Trouble

by Jesse Kellerman

  He rolled over. It was three in the morning.

  The downstairs buzzer brayed again, fell silent.

  He put on his robe, went to the living room, checked the locks. Again the buzzer went on-on-off-on-on-off. I’m here it said. I’m here I’m here I’m here. A brief silence; then the pattern changed to an impatient cha-cha: on, on, on-on-on. Bz bz bz-bz-bzzzzz.

  He closed the door to his bedroom and wrapped his pillow around his head. Soon the buzzing stopped, displaced by the ringing of the phone. He disconnected it and unplugged the answering machine. He switched off his cell phone and laid in bed, working over his knuckles like a junkie.

  She’s half your size. (She shakes you like a doll.) Leave her out there. (Ignoring her baits her.) You don’t have to leave the apartment, you can stay up here. (You have to leave sometime.) She’s not going to put up a tent outside the building. (Why not?) She can’t get inside. (She can follow someone else in.) She’s persistent but harmless. (They’re not mutually exclusive.) You can call the cops. (And tell them what.) She’ll go away. (She won’t.) She’ll go away. His breathing slowed. She’ll go away. There was silence. She went away.

  She went away.

  He went to the bathroom and swallowed an Advil. He could do this. He had no reason to wig out. First he would allow a margin of, say, a half-hour. Then he would get up, collect his belongings, proceed down the fire escape—with dignity—and get a cab. He would find a cheap hotel for a few days. It would be like a vacation, a characterless room and white walls, he could get some sleep. He was not sweating. He blotted his forehead on his pillowcase. There, he wasn’t sweating at all. On Thursday he would go home for Thanksgiving, and there he could relax and make a plan. Once he wasn’t feeling so run-down. He would go to work and help people with problems much more serious than his. He felt fine. He wasn’t run-down, he was fine. He felt serene, unprecedentedly serene, gulls adrift over the Pacific serene, Carnival Cruises serene. He blotted his forehead again. It would all be taken care of as soon as he had some space, not a problem, there was a knock at the front door.

  • 21 •

  JONAH STEM.

  Jonah Stem, why won’t you answer the door?

  You’re not going to make me wait here. Are you?

  So cold.

  Perchance the changing seasons have cooled your blood.

  Where has my fondle-happy lad gone, that lad I know and love so well? That lad knows my crevices. That lad seeks my darknesses.

  He’s there, I’m sure of it. He yearns for me.

  I can feel you behind these walls. These walls are nothing. They are thin and I can tear them down to reach you. At some point, my desire shall overcome my respect for private property. And then I’m coming in.

  Let’s not let it get to that point.

  You have no reason to act like this. We’ve been heading in one direction the entire time. You can’t claim to be that surprised. You’re a bright young man.

  Oh dear. I feel so alone.

  I’ve been nurturing an idea. Do you want to know what it is? A new project for you and me to execute together. Her most ambitious work yet, sayeth the critics. A rocket of incendiary imagination, a soul-shaking geyser. The New York Times. The New Yorker. The New York Review of Books. All waving accolades, paging through thesauri for a particularly pretentious panegyrical pablum to best encapsulate our idiom. You and I, Jonah Stem, we knock em dead.

  I thought we could—

  Well.

  I’m not going to tell you while I’m standing here.

  You have to let me in. Then I’ll tell you.

  You’re going to love it.

  You’re hurting my feelings.

  At any rate I thought it would be preferable to have this conversation in person.

  Did you enjoy work today?

  You looked tired. My poor poor love. Let me give you succor. Don’t shun the one who would bind you in her arms. You are a gift and I the bow.

  Open up.

  This hallway smells. Think of me out here. Your neighbors are probably phoning the authorities as I speak.

  Dear officer, there’s a poetess on my landing.

  But I wager that, if I smiled, Mr. Policeman would let me go, and possibly try to buy me a beverage.

  Men do that all the time, Jonah Stem. Give me things. One time in the middle of Herald Square a man came up to me out of the blue. He was quite handsome, though not so handsome as you. He put a hand on my neck and whispered in my ear I bet you taste like maple syrup.

  Do you believe that? What a silly twit. I wonder what his success rate is. It must have worked at least once or twice. This is a big city.

  We went to his studio. He had Ansel Adams posters. He had a CD tower in the shape of a large S. His bathroom was tiled in black and white, and the handtowels stank of Calvin Klein. He put on some truly abysmal jazz. There must be a special store that sells music that wretched. Really, though, the sound of mediocrity.

  I sat on his papasan. Although I can’t be certain, I think he was salivating.

  His tongue was like corned beef. He spent a great deal of time kissing the area behind my knee. Some former girlfriend must have told him that that is an erogenous zone. It’s possible he read it in a men’s magazine.

  Before he could do what he intended to do, I said: By the way, Roger—I don’t think his name was Roger—Roger, by the way, I want you to know that I have syphilis.

  Isn’t that funny?

  He almost went through with it anyway.

  As a present, I left my panties in his kitchen sink. One point for feminism.

  Jonah Stem, my back is starting to hurt.

  I’m afraid I’ve offended you.

  Have I offended you?

  If so, it’s only fair to allow me to speak with you face-to-face, so that we may clear the air. I love you to death. Frankly, I find this little display of obduracy disgustingly smug. It’s presumptuous of you to believe that I don’t know you’re there.

  I see you from across the City. All I have to do is follow your glow. I could track you across the globe. If you dove into the ocean I would follow in your steamy wake.

  We should take a trip together. There are so many places I want to go, so many experiences waiting to be had. I want you to flay me on the silty banks of the Amazon. I want you to lick my wounds like fresh snow atop the high misty peaks of Mount Fuji. I want you to distort me in the halls of Versailles.

  Open the door, Jonah Stem.

  It doesn’t bother me to throw myself against it. I have a thick skull. Did I ever tell you that? When I was but a wee lass I toppled headfirst off a jungle gym. These were the days before playgrounds came with rubber padding standard. But I was fine.

  I’m getting bored out here.

  To pass the time, and to help you see it my way, I’ll tell you a story about a man named Raymond Iniguez. Raymond wasn’t much of a collaborator. He was more like a tape recorder.

  Now, far be it from me to imply that he was stupid. To be honest I have no idea how intelligent he was. I never much listened to what he said, and even had I, I would’ve been in no position to judge.

  My understanding is that he was at one time quite vital. Rumor had it he’d once been a contender to play professional baseball. Regardless, I’m sure that the old Raymond could scramble eggs, drive a car, or tell a decent joke.

  Not the Raymond I met. By the time I met him, he had the vocabulary of a child. This should help you understand why my work with him was so primitive.

  Why it remains unfinished is obvious. For that I have you to thank.

  My concern was not his intelligence or lack thereof. My concern was that ethereal quality, that unpinnable je ne sais quoi that separates the men from the angels: talent. I have a nose for people, Jonah Stem, which is how I knew about you. Raymond gave off a similar scent of promise, although not as subtle and complex as yours.

  His was thick and sugary, cloying, at times. You might even say like maple syrup.

 
; We met in one of those classes I used to give to him and his compatriots. Once a week I went to that horrid place they have the gall to call housing. I don’t want to begin to discuss my personal feeling; they coop them up like steers. Nothing could be less conducive to the repair of the psyche. Men need to release, Jonah Stem. You can identify with that, I’m sure. But that’s neither here nor there.

  Raymond fascinated me, because despite what I knew about him, he seemed satisfied and earnest. It was an act, natch, but I could not help admiring him: what a feat of trickery. To look so placid and yet be the epicenter of such rumblings.

  Do you know that he almost killed a man? Another teacher at the school where he used to work. He coached high-school baseball. Then he lost his mind and attacked another teacher at the school, breaking his arm with a bat.

  Think about that.

  People didn’t understand; they sought to ameliorate him with drugs and creature comforts. Fill him up, give him ballast, and he’ll stay plumb.

  They misjudged him. Raymond’s turmoil didn’t stem from a void, it stemmed from a surplus. He had too much life force; it burst from his eyesockets and tried the tensile strength of his skin. He was gravid, eructing; he was the Übermensch.

  The Superman.

  Like you.

  What misfortune for him, then, to be born into our normative culture.

  Raymond was profoundly unhappy, Jonah Stem, and this was why I found his cheery countenance so fascinating.

  Both of you have that same determination to be good, although yours is more willing and less knee-jerk. You are both lost. Your goodness springs from hatred, like grass from burnt soil. You don’t belong in this world. It would almost be merciful to kill you, Jonah Stem, and spare you the disappointment.

  In the difference column, let us note that he often had problems maintaining an erection, a misfortune that has never darkened your doorstep.

  Raymond and I didn’t communicate well at first. I found him uncouth and—well, I shall come right out and speak it aloud: he was stupid, Jonah Stem, stupid as soap.

  Now, that isn’t always a liability. True, Raymond never appreciated the totality of my work, thinking it all a game. But stupidity is also an emollient. He never argued, the way you do. He did whatever I commanded.

  And he was strong. He had arms like most men’s legs.

  I brought him into the modern world. No mean feat, mind you. Teaching him to type was one of the greater accomplishments of my adult life.

  Oh, we had some good times, Raymond and I. Not on the order of the times had by you and me; they lacked the intellectual verve. But enough to whet a lady’s appetite.

  He helped drag my ideas out of the laboratory and into the big bad streets. As you saw on the tape, he was hardly my first collaborator. Those others, the disembodied hands you saw—niggly prigs, to a man. Too cerebral. Always wanting to talk.

  Raymond was ready for action.

  Parenthetically, love, I add that you are the perfect blend of bookish and brutish. I feel a fool never having sought out a doctor before; you lot are familiar with the body, and educated as to its limits. What luck: of all doctors, I found you.

  Your arrival confused him. While I’d warned of the possibility that we could be misunderstood, when it came down to it, he couldn’t break character.

  I didn’t know what to make of you, either. At first I thought to call the whole thing off. I didn’t want you to be hurt. So messy. But you got going, I couldn’t stop you. It was gorgeosity. One of art’s glories is that no amount of meticulousness can best the impulsive gesture. You are a creator of the highest order; your instincts, unerring.

  Pain is spectacular, Jonah Stem, in the sense of spectacle, drawing the eye. Properly done, it’s as transformative and cathartic for the performer as for the audience. Think of all our world religions.

  The only thing worth watching is the suffering of others. Depending on how close the observer is, the result is either comedy or tragedy.

  Watching you and Raymond was a bit of both.

  I’m getting tired.

  I think I’m going to leave now, Jonah Stem.

  I’ll see you very soon.

  • 22 •

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2004.

  INPATIENT PSYCHIATRIC SERVICE, WEEK THREE.

  “OY, KIDDO. OY.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.” He was supposed to be in a seminar on tardive dyskinesia; instead, he was in a room cluttered with Nerfs and paperbacks, standing by the window, gazing out over the Metro North rails where they came aboveground. In two days, he planned to be on one of those trains.

  He said, “She’s written me two dozen letters in the last week. And that’s not even close to the…the number of phone calls.”

  “Has she otherwise threatened you? Bodily harm, et cetera.”

  “As in, ‘I’m going to blow up your building’?”

  “Anything at all.”

  “Not—not exactly in so many words.”

  “Did she hurt you?” Belzer asked. “When she tackled you?”

  “…no. It wasn’t her who—” Jonah shifted the phone to his other ear. “She didn’t exactly tackle me.”

  “Did she exactly do anything?”

  “She—there were these guys—”

  “She has guys with her.”

  “They were more like—no.” Raking a hand through his hair. “I’m not hurt.”

  “Okay,” Belzer said. “Lemme get this straight. She calls. She writes. She follows you around.”

  “And breaks into my building.”

  “Now wait a second.”

  “She was there, she stood there for an hour.”

  “All right, but we’ve got no way of demonstrating that.”

  “If they came and, and, took fingerprints—”

  “Kiddo, you ask the cops that and they’re going to laugh at you.”

  “That’s a serious crime. Breaking and entering?”

  “If if if. Your real problem’ll be convincing them to come over in the first place.”

  Although he had had much the same thought, hearing it confirmed was like a hammer to the kneecap. “Isn’t there a law against—”

  “Against being annoying? There’s harassment statutes, and stalking statutes, but they’re broad and mostly for when there’s more serious stuff going on.”

  “This is serious stuff.”

  “Kiddo—”

  “Can’t we get a restraining order?”

  “That’s not what they’re used for. They’re for people on notice, under arrest, a summons. The cops don’t go around making people be nice. Tell her to get lost.”

  “I did.” Jonah breathed through his teeth. “Why are you so averse to me calling the police.”

  “You called to ask my advice—I’m glad you did—and I’m giving it to you. I’m not averse to calling them, per se, but I want you to remember that we’re still in the process of dealing with a lawsuit to which this woman is not irrelevant. She’s not a dealbreaker, but if we can keep her on our good side—”

  “You’re shitting me,” Jonah said.

  “I’m imagining a cataclysm. Not that you should be concerned, but we have to be prepared. What could happen, let’s think: Medina gets her to retract. He could have her say something like, ‘I was scared, I didn’t want to implicate him, I wasn’t thinking, but ya know what? Now that I think about it, prolly he wasn’t in danger. My imagination ran wild.’ They could make anything up. The guy is a liar. He could promise her a cut of the winnings. Who the hell knows. Not that it should make a difference, let me stress, because I don’t believe anyone would buy it. But it would make me happier if she wasn’t out to get you. Golly, kiddo, what’ve you gotten yourself into?”

  Jonah started to object to that phrasing but faltered. He had called Belzer intending to tell him about the DVD; but he no longer knew what that would achieve. “Last night I barricaded myself in my apartment.”

  “Jesus. Jonah, are you nuts
?”

  “She’s scaring the shit out of me.”

  There was a silence.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” Belzer asked.

  Down the hall a door opened, and two residents emerged, laughing. One of them said New meaning to the phrase double-blind… Jonah waited until the squeak of their soles faded, then said:

  “I slept with her.”

  “You what? Why did you do that?”

  “She started—showing up. We—it happened. I know it was a bad idea—”

  “No kidding it was a bad idea.”

  “I know, but it’s already happened.”

  “This is…” Belzer paused. “I don’t know what this is.”

  “All the other stuff happened after I’d told her I didn’t want to see her anymore. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, it was personal.”

  “Oy.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oy…Well, what can I say. It’s a free country.”

  “If I thought it would help to call her, I’d do it in a second. It won’t. First of all, I tried telling her, in person. And second, I don’t have her phone number—”

  “Look it up.”

  “She’s unlisted. I don’t have her address. I don’t have anything.”

  “There I may be able to help you,” said Belzer. “She gave a statement to the police. Lemme see what I can dig up. Meantime steer clear of her. Next time she shows or does anything bizarre, call nine-one-one. If you get lucky and they do decide to bust her on harassment, they’ll put out a TOP. Temporary Order of Protection. Then if she violates that, that’s criminal contempt, which is a felony.” He sneezed. “Although—look. It’s still only a piece of paper.”

  Jonah said nothing.

  “Have we told Mom and Dad?”