Foliate Oak January 2014 

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Fiction

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Sleep Comes Finally

By Pete Able

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In northern New Jersey, in a city that very much wanted to be part of New York, there lived a mild mannered accountant named Spalding Montgomery.  Mr. Montgomery lived alone in a modest one-bedroom apartment on the 8th floor of a fifteen year-old building.  He had a washer and dryer and was generally content with his lot in life.  He liked his mindless job and his impersonal coworkers.  He liked his tiny apartment and its efficient kitchenette.  He liked being a bachelor and the hours of solitude it allowed him.  He liked the way his face looked when it was clean-shaven and his slender, swimmer’s physique.  His one gripe, the one card in his hand that he would have asked the dealer to swap out, was the brain that had been given him.  Due to some chemical imbalance, whether dealt him by fate or by mere biological chance, he was prone to having periods of fantastic delusions, and this proclivity made it necessary for Mr. Montgomery to be under the almost constant surveillance of a psychiatrist and his prescription pad.

At the time of the main events related in this story, Mr. Montgomery is 28, and at this point he has experienced two major delusions.  The first came to him while suffering through the miseries of a shy adolescence.  It started small with the subtle belief that he was more sensitive than other people, which made his emotional pain more intense.  Over the span of a few weeks this minor misconception grew to such proportions that he came to believe that he was, in fact, the Second Coming of Christ.  The idea took root and defied all evidence to the contrary.  It went on unchecked for nearly three full days, during which time young Spalding believed it absolutely and lamented the fact that he would have to continue to suffer his whole life for the good of mankind.  He rebelled against the idea, asking himself, ‘What has mankind ever done for me?’  The fact that his parents had instilled in him a staunch agnosticism, and that, he therefore didn’t believe Jesus was the son of God, never gave pause to his confused teenage mind.  After awhile he simply forgot about the whole affair and continued through his high school years without ever having really identified it as a warning sign of a problem.

His second major delusion came in his last year at Rutgers University.  It was nearing the end of his final semester and the due date for a final project was fast approaching.  The pressure of the imminent deadline found him working deep into the nights and when he lay down to sleep his mind raced with all the perceived problems and failings of the project.  He went over revisions in his head for hours until he would wake at seven after stealing only two or three hours of fitful sleep.  The stress of all this unhinged something in young Mr. Montgomery, and he began to oscillate between delusions of grandeur and bouts of critical self-loathing.

Two days before the deadline he was terribly unhappy and significantly dissipated.  He wasn’t seeing anyone socially and rarely attended class.  He began to believe there was something seriously wrong with him.  The obvious culprits of stress and overwork didn’t occur to him.  Instead, in a potentially life-changing eureka moment, he hit on an answer.  “I’m gay!” he proclaimed to himself excitedly.  That was why he had such a hard time relating to people – he wasn’t being his true self.  It was a relief to finally know the root of all his tribulation.  It was so simple.  There was a cut and dry answer - he had been living with a false identity.  But when he thought of the logical resolution of this new realization, namely, a sexual relationship with a man, his aversion was reminiscent of how he had felt about suffering for mankind.  He again cursed his fortune bitterly, but, just like his not believing in Jesus wasn’t proof enough to dissuade him from thinking he was the Second Coming, his disinclination to share that kind of intimacy with a man wasn’t proof enough to dissuade him from believing he was homosexual.  Young Mr. Montgomery suffered a week of misery and confusion before, with the help of his first psychiatrist, he overcame this second mistaken epiphany.  It was at this time that he was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and was prescribed a daily regimen of Lamictil, an anti-psychotic, which, he was told, was a necessary precaution to stave of any future “breaks from reality.”

After graduation he enjoyed seven years of uneventful relative sanity.  He went to work everyday without taking so much as one sick day.  He cooked himself dinner six nights out of the week and rarely went out after work .  Occasionally he went to see a movie by himself or took the train into New York to walk the busy streets, spying on the passersby, their fashions and hairstyles, catching bits of conversations.  But aside from these infrequent diversions he lived his life on a straight line that ran from his apartment to his office and back.

Like this, seven years passed - seven years without an episode.  But seven years was a long time.  For seven years his imagination had no outlet.  For seven years something was stirring in the deepest recesses of his psyche.  For seven years it was peeking out only in the subconscious-ness of his dreams, which he never remembered.

His boyish good looks had hardened by now into a façade of stoic masculinity.  His blond hair had lost its waviness and would have hung straight to his shoulders had he not kept it cropped short.  Once upon a time he had his fair share of female admirers in the office but he always kept his relations there on a strictly professional basis.  Everyone came to know this about him and they returned his indifference in kind.  It was simpler, and if there was anything Mr. Montgomery strived for in life, it was simplicity.  For seven years things had been the picture of simplicity, but seven years was a long time, and fantasy can find a way to reach us all in the unguarded corners.

It was a Sunday night in mid-October that Spalding Montgomery was lying in bed and sleep would not come.  He rolled over, he shifted the pillow, he tried lying on his back, his side, and his belly, but still sleep eluded him.   Something was keeping him up but he didn’t know what.  His mind was alert but he didn’t know why.  And then it started.  Faintly at first, he began to hear small, tinny voices.  He couldn’t make out what they were saying, he only recognized the melodic rise and fall of a speech pattern.  He slowed his breathing and listened more intently.  He began to pick out words here and there.  It reminded Mr. Montgomery of the bits of conversation he heard when walking the streets of New York.

He sat up in bed trying to detect where the words were coming from.  He held his breath but heard nothing.  He brushed his covers off and swung his legs to the floor.  From a kitchen cabinet he took a glass and put it to the wall with his ear pressed to the bottom.  He heard nothing from his next-door neighbors’.  He heard nothing from his downstairs neighbors’.  The ceiling would be pointless as he was on the top floor.  At a loss, he shook off the mystery, and, after drinking a glass of warm milk, returned to bed.

Within seconds of lying down, almost imperceptibly at first, the voices returned.  Along with the voices he could hear other noises now, mechanical noises.  Was that the rev of an engine?  The honking of horns?  The sound of a jackhammer breaking concrete?  Mr. Montgomery began to worry that this was the start of a delusion.  Through years of therapy he was conditioned to be aware of the signs.  Was he having an episode?  He shrugged the idea off.  As an act of defiance he took the pillow from under his head and violently pulled it down over his face.  For a split second he thought the noises had ceased.   He experienced a surge of relief.  But even before he took his next breath the noises returned.  And what’s more, now they were louder.

Again Mr. Montgomery tossed and turned.  Every time he got comfortable and became still the noises returned.  “Why is this happening?” he questioned.  “I take my meds.” he told himself.  He flung his pillow to the floor in frustration.   He kicked his blanket from the bed.  He banged his fists against the mattress over and over and over again.  “Stop!  You’re not a child!” he reprimanded himself.  He lay on the bed panting heavily.  Once his breathing returned to normal he heard it.  It was a wailing siren - a wailing siren that was unmistakably coming from inside his bed.  Mr. Montgomery pressed his ear to the mattress and listened intently.  In addition to the siren he heard panicked cries and blaring horns.  He heard feedback come from speakers, which was followed by an announcement about an earthquake.  Now Mr. Montgomery was sure he was completely and utterly out of his mind.  His defected brain was telling him there were tiny people living inside his mattress.

He jumped from the bed and paced through the living room to the kitchenette.  From the freezer he took a bottle of vodka.  He poured a double into the glass that had most recently been used as a listening device.  He gulped from the glass too eagerly and gagged, almost losing the contents of his stomach.  His heart was racing.  He forced down another gulp and took two deep breaths.  This relaxed him.  He focused on his breathing, becoming slightly more relaxed.  Minutes passed.  He found a carton of orange juice in his refrigerator and fixed himself a tall screwdriver.  He took several sips.  He could feel the effect of the alcohol now.  He topped off his glass and walked warily into the living room.  He watched TV awhile, not allowing himself to think anything about what had occurred in the bedroom.  Gradually he sank down into the sofa, and he sailed off into oblivion and slept for a respectable five hours of undisturbed rest.

The next day at work went by like a half-remembered dream for Mr. Montgomery.  Sitting behind his desk his usually intent blue eyes were glazed over in abstraction.  His apparent distraction was noted but not commented on.  Everyone in the office was very much his or her own boss, handling their own accounts and their own clients.  That’s to say it was lucky for Mr. Montgomery that no one in the office depended on his ability to do his job, because it was seriously impaired.  When he remembered his work at all he shifted between tasks with anxious furtiveness.  With these spurts of nervous energy he accomplished very little, and he never kept his mind on his work for very long.  He was certain the small, tinny voices were waiting for him back at his apartment.  The thought was so real he began to imagine the things they would say.  Pretty soon he feared the voices might even find him here, in the safety of his cubicle.  At times throughout the day he actually believed there was a miniature city of tiny people living in his mattress.  At these times he believed it so fully that he almost ventured to break through his “strictly professional” barrier and tell a nearby coworker.  It was really amazing, after all.  In fact, he actually started to, but when the man looked, a little surprised, in his direction, Mr. Montgomery lost his nerve. 

After these ungrounded moments, these “breaks from reality,” he quickly identified them as such, but inevitably he soon forgot.  It was a revolving door of remembering and forgetting.  Every time he snapped back into his right mind, he realized it was absolutely necessary for him to leave the office immediately.  He hated to do it - it would blemish his perfect attendance record.  But it was imperative that he leave before his coworkers, or his boss, realized that he was mentally unsound.  It would ruin his reputation, or even his career.  He went to his boss’s office, knocking before he entered.

“Come in.” rang the always friendly, always positive voice of his boss.

Never having had to call out of work, Mr. Montgomery wasn’t quite sure how to begin.  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Johnston.” he said shakily.

“Not at all.” he replied with a wave of his hand.  “What can I do for you, Spalding?”  Mr. Montgomery cringed at this familiar use of his first name.

“I’m not feeling well.” he stammered.  “Would it be okay if I went home?”  Mr. Montgomery was unable to look the man in the eye.  He waited for an answer while gazing over at the clock on the wall.  It was no more than three seconds before the reply came.

“I’m shocked, Spalding.” He smiled broadly with eyes open wide in mock disbelief.  “I can’t remember you ever asking for a sick day.”

“I don’t think I ever have, sir.” he said almost apologetically, looking anywhere but the man’s face.  He was afraid his eyes would betray him, that the man would be able to see the utter bewilderment in his gaze.

           “In that case, I heartily approve, Spalding.  And if you’re not feeling better tomorrow, just give us a call.”

           Success surged blood through his heart.  He thanked his boss and turned quickly to make his escape.

           “Oh, Spalding?”

           Mr. Montgomery froze in his tracks.  What now?  He had to force himself to turn around.  With plain, cold fear, he met the man square in the eye for the first time during the exchange.

           “Get well soon.”

           Mr. Montgomery wanted nothing more than to get well soon.  It was imperative he talk with his doctor.

From his office Mr. Montgomery drove straight to his psychiatrist’s office only to find the building locked.  He immediately plunged back into the panic from which he had gradually risen during the car ride.  His doctor was supposed to have fixed everything.  He would have given him a Kolonopin to make the voices go away and make it possible to sleep.  He was supposed to tell him he wasn’t crazy, and make it true.   And now he wasn’t there.  Now he had to spend another wakeful night in that apartment, that den of delusion.  Sitting there in his car, in the parking lot, Mr. Montgomery began to make himself promises.  He made several, all contingent on his survival and becoming sane again.  He would get out more and be social.  He would be more friendly toward his coworkers.  He would be more forthright with his parents and his brother.  He would join a gym.  He would go to parties and out to bars and try to meet someone.  He would do all of this and more, he told himself.  He would embrace life instead of hiding from it.  But first he must deal with the matter at hand, namely, his current, tenuous hold on reality.

Mr. Montgomery still had one last, small hope.  It was a dim hope, but a hope nevertheless.  He had never used it before but he had an emergency contact number for his doctor.  He dialed it now.

           “Hello?” came the voice at the other end.

           “Dr. Welsh, it’s Spalding.”  His doctor was one of the few people he used his first name with without it causing him a negative, knee-jerk reaction.

           “Hi, Spalding.  Is everything okay?” the doctor asked calmly.

           “Well, no, I’m not really doing too good.” he stammered.  “Awful, in fact.  I can’t sleep.  I’m hearing voices.  I’m coming undone.  My grasp on reality is slipping.  I can feel it slipping.”  Mr. Montgomery said all of this in one breath and gasped when he finally came up for air.  He waited for the doctor’s reply with frantic hopelessness.

           “I’m sorry to hear you’re not feeling well.  Unfortunately, I’m out of town until tomorrow.  Are the voices telling you to do things?” he asked with professional concern.

           “No, nothing like that, but they kept me awake last night.  The only way I got any sleep at all was by getting drunk.”

           “I see.  Well, I can see you first thing in the morning.  How does 8 o’clock sound?”

           Mr. Montgomery stifled an agonizing shriek.  Up until then he was still clinging to the desperate hope that the doctor would change his answer and meet him today after all.

           “Eight’s fine.” he said despondently.

           “Okay.  Then I’ll see you in the morning.  Try to remember the voices aren’t real.  And, Spalding, don’t drink tonight.  We’ll adjust your prescriptions tomorrow.”

           As he hung up the phone Mr. Montgomery felt a chill and he shuddered violently in one quick, jarring spasm.

           Now he found himself in the impossible position of needing to kill time in the midst of a mania.  Under normal circumstances he excelled at this, but given the feverish state of his mind many of his usual pastimes were ruled out.  The idea of being out in public where people could see him was unthinkable.  Even the thought of being in the dark of a movie theater, an activity he normally found comforting, was terrifying to him.  The thought of being back in his apartment was equally terrifying, but in the end he saw no other options.  He drove there shakily.

           As soon as Mr. Montgomery arrived home he sat on the sofa and put on the TV.  He hadn’t eaten lunch but he had no appetite.  He sat there like one in a trance, not caring what he was watching.  Like this, time went by - but hardly.  Minutes felt like hours – hours were an unimaginable measure of time.  Thoughts flitted through his mind like slow motion, silent helicopter blades.  He felt the perceived super intelligence of the mania.  He imagined he was among the top 1% of the smartest people in the world.  He pictured his brain as a giant, perfectly formed diamond.  Ideas crystalized into shining examples of life’s highest echelon of beauty.  He felt very special indeed.  It felt like divine inspiration.

           Sporadically at first, but then without stop, his thoughts returned to the sounds that had emanated from his mattress the night before.  He pictured the whole city – a bustling uptown under where he lay his head, a poorer downtown under where he lay his feet.  He saw everything in great detail.  He saw people walking the streets talking on cell phones and hailing cabs.  He saw construction workers tearing up sidewalks and renovating buildings.  He saw rush hour traffic and subways and buses.  He imagined it all so vividly that he actually began to make plans for the miniature city.  Obviously, he would become famous for making the discovery.  He would give interviews and go on talk shows.  He would charge people to come and witness it.  Finally, he could sell it to the highest bidder.

           After he had pushed the idea as far as it would go he would come to his senses and remember that he didn’t believe it, and that it was all a figment of his imagination.  It was like his mind was being torn in two.  There was the part that believed in the city, and there was the part that didn’t, and knew it was all an absurd delusion.  Unfortunately for Mr. Montgomery, that part that knew it was a delusion kept getting lost somewhere in the depths of his confusion, and the sheer, utter absurdity of the whole thing didn’t make it go away.  The part of him that believed in the mattress city was quite happily mad.  The part that didn’t was tormented by the drastic back and forth into and out of reality.  Every time he snapped back out of the delusion he did so with an agonizing shriek.  He thought of again resorting to booze but then remembered Dr. Welsh’s forbidding of it.  He wished he’d been able to explain the extent of his distress to Dr. Welsh.  If he had been fully apprised of the situation, the doctor might have agreed to a little emergency alcohol use.  As it was, Mr. Montgomery was too afraid of being judged in the morning, so he would abstain.  He would somehow get through the night sober.

           After an indeterminable amount of time the sun went down and the city outside grew quiet.  The sun left Mr. Montgomery under a thin blanket on the sofa in the fetal position.  The only proof that he was awake or, indeed, alive, was the perspiration on his forehead and his bleary unblinking eyes.  The TV still sent out its cacophony of fast prattle and canned laughter into the room, but it did not find its way into Mr. Montgomery’s consciousness.  He had given up trying to fight off the delusions.  His mind sailed hither and thither, to and fro, without ever landing on one substantial shore.  The ship sailed with no one manning the rudder.  It merely floated on and on through a dense, unyielding fog.  But long ago, an hour or a year, in a moment of clarity, he had decided something.  The decision seemed as if it had been with him a long, long while now, and it relaxed him.  With the calm of a man who has accepted the inevitable, he rose, crossed the room, opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony.  Calmer still, he raised a leg over the railing.  He brought the second leg over and now stood facing out toward the crisp autumn night.  Finally, without so much as a flinch, or twitch, or shift of the eyes, Mr. Montgomery jumped out into the darkness and to the parking lot eight stories below.

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Pete Able focused on Creative Writing while at Rutgers University. He has published a travel story on the Interac website and a short story in tsuki Magazine. He is 31 years old.

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Once

By Randall Brown 

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My mother pulled my hair. I had brought her the Cosmopolitan but it was the wrong month. She wasn't drunk, then. She was trying so hard not to be. I remember walking in Chicago and someone saying to his friend or partner, "It makes a huge difference whether or not your parents sacrificed their lives for you." I interrupted, "That's a fucking lot to ask." He kept walking and didn't answer. My mother pulled my hair and threw me down the stairs. My elbow broke in a place that made it never quite right. It always ached, and I always felt it there, like the phantom limb of amputees.

I should've gone to the hospital, but I didn't want anything to happen to her. I drove to the cornfield near Big Daddy's, the bar where she danced and years later they would find her, strung up in the corn on a pole like a scarecrow. They'd never find her killer. It was how the world saw her—a dancer, a drunk, a dead thing already.

So I held my arm and looked at all that buried corn. The crust of snow held a blackbird aloft. The lone figure in the field that morning, me in my car, ready to gun the engine, pull the trigger, a ton of other desires buried inside. A silent dark thing. Why not fly? The blackbird walked on its stick legs and maybe in the afternoon the world would soften, but not then. Then the world felt hard, like forgiveness.

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Randall Brown teaches at Rosemont College’s MFA Program. He’s the author of the award-winning collection Mad to Live, and his work appears in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Fiction and Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction. He blogs regularly at FlashFiction.Net and is the founder of Matter Press.

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* * *

The Buddhist and the Novelist

By Alexander Carver

“Did you feel that?” he asked in a gravelly voice that revealed a lifetime’s association with cigarettes.

I marked my place in the book I was reading with my finger.  “Did I feel what?”

“The cosmic pull between us?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said examining his eyes for signs of madness.

“I think you felt it.”  

When I’d looked up and saw him staring at me from a neighboring table, I'd made the mistake of smiling at him. 

“It was of course inevitable that we would meet.”

“I guess so,” I said, clearing the tension out of my throat with a laugh.

“You have a pleasant sounding laugh.”

“Thank you.”

“Very pleasant.”

“Thanks.”

           
Hoping he would realize I was there to read and not to connect on a cosmic level with a stranger, I looked back down at the sentence my finger was pointing to and pretended to resume reading, forming the words on my lips the way children do to further get my message across.  I was reading a book about metaphysics by Aristotle.  Earlier in the week I’d had a conversation at a backyard barbeque in Venice Beach with a wilting flower child who had translated the devastation of a recent break up into metaphysical terms.  Not only could I not carry on a conversation about metaphysics, and comprehend what the drugs were telling her to say, but if asked, I couldn’t provide an adequate definition of the word.  I don’t like getting caught being ignorant, even in front of those who are too busy hallucinating to notice. 

The destitute man continued to try and draw me into a conversation.

“I’m a Buddha,” he said.

“Really?  I’ve never met a Buddhist before.”  

          
“Not a Buddhist, a Buddha.” 

           
“Oh…I’m sorry.”

“A Buddhist is trying to find his way, but I’ve already found mine, so I’m a Buddha.”

          
“Okay.”

         
  “What are you doing right now?” he asked, shifting his eyes down to my book.

        
  “Just doing a little reading.” 

I held up the book so he could see the title.

          
“And what do you do for a living?”

          
“I do a lot of things, but mostly I'm a writer.”

         
  “Have you written a novel?”

          
“No.  Not yet.”

          
“No.  I knew you hadn’t.”

          
“You did?”

           
“Of course.”

           
“How did you know I hadn’t written a novel?” I asked, taking a sip of my coffee to fortify myself against his growing intrusiveness.

“I knew because I’m a writer, too.  I’m currently writing a trilogy that has several major motion picture stars attached to it.  We’re going to begin filming next fall at a destination yet to be determined.”

He was definitely out of his mind, but well educated, and still armed with hope against whatever torments he was facing.

          
“Well, you must be very excited,” I said, allowing myself to indulge a bit in a conversation I thought might have the legs to travel in several imaginative directions.

           
“I don’t get excited.  Excitement doesn’t exist for me.”

         
  “No?”

          
“No.  Of course not.  I don’t need excitement to enjoy life.”

As we continued to talk, I tried to study him without giving myself away.  He was highly perceptive, and as on guard as a boxer in the ring, and I didn’t want him to feel threatened, and get angry, and put on an embarrassing display.  The first thing I'd noticed was that one of his front teeth was encased in gold.  It flashed from his mouth and drew my eyes towards it every time he spoke.  I figured he must have had some money at some point in the past to be able to afford that gold tooth.  His blue eyes, aflame with intensity, were further set off by patches of gray whiskers sprouting unevenly from his gaunt, deeply lined face.  A sweat-stained yellow bandana with paisley designs on it was tied around his narrow head giving him an edge that helped to negate his small, bony frame.  But the thing that struck me most about him were his hands.  They were large and handsomely shaped with long thick fingers, the quality of which were tainted only by the black dirt underneath his fingernails.  They looked like the strong, capable hands of a surgeon, and other than his blue eyes, were his most attractive physical trait.  He was definitely down for the count, but there had been potential there.  Potential he had most likely washed away with alcohol. 
          
“I’m going outside to smoke a cigarette.  You should join me…” he said. 

I had been peacefully reading for over an hour, and the caffeine that had propelled me into the depths of the incomprehensible subject of metaphysics was beginning to wear off, and leave me feeling drained and tired.  So I decided to get some air and humor this poor, lonely guy, who seemed to be trying his best to convince me that he was omnipotent, one of the fortunate ones, instead of one of the unfortunate ones.  He was strange and intense, but seemed harmless.   

“Sure.  Why not?” I said, closing my book.  “My eyes are getting tired, I could use a break.”

        
  “There are no breaks.  There is only what is happening right now.  There are no breaks in time.”

        
  I followed him to the front entrance, and as he held the door open, he looked up at me and said, “Are you ready to begin our journey?”

           
My startled look was not lost on him or the others inside Abbot's Habit, who had been observing our interaction through peripheral glances, and were glad they had not been the chosen ones. 

We went outside and sat down on either side of a wooden table framed by the large front window.  The Buddha placed a cigarette between his dried, cracked lips, lit a match, and with his surprisingly steady surgeon’s hands held the small flame to the tip.  He then shook out the match and flicked it onto the sidewalk at the feet of an attractive, middle-aged woman passing by.  She gave him an angry look, but didn’t dare stop to confront him.  Amused, the destitute man took two casual puffs from his fresh cigarette, and then, as if suddenly remembering I was sitting across from him, turned sharply towards me, looked into my eyes, and said: “I can read your soul and I know your destiny.” 

I sat up straight and pushed back my shoulders, adopting an appropriate pose for a conversation about my destiny. 

“Is it good destiny or a bad destiny?”
          
He didn’t like my question.  “There are no good or bad destinies.  There is only what will be.  And that is where the truth lies.  And I can see the truth, your truth, waiting for you out there in the future.”

“Cool,” I said.  I was beginning to realize that no matter what I said he was going to respond in a contradictory way that made me feel spiritually inferior to him. 

Just then a 300-pound man, dressed in a rainbow colored cardigan, came out the door holding a steaming cup of coffee.  The Buddha watched him veer off to the right along the sidewalk, heading towards the stoplight on California Avenue. 

“I like your sweater!” he called out to the man.

           
The man turned around, but kept his legs in motion, back peddling away from us, embarrassed by the compliment and its source. 

“Thank you.  I like it, too,” the man said.

           
“Where’d you get it?” the Buddha asked, raising his voice in proportion to the growing distance between him and the man.

         
  The man continued backing away across the street, not wanting to get pulled into a conversation with what appeared to be a homeless person. 

“My wife got it in Mexico!”

         
  “Good for her!  She has excellent taste!  And what do you do for a living?!”

          
The man was now more than twenty feet away -- still back peddling. 

“I’m a producer!”

          
“Really?!  What do you produce?!”

         
  “Films!”
        
The Buddha quickly got to his feet. 

“Oh, that’s interesting, because I’m currently writing a trilogy about…”

           “I gotta go!  Have a great night!” the producer yelled, turning his massive frame forward, and hurrying up the sidewalk, passed the glowing lights of the storefronts.
         
The Buddha moved up the sidewalk a few steps, and shouted: “Wait a minute!  I’ve got three major motion picture stars attached to my movies!”
         
The producer disappeared around the next corner.  The Buddha turned and looked at me with a flustered expression on his face, pathetic in contrast to his previously dignified, all-knowing countenance that I couldn’t help but laugh. 

          
“Well, that was interesting,” I said.

          
“What was interesting about it?” he said, sitting back down at the table.

          
“I don’t know, I guess he didn’t feel like talking.”

          
“He said everything he needed to say.” 

          
“He did?”

“Yes.  And what he didn’t say, I already knew.  More words between us would have been wasteful.  I already knew all the answers to all the questions I could have asked him.”

         
  “Cool.”

The Buddha stared at me again.  Unnerved by his glaring, hypnotic eyes, I turned away from him, and watched the cars driving past us on Abbot Kinney Boulevard.  Several tense moments passed with me staring at traffic and him staring at me.  Finally to break the silence I got him to return to the topic of my destiny.  Because even though I knew he was delusional, I was still interested to hear what predictions he might make.  I’ll listen to anything a friend, stranger, or even a crazy person has to say about my life, as long as they make the future sound promising.

        
  “So, you were about to tell me about my destiny.”

         
  “No.  I wasn’t about to tell you anything.  Because if I had been about to tell you something, I would have already told it to you.” 

          
“Okay.  But I was hoping that maybe you would...”

“If you wish for me to speak now of your destiny I can do so.”

         
  “That would be great.”
      
  He shifted his eyes to the back of a small Latino man, fastening an apron behind his back, as he charged up the sidewalk, apparently late for work.
         
  “You’re going to write a great novel,” the Buddha said.

         
  “Really?  Wow.”

         
  Realizing the value of his forecast was somewhere below a palm reader’s, I still couldn’t help but allow myself to enjoy his prediction.  

          
“Do you really think so?”

          
“I don’t think.  I don’t have to think.  Because I know,” he said. 

I studied his face again, this time looking for signs of clairvoyance. 

“Don’t you think you will?” he asked.

         
  “Well, maybe.  It’s just that I’ve never thought of myself as being destined to write the next great American novel.  I write plays mostly.  But, you know, if my destiny is to write novels, then, what am I going to do, that’s my destiny.”
   
“You will write a novel that is brilliantly conceived and heartbreakingly…(he couldn’t think of another word) and it will be the literary highlight of the century.” 

           
At that moment, a silver Porsche screeched to a halt on the street in front of us, narrowly missing a white Prius pulling out in front of him.  The angry driver honked his horn four times at the Prius.  The Buddha looked at me and held up four fingers.

          
“Four?” I said, thinking he was still referring to my destiny and greedily hoping he meant I would write four great novels, instead of just one. 

           
He held up four fingers again and motioned with his head towards the car that had honked its horn.

“Oh you mean that car honked its horn four times?  Is that what you mean?”

         
  He nodded his head.

         
  “Do you see some sort of significance in that?”

           
“There is significance in everything.”

We turned and watched the traffic again.  A few moments later, a man on a yellow racing bike pulled up to the curb in front of us.  Dressed in full racing gear, he slid off his motorcycle, and walked into the pizza shop next door to the coffee house.  The Buddha and I studied his racing bike for a moment.  It had the number 04 painted on the side of it.  He pointed at the number, turned, and looked at me.

          
“Four,” I said.  “The number four again.”

          
He narrowed his eyes and nodded his head, as if this proved once and for all that he was in direct communication with the higher powers.

         
  “It’s like metaphysics,” I said, taking advantage of a chance to use the word in a sentence, even though I wasn’t sure I was using it properly.

          
“It’s not like metaphysics.  It is metaphysics,” he said.  He paused a moment and then asked: “And what do you know about metaphysics?”

          
“Not too much.  I’ve just started reading about it.  Why?  Do you know a  lot about it?”

          
“Of course.  I know everything there is to know about metaphysics.” 

He extinguished his cigarette, flicked the stub into an oily puddle in the street, got to his feet, and peered down at me with his deep set, haunted eyes. 

“We should leave now and begin our journey together.”

          
“Our journey together?”

          
“Do you own an automobile?”

           
“Uh…yeah.”

           
“Is it parked close by?”

           
“Uh…no.”

          
“Where is it parked?”

          
“Over...that way,” I said, gesturing in the opposite direction of where my car was parked.

           
“Well, if you’ll take me to your car, drive me to an acceptable hotel for the night, and pay for my room, we can begin our journey first thing in the morning.”

          
I reached across the table for my book.

          
“Or,” he continued, “Perhaps we can begin our journey later this evening in the hotel dining room, if you’re anxious to get started right away.”

           
It appeared that in his mind he was Socrates and I was Crito, one of his disciples. I had let him take it too far, believing that I believed in him and his special powers.  An immediate escape was necessary.

          
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tonight.  I've already got plans.”

           
“Well, luckily there’s an inexpensive hotel right up the street.  It’s only a mile from here.  Perhaps you can drop me off there and join me in the morning.”

          
“I’m sorry.  I have to go right away.  I have a date,”  I said, looking at my watch, and getting to my feet.  “But it was a great pleasure meeting you.  I really enjoyed our talk.”

         
  “Wait.  Where are you going?” he said, his eyes looking panicked and deceived,  the way salesman’s do when you break the line just before he can reel you into the boat.

           
“My girlfriend’s waiting for me,” I said, hurrying off down the sidewalk towards California Avenue.

          
“Hey!  Wait a minute!  Hold on a second!  Don’t you want me to reveal the mysteries of the universe to you?!”

          
“Maybe some other time!” I said, turning and back peddling away from him.

           
“Well, could you at least give me a couple dollars, so I can get something to eat?!  I haven’t eaten in two days!”

           
“Of course,” I said, walking back to him, and taking out my wallet. 

He held out his large, capable, surgeon’s hand, and I pressed a five dollar bill into it's palm.

         
  “Thank you…” he said, his fingers snapping closed around the money.

          
“You’re welcome.  It was wonderful--”

“…FOR WASTING MY FUCKING TIME!” he said, getting to his feet and prancing away up the sidewalk and into the pizza shop. 

Alexander Carver is a produced playwright and published writer, recently in 'Zyzzyva'.

* * *

Stephanie Worthington

By Jasmon Drain

​

     How long ago these events happened doesn’t matter. 

     It began in a dirty hotel room.  They sat together over martinis, homemade (or hotel made), mixed with inexpensive vodka and a couple of olives.  A sophisticated drink.  She remembered his thin yellow legs folded over the bed and his hands that were tightly closed in knuckleballs pressing firmly into the mattress.  She sat in a hard white chair, a little dusty, anxiously speaking about the joys of leaving the city.  Her voice was filled with so much ambition that even roaches crawling around in hopes of leftover pizza crumbs stopped, looked up, and listened enthusiastically. 

     Stephanie Worthington, was once a timid girl, an almost tall (five feet, seven inches), black girl from the south side of Chicago.  She was curvy and had a good look, a real good look.  Back home she was the Lena Horne with one of those smiles that revealed her straight white teeth.  Or perhaps she was Halle Berry, with that strong jaw line and versatile hair.  Stephanie had the stuff to make it somewhere. 

     Jacob was a lean and light black boy with square shoulders.  He lived in the project building across from hers, located on Federal Street.  Many people thought they were brother and sister and not boyfriend/girlfriend, considering how much they resembled one another.  Already at 20, Jacob looked great in a suit.  He had those slanted eyes that made him look ‘different’ from other black people.  He repeatedly said that he was willing to do whatever it took to escape the projects for good. 

     The two traveled downtown three days ago, on the #3 Michigan Avenue Bus, were going to declare their love the cheapest way possible, and head for Iowa, or Wisconsin, or Minnesota, someplace where the cost of rent was cheap and jobs for blacks were plenty.  But, when Stephanie woke in the morning to be married, the only thing she had was the scent from the bed and a black dress shirt he forgot. 

     The wind was blowing hard the morning he left, hard enough that it could push a small body like Stephanie’s to the side.  She walked firmly along a busy downtown street in Chicago, maybe it was Jackson Street, it could have been Madison Avenue, watching the passers-by, and staring at the dark briefcases in the grips of businessmen and the snobby looks of women as they noticed her.  In her opinion, the men looked important, wealthy, purposeful.  She couldn’t help but notice the fact that there were no small kids around and every individual face was facing forward.

     People from the projects rarely scare.  But enduring the pressure of the downtown hustle while alone began to bother her.  So Stephanie, unlike everyone else she was around downtown, pointed her eyes to the concrete or to the air, looking for something, touching nothing.  Her face followed the quickness of cabs going by, the expensive shoes women pranced around in, and the tracings of elaborate architecture, where in Chicago, the large buildings have enough space between each that the sun is quite visible. 

    “Hey cute girl,” a man said, “You look lost.  You know where you going?” 

     She nodded her head confidently, yes, a strong stiff yes, anything that would ward off someone staring her down. 

     Stephanie stopped at the corner, abruptly, like her pointy-toed shoes had brakes on them.  She looked in the window of an inexpensive diner.  There was a black man with brownish hair, wire glasses, and furry eyebrows.  She immediately compared him to Jacob but thought Jacob was much better looking.  There was a woman with him, a white woman, with fragile legs looking freshly shaven, neat hands, and an expensive skirt.  Stephanie gazed at the two for a few moments.  She stared at their non-matching hands connected on the table, tickling one another.  They had soft smiles and exchanged lightly puckered kisses.  The woman had a large wedding ring.  Stephanie couldn’t help but get lost in its glare.  She pressed her face so close to the window that her nose flattened against the glass.  They saw her; she motioned upright, pretending as if nothing happened.  She continued walking… 

      …Jacob went back to the projects.  Got the first bus headed south on Michigan Avenue, early morning, a thirty-minute ride.  It was cheaper than the train.  He woke up at 1:30 a.m., seventy-five minutes after he and Stephanie had finished making love.  She told him she loved him, and that with their looks and thin bodies their lives would be a dream.  Opportunities for them would be everywhere.  Jacob replied by saying he needed to call home.  Said he did not like “whitefolkslife” and wanted that peaceful feeling of the projects.  He missed the harshness of everyone, the phony smiles with gossip to follow, the patches where grass didn’t grow, the stink of project hallways.  Three days downtown had shown him the truth.  But, Stephanie climbed out of bed, got on her knees as he lay on a fluffed pillow, and explained that anywhere they went was probably better than home. 

     “We’re going to do something different, Jacob.  Once we get out there we’ll have jobs there.  We won’t be broke.  We’ll have all we want.” 

     “I’m not broke.”

     “I don’t mean money like that.”

     “Money is money.”

     “Always having to hustle for little money makes you end up being the dude selling water bottles next to the Dan Ryan, or pushing something worth a dollar on the EL Train.” 

     “What’s wrong with that?” 

     “It’s stupid.”

     “Like I said, Money is money.”  Jacob’s back was turned.  He lifted his stringy body and started packing immediately.  Stephanie eventually kissed him on the cheek a couple of times, solid lengthy smooches.  Back in bed he went.  They made passionate love again.  She thought he was just getting nervous, maybe it was the jitters.  It was true that he rarely went past 43rd Street.  She went to sleep last night with a small grin on her face; she always felt comfortable resting on the stiff part of his chest bone.  Jacob never closed his eyes and didn’t leave her a note in the morning when he left.

      She woke early and called his name violently.  She tossed the phone around their sleazy room.  It scraped peeling paint from the wall, and she knocked over the television with the missing knobs.  

      At twelve noon, the time they were supposed to get married at city hall, she decided to put her dress on anyway.  It was a bleached white hand me down.  After fixing the ruffles along the bottom, she did makeup – mascara just the way Jacob liked.  She curled her hair and puffed it a little in the back.  Stephanie stood in the bathroom, admiring how beautiful she looked, wishing that she were ugly so there would have been some excuse for being in this position. 

     “How could he leave me like this?” she asked aloud.  

      Exhausted mentally, Stephanie sat on the toilet.  Because, without Jacob, she would be naked; he was who believed in her, who told her over their occasional sniffs of drugs that they needed a change of environment.  He was who she’d known all along, who she had planned to be with since the third grade.  And, that was something special because in big cities like Chicago, you never really consider marrying the person you grew up with…. 

     ….After standing and finishing dressing, she walked down the busy street.  The sounds of the horns became normal after a while.  She attempted to keep her head lifted but the shadows of buildings outweighed her by twenty pounds, reminding her those she’d left on the south side.   

     People continued bumping into one another downtown.  She was used to them dodging as if each had a contagious disease.  There was no eye contact downtown, no smiles, no familiar scents, no hellos.  Yet, everyone managed to take a glance at her in the white dress.  She then remembered Jacob’s flexible smile, childlike, and missed him even more.  He was soft and warm like sweetened oatmeal and she needed that in the new world she didn’t know.  Stephanie continued walking: LaSalle Street.  A man and a woman stood there holding hands, locked.  She could see each finger and stared at them uncontrollably, like she was watching a confusing movie, or wondering about a large word in a novel.  She just stared.  The red traffic light flashed a stain on her dress as she stood at the corner.  There was a payphone on the opposite side of the street.  She couldn’t resist walking toward it, sliding in a quarter, and dialing.

     “Hello?”

     “Jacob?”

     “Hey…”

      She held the phone tight to her ear.  She wanted to hear him breathe.

      “Why’d you leave, Jacob?”   

      “I didn’t wanna’ do it like that, It’s just I’ve been thinking, I don’t wanna’ be there, I don’t wanna’ leave Chicago, I don’t wanna go anywhere.”

     “So, you don’t want to be with me?”

     “Steph, I wanna’ be with my family.”  She could hear him straightening his body during the conversation. 

     “You barely even talk to your family.”

     “I been thinking about changing that.”

     “You always talking fast, saying a bunch a words, and sticking with none of it.”

     “Not this time.”

     “So you just leave me like that?  We’re supposed to get married today.”

     “I know – Maybe we could get married back home, Live here.  We could have our family here.”

     “Be serious.”

     “It ain’t so bad, This is our home.”

     There was a pause.

     “I’m standing here in my wedding dress, Jacob.”  She looked down at the ruffles making sure she was telling the truth.  “I want us to live in a house, have a backyard, and some real grass that grows.  You know, the stuff they say on the movies,” she paused again.  “I thought you wanted the same.”

     “You wanted that.”

     “I guess you decided you didn’t.”

     “I wanted you happy, Stephanie.”

     “You sound like a cheap book read too fast.”

     “You the one that wants that whitefolkslife.”

     “Not having a house full of roaches doesn’t mean you’re white.”

     “I’ll be just fine here.”

     “You’re not thinking.  Our new place will grow on you.”

     “Nah, I’m thinking, I left because I needed to, and I don’t need you trying to talk me into going anywhere.”

     “But, I need you with me, Jacob.”  Stephanie pressed her lips to the receiver as if hers could touch his, dreaming of how damp his mouth felt, how his kisses always felt like a back massage.  “We need each other.”

     “I think I wanna’ be around my family, Just come back,” he paused.  “Everything will be OK.”

     “I can’t come back.”

     “Did you spend your bus fare?”

     “Nah.  I just can’t.”

     She could hear him continuing to speak into the phone, words leaving his mouth with the speed of a typewriter.  Maybe he was even crying, yet, the computerized sound of his voice no longer had an effect.  It was as neutral as the color gray.  She hung up. 

     For the first time, she’d lost something, something that actually mattered as much as her wishes.  She was as confused as any human could be and those big screen dreams seemed so much larger now, almost unattainable, as if the immortal celebrities acting in movies with flawless faces and perfect postures had become the aliens Jacob always said they were.  She considered calling him back and getting on the next bus headed south, but continued walking.

     The horns grew louder and the people walked by faster.  Much faster.  Stephanie stomped another couple of blocks, all the while hearing the payphone ring and ring in the distance.  She stopped when approaching the stained wall of a building.  She began analyzing the scraps of newspapers covering a homeless person as he rested.

     He wore a dingy coat – although it was warm outside – and smelled like spoiled meat.  He looked at her crisply through one good eye, and a fresh bloody scar closed the other.  It looked as if had been damaged in a fight with a large cat.  Stephanie gazed at his clothes: the missing buttons on his jacket, the ripped seams of his pockets, the looseness of his pants.  She wondered if he’d experienced similar things when he was younger, if he was once hopeful and driven to do something different with his life.  But the truth was that he resembled most of the over-forty men she already knew. 

     How could he get to this point? she thought to herself.  Did he have no family either?  Did no one ever believe in him?  Did he lose who he thought loved him? 

     Stephanie stared hard enough that she could see the emptiness of his stomach through the eye.  Then she felt the steel wire of polluted city air attaching her to him, connecting two people who she thought had nothing in common.  She motioned to walk away but couldn’t.  Stephanie then wanted to reach down to him, ask him those penetrating questions about his past.  She needed reassurance that his circumstances were extreme, that they were his fault, and impossible for her.

     “Can I get a dollar, sister?”

     He held out his palm.  Stephanie noticed the twitching of his wrist; he was weak.  The paperweight of a dollar would have pulled his shoulder from its socket cleanly.  His voice was so unenergetic that maybe even his vocal chords had become demoralized.

     “Please, lady, do you got a dollar?  I really needs something to eat.”

     Stephanie didn’t answer.  She just stared at him, at the scar over his eye.  If she did answer, their connection would be stronger.  She chased her thoughts from his filthy clothes, from being homeless or hopeless because of failed dreams, of being alone and without Jacob.  But, right then, it all seemed inevitable.

     She’d moved far enough to not notice the payphone any longer, but the ringing remained.  Her head went back and forth: the homeless man/the phone.  She couldn’t become like him.  Anything but that.  The speed of her thoughts became authority.  She handed her entire purse to the man, including any change for the phone.  With it, Stephanie had given him her keys to her home, to the small, six-building, self contained city she had within the projects.  But with that, she felt neither relief nor satisfaction.  She stepped to the curb, and looked back at him rummaging through the purse.  He reminded her of zombies in movies looking for brains.  She turned abruptly and could see the grilles of sporty cars coming.  The flashing traffic lights.  The focused faces on concrete.  The women with great shoes.  The leather briefcases. 

     There was one thing she didn’t give the homeless man: the bus tickets she had purchased for her and Jacob when they arrived downtown.  Those were folded and tucked into her sock.  She didn’t touch them, though.  Didn’t even reach.  On the other side of the street was the bus station.  She planted her feet, outstretched her arms, closed her eyes, and wondered whether she should cross. 

      But she didn’t move.  Nope.  Not yet.  Not just yet.

​

The character Stephanie Worthington is a metaphor, a person with the desire of escape, a representative of the Stateway Gardens Projects which were constructed on the southeast side of Chicago in early 1955 and demolished toward the end of 2007, clearing the path for “urban renewal.”  Jasmon Drain would like to dedicate this story to the people who lived there.

​

* * *