Read Online For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories by Nathan Englander - Free Book Online Page B

fighting to free his wrists from the canvas bands or tear his hands off trying.
    The nurses land a needle in his thigh.
    Then Marty, big man on the ward, wanders into Doe’s room as a pair of nurses is removing the restraints. With a finger keeping place in a hardcover biography, Marty leans over, peers into Doe’s drugged face, and says, “I could swear we’ve met. Is it possible that you were here with me last spring?”
    And Doe answers a moment later, maybe two. “No,” he says, “I don’t believe I was.”
    Most of the nurses and all the rest of the patients are afraid of Doe. But Marty has found in him a huge, brooding confidant. A willing ear. Doe is not outwardly compassionate or wise, but the companionship is enough. For Marty has a lot to say and not enough time to say it with the thoughts coming so fast and the drugs slowing Marty down.
    “Like having a honeycomb in my head,” he says. “A geometric form with every side as much up as down. Soon as I have my feet firmly planted, I discover I’m sideways—and all the other slopes looking flat as floor.”
    When Doe is preoccupied, when he nods off or is simply caught in his own head, Marty pictures himself moving from chamber to chamber, walking up walls like Fred Astaire. Taking these odd angles on and seeing where they go.
    Sometimes it is the plate falling and falling and falling. A satellite. His moon. Marty at home with his family watchinghimself, watching the plate, watching everything go terribly wrong.
    Then there is shul, him reaching, the gabbai yelling. The Torah falling and unfurling and spreading outward like a red carpet, black word after word after word.
    Doe is street-ugly. That is, not unhandsome naturally, but his nose has had breaks, and there are old scars and new sores, a tangle of beard, and a dangerous look that is always there so that even if Doe is stumbled upon sleeping behind a Dumpster a person is forced to think twice. And the nurses do. They double up always, especially for late-night check-ins, when, considering how deeply they sedate him, it is a precaution more easily attributed to fear of the dark.
    Marty, on the other hand, arrived at the nurses’ station ready to sign himself in with a whole set of Italian-make hard-case luggage in tow.
    Marjorie, the head nurse, knows him of course. He is in and out more and more often over the years. The cycles speed up that way with age. “The wife,” he says, shrugging. He is there for Robin, as a favor to her.
    The nurses are prejudiced against this wife. Their patients are not generally debonair and handsome in a way that makes the heart rush. When she arrives to make sure Marty is in, they see a little woman, drawn and tired in her cheap blouses and A&S shoes. Robin has no smiles or anecdotes, no warmth for them. After she leaves they wonder if she cuts her own hair.
    This time, as soon as the wife left, Marty put a case up on the counter and popped it open, click and then click . So staged in his motions, so dramatic, still talking while he rifled through. “Looks like I’ve been making scenes again. Seems I’ve stretched the family budget a bit too far.” Pulling back his arm, he said, “Here it is. A gift for you, Marjorie.” He lowered the case,passed her a ribboned and bowed box. A younger nurse blushed. “In Milan,” he said, “I had a feeling that we’d be seeing each other, thought I might be back this way soon. Fine leathers,” he said, “fine women. Fine weather. A beautiful country. You should try and get there this time of year.”
    “Tell Robin you were thinking of her in Milan,” Marjorie said, handing back the gift. “Now why don’t you get set up. Nurse Williams will take you to your room.” Marjorie would have none of it. She never did. In the past, other nurses had been more susceptible to his flattery. There was one, once, back a while, that had been dismissed. She had been seen straightening the seams of her white stockings as she made her