Less Than Hero (31 page)

The man flies across the hood of the taxi and slams headfirst into the windshield, then launches over the roof as the cab driver slams on the brakes. Rubber screams on asphalt, the body somersaults through the air, someone shouts out in horror and surprise just before another taxi slams into the rear of the first, glass exploding and metal crunching, the sound jarring and insistent and final. The homeless man continues to tumble through the air, once then twice, before he finally falls to the asphalt in a sprawl of broken bones and flesh and blood in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

The crowds converge on the accident, men and women reacting with shock and grief and horror, a wide range of human emotions playing out on the screen in front of him.

Much better
, Isaac thinks, then he takes a sip of his coffee and settles in to enjoy the show.

I
’ve never dropped acid or eaten psilocybin mushrooms. I’ve never even smoked pot. And after five years of testing pharmaceutical drugs, you’d think I would have had at least one hallucinatory episode to add to my life experience, but until now I’ve managed to avoid seeing any Plasticine porters with looking-glass ties. Hell, I don’t even know what Plasticine is.

So while there aren’t any newspaper taxis waiting to take me away, my reality has definitely taken a turn for the psychedelic and surreal.

Faces and people melt and blur together. Buildings laugh and street signs wave. A giant balloon floats by that looks like Frank. For all I know it
is
Frank. I haven’t seen him in over a month, so maybe he’s turned into a blimp. In my present reality, anything is possible.

The rational part of my mind knows none of this is real, but that doesn’t make it any easier to cross the street when the asphalt is bubbling like hot lava while Viking ships populated by all of the characters Eddie Murphy has ever portrayed float past and fire cantaloupes at me out of licorice cannons.

This is not how I thought my day would turn out.

Clouds become disembodied faces. Streetlamps turn into the stilt-like legs of giant aliens. Everything melts or expands or otherwise breaks the rules of physics. It’s as if I’m living inside a Salvador Dalí painting.

I look around and try to figure out where I am, but there aren’t any recognizable landmarks to help guide me. The last thing I remember I was standing next to Isaac on the steps of the New York Public Library. I don’t recall walking away, so for all I know I’m still standing there and this is all in my mind. Except I feel my arms and legs in motion and the ground moving past beneath my feet, which means I must be mobile. But in my current state of mind, I can’t be sure of anything.

At some point I realize the sun is gone and I’m wandering in the dark through a haunted forest, with barren, skeletal limbs reaching out and voices whispering in the darkness, so apparently I’ve transitioned from Dalí paintings to Disney cartoons.

For some reason, my hallucinations are predominated by pop culture references.

Sophie appears, laughing and running, hiding behind tree after tree, but as soon as I catch her she turns to vapor and vanishes like a breath in the winter air. Someone taps me on the shoulder and I turn around to find Randy floating six feet off the ground wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, his flesh melting, so naturally I scream and run away. Charlie and Vic and Frank and Blaine show up here and there, more demons and ghosts to haunt the landscape of my newly warped reality.

Even the monochromatic redhead who gave me twenty bucks
makes an appearance, standing in the path ahead of me wearing a red lace teddy and beckoning me toward her with an alluring wave of an index finger. Then her index finger morphs into a serpent and I turn and run in the other direction.

Like I said, I’m pretty sure none of this is real, but I’m not taking any chances.

I reach a clearing in the forest and look up and see the moon glowing like a giant eyeball in the black sky. I’m waiting for it to turn into a face and wink at me, or start bouncing across the sky like a cartoon sing-along ball.

Look out! Look out! Pink elephants on parade!

Instead, the moon starts to look less like a lifeless satellite reflecting the sun and more like the opening at the end of a circular tunnel. The longer I stare at it, the bigger the moon grows, until I feel myself hurtling through the tunnel and into a universe of white, blinding light.

Then something pops and everything goes black.

I
wake up shivering on the ground, curled up in the fetal position, wearing rumpled khakis and a pullover hoodie, covered in dirt and leaves. I get to my feet and brush myself off and look around, trying to figure out where I am. There’s not much light but it’s enough for me to decide that I’m in the Ramble in Central Park. Or at least I think I am. At the moment I’m still not sure of anything. Scratch that. I’m sure of one thing: I’m staying as far the fuck away from Isaac as possible.

How he managed to fool all of us for so long is beside the point and not something I’m going to beat myself up about, because I already have enough guilt on my plate to feed an entire congregation of Catholics. But it’s obvious that when it comes to superpowers, I still have my training wheels, while Isaac is in the pole position at the Indianapolis 500.

I start walking, rubbing my hands together and trying to warm myself up, waiting for the trees to uproot and follow me or for Randy to come jogging past wearing a
Dark Side of the Moon
T-shirt and spitting balls of fire. Instead I see a man in a jacket walking a black standard poodle. At first I think my hallucinatory
experience from yesterday has run its course and that my reality has returned to normal, but then the man waves back at me with three hands and his poodle starts barking in German.

Hallo, Ich sah nur ein Vogel. Ein Vogel! Ich bin so aufgeregt! Vogel!

Eventually I make my way out of the Ramble, past the Shakespeare Garden, and end up by the Delacorte Theater, where Romeo and Juliet embrace in an eternal prelude to a kiss. While the statue captures an innocent moment of the star-crossed lovers frozen in time, I notice that one of Romeo’s hands has shifted to Juliet’s ass while his other hand cups her breast. He squeezes Juliet’s breast as she lets out a moan of pleasure. Then I blink and the statue returns to normal.

The last remnants of night are holding on in the shadows as the first hint of blue sky appears above Queens. I’m hoping the daylight will bring some relief from my hallucinations, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the sun rose wearing Ray-Bans and singing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

I walk past the Great Lawn on my way toward Fifth Avenue, blowing into my hands and rubbing my arms, trying to ignore the miniature Loch Ness Monster that keeps surfacing in the Turtle Pond. A couple approaches, a young man and woman walking hand in hand, either getting an early start to their day or putting the finishing touches on a late night. When they kiss, their faces melt together and drip onto the sidewalk like hot wax.

Apparently Isaac’s superpowers are longer lasting than Extra gum.

I walk through the Greywacke Arch and sit down on a bench out behind the Met. Other than joggers running past on their way to a healthy lifestyle, and a homeless person digging through
a garbage can, there’s no one else around. So I sit there in the early-morning cold, trying to warm myself up and pull myself together, wondering what I’m going to do if my new state of mind turns out to be permanent.

A few minutes after I sit down, a man in a long black coat and freshly pressed slacks sits down on a bench across from me. He’s holding a bouquet of daisies in one hand and looking around expectantly, an expression of anticipation on his face, as if he’s waiting for someone. He looks familiar, though I don’t know from where or when. If you live in Manhattan long enough you’re bound to run into someone you recognize. In my current state of mind I wonder if he’s real or a figment of my imagination; an odd coincidence or my subconscious coming out to play on the jungle gym of my hallucinating mind. There’s a good chance it could be either.

There’s also a good chance his bouquet of daisies will jump out of his hand and start dancing to the
Saturday Night Fever
soundtrack. So I put my head in my hands and stare at the ground, then take several deep breaths and hope no one comes up to talk to me. Right now, I just want to be left alone.

I don’t know how long I stay like this. It seems like a few days but I’m guessing it’s more like a few minutes, since the sun continues to inch its way above the Upper East Side. Plus, when I look up, the guy with the daisies is still sitting across from me, and I doubt he’d still be there after three days.

A woman comes jogging along the pedestrian path toward us and the man stands up, a nervous smile playing at his lips. From the expression on his face, it’s obvious he came here to surprise her. And it occurs to me that this is one of the scenarios
I fantasized about when I imagined running into Sophie, only she wouldn’t be jogging. And I would have brought lilies. But otherwise it’s pretty close. So I watch out of curiosity to see what happens, hoping my hallucination has a happy ending.

“Hi Sara,” the man says, raising his right hand in greeting, his left hand wrapped around the bouquet of daisies, which he holds out to her like a peace offering.

Sara doesn’t look thrilled to see him, which isn’t a good sign, for me or for him. Instead, she keeps running as she reaches into her waist belt and pulls something out with her right hand. For a moment it’s concealed by her fingers; then I see that she’s holding a small pink canister. As she runs past him, she raises her right hand and sprays the man in the face.

The man drops the daisies and starts screaming and clawing at his eyes, stumbling and nearly running into a garbage can before he staggers away through the Greywacke Arch toward the Turtle Pond as the woman continues her morning jog and disappears from view.

So much for happy endings.

I look back at the daisies scattered on the ground, the sun still waiting to peek over the high-rent homes and offices lining Fifth Avenue, and I can’t help but think that my hallucination does not bode well for a reconciliation with Sophie.

“That looked like it hurt,” a woman says as she walks past me.

Her red mane of hair cascades over her red turtleneck and her red leather jacket, which match her red leather pants. A red scarf and a red cable-knit beanie finish off the ensemble. She walks over and stands with her hands on her hips, looking toward the Greywacke Arch. “Did that look like it hurt?”

I stare at her, standing there like a giant red exclamation point, and like with everything else that’s happened to me since I woke up this morning, I wonder whether or not she’s real. Considering that the rest of my subconscious is making an appearance this morning, I’m guessing not.

After a moment, I realize my hallucination is waiting for an answer.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” I say. “He doesn’t really exist anyway.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she says, then walks over and sits down on the bench next to me. Her lips are so red it’s like they’re made of candy apples.

“You’re not real, are you?” I ask. “You’re just my imagination fucking with me.”

She shrugs. “I guess that’s all up to interpretation.”

I’m still pretty sure she’s a hallucination, but I figure if I have to hallucinate, at least I picked an attractive figment of my imagination.

We sit in silence a few moments as she taps her foot to some silent beat and the sun finally peeks up over Fifth Avenue, the rays shooting out of the clouds like an homage to God. Then my hallucination stands up and walks over to the bouquet of scattered daisies, picks them up, and comes back and sits down next to me.

“I don’t know why he brought her daisies.” She gives them a light sniff and makes a face as if she just smelled someone’s dirty feet. “He should have brought roses.”

“I don’t think roses would have made a difference,” I say, thinking about the confrontation that was an imaginary representation of my inadequacies as a boyfriend.