by Frank Spinelli
Otis calls me over. He wants to show me his newest move. I play defense, as always, but what’s the point? He’s easily better than me, and he knows it. No one else will play though, so I take my position, feet spread apart, knees bent, arms outstretched, and I try to keep him out of the paint. Otis dribbles the ball leisurely, toying with me, waiting for me to become distracted. I don’t try to steal the ball. I’ve tried it before, and once you commit like that, it’s all over. So I remain poised, staring him down, looking for that tiny flash in his eyes that says he’s going. But he’s even learned to control that little flash. And while I’m looking in his eyes, waiting for any little signal, he’s gone. The slightest feint to the right and, before I can react, he blows by my left side and launches an easy scoop shot. This is a new move. Otis is right-handed, but he seems to have perfected the left-handed version.
“Ain’t no way to guard that shot,” he says.
“Yeah?” I say. “I’m slow and hungry. Try it against Shaq.”
Otis boasts that he could have played point guard for the Knicks, except he kept running into the law. “Fuckin’ cops,” he says. He thinks it’s their fault he’s not center stage at Madison Square Garden. Personally, I didn’t know if the NBA would be willing to take a chance on an unknown 5’10’’ meth addict with a spotty outside shot.
Normally, Otis isn’t one to blame his problems on the world. This is a source of pride for him, standing there in his greasy overcoat with size ten Nikes on his size eight feet patting his chest. “I’m here ’cause of me,” he likes to say. “Ain’t no one else, man, just me.” I don’t point out the contradiction, because I know how he feels about cops. I just let it go.
We walk back to the bridge, Otis holding the ball against his stomach like he’s pregnant. He laughs to himself and says, “Can’t guard that shot.”
That was the last I saw of him.
* * *
Sometimes it feels like God has dropped a dark veil between me and the world; like I’m going through my routine and I’m suddenly aware that something’s not right. Everything feels unreal, including me. It’s not a sound or a smell, no alarm bells ringing in my ears. It’s more subtle than that. It’s a perception, a feeling of distance, but also an awareness of what’s not there, of what’s between the lines. I try to tell myself it’s a gift because most people have no idea what’s hiding between the lines.
I assumed it was me at first, this feeling. I assumed it was some trick of my imagination, but my imagination isn’t that strong. Nobody’s is. Nobody can conjure up such a consistent reality over the course of years and years. I’ve tried. When I was a kid, I tried to program my dreams. I’d lie in bed running scenarios through my head as I drifted off to sleep. The imagery was so vivid; but in the morning, nothing. As I got older, I’d sit in my room for hours, eyes closed, trying to put myself into a trance, trying to will myself into another world, to find a place of normalcy. But such places do not exist. This much I know at least.
I was twelve when I first noticed it, sitting in class at St. Thomas. Sister Gabriel loved to spring pop quizzes on us. They operated on fear, those nuns. We’d come into class every day like prisoners of war, wondering if we were going to be interrogated, and on this day—April 25, 1972—she walked into class and told us to put our books away. A wave of fear spread over us, but for me it was more than that. I suddenly became aware of what she really was, this woman posing as a nun. There was no reason to test us today. It was the Monday after a long weekend, we’d had no homework assignments. Why would she do this? It was suddenly obvious to me that she didn’t belong there, that she had never really belonged there, and that none of us knew who this pretender was. I couldn’t believe I’d never seen this before. I didn’t know what had blinded me to this truth, but I wouldn’t let it stand. I would expose her for what she really was. I marched up to the front of the room and tore the veil from her head.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “What are you doing here?”
* * *
The first thing is sound. I hear a bird chirping, and without opening my eyes I know it’s in the tree right outside my window. I don’t remember what kind of tree, but it’s got these amazing leaves that shimmer in the sun. I almost expect it to sing. And I can see the whole room—white on white on white. The bed is small, and the sheets are stained from the poor sap who slept here before me. And the old rusty fan doesn’t keep me cool. It just blows the thick air around a little. I kick the sheets off the bed and sleep naked. Some people are offended by that, but you can’t worry too much about offending people. You’ll never get any sleep.
Right now, this place feels like a prison. The stink of industrial cleaner, the terrified shouts quickly silenced. I sense these things sharply, and I know my place. I know this is as real as it ever gets for me. Other times, when it’s harder to focus, it feels more like a sanctuary, a place for rest and healing. And that’s precisely how they get you. False sense of security and all that. We’re here to help you, Simon. That’s what they say, but I’ve learned to see through that crap.
I told Otis the nun story once. He’s the only one I’ve ever told, the only one I trust. Otis’ll give you half his sandwich when you can’t scrape together loose change, and that’s all you need to know. We were sitting on our favorite bench, the one with the good view of the skyline. It was October, and we both knew winter was coming. The sky was gray, the East River was gray, the whole world was gray, and I told Otis about the dark veil, about the feeling of separation, about the fear. Otis turned to me with that smile, that wide smile with too many holes in it, scratched his wiry beard for effect and told me he had it all figured. Your parents traumatized you so bad, you blocked out the memory and went to a safe place. But that’s the easy answer. That’s the answer I get from the flunkies in white who try to keep me from the truth.
Otis knows all about the flunkies in white. He clued me in about them the first time we met, so it surprises me that he’s using their words. I was sitting in a corner of the Common Room a few months back, staring out the window and minding my own business when he zeroed in on me like a heat-seeking missile. He strutted over, full of wisdom and warning. I was new to this place, and I didn’t trust him at first with his wide smile and eager eyes. Guys like that always want something, but Otis was different. He didn’t take, he gave.
“See the guy in the corner? Looks like a linebacker?” he whispered. “He tells you to do something, you do it. He don’t take shit, no matter how sweet. The rest, you can work around ‘em, but not that one.” He stood and walked back to the card game at the center table.
Every week or so, he’d sit next to me, give me a piece of the truth, and he never asked for anything in return.
Mondays and Thursdays, they’d put us in cold, metal chairs in a cold, lifeless room surrounded by robotic faces. I knew this was real. There was no veil here. The ammonia burned my nostrils, my eyes watered and I stared out the window listening for the sounds of birds. Sometimes the others would speak, sometimes I’d speak, but who knew what the hell I was saying? Somehow, I could say the right words without really listening to myself. I knew they were the right words because the man in the half-glasses kept nodding and shutting his eyes in thought. Sometimes he’d lean forward, hands clasped, elbows on his knees and stare at the floor, but he was always listening, and I seemed to be saying what he wanted to hear.
* * *
I don’t know how much of my memory I can trust. People and places that seem so real one day seem like illusions the next. I have one memory though, that lingers through the stench of the streets, through the layers of filth on my body, through everything, and yet it makes no sense to me. I am sitting behind a polished black table in an office high above the streets. Men in suits surround me. Everyone looks like they’ve just had a death in the family. They cradle their heads in their sweaty white palms, they stutter and babble on cell phones, they shuffle papers as if that will solve anything. I sit calmly and stare at the buildings outside, wondering what the world would sound like if I could open the window.
I remember an empty apartment overlooking Central Park, followed by a much smaller apartment in a shittier neighborhood and then, Otis, Beemer, and Lucius and the place under the bridge, which feels more real than all the rest of it.
The man in the half-glasses tells me this is important, but I don’t believe a word he says. He looks safe, but he operates on fear, too. I’d like to rip the veil from his head, but I’d never get near him.
Every morning, my head pounds like one of those big Japanese drums, and I can’t remember yesterday. I think they’re trying to poison me. They could be slipping something into my food, or they could just let the asbestos in the walls do the job for them. I told the man in the half-glasses I wouldn’t eat the food anymore, but the linebacker in white just smiled and said, “I guess you’re not eating, then.”
After a few days of this, Otis tells me I’m not playing it smart.
“You gotta know the rules to dodge the rules,” he says.
So I eat my food, I smile in my cold chair and I say everything I know I’m supposed to say. Soon, the linebacker isn’t watching me all the time, and the man in the half-glasses shakes my hand and tells me I’m making progress.
Six months later, the doors open, the sun pours in, and I see the outside again. Otis says he’ll see me soon. He winks, and I know he’s playing it smart, too.
* * *
I’m standing in an empty playground, waiting for Otis to show. He promised me some one-on-one. I hear the traffic from Bedford Avenue, impatient horns blaring at pedestrians when suddenly a man walks past me and nods. His face is implacable and stern, like weathered stone. He doesn’t smile. He’s wholly without humor. He looks at me, and I know he’s conveying something. As if it was all real. As if I’m supposed to believe it’s real. But I know it’s not. I know that in the real world, these things don’t happen. These courtesies don’t exist. They never have.
I’ve seen this man a lot lately. I see him on the street, in the coffee shop, in the park. He stands over my bench as I sleep and whispers in my dreams. I can read most people, but not this man. He showed up five days ago, and he never leaves me. I become aware of a growing fear. I don’t know where this fear comes from, but I trust it. I’ve learned to trust these fears. It’s something about the tie. It’s too perfect. A perfect little half-Windsor. I know his type. Probably spends fifteen minutes every morning on the tie alone. Probably gets manicures and $100 haircuts. Doesn’t buy anything off the rack, but only from bullshit boutiques paneled in stained wood where everyone greets him by name. This man is a threat.
* * *
Otis has gone missing for a week. Sometimes he wanders off, does his own thing, but usually he pops up within a day or two. I ask Beemer and Lucius if they’ve seen him, but they haven’t. We’re standing under the Williamsburg Bridge, warming ourselves over a trash fire. It’s two in the morning, but the bridge still thunders with passing traffic. Beemer is shivering. It’s not that cold out, but he’s always freezing. He’s got no body fat. Doesn’t matter how many ratty sweaters he layers on, he’s always going to be cold. Lucius offers to donate some of his fat, but Beemer doesn’t see the humor. He just moves closer to the fire, leaning over it until we’re afraid his beard will catch. He says he doesn’t care. He’s so cold he’d almost relish the idea of burning alive.
I ask them if they’ve noticed the stone-faced man, but they just laugh. Why would anyone who wears Armani hang around this place? I tell them I think he may have something to do with Otis’ disappearance. I saw them together once on the basketball court, like old friends. I thought Otis was smarter than that. He usually knows who to trust.
“Don’t you worry ’bout him,” Lucius says, laughing. His eyes glow red in the gleam of the fire. “That’s one hard motherfucker. He got some years left.”
“Remember that time a few weeks ago,” Beemer says, “When the place was crawling with cops? Fucking Otis . . .” And this causes Beemer to laugh hysterically, wheezing and coughing in the process. “Fucking Otis—remember?—Otis goes to the one cop and says, Do you have a warrant to search these premises? And the cop pepper sprays him and hauls him away.”
I was furious, but Beemer and Otis never got along, and the sight of Otis, eyes burning, hands cuffed, and sitting in the back of a black and white always made Beemer lose it.
“They locked him up for weeks, he still came back. Shit man, where else Otis gonna go?”
Beemer is certain of this, but I’m not convinced. The same instinct that warns me of the stone-faced man tells me that Otis is never coming back.
* * *
I know all the public bathrooms in the city. Places that don’t require a purchase. The Macy’s bathroom is on the fourth floor. Otis used to come here sometimes. Looking for a new suit, he always said. I step off the prehistoric escalator, ignore the stares of the shoe salesmen, and wander in. I’ve tried most of Otis’ other hangouts with no luck. This is the last one.
If not here, then where?
Small pools of water and urine lie on the aging tile. Gay men cruise for a quick blowjob. I try to piss, but the stone-faced man is staring at me, and I can’t piss under those conditions. I feel him closer now, right over my shoulder, his icy breath on my neck. I try to play it cool, but I start trembling so badly, I piss all over myself. I can smell the murderous stink coming off his Armani suit like he’s just rolled around in pig shit. I glance down at his shoe, and I see a spot. I see a small spot on those perfectly-polished wingtips. It’s dark and caked, and suddenly I realize what he’s trying to tell me. Otis is dead. That expression is the face of a cold killer. I can’t believe he missed that spot of blood on his shoe. These lunatics are as fastidious about the way they dress as the way they do their job. No muss, no fuss. I guarantee he wears gloves, not just to avoid fingerprints, but to keep his manicure intact.
And yet, he makes no move. I consider confronting him. Demanding satisfaction. But always, I see the stone face, and I know demands are useless. Pleas, threats, reason, none of that will work against a dead heart. So I wait. What choice do I have?
* * *
I’m sitting behind the black table high above the streets again. I’m surrounded by men in suits, staring at me, waiting for me to say something. This place is called a board room, and it feels safe because I’m able to put a name to it. I know it’s a board room because it looks like every one I’ve ever seen on TV, complete with over-sized charts resting on an easel. These men are all dressed the same, and I feel threatened, but they all seem deferential somehow. They’re looking at me with hope and fear, so maybe I don’t have to be afraid.
What are you telling them, Simon?
I hear these words, but none of the men moves his mouth.
What do they want to hear? They’re looking to you to make things right, Simon. Can you help them?
I want to answer. I feel these words deserve it, but I can’t be sure the words aren’t just in my head. What will they think of me, these men in suits, if I start talking to the air?
Silence won’t help you. You have to talk.
And the voice is so insistent now, not just in my head, but from somewhere just outside the veil, a place so close that I have no choice but to answer.
“What am I supposed to say?” I expect every one of the men to look at me like a raving lunatic. But they just stare, as though they can’t hear me. “I don’t know what to tell them.”
Yes, you do.
This is spoken with such confidence that I believe it. Maybe somewhere in my lost memory are the right words. After all, I can tell the man in the half-glasses what he wants to hear.
My eyes scan the room and fall on a large, multi-colored bar graph at the other end of the table. A man in a navy suit stands next to it with a laser pointer. The x-axis reads Annual Sales (millions) and the y-axis reads Regional Offices. It’s obvious from the chart that the southwestern regional offices have outsold all other regions in the country by far, so I say that. The men nod. A few of them look at each other like people sharing a private joke.
“This is true, Simon,” says the skinny, bald man to my left, “but projections showed the exact opposite. We can’t figure out how our forecasters could have been so wrong.” His voice betrays desperation. I can sense desperation a mile away.
“Well, projections are, after all, just guesses.”
Nervous eyes dart around the room.
“Well, Simon,” says the guy at the end of the table who looks like a marine sergeant. “They’re a little better than just guesses. There’s market research, test groups. You know what goes into those projections.”
“Bullshit,” I say. All this crap about market research churns my gut, and since I’ve learned to trust my gut, I keep talking. Again, I don’t know exactly what I’m saying, but I don’t care. I’ve ceased to care at this point. Something is feeding me the lines, so I go with it. “Those projections were based on faulty research. We all know that. We put the research ahead of our common sense. Why are we kidding ourselves?”
That’s it. I knew you could do it. Shock some sense into them.
This place feels more familiar now. I know I’ve been here. I begin ranting about how this is not the first time our projections have been off, and how we never seem to learn from our mistakes, and this is why our jobs are in danger because the shareholders are pissed as hell and want everyone’s head on a platter. Chaos erupts. I guess these guys hadn’t heard about the last shareholder’s meeting.
The marine sergeant and the flabby ex-jock are yelling for everyone to shut up. The skinny, bald man looks shell-shocked. Everyone else is trying to figure out how they’re going to pay for their Porches and Jags if they lose their job. I’m watching the melee when I realize it doesn’t matter.
What doesn’t matter, Simon?
None of it. It’s a done deal. No matter how much we bicker and argue, we’re history. We’re not turning anything around, the board will vote, we’ll all be out, new blood will be in. Period.
Why do you know this?
I know it because it’s already happened. Hasn’t it?
Bingo.
I’m slowly aware of cold metal against my legs, the sound of snapping fingers. I hear traffic outside the window, one of those windows reinforced with the crisscross wiring. This isn’t a dream because I know I’m awake. I’m awake and this is real, and the veil is gone. Everything else but this moment seems like the dream now, an epic dream that has spanned years.
“How do you feel, Simon?”
The man with the half glasses is sitting next to me, not looking at me. I ask the only question that seems important.
“Where’s Otis? What have you done to him?”
I don’t know if he has any answers. It may be that Otis and I only shared sandwiches and games of one-on-one, but that’s what I have. And that’s what I know. And if Otis is gone, I need to know that, too.
There are several voices now. The man in the half glasses is speaking to a detective. I don’t see a badge, but I don’t need to. The military posture, the arrogance. He reeks of cop. And he finds the topic of Otis very amusing.
The cop is speaking. “Is he bullshitting, Doc? What’s the deal? He doesn’t know?”
“Know what?” I scream.
The man in the half glasses—who reeks of shrink, by the way—sits at a table across from me, hands folded.
“Do you know why you’re here, Simon?”
God, I hate the way this patronizing fuck ends every question with my name.
I lean forward, but the shackles restrain me.
“I’m not a goddamn child,” I say.
Now the cop is hysterical, like this whole thing is the best joke he’s ever heard.
“Think about it, Simon,” says the shrink. “You know what this is about. Right?”
I stare at his maroon cardigan, losing myself in the weave of the fabric, when the detective drops something heavy on the table.
“Maybe this’ll jog his memory.”
I stare at the long steel rod with the clawed ends caked with hair and dried blood. I reach out to touch it and this cop reacts like I’ve pulled a gun. But I already know what it feels like, this thing, because I’ve held it once before. Slowly, bits of memory begin to float up from the dark place like debris on a rising tide—Otis asleep on the bench; the icy cold of the crowbar; standing over him, my breath steaming in the cold night air; images of Otis and the stone-faced man, laughing, shooting hoops; the certainty that they conspired to kill me. And finally, the truth.
My hands are shaking now, pulling against the chains. The room feels like a meat locker, and my whole body is a knot of barely-controlled spasms. The rattling of chains against metal is so loud in the empty room, I think for a moment I might break free. I might summon the strength to rip these shackles apart like putty; but I’m not looking to escape, because for the first time, I can separate truth from fiction.
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Frank Spinelli's work has appeared in Si Senor, American Identity, and his essay on healthy eating appeared in Sustainable Eating.
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