“Uh, feel better,” the black detective offered before closing the door on their way out.
That was the second page, though a whole week separates it from the first page, which I read now for a second time, kind of gripped by this puzzle. Maybe Benoit is a fine writer, after all. Perhaps he just needs a good editor to place things in the right order and to clean up the unnecessarily confusing bits. Who knows, maybe I’m rooming with one of those outsider artist types I’ve heard all about. Fortunately Benoit isn’t covering his bedroom walls with childlike drawings of men and women, each sporting a penis and wings. Or, maybe that’s exactly what I should be wishing for in place of this strange script. Anyway, I reread the first page, looking for some kind of clue to what’s actually happening here.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
They found me. They found me in a dumpster, unconscious, half froze to death.
They told me. They told me I nearly died.
I woke to them already talking at me. I woke and they were talking while I lay in a hospital bed.
I drank chicken broth from a brown plastic cup.
They asked me who my enemies were.
I saw red.
They asked me how I ended up in a dumpster, cut up, shot three times, and half froze to death.
I saw red.
They asked me what my name was.
I saw black.
I put my cup of broth down, looked at the two detectives standing at the foot of my bed, and laughed.
They asked me why I was laughing.
I saw red.
I said, “I don’t know.”
They asked me what I meant by that.
I saw black.
I screamed, “I don’t know! I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything! I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!”
I coughed, felt something rupture behind my ribcage, and passed out.
CHAPTER 9.
“Really?” I complain into my cell phone, pacing back and forth along the Riverwalk next to the greenish Chicago River. Iron bridges hum and lofty buildings of steel and glass glint in the sun’s rays and lean over everything with stretched shadows.
“Yeah,” my brother, Noel, says from inside my iPhone. He guffaws. “What’s the big?”
“What’s the big? WHAT’S THE BIG?” I complain some more. “You were in Chicago and you didn’t feel the need to alert me to this very simple fact?”
“Look, bro, we had a busy itinerary. There just wasn’t time.”
“There… wasn’t… TIME?”
“Nope,” my brother says with a smack of the lips.
Noel is my younger brother by four years, and he’s my opposite in most ways but blood. He’s broad-shouldered and confident. He would be considered athletic but he does suffer one handicap in that he has a prosthetic leg. He’s had it since he was little, but, still, it never once stunted his confidence and may have even lead to him growing into the steady, charming adult he became. I’d like to think it has, anyway. Makes for a nicer story.
Actually, even missing most of his left leg, he’s still a pretty good softball player, golfer, tennis player, and bowler. So, I guess you could call him athletic.
Noel also has zero issue getting what he wants and telling people what he thinks. He’s thirty-one and already in corporate management at Target up in Minneapolis. A six-figure salary is a given. He’s been married since he was nineteen and has a seven-year-old daughter, Annie. Ashley, his wife, owns a pretty popular radio station in the Twin Cities. They live in a big house in Saint Paul’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood. My parents live just outside of Minneapolis, not too far from where Prince lived (Lived! Past tense! He died recently! Can you believe it? I’m inconsolable). My parents adore Noel and they talk to each other once a week, every week, at least. I haven’t heard from them, myself, since last Christmas when they phoned to tell me they missed me and to have a happy Christmas; but they had to cut the call short because Noel and Ashley were just pulling the Christmas ham out of the oven.
I couldn’t have them all here, of course. Not in my little apartment (even though a two-bedroom apartment is pretty roomy for a single guy like me and should bespeak of at least some personal success). And of course I was invited to Noel’s for the holiday, but I was suffering one of my dark moods and told them that I couldn’t make it. I said I was buried beneath work, but, truth be told, I had very little to do for much of November and December as so much staff and management were away on extended vacations. I spent the Christmas break wrapped up in wool blankets on the couch, sleeping as much as possible, and watching endless BBC programming made available on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime TV while snow was brushed from the clouds’ hair and fell.
I drank, like, two whole bottles of chardonnay over those four days off from work, as well. I was really putting them away!
“Just too busy, huh, to call your elder brother and let him know your family is visiting the city he just happens to live in?” I ask Noel now. I watch, aghast, as a duck wolfs down some slimy green thing from the river’s surface and proceeds to gag and choke and cough and uselessly flap its wings in a panic. I turn away before it slips onto its side and sinks with one last wheezy quack.
“Yep. Listen, bro, I called—”
“So, what was it you all did?” I snap.
“Huh?”
“What were all these important things filling up your itinerary, making it impossible to give me a ring?”
“Oh, you know—the usual. We took the architecture tour on the river—it bored the shit out of Annie, but Ashley loves it every single time. That’s why I have to take that damned tour every time we’re down there. Anyway, um… what else did we do? Oh, we went to Millennium Park and picnicked. Oh! And we brought Chuck so we took him down to the dog park on the beach off of… um… Montrose, I think. He loved it but the Escalade still reeks of wet dog. Anyway, Annie wanted deep dish so we went to Lou Malnati’s. We saw The Book of Mormon. Oh, also, we went up to the Skydeck—you know, those glass boxes that jut out from the top floors of Willis Tower?”
“Sears Tower,” I correct him.
“I thought it was the Willis Tower now?”
“That’s not the…. Listen, it sounds like you did have a pretty packed schedule while you were here but that’s still no excuse.”
“Yeah, well…” my brother says as one of those double-decker ferry boats passes by, hauling about a hundred tourists along the architecture tour. I watch it slip beneath the iron of the William P. Fahey bridge and try my damnedest to will its collapse, but the boat slides underneath and beyond without incident.
“So, did you do anything else while you were here?” I chide.
“Oh, yeah, we caught a Cubs game.”
“A CUBS GAME?” I shout into the phone, holding it in front of my reddening face.
“Yeah. What’s the big?”
“Noel, you were four gosh-darned blocks from my apartment and you couldn’t… look, forget it. Just forget it, OK, Noel? I hope you had fun. I hope you and your wonderful little white bread family had the most fantastic damned time of your damned little stupid lives.”
“Thanks, bro. It was a lot of fun, actually.”
“How’s that pegleg of yours, anyway?” I spit and feel immediate remorse.
“Ian…”
“Sorry! Sorry. Why did you call me?” I ask, climbing the concrete steps back up to street level where buses and cars blow horns and pedestrians threaten to walk all over each other.
“Thanks for finally letting me get to the point, Ian. You missed Annie’s birthday, man.”
“What?” I ask, dodging people on the sidewalk that make zero effort to get out of my way.
“Annie’s birthday was last weekend.”
“Wait. What? It was?”
“Yeah. And no call from you. No card. No check or present in the mail. Not even your typical Amazon gift card sent to her email—which is always a nice personal touch on your behalf, if I may say s
o, bro.”
“Geez,” I say, feeling the air squeezed out of my lungs. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about that, Noel. Is Annie there? Can you put her on—”
“No, she’s not here, you retard. She’s at school, man.”
“Oh… yeah. Of course.”
“Anyway, can you give her a call later? God knows why, but she loves her Uncle Ian, and while she didn’t say a word about it, I’m sure she’s pretty hurt that you forgot her.”
“Yeah… yes, of course, Noel. I’ll call tonight after work.”
“OK, then,” Noel says and before I can say goodbye he’s already hung up.
CHAPTER 10.
“She was wearing navy blue heels, white stockings, a navy blue mid-thigh skirt, and white top. Her black hair was unbound. It cascaded over her shoulders with… bounce,” I tell Madelyn, sitting across from her tiny, judging figure in her office—I mean, den.
“Bounce?” she says, angling her small, angular face downward so she can peer at me across the rims of her glasses.
“Yes… um… bounce,” I affirm. “It’s something that women who care about their appearance can achieve with a regimen of all-natural washes, conditioners, and regular trips to the stylist. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Of course,” Madelyn says, actually seeming amused.
I’m telling Madelyn all about my surprise lunch with Katharine. After talking to my brother, I sort of zombie-walked into the lobby of the thirty-story building I work in, planted right next to the river on Wacker Drive. Being out of it, I almost didn’t notice Katharine as I badged in at the security desk and proceeded to the elevators. But there she was, striding toward me across the marble floors, her hair shiny and full of bounce.
“She was carrying a small brown paper bag and a venti black ice tea (with two pumps of sweetener—her usual) from the Starbucks that’s on the twelfth floor of our building. Besides the Starbucks,” I inform Madelyn, “there’s a few other eateries, a convenience store, and one English pub with leather-upholstered booths and an oak wood-topped bar and a great view of the river and the city beyond. The executives tend to frequent that place so most of us steer clear of it, you know, because someone in a bar with those people is bound to have a few too many and wind up telling them exactly what we all think of their money-hoarding, slave-driving, soulless, heartless approach to American capitalism.
“I, of course, identify with the socialists,” I announce to Madelyn.
“Naturally.”
“Is that a crack about my social anxiety?” I bark.
Madelyn just stares, cross-legged, bouncing her foot.
“Anyway, Katharine, being a very kind, non-bitchy type, noticed I was perhaps a little down in the dumps. She suggested I join her for lunch. Of course I accepted her invitation.”
“Where did you go?” Madelyn asks.
“We went to Millennium Park and sat on a bench facing that giant sculpture—you know, the one of the woman’s head that somehow looks like the illusion of 3-D even though, of course, it is three-dimensional?”
“Yes, I know it. It’s quite fascinating. So, what was it that you had for lunch that day?”
“Me?”
“Yes. You.”
“I didn’t eat a damned thing. How could I eat?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was too nervous. On top of that, I was still pretty upset about the phone call with my brother.”
“Yes. Let’s return to that. You said you made a crack about his prosthetic leg.”
This time I just stare at her, cross my legs, and bounce my foot.
“Why do you think you did that?” she continues.
“Oh, I don’t know. He was pissing me off. I mean, shouldn’t you be asking why he would come to Chicago with the wife and kid and not bother to let me know?”
“Why do you think he did that?”
“Because he hates me.”
“Ian, I’m sure your brother doesn’t hate you.”
“Of course he does. Everyone hates me.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Oh, what does it matter, Madelyn?”
“You told him you would call Annie, your niece, that night.”
“Right.”
“Did you?”
“No. I…”
“What happened?”
I explain to Madelyn that I was floating on Cloud Nine after my lunch with Katharine and that I continued to float throughout the rest of the workday. Then I got home, nervous that I’d run into Benoit, who I hadn’t seen around in days. But, when I got home, he wasn’t there, and there was a… gift for me on the coffee table.
“A gift?” Madelyn jots something down in her notepad. “What kind of gift?”
“First, let me tell you about what I found in his room,” I tell her, kind of excited. I uncross my legs and lean forward. The table between us is usually an oasis, but it seems to shrink as I catch Madelyn’s eyes in my tractor beam.
“In his room?”
“Yes. I hadn’t told you before because I just didn’t think it mattered. But when he moved in he had a suitcase—you know, one of those old fashioned ones. It’s, like, tan and… old. Anyway, inside that he keeps a typewriter from the seventies or eighties, and a very, very large manuscript.”
“A manuscript.”
“Yes. And it is certifiably crazy, Madelyn. I’m telling you, if he was a patient—I mean, client—of yours, you’d have a field day with this one. He’s got a lot of bats in the belfry.”
“What makes you say that?”
“What do you mean what makes me say that? I’ve already told you about him. Haven’t you already deduced in your great, master’s-degree-bearing wisdom that my roommate is one grade-A certifiable whacko?”
“Honestly, Ian, I couldn’t form that kind of opinion without having talked to him first—and only after many sessions. I—”
“Of course. You have to make as much money as—”
“also find that such language as whacko is more telling of your own state of mind, Ian. I would never refer to any illness in such a way. When someone is sick, they’re sick. Do you understand me, Ian?”
She has me in her tractor beams now and I try to look away but can’t.
“Yeah,” I finally say.
Madelyn sighs and writes something down. “You say you were in his room?”
“Yeah.”
“Why were you in his room, Ian?”
“Because it’s as much my room as it is his, Madelyn.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“Of course. It’s my place, after all. It’s my damned apartment. I’m the only one on the lease, aren’t I?”
“So what’s his is yours and what’s yours is yours? Is that how it goes?”
“Well… no.”
“What were you doing in his room?”
“Like I said… he had that mysterious suitcase full of some kind of manuscript. I had tried to take a quick look at it before but he came home and I had to quickly put everything away and sprint out of his room. Anyway, I noticed it seemed weird, though, you know? There were pages and pages that looked like he just slammed on the typewriter keys over and over. And, you know, if he was suffering writer’s block or whatever, you might expect something like that. But, these pages with all these random letters and numbers and symbols filling sheet after sheet after sheet—he’s gone through and edited them. I mean, that’s what it looks like. He’s used pencil and red pen to change some random letters or whatever, and to cross out whole lines here and there. It just makes no sense!”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, I had to find out what that was all about, you know?”
“So you went through his things—his private things—not once, but twice.”
I laugh. “No, I’ve gone through them a few more times than that.”
“Ian.”
“Madelyn.”
“You understand that you’re invading his privacy.”
“Madelyn, his writing is seriously creepy. I think I have a right to know what’s going on in the head of some stranger living under my roof.”
“Ian, you know that invading someone’s privacy is wrong. We’ve gone over this. Isn’t the invasion of privacy the reason you and your last girlfriend didn’t work out?”
“Taylor.”
“Yes. You went through her email, didn’t you? You figured out her password and read her personal, private email.”
“I did.”
“Didn’t you also figure out your parents’ password to their online bank account without their knowledge or consent?”
“Well, I wanted to know how much money they have left, Madelyn. They’re not going to live forever and I needed to know if they’re saving or spending it all willy-nilly.”
“Another complete invasion of privacy, Ian.”
“Hey, their lives are nearly over. I’ve got most of mine still ahead of me. I needed to know if they’re leaving anything for Noel and me.”
“And you couldn’t just ask them?”
I scoff. “No. Don’t be stupid, Madelyn. Jesus, what do I pay you for?”
She stares. Bounces her foot. Stares some more.
“Anyway, don’t you want to hear about the crazy stuff Benoit’s writing?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Ian, I want you to tell me why you didn’t call your niece that night when you told your brother only hours earlier that you would.”
“Oh. Right. Like I said, I got home, and there was a gift for me.”
“Yes. What was it?”
“It’s stupid, really.”
“Ian.”
“It was a bottle of chardonnay and a magazine. And… a note.”
“Who was it from?”
“Benoit.”
“What’d the note say?”
“It said he was sorry about storming off the other night, you know, when we were playing the video game.”
“So, he apologized for that?”
“In the note, anyway.”
“And you don’t feel bad at all for snooping through his things?”
Y Is for Fidelity Page 6