Marlboro Man

by Erik Raschke

 

As I am leaving for my evening walk with my dog, King Louis XIV, I discover that someone has been mashing their cigarettes out on our “Welcome” mat. They are yellow Marlboro butts, the cigarettes of cowboys and mavericks.

I return to our apartment, toss the cigarette butts into the trash, wash with anti-bacterial soap. Even though my wife, Marieke, is still awake, reading, my son Philip is sleeping so I go about the house cautiously, gently turning the taps, measuring each movement.

Back in the hallway, I search the floorboards for clues that will reveal the perpetrator, for the culprit’s shoe prints in the carpet, the smoker’s size and sex, but in the end, I am only fooling myself, petty in my pretension that I have some sort of control over this opaque offense.

I glance over at our neighbor, Lucy’s, doormat. I am hardly surprised that there are no cigarette butts by her door.

Lucy, our blonde twenty-five year-old neighbor, whose profession as a bartender has made her pale white Dutch skin almost translucent, her voice charred by tobacco smoke, sleeps days, starts her evening at midnight, watches television until the morning church bells chime. When she first moved in, we exchanged introductions, her body language suggested she viewed me as a threat. Her arms remained wrapped tight about her torso, as if restraining a tempest.

Now, as King Louis XIV and I walk along the Zoutkeetsgracht, continuing our walk, I mull over my annoyance. To be so anti-social and self-absorbed… to leave cigarette butts on one’s Welcome mat. Lucy and her friends, coming in and out at all hours, comrades in discourtesy.

The Dutch night sky is cloudless, but it feels as if the clouds are still lurking about in some other form only because the air is so heavy and damp. I stop and sit on a bench, let King Louis XIV sniff, investigate corners. The water moves gently through the canals, pulled and tugged eastward by massive turbines, then ejaculated into the deep trenches of the Rijnkanaal.

***

I hold Marieke’s breasts, one in each palm, thin nipple between fingers. Her eyes are closed, her face pointed upward. The shadows twitching between the sinuous light of the streetlamp and the green phosphorescence of the kitchen clock, creep onto her body, darkening the space between our genitals, where only the outline of my shaft entering her body is visible.

I can see her eyes studying me, watching me watching her. Marieke has never been able to relax during sex, so she pontificates while dramatizing rapture.

When I am close to orgasm, she reads it in my face, lifts her body, points my penis upward, and I ejaculate onto her belly and thighs. She does not let me go. Leans forward and bites my neck. She then spreads my semen over her skin with two fingers, gazing at the slick sheen with wonderment.

She then lays down next to me, my wetness sliding off her body like oil seeping into a still pond. We breath and say nothing and listen to Lucy smoking a cigarette on her balcony, the coo of a pigeon from atop the ventilation duct on the roof, Philip breathing deeply in his bed.

***

The next afternoon, returning from a walk with Philip and King Louis XIV, I almost run into an Arab Moroccan man leaving Lucy’s apartment. He does not say hello nor meet my eyes. He has a lit Marlboro cigarette in his mouth, the same butts, I am sure, which I have found upon my “Welcome” mat.

“Filthy animal,” this same man spits as he passes King Louis XIV.

He pounds down the last seven stairs and throws open the door to our building. When it slams shut, there is the stillness of deflated confrontation. The smoke from his Marlboro hangs, gently bends in the fluorescent light. Through the window, I see the Moroccan man adjusting to the fresh air, tying his scarf tighter, pulling up the collar of his jacket. He drops his cigarette onto the ground and lights another, his face tightened in disgust.

King Louis XIV waits for my move, perpetually expectant.

Filthy animal.

Inside our apartment, Philip and I wash hands and fall onto the couch. I turn on the television and Philip drinks a juice-box then plays with his toys. I watch a show about automobiles whose content is more about the witty commentary of the British presenters than the actual test drives.

At some point, Philip wanders into the kitchen. After five minutes of total silence, I check in on him and discover the cabinet door wide open. He is sitting in the middle of the floor with a bottle of bleach in one hand and a bleach bottle cap in his mouth.

I lift him up and frantically ask if he has swallowed bleach. He stares at me, intrigued by the cadence of the sounds exiting my mouth. I lift him into the air and put my nose against his lips. He giggles as I sniff, as if this is Daddy’s new game. His breath smells like bleach. I set him down, read over the Dutch on the back of the bottle. It says quite clearly, yet unhelpfully, ‘harmful if swallowed.’

I look out the window, look around the apartment, toward the door. I pick up the phone, but cannot remember the number for an emergency. I hang up the phone, pick it up again. Dial 119. I get a message saying I have dialed a wrong number. I dial 911 and get the same message. I hang up the phone. I pick it up again. Pace.

I open the front door, labor over my choices, check Philip’s soft blue eyes hoping that there is something that will give me an answer.

I step over to our neighbor, Lucy’s door, and knock reluctantly. There is movement. Shuffling. She answers, dressed in a green bathrobe and Moroccan-style slippers, the type of shoes with a colored, pointed tip. She blinks rapidly, searches over my shoulder. There is something about the malaise in her gaze that suggests a lifelong experience with hostile confrontation.

“I think Philip swallowed bleach,” I say.

“Who? Oh.”

“Is it 911 or 119 or…”

“Neither,” she says. “Come in.”

She opens the door and walks away and I follow, smelling stale cigarettes, lemon cleaning spray. We sit on a red leather couch and Philip becomes curious, about this new environment, eyes moving over everything with equal intensity, but shows little inclination to leave my lap and explore.

Lucy’s cell-phone is sitting near an espresso machine. She picks it up and dials quickly. I notice several appliances lining the kitchen counter, just next to the espresso maker, appliances that Marieke and I have been saving to buy.

While Lucy waits for the hospital, she walks over and touches Philip’s cheek with her finger, gives him a smile so affecting that even I feel its warmth.

“How long ago did it happen?”

“Ten minutes… Maybe.”

“He didn’t throw up or anything?”

As I shake my head, someone answers on the phone and Lucy turns away to explain the situation. She is then put on hold and instead of joining us, walks over to the kitchen window, turns her back and for a brief second I think she is looking into our apartment, into our bedroom.

After Lucy hangs up she repeats what the nurse has said: that if Philip isn’t vomiting, then I should stay put, give him lots of water, feed him bread layered thick with peanut butter, and keep a close eye on him. Lucy then smells Philip’s mouth, takes a clean rag from the kitchen drawer, wets it, and slowly wipes around the edges of his mouth. She is maternal yet indelicate, making silly faces at Philip, but rubbing entirely too hard.

She stands so close that I can smell her soap, feel the texture of terrycloth washed in untreated water and without softener. In the sunlight I notice a few fading scars on her face, wounds from some minor physical traumas. Her hair is clean, light and thin, so blonde that it borders white.

“I know what he might like.”

She goes to her refrigerator and takes out a pad of sweet rum-butter and smears it thickly on a thin piece of raisin bread. Using two fingers, Philip wolfs it down, stuffing the bread almost whole into his mouth. When he has finished, she makes him another and he happily takes it.

“He’s got wonderful dimples.”

Lucy continues to stare at Philip, this boy eating her food. Slowly her eyes suggest that she is no longer thinking about my son but something far more consuming and expansive, the delicate tentacles of domestic possibility. Then something strikes her imagination, something searing. Her face twists gradually, the corner of her lips puckering, thin blonde eyebrows becoming perfectly horizontal, as if she has seen, in an open casket, the corpse of a childhood friend.

***

I sit next to the bed and watch Philip sleep. Although he is as peaceful as always, I feel that if I leave his side, even for a moment, he will die.

I have called Marieke several times, but it has gone straight to her voicemail. I have left her a message explaining the situation, but each minute I sit there I cannot help but ponder her absence. She has shut off her phone, adamant in her belief that I take responsibility and temporarily relieve her of parental responsibility. I have never decided whether this is perfectly sane or shockingly deviant behavior for a mother.

A siren wails. It is not the sirens of my youth nor the sirens of my country. A phone rings. It is not the sound of an American phone. There is a stinging in my stomach. A sickening dread. The sun sets and I remain in the dark.

It is late when Marieke finally calls. She says that she has just heard my voicemail message and is biking home as fast as she can. I tell her not to worry, that Philip is fine, but she does not want to listen. She apologizes and apologizes and huffs as she pedals.

When she gets home, she runs into the bedroom, looks at Philip, runs her hand across his forehead, exhales, swallows hard. I try and touch Marieke, but her whole body is tense and she moves quickly away. She has been by herself, in her research laboratory, for most of the day today and continues to be so in my presence.

When she is reassured that Philip is alive, Marieke returns to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of wine. I recap what has happened. She listens patiently, asks only a few questions, mostly pertaining to the hospital’s instructions. Says nothing about my interaction with Lucy. Then says, almost in a whisper, “I can’t believe you didn’t see it happening.”

Then a terrible silence follows. Slowly, something deep inside rises to the surface, bursts into my mouth. The timing feels right and wrong and yet right, but my face and body are burning with indignation. My cheeks widen. I cannot hold it back. I say, almost trip out:

“I’m tired of everything being foreign, of… of every detail of my life something I have to learn again. I want to go back to America.”

“We made the choice to come here,” she protests, her tone flat.

“We? You told me this is where you are having the baby. That’s not a choice. It’s an ultimatum.”

“Circles and circles… I’m so tired of this argument.”

“I am too.”

“I’ll say what I said last time,” she sighs, the condescension searing, flaying. “Look at me. Here. Look at me. We have a house. Medical insurance. Subsidized child care. If you can provide that in America then we’ll go. We will. I promise. But try and be a little realistic. You have an undergraduate degree in Anthropology. You’ve only had jobs that barely pay minimum wage. You’re doing a great job with Philip. You make wonderful, healthy meals for us. The house has never been so clean. I like coming home from work. I’m happy. You make me happy. This! This life makes me happy. But if you think life will be better back in America. If you can make life better. Better than this. Then I promise we’ll go.”

I find myself forcing out a whimper, “Maybe I’ll go back to America by myself. I could do that. I could. And then you can live your life any way you want!”

Marieke’s face calcifies and she looks expressionlessly out the windows at a tram rattling past, its passengers studying the darkness which lays in between our window and theirs. She then stands, walks to the window, begins to take off her clothes, right there. She removes everything until she is only wearing lacy black underwear and a bra. She then looks at me, looks at me for far too long, as if calculating my worth, and kisses me on the forehead, before crossing the floor and into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

I walk out to the balcony, resting my elbows against the metal railing. In the square below Lucy’s Moroccan friend, the man who smokes Marlboro cigarettes, the man who thinks my dog is filthy, is sitting on a bench with his back to me, smoking a cigarette, and looking down an empty Spaarndammerstraat. The window has been open the whole time and I’m sure he has heard us. Heard us talking about Philip. Heard the shrill pitch of emasculation.

***

Around two in the morning, through the walls, I hear voices. The television is turned off, a beer opens, Lucy asks something quickly, then slowly, then laughs what sounds like a nervous conclusion. The radio is turned on, but kept to a low volume. Lucy’s friend walks around the apartment, her floor creaks, her floorboards extending into my apartment.

The lamp in Lucy’s bedroom is switched on, filling our bedroom with light. There is no more conversation. Just a radio announcer’s gentle, confident voice, the international then local news, the weather, construction announcements, hectic advertisements.

I hear voices, slow, quiet talking. Then, a few seconds later, curtains open, Lucy and her friend enter her room kissing hard, he pushing her gently. She lifts one leg and wraps it around him. He puts his left hand up her shirt and, palm arched like a Olympian swimmer waiting for the gun, shoves his right hand down her pants. She is not surprised by his force, moves her hips into him, arches her neck to the left. His hands fumble between her legs, lifts fingers upward, hard. She closes her eyes, gasps, grabs his wrist, and brings her mouth to his neck, biting into him just below his ear.

Lucy is more aggressive when it comes to taking off clothes. She pulls and tugs, lifts her friend’s shirt, unbuckles his pants frenetically, forces down his underwear. She is still wearing her bra and jeans when she kneels and places him in her mouth and since he is not completely erect, she manages all of him into her throat.

I look over at Marieke who is still sleeping, her mouth ajar, her body rigid yet strangely limp. I lean forward onto my knees, shocked by my own voyeurism.

I toss the sheets from my body and take off my shirt, set it to the side of the bed. I look back at the man who smokes Marlboro cigarettes and leaves the butts on my ‘Welcome’ mat, this man who thinks my dog is filthy… this man who is grimacing with delight as he holds Lucy’s head while Lucy fights from gagging…

When he finally releases, Lucy pulls back for air, exposing his wet, erect penis. There is a piercing contemplation of roles, a temporary disentangling, on her part, from the thorns of submission. She looks up at the Moroccan man in a way that I cannot tell whether it is longing or a quiet, almost maternal apprehension.

The man who smokes Marlboro cigarettes and leaves the butts on my ‘Welcome’ mat, puts his hand around Lucy’s neck. She closes her eyes rapturously as he begins to squeeze, as he lifts her to her feet. Even from this distance I can see her face turning purple. His eyes never leave hers and her eyes never leave his. Suddenly, he lets go, reaches back, and slaps her so hard she falls out of sight. He kneels down a second later, descending upon the prey.

I lie back down, listening to the sounds of her screams of pleasure, chilled by the cold, magnificent cruelty of Lucy boyfriend’s domination, jealous over his control, his hard masculine self-confidence. I do not know what has made him this way, what has lead him to feel such pleasure from such cruelty, but it somehow feels more authentic and real than the supple tendons of my marriage. Gender roles established over thousands of years, roles only within the last few hundred suppressed, now released through his sexual domination. I am humbled by this man’s direct perversion, his natural barbarism, his rough sensuality, his complete disregard.

***

The next afternoon, as I am struggling to ascend the stairs with my son, Philip, under one arm, the stroller in my hand, and two bags of groceries in the other, I discover a smoldering Marlboro cigarette on my ‘Welcome’ mat. My first instinct is to drop everything and pound on Lucy’s door, but as I fumble with the keys, open the door, and set Philip inside, I hear a noise in the dark hallway. A snort. When I turn, I am not surprised to find the man who smokes Marlboro cigarettes standing behind me, in a corner, leaning against the railing, smoking, texting on his iPhone.

“Is this yours?” I say to him, pointing at the cigarette butt. He does not immediately look up, but I keep pointing, hoping he will.

This Moroccan man takes his time finishing his text. When he finally looks up, it is not his casualness which arouses my fury, but his inattentiveness, his meretricious disregard for my exasperation.

“This is the mat to my front door,” I hear my voice quivering. “You can’t just throw your cigarette butts here. You need to pick it up!”

He slowly slides his phone into his puffy jacket pocket and walks over to me, his heavy boots causing the floorboards to creak. As he gets closer, the light coming into the hallway from my apartment is cast upon his face, bringing out his soft, round brown eyes, his high, long cheekbones, his narrow mouth and thin lips, lips that I have seen move with a hypnotizing elasticity.

“You don’t even live here,” I spit. “Who does this? Who?…”

He steps so close that I can smell the cigarettes on his breath. The black, Arabic stubble lining his cheekbones is almost touching my own freshly shaven face, his tightly curled black hair, the hair of Africans, smells of hair wax, marijuana smoke, eggplant tagine.

“Pick it up now,” I whisper, each word shivering, barely passing my lips. “You! Now!”

His eyes narrow and he comes so close, his nose only inches away, his eyes boring down… I am almost convinced that he is about to kiss me. So convinced am I, that I feel my eyes closing automatically, my anger carbonating into an almost fizzy excitement, my indignation swelling into the sexual. My mouth opens slightly, my body relaxes. I imagine myself softening under his grip, unable to escape. I imagine him never letting go. Even as I collapse. Perhaps even climbing on top of me, his knees pressing into my chest.

There is the smell of smoke in the air. The smell of Marlboro smoke. This smell will remain in the hall for hours, never really leaving, just becoming an imperceptible layer of yellow. And the butts will pile up until the ‘Welcome’ mat is entirely obscured.

 

 

Erik Raschke is the author of The Book of Samuel (St. Martin’s Press) and several short stories. He lives in Amsterdam.