Weak sunlight is filtering in the window behind Victor’s head. This gives him a bit of a halo effect. The God upstairs.
“It has to do with who you are, who we are,” Victor says. His fantasy seems to include me somehow. Again, there is nothing special in that. He’s not special. A man like other men. “All of the cells in our bodies replace themselves constantly. So doesn’t that indicate the opportunities we have for change? You and I,” he says with a chin nod, “we were not always who we are now.”
He waits for a response so I agree with him. Of course, he is correct. But that doesn’t make him sane.
I have a better understanding of Victor now. I believe he is a Stage IV SIPD resident with a psychology background. A resident with brains and pull, with connections. I had better stay on his good side. And get into some clothes.
“Do you smell cheese fries?” I ask him. Victor begins to laugh. And then we are both laughing. I guess he thinks that makes us friends.
They all think that.
8.
Victor is an excellent cook. He prepares a simple meal of brown rice stir-fried with sliced vegetables, ginger, soy sauce, and garlic. He prepares black pepper tea and cheese toast.
We eat at a small pine table. The food is steaming and bountiful, like a magazine photo of the best take-out Asian food. But my appetite is small. I am distracted. I am uncomfortable being here like this in a borrowed robe. I really need to return to my office as soon as possible. The storm seems to be over, and I expect the Group meeting scheduled for tonight will not be canceled.
Victor consumes every morsel on his plate. Then he reaches across the table for mine. “You mind?” he asks, then shovels in the rest of my food without waiting for a response. I watch him eat. He eats like a person in full recovery mode.
“I’m on the far side of all that,” Victor says, as if he could read my mind. He wipes his nice lips with a paper napkin. “And once you catch up to where I’m at, we can work on things together. But you have to take a good look around you and begin to really see what is there. And what is not.”
I stand up from the table and thank him for the meal, the coffee, the rescue. Victor waves it all away. Then he stands up and looks me in the eyes. He is at least six feet tall and rugged. Victor is appealing in many ways. So I let him place his hands on my shoulders and I look right back at him.
“If you lose what you think of as your self,” Victor says slowly and quietly as if speaking to a child, “the dream becomes illogical, discontinuous. Yet the dream continues, the dream in which you are both subject and object, storyteller and characters in the story. If you lose your self to someone else, what then? Then they give you a new dream.” He grins that wolfish smile I find myself liking more and more. “Oh, we all do this to different extents, we all entrust parts of our personality to the world around us. We start to dream others’ dreams and we don’t even know we’re doing it. But if you realize that most of the information reaching you has been, how can I say this, prearranged? If you understand that what you are experiencing now is not real? Eventually you will begin to see.”
When he lets go of my shoulders I can still feel the warmth of his large hands. His mind is not in full recovery mode, that’s for sure.
A flock of monk parakeets squawk loudly as they stream by overhead. Late afternoon sun fills Victor’s apartment and the pile of clothes steams in the heat. I pick up my wet skirt, blouse, hose and drape them over one arm.
“I’ll return the robe clean and dry,” I say on my way out the front door.
“Be smart, not slick,” says Victor.
Ice drips down my spine and I shiver. His use of this simple expression strikes me as an odd coincidence. But surely, Franny was not the only person to use this particular phrase?
There is no one in the hall. All the doors are closed. I slip down the uncarpeted stairs to my office.
My door is unlocked. The office looks bleak compared to Victor’s place. An Office Depot desk and rolling chair, the butterscotch couch, a small white bathroom. Functional at best.
In the bathroom, I drape my wet clothes over the shower curtain rod and set the damp pumps in the white tub. I keep spare clothes in the bathroom closet for emergencies like this, so I change into my work uniform of straight dark skirt, simple white blouse and beige hose. I feel back in control once more.
Time for a walk. I pull my Nike walking shoes out of the bottom of the closet and put them on. Then I stand at the window behind my desk. After-storm sunshine lights up the quad. I can almost see the deepest puddles shrinking. Soon they will be the absence of puddles. The absence of the aftermath of a forgettable storm. A storm like any other storm.
I glance up at my ceiling. The galaxy of stains appears to be located in the spot where, upstairs, we had piled our wet clothing on Victor’s carpet. Where our raincoats and shoes formed a puddle. But how can that be? The stain was there when Justin was here, before we soaked the floor with our discarded clothing.
Time is passing in strange new ways.
I watch the people meandering along the sidewalks below. Stray residents and one or two employees cross and crisscross the damp and glistening quad. Everything glows pink and gold in the slant of the sinking sun.
Machinery whines in the distance. Beyond the quad, I locate the source of the drone: a tiny blue speck. Past the kiosk and the café, down the dirt drive to the entry gates, the faraway man in the blue uniform uses a chain saw. The lawn guy is cutting up some of the felled branches from the afternoon storm.
I am thinking about Victor, the way his overlapped teeth stood out white and clean in the afternoon light, the fresh lime smell of his skin, the old coin taste of his blood. His perfect dark roast coffee, the simple meal. His warm hands on my shoulders, his gaze gliding up and down my legs like a soft tongue. Your cognition is a dream, a hallucination.
Maybe so, but I should be concerned about my behavior this afternoon. It was way too personal and certain boundaries were crossed. This kind of behavior is widely regarded as unprofessional and I could easily lose my position here. Easily.
But okay, I admit it. I feel something for Victor.
You do a good job, you fuck up. It happens.
The greasy fast food smell of cheese fries wafts into the room. Ugh. I close the window and grab my keys from the cut-glass candy dish on my desk.
This time I lock the door behind me before I head down the stairs.
9.
Anders watches her come down the front drive. He likes the way she walks, rapid fire and with single-minded purpose. She stares straight ahead and Anders feels as if she is looking directly at him.
He slips behind the ficus hedge and waits until he thinks she has passed by.
She’s gone through the open gate and is heading toward the beach. Anders wants to follow her there again today, but he has too much work to do. The storm knocked down many branches and it is his job to clean up all the debris. To cut all the wood and stack it for the refuse trucks to pick up outside the main entrance. He has to accomplish this task before dark. There is not enough time to follow the woman on her walk today.
It is Wednesday, his day off. Usually on Wednesdays he is able to follow her. But today, because of the tropical storm, he must work instead.
With a sigh, Anders picks up the chain saw and turns to the oak branch before him.
Later, while he stacks up the fresh cut wood, Anders thinks about the woman. The way she was with the resident, the big guy with the stupid smile on his face. How he put his arm around her and she let him.
Anders carries the wood a few feet to the handcart. The woman lets the sick people touch her. Anders knows he could not do this. He would have to change so much to be able to do it. He would have to be her, to wear her face and body, to walk to the sea in small white sneakers, to talk to the sick people in front of a window facing east.
; Anders pushes the handcart full of cut wood toward the trailer he has hooked up to the mower. He’s not sure he would want to do these things. Then he imagines himself brushing long blonde hair in front of a full-length mirror.
He dumps the pile of wood into the bigger pile in the trailer. Tonight she goes to the Burdome Building at seven o’clock. He has to hurry and finish cutting and hauling all the branches if he wants to have time for dinner first.
Wednesday is the best day of the week.
Anders starts up the mower and drives it slowly across the grounds, towing the trailer of fresh-cut wood. The fat on his belly jiggles and shakes as he rolls across the smooth damp grass. When he passes the windows of the residents’ dining hall, he waves to the people inside. One of the dorm advisors waves back.
Anders can see that it is Joe. He likes Joe. Of all the dorm advisors, Anders likes Joe the best. Joe sits at a crowded table. He holds up a half-eaten cheeseburger and points to it. Anders laughs and continues on his way.
10.
I cross the empty street to the sidewalk on the north side. All the lawns I am passing are perfectly landscaped and obsessively manicured. Give a rich man a big empty yard and he will fool with it endlessly. He will fill it up with shrubs and annuals, trees and vines, he will fuck with it and blow money on it like it is a hot mistress. This is unhealthy for the man and for the planet.
I walk fast. When I take a good hard walk I always sleep more deeply. The deeper the sleep, the less likely I’ll have nightmares.
There is no escaping your dreams, of course. Just like there is no escaping your life. If life is just a big long dream you cannot wake up from, dreams are short little versions of that. At least waking up from dreams is an option. But it is not always so simple. Sometimes you wake up with SIPD. Sometimes you cannot wake yourself up.
I can smell the salt before I am able to hear the pounding surf. The beach reeks of exposed clam beds today, of brine and seaweed, of iodine spilled on wind-raked sand. I cross the empty two-lane highway and follow the mulch path to the public rest rooms. There is a bench there, a bench made from recycled plastic milk bottles, where I can sit to remove my sneakers. And strip off my hose.
I leave my shoes under the bench. I tuck the pantyhose in one of the sneakers and scan the shoreline. No one on the beach, not a soul as far as I can see.
I walk from the rest rooms onto the rain-pocked sand, hiking past the lifeguard station. The tall wood chair with the red-and-white cross sits empty today. The tropical wave has scared off beach-goers. The surf is rough, tall frothy waves roaring in, scraping themselves back out again. But, farther down the beach, I spot storm surfers. Four lean-bodied wetsuits, braving the thrash of the ocean. I stand and watch as the boys spring up, deftly manipulating their slippery boards. Sometimes they have control and sometimes they don’t.
If you believe the current statistics, one out of the four will end up with SIPD. He will lose interest in surfing, and his friends will abandon him. He will fade away and so will the memories of gold and pink afternoons on a windswept beach with the wild waves and the laughter of those who share his special passion. A passion for being in the natural world, for becoming a part of it.
Hundreds of quivery see-through jellyfish the size of small saucers have been tossed up by the sea. The waves are white-tipped and surly. Brown pelicans draft above me, then dive-bomb the fish. The air is so cool and clean I want to drink it. I walk and walk.
By the time I return to the lifeguard post the sun has set and the first few stars glimmer in a darkening sky. I am tired but invigorated. When I reach under the bench, my Nikes are still there.
But my panty hose is not. I search around the rest room building, check the sand, peer in a bright orange trash canister. Nothing. The stockings are gone.
I walk quickly through the increasing darkness. The night wind is picking up scattered sea grape leaves and tossing them like Frisbees. Cicadas begin their sex-driven chirping from hidden perches in the pine trees and live oaks I pass under. I imagine the many iguanas on the branches above me, and the monk parakeets, blue jays and mockingbirds. A hidden world I am unable to see. Not only because of the night before my eyes, but because I am blind to what is all around me.
Suddenly, I am walking across the quad. Like in a movie or a dream, I have fast-forwarded to the next scene. It is almost seven o’clock and I am due at the Burdome Building for Group.
I do not have time to wonder how this just happened. Or what it means.
11.
On my way to the Burdome Building, I stop at the convenience kiosk in the quad for a bottle of Diet-Water. The teenage girl behind the counter only has eyes for the tiny television screen on her phone. She does not count out my change, simply handing over the coins while managing to avoid contact with my outstretched palm. We do not speak a single word to one another.
This is how it is now. This is, I am coming to understand, the way we are choosing to survive.
I unscrew the plastic cap and drink fast as I walk the final block back to work. A big gold moon has popped up from somewhere. It leers down at me. I am not so self-absorbed tonight that I fail to recognize the autumn harvest moon. It is difficult for me to believe that this sock-it-to-me neon-yellow rock is the same moon I saw last month, that retiring ghostly globe visible only after dark.
Of course it’s the same moon, but with a different, more outrageous persona.
Before I enter the brightly-lit lobby of the Burdome, I stop to toss my empty bottle in a trash recycle bin made from recycled yogurt cups. The green can is designed to resemble a saw palmetto. Why must everything be reassembled to look like something else? I take a deep breath, and push through the heavy glass door.
The Malaise Group meets in the first floor auditorium of the Burdome Building on Wednesday nights at seven. We meet for two hours of group discussion. This schedule is supposed to make the weekly therapy meeting convenient for those members who have day jobs. However, the truth is, most members no longer do any sort of traditional work. Yet most of the Malaise Group fail to show up.
It’s not called the Malaise Group for nothing.
The coffee pot is full of fresh hot coffee and there are Oreos lounging in a perfect circle on a white enamel serving platter better suited to a generous side of roast beef. A stack of sad green plastic dinner plates towers over an abstract design of hot pink paper napkins, each neatly folded on the diagonal, arcing across the well-worn refreshment table. Sasha hovers here, her back to the door, fingers twitching as she arranges and rearranges the Diet-Sugar packets in their unbreakable plastic serving bowl.
I clear my throat and Sasha startles, the nervous marsh rabbit caught in the headlights. No one else is here, which doesn’t surprise me. We may add a few stragglers before our session ends at nine, Group members discovered loitering by their dorm advisers and forced to make an appearance here. Or we may not.
There is never much of a turnout for the Malaise Group meetings. I try not to take the low head count personally.
“Shall we get started?” I say now to Sasha. I say this every week.
We turn our backs on Sasha’s pop art arrangement of coffee and cookies and napkins, and I lead her down the carpeted aisle to the soft-lit stage. As usual, a dozen uncomfortable metal folding chairs are set up onstage in a tight circle. Sasha follows me up the narrow stairs. We choose chairs spaced far apart, facing one another. When I drag my chair a few feet closer to hers, Sasha leans so far back that she tips at a dangerous angle.
“Okay,” I say, as always. “Shall we begin?”
Sasha stares at her feet, thin paper flowers at the end of the pale stalks of her legs. Her chair teeters, her fingers wriggling on their willowy branches in the warm, slightly dusty auditorium air. She sprouts and droops, silent and empty.
After a day like today, I am having difficulty focusing on my work here tonight. And my legs are
cold. I want to tuck them under me on a puffy couch in a cozy room. I want Victor’s bathrobe soft and warm against my skin.
My mind lurches, veering down various paths. Sasha sits and stares at her wriggle of fingers, thinking her own incomprehensible thoughts.
I am wondering if it is strange that Victor speaks in Franny’s words. I am wondering if it is strange that Justin had an old photo of me. I am wondering if it is strange that Celia with her crumpled-up skin and thin clown hair has dreams similar to my own. I am wondering how I got to this point. The point where my work feels distant and hopeless, my life empty and distant. My mind races backward in time, rehashing for me how busy I kept it throughout the decades of schooling, the years of classes and clinics and study. All that time and effort, for what? So I can sit around with people who care even less than I do about what it all means? Where did I lose the path to meaning?
I do not struggle with my mind. It seems pointless. I let it ramble off, seeking its own way.
My legs shiver until the knee bones knock together. I am breathing in the dust of last Wednesday night, and all the Wednesdays before that one. The weekly Group meetings here line up in my mind’s eye. The nights on this folding chair stretch back in time to a distant pinpoint of light. To the vanishing point. I let my mind travel toward the tiny spark of light at the beginning of all that I know now.
The prisoner awakens.
“Sasha?” I prod. She stares at her fingers as if they are a psychedelic slideshow in her lap, where they flutter and weave themselves into shapes, then grip one another and collapse in a heap on her thighs. Sasha’s long black hair is stringy. It hangs in her narrow face. She rarely talks in Group. Even when the group consists of just the two of us.
Songs of the Maniacs Page 4