Motherless Brooklyn (21 page)

“Walk,” I said.

Humbled by his own body, the garbage cop didn’t argue, but headed for the door.

Danny volunteered to sit by the L&L phone. He already had a pot of coffee brewing, he pointed out, and I could see he was in a pacing mood, that he wanted the space of the office to himself. It suited me well enough to leave him there. I went upstairs, without our exchanging more than a few sentences.

Upstairs I lit a candle and stuck it in the center of my table, beside Minna’s beeper and watch. Loomis’s clumsy pass at ritual haunted me. I needed one of my own. But I was also hungry. I poured out the diluted drink and made myself a fresh one, set it out on the table too. Then I unwrapped the sandwich from Zeod’s. I considered for a moment, fighting the urge just to sink my teeth into it, then went to the cabinet and brought back a serrated knife and small plate. I cut the sandwich into six equal pieces, taking unexpectedly deep pleasure in the texture of the kaiser roll’s resistance to the knife’s dull teeth, and arranged the pieces so they were equidistant on the plate. I returned the knife to my counter, then centered plate, candle and drink on the table in a way that soothed my grieving Tourette’s. If I didn’t stem my syndrome’s needs I would never clear a space in which my own sorrow could dwell.

Then I went to my boom box and put on the saddest song in my CD collection, Prince’s “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore.”

I don’t know whether The Artist Formerly Known as Prince is Tourettic or obsessive-compulsive in his human life, b know for certain he is deeply so in the life of his work. Music had never made much of an impression on me until the day in 1986 when, sitting in the passenger seat of Minna’s Cadillac, I first heard the single “Kiss” squirting its manic way out of the car radio. To that point in my life I might have once or twice heard music that toyed with feelings of claustrophobic discomfort and expulsive release, and which in so doing passingly charmed my Tourette’s, gulled it with a sense of recognition, like Art Carney or Daffy Duck—but here was a song that lived entirely in that territory, guitar and voice twitching and throbbing within obsessively delineated bounds, alternately silent and plosive. It so pulsed with Tourettic energies that I could surrender to its
tormented, squeaky beat and let my syndrome live outside my brain for once, live in the air instead.

“Turn that shit down,” said Minna.

“I like it,” I said.

“That’s that crap Danny listens to,” said Minna.
Danny
was code for
too black
.

I knew I had to own that song, and so the next day I sought it out at J&R Music World—I needed the word “funk” explained to me by the salesman. He sold me a cassette, and a Walkman to play it on. What I ended up with was a seven-minute “extended single” version—the song I’d heard on the radio, with a four-minute catastrophe of chopping, grunting, hissing and slapping sounds appended—a coda apparently designed as a private message of confirmation to my delighted Tourette’s brain.

Prince’s music calmed me as much as masturbation or a cheeseburger. When I listened to him I was exempt from my symptoms. So I began collecting his records, especially those elaborate and frenetic remixes tucked away on the CD singles. The way he worried forty-five minutes of variations out of a lone musical or verbal phrase is, as far as I know, the nearest thing in art to my condition.

“How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” is a ballad, piano strolling beneath an aching falsetto vocal. Slow and melancholy, it still featured the Tourettic abruptness and compulsive precision, the sudden shrieks and silences, that made Prince’s music my brain’s balm.

I put the song on repeat and sat in the light of my candle and waited for the tears. Only after they came did I allow myself to eat the six turkey-sandwich portions, in a ritual for Minna, alternating them with sips of Walker Red.
The body and the blood
, I couldn’t keep from thinking, though I was as distant from any religious feeling as a mourning man could be.
The turkey and the booze
, I substituted. A last meal for
Minna, who didn’t get one. Prince moaned, finished his song, began it again. The candle guttered. I counted
three
as I finished a portion of sandwich, then
four
. That was the extent of my symptoms. I counted sandwiches and wept. At
six
I killed the music, blew out the candle and went to bed.

(in Tourette dreams you shed your tics)

(or your tics shed you)
(and you go with them, astonished to leave yourself behind)

There are
days when I get up in the morning and stagger into the bathroom and begin running water and then I look up and I don’t even recognize my own toothbrush in the mirror. I mean, the object looks strange, oddly particular in its design, strange tapered handle and slotted, miter-cut bristles, and I wonder if I’ve ever looked at it closely before or whether someone snuck in overnight and substituted this new toothbrush for my old one. I have this relationship to objects in general—they will sometimes become uncontrollably new and vivid to me, and I don’t know whether this is a symptom of Tourette’s or not. I’ve never seen it described in the literature. Here’s the strangeness of having a Tourette’s brain, then: no control in my personal experiment of self. What might be only strangeness must always be auditioned for relegation to the domain of symptom, just as symptoms always push into other domains, demanding the chance to audition for their moment of acuity or relevance, their brief shot—coulda been a contender!—at centrality. Personalityness. There’s a lot of traffic in my head, and it’s two-way.

This morning’s strangeness was refreshing, though. More than refreshing—revelatory. I woke early, having failed to draw my curtains, the wall above my bed and the table with melted candle, tumbler quarter full of melted ice, and sandwich crumbs from my ritual snack now caught in a blaze of white sunlight, like the glare of a projector’s bulb before the film is threaded. It seemed possible I was the first awake in the world, possible the world was new. I dressed in my best suit, donned Minna’s watch instead of my own, and clipped his beeper to my hip. Then I made myself coffee and toast, scooped the long-shadowed crumbs off the table, sat and savored breakfast, marveling at the richness of existence with each step. The radiator whined and sneezed and I imitated its sounds out of sheer joy, rather than helplessness. Perhaps I’d been expecting that Minna’s absence would snuff the world, or at least Brooklyn, out of existence. That a sympathetic dimming would occur. Instead I’d woken into the realization that I was Minna’s successor and avenger, that the city shone with clues.

It seemed possible I was a detective on a case.

I crept downstairs past Danny, who was sleeping on his arms on the countertop, black suit jacket shrugged up around his shoulders, small patch of drool on his sleeve. I switched off the coffee machine, which was roasting a quarter inch of coffee into sour perfume, and went outside. It was a quarter to seven. The Korean keeper of the Casino was just rolling up his gate, tossing his bundles of the
News
and the
Post
inside. The morning was clarifyingly cold.

I started the L&L Pontiac. Let Danny sleep, let Gilbert wait in his cell, let Tony be missing. I’d go to the Zendo. Let it be too early for the monks or mobsters hidden there—I’d have the advantage of surprise.

By the time I’d parked and made my way to the Zendo, the Upper East Side was warming into life, shopkeepers rolling fruit stands out of their shops, sidewalk vendors of stripped paperbacks unloding
their boxes, women already dressed for business glancing at their watches as they hustled their dogs’ waste into Baggies. The doorman at the entranceway next door was someone new, a kid with a mustache and uniform, not my harasser from yesterday. He was probably green, without tenure, stuck working the end of the overnight shift. I figured it was worth a shot anyway. I crooked a finger at him through the glass and he came out into the cold. “What’s your name?” I said.

“Walter, sir.”

“Walter sir-what?” I broadcast a cop-or-employer vibe.

“Walter is, uh, my last name. Can I help you with something?” He looked concerned, for himself and his building.

“Helpmewalter
—I need the name of the doorman working last night, about six-thirty, seven. Older gentleman than yourself, maybe thirty-five, with an accent.”

“Dirk?”

“Maybe. You tell me.”

“Dirk’s the regular man.” He wasn’t sure he should be telling me this.

I averted my gaze from the his shoulder. “Good. Now tell me what you know about the Yorkville Zendo.” I indicated the bronze plaque next door with a jerk of my thumb. “Dirkweed! Dirkman!”

“What?” He goggled his eyes at me.

“You see them come and go?”

“I guess.”

“Walter Guessworth!” I cleared my throat deliberately. “Work with me here, Walter. You must see stuff. I want your impressions.”

I could see him sorting through layers of exhaustion, boredom, and stupidity. “Are you a cop?”

“Why’d you think that?”

“You, uh, talk funny.”

“I’m a guy who needs to know things, Walter, and I’m in a hurry. Anyone come and go from the Zendo lately? Anything catch your eye?”

He scanned the street to see if anyone saw us talking. I took the opportunity to cover my mouth with my hand and make a brief panting sound, like an excited dog.

“Uh, not much happens late at night,” said Walter. “It’s pretty quiet around here.”

“A place like the Zendo must attract some weird traffic.”

“You keep saying Zendo,” he said.

“It’s right there, etched in brass.”
Itched in Ass
.

He stepped toward the street, craned his neck, and read the plaque. “Hmmm. It’sour ee a religious school, right?”

“Right. You ever see anyone suspicious hanging around? Big Polish guy in particular?”

“How would I know he was Polish?”

“Just think about big. We’re talking really, really big.”

He shrugged again. “I don’t think so.” His numb gaze wouldn’t have taken in a crane and wrecking ball going through next door, let alone an outsize human figure.