Same Same

by Peter Mendelsund

  But I’ve just thought of something.

  “Miss Fairfax, what is the name of the Mysterious Woman?”

  “Who?”

  “With the foreign eyes; who sits by the lake?”

  “Miss Chatterton?”

  “Chatterton?”

  “Miss Chatterton. Did you forget?”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Sure you did, Percy.”

  “Ouch!”

  “I’m sorry, but we need to finish cleaning these.”

  She examines my entire trunk, walks to a cabinet. Over her shoulder: “Did you hear about Mr. Al’Hatif?” She takes out a swab and a small vial of iodine.

  “Hear what?”

  I had not, in fact, heard.

  Though the paper was there, and it saw everything.

  (THE PAPER CONTINUED)

  The linoleum-tiled room. People milling about in various degrees of anhedonia, Mr. Ousman Al’Hatif sitting in a corner at a folding table, a creased and foxed, generally speaking heavily used, box of checkers off to one side, while in front of him is an untenably tall pillar of black and red; an intricate tower of stacked disks, as if a single piece was kinged, over and over and over in a tediously long game. The tower is straining to reach the height of the seated Mr. Al’Hatif’s forehead. He’s got one red checker in his hand, and he’s examining the column closely, as through a jeweler’s loupe. He puts a piece on top. You’d never notice him there, engineering this tower with such absolute concentration, off to one side as he is, in his shadowed niche. He is so quiet. Unerringly polite, never bothering anyone. Solitary. Working away. But then, someone does notice; a big, brutish guy with a face like a water buffalo, who lopes over to watch Mr. Al’Hatif work. Just stands above Mr. Al’H. The large man’s hands are limp at his sides, mouth slightly open, as he stares down, dully, at the ongoing construction. Mr. Al’H. does not even so much as glance toward this man, but, without his concentration wavering one iota, gingerly places the red disk atop the pillar, moving his hand so very slowly, before, in a flashing instant, removing all his fingers from it. Ta-da. The slack-jawed onlooker continues to watch as Al’H. palms through the pieces in the boxes, picking some out, putting them on the table, sliding them around the hard surface until he finds one that is to his liking, a black one—the tower alternates red, black, red, black—Al’H. picks up this checker and turns it in his hand. Still, no recognition or acknowledgment for the man standing there, threateningly, above him and his fragile tower. The man is so close that his crotch is pressing right up against the far edge of the table, threatening to move it, jar it, and ruin the whole fucking thing. Mr. Al’Hatif takes the new black checker in his hands and begins craning it slowly over to the site, and the onlooker scowls, and, without raising a hand to his mouth, suddenly coughs once. Al’H. halts his progress for a moment, collects himself, and resumes construction. Now the fellow above him is exercised, visibly, and in an act of now naked aggression, reaches out a meaty paw and snaps, right in Mr. Al’H.’s face. And we are all astounded then by the unassailable poise that Mr. Al’Hatif exhibits here, as he continues to lower the black piece slowly, slowly, and then dropping it on the pinnacle of the thing with a tiny little clack which is about the volume of a clipped pinky nail. The pillar lists a tick this time, wavers just a millimeter, but ultimately doesn’t fall. It’s getting to be a simply absurd height. Meanwhile, Mr. Al’H.’s aggressor here, angrier than ever, snaps three more times right up in the builder’s craw: snap, snap, snap, but not a blink from Al’Hatif; not a blink. He just selects another red checker, cool as you like, which makes his persecutor totally unhinged, and though we can’t tell what’s coming we know it won’t be great, and as predicted, the man now shouts at Mr. Al’H. not a word but a kind of “Uuuhh!” A quick staccato outburst, followed by an “I’m talking to you,” which is intimidating in direct proportion to the slowness with which it is uttered. And we all make mental bets—will Mr. Al’Hatif respond, etc., and, look at this, he does respond! (But almost imperceptibly.) We really have to kind of lean in to see it, but Mr. Al’H. raises one eyebrow, a single one, without looking, up mind you, just that single eyebrow, in complete isolation, up it goes, just, like, a smidge, and everyone is just bowled over by his subtlety, his suave stoicism, though now we all know that the brutish fellow is just going berserk on the inside—you just know it, you can tell—pop-eyed, steam out the ears, etc., etc., so on, and he hinges at his barreled waist that no one had realized he even had, hinges, bends right over forty-five degrees, takes a big and stagey inhale, and then like the big bad wolf himself, just blows (really blows!) the stack right over, and there’s a thermonuclear clatter, and the checkers go everywhere all over the table into Mr. Al’Hatif’s lap and run all over the floor, some of them striking circumference-side down and thus spin out in all directions ending up under our feet and everywhere really.

  Well.

  Al’Hatif looks out over the devastation, at the tower’s shrapnel, and sniffs a single unintelligible word under his breath, this directed at the brute who he still hasn’t looked at throughout all of this (who is this fellow, he must be new) even as this crazy assailant has been seized by paroxysms of mad, joyless laughter, and who addresses himself to Mr. Al’Hatif once more, saying you look at me when I’m talking to you, and adding in a racist epithet I will not repeat, just for good measure, and we all know the incident is going straight into the admin’s log, and in fact, admins are coming over even now, and then Mr. Al’H. pushes his chair back with a chalky screech and stands full up which puts him to about chin height on his assailant, and he just walks around this standing man, who is staring at the table as if Al’Hatif were still sitting there, though he isn’t, as Mr. Al’H. is bending down onto his hands and knees now to begin picking the checkers up from off the floor, saying, to no one in particular, “I’ll just build it again, tomorrow maybe,” and one or two of the other fellows, led by the Mysterious Woman, but also the Woman-Whose-Face-and-Hands-Are-Covered-in-Scars, join him down there to help in picking up because no one likes to see such bullying and one has to show at least this kind of solidarity even if one didn’t have it in one to confront the aggressor before the violence erupted, the violence which was inherent in the situation all along and which everyone saw coming but was too cowardly to stop but the whole damn thing was inevitable and there was no altering its course at all but then it was movie night and all, so the lights are dimmed and the projector clicks on and etc.

  (THE THERMOMETER)

  “Stand up for me now, Percy,” Miss Fairfax says.

  “Ugh.”

  “Sorry, Percy—I know this hurts, we’re almost done.”

  I feel shaky standing upright, and so suddenly sit back down again, displacing water over the tub’s rim. The water sluices around me and soothes the disinfected cuts instantly.

  “Well then,” she says.

  She helps me back up again by grabbing me under each armpit and hoisting.

  When I’ve regained my feet, Miss Fairfax gives me a big fluffy white towel which I use to dry myself and I feel better. It is soft. After, I’m sorry to put my paper uniform back on again. But I do it anyway. We depart the bathroom and sit facing one another in chairs. My hair is wet and feels cool as it air-dries. The slightest movement of the aether is registered upon the small exposed hairs of my arms and neck. For once I don’t feel as if I’m sweating uncontrollably.

  Miss Fairfax smiles at me and then begins to enter her notes into a device.

  (And this scene now feels like it’s gone on for too long. I need to move on, Rn. Rn. Rn…R.N.? Registered Nurs—)

  “What’s wrong now, Percy?”

  “God, can’t we dispense with the formalities, the whole admin/fellow thing for a moment, and just be people here?”

  “Do you think that I am not a person?” she asks, as she pulls a little plastic th
ermometer out of its shell casing and launches it toward my mouth.

  She has ceased to care about the paper, now Btw. It is all around her. She sits, lopsided, upon a pile of it. The papers cover her feet and crackle at her ankles, etc. But she doesn’t appear to notice anymore. She is so collected. She doesn’t once reach over to pull one of the sheets off of her, or reach down to brush one away….

  “I know you are a person, Miss Fairfax,” I mumble, “I know you are.”

  I try repeating the phrase, that she is a person—a real person—though it is hard to do so with the thermometer under my tongue, and it is precisely during this failed attempt at speech that I suddenly know what my project’s final stage will be. And I don’t think it will involve any…

  42

  …wriping. Ryeting. Riding the writing is proceeding, but I am having increased trouble inventing things in the word-space.

  Luckily, I have better ideas for ways to move the project. (The novel. The novel.)

  Better means in my back pocket.

  Last night I began to put some of them into effect, and now that I’m awake, will redouble my efforts.

  “Zimzim, turn off my alarm.”

  “Zimzim, what is the temperature?”

  “Zimzim, do I have any appointments today?”

  “Zimzim, open the shades.”

  The shades open, and I am blinded—the sun, fully breaching whatever remains of the metastructure, assaults me utterly, like a blistering shower of lemon juice. I squeeze my eyes closed and blindly, violently smack my hand onto the bedside table searching for my glasses, but cannot feel them. Just piles of sticky paper. Though I can feel a lump under one pile, and know that my glasses are in there somewhere, but no matter how much I shove the pile around, there is just too much paper. Instead, I manage to give myself another murderous paper cut in the webbing between thumb and forefinger of my right hand, so this affront, as well as another: I have accrued several of the paper sheets to my sweaty arm, like feathers on a wing. I try to flap them off me, but they are staying on there, riding the bucks. I grab at them with my left hand (my other, unencumbered limb) and crumple one of them up into a ball and try to wipe the sweat off of my brow with it. The paper is not absorbent, natch. So here too I accomplish nothing but spreading the sweat around a bit, along with smudging whatever ink might be on these sheets on my person. Stained again. And to top it off I give myself, naturally, yet another paper cut, this time on my right eyelid, narrowly missing the wet boundary of the orb itself. Opening my eyes now hurts in a new manner, but I keep them open for now, despite the discomfort, and in doing so I see myself in the dazzling mirror, and I am horrified. I am red and swollen. There’s a paper stuck obliquely to the side of my forehead in a patch of wetness there. There are two more paper sheets, one on each shoulder like epaulets in a child’s game of war. My uniform is off somewhere on the floor, probably under more of it. As it happens there are enough of these sheets plastered to me so that it feels as if I were wearing a robe made of paper.

  It is unpleasant.

  But I’ve had enough of this, so I spasm my once-again prone body in one terrific shaking seizure (up and down as well as side to side). “Aaaaaaahhhhhggghrrrrr­rrrrr­ghghg!” And I manage to dislodge a few more of them, realizing now that each time I move in order to remove a sheet, a new one affixes itself as if I were some sort of allegorical chicken who can never be plucked. I am now winded as well.

  Roll over in my bed, as the initial step in rising, onto more—what else—paper, rolling it onto myself like a human lint brush (I never realized how lousy the stuff truly feels), hoik myself up onto an elbow and now to sitting.

  Shit.

  Time to wade through the tundra and make some sense of it all.

  * * *

  —

  Fiction goes into the “Fiction” pile, nonfiction in the “Nonfiction” pile. I put crime in “Crime,” sci-fi in “Sci-Fi,” poetry in “Poetry.” Etc. I find a crossword puzzle, and try for a period to solve it. A coupon: clip and save. Pictures of any kind go into a single pile entitled “Imagery,” and one should never neglect stray images especially if they are old, and belong to someone else, as there is plenty of memory jammed into them that can be reused and reapplied and why should any memory ever go to waste. The site of the piles matters, which is to say that genres which are related to one another are located in geographical proximity. Also, the location of the piles is proscribed by personal preference and habit. For instance: “Horror” and “Disturbing News” go next to my desk so that I can read these during the day—not after sundown, for obvious reasons—and “Obscure Philosophy” goes by my bed right next to the pills in order to render me up unto Sleep, Daughter of Night. “Self-Help” goes in a pile in my closet, where I keep such things hidden, because I am embarrassed that I find some of it useful (and the same goes with the “Sexy Stuff,” obvi). I also leave some personal piles of paper out in the middle of my rooms—and, as with “Obscure Philosophy,” I leave the impressive, difficult pieces on the tops of my piles in case someone is to look at these piles and judge me accordingly. I am, I realize, constructing somewhat of a persona which is predicated on the “tops of the piles,” one which differs in substantial ways from the “bottom of my piles” or the “underneath-my-bed piles.” In this way, through my curation of paper, I may lay some claim to ownership of it.

  Fully standing now, I shuffle my way slowly into the mounds, trying to make it toward the particular hillock down there, under which must be my uniform. Kicking out rather than walking, and earning myself more cuts on the prows of my shins. When I reach the pile in question, I dig down with an arm, reaching waaaay in there, groping, groping. But all the hand encounters is more paper with all of those stealthy edges.

  An hour later, I am seated at my desk, naked from the waist up. I have a large pair of shears, a stapler, and a black grease pencil, and a big roll of tape. (And lots of paper, obvs. There are drafts and revisions galore, mostly futilities: false starts, dead ends, and outright toss-outs. Lists, maps, and charts as well. The project’s debris.) I’ve been hard at work. Many of the sheets of paper now have dotted lines drawn on them. These are clothing patterns. I have already made myself a natty pair of paper trousers in perfect facsimile of the uniform’s own pants, they are finished and currently being worn, and I am just putting the finishing touches on a tunic. Some cutting, some stapling…When the two sides of the shirt are affixed together, I pull it on, gingerly, over my head (it is rather stiff, like a sandwich board—should I write something on it? A motto of some sort?), and then, the paper pipes of the sleeves go on like oversized bracelets. A little tape here, a little tape there…the stapler goes: kerchunk! Kerchunk! And my uniform is complete. God it is uncomfortable (and hot). But it looks okay.

  Imho.

  I grab the grease pencil and draw in the appropriate spot a fairly decent approximation of my original stain.

  Great.

  Suddenly—

  Ping!

  I root for my device. Luckily it is in the white shallows by the bathroom, and I dig it out without too much trouble. Good. I’d hate to have to build one of those out of paper (it’s only a matter of time, probably).

  The message on my device is from Miss Fairfax, and when I v-chat her back, she does not seem taken aback in the slightest by my new duds.

  “Don’t I look handsome?” I ask.

  “Tip-top,” she replies, writing something down on a pad, and leaving the hangout.

  I plow my way like an icebreaker over to my balcony and now I sit on it, surveying the scene before me. The Institute. Under the thinning membrane of the metastructure.

  A white world. A flapping world. Slippery and sharp. The grounds area covered, the trees bedecked. Way off, by the perimeter, by the solar array and turbines, there is a wall of white built up along the edge of the metastructure, as if
a giant wave has come from all directions, collapsed, and a tsunami’s worth of foam was left in 360 degrees. Down below, some of the fellows are leaving for Group. I can see that several of them have, themselves, constructed paper uniforms as well.

  “Hello!” I shout down to a fellow, who seems to have used some kind of paste to assemble his getup. It is coming apart along two of the seams, and some of his fundament is exposed to the world. Nevertheless, he has also added a paper tricorn hat to his ensemble, which lends him a formidable and military air.

  He hasn’t heard my greeting from all the way up here, and so continues his trudge.

  I hear Zimzim the Tea Boy behind me. I spin around, and he is standing patiently in the mess, dressed in pale pink as ever.

  Me: “Zimzim, do I have any calls today?”

  Tea Boy: “…”

  Me: “Tea Boy, you really are quite something, aren’t you?”

  Tea Boy: “…”

  Me: “I told you the project was coming along, and just have a look at me now!”

  Tea Boy: “…”

  Me: “Up to my eyeballs in success.”

  Tea Boy: “…”

  Me: “I think somebody owes somebody an apology.”

  Tea Boy: “…”

  Me: “Still, with the accusations; the condemnations?”

  Tea Boy, bored, salaams, turns, and goes.

  Will I see him again? Will anyone? Doesn’t matter. I don’t need him anymore. Just see if I don’t. And by the end of the work period, I’ve made a pretty good Tea Boy out of paper, drawn in graphite, in variable, perishable intensities of sooty gray, using the control rods from my window blinds as an armature, a skeleton. They are tied together with bailing wire. The paper Tea Boy is a bit smaller than meatspace Tea Boy, but not by much. I think I’ve captured his blank affect pretty well, actually. Though I’m pretty sure that the paper version won’t be able to serve me beverages. This saddens me, briefly, but now it also occurs that I could simply add a couple of “stories of tea service” to his white and wavering trunk. In this way, I could just read about drinking coffee out of bowls. Actually, I have changed my mind, and I have decided and it is that in these stories I will have Zimzim serve me some fucking tea in a fucking cup. See, it’s up to me now how this all proceeds from here on out; my way or the highway. Take that, you uncooperative peon. Tea it is. In a cup.