We Are in the Bathroom
Full title:
We Are in the Bathroom with Larry Hagman
The fluorescence flickers into illumination with our fingers on the switch: argon is a noble gas, aloof. It will not make friends.
The brush startles Mr. Hagman when he opens the medicine cabinet. All alone in the harsh light on its glass shelf. Up top where she would only reach every six months or never if she was not able. Handle wrapped in pink tissue paper but he can still see one or two long red hairs twined in its translucent spines. Mr. Hagman stands there in the bathroom, before the mirror, before the cabinet, looking up at its stubby aqua length. His arms slack at his sides. O yes she was gone quickly and there is still her extra bar of Neutrogena on the second shelf as well and her tube of almond oil facial lotion. There is the faintest smell of bubblegum. Mr. Hagman makes up his mind and turns and leaves the bathroom.
We will see that, minutes later, he returns. In his left hand there is a compact portable stereo, the kind with speakers, a CD player. His right hand carries in its grasp the top cross-brace of one of the wooden stools from the kitchen. He places the stool before the sink, in front of the open medicine cabinet. He places the CD player on the counter next to the sink and plugs it in. He sits on the stool and we watch the increase in degrees of his chin’s elevation as he gazes up to the top shelf.
The brush giggles at Mr. Hagman and bites its nails shyly.
He places his hands on his knees and leans back against the wall. He does not want to startle the brush, we know. He wants to see the brush surrounded by so many young girls, with its red hair still in its spines. Perhaps the brush could be one like they might use on the set of Gidget. Or in the dressing room. But he wants the brush to always be eleven and to not make friends with boys.
Mr. Hagman must be careful. He worries that the brush may wait until he goes to sleep and then pull itself along the house’s baseboard, grasping carpet strands in its spines like a centipede.
It will crawl under the dresser and expel all its water and die, brittle and leathery and desiccated.
O but Mr. Hagman will not let this happen. Slowly, deliberately, he leans forward from the stool: yes, we can anticipate. He makes certain that the CD is in the player. He presses the cue button until it shows track five. He presses play and leans back and looks up at the brush again and Tiffany sings to him that she thinks we’re alone now. We watch and wait and then we see him smile and close his eyes.
He would place the brush on the navel, and, afterwards, sideways across her mouth. She would not speak and the final benediction would be those three sentences from Lawrence Durrell and then it would be done. And then the empty house. And then the brush and the windows open to the Fall night’s cool air and Mr. Hagman would pry open the gallon can of Glidden black latex semigloss, O midnight, seated cross-legged in the center of the living room’s bare oak floor, and he would destroy the brush by immersing it, once, slowly, in the thick black paint.