The Unbinding by Walter Kirn

source of their gloom? Sterility. They longed for little ones but lacked the glands. I ordered my mind to furnish them with genitals, but when they unzipped their ugly jumpsuits there were small oval mirrors in their groins. When they thrust them together the mirrors cracked and bled. The blood was silvery, like mercury, and when it dripped it burned my children’s legs.
    Struggling to wake myself from this slick nightmare, which had started as a dream of resurrection, I fell out of bed for the first time since fourth grade and horribly torqued my three smallest right toes, which swelled into one indivisible bruised clump. I spiked a pint of bourbon with crushed Excedrin, hoping to endure until the morning, when I could visit a well-slept specialist, but just before dawn I opted for the ER and a groggy intern. I hopped across the courtyard toward my car, was soaked by the surge from a broken sprinkler head, and ended up resting on a bench trying to light a soggy Salem with paper matches that sizzled but wouldn’t flame.
    And then there they were, not thirty yards away, exiting Selkirk’s second-floor apartment and heading for a staircase whose bottom step I could reach and touch with my good foot. Grant looked tumbled and pulverized by sex, her hair a static-charged loose thatch, but Selkirk’s hair was wet and combed. Just hours ago he’d played the urban guerrilla, costumed in camo and war paint, probably, but now he was dressed Caucasian-casual, like a Today’s Man sales rack come to life. His banality did have a certain dazzle, though, and as he descended the stairs, I had a thought: He’s the prince of the kingdom we wish we didn’t live in.
    I nodded first. Proactive. Very frontal. I would have stood but my knot of fractured toes might have made it a wobbly performance. And I looked scary enough seated: a grimacing, wet, Excedrin-addled smoker sporting one polished dress shoe and one soiled tube sock. Miss Grant, who sometimes passed me on the walkways and had smiled at me once or twice, faded back and let Selkirk bear the brunt of me.
    “It’s Rob. Hi, Rob. You’re back from somewhere sunny. Incredibly reckless tan there,” Selkirk said.
    “My family all gets cancer anyway.”
    “Forewarned is forearmed. So how was Jesse? Fun?”
    “Deeply. From every angle. Fore and aft.”
    “And Rob’s an aft man. Thought so.”
    Quick. But meaningless. Wit can be adrenal. All animals are speedy when they’re threatened. When Selkirk felt safe again, he’d slump and slow, though.
    “Why such an early start today?” I asked him, though most of my attention had moved to Grant, whose meekness, wariness, or muddledness had caused her to almost dematerialize. Now
there
was a talent: auto-self-erasure.
    Selkirk ignored my question. “Wounded, Rob?” He pointed at my sock.
    “It’s self-inflicted. Any excuse for a pop of liquid morphine. I’m only half-homo, Kent, but I’m all junkie.” I chuckled to keep things light and sinister, then haltingly drew myself up on tender toes and extended a hand to Miss Invisible. “Robert Robinson,” I said, because obvious fraudulence is the most ominous. “Noticed you here and there but never met you.”
    She replied with her name, including her dressy middle name (always the mark of a born dullard), but if she shook my hand I didn’t feel it. What a magical nullity she was, odorless as aluminum even after her wee-hours screwing.
    “Some jackasses fucked my apartment up last night.” My diction was brutal but my tone was neutral. Nothing but the morning news.
    “How?” Grant said. This meant she knew. Because, in this case, the “how” was everything.
    “The usual bullshit. Stink bombs. Silly String. Burning bags of dog crap. Jars of piss.”
    “Ish,” said Grant. Then, “Ish,” again, to Selkirk. If she’d been briefed about the plan, she was feeling misled about the methods. He said paint but I said flaming excrement. It might be a day of lively phone