The Blindfold Test

by Barry Schechter

  “Why don’t you sleep this one off? I have Maalox, Excedrin…”

  “The paranoid clubhouse!” She giggled.

  “I take it you don’t believe anything I told you about—”

  “Jeffrey, I don’t believe anything you say!”

  Staggered, he tried to interpret her smile. He didn’t think it meant she was kidding.

  “I could never have said that six months ago!” she exulted.

  “Maybe you weren’t shit-faced six months ago. Oh, that must be when you met—what was his name?”

  “You’re changing the subject. Too many things happen to you that don’t seem to happen to anyone else.”

  “If someone’s controlling events, plausibility doesn’t count.”

  “What about the five-inch cockroaches?”

  “I can’t change events to fit your restricted sense of possibility.”

  “What about the bee! That flew up your nose!”

  “In, actually, not up,” he said. “It was buzzing around under my nose, my nostrils flared, it flew in, flew out, it was a small bee, so what?”

  “I suppose Mr. Big trained it!”

  “I never said everything’s a conspiracy. Why is it that last week you were willing to believe a man who claimed not to have a face?”

  She tucked her hair behind her ears. “I didn’t believe him, I just—”

  “I’ll bet you were a gullible kid, and you’ve been overcompensating ever since. Bet you used to fall for the how-fast-is-your-dad joke.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “I say, ‘Fran, next time you see John Standell, ask him how fast his dad can run the fifty-yard dash.’ So you ask, and John, who’s in on the gag, says, ‘As you know, my father has no legs.’ ”

  “Ohmygod! I didn’t know!”

  He tilted her chin up and kissed her, her margarita-flavored tongue darting against his till she drew back to look at him. “I just said I don’t believe anything you say. Shouldn’t we talk about it?”

  “It’s too depressing to take seriously. If you’ve never believed anything I said, you could never have been in love with me.”

  “I didn’t say that, damnit!”

  “Then I’m a pathological liar, but—I know!—I’m sensitive.”

  She put her hands around his neck and mimed strangulation. “Goddamnit, Parker!” She cradled his face in her hands, attempting to beam a message through the lights welling up in her eyes. He was still trying to read it as the lights blurred, her lids dropped, and her head plopped onto his chest.

  * * *

  —

  At breakfast he tried on the glasses. The view was no different than through red-tinted sunglasses. “What do you think?”

  Fran was testing her ability to hold down a pill-size bite of toast. She looked down, smoothed a wrinkle in her skirt.

  He said, “Well?”

  She propped her chin on her hand. “What do you call those again? Detecto-glasses?”

  Lifting the frames, he pronounced each syllable crisply and unflinchingly. “Infra-red-like-dye-detector.”

  “ ‘Infra-red-like-dye-detector.’ ”

  “That’s a pretty lazy form of sarcasm—just repeating what I say.”

  “You’re beyond embellishment.”

  “Maybe you’ll be more creative when the Maalox kicks in.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “How are you feeling?”

  “I dunno. A little better.”

  “What about as a fashion accessory?” He flashed right and left profiles, then raised the frames an inch and peered out from beneath.

  “I guess rose-colored glasses are better than the usual blinders. Remind me what happens when you spot your bad guy.”

  He lifted the frames again and, deadpan and unblinking, said, “When seen with the infra-red-dye-detecting glasses, the culprit emanates a purplish glow.”

  “ ‘The culprit emanates a purplish glow.’ ”

  “The system was John’s idea. He’s very successful at what he does. Do you think he’s crazy, too?”

  “I think this is some kind of guy thing—you and John and Dobbs in your treehouse. Will you take those off?”

  Holding the frames in place, he wrestled her hand away. “You must be feeling better. But you see, these are no ordinary rose-colored glasses. They have special optical moral properties. The same technological breakthrough that lets me spot criminals lets me see into people’s hearts. So—tell me about what’s-his-name.”

  She closed her hair over her face and torso and drew her arms inside; he was looking at a hill of hair.

  He said, “That won’t do any good. Tell me about what’s-his-name.”

  “You shit!” A few strands fluttered in the vicinity of her mouth. “You want to grill me and pretend it’s a game.”

  “Coffee? I think I have a straw somewhere.”

  “Is there something you’d like to ask me?” She held open the wings of her hair, waited a moment, and let them fall back.

  “I haven’t had much luck with the truth lately,” he said at last. “I don’t know if I can take any more bad news.” This blatant appeal for sympathy sank without a ripple into her hair.

  He removed the frames and clattered them on the table. “All right?”

  He uncovered her face with a curtain-parting motion, her hair draped over the backs of his hands. She watched him expressionlessly, eyes bloodshot and teared-up.

  “Are you seeing someone else?” What he dreaded, he realized, wasn’t that she’d say yes but that she’d say no and he wouldn’t believe her. As far as he knew she’d never lied to him; there was no reason not to believe her, right?

  She gathered her hair up and let it plunge down her back.

  “No.”

  * * *

  —

  He found Fletcher leaning against a wall in the corridor, waiting with the noontime crowd for classes to change. He wasn’t glowing.

  “Rose-colored glasses, Jeff? Would that be a philosophical or a fashion statement?” The Styrofoam cup in Fletcher’s hand burst in his grip, splattering coffee on his suit jacket, shirtfront, and briefcase. Dropping the case and the remnant of his cup, he made flicking motions with his hands and arms. A wisp of steam curled off his jacket; he removed a soaked handkerchief from his breast pocket and hopelessly began rubbing at his sleeve. “Thanks,” he said, accepting Parker’s handkerchief. “That’s the great thing about tweed: It’s absorbent and it hides strains. I wonder if that’s why it caught on in academia—high coffee consumption, low motor skills?”

  Parker laughed.

  “See? I’m funny—that goes with the symptomatology. I’m only funny under stress. This weekend I found out I have an enemy.” Unbuttoning his jacket and lifting his tie, Fletcher daubed at the brown transparency pasted to his chest.

  “Why don’t I get you some paper towels?”

  “Tell me, Parker, how many people in the Chicago metro area do you think would be interested in a three-year-old Corvette for $5,000?”

  “Nearly everyone, I guess.”

  “I can confirm your estimate. In yesterday’s Tribune someone advertised that car at that price over my name and address. I took the phone off the hook, but the doorbell was still ringing after midnight. Around two this morning they started throwing pebbles at the windows. I know it sounds funny but, professionally speaking, a week of this could drive you nuts.”

  “Maybe some student you failed.”

  “You mean professors still fail students? I’ve never had the heart. I know, I’m contributing to grade inflation and the decline of the West, but unless there’s a terrorist cell operating out of the Committee on Academic Standards, I don’t think this is about grades. Last night I sat down and tried to make a list of my enemies. What enemies? I know, people think I’m pompou
s and boring, but as my ex-wife says, I’m not vivid enough to hate. Which leads me to conclude that someone picked my name at random.”

  “If that’s so, maybe they’ll move on to someone else.”

  “And maybe not. Anything follows from an illogical premise. My guess is now that he—sociopathic pranksters are nearly always male—now that he’s found a vessel for his rage and paranoia, he’s got a custom-made enemy for life. I spent five minutes in a gun shop this morning before I walked out in the middle of a sales pitch. I didn’t care to hear the definition of ‘stopping-power’ just yet.”

  “Aren’t you over-reacting?”

  “Let me see. A stranger’s trying to destroy me; next time he comes after me the kids might be over; why worry?” Maybe he was a terrific actor but his fear was reaching Parker like a bass chord vibrating the floor.

  Clearly ashamed of his outburst, Fletcher hefted his briefcase, reformed the ironic twist of his lips and the quizzical crease of his brow. “Ah, well! Neither rain nor sleet!”

  Once again Parker tried to recall the super’s description of his intruder. He wasn’t certain of anything anymore except that he’d become Fletcher’s personal demon. It was time to confess.

  “Ken, we have to talk about this.”

  “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” Fletcher checked his watch. “I appreciate the moral support.”

  “No, wait.”

  “Mr. Parker?” Stephanie Molnar was twisting her purse strap and running a hand through her perm. “I think you’d better come see this.”

  “What? See me in class.”

  “It’s, like, an emergency?” She sucked back the corners of a smile, as if she were about to laugh at a funeral.

  * * *

  —

  Parker’s students had joined a crowd twenty yards down the hall from his classroom. Equidistant from the room in the opposite direction, a second crowd faced them across the deserted length of corridor.

  “She’s still in there,” said Bob Vasquez. “We thought of dialing 911, but…” He looked to his classmates for a clue to the appropriate facial expression. “Man, somebody shoulda closed the door.”

  A whiff of perfumed rot tugged at Parker’s gorge. “Wait here.” He thought he was used to the stench, but a few yards closer it slammed into him. Breathing into his hand, he poked his head round the doorframe.

  “Oh, Jeffrey, thank God, help me, please!”

  Glowing purple, Mrs. Slansky sat trembling at the seminar table, motes of luminous face powder swirling about her head.

  * * *

  —

  By the time John Standell’s men arrived with the device, everyone had crowded behind Stephanie, who, staring through the pane in the door, was issuing an update: “Still trembling…. I think she’s crying. What?” She turned, blinked.

  “Step aside, please.” The men wore jumpsuits and spray-painter’s masks. Their device resembled an exterminator’s: metal cylinder, rubber tube, nozzle, trigger. They’d cleared a path through the crowd when Parker tapped the elbow of the man carrying the device.

  “I’m Jeff Parker.” He led the man a few yards down the hallway, the cylinder sloshing as they walked. “What happens now?”

  The eyes above the mask squinted impatiently. The voice behind it came out muffled. “We make a deal—information for a spray-job.”

  “Forget dealing. She’s an old woman; she’s already had a stroke.”

  “The fuck’s goin’ on here?”

  The other man had joined them. “All right, listen.” The same muffled tone. “First we spray her.”

  “She’s so frail,” Parker said. “I’d hate to get her soaking wet.”

  “She’ll be damp. Moist. Stuff comes out in a mist. If she looks to be in bad shape, we take her to a hospital. She’s okay, we take her to our company doctor for a checkup. Then we have a chat. No third-degree, they’re usually glad to have someone to talk to.”

  “Should I go along?”

  “This woman broke into your apartment. Maybe she don’t trust you.”

  Parker followed them to the door and watched through the pane. The man who had reassured Parker appeared to be explaining what would happen next. Mrs. Slansky gripped her pearls as the man with the device took aim, her cataract lenses caricaturing her fear.

  Parker tapped the window and smiled at her. She smiled back, waved.

  * * *

  —

  Parker snatched up his office phone on the first ring. “John?”

  “You ready? Here’s what she told us. Last year Mrs. Slansky started going to a rage clinic.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She gets into fights with store clerks and managers, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thinks they’re all disrespectful, trying to cheat her?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Okay, last year she flipped out at a Dominick’s—something to do with strawberries, I don’t know the details. It must’ve been major because the store called the police. She got a suspended sentence, but she had to sign up for something called ‘rage counseling.’ According to Mrs. Slansky, the only thing the rage people wanted to talk about was you. They told her you were plotting to ruin her life. Jeff?”

  “I’m here. I can’t spend the rest of my life saying ‘Huh?’ What was she doing in my apartment?”

  “I don’t know. The clinic’s run by a corporation called Tolerance Management. Heard of ‘em?”

  Parker checked the clock on his desk. “My appointment’s in two hours.”

  * * *

  —

  Arriving early, he bought a pretzel from a vendor in front of Carson Pirie Scott and sat down on a planter. Before this part of State Street had become a “mall,” there’d never been benches downtown, the city having no wish to make vagrants comfortable, and the hard cement planters seemed like a compromise: have a seat, move on! Still, it calmed him to sit watching the rush-hour crowd, the sunset hived in the windows above him.

  The man John had described was coming up out of the subway, sprouting infinitely, it seemed, as his long legs continued to emerge.

  Parker walked over to meet him. “Todd Woolcurt? Jeffrey Parker.” John had told him to watch for a Michael Jordan look-alike, and Woolcurt resembled the basketball star down—up!—to the shaved head, the wedge-shaped nose, the head like a torpedo standing on its point, and the infectious grin.

  He shook Parker’s hand. “Let’s get a few things straight, Jeffrey. I’m here as a favor to John. Nobody’s paying me to stand between you and a beating, see what I’m saying? You do your thing, I’ll stand there lookin’ bad. I exist, that’s usually enough.”

  “I just want to talk to these people.”

  “You do that, Jeffrey. My presence usually has a calming effect on the situation, understand what I’m saying? All I have to do is exist.”

  “You are; therefore they think.”

  “That’s right.”

  Across the street a man in a porkpie hat and a sandwich board recited Bible passages through a bullhorn. The crackling, staticky voice reaching Parker sounded like a police dispatcher calling all cars: “The number of the beast is six-six-six.”

  “I like the suit.”

  Woolcurt flashed the lining of what looked like a powder-blue Armani suit. “Yeah? It’s a knock-off—looks good, though, don’t it?”

  Parker was wearing a brown corduroy jacket, a beige shirt open at the collar, jeans and loafers. He’d pocketed the infrared glasses. “I was just thinking of the formidable entrance we could’ve made in matching Armani knock-offs.”

  “We’ll be formidable enough, Jeffrey, long as you don’t get stupid. What do I do?”

  “You exist.”

  “That’s right!”

  “I assume that includes hulking, towering, and overshado
wing?”

  Woolcurt slapped him on the back. “Comes with the package!”

  * * *

  —

  Maybe it was protective obtuseness; maybe his offended sense of reality had deleted part of the scene; but his first view of the outer office took in only eggshell walls, track lighting, green miracle-fiber carpet, a leather couch, a black mahogany desk, and a slim blond receptionist in a gray worsted suit and blue bow. It wasn’t till he’d given his name to the receptionist and accounted for Todd Woolcurt—“Mr. Woolcurt is my associate,” he said, paraphrasing some gangster movie—that Woolcurt nudged him and directed his attention to the framed photographs lining the walls. Blowups, their backgrounds cropped, they captured Parker in numerous variations of numbness, confusion, and stupefaction. The portrait above the desk mirrored his present transition, eyes focusing, smile flickering, a witticism dissolving on his tongue.

  His amazement was reflected now by the receptionist, who’d just looked up from her appointment book—he teetered above a widening expanse of blue. Her eyes nearly closed when she smiled, as if self-bedazzled. “You’re Parker! Nobody’s gonna believe this!”

  She wore her hair in a bun, a few wisps dangling over the ears, and as she continued smiling at him he half-expected her to unknot it and shake it loose. Instead she began rummaging through the papers on her desk. “I know it sounds stupid, but—”

  “You’d like my autograph?”

  “Would you mind?”

  He might have asked her out, if not for Fran and his tenuous grasp of what was going on here.

  Ignoring the blank sheet of typing paper she held out, Parker stepped behind the desk, took down his photo, and slid it out of its frame.

  Behind him she stammered, “Maybe you shouldn’t—oh, what the heck! Make it out to Joyce.”

  A headshot, the photo gave little evidence of time or place; the hair was a little longer than he’d worn it this decade. As for the expression, it had probably been passing across his face at least once a day for quite some time, and it occurred to him that one thing he’d failed to notice all these years was his own astonishment.