The Fuck-Up

by Arthur Nersesian

  I was moving away from myself; silly ideas and images moved their way across the desert of my mind. I no longer had control; all I could do was watch them and react; sometimes I’d laugh, sometimes I’d cry. The great caravan of thoughts passed more and more rarely until soon there was just the great desert: tabula rasa.

  Life became a brutal continuum. The chronic fragments—the streets, the garbage cans, the crowds, the subways, the police—were all indicative of a life closing, sealing like an old scab. All the fragments were piecing together for a final kill.

  I clearly remember the morning that time resumed. Weeks, maybe months, had crumbled since that party at the Harrington offices. I was snoozing on a bench in Grand Central Station until I was awakened by a cops night stick. The night stick wanted me to leave the terminal so I left and started walking westward.

  Soon, I saw the great steps of the Public Library, and there I sat and watched the cars. I don’t know why, but at one interval, when the lights turned green, I walked into the center of the street and looked down Fifth Avenue. I suppose I wanted to see where all the cars were going. That’s when I saw the Washington Square Arch. As I watched cars speeding down Fifth Avenue, their roofs disappearing toward it, I realized that I was trying to picture the white hood of a car, a Mercedes! And that’s when I saw it, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, Amen. After being on the brink for so long, after the bland and aching season of decay, in that distant arch I wiped my watery eyes and focused on the glimmer that wasn’t death.

  Moving more quickly and more determinedly than I had in weeks, I walked over to the IND station at Sixth and Forty-second Street, opened the exit gate, and entered. Soon an F train rolled in. I boarded and counted the stops: Thirty-fourth, Twenty-third, Fourteenth, West Fourth, Broadway-Lafayette, Second Avenue…. Here a cop boarded and looked at me. If he was a good cop he’d have tossed me off. I sat up stiff and formal trying to give the impression of having a destination. He got off at Jay Street and two stops later, at Carroll Street, before the train came to a halt I got up.

  My feet were numb as I walked down that platform, but I couldn’t stop the smile from my lips. For the first time in weeks, even years, every step had a meaning. Time and space were now finite. I was walking the shortest distance between two points. When I got up the stairs, I could see it in the distance and I could feel the relief. Sensations were beginning to return. I thought about these last couple of years. I had washed ashore here, formed a tiny beachhead for myself, and for an instant felt like I had a shot at the big time: an opportunity to get published, a classy abode, even part ownership of my own business. But swifter than it came, it went. Like a cockroach on water, I had floated on my spindly arms and legs in the giant toilet bowl of New York.

  I was only a block away now and I started chuckling. When I had parked the Mercedes there, it was the day after Helmsley’s wake.

  During his last few years, he moved away from literature and more and more toward history. When I asked him about this interest, he replied that when he got old and turned senile his memories might fuse with this vast bank of historical data and the history of the world would seem like his own personal past. I felt somewhat senile as I walked to my Mercedes. Glenn’s son still wanted to mutilate me; Ox would probably toss me in the same jail cell with Miguel, if Miguel was in jail; Ternevsky would try to have me castrated.

  I could see the car on the corner. Then I realized that I no longer had the key, but I knew how to hotwire engines.

  And then like the Cheshire Cat the hope vaporized leaving only a mocking grin. I realized that this wasn’t the car. I looked around and down the street. My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell.

  Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t hang on anymore. I didn’t have the guts to kill myself, but I didn’t want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry. I wandered through the neighborhood.

  The religion of the car—the diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight into coherence—allowed for some rationalizing an afterlife. A new theology was evolving, one that had a faith-in-death clause. It was evolved when I kicked a dead waterbug on the pavement. It was dried out, hollowed, emptied, like some kind of shell. Maybe, I thought, its body is a shell, maybe all bodies are shells. We hatch and die. Our spirit or something like that is the yolk: it lives the real life, the true life. It wasn’t comforting. The car would have been better.

  “Spare any change?” I asked one guy who looked as if he could. He ignored me. I asked another guy, who walked by more quickly. And then another and another and another and so on.

  “Get a fucking job, you bum,” an apelike man said to me.

  “I’m… not well,” I replied meekly, unstably. But then some gear locked into place and I started yelling back, “I got nothing to lose. I could do anything I want to you, and the worst that you think you can do to me can only be better than what I’m going through now. I got nothing to lose, nothing…”

  I walked some more, and I guess the light got dimmer, but it was still day; time wasn’t going anywhere. I felt very tired and I went into a doorway and dropped to my knees and instinctively looked out for cops and foot-stomping kids. I saw cars and legs and sniffing dogs. My eyes trailed up a street pole. It was Sackett Street. What difference did it make? It could have been Mahoegushmoegel Street, and so what? And I laughed at that.

  After some time, I started thinking. It would have been so good to see the Mercedes there. It would have meant there is a God and he’s a good guy and he’ll give you a break from time to time. I wondered what had happened to the last of Helmsley’s books that were in the back seat of the car. If the car had been stolen, they probably would have been chucked; if the car had been impounded, they still probably would have been chucked. While I wandered around the neighborhood, I kept an eye out for them. But I saw no sign of them. The great sandcastle of literature that he had built for himself had completely vanished.

  Before getting up to scrounge for food, I wondered if ever at any time anything—maybe a God or angels or some invisible force that watches everything—would know that I died, just know about it all. And then I thought. This has got to work itself out somehow. I wondered where I would be in a year. And then I realized that for the past couple of years, if asked where I would be in a year I’d probably have predicted that I’d find some meteoric, inexplicable success. For the first time, I realized that if I didn’t die, I would probably just survive, and the next year I would just be grateful to have a place and maybe a couple of bucks in some savings account and a small TV or something, and that’d do fine. God was time, I remember thinking. Time was everything. God was the pace of time. I remember thinking about this magical unit of time, a year, just a small clip of God’s pinky nail. I had faith in the duration. A year would come somehow and save me. At some point, I started repeating the phrase aloud, like a chant or a prayer. I remember that much, not because my prayers were answered, but because they got a response.

  EIGHTEEN

  “What the fuck are you mumbling?” A set of clothed knees were in front of me, glaring at me.

  “Just a year,” I replied and looked up meekly, and I recognized the face. “Your name is Bonnie, isn’t it?”

  “No, asshole; Angela, remember? What the fuck happened to you?”

  “I got sick and…” I clucked my tongue and raised my eyebrows and asked for some money.

  “What the fuck happened to you?”

  Then I started crying because someone was actually asking me that, and I started begging her for some food or anything and said that I was in deep shit in a really bad way and needed help, and I knew that she didn’t like me and could laugh at me and walk away, but please don’t just leave me! I cried till I was exhausted. She just stood above me and looked down; her expression didn’t chan
ge.

  “You’re right,” she finally spoke. “I don’t fucking like you at all. You’re scum.” And I thought she was going to spit at me, and she turned to go, and I swear I don’t understand it, but she turned to me and said, “Follow a half a block behind me, you capisce?” I nodded. “I don’t want anyone knowing you’re with me, capisce?” I nodded.

  She started walking down the street slowly, passing the OTB and saying hi to a couple of old guys. I followed slowly behind. I wasn’t sure what the fuck it was going to lead to, but figured even if she was going to lock me in some room and beat the shit out of me, there was still some hope that maybe I could convince her to feed me, so I could feel the pain more acutely. There wasn’t any more hope in that doorway.

  I followed at a good distance. In case anyone was watching from a parallax angle, I deliberately walked this way and that—no one could have second-guessed my destination. I kept a tight line of sight on her. She was the only fish on my only hook, and I couldn’t reel myself in until she was inside. Her door slammed shut halfway up the street, and I kept straggling this way and that, looking in garbages, keeping in character. Boy, was I hungry. In a moment I was in front of her house. I saw that the door was slightly ajar and I dashed in.

  “Did you run right here?” she asked sharply as soon as I slammed the door behind me.

  “I swear I didn’t. I was real careful, I swear it.”

  “All right, come on then.” She led me into the bathroom, put some clothes on a hook, and put a black garbage bag on the cover of the toilet. Before she left, she pulled the shower curtain aside and gave me some calamine lotion for the scabs and cuts.

  “That goes,” she said, pointing to my beard and handing me a razor. “Put your old clothes in the bag and seal it.”

  I towelled off, sheared the beard with scissors I got from the medicine cabinet, and shaved. I eagerly put the clothes on. Although they were not new and hung loosely from me, they were soft, well ironed, and smelled delicious: they seemed edible. When I looked in a full length mirror, I had this strange recognition and inspected the clothing carefully until I realized that I was wearing Helmsley’s garments. I still had only my old shoes, and although I had these new clothes, I had no intention of throwing out my old clothes. There were still cold days ahead. At best this might be a comfort station, where I could get a meal, a shower, and a change of clothes. Then, perhaps, I might get some kind of job. At least I could sit in coffee shops without being thrown out immediately. I could shoplift without being an instant suspect.

  “Hey, how did you get Helmsley’s clothes?” I asked upon leaving the bathroom.

  “He left a bunch here…. You can have them.” She took the garbage bag and was about to take it out the door.

  “Hey, I still need that stuff.”

  “Not in my house.”

  I remained silent as she threw the bag into a trash heap outside. Did she expect me to stay the night? Or perhaps just for dinner? If I asked her what exactly I could anticipate, I might make her nervous and panicky. I was in a very bad way and had little latitude. Like a fine tool or a dumb animal, she could be used and manipulated for one’s benefit—or misused and made into a danger to everyone around her. Helmsley, in all his braininess, couldn’t use this tool properly.

  When she returned, she saw me standing in the middle of her living room floor, just standing there thinking.

  “Well, sit down or something,” she said as she walked off into another room.I sat up against the wall and thought about how horrible the outside was. To be outside was terrifying to me; the security of being indoors was unbelievable. To have a place to come to of one’s own design seemed unfathomable. An idea occurred to me: if I committed a crime, I’d go to prison. A place is an extension and confirmation of the identity, I thought. If you’re neurotic or afraid or losing control, you might keep the place nunnery neat, with soups alphabetized in the cupboard or pillows on the couch arranged symmetrically. Strangely although I’ve always liked the idea of a clean place, I’ve always been a messy person. A place too clean and orderly makes me feel self-conscious. Angela’s furniture, knickknacks, and such seemed to be watching me. No, more than just watching me, they seemed to demand, by example, a code of behavior. I had to remain within the protocol of the order of the place.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “What did I do?” I asked, rising unsteadily.

  “Why are you sitting on the floor?”

  “What am I supposed to do, sit on the wall?” She pointed to a chair and started hollering about how it was the latest invention. I don’t know why I didn’t even consider the chair.

  “I’ve sat in chairs before, okay?” I yelled back. “I had a good reason for sitting on the floor. Did that ever occur to you?”

  “What reason?”

  “’Cause I have an edema build-up in my knees, and I was trying to put some pressure on the area.”

  “What, you got water on the knee?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, rolling up my pants. Fortunately my knees were swollen so she bought it.

  “Whatever suits you.” She left the room. I sat in the chair. In a minute she returned, carrying some crumpled sheets.

  “Well, what are you doing in a chair now?” she yelled.

  “You made me feel uncomfortable sitting on the floor,” I mumbled.

  “Sit on the fucking floor if you want,” she barked. And grabbing the back of the wooden chair, she yanked it so that I fell to the ground.

  “My knees are fine now.”

  “I think you’re a fucking liar about the knees.”

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  “I don’t know;” she replied. I didn’t say anything, and she walked out of the room. What was she doing in the other rooms? I crept to a doorway and peeked. She was making a bed. I moved silently back into the living room, went over to a bookcase, and surveyed its contents. There were a bunch of pastel-tone romances; the John Jakes historic novel series, named after frontier states and illustrated with covered wagons and cleavage; and glitzy soft-porn best-sellers with embossed red lettering. As my eyes travelled along the colorful, gumdrop-colored paperbacks, I suddenly spotted a dusty hardcover on an out-of-reach shelf: H. Lefebre’s biography Diderot. I strained high to pick it off the shelf and, upon opening it, recognized Helmsley’s Ex Libris mark—it was a first American edition printed in the 1930s. I quietly put it back, took my seat on the floor, pulled my knees up, placed my arms on my lap, and let my hands hang between my legs. I wished I thought of sitting on the chair from the start.

  “Hey, hey!” I awoke from a deep sleep with her yelling and shaking me.

  “Huh?” I jumped up nervously.

  “This ain’t a place to sleep, asshole.” It was time to go.

  “Okay,” I said nervously and asked if I could use the bathroom.

  “I don’t give a shit,” she said. I went to the bathroom and locked the door. I didn’t have to do anything, but I didn’t want to leave until I absolutely had to. I sat on the toilet seat and leaned back on the tank, drifting off.

  “What the hell you doing in there?” she screamed while banging on the door.

  “Nothing, nothing,” I replied, opening the door.

  “I thought you died in the bathtub or something.”

  “No, I’m okay,” I replied, but used her idea. “Do you mind if I take a bath?”

  “You just took a shower!” she hissed. But then, more gently, “I don’t care, go ahead.” She was about to close the door, but stopped and asked, “What were you doing in here all that time?”

  “I guess I drifted off.”

  “Well, why don’t you go to sleep?”

  “I don’t have anywhere to go,” I confessed.

  “Go to bed, asshole, in there.” She led me to a room where she had made the bed earlier. I thanked her, and as soon as she left the room, I tiredly thanked the darkness, which seemed to embody a great presence, God maybe…. Sleep popped me down like
a pill, producing a remarkably fulfilling emptiness.

  “Are you hungry?” she screamed in at me. I sat up instantly. My mind raced, trying to bridge the gap between deep sleep and what seemed like an interrogation. She repeated, “Are you hungry?”

  Instinctively I said no. If I say yes, I thought, she might interpret it as me trying to make her into a maid or expecting a service from her. I was surprised to see morning light streaming in through the windows.

  “At least have coffee.”

  I got fully dressed, shoes and socks and all, and went into the kitchen, where I sat at a dinette table. She made herself a full breakfast—hash browns, eggs sunny-side up, three strips of perfectly crisp bacon, toast, and coffee. I longed for the smoothness of yolk, for the texture of salty bacon, and lightly done, buttery toasts. She chewed equinely. She might just as well had been chomping on oats and grain. When she had consumed barely a third of the plate, she tossed the meal into the garbage and then walked off into one of those rooms. I raced over to the trash can and scooped out a large splat of solidified egg white. But then I heard her coming and shoved the egg white deep between my sock and ankle, a cache to eat later.

  She walked by the room. My God, she was dressing, probably going off to work, and that meant I’d have to leave at any moment. Angela glanced in.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you?” she asked, noticing my peculiar expression as I felt the egg white slither into my instep.

  “Nothing.”

  She then marched off, cursing. I shoved a catsup bottle down the front of my pants. I took some bread and shoved it into my shirt. I saw a can of string beans on the shelf and shoved it in my pocket. I took a spatula and before Angela returned I frantically bent it so that it slid along the leg of my pants. Angela returned, fully dressed in street garb.