CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The pick up in business last September, though sudden and at times frantic, was unspectacular. Sure, the average age of his patron went down, but Nick didn’t fully understand the reason and therefore didn’t mind. Money had been on his mind, so anything that kept more cash flowing into the establishment was fantastic. But in one weekend (and yes, it just happened one weekend, Nick thought) all of a sudden he started seeing not only faces he hadn’t seen since May, but brand new faces that were identical. The same faces that would go away come May and then come back the next September. One Thursday they came and it was all changed. Total anarchy on the jukebox. People leaving ashtrays and bottles on the pool table. Strict enforcement of the No Pitchers On The Bar rule. Fake IDs. It was all of a sudden old news to Nick, now that he had something to compare it to. He realized that it was just SUNY returning and this is exactly what he would see every year. He ended up hating Albany a little more because of it, even though he figured there must be dozens of cities around the country like it. Cities that may have had self-respect once but have since become intersections. Cities that have flight problems that are too slow to be recognized until the pattern is already ingrained. The word gets out. Albany just happened to be a way station between the St Laurence River and the eastern Megalopolis. It was as far inland as it could be while still providing a focal point on the horizon for the coastal cities and bigger cities on the northwestern fringe of the claustrophobic Northeast. Placed in Albany, one sees Montreal to the north, certainly a livelier city, Buffalo and its stepping-stone-to-Chicago feel to the west, New York and Philadelphia to the south and even Boston to the east, for the more intimidated, and humble. And Portland for the terminally bored. There were simply too many options.
It made Nick wonder what kind of perversity would ending up settling here. Nick served the people that got educated here, those who sustained it on a daily basis, and served many of the comers and goers their first or final drink. He could see it in their faces, whether they were passing through or were lifers. It didn’t even matter if a particular person’s stay would be as long as four years, like these students. He could tell. It wasn’t anything personal against Albany, he figured. It was just one of those cities. It was simply the joy of the traveller at rest, looking forward to getting back on the road. Where the best part is always ahead. The lifers never had that look. Nick was afraid of it. Greg was the only lifer he’d ever taken seriously. Even Chuck was at times a bit too deliberately caustic to be around. He didn’t want to think that lifers were blind to what was going on around them in every direction at arm’s length, but the thought that they would choose to stay seemed somehow more horrific. Nick ultimately felt that lifers in Albany had to be people who were simply not built for travel. Who, with travellers and options all around them, were simply exhausted at the thought.
It was about two a.m., a rather late closing time, even for a Saturday. A group of four dudes that ordered Tequila Sunrise after Tequila Sunrise were playing pool, and had owned the table since about eleven. They were a bit stuck-up but tipped well and never stuck a dollar in the jukebox. There were a few locals at one end of the bar but other than that it was just Greg, who made occasional comments about the millennium between Times Union page turns, and Nick. Everyone else had left over the past hour. Nick stayed open for the money, but also because he loved the bar most in the early morning hours without the jukebox. He always felt the bar had a nice natural soundtrack then, especially if it had been busy. Some of the sound of the night’s action lingered like a smell. The rest was filled by an occasional belly laugh or a poorly shot cue landing against the wood floor. Its presence, breaking a residual silence, was an attachment and an echo. It was when Nick felt the most pride in a job he’d taken by default. It made him feel lucky. It made him feel that if he were to someday believe that his moving to Albany had been a choice, he would feel that the relaxed weekend moments where he felt spent and satisfied would be a sufficient justification. It wasn’t charming but not a bad area. At least it was in New York City’s sphere of influence. Nick would have gone crazy without the corner guy’s consistent Daily News. It had attachment.
“Like Florida with winter,” Nick said.
Greg shrugged as if he had been expecting Nick to say something for a while. “I don’t know why you’re fucking going crazy, it’s just the start of the semester.”
“Well that and other shit,” Nick said. One of the pool-playing dudes, in a leather jacket and a Y2A: SUNY 2000 hat, ordered another round. “My computer crashed the other day.”
Greg cocked his head, interested. “What day?”
“Thursday. The 9th.”
“Was it…”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure? That was 9-9-99. They said that all the 9s in the date could freeze the computer.”
“No, because I had it going fine in the morning,” Nick said. “It just fucking froze later in the day for no apparent reason.”
“Did anything get lost?”
“Not really,” Nick said. “Everything had been saved. The book is safe.”
“Right,” said Greg, looking up from his newspaper. “So it that where you have been all this time? Now that your system is fucked you should spend some more time down here.”
Nick grinned and spread out his arms.
Greg winced and shook his head. “C’mon, I mean it. Chuckie’s getting sick of me. Besides, you’re practically the only one who cares when I talk about the night’s harness at Yonkers. I hate to say it, but I’ve missed you. What you been doing? Writing?”
Nick continued to try and distract himself, wetting his towel and wiping the table, emptying the ashtrays obsessively, refilling bottles to the fridge. The same tasks he’d find every night to stay occupied. They never seemed to pass the time, but Nick ended up taking a lot of pride in keeping up the bar’s appearance anyway. “To be honest?” He said.
“Yeah, to be honest,” Greg said. “You slip out right after I get here, just long enough to say hi, how the Yankees doing, then I don’t see you until close, if I’m here, if you’re here. You writing fucking War and Peace up there?”
“Well honestly I haven’t really been writing much lately,” Nick said. He reached under the bar and pulled out two shotglasses and filled them with scotch. He downed the first one promptly and moved the other in Greg’s direction with his fingernails.
“Bullshit,” Greg said with an annoyed ash of his cigarette that missed the ashtray completely. He picked up the shot and put it at his elbow. “Not that I care, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Well I like you. You’re a compliment to your brother, though his rounds were a lot more frequent.”
Nick shrugged. “Well, if you’ve noticed, my rounds come a lot more frequent when you’re off your tab, paying cash.” He was leaning with his back to the mirror, eating peanuts out of a tin can one by one. Each time, he picked them out with his thumb and index fingers and shot them into his mouth. It became disturbing for Greg to watch over time.
“So there is a system.”
“There’s always a system,” Nick said.
Greg smiled. “That’s why I don’t believe you when you said you haven’t been working on your book. What, you’re just sitting in your room all night? Watching TV?” He nodded, trying to keep eye contact with Nick, who was pretending to watch the pool game. “Yeah, I don’t see your car go anywhere, no women come by. ‘Cept Caitlyn now and then, and that ain’t been in a while. What, did you finally discover Internet porn? Trust me, the shit gets old real quick.”
Nick gave Greg a quick, amused glance, then turned back to the game. “What do you know about Internet porn? Do you even have a computer? I didn’t think old timers like you were into that kind of stuff.”
“Keep laughing, Nick,” Greg said. “Yeah, I have a computer. Probably better than yours is, too. Twenty five years at a union job adds up to a nice paycheck every week, you know.”
“You’d never know it from your tab. I should cut you off. I didn’t know you were paying Internet porn sites with money you owe me. And what the hell do you need Internet porn for anyway?”
Greg shushed him. “Keep your voice down. Look, Internet porn is all I have now.”
“God, fine,” Nick said. “A little more than I needed to know.”
“And I’ve got money but it’s not all cash I can throw around. I’ve got just about enough put away.”
“So what are you putting it into?”
“A house.”
Nick stopped watching the game. “A house? Really?”
“What, you think I’m going to putz around here forever? I’ve got maybe another few weeks before I can sign anything. But I should be gone by the new year.” Greg looked down into his glass, smiling fondly. His pudgy, cracked fingers squeezed the sides.
Nick lowered his voice. “Greg, that’s outrageous.”
“Florida, man. Spring and summer, spring and summer. No winter, no fall. Warm to hot, hot to warm. Skip all the bad shit. Lots of rain, but that’s okay. I like rain. I’d like to finish up being rained on all the time. Long walks in the rain get yourself cleansed. When I get soaked in a warm rain, I change but I don’t wash. I like it, I like the way it makes my skin feel. You know? All tub wrinkled. Like a baby. Like being born.”
Nick served a quiet drink and watched Greg speak. It had never occurred to him that he would go. Not only had he not said anything about it, in all the times he bitched about Albany, he never once had said, ‘Wait till I’m gone. Alls I want is a house in Florida.’ He was quite struck by Greg’s announcement. There was a quick, sharp, but undeniably true sensation of fear, of displacement, of removal. He wanted to ask why, tell him he didn’t like Florida, it was too cliché, old people buying property in Florida. Tell him that he’d probably hate it. That he didn’t want him to go. But he remained silent, watching Greg sleepily dream of some palm tree paradise as he teased his scotch. He wanted more than anything to not talk about it anymore. Because it was either going to happen or it was just drunk talk. But for the first time it seemed plausible, and he couldn’t decide if he didn’t want Greg to go for Greg or for himself. It scared him.
“I don’t want to die up here,” Greg said. He noticed Nick would not look at him and did not try to get him to. “I want to spend a few years with nothing to do but sit outside and watch the ocean and think about everything I’ve done and what’s coming next.” Greg stared at the bar and contemplated his whiskey glass with. He was taking even breaths and pinching his butts in the ashtray. The bar was freshly wiped and shimmering.
“That’s why I don’t believe you,” Greg said when he finally looked up. Nick shot him a quick look, his bottom lip rolling like it was about to help form a sound, but had the throat back out at the last second. “When you say you’re not working on your book,” Greg said. He wasn’t sure if he liked what he saw in Nick’s face.
“I didn’t say,” Nick said, “that I wasn’t working on my book. I said I wasn’t writing.”
“What?”
“I haven’t been writing, because my computer crashed. I can’t start up the word processor. But I’d just happened to print out all of what I’d had two nights prior. Well, I lost a few pages, but nothing I can’t re-write. But I’ve been reading it over, making changes as I go.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
“What?”
“So you are writing.”
“Not new stuff.” Greg hacked into his arm. “What?”
“You were never going to tell me, were you?”
“What?”
“Forget it,” Greg said. “Anyway, I heard you tell Chuckie last week you were almost done. You can take out a pen and pencil and write. You can type it into the computer later. Why the pause?”
“Can’t think of an ending,” Nick said after a long silence that Greg could tell had nothing to do with Nick trying to figure out the answer to Greg’s question.
Greg let out an inadvertent laugh and then cupped his mouth. “You gotta start with the ending and work backwards, man,” he said, smiling. “How can you write without knowing where you’re going?”
“It’s not that I don’t know where I’m ultimately headed,” Nick said. “I’m having a hard time trying to figure out what the specifics are. Hang on a second. I’m going to close this place down. Last Call,” he said, raising his voice. A couple of ‘no thanks’ came in from the pool table. Nick walked around to the other side of the bar and began putting the chairs up on tables and collecting their empties. He walked to the door and turned a few of the lights on. The sudden brightness brought everything back into focus. A few groans from the pool table. Nick checked the floor for any items that might have been left behind but didn’t see any.
“Well,” Greg said, picking up Nick’s shot. He downed it without flinching. “As long as it doesn’t suck. Ahhh,” he said, placing the glass gently on the bar. “Look, don’t worry about it. You’ll be done soon and then you can get the fuck out of here. Don’t find excuses to linger.”
“What do you mean?” asked Nick, looking up from wiping one of the tables.
“Well you came up here to write the book, right?”
“Yeah, and run the bar.”
“I thought you were going to sell the bar.”
“No,” Nick said. “Not anytime soon. I just signed another six months on the lease.”
“When, the first?”
Nick nodded.
“Nick, Nick, don’t do it. Finish your book and then go.”
“Go where?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said.
“You don’t sound so sure,” Greg said. Nick was silent, looking down at his towel. In the pause, Greg put on his hat. As he moved to get up, Nick stopped him.
“Hey, you’re going? You were just saying you wanted me around more.”
Greg shrugged and put on his coat. “It’s late,” he said, finally. He reached into his pocket and put a five on the bar. Nick pushed it back. “That was on me,” he said.
“No, last one is always cash, you know that.” Nick just stared at the bill. “Go on, take it.”
Nick slowly took the bill and placed it on the register.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Greg said. “Look, if I don’t see you tomorrow, you better be writing, okay?”
“Let me call you a cab at least.”
“Get the fuck out of here. When did you become such a mommy?”
“Sorry,” Nick said.
Greg extended his hand. Nick shook it. “Take care,” Greg said. “I’ll see you.” He tipped his hat to the pool table. “Gentlemen,” he announced to no response. He gave Nick a wink and strolled out. He walked past the parking lot and got hallway up the hill on Madison before he felt one of his perpetually clogged arteries clench making him clutch at his chest. He leaned against a lamp post and breathed and waited for it to pass, like they always did. It was no more painful than the rest of them had been, but it did not fade within a few deep breaths as usual. He looked at the night sky, slate colored clouds moving swiftly north. He set his eyes on them, a point in the distance to keep equilibrium. He kept gasping, breathing out, unable to breathe in. The wrenching just below his armpit continued. He saw in the distance headlights approaching, and began to walk. If he could walk he could get home. The car began to speed up, and Greg turned around, trying to remain calm. The red and blue lights on top of the car began to spin. There was a siren. The car did not see him wedge himself between two parked pickups and wave at the driver, and fall down. The car screamed up Madison Avenue. Greg kept telling himself to remain calm, remain calm, to keep walking, that if he could remain calm he would be alright, and he fell down into the street. He landed on his jaw and the clenching would not stop. His jaw was broken. He turned on his back and coughed up into the air the blood that immediately came down his throat. The clouds were still moving, fast. The car was gone. The night was a race passed and Greg was very still under it. Things became dark and there began to be less constricting in his chest, and he became more calm as that happened. Things grew more dark until he was as calm as ever and he could not believe how quick it had all been.
~
Until the excitement over Dawn’s e-mail, things had been pretty quiet on the home front for Caitlyn. There had been limited buzzing over the impending harvest of the plants, but for Caitlyn it was more of a relief, as she had never really been able to shake the low frequency yet continuously present paranoia generated by the constant hum of the circulation fan and thoughts of maximum sentences and years per plant since they were in her room. Plus they reeked. And Gina was always suspicious. But it was a matter of time now. All that was left was for all of them to decide on a day to clip the buds and dismantle the closet (“Until next time,” Turk had said. “Yeah, so it will be all boxed up and ready to go to your guys’ closet,” Caitlyn replied). Turk had been holding out, trying to determine when they would peek. He pushed for a week here, another couple days there, preferring to err on the side of being a few days late than picking it before it would be ripe. If you picked it too early, you’d be smoking it before it is ready, he reasoned. If you pick it a few days late, it’s been ready. And waiting. By the end Caitlyn just wanted it to be over.
The band took some time off and away from each other for the most part, except for Turk and Marshall. They’d sold every CD at the show and ended up, including the scraps
they’d been tossed as a last second replacement, with about fifteen hundred dollars. Under the circumstances they decided to forego band expenses like tapes and cords and strings for the time being and split the all money evenly. They came away with about three hundred fifty bucks each and lazed away the last weeks of August. When they got back, Turk did not play for a week, saying he wanted to give his instruments some time to rest. He went to record stores and bars, asking around, trying to hunt down any new good bands that may have slipped in under his rather occupied radar lately. The band practiced casually for about three weeks before they went back to their regular schedule. Turk seemed more at ease than Caitlyn had ever seen him throughout all the years she had known him. He had tasted a little bit of success and rather than get worked up over it, it made him feel validated and satisfied. He and Caitlyn had long conversations about what was next, what kind of music he felt like writing, and Caitlyn would doodle album covers on looseleaf while they sipped beers and chainsmoked.
Caitlyn by that time had effectively settled into the supervisor role at Royal Burger and was now closing the store every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The students had been back for about two and a half weeks. It had been busy but Agnes had brought in a good back-to-school crop of workers and shifts were generally fully staffed and ran smoothly. In Caitlyn’s experience, about three-quarters of these workers would last over a month. One or two would stick around and be consistent for a semester or more. The current group was so good, however, that the feeling among the managers was that they’d have quality employees across the schedule through the end of the semester. Caitlyn discovered in manager meetings that the turnover rate in a store like Royal Burger, which generally hovered in the astonishingly high triple digits, was generally an honest concern among both the store and district managers. They knew it should be lower, they just never addressed it. They felt that the inherent low skill level of the jobs at the bottom neither justified a large wage or attracted the work ethic one would have to have to dutifully assemble burgers for eight hours on any kind of long term basis. Besides, the stigma of being a “burger-flipper” simply had too much baggage as it had become synonymous with the absolute last resort of the potentially homeless. They talked of how hard it is to motivate people when you know that all of them are paid shit and want to be doing something else. Everyone you hire is automatically overqualified and will leave the moment they can make an extra fifty cents. This kind of thing left Caitlyn bewildered. Corporate pessimism was annoying but corporate melancholy over the public-at-large’s perception of their company’s bottom-rung jobs was too much. She figured that while the obstacles to change that the distance of the store-district-region hierarchy created were numerous, the managers could do shit about the things they complained of if they really wanted to. She figured an extra buck an hour at the bottom would do wonders in not only cutting back on the numbers of people who go, but in making it a somewhat desirable alternative to supermarket cashiering. And at an alarmingly low cost to the company, too. When she became a supervisor she had reign of the office for her shifts, which meant direct access to all of the books. The store spent little of the daily average of the five to seven grand it pulled in.
Caitlyn had watched a lot of people come and go and had rarely seen people quit with two weeks notice. The managers didn’t expect it. Most people simply never showed up one day. Once in a while an employee would just snap at a customer or a manager and make a scene but generally emotion was subdued, not noticed, or not applicable. And it worked that way on all levels. Managers rarely quit the company but were always being moved around from store to store for various reasons. The managers that had been there when Caitlyn started were long gone. Debbie and Shannon, who arrived a week apart three months ago, were the third generation under which Caitlyn had worked. Just like with the cashiers and sandwich assemblers, though, the transitions were all low key because nobody could be surprised by them anymore. They simply happened too often to be affecting. Caitlyn wondered how many people Agnes had seen come and go in the eight years the store had been open. Caitlyn could only think of it as a reign, impressive in a horrifying way. She wondered how many other people would come and go, moving on to some other job (they all hoped) that was, more or less by default, better? As one part-timer said on his way out, “Shit, I’ll only be out sixty-five bucks a week, big deal.”
Caitlyn was ready to get on that particular bus, and immediately. Gina printed out the e-mail and showed Caitlyn and Caitlyn flipped. The cut she got from Turk for the album art along with the money she’d saved because of her raise meant she’d be able to go in two weeks. Hell, she could give a week’s notice, have this week’s paycheck and the next and then get the next check mailed to her in New York. She started expounding on how perfect it would be. There was tons of dot-com money in New York. Gina could get into a company easily. Caitlyn said she would waitress and bartend and sell her art on the street. They could give clubs Gateway Drug tapes and act as liaisons for gigs. They had, as their share, almost half a pound of freshly harvested kind bud drying in the cabinet. They could sell a little bit if they needed extra cash. It was all right there, the timing was perfect.
Gina was hesitant because of the lease but Caitlyn said that there was only two months left on it anyway, they’d been on time with the rent every month, had no complaints from the neighbors, had at least a half month’s rent to give him anyway, and the landlord was nice, besides. He’d let them out. Gina nodded with an anxious glee, discovering she was being forced to choose something that was good for her. She knew that Caitlyn needed to go, and that her three options were: get a roommate, move back home, or go with Caitlyn to live with her sister, the person she loved most in the world, in New York City and flash her diploma around. While she knew that there really was really no choice, she realized that it would be a major severing of numerous emotional ties and umbilical cords and it scared her to death in a real way. She’d do it, of course, but she also knew that throwing herself into that city would be a very intense and revealing molt that she would absolutely have to keep up with and keep on top of in order to stay focused. She was tentative and going along with the natural flow of events. It felt good but Caitlyn still felt like she had to convince her. They ended up handing in their two weeks notices the next day, when they both worked the afternoon shift.
Caitlyn and Gina came over the night after they dropped the bomb on Royal Burger to find Turk and Marshall jamming on acoustic guitars in the basement, in the middle of some tripped out honkey tonk instrumental. When Caitlyn and Gina walked in they kept playing for about another five minutes before ending the piece in dramatic la-la-la’s and turning off the tape recorder on the eight track. Caitlyn and Gina clapped and accepted the beers Turk pulled out of an ice bucket and handed to them. They sat down and told the guys the news. Turk was sullen but could not help himself from thinking about all the benefits: a happy Caitlyn that he would see often; a chance to have someone dropping off tapes at some of the clubs that would be a natural best step for the band in playing out. Turk and John had been discussing doing a couple of New York shows for Pre-Demo, and then going in to the studio to record a full album. They talked about the possibilities of playing out in New York, selling records there, talked about it as if it had never occurred to them before. They talked about it as if it was real and immediate and pressing, and it was. If Gina had had any doubts, they were gone by the time Turk drove the two of them home. They talked until three, passing around some of the harvest that Turk had dried in the oven. It was amazing. Caitlyn was excited to have something to look forward to, a break in the clouds that had been waited on. Marshall expounded possibilities. Turk evaluated it strategically and from everyone’s angle, and declared the path clear. “It is set in motion,” he proclaimed. “Things are happening and cannot be stopped. We are witnessing evolution.” He pulled Caitlyn aside in the hallway at one point that night and told her he was going to write a sing for her called “Catalyst”. Gina was just blown away by the fact that it was happening and she was in the middle of it. Things stayed like that for a while while they worked out the logistics of it.
~
Here I would stop and contemplate a burger. Here I would never go in. For no real reason. Then up there, two mailboxes later, I would light up a smoke. Because through all the shit I always knew that it was no good for me, and would at least try to pace them out. When I would pass the mailbox up there on the corner, before the college pub, the buffalo wings place, I would either light up if it had been a rough day or wait a little, knowing I could light up at any time. But now there’s none of that shit. I have twelve cigarettes in a pack in my breast pocket that haven’t been touched all day. They would only remind me that I’m not breathing oxygen. It’s worse, for sure. My breaths go like this: inhale, three steps, exhale. I have noticed the timing. I wonder if I have always done it. Before I started smoking, that is. If there was such a time in my life. Because I started smoking in fifth grade and even in my few real clear memories before that, I can’t see anything specific, and maybe I did have cigarettes. When was my first? I knew last night, when I was sitting in my chair and couldn’t remember if I had just smoked a cigarette. I fell off the wagon. There were three in the ashtray. It had been a bad night. I didn’t know how many had been in my pack before the previous one. I am usually very good about things like that. But I wanted one, and didn’t know if I had just put one out. The rooms smelled like smoke but the room always smelled like smoke. I opened the window to try and jog my memory but all this air came in that I just had to breathe to rid myself of all this bad. Cough five times in the morning, no cigarettes right before bed, twenty minutes after your last cigarette your nerve endings start repairing themselves, twenty four hours and your circulation improves. I feel none of this. Just the bad gone away. But nothing has replaced it. No comfort, no cravings even. Certainly no repair. I am calling all sorts of things into question. I think K is now on to me. She waits outside, down towards the end of the block though, and not staring at my window, or waiting for me. I leave the lights out anyway. I see her staring at one of the windows across the street. There is this other guy too, one of the guys that works at the bar, I think he owns it, that seems to be hiding too. He fidgets and walks quickly from the bar to his door at mid-block, cracking his neck from side to side, very conscious of everything around him. Like he’s trying to avoid someone. I sometimes think he’s avoiding her too. He lives in the building. A light comes on soon after he enters the front door, just long enough for him to walk up stairs. I’ve noticed this in the past few days. She never bothers to look in the bar and I won’t give him up, not to her. And besides, how could I know? It’s just speculation. I just know what I know. There are facts. How much should I depend on my power of deduction? I mean, I’m paranoid to a fault now, so my mind is not right to begin with. Anthropomorphism, right? Interpreting others through your eyes? How much information could I peg correctly? Why would I want to?
I can’t stop breathing. Not that I want to. But I can’t stop noticing that I breathe. Inhale exhale. I notice it every time. I’m smoking oxygen this time, and how can I quit? I can’t not be conscious of this life sustaining process. It’s supposed to be involuntary and it is. But once when I was in grade school this kid actually held his breath until he passed out. I remember it. His face turned the color of a bathroom tile blue, very light, and his head slumped to the table. We all ran to get teachers. But as soon as he passed out he started breathing again. He just wasn’t conscious. I tried it numerous times but could never duplicate his feat. Don’t know why I wanted to, either, just to see what it would be like, I guess. That’s why I ended up trying a lot of things, I suppose. But anyway this is different. Every time a breath comes in, I take notice. I can’t stop taking notice. Because I feel it in my lungs, unobstructed by cigarette tar, I feel it being processed, I feel the bloodstream taking the oxygen and giving the lungs the carbon dioxide to get rid of. It was beautiful as I was falling asleep last night, cigarette free, but it was still there this morning. I dared not smoke a cigarette. I have just been fired from my job for incompetence and being unable to perform and I am walking home again, and again I will pass my old house, and now that everything is gone from my life, now that it is just me and my mind and my body and my apartment, the girl is gone, the job is gone, inhale exhale, I have scared all of my old friends, now that there is nothing I can start from the beginning. I will run a hot bath and wait for my only connection to come and take me and help me get better. Because she always said she would come if I needed her. She saved my life that once and told me that she’d do it again, just ask. Inhale exhale. And the times I let her talk. That’s what she said, I let her talk. But I just listened. She told me she could tell me because I was quiet and wouldn’t say anything. When she kept getting sick, when that boy in her class did that, when she went in, I would hear everything. Outside, above the city, watching it be nervous and still like live telvision. Sure I listened. She told me about the time she fainted and went to the hosptial and she had that thing. So she cried about it but she felt defective. And she was the only one out of all of us who wanted them. I couldn’t think of what to say so I told her to try and give birth in other ways. And I saved her life again she said. She was drunk and I got her into the house quietly. And I took care on these steps. I held these stairs with younger hands. They feel like everything else now. It feels like someone else has lived here forever. This is not my house. This placebo has run its course.
I think I want a hospital. I think I want to get better. Who watching me for the last few weeks would have assumed that? Going on benders, alienating every person I love while purposely letting destructive people in, who would have guessed I was cleaning the slate for real change? Inhale exhale. They would have left me for dead. And I probably should be dead. But they didn’t count on blood and they didn’t count on breath. Because I can’t stop, because it will sustain even if I try. But I cannot continue like this. I need to take a break and talk with people and do nothing else. I need to sit in a room with people who understand fucked up minds. Because I don’t know what happened. But they will. Inhale exhale. I don’t sound crazy to myself. It’s a good thing too. Cait will know what to do. I just have to find her.
I’m getting on the bus because I don’t want to wait another minute now. I screamed at work when they told me and I didn’t want to. I’m crying. Everyone on this bus is looking at me. I don’t know what to do. No I do. Inhale exhale. I didn’t want to be pushed. Am I bleeding? I don’t think so. I may be. I’m not in pain. My stop is soon. Everything is getting faster and I am holding on to the bar on the back of the seat in front of me to keep me from falling. SHIT, where is my stop, why are there so many lights, I DON’T NEED A CIGARETTE, I don’t, don’t, inhale exhale, can’t stop that at all. The bus is vertigo, these streets are vertigo. Get me to a phone.
I go into the bar because I don’t know how but I remember I don’t have a phone book. I will tell this to a doctor someday in the near future, I tell myself, inhale exhale. Sustain. Wait. The face I expect to see isn’t there. There’s a black guy behind the counter looking at me very strange. He asks me what he can get me. I say a phone book. He says, sure, pal, how about a beer to go along with that, you look stressed. I say I have no money, I blew it all on drugs and whores. Thank goodness the bar is empty, inhale exhale, an empty bar on a Wednesday evening, I manage to say, he says sure, whatever, hands me the phone book and a pint of beer, saying on the house, guy, just sit and relax for a minute. Someone is in the bar, but not him, there’s a guy in a motorcycle jacket at the end of the bar with two women he’s not paying attention to. Okay, and I remember beer tastes good and it is allowed! Okay, okay, things are not moving so fast anymore, inhale exhale, touch the beer and it is sweating down the side and it looks pretty. I should clear my wall. Avery. C Avery. 640 Lark street. I’m talking out loud between inhale exhale. How many phone books do you have? What kind of beer is this? Where is the guy who is usually here? How busy it is usually, because the guy seems to have taken a queer interest in me. He says, a bit puzzled, inhale exhale, many, Harp, He’s off celebrating, slow.
Something stops me hard. Celebrating? The black guy says he just finished his novel yesterday. He’s off with some girl, celebrating, you know. You know him? I say no, I’ve never been in here before. How do you know Nick, he says, I don’t. How the fuck, I guess you can know some pretty basic stuff from deduction. LIKE THE GUY WHO WALKS OUT OF THE BAR EVERY NIGHT WILL BE KNOWN BY THE BLACK GUY AT THE BAR, PROBABLY. I rip the page out of the phone book. He’s real freaked at this point. The beer tastes good, I’ve already had half of it. Now what. Avery, C, Lark Street. Must be. Somehow there is ten dollars in my pocket. I give it to the black guy and ask for change, quarters. He tells me to finish the beer and get the hell out of the bar, fucking weirdo. I had no idea, inhale, exhale. I leave the last sip as a tip and leave quickly. There is a phone at the greyhound station. I don’t want to stay at the bar any longer than I have to. Especially since that guy, Nick, isn’t there. I’d have asked him about K and he would have called the authorities for me. Everyone wants to help me, nobody wants to give me what I need, inhale exhale.
You can tell summer is on its way out, you can tell even though it’s not cold yet. Fall is about two weeks away and it’s remained warm for a while now but you can tell. Longsleeves have ceased to be uncomfortable. The concrete expanse of the parking lot looks like dirty ice and it makes everything seem colder. Quarters jingle in my pocket inhale exhale. See everything but breathing is secondary, my feet hitting the ground, then happening one after the other to become steps. The direction is secondary and that’s not normal. Will I recognize her voice, inhale exhale, will she be home, will she be frightened, will I once again be able to select the things I can’t forget, like what it was like to connect, like the reasons I do things.
Inhale exhale. It goes on like that for a while. I don’t relate to my own hands, cradling the quarters in my pocket making sure they don’t go anywhere. Either I’m cold early or my blood is thin and I feel weak. It’s not cold but I shiver anyway. I’m nervous and I feel sick. The quarters clearly rest against my palm and I can feel them weigh. Everything is clammy and acts startled when placed against things. My body is in all of this, my head bowed between the blinders of a public telephone. There are holes in the metal in the shape of a telephone receiver. I look through them, still, inhale exhale, holding the torn telephone book page. Everything is happening right after the previous thing. I’m holding it up, smoking oxygen, sustaining. Please let me do other things.
My finger traces down the fragile paper, pushing it away. I bend it with my fingers to keep it firm and look for her name and try to block the page from the breeze. I fold the page around her name until it’s a little square of her and a few other Averys and some Avettes. I put a quarter in the slot and dial the number, inhale exhale. It rings quickly four times and picks up a machine. An anxious female voice says I have reached 555-3058 but nobody’s around. She tells me to leave a message so I do.
“I don’t recognize your voice ,” I say. “Is that you, Caitlyn? This is Tony. Your brother, do you remember me? It’s very hard to stand here, I’m cold. I think I need you to come over. You can help, like you always said. We can steal cigarettes. Please. I live on Division Street, by this bar, three Division. You’ll know it right away. It’s three Division, second floor. Apartment 2D. Just knock. I’ll leave the door open. I’ll jimmy the downstairs lock so you don’t need a key. 2D, like. Like Division.” I start laughing. I cough. I gasp because I got interrupted. I think something audible will be on the machine. For a second I can’t get back so I hold my breath for a good few seconds and then breathe out, and back in. The answering machine is still going. Inhale, exhale, you can do it. It’s audible now. I hang up and lean against the phone. What else did I forget?
I go home and run a bath and open the blinds and keep breathing. I don’t know if she is going to get the message. But she will. I will wait. It’s already done. Answering machine messages don’t get erased. It was her voice now, I’m sure of it. I can’t leave. I’m naked. I’m so skinny. I fall into the bathtub and it picks me up. The water is just over my balls and it is the perfect temperature. I don’t even notice it. My balls buoy. Inhale exhale they sink. It climbs up my chest like tide. There is no friction. I wear it. I watch my chest rise and fall out of focus, pushing it around. What else did I forget?
When Caitlyn said it I was here, when she told me it would probably happen again, she could have been talking about anything, the dose, the cryptic things Andrew kept screaming at me, (where did what you just said just go? are you sure your heart is beating? why are you so on edge? can you repeat this after me…) and she could have been talking about keeping me right, inhale exhale. Inhale, she explained something, what did I forget, exhale, did she know, will she find me, inhale. I am so hungry. The tip of my chin hits the water. I straighten myself and some water comes out of the tub. I shut the faucets off. The water is still warm and it is still like a layer of skin to me. I could stay here and be found. I can keep my head right until I pass out. I don’t have to really let go. I feel years on my hands already. It means so much. But I no longer feel they are appropriate. I am either ahead or behind. Someone will shake me and keep me still.
~
crydydian (crydydian@bodyslam.uchicago.edu) has joined #life
<Pillbot> Hello crydydian!
****mode change +o crydydian on #life
<crydydian> hello everyone
<crydydian> who’s dbecker again?
<dbecker> hello cry
<sloegin> I can’t fucking believe it. good for you. hello cry
<dbecker> sloegin’s sis dawn.
<sloegin> my sister, you remember
<crydydian> oh, right I see
<crydydian> what can’t you believe gina?
<sloegin> my sister got a fucking job already
<crydydian> congrats
<crydydian> didn’t you just get down there?
<dbecker> Monday
<crydydian> four days ain’t bad
<crydydian> what’s the job?
<sloegin> she fucking works at the museum of natural history.
<sloegin> and not only that
<crydydian> wow not bad
<dbecker> it’s part time, roaming the exhibits, showing people around.
<sloegin> she charmed the pants off the museum director. she’s going to be doing voices for those things where you can press a button on a thing and a recorded voice will tell you about it?
<sloegin> so fucking lucky
<dbecker> I charmed her so much that she wants to meet my sister. They’re hiring, right now. They wanted me for full time but I can’t do it.
<crydydian> so when are you guys leaving?
<sloegin> probably Sunday morning
<crydydian> you guys sound all set.
<sloegin> just a little anxious
<dbecker> baby you’ll do great. you and cait will have a blast down here. so many good bars
<crydydian> oh, I love new york, I go whenever I can.
<crydydian> it’s a great town.
<sloegin> I’ve never even been
<crydydian> that’s amazing
<dbecker> can you believe it?
<sloegin> I was supposed to go once, remember dawn?
<dbecker> oh shit
<crydydian> what
<dbecker> woodstock, right?
*sloegin nods
<dbecker> sorry long story cry
<crydydian> s’okay.
<sloegin> hey cry I know pill hasn’t seen him but have you seen marcus at all?
<sloegin> I’d like to talk to him before I leave
<crydydian> no
<crydydian> how long has it been, a month
<sloegin> no, he was on here briefly last week, but this was before your email. he hasn’t come back on
<crydydian> no, sorry, I haven’t seen him.
<dbecker> it’s not like you won’t be able to talk to him
<sloegin> you know truthfully, I don’t anticipate spending a lot of time on this when I get to ny
<crydydian> I don’t blame you
<crydydian> god, if it weren’t for the endless potential for self-destructive behavior
<crydydian> I’d probably leave for good too
<sloegin> I’ll be too busy.
<sloegin> I won’t have time.
<crydydian> good for you.
<crydydian> so you going to say goodbye to everyone else?
<sloegin> no, I don’t think so
<dbecker> cold turkey. s’only way.
<sloegin> hey, fresh starts, right?
<sloegin> they still count for something, right?
<dbecker> as long as they’re fresh and as long as they’re starts…
~
Gina yawned and woke up amongst packed and half-packed and empty boxes, drenched in bright sunlight. The computer was still on and the music was still on, sounding even louder in the general morning stillness. The walls, without their posters blaring, loomed promintenly but seemed farther away, less invasive. They hungrily soaked up light. She creaked her way to her feet, knocking over cans of Genny Ice and made her way to the bathroom. The room was as she left it. Caitlyn had not come home.
She got back to the room and saw she had only missed one message since she began her session when she got home from her last day at work. It might have even happened before then; she didn’t remember even checking the machine once. She figured that it was Caitlyn telling her she’d be out for the night, or telling her to take care of something, but it was something else entirely. She played it back, thinking she might not have heard it clearly. The second go-around she put two and two together, and knowing that she didn’t have the number to any of the places Caitlyn might be and knowing that Caitlyn might not be home for a while, she scribbled down the address on the brown paper bag she toted her six-packs home in, tore it into a square, and sat down and lit a cigarette. She briefly thought of waiting for Caitlyn, but she was already out the door, heading downtown. She’d walk.