Now and Again (22 page)

The doctor had a bristly mustache and a black Mustang. “Do I know you?” he asked when Danny, who was holding the broom handle as if it were a rifle, stepped from behind a line of parked cars and said, “Hey, Doc.

“Apparently you know me well enough to tell me I have personality disorder.”

“Oh, yes, yes.” The doctor seemed defenseless without his white coat and hospital badge.

Danny's arms were nearly as big around as the doctor's thighs. If he and the doctor had met in a parking lot in downtown Baghdad, Danny could have ordered the doctor to drop his weapon and put his hands in the air. He considered doing it now, and then he did it. What the fuck? he thought. “Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air,” he said.

“What? What are you talking about?” The doctor looked like a beaver. Behind the mustache his teeth were an unprofessional yellow. “I don't have a weapon,” he said.

“Hands up,” said Danny, moving in closer and tensing his biceps and causing the doctor to take a step backward until he was leaning against the faded fabric top of the Mustang.

Slowly, the doctor put his thin white hands in the air, dropping his keys to the pavement as he did so. “What do you want? Money? I don't have much, but you can have it.” He was wearing a light blue shirt and a striped tie. His sleeves were rolled to show pale forearms and a gold wristwatch. It all made a nice picture against the black car, pleasing somehow.

—What do you mean “nice”?

—It's easy to distinguish the details, that's all. The black sets everything off.

—Then say that. Don't use some mealy word like “nice.”

—Vivid, then. The black-as-petrified-shit background enhances the vomit-and-blood colors of the tie.

When Danny's eyes lingered on the watch, the doctor seemed relieved. “Do you want the watch?” he asked. “Do you want the car?”

“I want to know the difference between personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Danny. “I want to know why you changed my diagnosis.”

The doctor let his hands drop to his sides. “The medical review board is pressuring us to give lesser diagnoses,” he said.

—Tell him to put his hands back in the air.

“Put your hands back in the air,” said Danny. And then he said, “Shut up!”

“I didn't say anything,” said the doctor.

“What's a lesser diagnosis?”

—Tell him to look you in the eye when he talks to you.

“What's a pre-existing condition?”

—Tell him to lie on his belly. Tell him to eat dirt.

“Lie down and eat the dirt!” shouted Danny.

The doctor dropped to his knees, hands shaking. “It means that you were already damaged when the army got you, so you're not their problem anymore. It means that every dollar they spend on you means less money for bullets and able-bodied soldiers.” The doctor squeezed his eyes shut after he said it, as if Danny was going to hit him with the broom handle, but Danny figured that's what they wanted him to do. He might be damaged, but he wasn't a fool. He knew the rules that allowed sending someone off to war and then failing to help him didn't allow hitting a doctor. He knew that because one of the voices was shouting at him.

—If you hit him, they'll arrest you, asshole! Now tell him to stand the fuck up.

“Stand up!” shouted Danny, and the doctor stood up, holding the keys he had dropped and pressing a button on his key ring that started a horn blaring.

The commotion scared Danny so much that he raised the broom handle and brought it down on the Mustang's fabric top as close to the doctor's shoulder as he could without touching him. The breeze from the stick riffled the doctor's hair. The sound made him jump and his eyes popped open, bugging out almost comically as the car's emergency horn ripped through the sultry air until someone shouted at the doctor to shut it off and Pig Eye exploded in the distance for the thousandth time.

“I don't make the rules,” said the doctor in self-defense, but the words sounded as puny and untrue as the doctor himself.

—Yes he does!

“Yeah, you do,” said Danny.

“I don't. I swear to you I don't. There are rules and regulations.” The doctor looked hopeful now that they were talking and the physical threat had receded somewhat.

Danny thought about using the broom handle to wipe the look off his face after all.

“There's a rule book,” said the doctor, “but there are also monthly updates. My folder of updates is this thick.” He stretched his thumb and fingers to illustrate.

—Tell him he's a fucking liar.

Danny was tired. The notebook was in his pocket, along with a mechanical pencil that had a reloadable cartridge for pencil leads and a retractable eraser. They all thought words could acquit them, when Danny knew that words could also be used to trick people and to control their thoughts. For instance, Danny had always considered America a place of equal opportunity because of words that had been drilled into him, not because of anything he observed. There was probably an evolutionary reason for this, but he didn't know what it was.

—Repeat after me, asshole. Say “equal opportunity.” Fucking say “American dream.”

Danny raised the broom handle in the air and brought it down again. “American dream,” he said, but his heart wasn't in it. He was tired. He wasn't a violent person. “Here,” he said to the doctor. “Take this stick, and next time you want to destroy someone, be honest about it and use this.”

Then Danny sat on the curb and took out the notebook and wrote down what he could remember of the encounter. He didn't look back at the doctor, but he could imagine him taking up the broom handle and holding it over Danny's head.

—Never take your eyes off the enemy.

“Who's the enemy?”

“I don't know, but it's not me,” said the doctor. “I hope you can find what you're looking for somewhere else.”

The somewhere else was the army recruiting station where Danny had enlisted almost three years before. The soldiers there joined the chorus of voices shouting, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” at Danny. They must have called the police because a squad car roared up, followed by what seemed like a whole squadron of cars with sirens and loudspeakers.

“Come out with your hands up!” roared the speaker, but Danny's voices laughed and turned their venom outward.

—Who the fuck do they think they are!

For one blissful moment, Danny had the illusion that he was leading his old company in a daring attack against the enemy. Armed with nothing but a U.S. Army ballpoint pen he had picked up off the counter, he charged at the first policeman to come through the door. He held his pen like a rifle, took aim, and then he tossed the pen to the officer and laughed.

BE ALL YOU CAN BE,
said the pen.

K
elly's parents had moved to New Jersey while he was overseas, and even though they greeted him with a banner over the door and arranged a gathering of neighbors, Kelly knew he didn't belong there and the sooner he left, the better.

“I'll bet you're glad to be home,” said the people who came in the door carrying fragrant dishes and bottles of beer, and Kelly nodded and said he was.

“I'll bet you're glad to be home,” said a strong-looking girl who lingered in the entry, primly settling a cardigan around her shoulders and assessing the crowd.

Kelly was about to say he was, but then he changed his mind. It was one thing for a bunch of old people to drop by to have meaningless conversations with him, but the only reason a girl like that would do it was because someone had told her to or because she was desperate. He kind of liked the desperate ones. They made him feel like a trained sniper at an arcade game. When she started to walk off, he said in a low voice, “Scared of soldiers?”

“Not really.”

Game on, thought Kelly. “Well, I'm scared of big girls,” he said, smiling to show he was playing with her, drawing it out a little—respectful, but sure of himself, like if she didn't want him now, he hoped she would change her mind. If he brought his A game, she might even end up thinking it was her idea. But where Kelly used to like to play the game straight through from “Hi, my name is Joe” to “Why didn't you warn me you're part tigress,” an inner restlessness prompted him to make the game more challenging by cutting right to the chase. He couldn't see himself asking about her job or her family situation or giving her a bunch of meaningless compliments or making up some bullshit about his ambitions and goals, so he said, “You must be bored. Can I get you a drink or do you want to get straight to the sex?”

“What do you say we skip the drink and the sex and the wedding and the two kids,” said the girl, “and we go straight to where I run off with another man.”

“Shee-it,” said Kelly. She wasn't desperate after all. “I must be losing my touch,” he said. He smiled, and the girl cracked a smile too, at first like she was humoring him according to the rules of her own game, but then with her eyes too, smiling for real. Just when they were beginning to understand each other, Joe Senior limped over with a bowl of chips and introduced them.

“This is Rita. She works down at the U-Haul with me. Her uncle runs the dealership.”

It was more than Kelly wanted to know. “Rita,” he said. “Ri-ta.”

“Joe,” she said.

Now that she had a name and a family and a reason for being there, the game was less interesting, and he started marking the exits and keeping his back to the wall just in case. Just in case a firefight broke out. Just in case insurgents stormed the living room. He laughed and said, “For a minute there, I thought I was back in Iraq.”

“That must be kind of weird,” she said.

It was the conversational cross talk that did it, and the crowded room, and his father, who was wobbling around grinning and making sure people were enjoying themselves. And it was New Jersey, with its potholes and smokestacks and rows of shabby brick houses, one of which was his home now even though he had never been there before in his life. Even the army was better than New Jersey. Even the fucking Bronx.

“I see you met Rita,” said someone Kelly didn't know, and Kelly said he guessed he had.

“She works down at the U-Haul with your dad.”

A few minutes later someone else came by and said, “Say, Rita, have you met Joe?”

“What's your name again?” asked Kelly, leaning in close enough to smell the musk of her hair. They had been introduced three times and he meant it as a joke, but Rita backed up a step and regarded him as if he was slow on the uptake or dangerous or possibly both, which was when he noticed she was marking the exits too.

“This isn't a required event,” said Kelly. “Feel free to leave if you want to.” He had to admit he said it a touch brusquely, so to make up for it, he blurted out, “It's just that you're very, very hot.” But the sentences were out of sequence now, and lines that had always worked to flatter and spark now came off as aggressive and a little, well, desperate. “I knew I shouldn't have worn the uniform,” he said in an obvious play for sympathy. “It changes things. It changes how people look at me.”

“I can only imagine,” said Rita.

“I can take it off and you can tell me if there's a difference.”

“That's a nice offer,” said Rita, “but maybe some other time.”

“I didn't mean…I just meant I could change into jeans.”

Kelly's mother came up with a tray of drinks, and Rita used the interruption to move toward the door. When Kelly turned around a moment later, she was gone.

“Shit, Mom. There you went and chased her off.”

“I'm sure you'll see her again,” said Kelly's mother. “Her name is Rita and she works with your dad down at the U-Haul.”

Kelly took one of the drinks and then another. It was some concoction his father had whipped up. It tasted like pineapple and coconut with something pink mixed in, but it carried a kick. By his third drink, the shabby house seemed to be disintegrating around him. What was he doing sleeping in a dingy little bedroom off the kitchen of his parents' house? He was twenty-two years old. He was a man. He was a warrior, for Chrissakes. He could take any man in the room with his hands tied. Blindfolded with his hands tied. Blindfolded with his hands tied and bowling balls chained to his legs.

“How about tomorrow you look for a job,” said Joe Senior when everyone had gone.

Yeah, he could do that. Or he could hold up a bank and take what he needed without bungling the job the way his father had done. Or he could bungle it in the family tradition and go off to prison and come back fifteen years later and pretend everything was A-OK. He could vanish into thin air, kind of the way he had come. He could do all of those things or none of them. Suddenly he wanted to cry like a baby, and then crying was the last thing he wanted to do. Instead, he took a twenty out of his mother's purse and headed out to see what people in the great state of New Jersey did for fun.

W
hen Penn left the library, the air was fresher than it had been, as if a storm had blown through or an oppressive haze had burned away. The sun was sharp and clean and the shadows were cool and blue, reminding him of his boyhood and hiding from the heat beneath the long veranda of the Greenwich house. Two privates were walking along the sidewalk smoking cigarettes. Every now and then one of them would stop to look around as if he wanted to take it all in: the traffic, the sooty buildings, the girls in summer dresses, the street vendors, the city smell. Recognizing military, they saluted when they saw him, and Penn saluted back.

“Where're you headed?” he called out after them, but he said it too late and they didn't hear him.

When he got back to Louise's apartment, he was relieved to find it empty. After he showered and shaved, he stood in front of a long gilded mirror, dressed in a black T-shirt and new jeans, and tried to see himself as other people saw him, but he couldn't. For the first time in months, hope stirred within him. Gone was the shame that had followed him everywhere since the incident and along with it, the impulse to study theories and avoid life. Gone too was the dense flock of misgivings that had pecked steadily at his insides as if he were Prometheus, sentenced to have his liver devoured by a giant eagle for bringing the fire of the gods to undeserving mortals. This was the way he used to feel after the snow began to melt and the crocuses and little stubs of grass poked through. He had been waiting for months for someone to tell him that everything was going to be okay, and now the news about redemption was his to tell and spread.