No Sleep till Wonderland

by Paul Tremblay

  Me and the humidity are going to duke it out to see who will be the bigger wet blanket tonight. I loosen my tie, unbutton my cuffs, and roll the sleeves to my elbows. I say, “Do we keep passing your fellow anarchists? Did you miss a meeting tonight?”

  He laughs. It’s big and fake, a show laugh. “Anarchists don’t wave, my good man. They give each other the finger. Don’t give out our secret handshake, now.”

  I limp and struggle to keep up with him. My gears aren’t fitting together right. Hard breaths leak out, and my muffler and exhaust system are shot. So I light a cigarette. Gus glides gracefully over the pavement, like he’s spent his prime years rigorously training how to walk. Another reason to despise my new drinking buddy.

  We pass the Lithuanian Club, and its never-ending sign crawls along the brick in yellow letters, reading: SOUTH BOSTON LITHUANIAN CITIZENS ASSOCIATION. I point to it and say, “I might be able to get you in the Lit Club if you want.” I say it with spite. I say it to tweak him, although I have no reason to do so.

  Gus stops and adjusts his hat. It’s a good move. He says, “Doth I offend you somehow, Mark? Look, man, you don’t have to come out for a drink if you don’t want to. I’ll shed no tears, and my heart will go on.”

  He’s right. I don’t have to, but I want to, even if I’m not acting like it. I’m so complex. I say, “Don’t mind me. I don’t get out much, and walking makes me cranky and tired.”

  “I understand. If you don’t feel up to it, we can do it again some other time, maybe next week.”

  He doesn’t understand, but I’m not going to argue the point. I say, “I’m always tired.” I offer him a cigarette, and he takes two out of the pack, one for his mouth and one behind his ear. He’s earned it.

  He lights up, points at the Lit Club, then says, “I’m already a member. I’m actually part Lithuanian.”

  I won’t call his bluff, if it is a bluff. I say, “Which part?”

  “We’re going to get along fine.” He pats me on the shoulder. Way to go, sport.

  Not crazy about the physical contact. He’s too easy with it. Not crazy about everything. It has been too many years since my friends and roommates fled the apartment and the narcoleptic me, and seemingly longer since anyone other than Ellen has willingly made me, the self-styled narcoleptic monk, a social call. I can admit I’m drowning-man desperate for some companionship, even the most fleeting and temporary. I know, a real breakthrough. If only Dr. Who could see me now.

  We traverse the remainder of West Broadway without further incident. He talks about being a kid and his family coming up from Hull once a month to go to St. Peter’s, a Lithuanian Catholic church. I sweat through my shirt and into my black necktie.

  At the corner of West Broadway and Dorchester Street is the brownstone where I live and work. I make a show of checking the front door, to see if it’s locked. The window with my stenciled name and job description rattles in the frame.

  Gus steps back to the edge of the sidewalk, looks the building up and down like he wants to ask it to dance, and says, “Nice digs.”

  I shrug. I don’t take compliments well. Besides, it’s Ellen’s brownstone, not mine.

  “Did you have an accident up there?” Gus points above, presumably to the stubborn soot stains on the bricks around the second-floor windows.

  “Fire did a couple of laps around the apartment. Hazards of my thrilling glamourrama job.”

  “You sure you weren’t just smoking in bed or something?” He takes the shot at me and combines it with a smile. Fair enough, and he pulls it off with the charm I don’t have.

  I say, “I’m never sure.”

  We cross Broadway and turn left onto Dorchester. I know where we’re going, but I don’t think I’ll like it. Two blocks, then left onto West Third Street, and we’re here. Here is a bar called the Abbey, which is as run-down as its reputation. Off the beaten Broadway path, the Abbey is stuck between abandoned or failing industrial buildings and a congested residential section of Southie. The two-and three-family homes are on the wrong side of Dorchester Street. They can see East Broadway and the houses and brownstones that have become high-rent apartments or high-priced condos, but they’re not quite there.

  The Abbey’s front bay window runs almost the full length of the bar. The window is tinted black with only a neon Guinness sign peeking through, and it sits inside a weather-beaten wooden frame that could use a coat or three of stain. There’s a guy sitting on a bar stool next to the front door. He’s tall, thin, wearing a white sleeveless undershirt and baggy black shorts. His tattooed arms are wrapped around one of his propped-up legs. He’s a coiled snake, and he doesn’t like the look of me. No one does. He nods at Gus and says, “Who’s this you bringin’ in here?”

  Gus’s voice goes performance loud. A bad actor reading worse lines, he says, “Mark, this is the ever-charming Eddie Ryan: bouncer extraordinaire, raconteur…”

  I hold out my paw. Eddie reluctantly unfolds an arm and takes my hand like it’s a rock he’s going to use at a stoning. He says, “I don’t want no fuckin’ pretend cop in my bar.”

  Always nice to be recognized by the little people. I say, “And I don’t like people with two first names.”

  Gus laughs even though we all know this isn’t a joke. “Come now, Eddie. Mark’s not a pretend cop. He doesn’t even have any handcuffs, and he’s not working right now. Relax.”

  “I know what he is.” Eddie rubs his buzz cut and rolls his shoulders, a boxer getting ready in his corner. I’d be intimidated if it wasn’t so typical. He points a finger at me and says, “No snooping around or buggin’ the customers with your shit, all right, or I’ll throw your ugly ass to the curb.”

  I’d love to keep the witty repartee going, but I keep my tongue in a bear hug. I guess this means I’m serious about drinking with Gus, or at least serious about drinking.

  Eddie opens the door with one arm. His tough-guy routine was not quite answer-me-these-questions-three, but we’re in.

  It’s night inside the bar, with the overhead lamps and bar lights shirking their illuminating duties. There’s a moldy pool table in one corner, a dartboard with no players, and some wooden tables and chairs that look like black skeletons. The place is half full, which is to say it’s half empty. The patrons at the bar sit huddled over their drinks, protecting them. A small group stands in a dark corner, laughing loudly and too loose with their spilling glasses. It’s a place for small-timers, their small deals, and their smaller dreams. I feel right at home.

  Gus and I claim two stools at the bar. He orders beers, and I add a whiskey kicker. The bartender is dressed like Eddie but is happier about it.

  I say, “Do I get to meet any more of your charming friends?”

  Gus smiles and waves me off. “Eddie’s all right. He’s just, shall we say, territorial. A dog barking behind a fence, but once you’re inside he’s all cuddles.”

  There’s more to it than that, and conclusions about Eddie, Gus, and the other side of the law aside, I’m going to let it all go, and dive into a couple of rounds and see if I sink or float. I say, “I’m not going to let him lick my face.”

  “I’d say that’s wise. You might catch something.”

  We drink. He talks. I pretend that I do this sort of thing all the time, that a guy like me always goes to a place like this. Gus tells me that he’s a bartender here a few nights a week and a bike messenger during the day. He shows me some scrapes and scars from pavement and automotive metal. I’ll drink to that, and so we do. Gus keeps talking. He’s spent two thousand dollars on tattoos, drinks scotch only at home, had a bout with Lyme disease a few years ago, got the tick bite while biking in some local state park. There’s an overflow of information, and I’m not sure what to say, how to respond, how to act, how to be. This shouldn’t be as hard as it is.

  Full glasses replace the empty ones, and I don’t remember making the empties. I’m winking on and off like a strobe light. Don’t know if Gus can tell. His words and phras
es aren’t fitting together. I can nod my head and add the occasional commiserative chuckle in my sleep. I drink too fast and too much. My head slows down, gets heavy, fills with buzz and murk and anxiety, a stew that’ll just about guarantee that I shut down. I try to focus on my surroundings, but there is no bar. There’s no one else here. We’re a two-man play. There’s a spotlight on me and Gus, and everything else is black.

  Gus hits me with questions. My turn to talk. I open my mouth and words sputter out like butterflies; they flitter around, so fragile. What am I saying? I might be talking about Ellen. Gus says he wants to help. I might be talking about my dead father, my dead best friend, or my dying business; everything is dying. Gus says he wants to help me. I might be talking about Dr. Who, the Red Sox, or the van accident that left me forever mangled and broken. Gus says he wants to help me out. I might be talking about how after my big case broke I thought everything would be better and easier for me, and it was for a little while, but then it wasn’t, and nothing gets easier because each day stacks on top of the one before it, building a tower of days that will lean and fall eventually.

  Maybe I didn’t tell him any of that. Probably. Now he’s laughing, shouting to the bar patrons out there who I can’t see because it’s too dark around us. He’s clinking glasses with me, slapping my back like I’m choking and need some foreign object expelled from my throat. Maybe one of those butterflies got stuck.

  Then it’s later only because it has to be later. It’s always later. It gets later early around here. I’m really drunk, can’t keep my eyes open, and I’m stumbling out of the bar with my arm around Gus’s neck.

  Gus says, “No sleep till Brooklyn, my friend. Brooklyn being my couch.” I didn’t know he was a Beastie Boy.

  The bouncer, Eddie, that fucking guy, he’s still there at the door, smiling and laughing at me, and he says something about taking that shit pile out of here and dumping it out back. I try to swing and hit him, but my arm stays around Gus’s neck. He must be strong to carry all my weight.

  Five

  I dream that Gus and I are walking down West Broadway, and we are the pictures we drew at the Wellness Center. We’re made of paper and very fragile. Gus is already in pieces. The wind growls and threatens to tear us up. Then I’m not little Jackie Paper anymore, and I wake up on Gus’s couch.

  A puddle of drool sticks my cheek to his leather cushion. I sit up slowly, afraid my head might fall off and roll away. The room is too bright. I’m blinking madly, like a liar.

  Gus sits in a chair by a desktop computer. He says, “Mornin’, sunshine. This’ll help.” He tosses me a half-full pint bottle of Irish whiskey. I actually catch it.

  We celebrate appropriately.

  Six

  I wake up in my own apartment for the first time in two days, though still on a couch, my couch at least. Hopefully I’m working my way up to a bed soon. I’ll try my best. Today is going to be about survival.

  A shower that empties the hot water tank isn’t enough. Clean clothes and a clean hat don’t really cut it either. I eat three slices of wheat bread only because I need to line my stomach with something other than the fur of the previous two-day bender before I swallow the bottle of ibuprofen. One must medicate properly, after all.

  Water. Pills. Coffee. I’m only capable of action one word at a time. On my third cup of coffee I attempt forward progress.

  I move like a slow leak down the stairs and to my office. I unlock the door but leave the lights out and the blinds closed. Coffee cup and my head go down on the cluttered desk. The clutter doesn’t mind, and my own lights dim. Mark Genevich, open for business.

  Sometime later, it’s always later but we knew that already, my front door opens with a crash and the track lights in the ceiling flash on too. Someone is treating my office very rudely.

  A man struts in, walking to the beat of his own inflated ego. He announces: “Mr. Genevich, I’m Timothy Carter.”

  Oh, goody. The CEO’s lawyer is here. I guess I’m supposed to be impressed. He pulls my wooden client chair up close to my desk, against its will; the legs scrape and complain on the hardwood floor. He says, “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  Carter is tall, with a medium but athletic build, and wears a dark blue suit with creases sharp enough to cut meat. He’s youngish, has purposeful beard stubble and a trendy, slathered-in-gel haircut. He could be in those magazine ads with the models who look like weird mannequin/flesh hybrids, those ads that try to sexily sell vodka, perfume, jeans, and other shit we don’t need. If that isn’t reason enough to hate him, he adjusts his cuffs after he sits and doesn’t take off his Ray Ban sunglasses. Doesn’t he know that only self-important assholes wear those? Somebody should tell him.

  Can’t say he’s at the top of the list of people I want to see right now. It’s a long list. I say, “Make yourself at home. You don’t mind if I sleep through this, do you? Don’t worry; we’ll make it work.”

  “I’ll be quick. I have a cab out front waiting for me, and you’re going to pay that fare, too, Mr. Genevich.” His voice is small, rodentesque. Nobody’s perfect, and I take a measure of comfort in it.

  “Sorry, I’m all out of coupons.”

  He snorts and leans back in the chair. “It’s been one of those mornings, Mr. Genevich. Cooperate and don’t push me over the edge.” Some high-powered lawyer he is, quick to anger and reliant upon cliché.

  I say, “Right now, I’d be more than happy to shove you off that edge and watch your pretty little plummet.”

  “I don’t think you realize how serious my client and I are about suing you for willful negligence. It’s a serious charge that could bankrupt your business, Mr. Genevich. Your complete and utter botching of the contracted surveillance has publicly embarrassed my client, causing undue emotional distress, and is costing him untold dollars in damage control with his own clients and would-be clients…”

  There’s more, but I don’t really want to hear the end. So boring and predictable. I wave my hand at him, shoo fly. “We all have problems, Carter. Life’s about overcoming adversity. Besides, that professional lacrosse player was awful cute.”

  Carter laughs and leans in, putting his elbows on my desk. “You don’t understand…”

  I’ve had enough. Yeah, I’m in a mood. I cut him off, at the knees preferably. “I returned what you paid me and you aren’t getting one fucking cent more from me.”

  Carter leans back, and I can see him switching gears and game plans midstream. He says, “I want to see any photos you might’ve taken while on surveillance. Play ball and things will go smoother for you, Mr. Genevich.”

  Oh, he’s smooth, like chunky-style peanut butter. I say, “I only took a few shots and didn’t bother downloading them off my camera because they didn’t seem to be all that relevant anymore.”

  I find the pictures on my camera view-screen; the first few are of the apartment building, and then there are a couple shots of the woman I thought was Madison, the CEO’s wife, walking out the lobby door. It’s from the first night, I think. I stop, then flip back to a photo of the building, zoom in on the address numbers. I hadn’t really thought about it, been a little too occupied with my repeated failures, group therapy, and then the past two lost days with Gus, but I assumed my CEO case went FUBAR because I’d written down the wrong information, presumably the wrong apartment building.

  I pass the camera over and say, “That’s the building where the CEO’s love nest is, right? That’s where you sent me?”

  Carter looks at the picture and says, “Yes, of course.” He’s so pleasant. I wish we could hang out more often.

  “I guess I followed the wrong woman, then.” I take the camera back and flip ahead to a picture of the woman, zoom in a bit, then give him back the camera. It’s great that we can share like this.

  Carter takes the proverbial long hard look, hard enough to crack the LCD screen. Or he could be playing me. I don’t know. He’s still wearing those huge sunglasses, so I can’t
read him. I’d be surprised if he could see anything in my office through those tinted windows. Maybe seeing the pictures isn’t as important as he’s letting on.

  I say, “I assume Madison isn’t Madison.”

  Carter hands the camera back to me, says, “No, she isn’t. Thank you, Mr. Genevich. We’ll be in touch. Soon.” He gets up and leaves as abruptly as he entered. His suit is loud; sounds like someone else’s money. I didn’t get to say goodbye, or tell him to fuck off, or ask him to turn out the lights.

  My head goes back down on the desktop, and my eyelids are doing a damn fine job of dimming the room on their own. My breathing slows as my systems cool and default into hibernate mode, but I’m not asleep yet because I’m thinking about the surveillance gig and now this odd and confrontational exchange with Carter and how it all seems a little off. Maybe I should take another trip out to that apartment building. Maybe I’ll figure it all out after I park my head on the desk for a little bit, but that’s just the lie I tell myself, we all tell ourselves.

  Sleep on it; you’ll feel better in the morning.

  Sleep won’t solve any problems or answer any questions. My mornings are false starts, and I have them throughout the day and night. And sometimes, mornings are the promises that never come.

  Seven

  “Knock, knock. Hello, is the good doctor in?”

  I open my eyes. I’m reclined in my office chair, hands folded across my lap; such a polite sleeping position. Gus stands in the doorway, lightly rapping on the door. He has a brown bag in his arms. I didn’t get him anything.

  Two visitors in one day. I’m a popular guy. I wipe my eyes and face, stir in my chair, pat the desktop, and mutter, “I don’t make house calls.” A dumb, nonsensical line, and I hope Gus doesn’t hear it.

  He doesn’t look like I feel; he’s clean-shaven, wide-eyed, and wears a new porkpie hat, this one danger red. I’m a barely there cadaver who shouldn’t be donated to science. If Gus tells me he feels fine, I might have to punch him.