Flatscreen (21 page)

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say. I’ve seen that episode” (
Seinfeld
, NBC, 1990–1998).

“You don’t know anything about me,” I mumbled as she ticked my chart, flipped her hair, adjusted her stethoscope, booty-shuffled back into the unflattering glow of the hospital.

“I mean well.”

Possible Ending #3 (Miramax):

Attend some superior accredited culinary academy, a training ground for world chef-ery, filled with sweet-drawling buxom brunettes with sharp palates, soft tongues, long tongs. Learn from the masters, unlearn my self-taught bad habits, develop strong calf muscles from all the standing, dissemble a baby calf in five flat. Shower daily, wear a fresh new apron, clogs, ironic sideburns. Get a job on the line, work my way up to sous. I still have a bullet scar, and a bad-boy limp. Maybe move south—Outer Banks, Virginia Beach—away from the culinary hubs into the kind of town that takes in strays, pays them to cook andouille sausage over an open-flame grill (
Summer on the Banks
, Dimetree Films, 1995). Waitresses with rip-fringed skirts supported by unwintered legs supported by nail-painted feet in battered sneakers. Drink too much, but so does everyone. At least I’m drinking French wine, sucking oysters, staring at the ocean. Occasionally Benjy comes down. Walk along the sand, talk about old times, rivalry we survived, family we survived, those ridic Thanksgivings like the one after I boned and
deboned Mrs. Sacks, when her hubby punched my eye like Iron Mike. Marry a surfer girl, let her surf my stomach (it ripples!), suspend her infantilism in the comfort of my callused-paw caress. Mom doesn’t like that she’s not Jewish, but by that point she’s remarried to Goldblum-Spelled-Differently, understands everyone just needs someone to make them feel like death isn’t a better option.

My doctor’s name was Zornstein. When he looked at my chart he chuckled, didn’t try to hide it.

“How you holding up, champ?”

“There’s still a hole in my leg.”

“Should be almost all closed up by now. You’ll hardly have a scar.”

“Too bad. I wanted a badass one like Fiddy Cent.”

“You’re lucky. The bullet missed everything. Went right through fat. Didn’t hit anything important.”

“But I could feel the bullet in me.”

“It probably just felt that way. The lump was actually your blood clotting.”

“So I’ll walk again and everything?”

“You can limp, if you want. For the street cred. But if you want to walk you can do that too.”

“When can I leave?”

“Another few days just for observation. You lost a lot of blood. You’re lucky that guy who shot you knew how to stop the bleeding.”

“He did?”

“Might have saved your life.”

“No shit.”

“Well, you can thank him yourself. He’s waiting for you out in the courtyard. I thought you could use a bit of fresh air today.”

“Isn’t it freezing out?”

“Five minutes will be good for you. We’ll give you a blanket.”

The nurse came with a wheelchair, winked in a way I took to be condescending.

“You look in better shape now that all that coke’s getting out of your system.”

“But what about the morphine?”

“They’re trying to wean you off.”

“No wonder my leg hurts so much.”

She wheeled me across the lobby to the terrace where Kahn sat waiting, watching a small child pick up rocks and throw them while his parents argued at a nearby bench. Father in a hospital gown, hooked to an IV even though he was outside.

“Hey there,” I said.

Kahn smiled. Always did when he saw me. Wondered if he smiled when he saw other people too, or if it was just when he saw me, if something about me made life bearable. I didn’t usually inspire smiles. Forehead lines, alcoholism, premature aging, balding, whispering, anything but the upward curve of lip Kahn organically produced whenever our eyes met.

Less well-dressed than ever before. Royal-blue sweatpants. Wheelchair gloves with cutoff fingers. Looked handicapped, homeless even.

“Got any smokes?” I said.

“Don’t touch the stuff. Stuff’ll kill ya.”

“So will bullets.”

Kahn looked me up and down, both in wheelchairs, warped reflections in a funhouse mirror.

“We are the same now. Cripples in the eyes of the law.”

“Doctor said I’d be fine.”

“As God created man in his own image, so I have done with you, my son.”

“I’m not your son.”

“You are Jesus and I am Jehovah.”

When I was stoned he seemed smart; when I was sober he sounded like an idiot. Still, he was here.

“You’re nuts,” I said. “You know that, right?”

“And you’re balls. We’re two peas in a pod. Twin testes in the sac of life.”

“If that bullet had been a few inches higher, I wouldn’t have any nuts.”

“So you should be thankful I’m such a good shot.”

“Or a bad one. For all I know you could have been aiming for them.”

“I may be crazy, but I am not cruel. No man deserves that. I wouldn’t even trade my balls if it meant I could get my legs back. Not in a million years.”

Looked down at his legs. Pants were baggy, hid how skinny his legs were.

“I’m not pressing charges,” he said.

“I didn’t think you would.”

“Your punishment is that I will live out the rest of my days in your old house, with a bullet lodged in the wall. It’s my punishment too.”

“Punishment for what?”

“For my sins, kid. We’re not like the Catholics. Everyone thinks they have it tough, but they’re wrong. The Catholics have it easy. They go to confession, whisper the pleasures in hushed tones like they’re phone-sex operators
while the priest pretends not to stroke his own schmuck behind that screen. For all we know they’ve got their flies open half the time, eight-year-old boys blowing them silent while the faithful whisper deepest and darkest about how Mommy didn’t love them so they stuck their dick in a jar of marshmallow fluff and let the pet rabbit lick it off. Next thing they know, they’ve said a few Hail Marys and they’re absolved. Sins washed away like chlamydia after three days on penicillin.”

“Plus they get to eat wafers in church. We have to fast.”

“You fast? Didn’t take you for the religious type.”

“I don’t. I’m not.”

“You believe in God?”

“Not sure I believe in anything.”

“A nihilist, eh? Filthy word. It means you can’t pretend. I used to be an actor. I used to be good at pretending. But I don’t know anymore.”

“So what do you believe in, then?”

“I believe in honor. Like negroes and Samurai swordsmen. I believe in good aged scotch and erect nipples when the night gets under white tee shirts. I believe a blow job can touch your soul, which means I believe in the soul, mainly because I’ve been blown by some of the best, and I once saw Coltrane at the Vanguard blowing that tenor like he was sucking gold dick for crack. Life is absurd, my friend. Don’t forget it. Life is absurd. Absurd as a turd.”

“They should put that on your gravestone.”

Kahn didn’t laugh. Instead looked back at the boy throwing rocks. Felt bad bringing up his gravestone even though we’d been talking about death, and it was impossible not to think about it when guys were sitting outside hooked to IVs while their wives cried (like an afternoon movie on cable with the sound turned down), while I myself
sat in a wheelchair, forty stitches in my leg, detoxing from morphine. The nurse walked over, said we should go back inside.

“Absurd as a turd,” Kahn said again.

She grabbed my handles, turned me around, pushed me toward the doors.

“Is he your father?”

“Sort of,” I said, because I didn’t know how to explain that Kahn had come to visit and my actual father hadn’t.

Ways in Which I Am Like a Rapper:

Possible Ending #4 (Dark but Ultimately Life-Affirming Screwball Dramedy):

Care for Kahn in the autumn of his life. Hilarity ensues. Benjy marries Erin. She erupts with babies, rounds herself into something soft. I cook large meals on the holidays. Everyone chuckles. Late one night Natasha bites my ear in the bathroom, penetrates me with her pinky, professes love. It’s possible I end up a schoolteacher for the mentally unhinged. When Kahn dies I cry fountains, realize how much I’ve learned, how much I still have to learn.

My room filled with cards with rhyming messages from the gift shop. Said things like “Sending a letter in hopes you get better,” because there were no cards that said “Sorry you got shot while breaking and entering, you fucking moron.”

Actually, only got one rhyming card, from Uncle Sal. Another card came from Dan. He’d crossed out Hallmark’s message, replaced it with “Sorry you got shot while breaking and entering, you fucking moron.”

Erin showed with bagels. Sat on the corner of my bed, watched the balloon raise and lower my leg. Light from the window caught the side of her face, reflected outward, adding a golden aura to her sweetly chubby cheek. Or maybe it just looked that way because they’d upped my morphine after I’d complained so much. Remembered that I’d seen her first, before Benjy, in what was now Kahn’s office but had once been my bedroom.

“It could have been different. It could have been me and you.”

If I hadn’t been on morphine I wouldn’t have said it and it wouldn’t have been excusable. But I had; it was. She didn’t get angry. Looked at me like she wanted to hug me,
cradle me, open her milk ducts, shower me with warm motherhood. Placed her hands over my hands.

“I accept your mothership,” I said. “You are the mothership.”

“I’m too young to be a mothership.”

“I saw that movie on Lifetime.”

“How’d it turn out?”

“She grew to love the child like it was her own.”

“But it was her own.”

“You’re pregnant?”

“Far from it,” Erin said, laid her head gently and ignorantly on my wounded leg.

“Owowowowowow.”

Erin upright, apologizing.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Just still a little tender.”

“You’re the soft one, aren’t you? Deep down I mean. You feel things strongly.”

“I feel strongly the pain in my leg.”

“But in your heart, I mean. In your heart you’re tender.”

“My soul is of no matter.”

“Your brother’s a shit.”

In my morphine sensitive-state I begged to differ.

“He means well. I really think he does. His heart is in a paper bag, I think. The paper bag’s stapled shut with really big staples, like the ones in my leg. But the paper is thin. You can rip it right out.”

“Like he ripped mine right out?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“The problem is I love him anyway.”

“That seems like a good problem.”

“It’s the worst problem I’ve ever encountered.”

“Fuck,” I said.

Erin squeezed my hand.

My peeps showed up too: Dan, Nikki, John, Matt.

I sang, “Oh, Danny boy, the lights are shining…”

“Aww, shit, you’re tripping out, kid. What they got you hooked up to in there?”

“Schwartz is domed to the dome.”

“I lost a lot of blood.”

“That’s ’cause you got capped, son,” Dan said.

Nikki bit her lip, shook her head, raised a single eyebrow.

“Hi, Eli,” she said.

“Hey, Jude. Don’t make it bad. Take a sad song…”

“Kid gets shot, thinks he’s John Lennon.”

“Paul,” I said.

“Who’s Paul?” Matt said. “I’m Matt.”

“McCartney, you idiot.”

“Yo, E., you’re famous.”

“Yeah. Your video’s climbed to ten on YouTube.”

“What video?”

“Guy Passes Out on Football Field, Gets Aroused, Gets Standing Ovation.”

“Shit.”

“You should be psyched. Chicks go crazy for famous people.”

Later, dreamed Alison Ghee was in the hospital with me. Siamese twins. Doctors wanted to cut us apart, but if they did she would somehow end up with my penis. Neither of us wanted the operation, but everyone was encouraging us to go through with it, saying if we didn’t then one of us—the weaker—would die. Couldn’t decide if it would be worse to be castrated or to have a dead girl physically attached to my body. Then my own heartbeat sped, the doctor said, “He’s crashing.” Realized I was the weaker half. “Do the surgery,”
Alison said. The doctor said, “Emergency separation,” held up a knife, was about to cut when I woke up.