“No, seriously, why would he be?” Ben says, looking at me pleadingly.
“He’s not, Ben”
“You don’t even want to answer the question, do you? You don’t even want to think of a possible reason. Here, just take this. “He shoves the box at me, and I take it, and Ben turns to walk away
“Wait!” I say, and Ben faces me again “Ok, hypothetically only, not any kind of real reason at all, just me humoring you, the only possible reason the devil is after us is because he has exhausted every other single person on the earth. There is not one shred of influence between either of us. If there was a devil, and if that devil was after us, he would have fully had his fill of every pimp, and drug pusher, and war lord and crooked business man, dirty politician, and wife beater, and..”
“Or, maybe he thinks he can get his hooks into one of us and make us do something really fucked up that will turn good people bad without them thinking about it too much…did you ever fucking think of that?” Ben shouts as he throws his cigarette into the street
“No, Ben. I never thought of that at all, and you shouldn’t either.”
Ben points one of his thick fingers at me “Don’t tell me what to think, you mother fucker” and he steps from the sidewalk and into the street.
When he reaches the other side, I shout “You should buy a trumpet!”
Ben waves his hand into the air, but doesn’t say anything. I watch him walk away, and when he is out of my sight, I look down at my feet. They are filthy, and bleeding, and in terrible condition. I search my pockets for keys, but my pockets are empty, so I sit down and wait. And think, and try to reconstruct a way that I would have left my apartment, and where exactly I could have gone in the course of the night. For the first time, probably ever, I actually consider that there may be something seriously unfixably wrong. Everything else outside looks normal. The street, the stray racing cars of morning commuters, the cold air, maybe it is only me that is different. After about an hour, a young woman exits the building on her way to class, and I race up to the door, and grab it before it closes. She recognizes me and smiles, and then looks down at my feet, and I can see a trace of shock cross her face, but I quickly explain that I had got locked out taking out my trash, and had been trying to get back into the building for a while. We share a little laugh over my predicament, and I hope that she does not look closely enough to see that I am bleeding. After she is gone, I race up the stairs to my apartment tracking blood and mud as I walk. When I get to my door, it is mercifully unlocked. I walk inside, and notice that nothing is disturbed. My bed is orderly. Everything still shows signs of my rush organizational efforts a few days earlier.
I scour the apartment for my shoes, but they are nowhere to be found. The only other footwear I have is an old pair of shower sandals, and so, I wash and bandage my feet, and put on the sandals. Then, after a bit more searching, I find my keys in one of their normal places, and walk to the basement maintenance closet where I retrieve a mop and a bucket. I carry the mop back to my apartment, and clean the entire floor, and after that, I move onto the hallway and stairs where I diligently remove the evidence of my shoeless nocturnal sojourn. As I am finishing the lobby, I hear a key in front door, and after a brief delay, Ron Reinhold, the building’s owner and manager, and my seasonal boss, walks in. When he sees me mopping, he smiles broadly and says “Well, well, does this mean that you have finally decided to take me up on my offer, Lukas?”
“I was just doing a little bit of cleaning up.” I say
“And to think, all you have to do is say the words and your ‘little bit of cleaning’ can turn into a superintendant’s title and a nice discount on your rent.”
“Ok. You’ve worn me down, Ron. I’ll do it” I say
“that a’ boy. I knew this was going to turn out to be a good day. “He says, and he reaches out to shake my hand. And as he does, he looks down at my bandaged feet
“Holy shit, man. What the hell happened to your feet?” He asks
I look down as if I hadn’t noticed the bandages that covered each one of my toes “have you heard of this barefoot running thing?”
“No, but it sounds like some kind of kooky bullshit, perfect for a guy like you” he says laughing, and I laugh too. “I was just thinking that you were looking pretty thin. Is that the culprit? Running around with no shoes?”
I look into Ron’s pleasant smiling face, “I have been getting quite a bit of exercise”
“That is the sign of a true professional. Staying fit in the off season”
“Spring will be here before we know it” I say
“Well, don’t overdo it there, star quarterback, god knows I’m not can’t rent all these apartments myself” He says
I smile at him, “Don’t worry coach.”
“In the meantime, I already have your first duty as the new super.” He reaches into his briefcase and removes a large envelope and hands it to me “the lease amendment for Mr. Thigpen in 1A…I was going to slide it under his door, but if you could get him to sign it and bring it by the office, I would appreciate it”
I take the envelope from him “Sure thing.”
“The beginning of a beautiful partnership” he says
“I always thought we already had a beautiful partnership” I say
Ron laughs “a more beautiful partnership, then”
“I will bring it by the office as soon as I get it back from him” I say
“No rush. “
Then, he shakes my hand again and says “In the meantime, you might want to consider getting some rest. You are looking a little worn down”
“Too much exercise”
He looks down at my feet again “It looks like your body might be agreeing with you there, pal”
I say goodbye to him, and watch as he leaves, the heavy front door slamming behind him. Then, I return the mop and bucket to the maintenance closet, and go and knock on Donald’s door. There is no answer, so I return to my apartment and write a note on the front of the envelope asking him to sign the enclosed documents and return them to me, and go back down stairs and slide the parcel under his door. Then I go back up to my apartment. I search the entire place again for a sign of my shoes, but I still cannot find them. Cleaning the hallway had given me a bit of time to clear my head, but back in my home, the panic over the event of the previous evening returns. I consider seeking out some more minor projects around the building to occupy my time, but decide against it, and turn on the stereo instead. I cue up some Fugazi, and let the sounds of 80s hardcore drown out my thoughts for a while, but it only works for seconds at a time, so I turn the music louder, and then louder still until I can feel the beat inside of my body. After a while though, the music loses its effect, and I turn it off, and lie down on the bed and try to rest. My resting body causes my mind to revolt, and soon, my thoughts are racing even faster than before as I imagine dozens of horrible scenarios that could have resulted in the loss of my shoes and the black hole of my memory.
I put on my earmuffs and try to mediate for a while, but my mind will not let me relax, so without any other options, I seek the only universal refuge for the tormented and collect my keys and wallet and put on my shower sandals and leave the building. Fortunately, the only bar on my street opens early, and as I walk into its cool stale darkness there are already two other lost souls occupying the stools. I sit down and order a beer, which I drink quickly and order another. The service is prompt, nonjudgmental and impersonal. I sit and have three beers in the presence, not company, of the other two men, as they drink silently, and blow their cigarette smoke towards the television showing the morning news. The alcohol hits my empty stomach quickly, and I bask in the familiar cloudy headed comfort of the beer for a while, and am happy that no one wants to talk. By noon, I am earnestly drunk, and the bar begins to welcome some noisier patrons who mostly ignore the skinny man in dress pants and shower sandals with his eyes fixed onto the television. When the bartender’s shift is over, another equally efficient one replaces her, and she makes me the mayonnaise and tomato sandwich which will serve as my dinner. Slowly, the early regulars drift away and are replaced by the afternoon patrons who give way to small groups of students, who drink quickly, talk loudly and are prone to the overt friendliness of novice drinkers. A few of them recognize me as the person who rented them their apartment, and try to start conversations with me that I do my best to reciprocate, and I find myself elaborating on my fabricated story about a barefoot running injury.
After a while, I am coaxed into a few games of pool that I play poorly but enthusiastically, and I work hard to make myself into a pleasant unobtrusive companion. Then, I get a flash of panic that I will say too much outside of my own will, so I excuse myself, pay my tab and walk home. As I exit the bar a rush of air provides a cold reminder of the world outside of the tavern, and I walk home slanting my body into the wind, and trying to maintain my failing balance. My sandal fails before I do and the separation of the thong before the sole causes me to fall hard onto the sidewalk. I sit on the ground for a while and try to repair the sandal, but my motor skills decide against it, and I resign to walking home with one functional shoe.
In my apartment, I drink a glass of milk and fall into a deep dreamless sleep. I wake in a heavy sweat at three in the morning and manage to drag my tired body to the bathroom where I am too tired to stand to urinate. I sit on the toilet and fall briefly asleep and lose my balance, and again return to my bed. I wake for good at nine in the morning to a flash of panic about another forgotten night. I make myself something to eat, and try to reconstruct the events of the previous day, and am happy to discover that I mostly managed to conduct myself normally, and for a few blissful moments, I sit and eat and remember the inside of the bar and companionship, and then my memory catches up with me again and points out the broken shoe, and the broken shoe recalls its missing cousin, and its missing cousin is a memento of a missing day, and I am back in the place where I began.
And I sit and think about all the times where alcohol was only a delay, and not a solution, and so I resolve to do something productive. So, I shower and shave, and with some duct tape, reassemble my sandal into a partially functional piece of footwear, and collect a pair of socks and go out into the street to the bus stop. I get on the first bus that comes, and ride it for a long while through neighborhoods I don’t know until finally it stops at a small promising looking shopping center. I get off and walk around the small outdoor mall in my tired sandals with my feet aching, and am disappointed to find that there is no decent shoe store. I try on a few pairs at a retail big box store, but all of them pinch my aching feet, so I return to the bus stop again and wait. The next bus finally does take me to a mall with a good variety of shoe stores, and I find a durable pair that will tolerate a lot of walking and look respectable enough for the springtime rental season.
It is late when I get home, but I am satisfied with the new shoes, and am happy to sit for a while and confuse acquisition with accomplishment, and I look over my worktable and consider making some new heads, but my mind feels genuinely ready to rest, so I start to prepare myself for an early slumber when I hear a knock at my door. I open it, and Donald is standing there.
“You don’t have no robe, or nothing?” He says when I open the door. And I look down at myself and realize that I am without a shirt, and I invite him inside, and turn around to find one
When I return, Donald says “where’s all you stuff?”
“This is all my stuff” I say turning to look at my apartment
“Here I thought you were doing all right” he says
“I am doing all right. I just don’t like to have a lot of stuff I need to keep track of”
“To each his own…” Donald says looking at me a little strangely “Here’s that paper for the company”
“Oh, good. I will take that over to them. Did everything look fine to you?”
“Yeah. It's fine. It all looks fine” he says
“Well, good. I’m glad they could work something out. How is the cat doing?”
“Yeah, fine.” Donald says “Look, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, especially after looking at how you live, but that girl works on Mondays”
“I know” I say
“And she takes her break at 1:30”
“Ok” I say
“…a normal man might try to figure out a way to run into her on her break when she actually might want some company instead of just hangin’ around trying to look at ‘er”
“Oh…I see what you are saying”
“All right, so if you do bump into her down in the cafeteria, don’t go saying something stupid like ‘Donald said you would be down here’”
“Do you think I am that stupid, Donald?”
“Man, yes. I do. But you hooked me up here on this other thing… so no we even”
“We didn’t need to be even” I say
“People always need to be even. Now, don’t say you know me, don’t say you knew she’d be on break, don’t do nothing strange”
“Oh, come on” I say
“And if it does go right, and it probably won’t, but if it does…don’t try to bring her back here, you can’t bring no woman back to your house where you got a bed and table and that’s it”
“I have a pretty nice stereo” I say
“And you need to keep that turned down, too. Not just then, but in general. You play that shit too loud”
“Did you hear that I am the new super in this building?” I say
“Well, I ain’t gonna need anything fixed, so that don’t matter”
“Ok. Well, thanks, Donald” I say extending my hand to him
He doesn’t shake my hand. As he walks away, he says, “We even. If I need anything else, I’m gonna call the company”
“Ok” I shout after him. “Either way, thanks”
I go back into my apartment happier than I had been since they day I spoke to the elephant. Donald is wrong about my place too, I am certain the girl from the museum knows the difference between minimalist and spartan. All of the sudden, I did not feel tired at all. So, I decide to make some heads, and plan on making one really nice one to give to the girl from the museum. Then, as I reach in the desk drawer to get out my clay, I find the small handmade container that I had fashioned for Ben. I pick it up, and gingerly open it. Inside, the head is still just as it was when I made it: the glass eyes, the eyelashes that took forever for look just right, the hair styled into a little fifties milk man buzz cut, the whole thing is perfect, a tiny masterpiece. Then, I decide that I cannot top this rejected sculpture, at least today, so I sit and try to listen to music again, but the head reminds me of Ben, and my missing shoes, and the indulgent day wasted in the bar, and it eats all of my energy away. And the music sounds terrible, just pointless sounds, and outside, it starts to rain. And I imagine all of my forgotten heads languishing unfound in the rain, little kernels of wonder free for anyone, becoming distorted and wasting away forgotten in the sodden preoccupied world outside my window. My mind performs a play for me, where the girl from the museum throws away the head I gave her again and again, and I think about the heads in the library and try not to imagine their fate too. I try to imagine one surviving, and serving as my proxy reading all of the books I am forbidden to read. So, I force myself to remember Emerson and his maxim that the ones opinion of the world is a confession of his character, and so I make myself stop…. Stop being another scared pessimist obsessing over the negative.
And so, I lay on my bed and put on my earmuffs, and control my breath, and gratefully, concentration comes easily, and the rhythm of my breathing takes me to the grove of trees where I once lived as a tree myself, and there is a wedding there with a bride in a white dress and a man in a tuxedo, and a healthy oak tree as the presider. It is a beautiful ceremony. The music is traditional, but the service is ecumenical with hand fasting, and a Chuppah, and a formal reception of Holy Communion by the couple. And then it is me, the groom. And the girl from the museum is bride, and I can feel my heart swell at the realization of this wonderful possibility, and I know now that I am dreaming and not flying, and I can relax even more because the man from the theatre will not be invited to the reception.
And the bride and I are turned and presented to our audience of trees and they all erupt in joyous swaying. So, she and I walk to a small wooden box, and kneel together, and turning a single key, we unlatch the lid, and lift it open, and from it flies a dozen white doves, and the trees sway even more grandly. Then the hawk, the uninvited guest of the groom, retrieves one of the doves from the air, and flies it to his nest lined with medical letters, and proceeds to prepare it with unrestrained zeal, but my bride does not see. She only notices the little bits of down that float gently from the sky, and she turns her face up like a child catching a snow flake and opens her mouth. A tiny feather from the departed dove lands gracefully on her tongue. She turns to spit it out, and the hawk moves to edge of the nest and cocks his head to the side, and looks at me fiercely with his accusatory eyes, and I am awake.
Outside my window, the rain continues. A steady, determined late October rain, but I get dressed to go out anyway. I lace my new shoes, put on my coat, and take the umbrella out of my closet, and then I walk out into the weather. It is a long walk, and I have a bit of difficulty in the dark, but ultimately, I manage to find the stand of pines. By the time I get there, the rain has slowed a bit, and in the near total darkness, I check the earth for signs of the dove feathers, but I find nothing. Then I try to search out the head. I find the tree where I had left it, and dig around the base searching for the head, but I cannot find it. So, I conclude that I must have been mistaken about the specific tree, and instead move to another tree, and search around the base of it. I repeat this process around nearly every tree in the grove, and by the time I am finally done, my pants are ruined, and it is nearly dawn. The head is missing.
I am so excited that someone had finally found the head, and even more, had taken it home, that I nearly begin to cry. Then for good measure, I sit on the soaking ground and wait until the light fully comes, and check around every tree again. Still, I do not find the head. The morning chill makes my soaking clothing feel like unnecessary cast, and I notice that I have started to shake. So, I decide to jog home from the park in an attempt to regain some of my body heat. I am halfway down the trail before I realize that I have left my umbrella, and return on tired legs to retrieve it. I search for a while and cannot locate it until I notice something black laying alongside a small patch of bushes at the edge of the pine grove. I walk over to retrieve my umbrella, and instead discover a pair of shoes. My shoes, that is to say, my old shoes, soaking wet and covered in mud, and tucked neatly behind them, my umbrella. I look at the little collection of my personal objects, and feel a flood of relief wash over me. If my shoes are here, I reason, the likelihood that I wandered anywhere truly strange in my fugue is pretty low. Also, I seem to instinctively gravitate to this space by the bushes to hide things. I consider saving the shoes, but they are too damaged by the weather to wear or donate, so I leave them behind, and jog home with just my umbrella.
When I get back to my building, I enter through the backdoor and go to the basement where I take a long time cleaning off my shoes as not to track any mud up the stairs. Then I remember the head. If I was in the grove, and left my shoes there, I may have also moved the head. The hawk that intrudes on my dreams could have directed me to do that, and worse still steered my ship to destroy even more of my creations. The whole idea makes me feel awful, and I am dejected as I climb the stairs to my apartment, but my brooding is interrupted by a happy diversion, a note under my door that says “clogged toilet 4D. Please rush!” My first sincere duty as building superintendent begins with a return trip to the basement to retrieve a plunger, and I walk back up the stairs to apartment 4D. When I knock on the door, I am met by a thin blank faced student.
“You left a note under my door about a toilet” I say, holding up the plunger
“Oh shit, dude. I thought you would never come” He says and invites me into the apartment. The place is a mess and the air reeks of marijuana. There is another young man sitting on the couch letting the glow of the television reflect off of his face.
“The guy is here to fix the toilet” The first man says to the second, and I greet the man on the couch.
The man on the couch says to me, “oh, I’m sorry about this dude, but we didn’t know what to do. It just wouldn’t flush, and I couldn’t find a plunger, and then Craig, flushes it again, and...”
The other man, presumably Craig, says “luckily neither of us has had to take a shit since. “
And the man on the couch says, “can always piss in the sink, you know what I mean”
I agreed that I knew what he meant, and then went into the bathroom. It was, in fact, a pretty disgusting scene, but I was able to fix everything in less than a minute.
When I exit the bathroom, the man on the couch is lighting a bong, and I say “for future reference, I am going to put a plunger down in the basement in the cabinet next to the washing machines. You run into this problem again, the solution will be right down there”
“Oh, thanks so much, bro. Yeah, sorry about that. Like I said, I don’t know what happened”
“Probably too much toilet paper” I say
“You want to hit this?” The man on the couch asks, gesturing to the bong
“You know, I kind of work for the company, and you are using an illegal drug in one of our buildings...”
“Oh shit!” Says the kid on the couch
“No. no. What I am trying to say is, I can’t join you. And if anyone asks you, I didn’t see anything, and it would be a big help to me if nobody asks you” I say
“Oh yeah, man. Definitely. Sorry about that. You almost gave me a heart attack there for a second” he says
“No I didn’t” I say “I just took too long getting to my point...There was no risk of a heart attack” I smile and the two stoned guys on the couch smile back at me. Then, I notice on their low side table, a trumpet standing on its bell with a single wilted rose sticking out of its mouthpiece.
“Is that your trumpet?” I ask
“That is my flower vase” says the man I presume to be Craig
“Clever” I say
“The rose died. I got it from my girlfriend”
“The trumpet?” I ask
“No, the rose. The trumpet is mine from high school”
“You wouldn’t have an interest in selling it would you? I have a good friend who is in the market for a used trumpet”
“No, probably not, man.” He says
“What if I could pay you now? Say, a hundred and fifty bucks, I can go it the money from my apartment right away” I say
“That’s kind of cheap” he says “it’s a pretty decent trumpet”
“Yeah, but it is a pretty crappy vase” I say
Both of the guys on the couch laugh a little too long, and when they finish, I say, “So, what do you think? $150?”
“Sure, man” says Craig after a few seconds of feigned deliberation.
Then, after a return to my apartment, and a quick transaction, I am the proud new owner of a decent used trumpet. It is still only 11:30 by the time my superintendent duties are complete, and since it is Sunday, and the changes are decent that Brian Folz will not be there, I decide to go the library. So, I put on a baseball cap as a cursory disguise and collect the trumpet into a small gym bag and walk to the library. When I get there, the guard who handled my original eviction is posted at the door, but I walk quickly by him, and he does not notice me. My plan is to seek out Ben, but I decide first to walk around the library for a little bit first in case I am discovered and forced to leave, I do not want to miss spending time with the books. I prowl the stacks for a while, and search out the hiding places of a few of my heads. They are all gone, even the one behind the Physicians’ Desk Reference. I hope that they have been discovered by people who will keep them.
Then, I find Ben. He is where I expected him to be; at the table where we always met at the mezzanine. He does not have any books on the table in front of him, but he does have an opened case of Coke and a few empty cans across the desk. He has headphones on, and seems to be listening intently. I sit down across from him. He looks up at me, but does not say anything, so I sit and wait. After a few minutes, he still doesn’t talk, so I take off my hat.
“I thought you said you weren’t allowed to come here” he says
“I’m not.”
“Then, why are you here?”
“I figured that Brian Folz wouldn’t be here…I am taking my chances because I wanted to talk to you.” I say
“I am leaving anyway”
“Where are you going?”
“Out of the library, I guess” he says. Then, he starts to pack up his things, and collects his cans into a plastic bag
“Can I come with you?” I ask
“Yeah. You can.” He says
So, we walk out of the library together and Ben lights a cigarette, and then starts quickly up the sidewalk
“Wait, Ben. Can we sit down for a second? I want to talk”
“We already talked. I already heard what you had to say.” He says
“Seriously, just for a second. Let's go sit down over there, just hear me out for a minute”
Ben freezes and watches me for a bit, and then he says “Ok”
So, we sit on the bench together in silence while Ben smokes and then finally, I say “I thought about what