“Oh, I still have more to say, dick whistle. This stuff reeks. You just spent three hundred bucks so we could steep ourselves in a giant pile of steaming horseshit.”
I let out a groan and stopped responding. Eventually Lisa went silent. She was either dead or exhausted, and I was grateful either way. We lay in our tub at a right angle, our toes pointed toward each other, for about twenty minutes. Once sufficiently overheated and pleasantly light-headed, I removed the washcloth and cucumbers from my eyes and checked to make sure Lisa’s were still covered. I stood up and with my hands and forearms wiped from my naked body the excess mud, which fell back into the tub in thick glops. I jauntily stepped over to the shower, my back to Lisa, and rinsed the remaining mud from my newly detoxed cracks and crevices.
“I’m getting into the Jacuzzi now,” I announced.
“Good for you, princess,” she said. “I’m getting out of here before a redwood takes root in my vagina.”
“OK, I’ll shut my eyes.”
The first sound I heard from Lisa’s direction was barely audible over the motor of the mineral bath. It was the kind of noise a middle-aged man might make getting out of bed after a solid sleep. Uuuunnnngh. The second sounded more like the first guttural emanations of a German charwoman suffering an appendicitis attack. Aaaaaoooo guhhhhpffft. And the third, the final audible cry of an elderly bison as it submits to a pack of hungry coyote. Mmmmbuh.
“Are you OK over there?” I asked.
“Pawk,” she said. “I’m stuck.”
*
Lisa and I have been calling each other Pawk for more than twenty years now. I am Pawk. She is Pawk. And together we are Pawk. It’s pronounced the way people with thick New York accents say pork.
The name stuck after a visit to our friend Sandra’s condo on Long Island. She had just given birth to her second son, Vincent, affectionately referred to as Baby Bincent by Isabel’s first son, Nicholas.
As soon as we sat down on the living room sofa, Nicholas, who was almost three and excited to receive company, brought Lisa and me one of his toys, a colorful limp-limbed clown.
“That’s one of his favorites,” Sandra said tepidly. She was nursing Vincent in a nearby chair. Her normally well-maintained hair was stringy and she looked like she was having trouble staying awake. “It speaks if you squeeze it.” Sandra, still in her early twenties, was the first of our high school cohort to have children, so her situation was foreign and awkward to us.
Evidently, the purpose of the doll was to teach some basic anatomy. When you squeezed its hand, you activated some microchip and the doll said, “Hand!” If you squeezed its leg, the doll said, “Leg!” Lisa and I must have been thinking the same thing, because she whispered in my ear: “Do you think this thing is anatomically correct?”
I replied, “Did you squeeze its . . . you know?”
“That’s the first place I squeezed. It’s dead down there.”
Playing with Nicholas, we could ignore the fact Sandra was married, with two small humans to keep alive. Responsibility frightened us. So, we kept squeezing.
“Head!” said the doll.
“Head!” yelled Nicholas.
“Head!” cheered Lisa and I.
Squeeze.
“Hand!” said the doll.
“Hand!” yelled Nicholas.
“Hand!” cheered Lisa and I.
Squeeze.
“Tummy!” said the doll.
“Tummy!” yelled Nicholas.
“Tummy!” cheered Lisa and I.
Nicholas was getting all riled up, twirling around the living room with his hands in the air. His joy was contagious because we were all laughing like a bunch of kids on a playground. Then Lisa pressed the doll’s shoe.
“Foot! Foot!” said the doll. Apparently it had a glitch in that extremity because it said foot twice. Or maybe it was just ticklish.
Nicholas stopped in his tracks and stared at both of us.
“Pawk,” he announced, the way one might answer the question of what’s for dinner.
“What did he just say?” I asked Sandra. She shrugged.
“Pawk!” Nicholas yelled.
Lisa and I looked at each other. Then back at Nicholas. Then back at each other.
“Pawk!” we cried in unison.
We’ve been Pawk ever since.
*
“Pawk, I’m stuck.”
“You’re not stuck,” I assured her. “Just try harder.”
“I’m trying as hard as I can. I’m dying. In the mud.”
“Would you like me to call an ambulance?”
“Funny, douche canoe. But I’m not kidding. Help me out of here!”
“OK, OK,” I said, more than mildly annoyed. “Close your eyes!” I climbed out of the Jacuzzi and reached for my robe, which I had hung on a nearby hook. It looked so clean and white and soft. If I wore it to pull Pawk from the mud, it would get filthy. That’s not the way this should go, I thought. I want a pristine robe after my mineral bath. And so I decided to remain naked.
“Keep your eyes closed. I’m coming over,” I said.
“I honestly have no desire to see your dick. Just get me out of here before I fucking boil.”
During all of her grunting and groaning, Lisa had managed to swing her legs over the side of the tub. She must have inverted her center of gravity because her head was thrown back into the mud, her frizzy copper hair splayed around her like a slow-burning fire. As I gazed down upon her she struck me as a giant overturned turtle slowly sinking into a prehistoric tar pit.
“Oh, that’s not good,” I said. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Give me your hands and I’ll pull you up.” She raised her arms from her sides. I took hold of her wrists and she took mine. I steadied myself as best I could on the slick concrete floor and pulled. Her shoulders barely broke the surface. “You’re gonna have to help me out a bit here,” I told her.
“I’m trying,” she growled. And opened her eyes.
“You’re peeking!” I yelled.
“I can’t see anything except the ceiling!”
“Well, shut your eyes anyway.”
“Why do you get to have your eyes open?”
“How am I supposed to pull you out without looking?”
“Oh, I don’t even care at this point.”
“Believe me, it’s not like I want to see any of this.”
Now’s probably a good time for me to add that Lisa is not a small girl. And I’m not saying this with any judgment, because life happens and I adore her. But whenever I picture her in my head, I see her as she was when we were young, a little wisp of a thing, five feet tall and ninety pounds soaking wet. After thirty years, two kids, a bad marriage, and a decade of working overnights in a hospital, she’s put on some weight, much of it in the bust region. Lisa doesn’t say whether she minds it or not, though she will frequently note that many men are drawn to it. I, on the other hand, was doing everything in my power to avoid looking at it.
I propped my foot up on the tub, between where Lisa’s legs were dangling over the edge, and pulled as hard as I could.
“Puuuuuush!” I yelled.
“You’re hurting meeee!” she yelled.
I kept pulling and she kept falling back into the mud, again and again, until we were both laughing so hard we had to pause, twice, to catch our breath.
“I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up,” I said after ten minutes.