by Ford Collins
When Lowell began walking toward him, Norman scanned around nervously.
“Good morning, Norman.”
“Good morning, Lowell.”
“How was your weekend?”
Norman fidgeted with the latches on his messenger bag and adjusted his gloves. “Pretty low-key, thanks.”
“You alright?”
“Sure.”
“Something bothering you?”
They were nearing Monroe, and Norman looked to his right, into the parking lot where Lowell had seen… well, something on Friday. “Honestly?”
“Sure, why not.”
Norman stopped, and held Lowell by the arm to halt him as well.
“I know we’ve never been close friends, Lowell, but I thought we were friendly at least.”
“Okay.”
“Alright, I’m just going to ask: Are you losing your mind, Lowell?”
“You mean right now, here, this morning?”
“Lowell. I’m serious. Look, you’re quiet and… introspective, okay, I get that. In fact, I respect that. But what the hell was all that nonsense on Friday about the guy in the parking lot and the dancing and…”
“I thought I saw a man… defecating on the building. I was going to say something to him, so I asked you if he was still there when you walked by.”
“A guy was taking a shit on the Plum King?”
“It certainly appeared that way.”
“Well, so what? Did he pick it up and start doing the Charleston with it? What does that have to do with dancing?”
“Why do you keep bringing that up? That’s where you lose me. I recall asking you about the homeless man using the wall as a toilet, but that’s it. Nothing about dancing. Are you losing your mind, Norman?”
“No. No. Don’t do that. Don’t deflect this and try to make a joke out of what I’m saying.” Norman steadied himself and continued. “You’ve gotten further and further away from anything resembling a fully functioning member of society over the last few months, Lowell. Every time I see you, you’re deeper in whatever it is you’re receding into. You’re… you’re turning gray.”
“What?”
“You’re turning into a walking silhouette.”
“Did you say I’m ‘turning gray’? Where did you hear that, Norman?” Lowell’s eyes flared, and he clenched and unclenched his jaw repeatedly.
“Hear what? See, this is what I’m talking about. What do you mean, ‘Where did I hear it?’ I didn’t hear anything. I’m telling you that you’re pale. You’re sickly looking, Lowell. I’m saying you don’t look well.”
Lowell looked away from Norman to regain his composure. The fact that he’d lost it at all annoyed him. “I’m fine. Really, I’m fine. I appreciate the concern, but it’s misplaced.”
Norman shook his head, and they both walked on.
“I’ve got to tell you something, man. I saw you standing in front of Café Noir on Saturday. What were you doing? You looked like you just broke out of the nuthouse.”
The question startled Lowell. He hadn’t recognized anyone in the café as he stared at the Brothers sign. Did Norman see what had happened to him next? The healing wound pulsed under his hat, urging him to follow up.
“Why didn’t you come out and say something?”
“Because I thought you’d finally snapped, and I didn’t want to end up folded in half and stuffed in a foot locker in your apartment, Lowell.”
“Norman. I’m serious.”
“And I’m not? You were staring at your reflection, talking to yourself. Tell me that wouldn’t be a little off-putting for you to see someone doing that?”
“I don’t remember talking. I must have been pretty tired.”
It took every ounce of Lowell’s strength to keep himself collected.
“I couldn’t watch. It was getting painful. But I looked back out of the corner of my eye a few seconds later, and you were gone. I figured you were off to the parking garage with your imaginary pooping pal, so it wouldn’t have made a lot of sense to chase you down and get in your way.”
He couldn’t ask Norman whether he had any idea which direction he walked after he’d apparently been talking with his reflection.
It would have been too strange of a question, even after the conversation they’d had to that point.
“You’re sure it was me?”
Norman shot him a bemused look and kept moving.
“Norman, I know I’ve been acting strangely lately. I have a lot of things I’ve been working through in my head… I’ve had trouble staying focused.”
Lowell saw Norman’s expression soften as he listened.
“I want you to know that I appreciate your patience with me. They let us wear our underwear on the outside of our pants in the asylum, you know. You can’t expect a guy to adjust to the complexities of life out here this quickly without some hiccups.”
Norman shook his head and sighed. “Just no blaming it on your pet snake when you finally dismember me, alright? At least man up and take the rap for that, if that’s not too much to ask.”
“You have my word.”
“Good enough. I’ll see you later, Lowell. Take care of yourself, huh?”
“Yes I will.”
They parted at the edge of the business district. Lowell watched Norman walk off.
Just as Norman vanished, it occurred to Lowell that he’d never said a word to him—to anyone—about the parking garage or his conversation there with the defecating man.
[Twenty-Two]
Lowell was distracted for most of the morning by Norman’s mention of the parking garage.
Had he been there during that conversation? That would have been an incredible coincidence, not to mention the fact that Norman had told Lowell he’d seen him outside Café Noir. Why wouldn’t he have explicitly said that he saw him in the garage as well?
Lowell grabbed his messenger bag and phone from his desk, and walked to the mailroom to pick up a batch of morning deliveries.
He’d begun contemplating a retreat to his internal study to try and sort through the Norman issue when he heard feet shuffle up to, and stop in, the doorway behind him.
“Will you please kill me? I want to die… I do. I swear I do.”
It was Lauren. And she was a mess.
“My, aren’t we chipper today?”
“Friends don’t let friends drown themselves in alcohol and blow their eardrums to little bitty bits listening to poo-pants bands who put up concert posters with electric horse boners on them, Lowell.”
“No, no. Don’t try to pin this on me, lady. You’d started hitting the sauce well before I wandered in.”
“‘Hitting the sauce’? You really are my dad.”
“Well, Lauren, I’ve been meaning to talk with you about that…”
She held up her hand and cinched her eyelids shut. “Ew, no. Ick. Please, stop. I’m barely holding back my breakfast as it is.”
Lowell smirked and finished packing up his drop-offs for the a.m. run. It was light, only six envelopes and a small box. He figured he would be done by half past nine, giving him a solid couple of hours to sit and think.
Lauren shuffled away again, making a whining sort of moaning sound as she rounded the corner and headed back in the direction of her desk. She hadn’t noticed the wound on his head.
Lowell thought it would be suitably camouflaged once the stitches were pulled and his hair was brushed over it, and it appeared he was correct. He had to admit that Lauren may not have been the best person to test the visibility of the healing gash, considering her condition, however.
He was headed outside anyway, but before he left the mailroom he pulled his knit cap down over his head, just in case.
Two attorneys from a firm four floors up from his were on the elevator as Lowell boarded for the trip down. They smiled at him as he stepped on, and went back to their conversation. Lowell was prepping for an overdue turn of heavy contemplation, and so tuned out much of what the men were
discussing, but he did catch one of them saying a significant snowfall could be on its way to the city in the next few days.
It made sense, considering the heavy chill since the weekend. The trace that fell on Saturday would have been anticlimactic on its own after such a dramatic change had rolled in.
Lowell passed through the Central One lobby and walked out onto Main Street. By now the sun dominated the eastern horizon, and Lowell had to squint to look beyond the bridge and follow up the gentle sloping shot past Clinton.
He would eventually work his way up to his preferred meditation spot, but first needed to drop an envelope off at the federal building, another at the county clerk’s office, two at the courts in the Hall of Justice, and two at law firms on the west side of the river. The package was bound for an accounting firm in one of the high-rises that comprised the boundaries of his courtyard destination.
The sidewalks weren’t busy as Lowell wound his way from point to point, and he noticed a kind of rhythmic flow to foot and auto traffic that mesmerized him at times during the morning. He’d unwittingly integrated himself into the pulse of the city’s downtown in a manner he’d never experienced. It was unnerving once he’d realized it, but it fascinated him.
Suspending inner operations to allow only work-related functions to proceed, it seemed as though his subconscious was free to align with the various fundamental stimuli around him. He watched the streams of pedestrians move along like an army of insects, individuals splitting off from the mainline at various points to tend to their specific jobs as clarified by status, and the rest of the line adjusting accordingly to veer around the gap and close ranks. Cars lurched and rolled, bucked and stopped, with drivers only blinking, tensing, and relaxing reflexively. Lights flashed and dimmed in measured intervals.
As much as it may have captivated him at first discovery, he grew weary of the mindlessness after only a few minutes, and reverted to focusing on the ground immediately in front of him. There was something in the thoughtless march that Lowell considered almost submissive. This in turn made him more uneasy, as it began to resemble the simplistic mindset he’d always attributed to the largest part of mankind, the cult of least resistance. Painless gratification was the bane of man, he was convinced. The words the mosquito had spoken to him on her return lit in his brain: “…there is no release from the pain, Lowell.”
His body trembled, and he closed his eyes tightly until he could regain control of himself. He shifted his focus to the light blue sky as he carried on toward his first delivery, and sought something to occupy his mind until he could get to the courtyard.
He settled, unintentionally, on Lauren.
There was nothing specific. He couldn’t point to what he was thinking about in regards to her at first, but it relaxed him, and so he kept on with it. It began as the general thought of… Well, her existence. She’d surprised him by reaching out and showing concern when he was struggling to diagnose his difficulties accessing his thoughts.
He’d been embarrassed to be seen, to be caught in that state, but it had subsequently become apparent to him that if he were forced to name all those with whom he might possibly be able to share himself—and all the inner workings that entailed—Lauren would be the lone candidate.
There was something free in her way of moving and speaking when he watched her, and it pacified him.
Lowell considered that his conception of Lauren was of her as one unencumbered by knowledge of him, of how he saw his surroundings and the people in them.
He felt a weighty apprehension at the thought of fully revealing the mapping of his greater thoughts on the world to her.
He was getting ahead of himself.
Better to start small.
He preferred her with glasses on, he decided. The long strides she took while running office errands, which he just then discovered he’d been noticing for months, stirred up within him an aesthetic appreciation for her grace and controlled intensity.
Her sardonic humor was very much in line with his own, even if he rarely displayed it.
Maybe most importantly, she’d pushed Lowell to open up. And he’d responded. She’d found the key to some door in him that he’d ignored, or never knew existed.
Lowell felt a strong breeze wrap around him and chill the right side of his face and neck. He was sitting in the courtyard, with his hands in the high pockets of his pea coat. A cardboard cup of coffee steamed on the stone bench near his leg on the windward side.
He pulled his messenger bag around to his front and unclasped the front flap. The packages were gone, all seven signed delivery receipts in their place. He had no recollection of any of the drop-offs or the receptionists and clerks who had signed the slips.
Now that Lowell was there with hours to spend, he struggled to decide what to do with them. He couldn’t remember ever being granted an opportunity to recede into his chamber of solace from the outside world and not immediately following through. Sweat formed on his arms and scalp. He itched. Everything itched, even his eyes. The sweat crept into the raw edges of what little of his wound remained open and it stung.
He ignored it all. Every sensation save one. He needed to see Lauren. An urgency swelled in his throat and his pulse thumped in his ears as he leapt to his feet. He needed to tell her everything, to release every scrap of his ragged innards and let her judge him as he’d judged so many others. All of the pieces that he’d tacked down to make some sense of this city, this world, this life—
No. Ridiculous idea. Lowell was immediately disgusted with himself for considering it.
Lauren had no business peering into him, and he had no business opening the doors to her, or anyone. She couldn’t understand all the years of work, all the synthesis and calculation. He’d seen it all grow inside him over years of constant supervision and encouragement. This thing, it was perhaps even bigger than him now, he thought. The fertile soil of his mind had played host to the seeds, the ideas. He’d fed them, provided nourishment through observation and presence. He alone could continue the cultivation to finally sow his masterpiece, his most grand and comprehensive theory. It would serve to draw all of the components into one massive truth, that would in turn validate everything he was and all that he’d done.
Lowell could let no one jeopardize his work. Not even himself.
[Twenty-Three]
Lowell stayed clear of the office for most of the rest of the day.
He slipped in to gather the deliveries for his afternoon run and slipped back out without meeting anyone in the halls. He didn’t bother to misplace any of the items in the deceased partner’s mail slot, though the wall calendar to the right of the bank of boxes was marked with a tiny dot in the bottom right corner indicating it was due.
Once again, the parcels found their ways to their intended recipients with little notice or interest on Lowell’s part. He just needed to pass the time and get to neutral ground where he could carry on his true work. Someplace where he would run no risk of being recognized. Somewhere he could hide in the open and let the filth expose itself to him. He’d let himself slide and he could feel it.
Most importantly, Norman’s reference to the defecating man needed to be addressed. If there was some clue to the relationship between the two he must find it, because one or both may have been able to help him decipher…
What? Decipher what, exactly?
How could they help him find a deeper understanding of anything? Was he planning to confront them on their involvement with his brother? He couldn’t expect that they would give up a hint on that line to him, that is if they had any hint to hide to begin with.
At Lowell’s deepest point, he knew that he needed to find his brother, to speak with him. No recitation on his behalf would compel Lowell to let the matter lie. No truth could come by proxy.
Should he seek his brother out? If so, where does one look for a notion that may not wish to be found? Lowell considered what type of bait could be laid out to tempt the boy.
&
nbsp; Lowell knew it was himself. His need, and his failure to appear were enough to bring his brother back to him before. But his brother anticipated Lowell’s failure. It was forecasted to him, somehow, that Lowell would be late to the launch, and so his brother’s lagging behind to comfort Lowell was of his own volition.
There was no danger to his well-being to draw his brother out this time. Lowell had carved a solitary niche in a dark corner of the shambling mass of society that allowed him anonymity, a perch from which he could operate unfettered. He took in the crowds at play, at work, at rest, and pulled from them all he needed to help him chart out their innards like stars in the expanse of the human experience. And not just to plot out bits and traits of all types of people, but to trace over the faint lines that appeared to Lowell to connect them in a tangled landscape of nonsense, of static.
He sensed, though, that once all the designs had been laid and overlaid, he would step back, and a unifying whole would welcome him. He could not, must not, lose his passion for discovery. He could sense the majestic reveal was nearly at hand, in fact. His brother must have played some part in opening avenues he hadn’t even considered. The dream had brought them together: The Harbinger and The Chosen.
But not yet. His progress had just as quickly been stunted as it had been stimulated by the appearance of his guide. There were too many calculations left to pore over, too many connections unrealized. Lowell had more questions than satisfactory answers.
And then it struck him. Yes, Lauren may have found the key to some previously unexplored place inside him, but this was no longer the calming discovery it had been just hours before.
If there were still untouched pools to dive into within him, he couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t stumble over some crucial means of decryption or vital memory that would sacrifice the operation. She posed a threat to his work, even as she seemed to pacify him—because she seemed to pacify him. If he were to pursue her, it would be at the potential expense of his ultimate understanding.