Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (32 page)

“Hello? Hello? Excuse me, anybody back there?”

“Coming,” a shaky voice calls back. “Be right there.”

The woman who comes out is neither young nor old. She has on one of those long flowered jumpers that leave everything to the imagination. Her long reddish-blonde hair is done in a complicated braid and she is using the kind of metal crutches you have to put your arms through—the serious kind. From where I’m standing, I can’t see below her knees but I can tell it’s been a long time since there was a bounce in her step. When she finally reaches the counter, she rests against it and takes a deep breath. Then she looks at me and smiles. “We don’t get a lot of walk-ins.” Her lipstick is seashell pink.

“Oh,” I say, “do I need to make an appointment?”

She laughs and has to grab the counter through her crutch to keep from falling. “Gosh, no. Most people just call in. Never mind. How can I help you?”

It occurs to me that despite her disability she has a demeanor far more suited to offering advice on seasonal planting in a flower shop or on vitamin supplementation in a health food store.

“I want to die,” I inform her.

Her pink mouth stops smiling.

“What do you mean?”

“Which part didn’t you understand?”

“Well, are you sick?”

I think about that for a long moment. I certainly feel terrible. Close to death. In pain. Unbearable pain. And nothing, nothing makes it better. It is only getting worse. Helping me to die would be an act of mercy.

“Yes,” I say.

She looks skeptical. “I don’t mean to pry, but … you don’t look … Have you gotten a second opinion? Whatever you have may not be as advanced as you’ve been told.”

“Trust me,” I say. “This is the end. I can’t live like this anymore. Just tell me what to do. I don’t want to screw it up.”

“Uh-huh. Again, forgive me for … What exactly is it that you’re suffering from?”

“Depression. I’m depressed.”

And when she laughs, her pink lips open so wide her face disappears and I can see her uvula dancing in the back of her throat.

“I’m glad I could make one of us laugh,” I say.

She stops laughing. Stops smiling. She leans across the counter and pokes her crutch at me menacingly.

“You think this is a joke, mister? You know how hard it is for us to keep this place open? For people with real illnesses? Real pain?”

“But I am in—”

“Oh screw you, mister. I’m going to be dead in two years. And not because I want to be. If you want to die now, why don’t you go jump off a building or slit your wrists or jump in front of a subway?”

“Because,” I say, “those things don’t always work. Things can go wrong.”

As she drags herself back to the office, she stops and looks over her shoulder. “Well, you know what they say, if at first you don’t succeed …”

I stare at her, shocked, shamed. Unassisted.

I don’t know how I get to Penn Station. I am just there, staring up, unblinking, captivated by the clacking, perpetually shape-shifting Amtrak departure board.

I have the fantasy that I am going to ride the rails. See the good old U.S. of A the old-fashioned way. I am filled with romantic anticipation of train travel fueled by dueling images of Old World opulence from
Murder on the Orient Express
, American ingenuity from Ford’s
Iron Horse
, and danger from
North by Northwest
.

I pull out of Penn Station aboard the Amtrak Crescent bound for New Orleans, immediately enter a long, dark tunnel, and emerge into fields of wildflowers. There is a beautiful blonde woman in a sundress running toward me. I open the window and breathe in, not caring that flowers will no doubt aggravate my allergies. The smell of long, uncut grass is intoxicating. I reach out the window to grab a handful of yellow flowers.

Suddenly, though, it is dark. The flowers are gone. And when they come back, when the lights come back, my flowers have been replaced. By fake, two-dimensional paper ones. And a two-dimensional paper girl who smiles because she can breathe freely again due to the contents of the bottle she displays.

My perfect world is gone. Just like that. I turn around, look over both shoulders. I am on a subway. Attracting attention. I search my pockets for my ticket. To New Orleans. Because I’m sure I bought one. That I got on that train. I’m so sure, so sure. I would swear to it. But my truth, like my time, seems to be fungible, capricious. The ground under my feet is eroding. Soon there will be nothing solid left to stand on. Soon there will only be shadows. Shadows and whispers. And I will mistake one for the other.

I spin around, hoping to take him by surprise. “TAKE ONE MORE FUCKING STEP AND I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!” I scream.

There is no one there. Just the crowd of anonymous commuters who expertly and efficiently divide themselves in two in order to give me wide berth. Moments ago I felt someone sidle up behind me. Saw his shadow rising up over my left shoulder. Heard him exhale in my ear.

The light changes and, aside from two or three impatient pedestrians who have risked death crossing four lanes of oncoming traffic, I am left alone on the corner. My heart is still pounding from my encounter with the phantom assailant. Only a bottle of Hurricane shattering at my feet, spraying the bottoms of my pants with drops of malt liquor and shards of glass, reminds me that I have been standing in this spot for a suspiciously long time.

I scan the collection of teenagers on the street corner but cannot identify my sniper—the one who launched the bottle at me. The light changes again and suddenly I am in the way. The looks I’m getting from passersby are not friendly and I feel shoulders and sharp elbows pushing, prodding, and buffeting me around.

I don’t know how I got here. I remember a bus. And lights and tunnels. Crowded staircases that smelled like sweat and piss and doors opening and closing like mouths, spitting out miserable, angry people. I followed one. To see where she was going. To see if it would be better for her when she got there. She had been trying to tell me something. The whole subway ride, I could feel the effort she was making. I could see the message she was trying to send me spark in the backs of her eyes and struggle to catch and take hold. She was like Lassie, barking at Timmy’s father so he’d follow her to where Timmy had fallen off a cliff or into a well.

So when she got off the train, I got off too. And when three blocks up and one block over she boarded a bus, I got on behind her and dumped a pocketful of change into the machine and stood there listening to it chew up my money until the driver told me to move to the back. And when I stood next to the seat where she was sitting and she looked up surprised, I knew she was happy to see me. So I smiled and got off at her stop. And when she went into a little bodega to buy milk and cat food and batteries and tampons, I waited outside and watched her shop and pay. And when she came out, she started walking faster and crossed the street and I had to run after her to keep up. And she started running and yelling for help.

“What is it, girl? What’s wrong?” I shouted.

But she wouldn’t tell me. She just kept running and looking over her shoulder. I tried to stay with her. But we got separated. And now I am lost.

There are numbers on the streets and names on the avenues. I should know where I am. This should feel more or less like a place feels when it’s where you live. But the coordinates are off. The city is not where I left it this morning. I look over and see the entrance to the 125th Street station and the stairs leading to the raised platform. I’m guessing that is where I came from. This shouldn’t be so hard for me. I know that. But the last few days, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to come up with a better version of myself.

The noise in my head is like a radio. Constant. It skips quickly from station to station. And then back again. Trying to find a frequency. Meantime, it’s all-in, all the time, all at once. Whatever’s out there’s in here. Skidding, shouting, banging, laughing,
Don’t-be-that-way-baby
,
Don’t-fuck-with-me-asshole
,
Don’t-know-why-I-bother
, Don’t Walk, Don’t Walk, Don’t. Walk. Walk. Walk on by. Bye-bye baby bye-bye. Wet. Wet. What? Drip. Wet? Fuck. Wet. Drip. Drip. Fuck. How many drops are dripping from this goddamned scaffolding? 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9—drops or seconds? I’ve lost count. Start again. No, stop. Stop! StupidBoringCrazyLazy. Get outside your fuckin’ head. Look outside. Look. Liquor store, laundromat, chicken shack, Dunkin’ Donuts, hair weave palace. Wish they’d stay still. They switch places when I blink. Just to fuck with me. Donuts
blink
chicken. Chicken
blink
laundry. Laundromat; hair palace; liquor store. Liquormat Laundropalace. Shell game. Musical fucking chairs. Just to fuck with me. I walk away. Walk this way. Walk away, Renee. And my feet take over. The sound. The rhythmic clip-clop on the blacktop.
The boom-clop, click-bop
. Stop. Can’t stop.
Clop-boom-skip-stop chick-a-boom bop
. Miles Fuckin’ Davis. John Fuckin’ Coltrane, jazz man. I’m the man. I’m the anchorman. News and weather on the eights. All the eights. That’s a lot of eights. It is tedious, monotonous, onerous listening to my own news and weather all day, all night long. On the eights. And underneath the sound of my own voice in my own head is the rhythm of my own feet on the ground. The containable soft-shoe that escalates into the full-blown percussive jazz rat scat that will not be tamed—the unlikely soundtrack to my interminable
A.M
. radio anchorman monologue. I am fascinated by my ability to syncopate, enumerate, ruminate, calculate, self-flagellate. It occupies every millimeter of available space in my head. I want to take a broom and sweep it out my ears like dust out an attic window but there will be more. On the eights. Every eight. All day, all night. No matter how much or how often I sweep it away, the noise will always come back.

I know enough, am aware enough, to know that what I’m hearing—or thinking—which is it? Don’t know—does it matter? Doesn’t matter—is crazy shit. Or rather, it is the shit that fills the heads of crazy people. But I should get points for self-awareness. Because if I know it then I’m not. If I were really crazy, I would think I was God or Jesus or Mick Jagger. That’s what crazy people think. But I don’t. I know who I am. Which is a relief. Because I was getting worried. Not really. But a little. Because of the noise.

I’ve spent too much time alone lately. Too much time in my own head. Thus the noise problem. I’m out of practice with words. Need to use them out loud again. I decide it would be a good idea to have a conversation with someone. Nothing too hard or too big. No politics or religion. Not even the weather. Just a verbal exchange. A verbal transaction. Maybe an actual transaction. I look up: chicken, donuts, laundry, liquor, hair weave. Not a tough choice. As long as they stay still.

As I walk past the bums huddled under their filthy blankets, shopping carts tethered to their ankles, the dirty bastards tell me to stop kidding myself, that there’s a puddle of piss waiting there with my name on it.
Lie down. Make yourself comfortable
.

I spit on the ground in front of one of them and get in his face. “Someday, the skies will open, and a flood will come and wash all the scum like you off the streets.”

“Huh?” He looks at me, confused, scared. Like I’m the crazy one. Like I’m the one with the problem.

“Don’t fuck with me, asshole!” I scream at him.

He looks up. “Okay, man, okay, whatever you say.”

Then I head across the street toward the friendly pink neon sign happily buzzing the word “Liquor.” It’s right where I left it.

I feel better already.

I point to the largest bottle of scotch I see behind the cashier and pull out a wad of balled-up cash. I am sure the cashier is watching me, looking at me. I leave the store and, having no idea where I am, chart a random course. Sounds and colors are bright, blurred, inseparable. I cannot tell “Walk” from “Don’t.” And so I keep walking until the scotch runs out. I know it is time to go home, but I would have to know where that was in order to go there.
Walt
, I think.

Walt
. I cross half an avenue and sit down on the bench in the middle.
Home. Willa
.

By the time I see the shadow behind me, it is too late. And I’m not sure that I care anyway. Maybe he is doing me a favor. What I haven’t been able to do myself. But I want to see him. And so I turn around just as the towering bearded man in the filthy clothes raises my empty scotch bottle over his head and brings it down on mine. Once, twice, hit the bench on the way down, sharp, hard kick in the ribs, head pulled up and back and dropped hard onto the bricks, final kick in the jaw.
The pain
, I think,
the pain is truth
.

It is dawn when I wake up shivering, throbbing, still bleeding. Coat and shoes gone. Pockets empty. But cold is the central issue now. I raise my head and see steam coming from a grate across the avenue and a third of the way down the block. It may as well be a hundred miles. But when the light changes, I begin to crawl, and when I get there, collapsing on that heating grate is one of the highlights of my life.

I fall asleep immediately and wake up far too soon to the inconsiderately thunderous footsteps of weekday commuters. By now the pain of last night’s shenanigans has spread throughout my body like a virus. I look up at the passersby from my position on the grate and could swear that every one out of ten is a wolf in a suit, furry and fanged. I blink only to see the flesh slowly melting off the face of a man dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit. I wonder if the blood I’m covered in—my blood—is real. No one stops. No one even seems to see me lying here, so maybe it isn’t real. I am invisible. So maybe I’m not real. Maybe the only thing that’s real is the pain.

I don’t know if I wake up because I want to scratch the uncomfortable itch below my left eye or if scratching the itch is the first thing I want to do when I wake up. I don’t have time to fixate on the question: both my arms are tied tightly to a wheelchair. There will be no scratching whatsoever. My eyelids fall shut, but I will them halfway open, manage to drag my chin off my chest, and force my eyes to move back and forth for a few seconds, looking for information. The effort is overwhelming, but before my head drops and my eyes fall shut again, I am able to ascertain that I am, it seems, sitting in the wheelchair to which I am tied and that the wheelchair is facing a sign that reads:
NYPD: NO LOADED FIREARMS PERMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT
.