Drop

by Mat Johnson

  In just a few weeks, I discovered that my apartment was not actually a space in itself, but rather a hole between the four other homes of my neighbors. Below, living behind the thrift shop on the first floor: the screaming one. Late night curses into the silence of the building. His favorite word: niggers. Two syllables that could be belched in anger or surprise or sometimes palpable awe, niggers, niggers. It was hours before dawn when the screaming came and I turned over on my stomach and sat up, my heart becoming a noticeable component beneath my shirt. A new unit of time was formed in the darkness, hijacked from dream, waiting for the next scream to come. In the isolation of my hole I dialed Alex.

  ‘What?’ she said picking up.

  ‘He’s doing it again.’

  ‘Chris, didn’t I fucking curse you out for this shit last time? Remember what I said and then hang up on yourself.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but the guy, he’s screaming again.’

  ‘It’s three-thirty in the morning.’

  ‘I know! And this guy, Alex, he’s yelling. It’s insane.’

  ‘Then go tell him to shut up.’

  ‘Hell no.’

  ‘Chris, do you even know what day it is?’ What day it was wasn’t important. I went back to sleep curled up with the butcher’s knife I borrowed from her two weeks before, dreaming of striped snakes biting the bones in my arms until I woke up and saw my elbows were gashed and painted in blood.

  Right side: the guy who lived behind my toilet. In the morning, when his girlfriend stayed over, his metal bed frame slammed chunks of plaster from the wall, for weeks making me think it was a washing machine because I didn’t know anybody boned like that any more (no slight change in rhythm, no moan, sigh, or recrimination). The last three beats slamming with deliberate finality and then gone. After that, sitting on the toilet with my ear pressed against the wall, all I could hear was the sound of Live with Regis and Kathie Lee being turned on.

  Left side: one damn song. Never the sound of a toilet flushing, of a door being shut, or even a cough. Just one damn song. Coming on about ten o’clock at night and going till midmorning. The same Hammond organ intro, giving rhythm to the melody, to the light rain of a snare drum. The same crying voice, too, begging to satisfy some need long forgotten. I could never make out the lyrics, or even identify the artist (besides the persistent suspicion that it was a Stax B-side). No one outside that room had heard that song in a long time. Sometimes it was so loud I could hear the record’s scratches. Torturing me with the hope that every time it reached its end that it would be the last time. A moment later, fingers on a Hammond started it up again.

  Above me: a rarely present owner and his always present dog, heartbroken and crying just as I was, a high whimper that would go for a few minutes until transforming into a bark until, feeling sorry for itself, it would stop. Only to break down shortly later and begin again, running tiny circles above me, enjoying the circumference of the room. Hours of nails clipping into wood with pawpads thudding behind. Lying on my mattress, staring at my ceiling, I felt sorry for it. I wanted to comfort it. I wanted to take it somewhere pretty and shoot it in the back of its furry skull. I heard its owner taking it out for a walk one night, and as soon as they were downstairs I turned off the lights and poked out the bottom corner of my window. The dog was a beige dust mop. The guy being pulled by it was older, tall with hair unfashionably large. He wore a security guard’s uniform and tennis shoes. At least he had a job. It couldn’t have been his dog. Some woman had left it to him. Across the street the beast, stopping to leave its fecal mark, looked up towards me. I ducked before it could start barking me out to its owner, name me to this place, inciting a riot from the city I was hiding from. Pulling me from my world of sleep and smoke, where I dreamed of getting off the tube at Brixton station, going up the escalator to the street beyond, turning left and walking towards my true home. The dream didn’t come every day, but enough to keep me satiated. In the best ones David was still alive and Fionna still loved me. Alex was there too: we had all escaped this and everyone was safe and smiling. Happy and riding the Victoria Line tube into South London. Each time, I looked for signs that this new return was the real one, noticing the curve of the train’s inner walls, the speed of the escalator steps, searching for any clue of authenticity. When I awoke, Margaret’s number tempted my phone. But I resisted. I wouldn’t be dialing until the call when I told her I’d be coming home. Until then, all that was needed was to roll some spliff or order food so I could lie down again. Outside Philly rumbled by, hopefully forgetting my arrival.

  Broke

  Midway through the second Philly month, all I had was fifty-eight bucks. My roll of crisp, tightly fitting, bills had degraded to a rumpled collection of soiled notes sitting on top of my television.

  ‘What happened to your money?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Well, I think that’s pretty obvious. I spent it all.’

  ‘How? You never go out your house.’

  ‘I order take-out.’

  ‘You order take-out. That’s great, Chris. Real smart, real responsible. What the hell you plan on doing now?’ From the tone of Alex’s voice, borrowing from her was not the answer.

  ‘I was thinking I could use the rest of my money to buy some Sara Lee cake mix. And some rat poison, as much as I can afford. Then I’ll bake the whole thing together into one massive chocolate tart.’

  ‘Get a job.’

  ‘I don’t want to get into the industry here. I’d much rather eat the cake.’

  ‘Get a temp job. Make some quick money. I’ll bet it won’t be anything that could tempt you to stick around. As a matter of fact, it might even make you as miserable as you seem to want to be right now.’

  ‘I don’t want to be miserable. I just want to be gone.’

  ‘Well, have you been working on getting out? You said you were going to come up with some new samples for your portfolio. How’s that going?’

  Next morning, while right-side neighbor’s bed frame slammed into my wall, I went downstairs and read his paper. The agency that listed immediate openings’ in bold caps told me to come in the following day for some tests, run through some drills, dress as if I was interviewing for a job. That night, I started getting nervous, fucking around a little first. There was all that weed, left over from the last buy, and since I would be joining the work force again it seemed appropriate that I should acknowledge the end of my obsolescence by lighting the rest of my stash afire. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no rolling papers currently on my premises, so I was forced to make due with my baby-blue toilet paper instead.

  I packed everything I could gather into one collective log and set it burning. Based on the power of the hit I took, the initiative was a raging success. The sheer force of the blow was strong enough to make me completely unaware that, in the process of ignition, I had set the entire contraption on fire, along with my hand and top lip as well. It wasn’t until I opened my eyes that I saw that the Buddha wasn’t the only thing burning, and by then I was forced to swat the stogie to the floor. Before taking my morning nap, I frugally ate the burnt remainders to make sure nothing was wasted.

  Hours later, when my alarm went off at two in the afternoon, my lip was really hurting. In the absence of a pilled pain reliever, I decided to take shots of the whisky I had left over in the fridge as I got dressed for the interview. This strategy first proved faulty when I fell asleep on the number 34 trolley and missed my stop at 22nd Street (making me a full twenty minutes late for my meeting), and continued to provide difficulties at the temp agency itself. For one thing, along with the first-degree burns I’d suffered earlier, it made the typing test very challenging. My fingertips felt like greased plums; I wasn’t sure what language was coming up on the screen but I was positive it had never been uttered before. While filling out the application, I found it nearly impossible to obey the thin little underlines that the form mandated my handwriting follow. Fortunately, though I was sure the whisky was slurring my speech dur
ing the interview itself, the red blisters covering my upper lip must have been sufficient distraction, considering that the agency actually called me the night after.

  Yes, they had work for me, maybe as soon as next Monday. A position with the electric company, had I answered phones before? Shit, didn’t I just answer this one? The secretary said, ‘Nine o’clock tomorrow morning we’ll get the drug screening out of the way and then we can get you out on assignment. Is that okay?’

  At dinner Alex asked, ‘How did it go?’ We were sitting on her couch, putting a sheet over the two cardboard boxes that was her table. I could smell the food so I was rushing, trying to get the fabric down.

  ‘It’s screwed. They wanted me to take a drug test first.’

  ‘So what, you got First Amendment issues now? You’re clean. You’ve always been clean, don’t worry about it.’ Alex brought the plates to the table. Red, steaming, smelling of hot sauce.

  ‘I’ve been smoking spliff daily since I got home.’

  ‘What? What the hell is wrong with you? Aren’t you a little old to be acting like a jackass?’

  ‘Alex, you smoke pot all the time. Parmesan?’

  ‘I don’t eat dairy.’

  ‘Yeah, but you smoke a fat joint, don’t lie. What the hell is this?’

  ‘First of all, you’re rude. Pasta.’

  ‘But what kind of stuff is this?’ I asked, holding something up with my fork.

  ‘It’s texturized vegetable protein. It tastes just like meat.’

  ‘Monkey-love, if it tasted just like meat, would I be asking? You’re weird. I love you, but I think you should know this. Ain’t no tofu allowed in the ghetto, what’s wrong with you? Tell you what I’m going to do: I’m gonna go out there, climb up a tree, kill us a squirrel, a big fat gray one, and then we’re going to eat the fucker.’

  ‘You gotta get that job, boy,’ Alex said, slurping spaghetti strings into her ‘O’ shaped mouth, getting flicks of red across her chin and neck which she didn’t notice. I reached out and wiped them off with my thumb.

  ‘Take the test,’ she told me.

  ‘Are you crazy? I’ll fail it and then they’ll arrest me and send me upstate to Holmesburg.’

  ‘They don’t arrest you for stuff like that.’

  ‘They’ll deport me.’

  ‘Insane negro, this is your home.’

  ‘They’ll take my passport, they’ll make me stay here for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Oh God, please shut up. Just stop. There’re ways to pass any test. I keep some pills in my cabinet, goldenseal. That’ll help clear you out. I’ll cut your hair down too. Sometimes they take hair samples and check those as well. When you’re done eating my food, go get my clippers from the bathroom.’

  ‘The job only pays six-thirty an hour. That’s not enough for this humiliation.’

  ‘Well, when you get paid, maybe you can put some pride on layaway.’

  Bald, clipped, and razor shaved, I walked home. The half-empty pill jar recommended two a day for two weeks to ‘properly flush the system of impurities.’ Sitting in their container, the stuff looked pretty harmless. Like ground-up lawn grass, green and fibrous, compressed into small, hard, jellybean rocks. Not something that could hurt you. No white powder, multicolored beads, painted coating, or gelatinous shells. Twenty eight pills required, thirteen and a half hours to go. I chugged the first two, swallowing them and their pickled-ass taste down. Two more every two hours. Flush my way to freedom.

  Midnight: force two past my tongue, put a jug of tap water out, set the alarm, try to fall asleep as their sourness replaced the saliva in my mouth.

  Two o’clock: warm oblivion, but the buzzer kept coming and then I remembered. I took two more pills, a swig from the water nipple, and a piss so long and loud that I was totally awake by the time I flushed it.

  Four o’clock: the ritual was repeated only out of respect to my conscious self. Too tired to get up for another piss, I reached for an empty Pepsi bottle lying among the trash that cluttered my floor. The plastic rumbled while I filled it, going from cold to hot.

  Six o’clock: the sun had returned but too soon because I needed sleep, so much more sleep. Always. Putting the piss bottle back I squeezed it too hard. Whiz splashed all over my hand. Tears from eyes. Mouth saying, ‘Damn, damn’, as I reached for a shirt to wipe my fingers down.

  Eight A.M. the bell went off. Eight-ten it went off again. Eight-twenty I got out of bed. In the bathroom mirror, my head was still bald and I splashed cold water to watch it dribble down. I spy. The only hair visible on me besides my eyebrows were the little strands poking out of my nose. I grabbed the biggest of those and pulled, looked down and saw coarse black disembodied strands between my fingers. They would never catch me.

  Nine o’clock: staring at the nurse’s closed office door, piss stinging like Drano wondering if they could take a sample from the puddle I seemed destined to make below my chair. Trying to think bad thoughts. David pouring vodka over his nappy chest and dropping a match there as he tried to get a fag started or David lighting himself with no fag in his mouth at all, screaming Chris like it meant Ayudame as the flames engulfed him. Fi at Dio’s, sitting around the kitchen table and laughing about me and my slave-descended pedigree. Right then I reminded myself to devote more of my melancholia to Fi’s abandonment in the future. I’d been neglecting that anguish. Apparently, even for a lonely man like me, the pain of getting dumped by a lover was easily overshadowed by the guilt of mortally failing a friend.

  Almost bursting, I heard the click. There was movement at the nurse’s door. But it was just another guy coming out, looking as unemployed as I was. Sitting down beside me, I could smell cologne and leather upon him. That could be part of the test: they put you in the waiting room to the point of exhaustion with a mole. Just like in Kiss of the Spider Woman. But that was stupid. That was the pee talking. I wondered at the dreads that hung like willow branches along his cheeks.

  ‘Did they cut your hair?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, confused, staring at the way the fluorescent lights shone off my dome. ‘Nurse Howard cut yours?’

  ‘Yup. She’s a rough one,’ I told him.

  The office door kicked open. She was as big as gluttony could imagine, covered in a plantation of white cotton, smiling like this wasn’t a cruel world after all. Reaching out to me, fingers of overstuffed socks.

  ‘You got to go, don’t you? You really got to go. I know that look. You wanna go now,’ Nurse Howard told me, smiling, pointing me in to her office door. ‘I know you. You went to Northeast, right? I recognize you. You used to catch the number 26 bus.’

  ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Your skin really cleared up good. Used to catch the number 26 bus, got off on Chelten. You remember me?’ She looked familiar, but she could have been my twin and I wouldn’t have known. At 400 pounds her features had become bubbles.

  The office was too small for her; there was no way she was going to fit between that desk and that wall. Where was I to piss at? At the sink left of her chair? I could do that.

  ‘You can do your business.’ Ecstatic, I started tugging on my zipper. ‘Not here, eager boy. You crazy, you know that? Open the door.’ A closet? That would be fine. But when I hit the lights it was a bathroom.

  ‘Take a cup from the dispenser, let the beginning of your stream out into the toilet and give me a sample from the rest. Try to fill half of the cup.’ Half a cup, half a gallon, I didn’t give a shit. I was already squared up in front of the bowl, reaching for myself before Nurse Howard closed the door on me. Ecstasy, the truest kind, my head bent to the right side, my eyes squinted as if witnessing the glory of the Lord, the rumble of my water hitting the porcelain pond almost loud enough to cover my groaning.

  ‘Try not to spill anything on the container, I hate that. That’s the nastiest thing about this job,’ Nurse Howard said through the door, as if she could see me. ‘So I haven’t seen you in a while. What have you been
up to? You still live in the neighborhood?’ My whiz swirled around in the cup making bubbles. I squeezed myself again and aimed back down to the bowl, letting it go till I was shaking my dick and arching my back in shivers. Finished, the plastic cup felt hot like a morning lover. I put it back on the sink, shook, zipped, flushed.

  Looking at my clean head in the mirror I thought, I got you, I got you on this. Smiling-face nurse even recognized me; that must be a sign. Reaching down for the cup again, I almost spilled it when I saw it sitting there. Something was very not right. Something was, in fact, very wrong.

  After a few minutes, I came back out of the room. I didn’t know what else to do; there was no window or back door to climb out of. Nurse Howard was grinning, coming towards me, reaching greedy for my sample. It wasn’t too late. I tried pulling away, to drop it, but her marshmallow hands grabbed it before it hit the floor.

  ‘Careful,’ she said, in a voice too loud for the room. Nurse Howard put my cup on the counter and sat back down, filling a blank label out with my name. She knew it without asking. My bladder ached from its ordeal, but my legs were getting ready to run.

  ‘You’re a fast one. That last dude was in there for an hour, listening to the tap run.’ Nurse Howard was having a good day. She looked at my cup. ‘What the hell is that?’ Her head bounced back, seeing it. Holding my product up to the light, she swirled it around a like a glass of Merlot.

  ‘Green?’ she said staring at it. ‘Will you look at that?’

  Please no. Nurse Howard’s head was thick with braids, red plastic yarn woven into them. The gum she was chewing was spearmint.

  ‘Well, look at it! I’m not going color blind here, am I?’ She wasn’t. ‘You sure this ain’t lime soda?’ Nurse Howard added, thrusting my piss over to me. It jumped in its plastic cup.