The Fuck Up

by Arthur Nersesian

  “Really, you should masticate your food,” she commented.

  “How are you going to pay for this?” I asked just to get the insecurity out of the way.

  “With money,” she replied. “I write dinners off as business expenses, why?”

  I continued eating at her pace, and felt somewhat insecure by the security and control she had about everything. Her remark about the meal being a “business expense” had put everything in its proper framework: the last two days were nothing more than business. After dinner, the Pierre brought over a dessert tray. I picked out the most intricate structure of chocolate ever constructed. With it we had two reviving demitasses. Because she was a little low on paper, she paid the bill with plastic. We left the restaurant and walked down Montague Street toward the river. There, we strolled the promenade, which decked around Brooklyn Heights giving a humongous view of Manhattan on its Nile. It was late afternoon, and although the sun was sinking early, it was the warmest day in the past week of frost. There was something autumnal about the day—the tiny, bony branches should have been gently swaying with yellowing leaves. When we finally made it up the stately steps of her brownstone, she said her first words since we left the restaurant: “I don’t know how I could’ve passed through this alone.”

  Once we entered her living room we took off our coats. While I examined my borrowed clothes in a full-length mirror, she explained that she didn’t want to be callous yet she needed to be alone for a while. If I liked, she said, I could make use of the lower floors. Then she went to a cabinet, where she took out a brass ring of keys. “If you want to go out, these are the house keys. This is the key to the garage downstairs, and this is the key to the Mercedes, if you drive. I don’t.”

  “You’re very kind,” I said, grabbing the coat. “There’s no need to feel like you’ve got to pay me, I’ll get going and call you in a day or so.”

  “Wait.” She was suddenly distressed. “Where will you be going?”

  “I don’t know, why?”

  “You can’t go. I’m not just being polite. Would you do me a favor and come back later?”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “This might sound strange, but I know I’m going to be going through a kind of roller coaster ride, and for a while it’s going to be difficult to handle things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Sometimes…I lose track of life. Things lose their value. I become very messy.” Then she lapsed into an embarrassed silence.

  I knew the feeling. I agreed to stick around. She thanked me and retreated upstairs to her bedroom where I could hear her close the large oak double doors that separated the upper half of the house from the lower half. The house was loaded with modern conveniences. Everything was either reconditioned antique or high tech.

  Behind a set of panel doors in the living room, I opened up the RCA Entertainment Center—that was what the label read—that included a widescreened color TV, at least twenty-five inches in length and a VCR. In an old bookshelf that had been built right into the wall and that probably once supported a classics library, VCR tapes were aligned. I picked out two films that never became too popular: Cutter’s Way and Wise Blood.

  It was just after five o’clock and while I was trying to get the VCR to work, I lost the sound on the TV Both the VCR and the TV had separate remotes and while trying to make them cooperate, I watched a mechanical woman soundlessly broadcast the news.

  Flashing across the TV for only an instant on a screen behind the Newsreadette was an old college yearbook photograph of Helmsley. By the time I cranked up the volume, I heard the Newsreadette say, “…was identified by a relative.”

  NINE

  As I dashed out of the front door, I figured that I had a thirty-minute run ahead of me. Turning back before the front door swung shut, I raced downstairs to the garage on the ground floor. The Mercedes started right up. I zoomed out and down Court Street zipping through lights and cutting off other cars until I screeched to a stop at Helmsleys front door on President Street. I dashed up his steps and banged on the door. I heard some rustling inside, and then the peephole was filled with an eye, “Can I help you?”

  “I’m a friend of Helmsley, please open up.”

  The door opened and a decrepit old lady appeared, her face was all droopy and crinkled, “Poor boy, mixing with trash.”

  “They killed him?”

  “Well, I certainly believe so.”

  “How…what happened?”

  “A Brody, he done. Right off the bridge. That’s what they say, anyhow.”

  “When? Did they find who threw his body off the bridge?”

  “I only know it was the Brooklyn Bridge,” she mumbled as she disappeared into Helmsley’s bedroom.

  Looking about, I couldn’t believe it. His books were thrown in stacks around the house. I arbitrarily picked up a cloth book yanked from its spine; Das Kapital, one of the earliest editions, in a three-volume set; it had been invaluable. I let it drop back to the floor. I remember him showing me one book that was singed brown. It was printed in Cyrillic. He explained that it had survived the 1812 torching of Moscow. So many of his books that had survived brutal tests of ages and centuries had finally met their end here. When I finally composed myself, I asked, “Did the police see this? Do they know who killed him?”

  “Police?” squawked the old lady.

  “’Course,” I replied. “They should see this.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked. “That’s plain crazy talk.”

  “What do you mean crazy talk?” And then pointing to the floor I screamed, “Look at what those fucking wops did!”

  “Wops!” she replied. “Who are you calling wops? His family’s Polish.”

  “What?”

  She explained that when the gang of relatives heard of Helmsley’s demise, they came quickly to life. They descended upon his meager belongings. Their beaks tore into his body. As this pinhead standing before me, an old and straggling member of the herd, described the occurrence, I fought an urge to bang her over the head with a shovel. I walked from room to room, staring at the floor.

  Greed has no patience, and there are no claims from beyond the grave. Apparently the landlord was eager to repossess Helmsley’s rent-controlled hovel and had generously given entrance to anybody claiming relations to the deceased.

  But I had the last laugh, these mindless insects were more attuned to consumption than taste; they thoughtlessly loaded up their shopping bags with shiny trinkets and tinsels. To them books were things to prop up air conditioners and hold open doors. They didn’t know that the closest thing that Brooklyn could ever compare to a privately owned library of Alexandria was what they had been walking on. I discovered that when the many kin and cousins first rampaged earlier that day, a frenzy had occurred. The books had been shoddily cast into small miscellaneous heaps; the jackals had stripped the books from the shelves checking for any penny-ante treasure that might be stashed behind them. They didn’t know that when Helmsley wanted to read a book, he would go to the library because the books he owned were treasures.

  “Has anybody taken any of the books?” I asked the old lady.

  “Naw,” she replied, fishing through old pots and pans. “Super said his son’s throwing them out tonight.”

  “May I take some?”

  “Whatever,” she replied.

  For a moment my heart, my arms, everything opened and unfolded and rapture engulfed all; these books are mine! But as soon as I dashed into his bedroom—only then did it hit me. Helmsley: My mentor, that athlete of the mind whose passion was rivalled only by his logic, a minor twentieth century New York philosopher who had unfailingly caught me whenever I dropped from my tightrope. He was dead.

  I didn’t have energy in me commensurate to the loss. I sat on his bed and carefully labored to conjure, summon, recollect, and synthesize all the nuances toward the identity of Helmsley Micinski; to address his distinctions, and why in a world of f
ive billion he was indispensable, and how mankind somehow would never solidly complete its final purpose—whatever that might be—because of his robbed life. But most of all, I tried appraising how much of me was Helmsley: how much of my own thought syntax and spiritual matrix was traceable to him, was him? All of this stewed in that greasy pot of agony.

  When I escaped to the city trying to shake free the stalking grief and heartache of my father’s death, I learned that loss was life. Tears were inexperience. The shock was gradually absorbed, all emotional bodies eventually regained their proper orbit. The closest thing to relief was when I eventually perceived my father had always been dead. But now there was Helmsley and once again life was for mourning.

  Once, as a teenager, I had believed that people could change themselves. Finally I realized that all one could ever hope was understanding one’s filthy self better. I felt cleaner by realizing that more than anything in the world, I desired Helmsley’s books. And far more than missing my friend, I felt sorry that I had lost my insurance of continued existence. Also, I had been closer to him than to any of these strangers. With all this in mind, I started making piles of books, first selecting the most valuable, such as a Shakespeare & Company signed edition of Ulysses that was still in mint condition. I wrapped most of his precious books in his old clothes and stacked them on the bed. I had nowhere near Helmsley’s vast data bank of knowledge, and I sensed that I was ignorantly discarding volumes of priceless books, but I had neither the time nor the space. The super’s son would execute his duty in a short couple of hours; I could only save as many as would fit in the car.

  Once I had them sorted out, I ran downstairs and jumped in the car. I drove around the corner to a liquor store. Giving the owner five bucks, he gave me as many boxes as I could stuff into the back seat. I sped back to Helmsley’s, raced up and down the stairs, up with the empties, and down with them filled. I ballasted that old Mercedes down like a freighter. The old lady watched in amazement as I ran by with the boxes. Finally she hollered, “If you want, I got a whole basement full of them Readers Digest books.”

  “Thanks, no thanks,” I yelled back when I was done. The chassis of the old Mercedes was almost rubbing against the tires. There wasn’t room for another page. In a sweaty and exhausted mess, I went upstairs for the last time and asked through gasps, “You wouldn’t know where Helmsley is now, would you?”

  “You mean his body?”

  “Right.”

  She gave me instructions to a funeral home. “Tonight’s the last night of the wake, though, and if you see his cousin Elsa there, tell her I want the china teacups.”

  “China teacups, fine,” I replied and was about to run out, but stopped short when 1 saw her poking on the couch. I had slept on that hard old couch endless nights. Mercifully 1 grabbed a steak knife in the kitchen, elbowed the old lady to one side, and slit open the upholstery, liberating those overwound springs.

  “Hell’s bells, what’d you do that for!” she screamed.

  “Believe me I was doing both you and the couch a favor.” I just couldn’t bear to think of my old couch in one of their tacky Queens basement-living rooms with stucco walls and aluminum siding.

  The Malio Family Funeral Home was handling the interment. As I pulled the car to the curb, I was amazed to see such a large group of mourners. They were all dressed loudly in black and they loudly crowded outside together. I parked in front of a hydrant and went in. There were three galleries for bereavement, and only when I entered Helmsley’s display room did I realize that those strangers were only strangers.

  In an adjacent room was laid out the dead body of some matriarchal grandmother; the wailing group hovering around were both direct and derivative members of her lecherous hatch. A closed coffin in an empty room was Helmsley’s final salute. People avoided me. I heard someone mumble, “You don’t go to a wake dressed like that!”

  I went into his vacant room and pulled the door shut behind me. Helmsley wouldn’t have cared about the filthy clothes, or the streaks of peroxide in my hair. I sat in the front chair that was closest to his box. As I listened to the rumble outside, I grew increasingly angry that no one else had come. They had mentioned his death on TV His academic pals could have found out where he was. The crowd outside should’ve been Helmsley’s crowd. No one had come to see him off, not even that slut Angela, who probably compelled his suicide. What had happened? I would’ve given anything to know. I didn’t just want an account of the events leading up to him jumping off the bridge, but what he saw in her; why did he allow himself to be degraded by her? He was as handsome and intelligent and amusing and considerate as anyone I ever met. How could a lifetime of study and creation have come to such a forlorn end? I rose and paced back and forth in front of the closed lid.

  All he asked me to do that early morning was to leave the house, just for a couple of hours, and I acted no better than his beast-lover, making it an issue of pride. After all the patience that I had demanded of him over the years, I suffered that I hadn’t returned any.

  Perhaps out of a compulsion to punish myself, but I think out of a macabre need for forgiveness, I opened Helmsley’s casket. He was badly mangled, the bone of his right forearm was ledging out of the side, just below the skin.

  Autopsy sutures that crisscrossed his face and body were thick and unconcealed. I ran my hand through his flaxen, still alive hair and I stared into his bluish face. Until there was a knock at the door, I didn’t realize that time was passing. I quickly shut Helmsley’s lid and threw open the door. A tall lanky man in a cheap dark suit, curly hair, and silly porkchop sideburns entered. He looked like a portrait Helmsley had of the poet Pushkin.

  “You knew Helmsley?” I asked slowly, assuming, based upon his appearance, that he spoke a foreign language.

  “No, I’m sorry, but the home is closing.”

  I thanked him and left. The mob of a family outside was gone. The Mercedes had a ticket on the windshield. Slowly I drove back to Glenn’s house and carefully parked the Mercedes in her garage. After locking the garage door, I went back upstairs into the living room. I had forgotten to turn off the TV, so I used one of the two remotes to lower the volume. Then I quickly downed a double bourbon. About two minutes later, Glenn entered wearing a nightgown, and stretching her arms out, she declared, “I’ve had a refreshing nap.”

  “A refreshing nap?” I murmured, still picturing Helmsley drained of life, and locked in sleep. Her remark seemed to be a freakish contradiction. I started laughing, uncontrollably laughing at what she said. All that had occurred in the short period of her nap. She stood there and looked at me as if I were crazy. If I tried to explain all that had just happened she would have no doubt about my insanity. Instead, I pointed to the TV “I’m sorry. I just watched ‘The Odd Couple.’ Boy, is that Felix unpredictable.”

  She had a drink and felt refreshed and talked about her boyfriend and how she was adjusting to the break up. So I filled my glass and kept up a polite expression.

  “…as if my wings were clipped…you know, so what now? Well I’m not sure myself, just all the little things that I’ve always wanted to do, but he prevented me from doing. All I really know is I have this sudden sense of being free!”

  She rambled on itemizing all the grievances and why she felt good about the break up. I just drank more and smiled more and nodded more. While she talked, I envisioned Helmsley in that closed book of a coffin in a dark room. As I got drunker, I thought more about the meaning of death. In this instance, most poignantly, it meant a potential unrealized. Reams of blank pages, unfilled. He truly intended to dedicate his life to writing. All the plays, the novels, the essays, the short stories, all those philosophical tracts that he would pretentiously talk about or those he actually had written: now, only I would know. He would have found life unbearable if he had known that he was going to die with virtually none of his plans achieved. It retroactively drained the meaning from his life; so why would he kill himself?

  Suddenly
I heard Glenn again. “The thing about my relationship with him was that I was in constant admiration of him. I used his language, I looked at things with his values, but I realize now it’s because I was essentially intimidated by him deep down. That’s why I really thank God that I’ve broken up with him, because now for the first time I can see what it is being myself…”

  “But he gave you so much,” I replied, applying her statement to my relationship with Helmsley, “can you really just forget about him like that?”

  “He took so much more,” she replied. “He was utterly demanding and selfish.” I couldn’t follow her here, because Helmsley asked for so little. It was as if we were passing on crisscrossing escalators, hers ascending and mine descending.

  Soon we watched some TV and played a board game. Eventually after some persuasion on my part, and reluctance on hers, she told me a little about her first marriage: they were both too young. There seemed to be something more she kept restraining herself from saying, and I was too stretched out of shape to induce her any further. After a late night snack, we went to bed.

  I lay next to her and quietly she slid under the sheet and tried to start up the engine. The combination of booze and dead Helmsley was too much. I just couldn’t solidify. But she only reacted with greater determination. I wanted to tell her, but, like her, I too was restraining myself from getting emotionally entangled. Finally I tugged her off and told her that I just wasn’t up to it, too much bourbon. She felt the chill, rolled over, and went to sleep.

  I awoke the next morning in a sweat. I had dreamt that Helmsley had died, and so he had. Glenn wasn’t lying next to me. I found a note on the night table, it read:

  Went to work. If you need any money, there’s some on the cabinet. If you need the car, help yourself. One problem is I need to be alone tonight. I must work out some problems. But please, this is not meant to be a rejection. Call me tomorrow