Oh and the night, the night, when the wind full of space wears out our faces…
It had come down to the simple fact that life was harder than anyone had told him it would be. There was this pressure in the air, pressing down on everyone. It was hard to get anything done. Nobody spoke up in class, and if they did, it was some form of relatively applicable information deduced from a couple introductory paragraphs of the text. Meaning that everyone was coasting. Just doing the bare minimum. The professors had a hard time. And it was no different outside class. Everybody staring into their phones all the time. Nobody wanted to talk. You had your fake life online convincing people that you existed. It was enough. People wanted to be left alone.
His hair had gotten longer. He’d stopped shaving, and now he had this stubble that kind of looked like fresh dirt. Plus, he’d lost weight. He’d look at himself in the mirror like a farsighted person and think, Is that really me?
He’d missed a couple deadlines. His teachers sent him emails, encouraging him to get the work in before such and such a date, when they’d have to take drastic measures.
The nice thing about heroin, it stopped time. You folded into an in-between, where you could hide for a couple hours. Like if you stopped a movie and you were the main character, and all the people in the audience instantly lost interest.
He’d started having all these health issues, like he was really fucking sick, and the only thing that made him feel any better or let him forget he was feeling so bad was doing more. And that became his life. Doing more.
It didn’t seriously occur to him to stop. Distantly, maybe, in the back of his mind. Way, way back. It was kind of a preoccupation, like, this is my life now. I have this condition and I have to deal with it. And that’s pretty much all he thought about.
For some reason he stopped going to class. At first it was just going to be the one time. He’d hang out with Carmine. Or Lucia would come to his room after lunch to blow him. But his professors only annoyed him. To be honest, they seemed insincere, like their minds were elsewhere. Most of the lectures were recorded, so you could easily catch up online. In theory this made sense, but he had yet to check that out.
One morning he woke up to Lucia shaking him and slapping his face and screaming in his ear. Jesus, Theo, I thought you were dead.
A couple of days later, his parents came up to rescue him, and he took off. He didn’t want anything to do with either one of them. They weren’t in the same reality anymore. He could never make them understand how good he felt on heroin and why it wasn’t something he could give up right now. What did the talk show hosts call it—self-medicating?
Yeah, that’s what he was doing.
That cold night, he walked all the way down to Hamilton Street, at least a five-mile walk from campus, and found her at a little table in the bus station café, and she took his freezing hands and put them inside her pockets and looked up at him, straight into his eyes, and said, You found me.
By then it was nearing the end of the semester. It was a week before Christmas. They were closing the dorms. He’d gotten a notice about missing too many classes and the possibility of academic probation next semester if he didn’t fulfill the following tasks—they’d made a list.
You should go home, man, Carmine said.
Tomorrow, he told him. But they both knew he wouldn’t.
They went to Carmine’s. It was late, and the house was dark, but they had a tree in the living room with twinkly lights. They stood there, looking at it. Theo pictured his mother setting up their tree all by herself, and he felt bad. He wondered if she’d actually gone to the trouble to buy him a present and he hoped she hadn’t. But he could picture the box wrapped up under the tree with his name on it. And what had he gotten her? Nothing.
At Carmine’s, you saw crosses everywhere, over the doors, over the bed, even in the bathroom over the toilet. He said his parents were superstitious more than religious. They wanted protection. There were pictures of Jesus hanging next to family pictures, in the dining room, up the stairs, and one in Carmine’s room over the desk where he’d done his homework his whole life. Nobody in Theo’s house actually believed in God, but here was a family who had laid their trust in the Lord Jesus. Even when Carmine was snorting coke, you’d see his St. Christopher’s medal dangling over the powder. When he was high, he talked nonstop. You couldn’t shut him up. Theo didn’t like to talk when he was high; he couldn’t. That night, he lay on one of the twin beds while Carmine went on about this girl Melanie he’d started seeing and all her extraordinary qualities, her blond hair, her huge butt, so big, he said, it was like a big-assed sandwich you couldn’t get your mouth around and you had to hold, like this—he demonstrated—with both of your hands, and eat a little at a time. Theo could hear the TV in Carmine’s parents’ room next door and sirens out in the night and the dogs in the neighborhood barking like they’d bite your head off every time someone walked by, and he stared at that picture over Carmine’s desk, the one of Jesus, the long hair, the eyes, the compassionate expression, the white robe, and thought how crazy it was that this person, this single individual, had had such an impact on so many people all around the world for, like, centuries. You couldn’t make that shit up.
His mother once told him she’d given up on God. There are too many bad things, she said. But don’t take my word for it. Make up your own mind.
Theo had. He believed in science, empirical evidence. Everything else was crap.
He knew it came down to perspective and where you grew up. He and Carmine were close, but they had essential philosophical differences. Theo came from another world, a world called money. His house was a lot nicer than Carmine’s and they had all this high-end stuff. And unlike Carmine’s father, who shouted and carried on when something bothered him, Julian never raised his voice—ever. Which was almost worse, scarier. Because you never knew what he was really thinking. Julian was a quiet, intense person, deliberate in everything he did. He wasn’t a big talker, but he’d been on a debate team back in college and knew how to present an argument. You had to be sort of prepared to state your reasons for wanting something, because he could usually talk you out of it. Theo resented how his mother always seemed to need permission to do things, like even if it was just a trip to the city to walk around a museum, like she was Julian’s employee, not his wife. He found it annoying.
When his mother went back to work, doing weddings on weekends, he and Julian were alone together more and mostly hung out and watched movies. Julian had a stellar film collection. He loved foreign movies. Fellini, Godard, especially Antonioni. You didn’t just watch Antonioni, Julian liked to say. It wasn’t only what was in the frame that mattered. It was about what was just out of view. How the actors moved through the frame: into the frame, and then out of it. You were always wondering what was beyond the frame, and then the camera unhurriedly glided over to show you. You gazed at the naked shoulders of beautiful women, the sloping hills of a remote island, the dark water of the ocean, or the long shadows of the trees.
On their movie nights, they would sit on opposite ends of the sofa with a bowl of popcorn between them. Julian slouched down on the pillows and crossed his legs like a woman in his Italian loafers. He was a skinny guy, with slippery black hair and dark, unrevealing eyes, and always a shadow on his face like he couldn’t shave fast enough. One time they watched A Man and a Woman, this love story about a race-car driver and the gorgeous French woman he’s in love with, and Julian would talk about how these movies had taught him a lot about how to sell things to people, because it wasn’t really about the product when you came right down to it. Essentially you were selling this idea of a life, the possibility of having something better. That’s what people needed, he said. They needed to believe there was more.
More, Julian said, the most significant noun of the twenty-first century.
Even when you had to sell a product like Motus, you were selling a lifestyle, he told Theo. So instead of focusing on the
drug itself and what it did to you once you took it, he gave people the sense that the drug could greatly improve their lives, reinforced by the happy people in the ad doing happy things—a woman in the garden, a father playing catch with his son (something Julian had never thought to do with him), or a family sitting around a table having dinner, all this stuff happening in the background while some guy talked about the actual product and its possible horrific side effects, like vomiting and liver disease and kidney failure. The commercial convinced you that, by taking the drug, you could actually achieve happiness, not only because you could finally move your bowels but because it could help you feel in control of all these other aspects of your life. If Theo were going to shoot that commercial, he’d show some dipshit opioid addict staggering down some street, trying to find a toilet to sit on without anybody bothering him or seeing him, because he’d have to sit there for like a week, just praying something would come out.
Everybody said it was dangerous, but it didn’t feel dangerous; it just felt nice. Like really nice. And he stopped worrying. And for a couple hours he could float along. At first he thought it made him smarter. Like he had all these fucking brilliant ideas shooting into his brain like meteors. Yeah. Like a meteor shower. But after a while, a month or so, say, he was tired of the ideas, tired of thinking, and you just wanted to lie back and not think, and let it take you.
He knew every time he used, it hurt Magda, but after a while, he thought only of himself, not of his angry, disappointed mother.
There were others like him out on the street. They’d walk together in a group. It was harder to be alone. You got scared, scared out of your mind. Because you knew every time you did this stuff, you could die.
That was the song always playing in your head.
You can feel it watching you.
Death.
Just kind of snickering.
It was like somebody telling a joke about you just out of earshot, and you can’t hear the fucking punch line.
He wasn’t going to go home for Christmas. He stopped calling his mother and taking her calls, and when he’d used up all the money in his bank account, he did something stupid, he sold his phone.
He was starting to feel a little lost. Like he was actually in real trouble. Like deep.
True was the only one who cared. She’d say things that made sense, and he’d feel better. He’d feel like this was just a phase he was going through. Like pretty soon he’d be done with it and his life would go back to normal.
She talked about her past. Her parents had split when she was little, and she hadn’t seen her father since. Her mother was big and fat, like four hundred pounds. She lived upstate somewhere and owned a fried-dough truck. She does all the carnivals, she said.
I never had fried dough. Is it any good?
Yeah, it’s good. The sugar comes off on your fingertips. We used to go around leaving our fingerprints everywhere.
They were sitting on a bench in a small park in the bright, cold sunshine, and she was rolling a cigarette with her delicate fingers.
I used to work for her on the weekends. It was so hot in that damned truck. The sweat just rolled off me.
Why’d you leave?
Her boyfriend moved in. Bobby. He was a short-order cook. He had this gold tooth. He was mean, but he made good pancakes. They’d be sitting around, drinking rum and Cokes while I was trying to do my homework. I was a good student. I got all As. This one night he came into my room.
She went quiet and lit the cigarette and blew the smoke out hard. Then she looked at him with her blue eyes. He put his hand over my mouth, she said.
That’s horrible. I’m sorry that happened to you. Did you tell your mother?
She shook her head. What for? She wouldn’t have believed me. I left in the morning. I was only fifteen. Didn’t even finish high school.
What happened? Where did you go?
I came here. I hitchhiked. This nice woman picked me up. She helped me a lot. She knew about this place I could live and get my GED.
What about your mom? Did she try to find you?
No. She took a final drag of her cigarette and flicked it to the ground. I never want to see her again.
They walked with their signs under their arms. The thought of never seeing his mother again filled him with an unbearable despair. He couldn’t let that happen, wouldn’t.
True touched his arm. Hey, she said, and smiled. Sorry. I know that’s a weird story.
Don’t be sorry.
I’m trying to put it behind me.
Good. You should.
Just sometimes it makes me sad.
He looked at her and took her hand. You’ll be all right.
Will I?
He nodded, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know how a person could recover from that. There were a lot of bad people out there. Too many. They got away with terrible things.
They crossed the street and headed toward the expressway ramp.
I used to walk on stilts, she said, balancing on the narrow curb like a tightrope walker, with her arms out.
Stilts?
This old clown gave ’em to me. I’d walk on ’em, all around the trailer park. I was like a giraffe walking around the place. You’d see all these pickups parked in zigzags. You could smell everyone’s dinner cooking. You could see into everyone’s life. You could see what people were doing.
What were they doing?
Not much.
She wrote her name with a Sharpie on his hand, T-R-U-E.
Then he took the Sharpie and wrote, L-O-V-E.
But it wasn’t true love, not really. And they both knew it.
You’re a good boy, Theo, she said, and kissed him.
Once, she washed his hair. In this gas station bathroom. She used a bar of dirty soap, pushing the suds down the drain. He liked the feel of her skinny hands on his scalp. Then she made him kneel under the hand dryer, smacking around his hair like she was mad at it.
You could get free coffee at the shelter, but you could stand there for only so long before they made you leave. They’d stand out in the cold for hours. It was hard; it could eat you alive.
The hero prolongs himself, even his falling was only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth…
Those lines of Rilke’s roamed around his brain, and he saw himself as a fallen hero.
It was kind of a sad story.
He just wanted to get high. That’s pretty much all he thought about.
Sometimes the world was too much for him. Sometimes just the sun, how it pulsed and cried, or the buildings, the dark lines, the old warehouses along the river, or the layers of wind and clouds, so gray and low, waiting to release, anticipating grief. He liked to walk in the city. The streets ran on diagonals, they led to nowhere. He liked the black doorways, just a hint of light on the narrow stairs. You couldn’t ever tell what was up there.
Rye
An hour or so outside Albany he called Constance. She sounded happy to hear from him. She was going home in a few days for the holiday, she reminded him.
Have a good time, he said. How’s Simone?
She misses you. You should call her.
He hesitated; he didn’t like his assistant telling him what to do. Tell her I called, he said, and hung up.
He made it to Albany before noontime and easily found the SUNY campus, which occupied six hundred–some acres in the middle of the city. He drove around its circumference, getting his bearings. The campus was desolate, and it occurred to him that it was closed for the break. Tinseled decorations shimmied on the streetlamps. He pulled over and opened his window and looked out at the gray sky. It was colder up here, and it was starting to snow.
He took out his phone and glanced at the photo Magda had posted on her Instagram page of Theo and the girl at the Chinese takeout, Kim’s, it was called, and he googled directions. It was downtown somewhere, on Broadway. He drove off campus and turned onto Western Avenue. He meandered through narrow, haphazard streets; some
were cobblestone, flanked with row houses and older brownstones. As he neared the river, there were abandoned warehouses, condemned buildings demarcated with large red Xs, boarded-up storefronts. Kim’s was near the corner, adjacent to the elevated expressway and a few steps from a budget motel. He parked on the street and sat there for a few minutes, taking in the scenery. You could see the cars screaming by on the overpass. Under that was a wide stone tunnel through which he could see the river. But it was a waste of waterfront. There was nothing down here. Many of the surrounding buildings were very old, late seventeenth century, probably Dutch. He saw a guy standing at a traffic light at the expressway entrance ramp, holding up a cardboard sign. Not Theo.
Kim’s didn’t have any customers. It wasn’t the easiest location. It occurred to Rye that he was hungry; he hadn’t eaten anything since earlier that morning, when he’d sat across from Magda like a displaced person, determined to abandon the rest of his life, his wife, his daughter, his career, to return to their bed. This hunger he felt for her was destructive, because he knew he’d do whatever it took to get her back.
He decided to go inside and order something. A woman was standing behind the counter. Her long fingernails were painted green. The floor was dirty. He ordered lo mein. While he waited, he showed her the photograph of Theo and the girl and asked if she knew either one of them, and she nodded and said in a thick Cantonese accent, She around the corner.
Where?
Around. She gestured. Bus station.
She handed him his bag of food, and he paid and thanked her and left and got back into his truck and sat there, eating with chopsticks as the snow began to fall. When he was done, he drove around the block, passing two other kids with signs, their backpacks at their feet, and found the bus station. There were people standing out front, smoking, jumping up and down in the cold. Taxis waiting. He parked in the lot and went inside to have a look around. He used the restroom and washed his hands and walked to the rear of the building, where the gates to the buses stretched all along the corridor. On his way out, he passed the nearly empty café, where a woman with tattooed breasts was nursing her baby. He didn’t see the girl anywhere.
The Vanishing Point Page 17