by Bill Hayes
I felt like I wanted to keep talking almost, like we’d just gotten started. I told him my name, and asked his. He said, “Abdel.”
I have a friend in San Francisco, Frish, who keeps a running list of the first names of every cab driver she’s had: Cheikh, Akhtar, Alfredo, Mati, Sufian, Manuel, Mohammed, Juan, Raphael … I find that very beautiful. I wish I’d started doing that when I moved to New York.
I paid the fare and gave him a bigger tip than I usually would. Abdel turned to me and said with all sincerity, “We will meet again.”
It was almost spooky, how he said it.
“What do you mean?”
“A ride. It happens. When it’s meant to—”
I opened the door, but sat there for another second.
“—and if you ever want to go to Casablanca, I will tell you where to go.”
“Thank you, Abdel.”
“You’re welcome, boss,” he said.
Fifth Avenue and Thirteenth
NOTES FROM A JOURNAL
8-26-12:
I, listening to Björk on my iPod;
O, reading and writing in his travel journal;
We: drinking champagne on a flight to Reykjavik.
I look over and see O making a list in his journal. He tells me he is writing out all the elements that are NOT present in the human body:
He
U
B
Be
Al
Si
Ar
Sg
Ti
V
Ni
Ga
Ge
As
Br
Kr
Rb
Sr
Y
Z
When I ask, he names each of them, following my finger as I go down the list. He interrupts himself at one point: “They like to be remembered and recited like this.”
“They?”
O nods.
He could not look more delighted, and it’s not because of the alcohol.
Listed separately, under the heading, “No or infinitesimal,” are the exceptions. He goes on to explain the difference between organic and nonorganic chemistry. I do not—and expect I never will—understand half of what he is saying.
_____________________
8-28-12:
Björk invited us to her home in Reykjavik for lunch—a remarkable afternoon; O said it best: “Everything was unexpected.”
The two met a couple of years ago when Björk asked Oliver to appear in a BBC documentary about music, but they had never spent time together socially. And in fact, O knew very little about her work up until shortly before we made this trip. I got a DVD compilation of her music videos and conducted a crash course in Björk for him. O sat on the edge of his bed, inches from the TV screen, as he needs to in order to hear properly, and watched without stirring, mesmerized especially by the visuals, for ninety minutes. Because of his face-blindness, which makes it difficult for O to recognize people not only on the street but also in movies and on TV, he’d sometimes ask, “Is that Björk?” Or, “Which one is Björk?” A swan dress one minute, robotic gear the next, her constant changing of costumes and hairstyles utterly confounded him, but he was deeply impressed by her artistry.
We pulled into the driveway at the back of Björk’s home and I saw her through the kitchen window. She looked to be in the middle of a task, concentrating. A simple hedge fenced the house. There was a child-sized table and chairs in the front yard, the setting for a tea party. We didn’t see a path, so we parted a hedge awkwardly and made our way to the front door. She answered. In my memory, she curtsied on greeting us. Of course she didn’t, but her air of modesty and respect in greeting O had that feeling. She ushered us into the dining room, where a table was set. Björk introduced us to two friends: James, who’s English, and Margarit, Icelandic, both of whom had striking red hair.
Björk’s hair was up, held by a barrette with blue feathers. She wore a simple tunic made from several different kinds of colored and patterned fabric; she may have made it herself. She wore white pants under the tunic and wedge sandals. Her face: unlined, no makeup, pretty; eyes the color of jade; lush, jet-black eyebrows, shaped like two feathers.
I walked into the kitchen, where she was preparing lunch. The wallpaper was a photo print of different women’s elaborately braided hair—the hair of goddesses. She was completely at ease, unpretentious; more than anything she seemed eager to be a good host—wanting to make us feel comfortable and, like a mama, get us fed. We chatted for a little bit. But I was too nervous to say what I would have liked to say—how much her music had meant to me, especially after Steve died.
Björk urged us to sit and eat. The chairs were carved from tree stumps. The tablecloth was embroidered with seashells. On the table: warm, salted mixed nuts in tiny dishes. Almost immediately, she brought out a steaming pan of baked trout, a salad, and a bowl of boiled potatoes—“I like it with the skins left on,” she said, almost apologetically, “don’t you?” O and I nodded.
Conversation was lively. We talked about Iceland, about Oliver’s new book, Hallucinations; about her CD, Biophilia, and her new projects. She told us that she’d recorded Biophilia (its name inspired by Oliver’s Musicophilia) in the lighthouse I’d spotted the night before when I was chasing down the sunset. Björk said she had a calendar in the kitchen with the time for the tide going in and out, so they would know when they could get to the lighthouse—and how long they would be “stuck” there while the tide was in. She laughed. “It was really, really good, because it forced me to work; I couldn’t leave if I wanted to.” She mentioned that she’d inquired about buying the lighthouse. That didn’t work out, but she thought this was for the best. “A lighthouse is for everyone.”
After eating, Björk led us from the table, through a little door, and to the stairs. These were not stairs in any conventional way. Oliver—ever the naturalist—knew exactly: “Why, these are basalt stones! This looks like a stairway carved out of a wall of basalt!” Björk nodded. Adding to this remarkable sight: The railing in the winding stairway was made of whale rib bones.
Björk smiled and helped Oliver up. “And this”—she pointed to the shimmering lamp hanging overhead, dropping into the stairwell, “actually my daughter and I made it out of mussel shells. It wasn’t supposed to be permanent, but … we like it.”
She wandered into an upper room, and we followed. There, she showed us two custom-made instruments, a celeste and what looked like a harpsichord. Both had been modified somehow through instructions from a program on her Mac. I could tell that O was completely lost as she explained how this worked. Yet it was then, right then, that I realized how much she and O were alike—fellow geniuses, incredibly, intuitively brilliant—while being at the same time such an unlikely pair of friends.
Back downstairs, Björk brought out a gooseberry pie, with berries picked from her own trees. She’d made it with her daughter the night before. “As she was the cook, of course she had to have the first piece,” she said, pointing out the missing wedge. She served it up in a nice slop—topped with fresh, plain Skyr, which has a sour bite to it—along with coffee and tea. The tea set was out of Alice in Wonderland—each cup literally half a cup, sliced in half. “I’ve learned that these are for right-handed people, these teacups,” she says, “or I learn who is left-handed by watching them try to drink from them.” She giggled.
We finished the pie. I looked at Oliver’s watch and saw that it was almost three thirty; we’d been here three hours. Oliver signed an advance copy of Hallucinations—“You will be the only person in all of Iceland with this book”—and I gave her a copy of one of mine. “For Björk, with gratitude,” I signed it.
THE WEEPING MAN
I left work one night at five fifteen and headed west on Fulton to catch the uptown 4/5 at Broadway. The sidewalk was packed thick with commuters. I felt weary and aggravated by the slow pace of the crowd. “Come on, people,” I mutt
ered under my breath, “let’s move.” Just as I said this, I noticed something not right: a young man, two or three people ahead of me, crumpling. A building caught his fall. I came to his side. He was pale; his face contorted; he clutched his arm. He was dressed in a suit, as if he had just left his office on Wall Street. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Are you sick? Do you need help?” I wondered if he was having a seizure. I felt for my cell phone in my pocket, ready to make a call.
He didn’t answer. He was Asian and, for a moment, I wondered if he didn’t speak English. I repeated myself: “Are you in pain? Do you need help?”
“No, I’m okay,” he said, and then began weeping. I looked around, not sure what to do. Passersby were watching. The young man stood and began walking slowly, still weeping all the while. I stayed by his side.
“You sure you’re okay?” I asked. “If I can do anything to help—”
He nodded, so, though reluctant, I went on my way, taking the steps down to the subway station. When I rounded the corner, I saw he was behind me. Our eyes met. I slowed my pace so he wouldn’t lose track of me in the crowd. He followed, through the turnstile and onto the platform. He looked so distraught, his face a rictus of pain. I had a bad feeling, I just did, frightened that he might do something to harm himself. He came and stood next to me; he cried quietly but didn’t speak.
Fortunately, a train arrived immediately, and I ushered him onto the car. Commuters rushed through, pushing their way in, pushing hard; you can’t believe how crowded a subway car can be at rush hour.
He grabbed hold of a pole with both hands, so tightly his knuckles went white. He began crying again. The subway car was packed so tightly that I was pressed right against him. I told him my name and asked his. “Kenneth,” he mumbled, saying it with derision.
“What’s going on, Kenneth?” I whispered.
He took a deep breath. “It’s all gone wrong!” he spit out. “My entire life.”
Had he lost his job? Lost a fortune? Gotten his heart broken? I didn’t ask. I put a light hand on his shoulder and let the train’s hum answer him.
We rode in silence for a while.
He looked up at one point. “You’re a good person,” he said brusquely. He tried to say it nicely, I could tell, but somehow it didn’t come out that way; it sounded like a mean accusation. It was actually sort of funny. I couldn’t help but smile.
“Listen,” I told him, “I have had days like the one you are having.” I told him how sometimes I used to go out to the pier at Christopher Street when it was empty, just to have a cry. “It’s hard.”
The car was packed tight yet completely quiet but for the sound of a young man in a nice suit and tie, crying. I looked around and saw alert, concerned faces—people not wanting to intrude but at the same time listening.
An Indian woman seated nearby caught my eye. She mouthed to me: Is he okay? Does he want to sit down? I asked Kenneth, but, no, he wanted to stay put. The Indian woman squeezed through and joined us. There we were, three strangers steadying ourselves on the same subway pole. Pressing up against us from all sides, it seemed, were hundreds and hundreds of subway riders, in this car, and in the next, and in the next, in both directions, like a long retaining wall that keeps a whole mountainside from sliding down.
She asked Kenneth if he had a place to go, people to be with tonight. He was going home, he answered. He had to get off at Grand Central to get the train to Yonkers. She offered to go with him. He refused her help—No, no, he said—but she insisted she would be happy to go.
I thanked her. “I have to get off at the next stop. You’ll make sure he gets home safe?”
“Absolutely.” She introduced herself to him, her voice like a song.
The subway stopped at Fourteenth Street–Union Square. I wished Kenneth well and thanked the woman again and stepped off.
A Touch-Up
NOTES FROM A JOURNAL
9-16-12:
In Brooklyn, waiting for the subway back to Manhattan at the Graham Avenue stop, I happened to see a somewhat older man—nice-looking, bald, maybe fifty-eight, fifty-nine—do a double take as a young woman walked by in a short skirt. He looked over and saw that I’d seen him seeing her. He smiled. “Do you think she knows how pretty she is?” he said to me.
She was just far enough away that she couldn’t have heard him.
I watched her, retreating with her friend; she was a knockout, at least from the back, she really was. “I’m not sure. Why don’t you ask her?”
He shook his head. “Nah, too old for her.” Pause. “I’ll tell another one that tonight.”
“A date?” He nodded, and as if in preparation for whatever he had going on later, he began doing a waltz—one-two-three, one-two-three. This was the sweetest thing to see, like that time I saw the actor on the subway practicing his lines, a rolled up script in one hand. The man kept dancing. The subway came. At the far end of the platform, the girl and her friend got into one car. Here, the waltzing man and I got into another.
Do you think she knows how pretty she is?
_____________________
9-30-12:
Why is it hardest to write when there is so much to say?
Let me rephrase: It is hardest to write when there is so much to say.
Wendy Weil, my agent, has died. She was found at her home in Connecticut on Monday; apparently, she’d had a heart attack while in bed—she was surrounded by manuscripts, I was told (“I have so much reading to catch up on,” she’d said when we spoke on Friday afternoon—we had just finalized my new book contract).
I am so sad to lose this friend, not just a friend but also a mentor. I can hear her saying so many things to me, always supportive: how she’d say, “O-kay,” a hard stress on the second syllable, drawn out, say it several times, as you told her what you wanted, maybe what you wanted answered by a publisher or editor. How when she said something like, “This is you at your very best,” lowering her eyes and looking at you dead-on through her bangs, as she did about some of my Times pieces, I knew she really meant it. How, after lunch with that editor from Simon & Schuster, we decided to walk back to her office rather than take a cab. We saw an expensive chocolate shop near Rockefeller Center—“Their chocolates are divine,” she said—so we stopped and bought five, one each for Emily, Emma, and Anne back at her office. Wendy and I ate ours as we continued walking.
_____________________
10-2-12:
This morning on a crowded subway, I spotted a young black woman dressed entirely in shades of pink: pink pants, pink ruffled blouse, pink jacket, pink ballet slippers, and pink clutch handbag. She was wearing giant round sunglasses. I thought about how Wendy enjoyed hearing stories of my subway encounters and sightings. I had my iPod on, as I always do, and was listening to a Neil Young song, his voice plangent and impossibly beautiful. I started to weep. I put on my sunglasses. I took a breath. I didn’t really want to be crying on the subway. I zeroed in again on the young woman in pink. I loved that she had dressed up in what must be her favorite color. Her lucky color. I imagined she was going to an interview for a new job. She was looking in my direction. Although I couldn’t see her eyes, I was sure they were meeting mine, tears falling. “You are going to have an amazing day,” I told her, purely through my thoughts. “You look fabulous.” The subway came to a stop. The woman in pink stood and smiled back at me as she exited.
_____________________
10-8-12:
Sunday night: attended a concert with O at St. Bart’s church: Mozart’s Requiem Mass, performed by an orchestra composed of Weill Cornell med students and doctors. One of the doctors recognized O and ushered us to some good seats. Exquisite performance. Saw Linn and Ved Mehta afterward. A rainy night.
Talking in the car on the way home: O said, listening to the Requiem he couldn’t help thinking about, in a way “picturing,” seeing, his own death and feeling “not troubled in the least—not serene, but … as if it is the right thing at the right time. And
so it will be.”
I looked over at him and nodded. I took his hand.
Back home, we reheated the salmon and vegetables we’d made the night before, set the table, opened a bottle of wine, turned on the radio.
Cleaning up the kitchen, O, washing the dishes, commented: “One feels they want to be cleaned. One feels they appreciate it.” The dishwasher wasn’t completely full, so he added already-clean coffee mugs and glasses to it, “so they have company.”
He is endearing and hilarious this way, how he invests objects such as pots and pans and the table we eat on (rushing to put a protective place mat down so as not to “hurt” it) with feelings. He views most things—and I do mean things (pots, the alarm clock, his fountain pens, the piano, and most especially, books)—as having life to them, a nature … while at the same time acknowledging that this is absurd, ridiculous.
Earlier, over dinner, O talking about his late friend Gaj—Carleton Gajdusek, a Nobel laureate in medicine—with great excitement and conviction, comparing him to Goethe, of whom it was said, O told me, “He had a nature. A nature.”
I thought I knew what O meant—O, who has always disliked being pigeonholed, typed, as simply one thing or another, doctor or writer, gay or not, Jewish or atheist, etc.—but I wasn’t completely sure and prodded him.
“A nature,” he repeated, as if that was the only way to say it. “He wasn’t this or that, fitted with so many labels, an ‘identity,’ like people today, but all aspects of him were of a piece—this is who he was, not what he was; a force of nature, I suppose.”
_____________________
10-21-12:
Finding O at his desk, hunched over a yellow pad, writing, I sat across from him. He is working on a new “little piece”—an atheist’s take on the “absurd” idea of an afterlife. He’s titled it, “Seeing God in the Third Millennium.”
I like it already, I tell him. He reads for me the many pages he has written—twelve or fifteen. I am with him, every word. It reads fluidly, authoritatively.