“No,” I mumbled as I started making change.
“Keep it.” A dime. A thin lousy dime, but from the way he said it, you’d think he was sponsoring my college fund. I didn’t say thank you. I just turned, stepped off the paper towel island, and went out the door.
“Stop by for coffee when you feel like it.”
I wouldn’t stop by for coffee if the apocalypse was imminent and his apartment was the only safe haven in the galaxy. I shut the door behind me and was at the elevator when he followed me into the hallway.
“Let’s go Mets!”
What a fucking freak.
Walking back to the diner after my first Gebberts encounter, I toyed with the idea that the guy was in fact a ghost and that in reality I had been standing in an empty, abandoned apartment. Perhaps the limboed spirit of Gebberts had created the illusion that I was interacting with a living, breathing human in an actual home. Maybe the sanitary extremis was needed to combat the constant excretion of unholy astral ectoplasm bubbling and erupting out of various ghastly orifices.
I was terrified every time his name appeared on a delivery ticket. And to this day my ghost theory remains a legitimate possibility. Perhaps Gebberts the Cleanly Ghost will forever haunt 301 East 66th Street, eternally ordering BLT on toast, looking at some hapless delivery boy from a sidelong, stiff-necked angle that made his head appear abnormally small.
. . . Let’s go Mets!
eleven
Ciro asked me to work until midnight one Saturday evening. I had to ask permission from my mother. She said it was okay but that she wanted to pick me up when my shift was finished. I understood her concern but it made no sense because I already spent hours up until midnight walking all over the East Side, going in and out of buildings and strangers’ apartments.
At around eleven that night Lorenzo, the weekend manager, gave me a ticket for the building I lived in. The delivery was for apartment 8A, which I figured was one of the penthouses. The name on the order was Jones, which didn’t ring any bells. It was a weird order: two large OJs, two strawberry milkshakes, two double orders of bacon (a total of four orders), and lots of pickles.
Strange, but far from the strangest for sure. That dubious honor went to Miss A. Lundgren, a 400-pound woman who lived on East 68th Street. Miss Lundgren, dubbed “Circus Circus” by Ciro, had a standing order every Saturday and Sunday morning. At nine thirty a.m. she expected to be delivered to her door: half a dozen eggs sunny-side up, twelve sausage links, eight slices of toast with ten small packets of grape jelly, a triple order of home fries, and three large chocolate milks. Included as a courtesy in one of the bags was a full-size glass bottle of Heinz ketchup. The order stood for two years straight until one Saturday she didn’t answer the door and was never heard from again.
When I got to my building with 8A’s order in hand, the new doorman Jeff was on duty. I liked Jeff a lot. He reminded me of a character in an old Western who would play a sheriff or a train conductor. He was a tall, sturdy, healthy-looking guy. A Midwestern oh-my-gosh type with neatly trimmed hair and respectful, old-fashioned manners. He didn’t seem to belong in New York City at all.
But Jeff was far from straitlaced. He had a fetishistic obsession with ballerinas and would often hang around the entrance to the ballet school at Lincoln Center. He would lean against the building and pretend to read the paper but he’d really be watching the young dancers come and go from their classes. He wasn’t at all shy about sharing any of this with me and spoke of his fixation very casually. As if it was something that any normal American male would appreciate.
The girls who took classes there were young: from high school age down to like ten years old. Jeff would get this devilish twinkle in his eye when he described these aspiring dancers “in their little pink leotards and soft satin shoes . . . so small and petite.” He tended to like the girls on the older edge of the spectrum, thank god, and especially got off watching them smoke cigarettes and curse. Jeff claimed that ballerinas had some of the filthiest mouths anywhere.
I didn’t feel the need to be announced, so I didn’t tell Jeff where I was going. I was sure they were expecting me. The door to apartment 8A was about halfway open and I could see into the main room. There was a low wooden table in the middle of the space and not much else in terms of furniture. A reel-to-reel tape recorder sat on top of the table and its wheels were spinning. There were cabinet speakers on both sides of the table, their innards pumping out a loud, distorted drone which I guessed was most likely from an electric guitar—a fact deduced from the sight of two electric guitars that leaned against a wall. One guitar was red, the other black. The red one had holes in it, the black one did not. They looked like a happy couple.
There were lots of books piled on top of lots of big cardboard boxes bearing the name and logo of RCA electronics. Most of the books were paperbacks and were stacked outrageously high into towers that teetered on the verge of collapse. Tons of notebooks and yellow legal pads, scribbled-up sheets of paper, pens and pencils. Some of the cardboard crates had rows of empty bottles sitting on top, neatly arranged like chess pieces and segregated into wine, beer, and liquor sections.
Lo and behold. It was him. The blond man with the Iron Crossed head was crouching beside the low table, manning the tape deck.
Was he Jones?
His lady sat Indian style on an Oriental-looking cushion, her back to the door. I stood at the threshold holding their food. I could feel the heat slowly waning from the bacon as I waited for someone to notice me. For some reason I didn’t feel right knocking or clearing my throat or saying anything at all. I just continued to watch and wait.
There was no rug on the hardwood floor. I thought it looked like a cold surface to sit on even with a cushion. But the pair didn’t seem to mind. He hit a knob on the deck and the reels stopped spinning. The speakers went quiet. He hit another knob and the tape spun the opposite way. He replayed the droning guitar.
“That part, right there, that’s the part I’m talking about. Do you hear it?” He jotted something onto a coffee-stained legal pad. A cigarette burned in an ashtray on top of the same yellow page.
“Yes, I hear it.” Her voice was quiet and I couldn’t tell if she had an accent or not.
“That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s what the whole shot is about. It’s all there in that one riff.”
“You’ve done it.” She spoke soft and kind.
“Now what? . . . Now what, baby?” He said this as if he really wanted an answer from her, but this was definitely not the case.
“That’s always the question, isn’t it?” She did have an accent. Maybe Spanish or Portuguese.
He chuckled with a childlike pitch that surprised me. It took some of the edge off his menacing aura. Then, as his laughter subsided, he turned his head in my direction. “Hello.” He said it flatly but his eyes had the intensity of a brain surgeon staring down the tumor in a young boy’s head. “What are you, like fourteen? Jesus Christ! Tell Fernando he can’t send kids to my place! What, is he trying to get me fucking arrested?!”
He scared me. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about or who Fernando was. I wanted to tell him that I lived downstairs but I thought that would confuse him even more so I just held up the bags of food.
“I have your delivery.” When I spoke, the woman
turned her head. She was exotic-looking with high cheekbones and dark eyes. Mexican or Indian or maybe from Spain. She glanced at me and then quickly looked down.
“What?!” He shouted it like he was expecting some kind violence to happen.
“He’s from the diner, Lou,” she said.
“Oh . . . oh yeah.” He relaxed a little. “Where’s the old man? Did you mug him or something?”
“No, ummm. I just started working there a few weeks ago . . . and I . . .”
“I’m kidding, man.” He chuckled again. “What’s the matter? Can’t you take a joke? How much I owe you?”
“Seven fifty-fi
ve.”
The moaning feedback echoed from the speakers. He stood up and started searching his pockets. I smelled the kerosene on him again. She looked back up at me. Her eyes were gentle but I was uncomfortable. I felt like she was waiting for me to do something or for something to happen. I didn’t know what that was, but I had a strong feeling that I had forgotten to do it or didn’t know how. I became very confused and disoriented.
Whatever specific energetic vibration they gave off as individuals was new to me—that I understood. But as a couple the voltage was magnified and amplified: a white-hot current looping between transponder towers. My heart began to race, I was nauseous and sweating. Maybe it wasn’t them, maybe it was the recording that upset my equilibrium. Everything became alien and dangerous. My knees started shaking. I wanted to run but my legs felt stiff and heavy.
I made a big effort to focus on the reason I was there: the transaction of food for money. He was rifling through his pockets with a jittery manic urgency, like there were a hundred pockets in his pants and one of them held a ticking bomb. My mouth went dry and my tongue was swollen; I didn’t think I was going to make it.
After searching each pocket at least ten times, he gave up and turned to the woman. “Where’s my money, honey?”
“Check your shoe, Lou.”
Lou.
Lou laughed, then looked at me: “Hop on the bus, Gus.” He turned off the music.
I regained my faculties, my heart slowed down, I stopped sweating, the nausea went away. The woman smiled sweetly at me. Lou’s eyes softened and he went on reciting rhymes.
“Just drop off the key, Lee. And put your hand on my knee.” He walked to a corner of the room and reached into an ankle-high black leather boot with a high heel. From its depths he recovered a neatly folded banknote and handed it to me. It was a hundred-dollar bill. “Here you go, sport.”
“I’m sorry, sir . . . but I don’t have enough change for that.”
“Well go get it.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back.” I handed over his order and turned to leave.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I turned back around to face him. “I’m going to get some change for you.”
He snatched the hundred out of my hand and gave me back the food. His eyes got big, hard, and piercing again. His head twitched like a rooster’s. “The fuck you think, I’m stupid? You think I’d actually fall for that shit? I invented that fucking scam back in Brooklyn, you little prick! Get the fuck out of my house!!”
His arms were moving fast and randomly, waving in my face as he spoke. It looked like he had four of them from my perspective. I was frightened more for him than for me and I was pretty scared. He seemed like he was about to croak from a heart attack, stroke, or conniption fit. I apologized but my words had no effect.
“Maybe you and the old man are in cahoots and this whole thing is a setup. Send him over and I’ll stab the fucker with a bread knife!!”
“It’s not a setup, I promise.” I didn’t recognize my own voice as it came out of my mouth. “I’ll go to the diner and get your change, sir. You hold onto your money. I’m very, very sorry.” I started out the door but a claw gripped my shoulder hard.
“No, no, no . . . too late . . . too late for that . . . we have to settle this once and for all, we’re gonna get your boss on the phone. We’re gonna make sure all your bullshit checks out ’cause right now I don’t know who the fuck I got in my house and I got a woman to protect, motherfucker . . . Rachel, call the restaurant.”
Rachel.
His nails dug into my skin and I pulled away as gently as I could. He twisted the fabric of my jacket to grab me tighter.
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere, you punk. I should call my friends down the fucking—”
“Baby . . .” Rachel interrupted his rant. “He’s just a kid. Let him go and get change. He brought our food, let him get change and then we’ll pay him.” She shook her head and looked at me. I sensed she was trying to communicate that everything was cool and not to take him so seriously.
He grabbed the bag out of my hand and started to pull all the items out one by one. “What did we order, hon? Who ordered all this bacon?”
“We did, Lou.”
“Pink milkshakes . . . oh yeah. Okay, okay, okay. Looks like you got it right, kid.” He turned to Rachel. “You trust him, hon?”
“Yes, I do. I trust him.”
Lou sized me up for a few long seconds. “Rachel is extremely intuitive and possesses psychic ability. I call her the Panamanian Shaman. She has uncanny insight into the human mind and motivation. Don’t ruin it for me, okay?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that question but I assured him I wouldn’t ruin it and that I would be right back with the correct change. Yet before I was able to turn around and go, he lunged at me. His move was quick and sudden. I raised my hands and closed my eyes, expecting to be thrown against the wall or to the floor. But he just put his arms around me and hugged. His body was stiff and tense, his ropy muscles flexed. But it wasn’t a sleazy ulterior-motive thing or anything like that. It seemed like sincere affection and an apology. It touched me as much as it surprised me. And it was over as abruptly as it began. He kept his hands on my shoulders as he pulled away.
“What was your name again, kid?”
I hadn’t mentioned my name. Or had I? I’d lost track of what was said and done and how much time had elapsed since I got there. It could have been two minutes or an hour; my perception of time had been debilitated. And the hug had really thrown me for a loop.
“Matthew.” I had to think about it for a second.
“Okay, Matt. Can I call you Matt? See you in a few minutes.” He released his hands from my shoulders; I walked out the door.
“Hey, Matt!” I looked back at him and he was holding the hundred-dollar bill between his index and middle fingers. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” He strode to me and shoved the bill into my hand.
“Thanks, Matthew,” Rachel said from the cushion. She was turned about three-quarters toward me and smiling beatific at Lou, then at me. The fluorescent light coming from the kitchen hit the side of her face like a slash of daytime. It revealed a subtle stubble of beard struggling to surface through the thick layer of makeup on her face.
“See you in a bit, Matty me boy,” Lou said as he closed the door politely in my face.
I walked down the corridor as the guitars began screaming once again.
twelve
I returned to apartment 8A out of breath from running to and from the diner. I was only gone about fifteen minutes but the atmosphere had totally changed. It was quiet and calm.
Lou was happy to see me but I think he forgot my name. He kept calling me Jack. Rachel was still on the cushion but now she had a box of beads open in her lap and sipped on an OJ. She was sorting through and separating the various colors and sizes. I gave Lou his change and he gave me a ten-dollar tip. It was the biggest tip I would ever get as a delivery boy.
He invited me to sit and offered me one of the strawberry shakes. I sat on the floor across the table from him and told him I could only stay for a minute.
“Where you from, Jack?” He chomped on some bacon.
“Queens, but now we live here.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Here, downstairs . . . on the sixth floor.”
“What?”
My answer confused him as I predicted. He couldn’t connect me working at the diner with me living two floors beneath him. Before I could elaborate, he lit a cigarette and changed the subject.
“Rachel had a good feeling about you and I trust her instincts implicitly. Do you believe in past lives?”
“I never really thought about it.” That was the truth, I hadn’t up until that point.
“The Hindus, the Buddhists, the Hare Krishnas, they all believe in the concept of reincarnation. They think we’ve had many lives before this one and will have many more after this, and everybody
always thinks they were a king or a pharaoh but they could have just as easily been an insect or a three-legged dog or a slitherer with suction cups. Right, hon?” He stopped talking, looked at her, and waited.
She started to unspool some wire and without looking up began talking: “You are reborn according to the karma you create and bring with you from one life to the next, but whatever your past life may have been, it bares little resemblance to who you are today because what we consider ourselves to be, the ‘me’ that we identify so strongly with, is merely a collection of patterns, habits, thoughts, ideas, impressions, and histories that have been cobbled together from various causes and conditions that arose due to prior karma; the self is an illusion, as empty as a rainbow. What does get reincarnated is purely an impartial, impersonal, and wholly energetic field that has become imbued with a positivity and/or negativity outside of any identifiable qualities of self.”
The above being my best attempt at recreating her theory of karma and rebirth, as heard by me on several subsequent occasions, but always in the same torrent of words and ideas. She looked up at Lou when she finished speaking, then at me briefly, then back down at her wire and beads.
“She’s fucking brilliant, no?” Lou shook his head in admiration.
I nodded and sucked down some shake. I had to get back to the diner. My mother was coming to pick me up in fifteen minutes, which was an absurdity in itself since I was already home, but I didn’t want to have to explain everything to her. I felt it best to keep my new friends a secret.
“Come back and see us soon, Jack.” Lou gave me a strange-looking paperback by someone named Lobsang Rampa along with another big hug.
“You’re welcome anytime,” Rachel said as she strung up some beads.
“Do you take dictation?” Lou asked as he escorted me out the door.
I surprised myself by saying yes.
“Come by Friday afternoon, I could use the help.” He slammed the door without waiting for my response. Then I heard a loud crash from inside his apartment, something big and heavy must have fallen to the floor.
The Perfume Burned His Eyes Page 4