The Trouble with Bliss

by Douglas Light

It’s early; dawn arrives as expected. Morris slept poorly, fitful and restless, kicked about all night with bad dreams. He kept jolting awake, then slipping back into the haze of sleep. He dreamt he was trapped in the middle of a protest march filled with thousands of people. Everyone looked the same, the men, the women, the children. They were faces he didn’t recognize but somehow knew. “What are we protesting?” he kept asking. “Not on the floor!” was the response. To his left, right, and behind, a unison voice. “Please, not on the floor!” Creaks and footfalls, the noise of Sofar’s pacing in the apartment above, soundtracked his dream. The marching mass with Morris in the middle. “Dear God, someone’s here,” the woman beside him in his dream loudly whispered. “Someone’s finally come.”

  Morris jerks awake. There's no one, his room empty, silent.

  He brushes his teeth, changes out of his sleeping clothes and tennis shoes. Thankful the night has passed, he heads quietly into the kitchen, his stomach foul from all the beers at the Old Homeplate. One beer had turned to four, which dented his wallet. He drinks down a tablespoon of baking soda in water to settle his queasiness.

  On top of the refrigerator is a large Mason jar full of coins. Gingerly he pours change onto the kitchen table, separating the quarters and dimes from the nickels and pennies. It’s the last days of the boiler being on, the season warming. The radiators call to one another, the pipes banging a comfortable note. The apartment’s dim and warm, a safe house from the world.

  Outside, all is different. The air is vibrant, crisp. The sun clips the sky. Saturday. People are sleeping in late, their regrets of the night prior not yet born. The streets are empty, an eerie calm over everything. The occasional car or cab snaps by, the road their own. The synchronized stoplights click from green to yellow to red then start again.

  Morris stops at Marcelo’s Hot-To-Go-Go, a storefront coffee spot with windows blurry from fried food vapors. Getting a coffee and a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich to go, he pays in coins, then wanders west then south down the Bowery, past the cheap, ugly furniture stores, the stained-glass and lighting shops, past used restaurant-supplies places whose gutters are greasy and black.

  In a vacant parking lot with advertised parking rates of $12.38 per hour, tax included, a frail, Pakistani man scatters breadcrumbs from a powder-blue Tiffany bag. He’s missing half his left hand and all his lower teeth. Cooing and clicking, he patiently waits for pigeons to arrive. Against the fence is his bike, a rickety beast made with cannibalized parts from other bikes and held together with electrical tape, metal coat hangers, and faith. Attached to the back is a cart cobbled together from a baby carriage and a rolling file cabinet. Three empty banana boxes are stacked on it.

  The gray, brown, and white birds drop on the breadcrumbs, pecking and flapping as they circle and circle the ground for their share. When a solid sized flock has gathered, the birds turning and turning in a random pattern, the man grabs up a blue nylon fishing net and masterfully swings it out and over the flock, trapping nine birds. The others lift for the sky, fleeing with a beat of their wings.

  With a swift yank, the man collects the netted birds and stuffs them in the banana boxes. Then, the process starts again. The crumbs, the wait, then the whip of the net.

  Morris thinks to ask the man what he does with the captured birds, then he thinks better of it. Their fate, he imagines, is oven-roasted over a plate of rice pilaf.

  Turning back, Morris heads toward home.

  The morning’s spiced with the scent of spring and dampness. On Fifth Street, Morris sees the men and the construction dumpsters out front of the police precinct, ready for the day’s work.

  The place is finally coming down.

  Since the police left, the building’s been locked down. The police cars are no longer parked about the neighborhood, half on the sidewalk, half blocking the street. There’s no longer traffic in and out of the front door. It seems so peaceful, calm, like the warming moments between dawn and the morning’s first car alarm sounding.

  Inside, it’s anything but peaceful.

  Three months prior, a crew of seven squatters climbed a tree at the back of the building and got onto the fire escape. They took the building the way a virus takes a body, have since been thriving there in secret.

  Pausing in front to study the building, Morris feels a sharp sadness. It’s always been there, an anchor of the neighborhood. A part of his life. Now, it’s being replaced.

  Morris hears his name yelled. “Bliss.”

  Turning, he sees a big man in brown Carhartt cover-alls striding toward him in a straddle-walk, like his thighs are chaffed.

  It’s Stefani’s dad. “Jetski,” Morris says, surprised.

  “Jetski?” he says. His face sours. “I should wax your fucking tugboat, Bliss.”

  He comes at Morris fast. Morris instinctively braces, but instead of a hammering of fists, he finds himself in a one-armed half-hug. Jetski’s face presses into Morris’s chest as he slaps his back. He laughs. “Jetski,” he says, his face lit up. “Sweet baby Judas, Bliss, no one calls me Jetski anymore. I should take you down for that. You know I hate that nickname.” His face is red, like he’s shaved off the first few layers of skin, and he smells of wet wool and rubbing alcohol. “Twisted Bliss. How you been?”

  Stunned, Morris hesitantly answers, “Good.” His body’s still clinched.

  “This is a reunion, my Bliss,” Jetski says, excitedly. “This is great. How are things, things good?”

  “Yeah,” Morris says, relaxing slightly. Jetski doesn’t know, Morris realizes. He doesn’t know about him and his daughter, Stefani. “Well, it was good seeing you,” Morris says, turning.

  “I hear what you’re saying, Bliss,” he says, getting in Morris’s way. “It’s good seeing you, too. We should go out for a beer sometime. Or I should have you over, meet my family.”

  Morris sees it clearly; he, Jetski, and Stefani all in the same room. He sees the ugliness. “What are you doing over here?” he asks, trying to work past Jetski. Jetski keeps tacking, staying in front of him. “I thought you lived—” Morris pulls up short. He knows exactly where he lives. Stefani told him. “I thought you lived elsewhere.”

  “This is my show,” Jetski says, pointing to the police precinct with his reattached finger. Frankenfinger. It’s crooked, bent, points off the left of where he’s indicating. “These are my men.” He motions to the crew. “I’m the project foreman, Bliss. I’m in charge of taking the building down. Priority project stuff. Got us working Saturdays for the next few months,” Jetski says, his red face still glowing with joy from seeing Morris. “They set a deadline, then make you wait and wait and wait. Then the assholes expect the deadline held.” Jetski’s gotten heavier since high school, gained thirty or so pounds; there’s a hint that he might once have been handsome. He never was. Stefani’s his girl, a concept that chills Morris. It’s a small evolutionary step from the naked woman that was in his room yesterday to the man before him. Thankfully, Jetski and Stefani share only their hair color. They look nothing alike.

  Jetski asks, “Whatever happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We use to be tight, good friends. But after high school, you disappeared.”

  “Well, you know,” Morris says. They were never tight. Morris hated him in high school. “Things happen. I’ve been—” He breaks off, realizing he’s about to give an answer by rote—I’ve been traveling.

  “Things happen,” Jetski says, nodding. “That’s solid fact. Things happen,” he says, then, “Shit, you remember the Bloody Eagle Brigade? I tell my wife and daughter that story all the time.”

  “No,” he says. “I don’t.”

  “Oh, come on, Bliss. The Bloody Eagles.” He playfully jabs Morris in the ribs. It hurts. “You and me. Remember? All the hijinx. You, Morris the Professor, coming up with the plot, and me, the axe man, getting the job done. Remember all the shit we use to pull?” There’s a longing, a faint d
esperation in Jetski’s voice.

  “We never really hung—”

  “Twisted Bliss and the Bloody Eagle Brigade. We were famous in high school. Shit, remember that time we put black shoe polish on the girls’ bathroom toilet seats, or when you Superglued Mr. Arnold’s chair to his desk?”

  “No.”

  “Yes you do, Bliss.”

  “Actually, no, I really don’t.”

  “The Bliss and Stevie J. The Bloody Eagles, baby. You remember.”

  Morris relents, lifts his head, giving a noncommittal half nod.

  “I really miss that, Bliss. All those times. But now’s now, you know what I’m saying?” Jetski says. “Got a wife, a teenage daughter. But I make good money.” His voice turns tired. He glances about, like he's gaining his bearings. “What are you doing now?” he asks, his initial excitement wearing down. “Where you working?”

  “I’m between jobs,” Morris says.

  “Bliss, you should’ve called me. I could’ve gotten you on here. You should’ve talked to me last week,” Jetski says. “Let’s do some beers. How about tonight? Let’s go have some drinks and catch up.”

  “Tonight?” Morris asks. “Ah, well, the truth is, I’ve got to watch my cash right now.”

  “Should’ve talked to me last week,” Jetski says, shaking his head. “I'd’ve had a job for you.” He pulls out his wallet. “Here’s a tide-over,” Jetski says, presses two twenties into Morris’s hand. “Until you get going again.”

  “No, no,” Morris says, embarrassed. This isn’t the man Morris remembers. Jetski was never generous. “I can’t take this.” First his daughter, now his cash.

  “Bliss,” Jetski says, “take it.” He gives Morris another awkward hug. The Frankenfinger digs into Morris’s back. He feels sympathy and repulsion for Jetski. He’s changed. “From one Bloody Eagle to another,” Jetski says. “Hey, you up for seeing the precinct before I take it down?”

  “Sure,” Morris says, slowly pocketing the money. He’d spend a few minutes with Jetski, earn the money.

  Hardhats on, they head up to the front doors of the precinct. Jetski pulls his keys.

  “Finally taking her down,” Jetski says. He runs his hand over the building’s wall like he’s petting an old horse. The building, a pale limestone quarried from Indiana, stands silent, large, as it has for over a century. “Haven’t been in here for six months,” he says. “Restrictions, permits, this person suing that person. A mess. Off limits to everyone. Couldn’t do a thing until everything was approved. Well,” Jetski says, “now there’s no more bullshitting, right, Bliss? Got to do what the man says.” Selecting a key on his overloaded key ring, he pops the large padlock off the thick, oak doors like he is christening a yacht. “Time to get dirty.” With his steel-toed boots, he kicks the door open on the dark entry.

  The smell of decay and dirty feet strikes them flat.

  Morris’s eyes tear. “Jesus, what is that?”

  “Something dead, I’d say. The place needs some airing out,” Jetski says, coughing. “Pretty bad, huh?”

  Morris shakes his head. He pulls his shirt collar over his nose. “Not the smell. That.” He motions to the pile of lockers, broken tables, and chair mounded in the center of the room. It’s a barricade, a fortification built of items left in the precinct. “What’s that?”

  A voice sounds from the middle of the mess. “This is your one warning,” a woman says, rising from the debris. “Leave, or suffer.”

  “Sweet baby Judas,” Jetski says, startled by the figure. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “We’ve been breached,” the woman shouts, sending out the call. She strikes a flame with a Zippo lighter, holds it high above her head like she’s at a rock concert. “Breach, breach,” she cries again. There’s a sound of scuffling as the others struggle from sleep and race to take up defensive positions. Two other squatters, bounding down the stairs, dive behind the barricade.

  “You can’t be in here,” Jetski shouts at them. “This is a work site. Off limits.” He steps into the foyer. Morris is right behind him.

  “Remember the Maine,” the woman yells, then dips down behind the barricade, the lighter still aflame.

  “It’s the Alamo, you asshole,” Jetski says.

  “Ignition,” the woman shouts.

  “Come on, Bliss,” Jetski says, “we’re cracking some heads.” He strides forward, ready to drag all three squatters out on his own. But before he can take two full steps, an explosive wad of flaming red phosphorous tears across the dimness of the room and strikes him solid in chest, like a chestnut fired from a crossbow. It scorches his coveralls before dropping to the floor and fizzling out. “Mother of God,” Jetski cries, slapping his smoldering front. “What the fuck was—”

  Cheering, the squatters fire a second shot of burning traffic flare from their makeshift surgical elastic slingshot. The projectile clips Morris’s pant leg then whizzes out onto the street, where it bounces into the middle of the waiting workers. They all scatter from the hissing spark.

  “Jetski,” Morris yells, dancing about. “I’m getting out of here.” Another flare zings past, bangs against the front door.

  “I hear you, Bliss.” They cut a rapid retreat, hustle outside.

  Trying to spark another flare, the woman fumbles her lighter, drops it on the stockpiles. A flare ignites, then another, the whole mound quickly bursting into a violent, blinding red. All three squatters roll from the barricade and stumble up the stairs.

  The entire room is aglow in red, like a cut of raw tuna.

  Jetski grabs the heavy oak doors and swings them shut. He loops the steel lock back through the chain, hammers the lock shut.

  “The place is going to burn down,” Morris says, terrified, exhilarated. He’d never been fired on. It felt like war, or what he imagines war to feel like.

  “They won’t be that lucky,” Jetski says. The front of his coveralls is charred black. “Burning to death would be a blessing for them, Bliss. It’d be the only way to kill the smell.” He wipes his nose on his shirtsleeve, then flips open his cell phone to call the police. “Get the cops to clamp down on this,” he says, then pauses. His red face lights up. He snaps the phone shut without making a call. “Pack it up for today,” he yells to the workers. They look to each other, confused. “You’ll get paid,” he says. “Pack it up.” They hurry off before Jetski changes his mind. “I got an idea, Bliss,” he says to Morris, placing his arm on his shoulder. “I think the Bloody Eagle Brigade is going to pay someone a visit tonight,” he says.

  Chapter 14