Come Closer (8 page)
I turned. It was the man running the shop.
“Well I AM buying, I’m getting this and I’m deciding about these others.” I was angry, but only for a second or two. Ridiculous man. How could people know what to buy if they didn’t look first? I thought of the utter absurdity of the situation: a man who was talking customers out of shopping in his store. Probably went home every night wondering why he didn’t sell more magazines.
And then again: “Buy or don’t buy. Come on, lady.” I would have walked out but I had been looking for that magazine for a week now, it was mostly sold by subscription and wasn’t easy to find at a newsstand. I went to the counter.
“You know you’re very rude, how is a person supposed to shop without looking around first?” I paid with five dollar bills and two quarters.
“You don’t like it, get out. I don’t need this.”
I got angrier. All I wanted were a few magazines and here was this abuse. “I am getting out, and I won’t come back.”
I turned and left. I heard him behind me: “Fucking bitch.”
I ignored him. What a nut. How does a person like that come to run a business? I lit a cigarette and smoked a few drags. I was still angry, even though I was embarrassed about it. It should be beneath me, taking this moronic woman-hater seriously.
I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes left. If I walked the long way back to work, took the streets instead of the avenue, that would fill the time nicely. I could smoke another cigarette and relax. Stressful morning, trouble with the electricians at the Fitzgerald house, and now this ridiculous fight with a stranger. I was about to step into the street when a woman rushed by, or maybe a man with long hair, lightning fast, and almost knocked me down. I stumbled, and then caught myself. Fucking messengers.
And then a dip. I had closed my eyes for a second, a blink in anticipation of being hit by the messenger. I closed my eyes and there was a dip, a dip or a drop out of consciousness. I had a cigarette in my hand, the air smelled hot and dirty on the street corner, the messenger rushed by, I lost my balance, stumbled and then, I could just barely remember it, I saw black and lost the feeling of my feet on the ground.
It passed as quickly as it came, and there I was in front in the magazine store on the corner. The cigarette was gone. Of course you don’t usually remember putting out a cigarette, not at a pack a day. That’s twenty times a day you put out a cigarette.
Where was the magazine? I looked around my desk. Not there. In my mind I went back again to the magazine stand. After the messenger raced by I shook my head, took a second to get my bearings. Just a little moment of lightheadedness. I walked up the side streets back to work, smoked another cigarette, stopped to admire a beautiful red rose bush in a front yard. I stopped to check my watch before I came back into the building. Five to. What I expected. But I had only checked the long minute hand, not the short hour hand. So where was the magazine? I didn’t have it on the way back to work. I remembered reaching into my purse for cigarettes and lighter and having both hands free. No cigarette, no magazine.
I mulled it over in my mind for a few minutes before I came up with an answer: I had fainted. That was the only possibility. When I thought I had only stumbled, avoiding the messenger, I had fainted. I had been out for an hour, righted myself, and then returned to work without knowing it had happened, drawing no attention from a single passerby, and then forgotten the whole thing. Sitting at my desk I weighed a visit to the emergency room. No, I was okay now.
It was just like people in this city not to stop and help. Of course the magazine dealer would have seen the whole thing through the door, but he certainly wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help me. I called Edward at the office but he was out. The rest of the day went by without incident and at six I went home. There was a message from Ed on the answering machine saying he would be late again. I ate a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table and almost forgot about having fainted—until I went to the bedroom and started to undress, changing into pajamas for the evening. Underneath my jacket, on the left shoulder of my white shirt, was a spray of small brown dots.
It looked like blood. Enough so, in fact, that there was nothing it could be but blood. My mind flip-flopped again. Then I remembered lunch at the coffee shop—a rare hamburger. Mystery solved. The stain was from lunch. I had transmitted a fine spray of blood from a cooked hamburger around my jacket and onto the shoulder of the shirt underneath, then I had fainted, righted myself, and forgotten about it. As simple as that.
Edward came home at nine, with a bag of Mexican take-out for dinner and an armload of apologies. I told him what had happened and, shocked, he quizzed me with all the warmth of an emergency room doctor: What had I eaten? Was I getting my period? Had I slept well last night? How did I feel now?
“Why are you interrogating me?” I yelled. I felt fine, I looked fine, eventually I convinced him that I was fine.
It wasn’t until a few days later that I happened to watch the television news. Ed was still at work. The sun had just gone down and a gray light was coming through the windows, meeting the blue from the television in the middle of the room. I was sitting on the sofa about to bite into another take-out dinner, pad thai and papaya salad.
A vaguely familiar face popped up on the television screen. Middle-aged, male, not at all attractive. Where did I know him from?
“Kareem Singh was buried today,” a woman’s voice said. Cut to a funeral in a crowded slum of the city. “The owner of a newsstand was killed with a box cutter on Monday afternoon in what police think was an attempted robbery.”
Of course. The asshole from the magazine stand. Horrible. But I wasn’t surprised, the way he’d acted. Probably said the wrong thing to the wrong person. And I had been there on Monday, it must have been right before—
For a very small moment, for a tiny sliver of time, the thought occurred to me. But as soon as the spark was lit it was put out again. Impossible. The television news moved on, cut-cut, and so did I.
It wasn’t until months later that I would look back and realize that, most likely, I had killed the magazine dealer myself.
T
HAT WEEKEND WE went to the Asian Museum to see a rare display of Meiji Japanese furniture, Edward’s favorite. After we walked through the exhibit we had an elegant lunch in the museum cafe, watercress salad and crustless salmon sandwiches—a little too elegant, I guess, because soon afterwards we were hungry again, and went for a walk in the park in search of hot dogs and pretzels.
HAT WEEKEND WE went to the Asian Museum to see a rare display of Meiji Japanese furniture, Edward’s favorite. After we walked through the exhibit we had an elegant lunch in the museum cafe, watercress salad and crustless salmon sandwiches—a little too elegant, I guess, because soon afterwards we were hungry again, and went for a walk in the park in search of hot dogs and pretzels.
In the park we ran into Alex and Sophia and their six-year-old daughter, Claire. I didn’t like Alex and Sophia. All that could annoy me about Ed was amplified in Alex and Sophia. They worked in finance, in some capacity, and made tons of money. Their apartment was revoltingly spotless and bland with an absurd white carpet they paid a woman to come in and scrub twice a week.
Luckily they had Claire, so I had some entertainment when we met. While Ed and his friends talked about Alex’s promotion, which was supposed to be interesting, Claire and I walked down to the lake to look at the swans. Swans were beautiful but could be dangerous, I explained to Claire as we walked. As long as they didn’t feel threatened, I told her, they were fine. But if we were to get too close to the birds they would try to bite.
When we got to the water we stood there for a minute or two, watching four white swans pick each other’s feathers clean with their hard orange beaks. Then Claire turned to me—not exactly to me but in my direction, a little to my left. She did this a few more times, and I looked around to see if anything interesting was going on. But I knew a little girl could find an unusual blade of grass or an out-of-place bottle cap fascinating, so I didn’t give it too much thought.
Then Claire turned towards me again. “Are you sure?” she asked.
“Sure about what, honey?” I said.
She ignored me. “Okay,” Claire said. And then she let go of my hand and ran to the water’s edge and reached her hand out to the nearest swan. The bird bent its long neck towards Claire with a nasty look on its face. It all happened in the blink of an eye. I ran down after Claire, scooped her up, and jumped back. The bird waddled up the riverbank after us.
“Hey!” I yelled at the swan. “Fuck off!” It stopped and stared with its beady eyes. I ran with Claire in my arms like a sack of potatoes back up the embankment. After a few yards I put her down and we walked back towards her parents.
“Claire, why did you do that?”
She squeezed her eyebrows together and pouted. “She told me to!” She cried. “She said I could!”
“What are you talking about? No one told you to do anything.”
“Her!” Claire said with frustration. She pointed to my left side, at about the same angle she had been looking earlier. “Your friend.”
“Who, honey?”
“The lady who’s always with you,” she said. Claire pouted and looked at the ground.
When we got back to our little group I told Sophia that Claire had been telling lies.
THATNIGHTIpicked up
Demon Possession Past and Present
and took the quiz again. This time I scored a seven.
Demon Possession Past and Present
and took the quiz again. This time I scored a seven.
0-3: You are probably not possessed. See a doctor or mental health professional for an evaluation. 3-6: You may be haunted, or in the early stages of possession. Do not be alarmed. Seek a spiritual counselor for assistance.6-10: You are possessed. Consult with your spiritual counselor immediately. You may be a threat to the safety of yourself and your family. See the RESOURCES page for a qualified professional in your area.
S
ISTER MARIA, SPIRITUAL advisor, was the closest professional in my area. What could it hurt? I asked myself. I had always been curious to visit a psychic, just to see how they did it—the tricks they might use, the leading questions—because of course there was nothing to it. Of course I didn’t believe in psychics or spiritualists or demons or devils. At the very best this Maria might be an intelligent person with strong intuition who could give me a little insight into the changes that I saw happening in myself the past few months.
Take some time to relax,
I imagined she would tell me.
Take some vitamin C.
At the worst, it would be good for a laugh. I used that phrase a lot that year,
good for a laugh.
And the word
curious.
That’s what I would tell Ed if he found out that I wasn’t at the Fitzgerald house that day, like I had told him—it was just for a laugh, I would tell him. I was curious.
ISTER MARIA, SPIRITUAL advisor, was the closest professional in my area. What could it hurt? I asked myself. I had always been curious to visit a psychic, just to see how they did it—the tricks they might use, the leading questions—because of course there was nothing to it. Of course I didn’t believe in psychics or spiritualists or demons or devils. At the very best this Maria might be an intelligent person with strong intuition who could give me a little insight into the changes that I saw happening in myself the past few months.
Take some time to relax,
I imagined she would tell me.
Take some vitamin C.
At the worst, it would be good for a laugh. I used that phrase a lot that year,
good for a laugh.
And the word
curious.
That’s what I would tell Ed if he found out that I wasn’t at the Fitzgerald house that day, like I had told him—it was just for a laugh, I would tell him. I was curious.
In the northern tip of the city, where Sister Maria’s shop or office or clinic was, I didn’t know what to expect—the streets crunched with bottle caps and fast-food wrappers and used hypodermic needles. The windows in the rundown tenements were cracked, some missing and replaced with balsa wood or particleboard. But it wasn’t wholly without charm: an elderly man sat on a folding chair in front of his doorway, hat in hand, and wished me a fine day. On a grocery store wall I noticed a small plaque from the Landmarks Commission; it had been the site of a famous jazz nightclub in the thirties. A slow wailing big band sound flowed through an open window.
Accompaneme,
the woman sang—come with me. A crowd of children played hopscotch in the middle of a street. Up the street a clique of teenage girls sat on a stoop and pretended to ignore the grandstanding teenage boys on the street around them.
Accompaneme,
the woman sang—come with me. A crowd of children played hopscotch in the middle of a street. Up the street a clique of teenage girls sat on a stoop and pretended to ignore the grandstanding teenage boys on the street around them.
At number 77 was a shop with a life-sized plaster Madonna in the window. She wore a black wig and a white dress, and at her feet was a bowl of water with coins at the bottom. The glass was clean and the street in front was well swept. A bell jangled when I opened the door. Inside was a neat little shop lined with shelves like a grocery store, except I wasn’t quite sure what was on the shelves. Jars of herbs. Quarts of green and brown liquids labeled with numbers. Come-to-me oil, money-drawing soap, house-blessing spray, hot-foot powder, four thieves vinegar, Florida Water, St. Christopher oil. Candles in the shape of men, women, cats, and dogs. Lucite pyramids filled with lucky charms, and good old-fashioned crystal balls in various sizes. Behind a glass case of medallions and charms stood a teenage boy, a flaming queer in tight designer jeans with a silver ring through his bottom lip. He smiled and asked if he could help me.
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