I’m Losing You by Bruce Wagner Read Free Book Online Page A

and musk—as she imagined the skin of the cantor—and for her, this odorously illicit concatenation made her pulse pound. Rejoice: she watched the deadpan cantor silently clear his throat, neck shifting mysteriously, Sy Krohn, the inscrutable religious pro, and the Ribkin family stood along with all the others when his songs began, prayerbooks open for talmudic anthem, this soignée, beaten-down housewife who could actually smell the cantor’s balmy breath, redolent of Listerine and borscht, matzo brei and brisket, beer and kugel; she built an aromatic bridge to him, tendons of ambrosia, sandalwood and heliotrope, jasmine and rose—high altar of attar. He lifted the span with the tension of his voice and held her aloft while Bernie vanished to the men’s room or sidewalk with a sixty-dollar cigar. They journeyed together, cantor and mistress, a powdery pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, Gaza and Alexandria, Palmyra and Damascus. Skirting the Empty Quarter—Rub al Khali. To Athens they went—along the way, eloping from the caravansary and camping in a grove of tamarisks, near a spring-fed pool. Sy roasted a young goat over thuriferous firewood and served tea thick as molasses. He tore into her Arabic tail, slicing it open, licking her spit. Come morning, she awakened in his arms beneath a cloudy anvil of monsoon.
    The congregation sat again, jarring her reverie. As the rabbi spoke, Sy faded to the wings to begin his trademark mucosal rumblings. Once she was his, Serena resolved to do a makeover. A few adjustments, that’s all. Get him to stop putting grease in his hair,that’s why he had the dandruff. Then, in the middle of these absurdities, Donny looked into her eyes, freed by the absence of his father, a strange beseeching look, the abstract, abject entreaties of a small boy’s nameless misery. The seven-year-old could not give his heartbreak a voice—the cantor would have to speak for them all. The congregation would rise again as Serena fell back on her fantasia: East of Aden, there they were amid merchants and drovers, wending through souks with the imperturbable charm of post-coital complicity: stalls of cinnamon, cardamom, turmeric and thyme, ivory, indigo, coffee and galls. He gave her myrrh for menstrual cramps, and ground red coral for the abrasions from their lovemaking, resin from the dragon’s blood tree. The cantor wore blue loincloth, scabbard and
jambiyya
. Gone were the grease and the talis, the flaky skin. Under hallucinatory skies of eagles and crested hoopoes, through fields of wheat and fire-red aloes, rock-laden baboon-screeched wastelands and stands of lemon trees they went, Sy and Serena, until reaching the vulcanean cliffs of Hisn al Ghurab.
    Bernie rejoined them, sliding onto the bench (that reeked of the mucus of her love), soft and honey-smooth as a bowling lane. It had been hell for almost four years; he hadn’t touched her in three—why didn’t he leave? Because of the child, he said.
But we’re killing the child!
Their rancor was sloppy and public. Why hadn’t she forced him out? Because of the child…
    Soon she would go to the cantor, to save her soul. She didn’t care what it took. She would corner him, talk to him, make him touch her. He had a wife but that meant nothing. She would ask him to sing—to her alone. She would tell him that spices rode on his voice and that he should stop putting grease in his hair. She would say she was lost in the Rub al Khali and would he please take her arm lest she be swallowed by the dunes.

    Simon decided to wait a few weeks before calling Calliope to apologize. They’d been through this type of blow-up before. The bad part was, this time he needed rent money.
    He came up with a great idea for a
Blue Matrix
episode. Simon would call it “Heart of Arknes,” Arknes being the name of the Vorbalidian navigator’s long-lost mother, a fierce warrioress who died in a