Manhattan Loverboy

by Arthur Nersesian

  Walking home through lower New York, I felt depressed. To paraphrase E.B. White, I was seventy-something blocks from where preppie-victim Jennifer Dawn Levin had been strangled, thirty blocks from where graffiti-artist Michael Stewart had been killed, sixty blocks from where homeless Joyce Brown was snatched from the gutter and “rehabilitated,” a hundred and thirty-odd blocks from where Eleanor Bumpurs had been bumped off with “necessary force,” a state away from New Jersey, and I was slowly heading in the direction of where both John Lennon and Malcolm X had been blasted away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  QUIT YER LOOKIN’ AT ME

  Unlike TV, fate had let evil once again rule out over good. But fate never let things get too evil, otherwise things would destroy themselves, and there’d be no more evil or TV. When I arrived home, I felt depressed and lonely. I turned on the TV. It advertised one of those party-line numbers “where you can hold a party on the phone.” I dialed. For two minutes while I seethed, eight unidentifiable people with the same voice said hello over and over.

  She was a growing evil, a cistern collecting power. She had sucked the life forces out of me. I was estranged from my self-esteem and securities. I could kill her and then myself. It was a fair trade; she was as evil as I was good. Besides, the mild sentences dispensed by our criminals’ justice system made crime quite appealing; hell, I could probably get out of prison while I was still relatively young. I had far more faith in the criminals’ justice system as a criminal than I did as a victim.

  How should I do it? I started drinking coffee and doing some drugs to help me think more clearly. The possibilities were endless, and as the drugs catapulted me to greater heights, and my anger became more rampant, each new idea—like rungs of a sadistic ladder—lifted me higher than the prior thought. I worked my way up to abducting her, drugging her, then shackling her, keeping her conscious. If she came down with the flu, I’d fussingly nurse her back to health before continuing the torture. When I’d squeezed out the ultimate drop of pain from her eviscerated body, and she’d finally died, I’d either disappear to Alaska and live with all those burnt-out Vietnam vets or vanish in Arizona with all the pedophile priests.

  My fantasy was interrupted by a knock at the door, and there she stood—my tormentor, my future victim, alone, ready.

  “May I speak to you a minute?”

  I will be your destroyer and therefore I am your maker, I thought in my drugged-out state, but I only said, “What?”

  “About today, about this whole thing.”

  “I want you out of my house,” I said, instead of saying, I will eat your innards.

  “This half of the house is mine.” She pointed to the front half of my apartment. “I just was hoping that maybe we could be on some kind of cordial basis, since we’re neighbors.”

  “I’m afraid not. I hate you more than anybody ever hated anyone else throughout both recorded and unrecorded history as well as future history and, for that matter, transcending all planes of possible consciousness throughout our bowl-shaped universe as well as all spatial and temporal planes.” I had finally loosely said what I really thought.

  “Well, I don’t really believe that. Do you want me to tell you what I think?”

  “Not really.”

  “I know that I liked you and I think that you liked me, and you had extra room, and I needed the space, and I think that you realized that if we were roommates, maybe we could become closer.”

  “What do you mean ‘closer?’”

  She stepped closer. “I mean lovers.”

  “Lovers?!!” So ironic! Indeed, I had become her devoted, loyal, and eternal hater.

  “Ever since I saw you, do you know what I saw?”

  “What?”

  “A gnarled acorn.”

  “Flattery won’t work.”

  “An acorn, a seed that if well managed could one day sprout and become a magnificent oak.”

  “Oh?”

  “Do you know what I sometimes see myself as?”

  “What?”

  “Rich, fertile soil.”

  “Really?”

  “I can help you.”

  “How?”

  “You’re unemployed. You’re unwashed. You’re eating the wrong foods, reading the wrong books, rutted in very bad habits.”

  “That’s what I am.”

  “Suppose I told you that you could have consonants in your name instead of all those subversive vowels.”

  “Consonants?”

  “Suppose I told you that you could be tall.”

  “Tall? What do I have to do?”

  “Just trust me.”

  “You’re wicked. You’re trying to take what remains of my apartment and sanity away.”

  “Suppose I tore up the lease. Suppose I signed a statement saying that my stay here was subject to your day-to-day approval.”

  “Wha?”

  “Suppose I tore down the wall?”

  “Cha?”

  “Suppose I tore off my work clothes and lived with you as a supportive wife. Suppose I propped you up when you were weak and praised you when you were strong?”

  “Xzk?”

  “Suppose you disposed of all those profane old magazines, and I became your love-slave, your centerfold, your sperm bank.”

  “[@#|?”

  I sputtered and spurted in my pants. I felt my heart bulging as if a charred sausage link were stuck sideways in my esophagus. It was immediately apparent that all hatred was just sexual polarity for her. Everything started tightening as I said, “I la…I laav…”

  “What?!”

  “I love ya.” A tight fist that wouldn’t unclasp was in my chest; I couldn’t breathe. “I’m having a heart attack!” I gasped as I dropped to the floor. I had always intended to have CPR instructions tattooed on my chest, but, like everything else, I’d never got around to it. I saw a long dark tunnel. I was speeding through it. It was kind of a superb subway ride free of beggars, turnstile jumpers, and rats. I wasn’t scared. I knew I was dead, and then a pinpoint of light appeared in the way-off: God. I asked him if psycho-comedian Andy Kaufman was really dead, or just perpetrating his greatest, driest gag.

  As if I was a non-refundable beer can, he simply said, “Returneth.”

  I felt shifted in reverse, going backward, and then from up on the ceiling, I could see Amy pounding on my chest. Responsibly, she had attended the Red Cross classes. While she was mouth-to-mouthing me, I tried tongue-kissing her. Instead, I gagged and passed out.

  I awoke in a hospital with tubes in my arm and mouth and nose, and beeping from the electrocardiogram in my ear. My entire corpus appeared wound up in toilet paper; my legs had casts. My face was bandaged and it felt swollen. I also felt a numb weight on my chest. Between the slits of gauze, I slowly started inspecting my surroundings. I saw a figure slumped over in a seat in the far side of the room—her.

  “You,” I groaned inaudibly, and made a pathetic attempt at finding that umbilical nurse-button. Despite the fact that I was incredibly weak—it felt as if they had peeled the muscles from my bones—I was terrified. I was sure that she had tried to kill me. Here she was again to finish the job. She could simply grab the pillow out from under my head and put it over my face. After a desperate struggle for the little button, I fell exhausted back to sleep.

  I woke up an indeterminate amount of time later. She was still there. Was she patiently waiting for my demise? That deluded dream about her wanting to be my sperm bank, what crapola. No doubt she had observed that my diet consisted largely of greasy fast foods, and she must have realized that along with my poor habits, a screeching halt in that old yellow cab of my ill-maintained body could send everything tumbling forward. But what was she doing here? Even more, why had she let me live this long?

  “Will he be okay?” she asked the nurse who was checking a series of needles, tubes, bottles, and beeping electrical graphs as if she were adjusting the transmission of a compact car.

  “He’ll be just fin
e,” the lady in white replied, and left. Amy looked down at me. She kissed and massaged my cold hand and started crying and saying things into my limp metacarpal. I must have had a partial stroke because it was still remarkably difficult to talk.

  “Why are you treating me this way?” I said slowly.

  “You’re awake!” she exclaimed, hugging me.

  “Huh?”

  “I love you,” she said without mitigation or hesitance. “I always fight when put on the defensive, and you have this way of putting a girl very much on the defensive. But I also realized that in many ways you’re everything that I was ever looking for. When I wasn’t with you, I realized that I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Have you ever felt that way?”

  Yes, I had a severe rash once. When I wasn’t scratching, I was thinking about scratching it. I managed to bend my mouth, a smile. Yes, I loved (adversarial polarity) and wanted her, but I still couldn’t understand her infatuation for me.

  Slowly, I ground out words: “Can’t you find anyone else? Is your life really this lonely?”

  “Of course not,” she replied, “Whitlock wants wedlock. He’s mad about me.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “Society affairs.”

  “Why are you picking me?” I replied slowly.

  “Well, in a word, for me it’s always been a case of likes repelling.”

  “And opposites attracting?” I wheezed out.

  “Not entirely. I’ve always been very sensitive around invalids and sickly types. They disturb me. I can’t stay with an irregular person; people who are handicapped or freakish make me sick to my stomach. Quite bluntly, I’m a complete Darwinist. I think runts like yourself should be drowned like kittens. I’m completely opposed to medical technology’s bent for preserving aberrations that never should be permitted. But the truth is, the closest I can really come to love is pity. In fact, I’m completely embarrassed about my love for you. Indeed, you’re more of a perversion to me, and perversions are stronger than conventional loves because they’re predicated on one’s greatest fears and weaknesses. I really wish I could get out from under these feelings for you. They must be kept in utter secrecy.”

  I asked her why I had all these additional bandages on my body and casts on my arms and legs.

  “Well, that’s why I can confess my love for you now.”

  “Huh?”

  “I had to do some alterations.”

  “What?”

  “There are some things you should know.”

  “What?”

  “When they brought you in, you desperately needed a bypass.”

  “And I’m sure it won’t be my last. So what?”

  “They searched for your relatives, but we couldn’t find any. Do you have parents?”

  “I didn’t break out of a shell!” I replied laboriously, not admitting I was adopted, which might have led to the possibility that I was hatched.

  “Well, we couldn’t locate anyone, so I said I was your wife, and with the assistance of a couple of doctors who were fairly mercenary, and since I love you, and…” She paused.

  “What is it?!” I murmured a shout.

  “I took the liberty of having some elective surgery done on you.”

  “Elective? What was done?”

  “Now, I’ll pay for everything. You really don’t have to worry about that, you’re an investment.”

  “A what?”

  “Like the apartment, I had you completed before I moved in.”

  “What?”

  “You had a total of seven,” she explained, “not counting the rhinoplasty and the liposuction. You’ve had nine operations. And you’re scheduled for one more.”

  “Nine operations! What the fuck…”

  “Oh, no, I elected against that one. I didn’t think you needed a penis augmentation.”

  “What!” I started squirming against a network of bandages and restrainers. What kind of Michael Jackson had she turned me into?

  “You shouldn’t struggle,” she said. “The operation done on your legs is highly experimental. They’ve never tried it on mammals before. You could rip the arteries.”

  “My legs? What was done to my legs?!”

  “They call it ‘bone accentuation.’ A part of the torso-proportioning.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re average height now.”

  “What? What’s this?”

  “And thin, too.”

  “What? Where’s my fat!”

  “You’ve had radical fat suction.”

  “Out!”

  “You still have a pupil-fusion operation tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “Brilliant blue eyes that actually glow in the dark, like little blue headlights.”

  “Get the hell out of here! I swear I’ll have you arrested. I’ll see you behind bars.”

  “All right, calm down.” She rose to go. “You’re tall, thin, and handsome. Get used to it, Bane.”

  “Bane? Who the hell’s Bane?” Yet the name rang a bell.

  “I decided that you’d make a good Bane. I plan to call you Bane during the length of our relationship.”

  “Get the fuck OUT!” I hollered and screamed until I was so frantic that the sound frequency of the electro-cardiograph blended into one long single beep. To my continued screams, Amy calmly left.

  When an orderly entered, I screamed obscenities until he called a nurse. I kept screaming until a doctor rushed in. From him I asked exactly what had been done to me and was told of one big life-saving operation and a variety of smaller forays into my body.

  He itemized it for me: My face was different. The eyes were almondine, the nose, retrouseè, the cheekbones were reinforced. The chin was clefted, the jawbone strengthened. My ear lobes were connected to my jaw. In short, I was handsome. The balding field of my scalp was seeded with a new crop of hair, the skin sanded. He went on. I informed the good doctor that unless I was prepped stat! for operations reversing the dubious damage, his hospital would collapse under the weight of my Chungking lawsuit. He informed me that this was quite impossible for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which was the fact that experts had been called from all corners of the U.S. Millions of dollars in operations and procedures had changed hands over my body. Articles delineating the many surgeries were currently in galley form and about to be printed. Amy had gone even further than the mass operations done in Bismarck, North Dakota. She had made me supremely into one of her own.

  Over the next few weeks, while recuperating from the surgery, when I wasn’t unsuccessfully hunting for big-name trial lawyers who would competently handle my case, I spent the hours flipping through an odd assortment of fragranced, glossy magazines, either men’s fashion magazines, mainly GQ, or business magazines, like Forbes. Gaze on anything long enough and you’ll learn to love it. I gradually developed a fixation on shady, showy figures of film, fashion, and finance.

  I found myself watching that air-time-purchased TV show, The Millionaire Makers, desperately trying to follow the “no-money-down process” to becoming a financial wizard. Venture capitalism was on my mind. As a pastime, on little scraps of paper, I began fooling with unusual plans and byzantine schemes: If I could sell the lease of my apartment for such and such, and get a second mortgage, and invest that capital in such and such, before this so-and-so takeover, and then liquidate the assets into X bonds, I’d be worth X zillions in just a few years.

  CHAPTER NINE

  VENGEANCE IS MINE

  (KARMA IS FOR PUSSIES)

  As the bandages were peeled off, the results were quite embarrassing. It all eluded me at first, but in the mirror of popular opinion, I beheld it. As the gauzy veils unspooled, a sigh went up, like a puff of smoke. I watched with the same goggle-eyed disbelief as the middle-aged nurses who filled the spectator pews in the surgical theater.

  “You know, you’re lucky,” one R.N. remarked, in a nasal, outer-borough honk. “Some folks wait years before their bodies can de
teriorate enough for the operations you’ve had.”

  How fortunate I was. After all the bandages were off, and I started realizing what I was going to look like and what the future would hold, I felt lightheaded. Good looks were a wild card I had not been dealt. Only in the most incidental way had I even thought of my appearance.

  Yet, as the nights progressed, I began to love sleeping with myself. During the days, intensive therapy was the regimen: hydrotherapy, parallel bars, Nautilus machines—all awakening stringy gristle that never knew it was muscle, spaghettied around newly fused bones. On a daily basis for months, the hours were filled with intensive aerobic and weightlifting sessions. My feelings for me were intensifying. Initially I had just a crush, a puppy love, but eventually I developed an Adele H. obsession with myself.

  One day I was awakened by an ominous numb sensation. I opened my eyes to see the ghastly Whitlock standing before me, pinching an I.V. tube that had been dripping Lord-knows-what into my gorgeous arm.

  “Hi, handsome, remember me?” he dropped the tube and began. “We’ve got a problem to work out.”

  “Leave me very much alone,” I pleaded.

  “Very much like to. Very much like to. But you seem to constantly be stuck in my craw.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Amy seems to think you’re a god in rags.”

  “I’ll sue the bitch if I ever see her again, I swear. Look what she did to me.” I was still hypocritically irate over her five-hour body makeover.

  “You don’t look any different to me. But I’m glad to see you feel this way.”

  “I’ll sue you, too, I swear.”

  “Suppose we settle this right now.”

  “How?”

  “Suppose I give you a solid figure, and we put an end to all this squabbling.”

  “What kind of figure?”

  “Suppose I give you, say, ten thousand bucks, and in exchange, you just stay away from us.”