—sudden, dark, and jagged. Twilight turned black in an instant, as if the storm had bullied it away. The clouds were so low and loose that the antenna from the Empire State Building penetrated one like a syringe. He retreated to the chair, sinking low and pulling the throw blanket over his body, assuring himself that a quarter inch of crochet would soften the blasts of thunder. He thought about his upcoming show and wondered how it had come to be that he was missing his rapidly approaching deadline. Throughout his entire career Billy had never failed to bring in a show on time, and he knew he should be searching frantically for a way to trick the thing into happening. His work, however, seemed a thousand miles in another direction and, for the first time, he starting doubting that he could pull it off.

Raindrops began to skim loudly off his windows. They seemed thicker and more weighty than usual this evening. It was an intimidating yet lucid rain.

The windowpanes, loosened by wind, rain, and time, made squealing porcine sounds, as if they could be dislodged from their frames at any moment. Billy sat very still and thought of the raven, staring trancelike at the sweeping sheets of water. In his mind he was taking in the shape of this massive rain, which was falling vertically one moment, shifting to diagonal, and then almost horizontal as the wind gusted. At one point the currents of air gathered such force, they actually appeared to reverse the rain, lifting it upward a moment before it surrendered to its descent.

Later, when the storm subsided, the smell of the streets—scraped clean by the pressurized downpour—rose to his rooms, and Billy thought back to the time when the cord was still within him, attached to his mother’s piety. Back then, Billy imagined that drops of rain were unanswered prayers falling back to earth.

Billy stepped to the window, crumbs of rotted wood and sealant at his feet. He inhaled deeply and realized what the post-storm smell was really made of. Aside from the musky city filth, it was the smell of exhaustion. He had thought all this time spent sequestered in the room would be a needed respite, but he just felt wiped out.

During a long phone call earlier that morning, Denny asked Billy if he had ever considered the possibility of never painting again. Could he simply start over from scratch? Billy thought he could. He had insisted to Denny and Marta—who had hesitantly joined the conversation from the phone beside the sofa—that he could easily leave art behind. For all his hypothetical conviction, however, Billy thoroughly avoided any specifics about what he might possibly do instead.

Denny was not so confident when he turned the same question on himself. His childhood, with its loveless poverty and varied abuses, was a catalyst for many young vows, mostly involving some way to acquire what he’d always been denied.

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