put up with a lot worse things for a quart of gin.
“I’m a very rare individual,” he said, his voice like bubbles breaking in crude oil...as though he were trying trying to speak while swallowing a mouthful of Mazola. His tongue seemed to be too large for his mouth. She knew from experience that it was a rough, lumpy organ. “So rare,” he continued, “that doctors are only aware of a scant handful of like examples. And they’re usually destroyed immediately. There used to be many more of us, before modern medicine. You’ve heard of a fetus in fetu ? No, I suppose you haven’t. Very, very rare. Almost unknown. Well, surely you know how identical twins occur? An egg divides shortly after fertilization, creating two identical fetuses. Sometimes this goes wrong. The egg doesn’t divide perfectly and one of the twins isn’t viable. The other egg enfolds and absorbs it. But it isn’t dead. It continues to live and grow, though it never has any hope for an independent life of its own. It’s a brainless parasite, drawing its nourishment from the healthy, normal fetus. In most cases this ultimately kills the normal fetus long before it comes to term. But on very rare occasions, the baby is born bearing its own twin within it.”
The woman had not been listening to a word of this and had no idea what the man had been droning on about. Nor did she care particularly. The heat was too oppressive and her head was swimming as it always did when she had gone too long without her gin. He had a twin? So what? Too bad for the brother, if he looked anything like this guy.
She had the only window wide open, but it looked out onto an air shaft. Nothing came out of it but the cold stale fumes from the Chinese takeout three floors below. This didn’t go well with her gin-deprived stomach. Rivulets of sweat ran down her flaccid, lard-colored body—like a cheese left in the sun. The droplets tickled like scurrying lice. There was a salty delta forming between her breasts. It was crusty and itched. The man on the bed glistened, but it didn’t look like sweat. He looked more like a slab of fatback rendering slowly in the heat.
“I had a sister once,” she said. “Wasn’t no twin, though. She was a coupla years older’n me. Ain’t heard from ‘er in years.”
“I don’t have a twin,” the man said. “I wasn’t done with my story yet.”
Jeezus , the woman thought. I might have known. She went back to the bed and sat on the edge of the stained, sheetless mattress. She lit a cigarette and sucked on it. She stuck out her tongue and picked a fleck of tobacco from it with the tips of her thumb and forefinger. She looked at the fleck, but couldn’t find anything interesting about it.
“No...it seems that many cases diagnosed as fetus in fetu were carcinomas—a special kind that is even rarer than the vanishingly rare fetus in fetu . They’re called Teratomas . It’s a Latin word that means ‘monster cancer’, in case you were wondering.”
She felt the bed bounce as the man stirred. He was sitting up and a moment later she could hear his feet padding on the bare linoleum floor. They made a squishing sound, like sponges. She didn’t want to turn and look at him, but he came around to her side of the bed and stood between her and the air shaft window. Goddam but he’s ugly, she thought for at least the twentieth time that week. His greyish skin hung in pendulous, overlapping folds, like melting wax. In places it was as smooth and glossy as fresh liver, but in others it had a crepe-like texture and in others it had what looked like scales and she wondered of psoriasis was contagious. Nothing matched. His arms and legs, even his fingers and toes all looked as though they belonged to a dozen other people. And from people who’d been glad to get rid of them, at that. He did not smell very good, either, and the fact that she noticed at all was saying a lot.
He had warts, too, dozens of them, scores, all over his body.
“I’m a very rare individual,” he said, his voice like bubbles breaking in crude oil...as though he were trying trying to speak while swallowing a mouthful of Mazola. His tongue seemed to be too large for his mouth. She knew from experience that it was a rough, lumpy organ. “So rare,” he continued, “that doctors are only aware of a scant handful of like examples. And they’re usually destroyed immediately. There used to be many more of us, before modern medicine. You’ve heard of a fetus in fetu ? No, I suppose you haven’t. Very, very rare. Almost unknown. Well, surely you know how identical twins occur? An egg divides shortly after fertilization, creating two identical fetuses. Sometimes this goes wrong. The egg doesn’t divide perfectly and one of the twins isn’t viable. The other egg enfolds and absorbs it. But it isn’t dead. It continues to live and grow, though it never has any hope for an independent life of its own. It’s a brainless parasite, drawing its nourishment from the healthy, normal fetus. In most cases this ultimately kills the normal fetus long before it comes to term. But on very rare occasions, the baby is born bearing its own twin within it.”
The woman had not been listening to a word of this and had no idea what the man had been droning on about. Nor did she care particularly. The heat was too oppressive and her head was swimming as it always did when she had gone too long without her gin. He had a twin? So what? Too bad for the brother, if he looked anything like this guy.
She had the only window wide open, but it looked out onto an air shaft. Nothing came out of it but the cold stale fumes from the Chinese takeout three floors below. This didn’t go well with her gin-deprived stomach. Rivulets of sweat ran down her flaccid, lard-colored body—like a cheese left in the sun. The droplets tickled like scurrying lice. There was a salty delta forming between her breasts. It was crusty and itched. The man on the bed glistened, but it didn’t look like sweat. He looked more like a slab of fatback rendering slowly in the heat.
“I had a sister once,” she said. “Wasn’t no twin, though. She was a coupla years older’n me. Ain’t heard from ‘er in years.”
“I don’t have a twin,” the man said. “I wasn’t done with my story yet.”
Jeezus , the woman thought. I might have known. She went back to the bed and sat on the edge of the stained, sheetless mattress. She lit a cigarette and sucked on it. She stuck out her tongue and picked a fleck of tobacco from it with the tips of her thumb and forefinger. She looked at the fleck, but couldn’t find anything interesting about it.
“No...it seems that many cases diagnosed as fetus in fetu were carcinomas—a special kind that is even rarer than the vanishingly rare fetus in fetu . They’re called Teratomas . It’s a Latin word that means ‘monster cancer’, in case you were wondering.”
She felt the bed bounce as the man stirred. He was sitting up and a moment later she could hear his feet padding on the bare linoleum floor. They made a squishing sound, like sponges. She didn’t want to turn and look at him, but he came around to her side of the bed and stood between her and the air shaft window. Goddam but he’s ugly, she thought for at least the twentieth time that week. His greyish skin hung in pendulous, overlapping folds, like melting wax. In places it was as smooth and glossy as fresh liver, but in others it had a crepe-like texture and in others it had what looked like scales and she wondered of psoriasis was contagious. Nothing matched. His arms and legs, even his fingers and toes all looked as though they belonged to a dozen other people. And from people who’d been glad to get rid of them, at that. He did not smell very good, either, and the fact that she noticed at all was saying a lot.
He had warts, too, dozens of them, scores, all over his body.
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