A Perfect Blindness
W. Lance Hunt
A Perfect Blindness
Copyright © 2016, 2017 W. Lance Hunt.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1012-5 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-5320-1013-2 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017900664
iUniverse rev. date: 04/24/2017
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
—Søren Kierkegaard
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 - Only a Party
Chapter 2 - Heading Back
Chapter 3 - Eyes in the Mirror
Chapter 4 - Lies and Other Fictions
Chapter 5 - I’m Pregnant
Chapter 6 - Artful Dodger
Chapter 7 - Electronic Body Music
Chapter 8 - Persistence and Determination
Chapter 9 - This Is the End
Chapter 10 - Sapphires Aflame
Chapter 11 - One Night at Crazy Mama’s
Chapter 12 - Sweet Home Chicago
Chapter 13 - Seventy-Five Dollars
Chapter 14 - Music Whore
Chapter 15 - Lips, Thighs, and Sequencers
Chapter 16 - Another Stupid Tanya Thing
Chapter 17 - So Very Pretty
Chapter 18 - Like Laverne and Shirley
Chapter 19 - Too Thin to Feel
Chapter 20 - That Ring
Chapter 21 - Un-Normal
Chapter 22 - Tempt Me
Chapter 23 - Dreamerz
Chapter 24 - Just Walk Away
Chapter 25 - Coffee to Make You Sleep
Chapter 26 - Before They Vanish
Chapter 27 - Beaters
Chapter 28 - Ought Not
Chapter 29 - The Future Sound of Ourselves
Chapter 30 - Peephole
Chapter 31 - Dime a Dozen
Chapter 32 - Roommates
Chapter 33 - The Weight of Survival
Chapter 34 - Laughing Like Children
Chapter 35 - Joie de Vivre
Chapter 36 - Not Even in the Movies
Chapter 37 - Original Wave Night: Bumps
Chapter 38 - Mannequin
Chapter 39 - Mistress Mayhem
Chapter 40 - Book of Love
Chapter 41 - The Better Things Go
Chapter 42 - Exit
Chapter 43 - C-Town
Chapter 44 - Crazy Mama’s
Chapter 45 - Concert-Sized
Chapter 46 - The Angel
Chapter 47 - Falls Like Dirty Snow
Chapter 48 - A Hesitant Breath
Chapter 49 - Playing for Drinks
Chapter 50 - Daydreaming
Chapter 51 - The Songs We Write
Chapter 52 - Sweep It All Away
Chapter 53 - The Smooth, Cold Floor
Chapter 54 - Persistence and Determination Alone
Chapter 55 - Just Like Sammy
Chapter 56 - Dizzy
Chapter 57 - Blowing Off Steam
Chapter 58 - Ready for a Fight
Chapter 59 - Suspended in Contradictions
Chapter 60 - Sammy’s Face
Chapter 61 - She Smiles
Chapter 62 - One Night in Subterranean
About the Author
Acknowledgments
I thank the following people for reading and commenting on the various drafts of this book in its various incarnations over the past fifteen-odd years: Greg Beaubien, Sofi Stambolieva, Linsey Abrams, the workshop (especially Edith, Rod, Laura, and Rosary), and my wife, Karina, not only for her comments but also for putting up with my hours alone, staring at a computer screen.
Chapter 1
Only a Party
—Jonathan—
If only I had seen it sooner. Kenny might be here. Scott and I might still be friends, and Jennifer … well, she wouldn’t have felt pushed to escape. As for us, Amy, there’d never been any real chance.
Yet I’ve come to understand that none of us is entirely to be blamed for what happened. How could we possibly have understood what each other needed when we couldn’t even see what we needed for ourselves? We’d had no guide to lead us through this thicket of ignorance. No one ever does.
Looking back, it all seems so obvious. That makes me angry. But it makes me sad more than anything. There was so much pointless pain. We were making the same mistakes over and over, never grasping that the stories we kept telling ourselves were only what we wanted to be true—not what was true. For this I’m sorry—for all of us.
While each of our stories ends differently, they all begin on that first trip to Chicago, three years ago, the first Saturday of May 1988.
Scott and I came only to visit a couple of friends, Tanya and Randal. We were to go to a party at their place, crash on their couch, and then head back to Columbus the next day. It was to be one night—nothing life changing. Certainly nothing for anyone to die over.
Driving Scott’s Sentra on our first trip to Chicago, I listen to the hum and rattle of the road, the steady vibration numbing my butt. I’ve spent six hours on flat, straight freeways, driving through corn and soybean fields, and past cattle and horse farms, first west on I-70 and then north on I-65, with the trees, hills, and fields all violently green in a Midwest spring.
Scott’s sleeping because he worked late and got only two hours of sleep before we left. He must be completely cashed out to get any sleep the way he’s awkwardly crammed into the passenger seat. He’s too big for it: a bit over six feet tall, and thick from years of having worked out. His shirt buttons strain across his chest, and jeans wrap like skin around his legs. I’m sort of his opposite: five ten, skinny, with long light brown hair—dirty blond I’ve been calling it lately. When I first met him, I imagined a real stud with the ladies. But he usually spurns their attention—claims they’re needy and take up too much time. Even so, I’ve seen the way he looks at them. I doubt he’s as in control of his lust as he’d like to imagine. I suspect that’s why he wears his dark brown hair parted above his left eye, as if he were still in high school; it’s his veil of dweeb.
Right now I’m awake, but I need some tunes to stay that way, so I turn the volume down and the radio on. Out comes Depeche Mode, and I bop my head to the beat of “Just Can’t Get Enough,”
which has about the perfect energy for driving.
It’s not until we get near Gary, Indiana—where I see the first exit sign pointing to the Skyway and Chicago—that it really hits me: we’re actually going to Chicago. Yesterday Tanya called and invited Scott and me to visit them in their new place in Wicker Park. Our band White Heat didn’t have any gigs this weekend, so last night we gave away the rest of our shifts at the restaurant, and this morning we packed our bags, gassed up, and hit the road.
Sitting here now, steering wheel in hand, I feel bad about the way I left things with Amy.
She was pissed when I called this morning to let her know that Scott and I were going to Chicago. I told her the truth: “We’re going to visit Tanya. We’re staying at her place. You guys can’t stand each other. Plus, six hours with you and Scott in the same car?”
“You going up there to join her entourage again?” she asked. “She hooking you up with a place? A job?”
“It’s a party.”
“Six-hour drive for a party?”
“Yep. Be back tomorrow, late.”
“Better not be lying.”
“Only a party. Back tomorrow. Nothing else,” I said. “Promise.” I meant it too.
As we pass Gary, the farmland turns into factories. To the right, the US Steel mill never seems to end: one smokestack follows another, some spewing smoke, others flame, others nothing, scattered across a field of jagged roofs like sharks’ teeth. Beyond that lies the endless water of Lake Michigan. On the other side of the Indiana Tollway are small brick and aluminum-sided houses, each in one of a few styles, repeated endlessly, lined up on straight streets, spreading outward in an orderly grid.
We approach the Chicago Skyway Bridge, the last thing between us and Chicago. I nudge Scott awake as we drive across the almost eight-mile-long bridge over the Little Calumet River. Glimpses of the city flash between the girders.
Then, right as we pass the crest of the bridge, Chicago appears like a revelation: buildings erupting out of the plains, stretching up until they penetrate the clouds. At their feet is water as far as I can see on one side; on the other are the plains, covered in ordered rows of houses, spreading out until everything disappears at the horizon. Scott looks awed. I imagine showing this to Amy: See why we came?
Then the road sinks, plunging below street level until we’re in a canal where streams of cars and trucks gush through the city.
“Crappy view,” Scott says. “I can only see rooftops. And light poles.”
I want to look up; instead I have to concentrate on the traffic, as cars are constantly switching lanes, pushing themselves into tiny gaps, cutting off trucks, busses, and us. I have to jam the brakes or accelerator every few moments.
“It’s six twenty-five in Chicagoland,” the radio announcer says. “A beautiful sixty-eight degrees on this Saturday, the seventh day of May. And the rest of the weekend looks perfect for grilling out.”
When an ad starts, Scott pushes in a Joy Division CD—Closer—and “Atrocity Exhibition” starts its bleak, stripped-down soundscape.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’ll work.” Better than the usual George Michael, Rick Astley, or Whitney Houston that have taken over the airways lately.
A lot of people have said that I sound like Ian Curtis. I don’t hear it. People probably see me behind the mic, conjuring moody soundscapes on my keyboards, and think I’m trying to be some modern version of him. I’m not.
Scott rifles through the glove compartment and then flips through my song notebook. “Where’d you put the directions?”
“Should be right there,” I say, pointing my elbow at my notebook.
“Well, they’re not.” Sighing, he pulls out an old gas station map and unfolds it to a section with a heading reading, “Chicago: Downtown Detail.”
After a half hour, the signs tell us that the Dan Ryan has become the Kennedy Expressway.
“Why the hell don’t the signs use numbers for highways? You know, three fifteen, seventy-one, two seventy,” he says. “How are you supposed to find anything on a map?”
“She told me we’re supposed to stay on the Kennedy until we get to North Avenue,” I say. “Wherever the hell that is.”
“We’ve still got their phone number, right?” he asks.
“On the directions.”
“That I can’t find. Wonderful.”
Quickly, we pass the Ontario Street exit. Then comes Chicago Avenue, Augusta, Division. And then the sign we need—North Avenue—appears.
Exiting, we rise from the Kennedy Expressway and come to a traffic light. The traffic light isn’t like the ones I’m used to, hanging overhead, but is propped up on a lamp pole off to the side of the intersection.
Turning onto North Avenue toward the sinking sun, we really enter the city. I can see whole people for the first time; they are walking, entering buildings, waiting for these weird traffic lights to change, and talking on pay phones. As we drive west, the people vanish from the sidewalks. The buildings get sparser and are short, industrial, and shabby. Some have fenced-off parking lots sprinkled with a few cars and a delivery van or two. Several have boarded-up windows, and a few look derelict. Convenience stores and the occasional auto-repair/tire-fix shop or check-cashing place pop up at corners here and there. It’s not pretty; it’s functional. As the signs say, “Chicago: The City That Works.”
“Where is it we’re turning, again?” he asks.
“Win-something. But I remember that we turn right.”
“Wow, that’s almost helpful.”
“Win-chester,” I say. “Like the gun. That’s the name.”
One slender building rises taller than all the rest around: the Coyote Building, its tall spire a minaret calling the faithful to play. It brings the streets back to life. Around it the industrial buildings end and three-story brick and stone buildings spring up like uneven teeth: crowded blocks of apartments sitting atop small shops, most of which are painted in bright colors, with homemade-looking signs featuring stick figures. Bicycles are chained up along the sidewalks. Handbills plaster empty walls, the words spelled with cutout letters like in movie ransom notes. It’s shabby but alive.
Closer to the Coyote Building, I see a train passing above North Avenue on elevated tracks as it slides between buildings. I feel as if Amy is seeing this with me. You gotta admit it’s cool, girl.
Then I see Winchester.
Turning right, we slip onto a residential street; on either side are apartment buildings, pocked with an occasional vacant lot scattered with mattresses lying on piles of junk. Most apartments have stairs going both down a half flight to a garden apartment and up a half flight to one or two doors. A few stand-alone homes squeeze in between. All look mangy, and some, decrepit: fading paint, broken gutters and handrails, listing screen doors, shattered flowerpots, and cardboard stuffed behind broken windowpanes. Potholes clutter the street. Many street lamps are gone but for their stubby bases, left there like steel stumps. Here and there, windows are boarded up, and several times we pass completely boarded-up buildings with junk sprouting from their skinny yards: abandoned box springs, dinette sets, refrigerators, toys, mysteriously shaped scraps of metal, and bags bursting with clothes. The street reeks of neglect. Yet it’s studded with buildings that have been reborn—new windows, fresh paint, and rich-looking curtains, behind which are bookcases and chandeliers.
“Sixteen seventy-five Winchester,” Scott says, holding up the page of my songbook I’d scribbled Tanya’s address on.
We’re close. On the next block, I slide the car to the curb almost in front of the house.
“Rock-star parking,” we both say.
We bail and grab our bags. The radio, CDs, and the rattle of the road have filled the past six hours, and now that we’re walking down a sidewalk, the only sounds are our footsteps and the soft drone of cars in the distance. It feels str
ange—especially since Tanya told us this was still mostly a Spanish-speaking neighborhood, with the Latin Kings and Party People fighting for turf to sell crack around the edges. She’s even heard gunfire at night a few times—drive-by shootings that she saw later on the ten o’clock news. Lately, though, a lot of artists have moved here, opening up shops, galleries, and restaurants and refurbishing run-down buildings and houses.
“Let’s go,” he says, pointing at the doorway.
I press the doorbell button. The muffled electronic ding-dong of the doorbell is followed quickly by the shuffle of shoes and jangle of the doorknob turning. The door swings open.
Dramatically lit in the foyer, a lone man stands. His wavy black hair is pulled into a tail, hanging past his shoulders. He’s wearing snug, well-worn blue jeans, shiny black boots, and a white V-neck T-shirt. Curly black hair pokes out from the collar. A camera hangs from his neck. He examines us, his eyes moving quickly down and then back up each of our bodies.
“Tanya’s downstairs,” he says, drawing the camera to his eye; two flashes fire off in a row.
With spots in the middle of my vision, I step inside and find I’m standing on a bridge spanning the space from the foyer to a hallway in the back of the second floor. Midway across, there is a spiral stairway leading down. Looking over the right side of the railing, into the lower level of the house, I see the expected crowd. They’re like they were at her parties in Columbus, but more so: more hip, more artsy, more punk, more stylish.
I know you hate these parties, Amy, but that’s your fault. She’s the star—not you. You should’ve known better.
The photographer looks around and then down into the living room. His eyes seek; they’re always hunting, locking onto things for a moment—usually a face, or a body posed just so. He’s like a hawk scanning the ground for something small and hard to see to swoop down upon and catch. His fingers even resemble talons the way he holds them slightly curled. So often he seems about to grab the camera but rarely does.
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