“Smile, willya?!”
Squalled Nadine. “Jesus H. Christ, you'd think your face'd crack
open!”
Bailey felt a smirk coming on,
but now he had a need to fight it back down, which he did
successfully. He, Othmar, Emily, Nadine, Dennis and Darren were
together for the usual AM coffee splurge and gab at
Denny's---Saturday night drifting into sunrise and no one had to go
to work on Sunday morning----even Emily had a week or so to kill
before she'd have to catch the shuttle back to New York...
“Jesus,” Nadine bitched,
“Don't you EVER smile?! You're doing okay, getting a free ride to
all the galleries, getting good meals----what's your problem?!”
“Bailey's got no problems,”
Othmar, as usual, coming to his rescue, “he just has a sense of
purpose!”
“He'll smile when he has a
reason,” said Dennis.
“You have to know ole Bailey
as long as we have,” said Emily, “to know that when he's zoning
like that it doesn't mean he's got a problem.” She reached over and
patted Bailey on the shoulder. “He's a very sensitive boy, and a
fine artist in his own right.”
“The best,” helped Othmar.
“It's just a matter of our convincing the rest of the world so.”
“We'll get there, ole Bailey,”
drawled Dennis, “Do not fret. We're all gonna get where we're goin'
someday.”
“I know,” said Bailey, and
rode with it—Othmar and Emily and the gang were good friends, but
as ever, he could have done without the testimonials.
Nadine harped on. “I don't
know----I don't get it---we're all having a good time and there you
are, pal, off in the doldrums!”
“I'm having a good time,”
Bailey offered weakly.
“And you just--”
“You see?” Darren barked.
“You see?! He's having a good time, dear! Now, willya get off the
poor guy's case?”
Subject matter picked up and
moved on---there was no sense in killing a whole evening/morning
arguing about Bailey's facial expression.
Dennis was clipping off on one
of his college-era road rambles. “So, anyway, Texas, down to the
border, right? There are six of us, all crazy and half-in-the-bag in
that one tiny car.....”
“Must smelled dandy,” Nadine
editorialized.
“So, what do you figure a
cop would have to say about it?” Continued Dennis.
The booth was situated beside
the picture window and Bailey found himself drawn to stare out into
the parking lot---it was three o'clock, give or take, and the
asphalt, at least on this side of he building, was empty----dead for
a Saturday night, here. It was early September, time of dying sun and
heat and Bailey knew the snow wasn't far off, now, that it would be
blessing the ground like a sad angel powder...millions of tiny
crystals pushing the black out, showering the vacant earth....
“--Hey, Bailey?”
“Huh?”
“I said, 'are you ready to pack
it in?' “ Repeated Othmar.
“Oh! Sorry! Sure, I'm all set.”
“Jesus! Earth to Bailey!”
“He looks tired,” said Emily.
“C'mon, Bailey, we'll take you home.”
“Later, all.”
“ 'Bye,” the gang saluted,
all wired-but-tired and gabhappy.
“And goddammit, try to cheer
up, will you?” Yelled Nadine.
A yeah, yeah, yeah would have
done, but Bailey opted to retain his dignity with silence. Outside,
the wind blew---Bailey was right; Winter, long off, still, but sure,
was a shadowy creep aking its overtures to the land.
“Don't listen to Nadine,”
grumbled Emily. “She's just a bitch, she doesn't see your inside.”
“Sometimes I wish I couldn't,”
joked Bailey.
“Cut the crap,” said Othmar,
fishing through his pockets for the car keys. “Man, you bug me when
you start talking like that.”
Othmar drove downtown to
Bailey's Canal Street apartment---he was animated, as he frequently
was on those occasions when Emily was in town, going off ragtime
about all things art and sex and machinery. His and Emily's
creation-in-the-works was a sculpture of tire irons that were welded
together....the whole mess was obviously erotic in nature but maybe
the full effect hadn't been fully realized, yet, since at present it
still looked like a gnarled patchwork of tire irons. But it was
always good to see a surprise unfold, and dammit, Othmar was happy
and excited, and that hand to count as a positive, right?
Bailey laughed....he enjoyed
Othmar's enthusiasm, but it was hard to get around the fact that he
was tired.
Othmar pulled up to the curb.
“Need any help getting in the door?”
“No,” said Bailey. “I
think I know my way by now.” He loped up to the front door,
searched his coat pocket, found the keys, turned momentarily to wave
goodbye and let himself in.
Othmar put it into drive.
“Othmar?”
“S'up, babe?”
“I wish you'd put in a word
with Bernice for Bailey. I kind of worry about him, living in that
dump. I mean, your place isn't THAT much more expensive.”
“Oh, Em,” sighed Othmar,
“we're talking Bailey, here, and you've known him as long as I
have. You know how he is and you know what he HAS to do----he wants
to live in a place that's 'alive', a place where there's a lot going
on....it helps him. Somehow. He keeps saying.”
“I know,” Emily grudged.
“But I wonder sometimes if it doesn't hurt him, as well. Look at
Bailey, in shittown, Bailey, with his candles and his books and his
little glass angel figurines----he needs it, or he says he needs it,
but there's a big contradiction there. I think he's very frail.”
Othmar shrugged a shoulder. “I
know, but it's Bailey, who's on a fixed income, who ain't rich by any
stretch, and neither am I, but he thrives on it.”
“He says he thrives on it.”
“Maybe he needs it. Bailey and
the glass angels and shittown.”
“Whatever. Still, I worry.”
“Yeah, well....maybe sleep
on that worry,.” Othmar pulled into the Dell Street parking lot.
“I'll see about talking to him.”
“ 'Kay,” smiled Emily.
Obviously no constructive thought was about to transpire before a
decent night's sleep at this point.
******
In the dim light of his apartment
Bailey admired the decorations on his single end table by the couch
he'd fished out of the dumpster last Christmas. He was proud of what
was evolving as kind of an interchangeable, free-flowing diorama.
There were the candles and all the glass angels, of course, those
were a natural given, here, but also the various actors----the
Godzilla, Jet Jaguar, Ultraman and King Caesar action figures; Time
Traveler, his old, stalwart Micronauts doll from grade school; GI Joe
and a few molded plastic ninjas, all forming a phalanx around and on
top of his pill organizer. It was almost a political statement for
him at this point----no man enters, no man leaves.
He'd had conversations with
Bruce and Mike, a couple of the local guys from the neighborhood.
---”hey, Dave,
we ain't seen ya much lately!” Everyone in the neighborhood Bailey
saw called him “Dave”---not out of any malice, he was sure of
that, but everyone, for whatever reason, was sure he was “Dave”,
and acted like he should know who they were, even if he didn't.
Was there a guy named “Dave”
walking around town that looked exactly like Bailey?
It didn't bother him
enough to correct them, though. He was alright with letting it go.
---”we don't never see
ya down to the community council no more, Dave! How come you don't go
there?”
---”I don't want to.”
----”Aww, you know
they got lotsa good drugs, Dave!”
----”Yeah, that's
okay, I don't want to.”
----”Aw, everybody
misses ya downa community council, Dave!”
Bailey was jarred out of this
memory but hooting and hollering from several people outside. It
suddenly occurred to him that he was sitting, buck naked, in front of
those windows on the side of the house.
Hell, the apartment was like a
fishbowl---windows EVERYWHERE. Even here on the second floor, in low
light, the neighbors were getting a show.
“WOOO! Shake it for me,
baby!!!!” Hollered a woman out in the darkness.
“Getcher pants on, faggot,”
snarled a male voice. “You're scaring the children!”
Bailey made to get up and
make a run for the bedroom and whatever surgical equivalent to
pajamas he could find there but in the end he sat back down. Bolting
and getting dressed was almost an admission of guilt, and Bailey
wasn't about to play that game with these troglodytes.
The catcalls eventually died
down. Bailey made his way to the darkened front room for some peace.
It wasn't that there were less
windows in the front room but they mostly faced the street below and
the lights were all off.
Bailey sat on a motheaten couch
that had been left by a previous tenant. The place, whatever Othmar
and Emily wanted to say about it, had no shortage of couches.
Down in the street, some unseen
man yelled to some invisible addressee. The man sounded as though at
least half his civilized demeanor had somehow taken a slip down the
evolutionary board. Scuffle in the dirt, sound of a bottle breaking.
The candles were out. Bailey
crouched on the floor and tightened up into a ball.
The man outside screamed in an
anguished rage where the last vestiges of his humanity seemed to slip
away forever.
Bailey clutched the sides of his
head. “Stop,” he groaned.” Make it stop. Make it stop.”
*******
Othmar had a package to pick up
at the post office on the South End. Bailey had a few hours to
kill---hell----it seemed as though Bailey never had anything but
time---and so he accompanied Othmar for the ride.
“Emily get back okay?”
“Yeah....kinda nice,
though.....some obligations kinda going by the wayside.....she'll be
back up here mid-week.” Othmar looked pretty stoked.
“That's good,” said Bailey.
“She gonna be in town for the opening?”
“Yeah, at this point, most
likely,” said Othmar.
“I used to go to the South
End post office a lot,” said Bailey, “back when I was more into
the mail art thing. I'd go out there and then I'd hit the McDonald's
and I'd eat my burgers and read my mail. I don't really do that
anymore.”
“You look sad, pal, “ said
Othmar, “how you been?”
Bailey shrugged. “Okay, I
guess. It's just---I don't know---sometimes I wonder what the hell's
happening.”
“What do you mean?”
“It's hard to explain.”
Bailey's soft voice was more quiet and halting than usual---it
sounded funeral parlor to Othmar. “You know....those times when
you're moving through a crowded room and you think you heard someone
calling your name? Then you turn and you stare at them and you
realize they weren't talking to you at all? Then you try to cover up
by staring at everyone else in the room in kind of a roundabout way
and then you just look confused and stare down at your shoes? Then
you laugh to yourself and you shake your head and half the people
there are staring at you and wondering what the hell is going on and
so you just slink out of the room but halfway out you say, oh, God,
what am I doing and you go back in and you look around again but
nothing's any different, it's just, like, pffft! Pffft! Pffft!” He
made small, sad, explosive gestures with his right hand to accompany
each “pfft”, “and there's nothing you can do so you leave
anyway, but then it feels...unfinished? You've got this bad feeling
deep down but it's like there's nothing you can do? You know those
times, Othmar?”
“No,” Othmar frowned.
“Oh,” said Bailey, his
fingers roaming delicately, nervously, across his face. “Well, it's
not too important.”
They arrived at the post
office. There was no line and Othmar mailed off his package. Bailey
cut loose and ran down the hall to check his P.O. Box. He rejoined
Othmar out the door.
“Anything?”
“Nada,” said Bailey. The
two got back in the car.
“Didn't realize you still
kept your P.O. Box down here. Thought you'd given up on the Mail Art
thing.”
“Oh, yeah, I have,” said
Bailey. “I still get my monthly check, you know, and I figured it'd
be too early in the month to come looking for it, and I was right,
but we were here, and I thought, well, when in Rome....”
“How's that going?”
“It's alright,” said
Bailey, “You know, you go down to your appointment every six months
or so and they draw your blood and the Chinese guy gropes your balls
and tells you to cough and then they ask you questions. 'Have you had
any accidents over the last six months?' And you say, 'no,' and they
say, 'do you hear voices?' And you tell them, 'no,' and they ask you,
'do you have any special powers---can you turn invisible or fly or
read minds?' And you say, 'no, I can't do any of those things,' and
they sign a bunch of papers and re-up you on your meds and you keep
getting your nut check in the mail.”
Othmar winced. “Dude, don't
say that.”
“What---'Nut Check'? Dude, if
I can have a sense of humor about this, you can, too.”
“Bailey, ole bud, are you
doing okay?”
“Yeah, I guess....why?”
“Emily and I were talking and
sometimes we worry about you, living out there on Canal Street and
whatnot.”
“I'm okay.”
“We're not real sure. Listen,
Bailey, all I'm saying is that if you want to move to, say, where I'm
living, I'm sure I can badger Bernice into cutting you a decent deal
on the rent...”
Long silence. “That's nice,
Othmar, but I'm okay.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You SURE you're sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Absolutely, positively, a
hundred percent sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Pinky swear?”
“Dude.”
So began the long,
quiet drive back to Canal Street. Bailey spoke up first. “Winter's
coming, soon.”
“Yeah,” said
Othmar. He hated Winter.
“I like the snow,”
said Bailey. “When it's virgin snow. It's like angel powder, and I
like it when it covers up all the dirt.”
“Yeah,” said
Othmar.
*******
It was a long time
ago----Bailey remembered he was eight and he and his father sat
together on a jetty on the Cape. He was crying and his father was
trying to brace his leg, trying to yank a rusty, barbed fishing hook
out of his foot. It was painful----blood was all over the rock.
“Eeeyeeyeeee,” cried little Bailey.
“Shaddap,” yelled
his father. “It'll be out in a second...quit yer yeein'.” His
father pulled. It was still caught in his foot. It seemed that blood
was everywhere.
“Eeeeeyeeeyeeeyeeeeee,” squealed Bailey.
His father boxed
his ears. “Stop that goddamn yeein',” he snarled.
Blood on the jetty and
the boy was crying. Seagulls yakked and tittered. Ocean bellowed.
*******
He knew his name was Bailey and
that was the end of the discussion. Othmar and Emily knew he was
Bailey-----even Nadine knew he was Bailey.
It didn't matter what all the
people on the street said, what they said down at the temp agency,
what they said down at the neighborhood bar where he cashed his
checks. He was BAILEY. And all those check stubs on the kitchen table
addressed to “David Sinclair”, whoever had put them there, didn't
matter, either.
He was going to make a moral
stand and be who he was, regardless of the box people tried to put
him in. He grabbed a pair of scissors that he had lying loose on the
couch cushion for God knows how long....relic from the mail art days.
And goddammit, he thought as a side note, all his friends and
colleagues around the country----whatever may have happened to them
at this point.....they knew him, too. They knew he was Bailey.
The first things he pulled out
of his pocket were his driver's license and his social security card.
He cut them both into tiny, jagged pieces.
There were others, of
course----the library card was one-----these two were the big ones,
though. That was an ideal place to start.
For a hot second it was his
plan to take the whole bolus of gnarled, segmented card stock and
laminated plastic and dump it all in the trash. He hesitated,
though, and thought better of it. If it was all located in the same
place it was almost a guarantee that anyone could assemble all the
remnants, no matter how erratically he may have cut them, and
reassemble them as they'd been before.
He wasn't going to let that
happen!
He dropped a few scattered bits
in the trashcan....he had a couple of little dustbins around the
house----one in the bathroom and one in the den-----he supposed these
were options, but even then, were they all too close for comfort?
No----Bailey decided he would
dispose of them over a period of several weeks, so as not to arouse
suspicion. He played with the idea of dropping various pieces around
town----maybe he could take the bus one day, have a little trip
around town and deposit the random pieces in various trashcans and
dumpsters.
He wished it were more feasible
to travel out of state.....that would be even better.
He sat and thought about that
for a while.
********
Wednesday, and the TV was going.
Some lecherous kiddie show host rasped in a cancerous deadpan while
holding a tiny girl on is lap. Bailey winced.
Out in the muddy courtyard, two
dogs were tangling and snapping---could it have been that two of the
men from Saturday night had become dogs?
He laughed out loud, then
scowled. He hurled one of the glass angel figurines at the far wall.
It smashed. On the other side of the wall, next door, a fist pounded
in response and a man's voice boomed, foreign and judgmental.
Bailey crept over to the broken
angel on his hands and knees. Fretting and whimpering, he scooped up
the pieces. “You never hurt anyone,” he told the broken glass as
he wept.
Bailey felt stray shards digging
into his knees and the heel of one hand. He tried to sooth himself.
Winter would come soon, it would come soon....
Winter. The snow.
Crystal showers in the dark.
Bailey stood up. He ran over to
the figurine shelves, heart beating rapidly, and he yanked the top
shelf off its brackets....
********
It was two o'clock Friday
afternoon when, after two hours of trying to raise Bailey either by
phone or by knocking on the door, Othmar, Emily and Dennis finally
got the gumption to get the spare key from Jake, Bailey's landlord,
and get into the apartment.
They pulled the bed covers away
from him, fearing the worst. Bailey was alive, though locked
obstinately in a fetal position. They dragged him out of bed.
Bailey's face was frozen in a
horrific grimace that resembled that sad-or-tragic side of the two
dramatic personae masks. The corners of his mouth were turned down in
a grotesque, exaggerated manner—it was a perfectly formed
crying-mouth, matched by two similarly perfect crying-eyes, which
were, in turn, complimented by a tragically knit brow.
“Bailey,” whispered Othmar,
“what the hell is this?”
Bailey refused to answer Othmar,
barely acknowledging anyone else in the apartment. He sat on the foot
of his bed, his rueful facial expression gruesome and unmoving.
Dennis sat down beside him. He
put a sympathetic hand on Bailey's shoulder. “Buddy, what is it?
Huh? Are you okay?”
“Apparently not,” snapped
Othmar.
“What's the deal, man?”
Asked Dennis, undaunted. “We're your friends, man!”
Bailey shook Dennis off, stood
up feebly and hobbled into the kitchen, where he collapsed by the
sink. He lay there, imploded and mute in the corner, his back to the
other three.
Othmar followed him. “Bailey!
Come on, man, talk to me! What's wrong? What's with the face?”
No response.
Emily noticed a small, college
ruled notebook on Bailey's reading table. The book was marked, in
ballpoint scrawled block letters, “JOURNAL”. She picked it up.
Othmar was in the kitchen,
talking softly to Bailey, who wouldn't drop that ugly, wounded facial
expression. Dennis sat where he was, on the edge of the bed, quiet,
staring at the floor. Emily began thumbing through entries in
Bailey's journal.
One simply read,
Despondent.
Emily flipped a few pages.
Another one read,
Othmar, Emily, Nadine
and all the others. I love them. I am not functioning on their level
of existence, never can, never
will. I am everybody's silly child.
More pages.
She stopped on another one dated Sunday.
A
bunch of neighbors, sitting on the porch, were just hanging out. The
one lady's big, black dog started barking at me like it always does.
Everyone else was friendly enough. “He still doesn't like you,”
she said, referring to the dog. I went inside and I heard her say,
“because you're an asshole, that's why he don't like you.” I
spent the whole night wondering what I did to deserve that, from her
AND the dog.
She felt
her eyes filling. More pages. Lots of long raving about his identity,
the long fight for it, and moral stands against....she wasn't sure
what. His father? People he barely knew around town? It read like a
thesis statement. Then the last entry.
The
angels are dying! The angels are dying!
It was then
that she saw all the smashed crystal on the far side of the living
room.
“Oh, God,”
moaned Emily, hands to mouth, “I saw it all coming, I saw it all
coming....”
Dennis looked
up. “Huh? Saw what coming? Hey, Em, you okay?”
“Othmar....”
Othmar was
in the kitchen, trying to talk to the unresponsive Bailey.
“Othmar?” Emily's hands were shaking. She dropped the journal
with a loud Thak! On the linoleum.
Othmar
looked over his shoulder for a second, then turned back to Bailey.
Emily's
voice was weak and tremulous now. “Othmar....? Pal....?”
“What?!”
He snapped. It was the first time he'd ever raised his voice to her.
“I feel
sick,” she said. She was aware of her legs giving way. Othmar
bolted halfway across the kitchen and caught her as she pitched
forward.
**********
They
brought him to the car, almost having to carry him. He wouldn't drop
the face.
Their first
notion was the emergency room. It turned into a fight at the
Admissions Desk.
“Bailey,”
said Othmar. “Bailey Sinclair. We don't know what's wrong with him.
He won't talk.”
“David,”
said Emily.
“What?”
“David
Sinclair. That's his name.”
“Bailey.
His name is Bailey.”
“No,
Othmar, it's David.”
“Bullshit,
he's Bailey. We've known him most of our lives. He's Bailey!”
“That's
not his legal name, Othmar! You know that!”
“I know
who he is!”
“Listen,”
scolded the Admissions Nurse. “If this is going to turn into a
screaming match you can take it to another hospital in another town,
okay?”
Eventually
it wound being pointless, anyway. No insurance, no info, no word on
any family members. Othmar and Emily were aware that Bailey's father
was SOMEWHERE out in the world but they didn't know where and they
doubted Bailey had kept tabs on him.
Ultimately
the little group were tossed out.
For a
couple of days they carried on stoically, hoping that conditions
would change and that Bailey would revert back to normal, but his
peculiar catatonia persisted. He functioned, but would not change the
frozen frown, would not speak and appeared not to listen.
They took
turns minding him overnight---Dennis on Friday night, Othmar and
Emily on Saturday. They brought him to Denny's Sunday night to sit
with the gang. He wouldn't eat or drink. In fact, if he ever ate or
drank (or pissed or shat, for that matter) in the state he was in, no
one ever saw him do so.
Nadine was
her usual pain in the ass self and took it upon herself to wreck the
already rough proceedings.
“I told
ya,” she harped, “you brought it on yourself. You never listened.
I said, 'smile!' And did you? No. What----was your face going to
crack open? Now it has! Look at you now, you freak! You're a joke!”
“You
watch what you say about him,” said Emily through her teeth. “You
don't know him---you never knew him!”
“Go back to
New York, miss fancypants! Go back to la-la land! You and your fat,
stupid boyfriend have done everything to enable this and look at
him!”
“Fuck
you,” exploded Othmar, and now the whole room had eyes on their
booth.
“Come
on,” said Nadine, physically yanking Darren out of the booth with
her. “Not dealing with these people and their delusional garbage
anymore.”
“'Bye,”
called Darren helplessly after them.
“Yeah,
'bye,” hollered Nadine without turning around. “Call me when the
UFO lands!”
The
remainder of the gang was quiet and somber. Things soon broke up and
Othmar and Emily packed up Bailey and dragged him along. There was no
point left, nothing to discuss.
*******
The silent,
grief-faced golem that was once Bailey stood by the river, staring at
it through the chain link fence. Othmar scuffed his feet in the dirt
and loitered uncomfortably and spoke to it.
“Emily
says it's a waste,” Othmar said. The Bailey-thing, like always,
said nothing.
“I don't
get you,” Othmar continued. “Why?” He was ready to cry. “We're
your friends, man, and we're here! We always have been!”
No reply.
Bailey squinted tragically at the polluted river and the old mill
district.
“Dammit,
Bailey, what's it take? I'm not a mind reader! How do I reach you?”
Nothing.
“Jesus.”
Othmar cuffed the Bailey-husk on the shoulder and started crying.
“Bailey? Say something, willya? Emily's waiting. I have to go.
Bailey?”
Nothing.
Othmar wiped
his eyes and touched Bailey's shoulder. “I'm done, man. I love
you.” He was halfway down the length of the old, blown-out factory
when he turned, looked back, saw no change and kept walking,
eventually disappearing around the corner.
The
Bailey-thing, now unattended, crumbled into a semi-fetal sitting
position and the river burbled beyond the fence. Bailey rested
between the corner of the building and the fence, staring through the
pained slits of his eyes at the rolling water. Hours passed. The
shadow of the fence grew long and cagelike across his form. Bailey
calmly hid his face in his hands.
Winter was
almost here.
Published in THE MEAT FACTORY AND OTHER STORIES (Alien Buddha Press)
THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
ALICE COOPER-Love It to Death
ALICE COOPER-Goes to Hell
SKINNY PUPPY-Rabies
SKINNY PUPPY-Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse
BLUE OYSTER CULT-Agents of Fortune
THE GUN CLUB-Larger than Live
