The Chiropractor's Assistant by Barry Rachin (books for 8th graders .txt) 📖

A week before the poet, Gregory Stiles, was to read from his award-winning collection at Brown University, Elliot Slotnick threw his back out changing a flat tire. He almost had the wheel free of the axle with one rusty lug nut frozen tight. Setting his feet firmly on the asphalt, he gave the tire iron an extra twist and felt the icy burst of pain approximately eight inches up from the base of his tailbone. Lumbar three. At least twice a year, he did something whacky, injuring the same part of his back.

The next afternoon he was lying on his stomach in the chiropractor's office, his mouth and nose protruding through a strategically placed hole in the leather-padded examining table. The pain in his back was miraculously gone, replaced by a dull, achy soreness. He recognized the soreness from previous injuries and luxuriated in the promise of restored health. Dr. Edwards, the chiropractor, had gone off to tend to the next client. His assistant, a zuftig blonde on the front side of middle age, spread a cold gel on his lower spine; a moment later, she was massaging the area with an electronic device that made his skin tingle.

"Does that feel better, Mr. Slotnick?"

"Yes, it does, thank you." Sad to think this was the closest Elliot had come to female companionship in the past six months. "Yes, that feels much better!"

From his prone position Elliot's field of vision was extremely limited, but he could picture the attractive, white-frocked woman in his mind's eye. The way she walked with her wide shoulders thrown back and chin held erect. The cheekbones were high offsetting a pair of thin but delicate lips. Elliot had spent the better part of his adolescence well into young adulthood lusting after erotic goddesses like her. Was there a brain in that gorgeous head? What were her interests and hobbies, her aspirations, her dreams? He peered down at the floor through the hole in the table and watched a dust bunny no bigger than his fingernail drift aimlessly across the linoleum.

The assistant left the room so he could put his clothes on. As he buttoned his shirt, Elliot studied himself in the full-length mirror. Upon his arrival a half hour earlier, the right shoulder sagged two inches below its mate. A subluxation of the lower spinal column, Dr. Edwards pointed that disconcerting fact out to him during the initial examination. Now both shoulders were more or less aligned.

"Is this yours?" The chiropractor's assistant had returned and was holding a blue flyer, which she fished out from under the table.

"It's just a notice for a poetry reading." Elliot was mildly embarrassed. So few people had any interest in poetry. Even among his students at Brown where he taught comparative literature, he would be shocked, pleasantly so, to see more than one or two familiar faces in the meager crowd.
"A poetry reading?" There was a hint of awe mingled with envy in her tone. "It sounds so refined."

"Well yes, I suppose." Elliot folded the flyer into a compact square and buried it in his pants pocket. "If the poet has a bad night or the material he chooses isn't up to par, it can be a huge bore."

"I wouldn't care," she replied.

"How's that?" His bushy eyebrows edged up a fraction of an inch.

"My last reading was tarot cards and tea leaves.” She flashed him a sick grin and began straightening up the examining room.

Elliot rubbed his chin thoughtfully and lowered his eyes. The light banter was drifting off in an unexpected and potentially troublesome direction. He could let the conversation lapse, die a natural, painless death, and that would be the end of it. On the other hand, if he asked her to join him, it wouldn’t be a date per se. The woman had never attended a poetry reading and Elliot, without any ulterior motive or devious intent, would simply be accompanying her.—a literary tour guide, so to speak. The fact that she was outrageously attractive was an incredible stroke of good luck, an act of serendipity like winning the lottery or getting an unexpected promotion, and nothing more.

"You could come with me, if you like."

Unable to call them back, he heard the words fly stupidly out of his mouth, and, before he could even consider the consequence of what he had done, the chiropractor's assistant said, "Yes, that would be nice."


Elliot Slotnick’s Grandmother, Esther, came to America from Kiev in the Ukraine. She arrived as a young girl in 1912. There had been a pogrom, a massacre of Jews, in the town where she was born close by the Dneper River. One night during an unusually cold winter, the Cossacks rampaged through the Jewish quarter waving their swords in the air and screaming for blood. It was the week before Passover. Three people died. A dozen chickens and a brown cow were stolen, several buildings burnt to the ground. After the incident, it was decided that the family, which had relatives already firmly established in America, would emigrate.

When Elliot was a little boy, Grandma Esther sang a whacky song in Yiddish - a lilting, repetitious ditty that she learned from her own parents as a young girl not much older than Elliot. She sang the song during the day as she kneaded the dough to make her sugar-glazed, apple and cinnamon strudel; over and over she repeated the absurd refrain as she sprinkled lemon and orange rind, black raisins and honey onto the paper-thin crust. Later in the evening, she hummed the minor-keyed melody, however inappropriately, as a lullaby to send her favorite grandson off to sleep

Shiker ist a Goy,
und nichter ist a Yid.
Geht a Yid
in Bet Hamikdash arein,
und habt er dort a kaddusha...

The Christians are all drunkards
and the Jews are all sober.
The Jews go to the Synagogue
and say their prayers,
while the Christians …

As he grew older, Elliot could not remember the final verse. It was lost to him along with his grandmother's cock-eyed, superstitious logic and secret recipe for strudel. But he imagined that the Christians acted much like the Cossacks who had terrorized his not-so-distant relatives - running amok, raping, pillaging, and murdering righteous Jews.

If Grandma Esther were alive and knew Elliot was attending a poetry reading with the chiropractor’s assistant, an idol-worshipping shiksa and veritable heathen, she would have recited the Prayer for the Dead and sent the Golem, medieval Jewry's version of the Frankenstein monster, to hunt Elliot Slotnick down and tear him limb from repulsive limb.


Marilyn Moneghan. That was the woman’s name. She reminded Elliot of another Marilyn - the one who, in the early 60's, was romantically linked with President Kennedy - not so much in face but in her generous bosom and milk-white, translucent skin. The jutting breasts and immaculate, baby-soft skin were right up there with those of her glamorous, Hollywood namesake.

On the night of the poetry reading, Elliot drove cross town to a tidy, two story tenement in the working-class, Silver Lake district. When he arrived at the apartment, Marilyn opened the door and stepped out onto the landing. "There's a problem," she said in a pinched tone.
She wore a fashionable, print dress with low heels and a pair of teardrop, pearl earrings. The effect was stunning. "My daughter is giving me fits. She doesn't want to stay home alone."
"Bring her along, then."

"You're sure it's all right?"

"It's not unusual for people to bring children."

"I'll be just a minute." Marilyn disappeared back into the apartment. A moment later, she reemerged with a young girl, a physically underdeveloped version of the mother but with a taciturn expression. "Chrissy, this is Mr. Slotnick." The girl, who pushed her lips out in a petulant scowl, glanced vaguely in Elliot's direction while taking special precaution not to make direct eye contact or alter her expression. She was wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt and jeans with a tear in one knee. "Should I have her change into something more presentable?"

"No, she looks just fine."


"About tonight’s reading," Elliot explained. "Gregory Stiles is something of a legendary figure among the West Coast, beat poets." Marilyn was sitting next to him in the front seat with her hands folded neatly in her lap. Chrissy was slouched down in the back at such an angle that Elliot could not locate her in the rear view mirror. "In the mid-sixties he bummed around the Bay Area, working odd jobs and writing some amazingly good poetry - mostly about his childhood." Elliot turned onto Broadway heading east toward the downtown area. It was already quite dark. They passed a number of tall buildings with intricately carved, gingerbread trim in Victorian style.

Gregory Stiles was considered one of the young lions, a literary prodigy, whose first book of poems, a small collection of no more than sixty pages, was noteworthy for, among other things, its simple, uncluttered language. There was at least a dozen new books over the next ten years, and the author became a fixture at writing seminars and college workshops throughout the country. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way from journeyman poet to literary lion, the wellspring of Gregory Stiles' creative juices ran dry; his writing lost much of its crispness and verve. In his prime, the man had written some first rate poetry; if the material which followed didn't quite measure up, Elliot saw no reason to share this unpleasant detail with the woman sitting next to him.

The poetry reading was billed as a retrospective, but for some reason Gregory - a thinly elegant man with bifocals and a thick head of unkempt, silver hair - chose to open with ten poems from his most recent publication. He read with a renewed passion and sincerity that caught many of the listeners off guard and left the audience hanging on every poignant image and jaggedly sculpted verse. A half hour into the reading, the author shifted to a work-in-progress, a series of haiku-style, shorter poems which, while not as interesting as the earlier material, was still quite remarkable.

On the ride home, Elliot glanced at Marilyn. Again, her hands were folded demurely in her lap, a contented smile coloring her lips. Chrissy had moved to the front seat wedged between her mother and the window. The scowl was gone, replaced by an expressionless, neutral mask.

When they reached the apartment, Chrissy nodded, almost but not quite cordially, and vanished into the apartment. "Thank you so much, Elliot," Marilyn said. "I can't remember when I've had such a wonderful time." She leaned forward, cocked her head to one side and kissed Elliot full on the lips. The kiss was generous and lingering; she was in no hurry to give it up. And yet, the gesture was perfectly discrete. Elliot's first wife, Nadine, had been an effusively wet and sloppy kisser, one might even say an hysterical kisser. Even before their marriage, her emotions careened haphazardly all over the place. She favored the shotgun approach to sexual bonding, spraying her affection (and her rage) like buckshot pellets. Marilyn Moneghan’s approach was totally focused and deliberate - like a hunter with a single-shot, high-powered rifle. There was nothing random or arbitrary about the woman.


The following Saturday, Elliot took Marilyn on an outing to Horseneck Beach. Before they