Kent English (25.6.06)

GALATEA

Kent English



"Pygmalion, son of Belus, fell in love with Aphrodite and, because she would not lie with him, made an ivory image of her and laid it in his bed, praying to her for pity. Entering into this image, Aphrodite brought it to life as Galatea, who bore him Paphus and Metharme."

Robert Graves

The Greek Myths



Chapter 1





Feet. Or rather, sweaty feet. I have always thought that popcorn smells like sweaty feet.

It's not really the smell of popcorn itself that bothers me so much as that of the warm salty butter that has usually been slathered over it with greedy abandon. There's just something sickly about that aroma, and given my sensitivity to such things, if I'm around it long enough, like a greasy larva it creeps up my nose and squeezes into a spot behind my eyes where it begins to throb. It was for that reason—and a suspicion that the buttered variety was more likely to grow mould—that I had chosen to use unbuttered popcorn, and the two grocery bags I was carrying home were, I thought, filled with the last of it that I would need.

Although night had long since established itself, some of the day's precocious heat was still lurking about in the streets. As I was making my way along the row of old limestone houses leading up to the laundrette that marked the corner of my street, I felt a rivulet of sweat break free near my neck and work its wretched way down my back, sending shudders of revulsion through to the ends of my extremities. I berated myself for having put on my windbreaker, for even having taken it in the first place: spring had yielded quite a bit earlier than usual, so it had been a couple of weeks since there had been a need for anything more than a T-shirt and shorts. Yet, as a detached, objective part of my mind noted with frustration, I would without a doubt take my windbreaker again tomorrow and every subsequent day until autumn finally took firm hold, and something warmer was required. It was, this same droning part of my mind conjectured, a kind of security blanket that I used to shield myself from the scrutiny of the world, even at the expense of my own comfort. This knowledge was ultimately more distressing than the temporary agony caused by the sweat coursing towards my waist: sensations fade, but circumstances can remain like a scab that is picked at and picked at until a scar takes permanent root.

Quickening my pace as I turned right at the laundrette, I soon reached the steps of my apartment block, where I gently set the two bags down, careful not to spill any of my hard-earned popcorn. That done, I immediately took off my windbreaker and paused to let what little breeze there was caress me through my damp work polo. Standing there, enjoying that delicate embrace, I felt that there was something a little different about my surroundings, but I could not immediately say what it was: the faded sienna paint was still peeling off the door, the ivory Honda Civic was still loyally awaiting its negligent owner to rescue it from the encroaching rust and weeds, the brush to the south of the building was still littered with empty beer bottles and crushed cigarette packs. I was perplexed until the wail of an ambulance's distant siren began competing with that of a tomcat making his rounds a block or so away, and it suddenly came to me that it was the familiar wail of heavy metal guitars that was joyfully absent. That realization was enough to silence even my annoying internal commentator: any night that my neighbour's stereo did not cause my wall to vibrate in time to a Mötorhead bass line was a night to cherish. With a smile lighting up my face, I tied my windbreaker around my waist and took out my keys.

My smile had diminished a bit by the time I reached my door, but traces of it still remained in place of the grimace that usually marked my features after climbing the three flights of stairs to my bachelor apartment. I set the grocery bags down again, this time, being out of breath, allowing a few pieces to fall out onto the floor. I had thought that moving into a third-storey apartment would help me get in shape, yet a year had passed and I was still left panting on a daily basis, which made me think that there was perhaps a congenital defect in my pulmonary system, maybe a diaphragmatic hernia or bronchiectasis. However, when I had recently gone to see my GP­—the venerable Randy P. Lithau, M.D.—in the hope of gaining a referral to a lung specialist, he merely sighed and informed me that a daily three-minute climb did not "constitute a sufficient amount of exercise, so I'm hardly surprised that it wears you out. Get active, man! And for God's sake stop worrying so much!" Yes, well, although I was sure the good doctor had admirable intentions, I was all too aware that in my vulnerable state, sustained exertion could result in a cardiac event, so I had opted to proceed with caution. I devised my own exercise routine, which involved going down to check my mailbox at least once every hour that I was home during regular delivery hours. That allowed me to not only "get active", but also to reduce my anxiety levels by regularly confirming that a) no important mail had just been delivered, and b) I had not missed anything the last time I looked. I was sure that, had I the opportunity to tell him, Dr. Lithau would be proud; unfortunately his secretary had called me shortly after my last visit to inform me that because of his busy schedule, Dr. Lithau was being forced to ask some of his patients to transfer their business to other clinics. She was kind enough to provide me with the number of a doctor recommended by Lithau himself; it, however, turned out to be for a psychiatrist's office. I chose to assume that it was an innocent mistake, despite the significance imparted to it by the part of my mind that calls itself rational.

The door to my apartment, though of sturdy manufacture, looked as if a small rhinoceros had taken a profound disliking to it, and as such, I was not overly confident in its integrity. I had therefore installed extra locks—seven, to be precise—as a precaution, so my breathing was almost back to normal by the time I finally got the door open. I slipped out of my shoes just past the threshold and turned to take the bags from the hall. Crossing the room to the large box in the far corner, I emptied them onto my now considerable pile of popcorn.

Two and a half weeks earlier I had taken a job working behind the concession counter of a small downtown movie theatre—The Mind's Eye Cinema—which specialized in independent and foreign films. I generally went there at least once a month (I have a thing for subtitles), and on a recent visit to watch an Italian film that wasn't playing anywhere else, I had noticed a HELP WANTED sign as I as buying my medium ginger ale (which, incidentally, was to be the last soft drink I would ever purchase at a theatre: the storage area for the cups, at least at The Mind's Eye, is far from meeting my idea of sanitary, a fact which I was later asked to stop mentioning to customers). I had been wondering how best to obtain the popcorn I needed for Galatea, and the opportunity that had presented itself seemed highly appropriate, as I was also in dire need of employment, or at least of a source of income. I take particular pleasure in solutions that simultaneously solve more than one outstanding problem; there is an aesthetic quality to them not unlike an elegant chess move that achieves both defensive and offensive objectives at once.

After a perfunctory interview, during which I was able to ascertain (without sounding too desperate, I hope) that any popcorn left over at the end of the night was up for grabs, I was told to show up the following day for my first shift. The work was not what I would describe as fulfilling or stimulating, but I was able to quickly fill my popcorn box, despite one of my four shifts being in the afternoon. Any time I was working in the evening, I would take along four grocery bags, and was on average able to fill two of them. My bank account unfortunately did not full up as quickly—did not, in fact, fill up at all—but with the first of my biweekly paycheques I was able to buy myself a much needed respite from the recent influx of eviction threats. Not that I was likely to get kicked out: my landlord, Sean, had been a friend —or at least a classmate—of mine at university and had inherited his small housing business when his father had suffered an aneurysm while ice-fishing two years earlier. Sean owned and managed three rather rundown apartment buildings just outside the downtown area and did his best to survive in a business about which he knew little and for which he was ill-equipped: romantic, pushover types are rarely successful in any kind of managerial position. When it came to tenants like myself who were always late or even months behind in payment, his strategy was to bombard them with letters of warning, ranging from pale lemon for slight infractions through to a deep goldenrod, which signalled a major issue and was a precursor to the series of red letters of pending eviction, of which there were again five shades, each with increasingly dramatic threats. I had even heard tell of a fluorescent orange please-vacate-the-premises-immediately letter, but I suspect that even it, like the others, carried no more tangible threat than the shrill yapping of a toothless Chihuahua. Standing six-foot-four, thick as a lumberjack, with a shaved head and eyes the colour of moss, Sean was physically more intimidating than a toothless Chihuahua, at least until someone confronted him. At the slightest indication of hostility, his startling eyes would mist over, and he would seem to physically shrink, not as though he were coiling his bulk for a retaliatory strike, but rather as if he were trying to make himself a smaller target in the face of what must have seemed to him like curare-tipped arrows. All this I had known since the days when I sat next to him in first-year Latin: the professor had once asked Sean to read a portion of the homework aloud and had then challenged his version of the translation. It had left Sean shaking, mute and on the verge of tears. (The professor, a kind but distracted fellow, had later realized that he had been looking at the wrong section and had offered an apology after class. Sean went on to major in classics, and his colourful letters all included small-print footers of cryptic Latin phrases like OMNE IGNOTVM PRO MAGNIFICO or ALIQVANDO BONUS DORMITAT HOMERVS .) I knew, therefore, and I'm certain others quickly learned for themselves, that if one merely spoke to him in person, it was preposterously simple to get extensions or work out payment plans. Of course a thread of guilt always followed me after my timid (for I, too, dread confrontation) manipulations of dear old Sean, but it was tempered by a) my need to hang on to my apartment, and b) the knowledge that I would never cheat him out of any money in the long run. (Not unless I really had to, anyways.)

However, I had recently been pushing my luck and limited negotiating skills further than I liked—I had received the maroon letter of pending eviction, the last and most sinister—so my acceptance of the concession job was timely. The job did, unfortunately, have one glaring (as in baseball-stadium-halogen-floodlight glaring) drawback: the butter vat and its insidious miasma. By the end of each shift my cranial pain centres were firm in the pulsing grip of the vat's malicious fist. It had seemed fitting that I should suffer in my pursuit of popcorn—I guess I saw it as a kind of final offering to the idea of Galatea, and such offerings are meaningless without sacrifice—but I had not anticipated the extent to which my poor olfactory nerves would be afflicted. I was therefore very thankful for the large bottle of Tylenol 3's that I had pocketed while my grandfather's room was being cleared out after he passed away (of lung failure, I should add, so my concerns are not entirely without basis). Without their analgesic aid I doubt I would ever have lasted behind the concession's coral counter, and with my pill supply starting to run low and my popcorn supply exceeding its goal, I could now ask if I could be transferred to the box office, which was a safe distance from the dreaded vat.

That night I was beset as usual by the throbbing, but as I turned from my popcorn eager to self-medicate, I noticed with a shock that I had left the door wide open. I gingerly hopped over Galatea, lying as she was in the middle of the floor, and stepped to the door. I remembered then that I had left it open in order to retrieve the few pieces of popcorn that had fallen out in the hallway. Luckily they were all within reach of the door, so I was able to avoid stepping on the cracked sorrel linoleum in my socked feet. I studied the pieces once they were in my hand, trying to decide whether or not to add them to the pile, but given the filth of the hallway and the impressive size of my hoard, I opted to toss them in the garbage. Then, once the door was securely locked and double-checked, and my windbreaker was carefully draped over the back of a kitchen chair, I was finally able to head toward the bathroom.

I thoroughly washed my hands and forearms and dried them on a fresh yellow towel, then washed my hands again and dried them on a fresh white towel. (I have developed a wonderful—patentable, even—system for towels: blue is for when I wash my hands while or after cleaning, green is for when I am cooking, yellow is for general use, and white is reserved for when I have washed my hands after drying them on another towel. I can hardly imagine what my life was like before I initiated this system.) I then took the bottle from its spot in the medicine cabinet and tapped two precious pills into my palm. These I took to the kitchen, where I tore off and folded in half a paper towel on which to set them while I poured a glass of distilled water. I always drink a large glass of water (usually distilled, although reverse osmosis is also acceptable) when taking tablets. Caplets and gelcaps I can swallow no problem, without water and regardless of their size, but tablets always feel as if they're stuck just below my Adam's apple. I know that's not really the case: the pills themselves are busy dissolving in my gastric juices and distributing their pharmacological bounty; it's just a residual sensation —probably caused by the powder tablets so readily shed—but it's nevertheless distressing. Given the choice, I never purchase tablets, but of course, considering the way I had obtained my T-3's, I had little choice but to grin and bear the itching in my throat.

The pills reluctantly went down, and I gargled the last of the water to rid my pharynx of any remaining powder. After I had given my glass a good washing, I lifted my arm and sniffed my sleeve: it, like the rest of clothing and person, was saturated with the smug stench of the concession counter. Disgusted, I began stripping, and everything except my boxers went into the laundry basket that I kept next to the door. A dresser stood in the corner opposite my box of popcorn, and from it I took a pair of jeans that was worn from countless washings and a camouflaged T-shirt that was missing one of its sleeves. Lifting them to my face, I inhaled deeply and let the scent of fabric softener—one of the truly great inventions of the modern era—dispel the olfactory memory of buttered popcorn. Already starting to feel better, I got dressed and then turned to look upon Galatea lying incomplete on the floor.