I don’t know whether The Artist Formerly Known as Prince is Tourettic or obsessive-compulsive in his human life, b know for certain he is deeply so in the life of his work. Music had never made much of an impression on me until the day in 1986 when, sitting in the passenger seat of Minna’s Cadillac, I first heard the single “Kiss” squirting its manic way out of the car radio. To that point in my life I might have once or twice heard music that toyed with feelings of claustrophobic discomfort and expulsive release, and which in so doing passingly charmed my Tourette’s, gulled it with a sense of recognition, like Art Carney or Daffy Duck—but here was a song that lived entirely in that territory, guitar and voice twitching and throbbing within obsessively delineated bounds, alternately silent and plosive. It so pulsed with Tourettic energies that I could surrender to its tormented, squeaky beat and let my syndrome live outside my brain for once, live in the air instead.
“Turn that shit down,” said Minna.
“I like it,” I said.
“That’s that crap Danny listens to,” said Minna. Danny was code for too black.
I knew I had to own that song, and so the next day I sought it out at J&R Music World—I needed the word “funk” explained to me by the salesman. He sold me a cassette, and a Walkman to play it on. What I ended up with was a seven-minute “extended single” version—the song I’d heard on the radio, with a four-minute catastrophe of chopping, grunting, hissing and slapping sounds appended—a coda apparently designed as a private message of confirmation to my delighted Tourette’s brain.
Prince’s music calmed me as much as masturbation or a cheeseburger. When I listened to him I was exempt from my symptoms. So I began collecting his records, especially those elaborate and frenetic remixes tucked away on the CD singles. The way he worried forty-five minutes of variations out of a lone musical or verbal phrase is, as far as I know, the nearest thing in art to my condition.
“How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” is a ballad, piano strolling beneath an aching falsetto vocal. Slow and melancholy, it still featured the Tourettic abruptness and compulsive precision, the sudden shrieks and silences, that made Prince’s music my brain’s balm.
I put the song on repeat and sat in the light of my candle and waited for the tears. Only after they came did I allow myself to eat the six turkey-sandwich portions, in a ritual for Minna, alternating them with sips of Walker Red. The body and the blood, I couldn’t keep from thinking, though I was as distant from any religious feeling as a mourning man could be. The turkey and the booze, I substituted. A last meal for Minna, who didn’t get one. Prince moaned, finished his song, began it again. The candle guttered. I counted three as I finished a portion of sandwich, then four. That was the extent of my symptoms. I counted sandwiches and wept. At six I killed the music, blew out the candle and went to bed.
(TOURETTE DREAMS)
(in Tourette dreams you shed your tics)
(or your tics shed you)
(and you go with them, astonished to leave yourself behind)
BAD COOKIES
There are days when I get up in the morning and stagger into the bathroom and begin running water and then I look up and I don’t even recognize my own toothbrush in the mirror. I mean, the object looks strange, oddly particular in its design, strange tapered handle and slotted, miter-cut bristles, and I wonder if I’ve ever looked at it closely before or whether someone snuck in overnight and substituted this new toothbrush for my old one. I have this relationship to objects in general—they will sometimes become uncontrollably new and vivid to me, and I don’t know whether this is a symptom of Tourette’s or not. I’ve never seen it described in the literature. Here’s the strangeness of having a Tourette’s brain, then: no control in my personal experiment of self. What might be only strangeness must always be auditioned for relegation to the domain of symptom, just as symptoms always push into other domains, demanding the chance to audition for their moment of acuity or relevance, their brief shot—coulda been a contender!—at centrality. Personalityness. There’s a lot of traffic in my head, and it’s two-way.
This morning’s strangeness was refreshing, though. More than refreshing—revelatory. I woke early, having failed to draw my curtains, the wall above my bed and the table with melted candle, tumbler quarter full of melted ice, and sandwich crumbs from my ritual snack now caught in a blaze of white sunlight, like the glare of a projector’s bulb before the film is threaded. It seemed possible I was the first awake in the world, possible the world was new. I dressed in my best suit, donned Minna’s watch instead of my own, and clipped his beeper to my hip. Then I made myself coffee and toast, scooped the long-shadowed crumbs off the table, sat and savored breakfast, marveling at the richness of existence with each step. The radiator whined and sneezed and I imitated its sounds out of sheer joy, rather than helplessness. Perhaps I’d been expecting that Minna’s absence would snuff the world, or at least Brooklyn, out of existence. That a sympathetic dimming would occur. Instead I’d woken into the realization that I was Minna’s successor and avenger, that the city shone with clues.
It seemed possible I was a detective on a case.
I crept downstairs past Danny, who was sleeping on his arms on the countertop, black suit jacket shrugged up around his shoulders, small patch of drool on his sleeve. I switched off the coffee machine, which was roasting a quarter inch of coffee into sour perfume, and went outside. It was a quarter to seven. The Korean keeper of the Casino was just rolling up his gate, tossing his bundles of the News and the Post inside. The morning was clarifyingly cold.
I started the L&L Pontiac. Let Danny sleep, let Gilbert wait in his cell, let Tony be missing. I’d go to the Zendo. Let it be too early for the monks or mobsters hidden there—I’d have the advantage of surprise.
By the time I’d parked and made my way to the Zendo, the Upper East Side was warming into life, shopkeepers rolling fruit stands out of their shops, sidewalk vendors of stripped paperbacks unloding their boxes, women already dressed for business glancing at their watches as they hustled their dogs’ waste into Baggies. The doorman at the entranceway next door was someone new, a kid with a mustache and uniform, not my harasser from yesterday. He was probably green, without tenure, stuck working the end of the overnight shift. I figured it was worth a shot anyway. I crooked a finger at him through the glass and he came out into the cold. “What’s your name?” I said.
“Walter, sir.”
“Walter sir-what?” I broadcast a cop-or-employer vibe.
“Walter is, uh, my last name. Can I help you with something?” He looked concerned, for himself and his building.
“Helpmewalter—I need the name of the doorman working last night, about six-thirty, seven. Older gentleman than yourself, maybe thirty-five, with an accent.”
“Dirk?”
“Maybe. You tell me.”
“Dirk’s the regular man.” He wasn’t sure he should be telling me this.
I averted my gaze from the his shoulder. “Good. Now tell me what you know about the Yorkville Zendo.” I indicated the bronze plaque next door with a jerk of my thumb. “Dirkweed! Dirkman!”
“What?” He goggled his eyes at me.
“You see them come and go?”
“I guess.”
“Walter Guessworth!” I cleared my throat deliberately. “Work with me here, Walter. You must see stuff. I want your impressions.”
I could see him sorting through layers of exhaustion, boredom, and stupidity. “Are you a cop?”
“Why’d you think that?”
“You, uh, talk funny.”
“I’m a guy who needs to know things, Walter, and I’m in a hurry. Anyone come and go from the Zendo lately? Anything catch your eye?”
He scanned the street to see if anyone saw us talking. I took the opportunity to cover my mouth with my hand and make a brief panting sound, like an excited dog.
“Uh, not much happens late at night,” said Walter. “It’s pretty quiet around here.”
“You keep saying Zendo,” he said.
“It’s right there, etched in brass.” Itched in Ass.
He stepped toward the street, craned his neck, and read the plaque. “Hmmm. It’sour ee a religious school, right?”
“Right. You ever see anyone suspicious hanging around? Big Polish guy in particular?”
“How would I know he was Polish?”
“Just think about big. We’re talking really, really big.”
He shrugged again. “I don’t think so.” His numb gaze wouldn’t have taken in a crane and wrecking ball going through next door, let alone an outsize human figure.
“Listen, would you keep an eye out? I’ll give you a number to call.” I had a stash of L&L cards in my wallet, and I fished one out for him.
“Thanks,” he said absently, glancing at the card. He wasn’t afraid of me anymore. But he didn’t know what to think of me if I wasn’t a threat. I was interesting, but he didn’t know how to be interested.
“I’d appreciate hearing from you—Doorjerk! Doorjam! Jerkdom!—if you see anything odd.”
“You’re pretty odd,” he said seriously.
“Something besides me.”
“Okay, but I get off in half an hour.”
“Well, just keep it in mind.” I was running out of patience with Walter. I freed myself to tap his shoulder farewell. The dull young man looked down at my hand, then went back inside.
I paced the block to the corner and back, flirting with the Zendo, seeking my nerve. The site aroused reverence and a kind of magical fear in me already, as though I were approaching a shrine—the martyrdom of Saint Minna. I wanted to rewrite their plaque to tell the story. Instead I rang the doorbell once. No answer. Then four more times, for a total of five, and I stopped, startled by a sense of completeness.
I’d shrugged off my tired old friend six.
I wondered if it was in some way commemorative—my counting tic moving down a list, subtracting a digit for Frank.
Somebody is hunting Minna Men, I thought again. But I couldn’t be afraid. I wasn’t game but hunter this morning. Anyway, the count was off—four Minna Men plus Frank made five. So if I was counting heads, I should be at four. I had an extra aboard, but who? Maybe it was Bailey. Or Irving.
A long minute passed before the girl with the short black hair and glasses opened the door and squinted at me against the morning sun. She wore a T-shirt, jeans, had bare feet, and held a broom. Her smile was slight, involuntary, and crooked. And sweet.
“Yes?”
“Could I ask you a few questions?”
“Questions?&m”>
“If it’s not too early,” I said gently.
“No, no. I’ve been up. I’ve been sweeping.” She showed me the broom.
“They make you clean?”
“It’s a privilege. Cleaning is treasured in Zen practice. It’s like the highest possible act. Usually Roshi wants to do the sweeping himself.”
“No vacuum cleaner?” I said.
“Too noisy,” she said, and frowned as if it should be obvious. A city bus roared past in the distance, damaging her point. I let it go.
Her eyes adjusted to the brightness, and she looked past me, to the street, examining it as though astonished to discover that the door opened onto a cityscape. I wondered if she’d been out of the building since I saw her enter the evening before. I wondered if she ate and slept there, whether she was the only one who did or whether there were dozens, foot soldiers of Zen.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What were you saying?”
“Questions.”
“Oh, yes.”
“About the Zendo, what you do here.”
She looked me over now. “Do you want to come inside? It’s cold.”
“I’d like that very much.”
It was the truth. I didn’t feel unsafe following her into the dark temple, the Deathstar. I would gather information from within the Trojan Horse of her Zen grace. And I was conscious of my ticlessness, didn’t want to break the rhythm of the conversation.
The foyer and stairwell were plain, with unadorned white walls and a wooden banister, looking as if it had been clean before she began sweeping, clean forever. We bypassed a door on the ground floor and went up the stairs, she carrying the broom ahead of her, turning her back to me trustingly. Her walk had a gentle jerkiness to it, a quickness like her replies.
“Here,” she said, pointing to a rack with rows of shoes on it.
“I’m fine,” I said, thinking I was supposed to select from among the motley footgear.
“No, take yours off,” she whispered.
I did as she told me, removed my shoes and pushed them into an orderly place at the end of one of the racks. A chill went through me when I recalled that Minna had removed his shoes the evening before, presumably at this same landing.
Now in my socks, I followed her as the banister wrapped around through a corridor, past two sealed doors and one that opened onto a bare, dark room with rows of short cloth mats laid out across a parquet floor and a smell ocandles or incense, not a morning smell at all. I wanted to peer inside but she hurried us along, up another flight.
On the third landing she led me to a small kitchen where a wooden table and three chairs were arranged around a thwarted back window, through which an emaciated shaft of sunlight negotiated a maze of brick. If the massive buildings on either side had existed when this room was built they might not have bothered with a window. The table, chairs and cabinets of the kitchen were as undistinguished and homely as a museum diorama of Cree or Shaker life, but the teapot she set out was Japanese, and its hand-painted calligraphic designs were the only stretch, the only note of ostentation.
I seated myself with my back to the wall, facing the door, thinking of Minna and the conversation I’d heard through the wire. She took water off a low flame and filled the pot, then put a tiny mug without a handle in front of me and filled it with an unstrained swirling confetti of tea. I warmed my chapped hands around it gratefully.
“I’m Kimmery.”
“Lionel.” I felt Kissdog rising in me and fought it back.
“You’re interested in Buddhism?”
“You could say that.”
“I’m not really who you should talk to but I can tell you what they’ll say. It’s not about getting centered, or, you know, stress reduction. A lot of people—Americans, I mean—have that idea. But it’s really a religious discipline, and not easy at all. Do you know about zazen?”
“Tell me.”
“It’ll make your back hurt a lot. That’s one thing.” She rolled her eyes at me, already commiserating.
“You mean meditation.”
“Zazen, it’s called. Or sitting. It sounds like nothing, but it’s the heart of Zen practice. I’m not very good at it.”
I recalled the Quakers who’d adopted Tony, and their brick meetinghouse across eight lanes of traffic from St. Vincent’s. Sunday mornings we could look through their tall windows and see them gathered in silence on hard benches. “What’s to be good at?” I said.
“You have no idea. Breathing, for starters. And thinking, except it’s not supposed to be thinking.”
“Thinking about not thinking?”
“Not thinking about it. One Mind, they call it. Like realizing that everything has Buddha nature, the flag and the wind are the same thing, that sort of stuff.”
I wasn’t exactly following her, but One Mind seemed an honorable goal, albeit positively chimerical. “Could we—could I sit with you sometime? Or is it done alone?”
“Both. But here at the Zendo thereߣs regular sessions.” She lifted her cup of tea with both hands, steaming her glasses instantly. “Anyone can come. And you’re really lucky if you stick around today. Some important monks from Japan are in town to see the Zendo, and one of them is going to talk this evening, after zazen.”
Important monks, imported rugs,
unimportant ducks—jabber was building up in the ocean of my brain like flotsam, and soon a wave would toss it ashore. “So it’s run out of Japan,” I said. “And now they’re checking up on you—like the Pope coming in from Rome.”
“Not exactly. Roshi set the Zendo up on his own. Zen isn’t centralized. There are different teachers, and sometimes they move around.”
“But Roshi did come here from Japan.” From the name I pictured a wizened old man, a little bigger than Yoda in Return of the Jedi.
“No, Roshi’s American. He used to have an American name.”
“Which was?”
“I don’t know. Roshi just basically means teacher, but that’s the only name he has anymore.”
I sipped my scalding tea. “Does anyone else use this building for anything?”
“Anything like what?”
“Killing me!—sorry. Just anything besides sitting.”
“You can’t shout like that in here,” she said.
“Well, if—kissing me!—something strange was going on, say if Roshi were in some kind of trouble, would you know about it?” I twisted my neck—if I could I would have tied it in a knot, like the top of a plastic garbage bag. “Eating me!”
“I guess I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was oddly blasé, sipping her tea and watching me over the top of the cup. I recalled the legends of Zen masters slapping and kicking students to induce sudden realizations. Perhaps that practice was common here in the Zendo, and so she’d inured herself to outbursts, abrupt outlandish gestures.
“Forget it,” I said. “Listen: Have you had any visitors lately?” I was thinking of Tony, who’d ostensibly called on the Zendo after our conference at L&L. “Anyone come sniffing around here last night?”
She only looked puzzled, and faintly annoyed. “No.”
I considered pushing it, describing Tony to her, then decided he must have visited unseen, at least by Kimmery. Instead I asked, “Is there anybody in the building right now?”
Motherless Brooklyn Page 14