Amongst the Gadflies

by Ford Collins

  Thick curtains in Lowell’s bedroom kept all but the stealthiest bits of sunlight out of his consciousness. The few that eventually made it through were enough to tease him awake. He forgot, for the briefest of moments, that there was anything amiss with him at all, but his too-quick elevation to an upright position dashed that.

  The pain was incredible, but not what he’d felt before he fell to sleep. He had no idea what time it was. He had no clue what day it was, for that matter. He rubbed his forehead absently as he walked to the window.

  Lifting back the edge of the curtain, Lowell could see the lot was full. So it was still Sunday, and judging by the sun it was before noon.

  His fever had broken, and the sweat had dried.

  He peeled off his crusted clothes and wandered to the bathroom to shower.

  The odor of vomit was overpowering. Lowell pulled the largest drag of breath he could muster and spun the sink’s hot water knob to full rotation. Using his hands, he scraped and pushed the rankness down the drain, scalding himself in the process. A sour cloud of stale breath exited his lungs in a rush as he completed the task, and he ran a wad of toilet paper over the basin and faucet to dry it and nab any straggling bits of bile or food, then dropped it in the trash and started the shower.

  Lowell avoided wetting the back of his head as best he could. The few drops that did fall on the area were molten lava. He knew he’d have to deal with cleaning it at some point to avoid further infection.

  After drying off and partially dressing, Lowell brought a handful of paper towels and a bottle of iodine from the kitchen, and sat on the edge of the bathtub.

  He blinked hard, exhaled deeply, and held the folded mass of paper towel, doused with the antiseptic, to his skull.

  White light shot across his brain and blinded him.

  The muscles of his neck, chest, and arms felt as though they had detached from his bones and burst through the skin.

  His free hand swung for anything to hold, and locked onto a towel rack, which groaned, snapped from its wall anchors, and clanged to the tiles. Fingers scrambled to find the small wooden stool next to the toilet, and gripped one of its legs so tightly the knuckles creaked and popped. He held on until the trial ended.

  Once the sharpest pain had subsided, Lowell rose from the edge of the bathtub and walked to his bedroom. He glanced out the window to see the sun just beyond the midway point in the sky, then opened his closet.

  He dressed and moved back to the living room, glancing as he passed by the table at the now dried, deep crimson envelope lying unmoved. It stared back at him.

  Lowell put on his coat and boots, delicately pulled a knit watchman’s cap down to just over the tops of his ears, and left the apartment.

  The day was icy and dense on his face, sliding over his cheeks, and chilling his lips and teeth with every intake of breath. The hairs in his nostrils froze together immediately. The wound was calmed by the cold, even under his cap.

  It was the most alert he’d felt since the previous morning.

  The cold had also emptied Monroe Avenue of most of the urchins and drifters, Lowell discovered after turning onto the thoroughfare from Oxford.

  Every line and color was crisp. Barren sidewalks on either side of the roadway seemed like mile-long ladders laid down for him to climb. He stepped on the first wrung and set a steady pace for himself. His fingers dug into the deepest corners of the pea-coat’s high pockets. The hairs on his legs stood, electrified by the to-and-fro shuffle of his pants across them in the crackling dryness.

  He stopped in a bagel shop a few blocks down, and ate his first food since Friday. He’d gone hungry for so long by then that he couldn’t feel the pangs any longer. The meal wasn’t much, but he calculated it would be enough to keep him moving for the next few hours.

  Stepping out of the shop and back onto Monroe, Lowell toyed with finding a place to sit and play audience to the rabble, as he hadn’t had a chance to partake in that pastime for an uncomfortably long time. It was true he’d chosen to abstain from observing in the time from the park to the café, but by Sunday it had been too long. He was an addict, he admitted willingly, in need of his fix.

  Circumstances had conspired to keep him from doing that which he felt most compelled, and most equipped, to do. Now, weather worked against him by forcing the streams of wanderers to huddle indoors, hiding away from the strongest hints of the upcoming winter to that late point of the year.

  Lowell turned in the direction he’d started from, walked back over Goodman Street, and stood on the corner.

  A twinge from the back of his head set his mind to consider a trip to a hospital to have the wound formally treated. He couldn’t have cared less whether it healed and left a mangled ridge of scar tissue. It would be at least partially hidden by his hair. But the concern over infection was real, and he wasn’t sold on his own skill as a battlefield surgeon. His closest option was Southland Hospital, a nearly two-mile walk away.

  Avoiding having to reason out his next play immediately, he crossed Monroe and continued down Goodman, walking in the general direction of Southland.

  Sections of this quarter of the city had undergone, or were undergoing, what the city council had called “reclamation.” The main corridors had been resurfaced, adding a shine to the consecutive facades of convenience stores and coffee houses and pharmacies.

  The rankness of poverty and apathy lingered unmistakably nearby, though. Not all of the glowing facelifts hung from new and improved businesses. Adult movie shops dotted the lineup like rotten teeth capped with golden crowns. Floors within the laundry halls and liquor stores were as vile as ever, regardless of the neon signage now ruling the windows out front. Garbage spilled over from abandoned cans emblazoned with the city’s stylized flower logo on street corners, and migrated, airborne, into the branches of trees and bushes in their vicinities.

  Breezes passed through the streets and drifted down side passages, impregnated by the putrid garlands, and became an ingredient in every breath taken in by passers-by.

  The long-term neighborhood inmates acclimated to the stink, as someone with chronic body odor no longer notices the ripe perfume that makes others’ eyes water.

  From Monroe to the bridge over I-490, Goodman Street was a muddle of houses. Some had seen better times to be sure, but clung to respectability through the energy and initiative of owners intent on riding the wave of gentrification to higher property values and a healthy payoff for their real estate.

  Other homes were ramshackle beasts staggering to their wheezing ends stripped of their paint and their class.

  These were the type decorated with used diapers and condoms, plastic bags, fast food packaging, and cigarette butts wedged into and scattered around splintered spindles of porch rails, and fractured, crooked steps. Windows were cracked, held together with duct tape, covered with garbage bags and heavy-duty staples. Some had been tattooed with graffiti. Some were abandoned. A few housed squatters, bunched together and burning wood torn from the walls and floors to keep warm like rats huddled in their nests.

  Lowell crossed over I-490, stalling for ten minutes to watch cars roar under, glittering in the afternoon sun.

  He avoided cars when possible, and only rode the bus to work when the weather made walking difficult. He’d never held a drivers license or even a permit. He had no interest in missing out on the scenes of the city that could only be frozen and savored at close proximity.

  His gift for blending into the scenery would have been squandered if not put to use in the field.

  Lowell turned from the traffic blurring below, and walked on.

  He was within a half mile of Southland once he got to the corner of Goodman and Clinton Avenue. Across Clinton, on the southern corner of the intersection, was the Sunrise Cinema House, a second-run and indie theater that Lowell occasionally visited.

  He could see from where he stood that nothing was playing that he had any interest in sitting through.

  A bit of sle
ep sounded like a much more pleasant option than continuing on to the hospital, though.

  His stomach knotted at the thought of waiting in the interminable fluorescent light for what could amount to hours.

  His skin crawled imagining having to sit in the midst of all the decomposing flesh of scum awaiting their next doses of morphine and oxycodone, and cretins hoping doctors won’t ask questions while setting girlfriends’ or wives’ or children’s broken limbs under bruises oddly similar to fists in size and shape.

  Once inside the theater, Lowell asked the young man in the booth to surprise him with a ticket to a random movie. The seller looked over his paperback, wore a momentary expression of agony, then shrugged. “There’s only one matinee, so it won’t be much of a mystery for you, I’m afraid. Sorry, but do enjoy the show.”

  Lowell took his ticket without another word, sat in the back of the empty theater, and fell to sleep.

  [Eighteen]

  The film was back in the canister for twenty minutes when Lowell awoke, still in his seat, still with his head drooping down, chin to chest.

  “It really was kind of a turd, wasn’t it?” The ticket seller, who also happened to be the concession stand cashier and projectionist, sat in the end seat of the row directly across the aisle from Lowell. The man’s legs were crossed, and he leaned his chin on the palm of his left hand, with his left elbow on the threadbare armrest.

  Lowell rolled his neck around to stretch numbed muscles. His lips had dried as he snored loudly during the movie, and his upper lip had split up the center inside his mouth. It stung from his saliva.

  “What time is it?”

  “Ohhh, let’s see…” The ticket seller looked leisurely down at his watch. “Five minutes to four. Got a hot date?”

  “No.”

  “Frankly I’m shocked. Charismatic guy like you?”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Are you trying to seduce me?”

  Lowell stood. The ticket seller dropped his hand from beneath his chin, and motioned for Lowell to stop.

  “Sorry. I’m just having a little fun with you. I’m done. Promise.” He rose from his seat and beckoned to Lowell to follow as he ducked through the curtains into the lobby. “I get bored. I get sarcastic. It happens.”

  “How is this place still open? Is it always this empty?”

  “Mmm, no. Every few weeks they trot out the ‘cult classics’ or throw a party for Kazakhstani Heritage Month or some such thing. That always gets the fruits and nuts out of the burbs to sprinkle cash around and make believe they enjoy each others’ company.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  “Doesn’t it just?” The ticket seller stood on his toes and balled his hands together in mock ecstasy.

  “I should probably go get my head examined now.”

  “Damn it, Ken. Laid it on too thick… Again.”

  He slapped his left temple in a series of short, light, open-handed smacks, then took a more serious expression and looked back at Lowell. “Wait, because of me or the movie?”

  “Because of this.” Lowell removed his cap, and turned his head to the left and down.

  “Oh my god. What happened to you?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You have no idea how you split the back of your head open. That’s what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I’m saying, yes. I have no idea.”

  “Who stitched you up? It looks like you threw a needle at Stevie Wonder and told him to have at it.”

  “Thank you. I stitched it myself.”

  “Oh, no. Are you one of those weirdos that jams thumb tacks and glass and buttons into your skin to get your happies? Please tell me you don’t do that.”

  “I have an intense dislike of hospitals and distrust of medical professionals in general.”

  “You’re, um… You’re not much of a social animal, hmm?”

  Lowell planted his cap back in place and glanced to the door. Ken followed Lowell’s eyes and nodded. “Get along back into the wilderness, lone wolf. I’ve held you back long enough. Just do me a favor, huh?”

  Lowell looked back at him and cocked his head clockwise slightly.

  Ken stepped close to him and placed a hand on Lowell’s shoulder.

  “Keep your head together long enough to be sure that losing it’s what you really want.” He leaned in and kissed Lowell gently on the strip of exposed forehead, and disappeared through the curtains into the theater.

  The sun was dropping under the city’s western edge, and the evening air swirled into a breeze that cut through Lowell to the bone as he walked through the theater’s door. He tucked himself more tightly into his coat, buried his hands in the pockets, and set out toward Monroe Avenue, away from Southland Hospital.

  [Nineteen]

  Lowell’s father was a somber man with no interest in being close to his wife or son.

  He abandoned his family when Lowell was eight years old, and dropped dead of an aneurysm seven months later in a small, dimly lit apartment near the house he’d left his wife and Lowell behind in.

  In fact, the apartment was two doors down from the house, though neither wife nor son had any clue the father lived and died so close-by until they read a police blotter blurb about him while sitting together at their dinner table three days after the body was found and removed.

  Lowell’s mother was a quiet, grayish woman who never seemed to have an opinion on anything. She didn’t have a sense of humor to speak of, either, and didn’t react outwardly to her husband leaving her or to the news of his subsequent death.

  She left for Maine to live with her sister after Lowell left home for college, and Lowell lost contact with her after that.

  Lowell’s childhood was ordinary and American.

  He attempted to take part in organized sports between the ages of eight and ten, but was uncoordinated and unfocused. His mother went with him to buy a baseball glove the day before his initial practice. Neither knew anything about how to fit or break-in sporting equipment, so they grabbed the first glove they saw.

  It was much too big for Lowell, and too stiff for him to properly close his hand around a ball. A toss to him from a teammate skipped off the leather heel and crashed into his nose and cheek, knocking him unconscious for about fifteen seconds, giving him a nosebleed, and leaving a nasty bruise up and down the right side of his face. By the next day, he wore an impressive shiner.

  He never went to a baseball practice again, and his mother didn’t push him on it.

  Lowell had a more fruitful run with a soccer team, playing for just shy of two seasons as a sweeper. He exhibited moderate skill nurtured from active participation in practices, though he had little natural aptitude for positioning or anticipation that would have given him a bit more of an edge on the pitch.

  He never developed a taste for competition in the sense that was necessary for team athletic success. There was no instinct to cooperate in common endeavors. He was more interested in studying the strengths and weaknesses of other participants. Especially the coaches—the leaders and planners who beat the drums the followers marched to.

  Three quarters through his second season, Lowell decided he’d had enough of playing, as he couldn’t watch those around him without completely neglecting his defensive duties to the team. Blatant failure called attention to him, which in turn made it even more difficult to make prolonged observations.

  Near the end of the ninth match, he brushed against an attacking forward from the other team, and fell to the grass in a heap, clutching his knees.

  He was helped to the bench by his coach and assistant coach, who let him hold the clipboard with the team’s roster and diagrams of set plays on it in hopes that Lowell wouldn’t go home to his mother severely injured, and possibly provoke her to file a lawsuit against the league and, specifically, his coaches.

  Lowell’s mother never attended the matches, and he never told her about the incident. He wasn’t injured in the least. He’d simulated the ma
lady to get exactly what he’d ended up with: front-row seats, literally, to his coaches’ weekly performances.

  He ended that season disappointed to learn that neither man was particularly masterful as a leader, an orator, or even as a coach. But he’d taken away something more valuable than anything he’d learned to that point in his life: As long as people get what they want from you, they’re willing to be deceived.

  This knowledge had allowed him to view nearly anyone he wished, in nearly any situation or setting, without being challenged on his presence. Most times, his existence never registered with his subjects.

  Those who interested him the most were the type who offended as a means of repeatedly reasserting positions of dominance in some form or another. But what good was that sort of behavior if there was no one to record it? Each offender needed an audience to validate his efforts and affirm his status. This was the service that Lowell provided. In turn, each donated his brain to Lowell’s science.

  To Lowell’s thinking, it was an exceptionally efficient symbiotic relationship.

  He’d never questioned his own lack of need for recognition or approval. Likely it stemmed from not having any figure of authority hovering overhead in his home, on the athletic field, or at school.

  His performance only had to satisfy him, and this relieved internal pressure to perform up to any arbitrary sets of expectations. It also freed his sense of self-importance to swell unimpeded, and though he considered himself to be impartial in his judgments of others, there was no mechanism within him to gauge whether the weighing platform on his side of the scales hung fairly balanced in any given case.

  In theory, Lowell had done his best to remove any agenda from his hypotheses and testing. In practice, his life sometimes bled through and biased judgments. He acknowledged this when he could, sometimes catching inconsistencies in his reasoning and investigations. He would then recall applicable instances that were specific to what or who he was studying, and attempt to find some compromise to make that rule acceptable for use going forward.