PALINDROME

by Lawrence Kelter

  There were no refills in my cabinet drawer. “Be right back.” I popped up and walked down the corridor to the supply closet. I inserted a lidocaine cartridge into a clean syringe and grabbed a fistful of supplies to replenish my empty drawer. I saw Doc Moffet peering through the doorway into the corridor. He appeared to be a bit impatient. I needed to avoid eye contact, and so I turned my head as I reentered the room. As I did, I tripped on the door saddle and went down.

  “Jesus, Lexa, are you all right?” Moffet jumped out of his chair to help me. He must’ve seen the hazel eye because he winced, and I didn’t like the expression on his face. The patient was sitting up in the chair but couldn’t speak because of all the dental apparatus in her mouth. Moffet grabbed my arm and put it around his shoulder. He helped me into an empty examination room.

  “I’ll be okay. So sorry, doctor.”

  “Lexa, you’ve got—”

  I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The loaded syringe I had been carrying was sticking out of my temple, and the plunger had been depressed.

  “Hold still,” Moffet said. He pulled a sterilized gauze pad out of one of the canisters on the counter. “I’m going to pull it out. Try not to move.” I could feel him putting pressure on the injection site as he withdrew the needle. I could feel the needle being pulled out of my skin. “You’re going to be all right, but I’m going to take you over to the hospital to get checked out.” He took my hand and put my fingers on the sterilized gauze pad. “Keep light pressure on this, okay?’

  I nodded. “I’m okay, Doctor. Just let me sit down for a few moments. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “Yes, sit, please sit.” He helped me into the reclining dental chair and adjusted the height so that my feet were higher than my head. “Do you feel like you might pass out?”

  “I don’t know, I just feel a little weird.”

  And then I guess he noticed Allie’s hazel eye. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Your left pupil is fully dilated. You need to be checked by an ophthalmic specialist to make sure there’s no damage to your eye.” I looked in the mirror. He was right; my left pupil was fully dilated, so much so that you could barely see that the iris was hazel and not blue. “Wait right here, Lexa, and don’t move. I’ll go call an ambulance.” I heard him running to the front desk and then I heard his voice on the phone. “This is Dr. Moffet at—”

  In the middle of all the commotion, with a patient in mid root canal and an ambulance’s siren wailing in the distance, Darla, the receptionist walked through the door holding a bouquet of butter-yellow roses. “My God, Lexa,” she looked terrified. “What happened to you?”

  “Lexa fall down and give herself a local in the head,” I said in a childish manner. “Pretty clumsy, huh?”

  Darla started to cry. “Are you all right?” She was so nervous that she crushed the bouquet with her hands. “Do you want some water?”

  “I’m fine. Hey, careful, you’re crushing those beautiful yellow roses.”

  “What?” Darla was in a state of full-blown panic, staring at me and showing no comprehension.

  “The roses, you’re ruining them.”

  Darla glanced down at the mangled bouquet. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. They’re for you.”

  “Me?”

  Darla nodded.

  Dr. Moffet raced back into the room. “The ambulance just pulled up. Are you okay?”

  “Feeling no pain, Dr. Moffet.” I smiled to ease his worry.

  He shook his head from side to side. “You’ll be fine. We just have to take all the necessary precautions. I spoke to the EMS technician. The hospital will have an ophthalmologist standing by. I’ll finish up with the patient in the chair and come right over. Just try to relax.”

  “No problem, Doctor.” I took the bouquet of roses from Darla and looked at the note card. The card was made of quality parchment paper. The note was handwritten in the most exquisite shade of blue ink. It read, I hope you are feeling better, and it was simply signed, Emilio.

  Thirteen: Reconciliation?

  The only class I had scheduled that afternoon was a lecture on contemporary literature, and I figured I could handle that, even after having a needle removed from my head.

  The trip to the hospital had gone well. The injection was not responsible for my dilated left pupil. The ophthalmologist’s opinion was that the dilated pupil was a response of the sympathetic nervous system. He surmised that the fall had triggered an adrenaline spike and that the adrenaline, not the lidocaine injection, was the pupil-dilating culprit. The lidocaine had been injected subcutaneously and trapped between layers of skin. So other than the fact that my temple was still numb to the touch, there were no permanent issues.

  Dr. Moffet gave me the day off with full pay and was glad that he hadn’t incurred a lawsuit. Better still, I now had justification for the hazel eye. I smacked my head on the floor and accidentally took a needle in the temple. Who could argue with that? It beats, I have the unusual power to alter my appearance, and I have one eye that just wouldn’t cooperate.

  I always sit in the last row of the lecture hall. I’m sure the lecturer wasn’t pleased by the fact that a class of fifteen couldn’t sit together in the front row of a three-hundred-seat auditorium, but he never complained about it, and I liked being the first one out the door at the end of the lecture.

  “You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself,” another Hemingway gem. This lecturer seemed to be full of them. Hemingway was such a man’s man. Entire decades had passed since his death, and the whole of contemporary literature was still smitten with him. He is a god among writers, simple yet complex, brilliant yet damaged. He is what all writers aspire to be, but will never become.

  Ax drifted in as silently as vapor. I wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting next to me until he spoke. “I see you’ve still got goggle eyes,” he said as he leaned over to examine me. “Are you ready for some Chinese medicine yet?”

  “How dare you use the words ‘goggle eyes’ during a lecture on Hemingway—show some respect.”

  “I prefer the writing of Sun Tzu.”

  “Now there’s a surprise. Let me guess, the Art of War?”

  “Very good.”

  “What should I expect from a great ninja warrior?”

  “Sage wisdom and unquestionable loyalty.”

  My eyes welled up, and I kissed him quickly on the cheek. Was this the path to reconciliation? A moment passed. I had no doubt that it was. Loyalty above all else, loyalty at all costs. There were billions of people in the world, yet Ax and I were truly alone. No other two people possessed what we possessed, and although we could look like anyone, we were like no one else. I didn’t have to say thank you. My emotion was there for him to see in my eyes. “Face forward and pretend you’re interested in the lecture. He’ll never know that you don’t belong in the class.”

  “Okay.” Ax turned and faced the lecturer and spoke without looking at me. “I still don’t know what to do about the money, but the fact that you deposited the check into our bank account kind of takes the decision out of our hands. Everything comes at a cost, and I’m worried that the cost of this money will be great.”

  “We’ll have to deal with it, whatever it is.”

  “We always have.”

  “So what now? What do we do?”

  “There’s nothing to do but wait for the fight to come to us. Either it will or it won’t. Maybe we’ll get lucky and nothing will come of it. Let’s just live our lives cautiously and take one step at a time.”

  “We’re survivors.”

  We fist bumped. “Survivors,” we said together.

  I started to giggle and had to cover my mouth to conceal the noise from the lecturer. I was thinking about the spastic events of the day, tripping at work and taking a syringe in the head. I mean c’mon, it’s funny when you think about it.

  “What�
��s so funny?” Ax asked as he turned his gaze back to me.

  I shrugged and kept my mouth shut, but Ax understood from my expression that I had another bomb to drop on him. He rolled his eyes. I could see that he was preparing himself for another emotional blow.

  “What already?” he said.

  “It’s nothing, just something funny that happened at work. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Your expression betrays you. It doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “I slipped at work and accidentally stuck myself in the head with a syringe of lidocaine. I’m fine.”

  “You call that nothing? Your life forces are out of balance. That’s why these things continue to happen. Don’t you understand? The altercation at the bar, slipping and injecting yourself with poison; it’s caused by a spiritual imbalance.”

  “It’s a fluke, nothing more than a random series of events.”

  “And maybe it’s God, acting incognito.”

  “God acting incognito? Whoa, reaching deep, aren’t we?” We were drawing attention from nearby students, who heard us quarreling. “Let’s get out of here.” I stood and left the lecture hall. Ax followed.

  “Maybe we should think about leaving town again,” he said.

  “No way, I’m so close to my degree I can taste it.”

  “You can always transfer your credits. We’ve done that before.”

  “No!” I said loudly. A student passing in the corridor turned to look at us. “No,” I whispered, adjusting the level of my voice. “Let’s just stick to our plan and take one day at a time. I like living here.”

  “I like it too, so don’t create a reason for us to have to move again. Long Island’s not the first place we’ve liked, and it’s not the first place we were forced to leave.”

  “How can we leave? We have an actual home here. It’s not the same as before.”

  “Aunt Sue’s condo? It’s a material thing. It means nothing.”

  “How can you say that? It’s our home and the first decent place we’ve had in a long time. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting too old to sleep in a car at the Home Depot parking lot. You would have to leave the dojo!”

  “I can practice my art anywhere, in a dojo or in a dumpster, my surroundings are immaterial.”

  “Well, I’m not as Zen as you are.”

  “No,” Ax said, “you are not Zen, but you can benefit from Zen wisdom.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Try the Chinese medicine. Be the change, Lexa. Can you do that? Can you be the change? It’s a basic Zen principal: don’t wait for things to change. Do it yourself. Be the change.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Ax gave me an optimistic smile. “When?”

  “Soon. Maybe soon—I have to think about it.”

  “That’s all I ask. Be the change, Lexa, be the change.”

  Fourteen: Compassion

  Twilight was fading as I got into my car and headed to my friend Carli’s place. There wasn’t much traffic on the Long Island Expressway. All the traffic was going the other way, commuters heading home after a long day at the office. I smiled because I was driving in the traffic-free direction. I was feeling very Zen after Ax’s “be the change” diatribe and related my western-bound serendipity to Zen philosophy, thinking about the flow of things and the movement of energy. Be the change? How could I be the change? Ax assumed that everyone was at one with nature and that we all understood and felt a spiritual presence around us. I was not so much into feeling the spirit as being a loose spirit. Ax had implored me to take control over my life, but I wasn’t sure it was going to happen right away. Ax really wanted me to take his Chinese medicine, but I didn’t think it was such a good idea. I didn’t understand his Chinese medicine or what it would do to me. I really didn’t want to try and didn’t know how to make him understand.

  Carli lived in one of those old campers, the one’s that looked like a giant-size, silver hotdog, the kind that was covered with rust and had cinderblocks for front steps. Recently washed duds were hanging from the clothesline. I could see little Mark’s white blanket and baby towels drying on the line. I threw the car in reverse, and it stalled. I wanted to get closer to the front door so that I wouldn’t have to walk over broken beer bottles in the dark, but the old bucket of bolts made that option moot. Fifty K lying in the bank and I’m still driving this? Be the change, I thought. Tomorrow I would be the change, whether Ax liked it or not.

  Batman was walking out of the front door as I arrived. Okay, this wasn’t the Batman-and-Robin Batman, the one who lived in a billionaire’s estate, drove the Batmobile, and apprehended hooligans in the middle of the night. This was a much less unique individual, but one that was nonetheless intriguing. Batman was the name the other car service drivers called him. Batman was the dependable ride, the honest hack who didn’t rip off his fares. He was the guy whose car you could safely get into at 1:00 a.m. after taking the LIRR home to Central Islip. I gave him a peck on the cheek, even though Batman was in desperate need of a shave. Batman was a light-skinned black man with moles on his face like Morgan Freeman and thickly matted kinky hair.

  “Lexa, how are you, dear?” Batman had a voice as rough as industrial strength sandpaper. It was downright gravely. This was not the voice that came from a healthy set of vocal chords. These vocal chords had been thickened and hardened by decades of cigarette smoking until they vibrated with the resonance of a contra bassoon. It was a voice that could only be reproduced by a subwoofer. “Stopping by to see Carli and the little one?”

  “We’ve got a regular thing. You just drop her off?”

  “Ya, I just picked them up at the clinic. She took the little one for his checkup.” He noticed that I was holding a six-pack of Bud Lite. “What are the chances one of those cold Buds getting loose?” He was literally licking his lips.

  “You took my friend to the doc, didn’t you? I think the chances are pretty good.” I yanked one of the cans out of the plastic scrim and handed it to the cape-less crusader.

  He popped the top and took a long guzzle. “Bless ya, dear, I’m always so dry.”

  I didn’t want to tell him to stop smoking. I was sure he had been told hundreds of times. I wasn’t going to lecture him the way Ax had just lectured me. “Drive safely, my friend.”

  “No worries, takes a lot more than one beer to mess up the Batman.”

  I was sure he was right. He got back into his livery car as I balanced on the cinderblock steps outside Carli’s camper and waited for the door to open. When it did, Carli looked just as I expected her to look, wearing a robe and moccasins. Baby Mark was up on her shoulder. She held a cigarette at arm’s length to keep the smoke as far away from Mark as possible. “Bring the beer in, Sweetie; this girl is thirsty.”

  I handed Carli the beer. She handed me the baby, which was far more than an acceptable trade. Mark was the sweetest little boy. He had a gorgeous little round face and bedroom eyes. He never cried and never fussed. I guess he knew not to expect much from life and that nobody likes a complainer. I held him in front of me, blowing him kisses and cooing like only a woman can. Mark made the sweetest little silly drunken face. It melted my heart. I found it amazing that God had created such a wonderful little person from a union of Carli and Sepp, two of God’s lesser-inspired creations. He was such a beautiful baby. It just didn’t make sense.

  “Come in, come in,” Carli said greeting me. “Mi casa es su casa.” Carli had a good heart, she just had a messed up life. Carli stood almost six feet tall. Her skin was milk white, and she wore those diabetic socks that flopped loosely around her ankles. Carli had circulation problems. Like Batman, she was a cigarette addict. She couldn’t even stop during her pregnancy and now, with Mark breathing the same air . . .

  “No cigarettes while I’m here. Give your baby a chance, for Christ’s sake.”

  “No problem,” she said, putting the butt out on the old porcelain sink. She liberated a Bud and took a swig. “Got to keep my mouth busy thoug
h.” She smacked the beer can down on the table and smiled. “Hey, want some of these? I got a ba-jillion of them free at the clinic.” Carli reached into a bag and pulled out a bundle of those diabetic socks, the ones with no elastic knitted into the top. Like I said, she had a good heart. What was hers was mine.

  “No thanks, you think I never want to get laid again? I’m only twenty-one. Have you got any idea how those things turn a guy off?”

  Carli smirked and gestured to Mark. “Didn’t stop me from getting knocked up.”

  What could I say? Mark burped. I held him up and jiggled him like a toy. “No it didn’t. No it didn’t, and look at the beautiful baby boy you have now.” Like my brother Ax, Mark was content with his environment, whatever it was. It didn’t bother him that he lived in a rusted camper with cockroaches and bedbugs, and that his mother had maybe five years left before her arteries turned to granite and her blood stopped flowing. Mark was content and happy to breathe smelly, cigarette-tainted air and feast on baby formula bought with food stamps at Walmart. Except for the cigarette smoke, it wouldn’t have bothered Ax either. The really sad part was that Carli was only twenty-eight years old. “Here, take this precious little boy, and I’ll make some dinner.”

  “Deal!” Carli announced excitedly. She grabbed her Bud and sat down on the sofa that was covered with a bed sheet. I handed Mark back to her. “All your crap’s still in the fridge; no one’s touched it.”

  I opened the refrigerator. All was as it had been the last time I visited. Carli refrigerated everything: the cans of baby formula and the cans of crushed tomatoes that I had bought were all there alongside the stacks of aluminum trays that Meals on Wheels delivered to her everyday. I did a quick count. “Okay if I make a big batch? You’ll have leftovers.” There were several unopened trays. Dear God, I wondered, what does this woman eat?