Free The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison Page B

say.
    He corkscrews his face and fresh tears stream down his cheeks. “I was smoking,” he moans, releasing his crotch to expose his wrinkled red member.
    â€œJesus!” I say, recoiling.
    â€œIt huuurts,” he says.
    I reach for the doorknob, but he grabs my arm pleadingly. “Dude, what do I do? I’m serious, what do I do? It huuuurts.”
    â€œHell if I know, put a Band-Aid on it.”
    He looks up into my face with the most desolate and apologetic of all expressions: the expression of a guy who just burned his penis with a cigarette and wants you to put a Band-Aid on it.
    â€œDude, I can’t do it,” he says. “I’ll pass out.”
    I heave a long sigh. Rifling through the medicine cabinet, I wonder why it is that the winds of fate have blown me here. Why in a house full of people did the little pug-faced man choose me to minister to his injured penis? How did he know?
    â€œHold still,” I say.
    He winces at first, but then sighs with relief as I apply a curlicue of Neosporin to the popped blister. His dingus feels like a salamander between my fingers, though nothing in my manner suggests that I am disgusted. I am, after all, a pro.
    â€œYou’re not a fag are you?” he says.
    â€œNope,” I say, smoothing over the Band-Aid and releasing his penis.
    â€œ Th at’s good.” He gives me a pat on the shoulder. “Hey, man, seriously, thanks.”
    â€œNo problem,” I say, rinsing my hands. “Do me a favor, though.”
    â€œYeah, dude, name it.”
    â€œStay away from me.”
    I can see the hurt in his little pug face. But you know what? I don’t give a damn anymore. I’m developing a taste for superiority.
    Rejoining Dale and the girls in the kitchen, I see that Dale is making headway, talking some crap about the Phoenicians owing their ancient trade routes to the Atlanteans. Th e Bottle Opener is either smitten with Dale or she’s from Atlantis, because she’s eating it up.
    â€œWhat was that all about?” Oompa Loompa wants to know upon my reappearance.
    â€œGuy hurt his thumb,” I say, reaching into the fridge for a beer, popping it, and guzzling a third of it in one motion
    â€œ Th at guy’s a freak,” she says.
    Look who’s talking , I want to say. You look like a fucking jack-o’-lantern. “Yeah,” I concur. “Total freak.”
    â€œYour fly’s undone,” she says.
    â€œYeah, I know.”
    Dale has produced a pot pipe from the depths of his trench coat and begins loading it. I don’t know how he can see what the fuck he’s doing through those glasses. He sparks the pipe and passes it around. Th e conversation becomes hopelessly stilted. Even Dale can’t seem to string together sentences. Cindy is changing colors like a lava lamp. Th e tentative emergence of a freakishly overweight tabby from behind the dead ficus near the head of the hallway ultimately provides the group with a much-needed focal point. For three or four minutes we sit stupefied, sipping our beers, observing the beast’s every movement without comment as it licks and circles and runs its spine along the bottom of the refigerator. I can feel my jaw slackening. I’m drained of all my drunken swagger, all my superiority. I begin to wonder if there’s anywhere I belong or anyone to whom I could ever belong again—a trapeze artist, a sword swallower, Janet. Certainly, I don’t belong here. A small part of me—perhaps the hopeful part or maybe the courageous part—wants to suggest that we all pile into the Suburu and go buy Slurpees. But then I remind myself that I’m a would-be divorcee, who used to be a father, and most of me wants to run from this house as though it were burning.

stations

    E lsa is around the house again Monday morning, having cleared her schedule of all lessons for the third day in a row. Th e house is immaculate: no stacks of