The New Black (21 page)

“Jesus, fine, whatever.” I start into an Elvis tune, from his gospel years, and she cuts me off.

“Hank Williams.”

“We've been over this before.”

“Hank Williams, Henry. Sing it.”

“Damn it, Ma.” I forget and crush my cigarette on the floor under my foot. It sizzles on the damp surface and the mark is indistinguishable. “I'm not singing that fucking song. I don't care if it's the only song that won't…won't make your head explode. I'm not going to sing that song.”

“But it's all I have.” Her jaw tightens, lip shivers. “I love it.”

“He loved it.”

She flinches, as if I'd hit her. As if she could see me try to strike her. “He loved you.”

“He loved smack and he loved you buying it for him.”

She swings her hand, swatting dust particles and drops of rain and coming nowhere near my face

“Don't talk about you father that way!”

“Why, Mom?” I pace the other side of the bed. “Tell me.”

“Because he was a good man.”

“He tried to burn the fucking house down!” I knock the picture of her and the man off her night table. “You're blind and you're crippled, and you're telling me he was a good fucking man!”

“Don't scream at me!” Her voice shatters into a thousand jagged pieces, chest heaving and shaking so hard the armrest falls off the wheelchair. It clatters on the floor, and I look around and the whole scene comes crashing down on me as if the roof finally gave in and aimed itself for the crown of my skull.

“God. Mom.” I rush to her side of the bed, to hold her, hug her, sing to her, and apologize, but she uses some kind of echolocation and her hand stings hard across my mouth. She wills the tears back into her eyes and her expression becomes marble.

“Get out of my house.”

X

Marcel answers on the third knock. The light over his door is burned out and streetlights cast a golden pall. The bunny on his right foot is missing one ear and his left looks comatose. He regards me with leaden eyes and a grunt.

“I need an operation,” I say.

His kitchen is almost as accommodating as his basement surgery: cardboard boxes half-full of textbooks and home repair manuals line the perimeter, and a rainbow-river of wires runs across the chipped linoleum.

“Hazelnut?”

“What?”

“Do you like hazelnut coffee?”

I shrug and pull out a chair, moving a grocery bag of antiseptic mouthwash, grilling implements, dental floss and packs of wintermint gum to the floor.

“You know I'm not a brain surgeon, right? I mean, anything can go wrong.” His words come in fits and starts, alternating warnings with counting scoops of coffee. “You've seen that yourself. It probably will go wrong.”

“You're a doctor. You can do it.”

“Henry,” he pauses, laughing to himself. “Look behind you. Second stack from the corner, about waist-high. There's a box labeled head.”

While he roots around in the fridge, I unstack piles, unearthing a box of neurological textbooks. He beckons with his hand, digs halfway down and grabs a book with a blank cover. Bologna sandwich hanging from his mouth, he leafs through two inches of pages, then spins the book to face me and jabs a finger on a diagram of the human brain.

“Right there, right there, and right there are where your memories are stored.”

“I told you you could do it.”

“It's not erasing a movie from a video tape, Henry. It's brain surgery.”

“And?” On the counter, the coffee pot coughs and sputters.

“And those two spots, I could never get to. Not without turning your head into a skull-full of grits.”

I get up and pour two cups of coffee. “So what are you going to do?”

“Nothing.”

Fingers of steam rise from the coffee like smoke, like ropes of thick grey air that carry cinders and souls. I sip and expect to taste ash.

I point to another set of ridges. “What about there?”

He tilts his head, considering. “Well, yeah, but there's no guarantee. On any of it. I could do it and make you a drooling idiot. You could lose any memory you have. You could lose random ones and keep the ones you want gone. I could slip and nick another lobe, like this one.”

He lays a gnarled finger on the next section. “That controls language.”

“Okay.”

“While I'd enjoy you not be able to argue with me, it might affect other aspects of your life. As in you and your—“

I swat away the idea. “Yeah, I get it.”

We sip our coffee until it's only grounds scattered on the bottom of the cup. He offers half his sandwich, but I push it back to him. I try to stare a hole through his skull, to climb in and rewire his risk-assessment ridges. He won't meet my eyes.

Eventually, he stands and stretches. The edge of the sky bleeds pink, drop by drop, ray by ray. He tells me that he needs to take a shower and eat breakfast because there's a consultation scheduled in two hours. He pauses before going up the steps, turns and raises his gaze to mine. It's taken four hours for him to meet my eyes.

“I used to know a girl once, a singer, back when I was still fighting.”

“So that wasn't a joke?”

“I didn't always look like this.” He looks down at the buttons of his shirt, stretched tight and nearly popping free. “She had one of the most beautiful voices I'd ever heard—still, to this day—that could've taken her anywhere in the world. The only thing holding her back was the idea that things were always better on that other stage.”

I flip back the edge of a box, pick at a veterinary surgery guide.

“You're going to do this regardless, aren't you?” he says.

“It's either you or drinking four gallons of turpentine.” In a digging motion, I press a spoon to my forehead until white dots materialize like stars on the horizon. “Either way, he can't be in here anymore.”

Marcel only nods. The spoon tinks on the tabletop.

“Go home and sleep.” His footsteps echo in the hallway. “You can come in tonight.”

X

The day passes in a breath, and as I kneel beside Mom, tucked under her covers as if she's sleeping, though I can tell from her breathing she's awake. I can't remember a single scene from my entire day. Marcel's voice echoed down the hall, then I was tiptoeing across the Mom's floor, a thief in my own house.

She rolls over and grunts, still pretending, and her hand falls on the edge of the bed next to mine. I lay mine over hers and sing in a voice barely louder than eyelashes blinking. I swallow bile and dig my fingernails into my thigh and sing the Hank Williams song she and my fuckface father loved. She manages to keep the appearance up and can control her breathing, but the tear welling in the crevice of her right eyelid gives it away. I kiss her forehead and remove my hand, then slink away into the rainy night.

A pelican flies over water that looks like an ocean of sapphires while two palm trees sway in a gentle breeze that barely shifts any of the crystalline sand on the beach. A woman leans over a car from Smokey and the Bandit, the bandana she's using as a bathing suit disappearing between her thighs.

I've worked with Marcel for over two years, and I never noticed the posters he tacked to the ceiling.

“Nice touch,” I say.

He nods, gives a half-smile. “I wanted to cover all the bases.”

“It's only two bases.” I sit up, leaning on my elbow. ‘And that one's bordering on pornographic.'

He just shrugs and runs the edge of a knife over a tomato, testing the blade, then pours alcohol over it. Blotting it dry, he picks up a needle then sets it down, turns over a pair of tongs and replaces the Saran Wrap over the table. Three more slices in the tomato and I think he's stalling.

“You promised,” I say.

His hand jumps, nicking the thumb. Hand to his mouth, he mumbles, “You're sure about this.”

I just nod and lay down, close my eyes. A muted rainbow of dots float across the flesh inside my eyelids. I focus, try to rearrange them into a halftone print of a family portrait with only two people. Inhale. The smell of damp smoke floods my nostrils, and Marcel gave up cigarettes years ago when his wife died of cancer. Exhale. The sound of game-show audiences drowns out scratchy country guitars. Inhale. A fist of cheap cologne, vodka and the burnt baby laxative used to cut dope crushes my nose. Exhale. A whiff of ash, of baby powder, of Mom's shampoo from when I was younger that always reminded me of cut grass. Inhale. Nitrous oxide and Marcel's liquid voice telling me to count to ten. Somewhere beyond my ears, past bloody eyelids and clenched fists and bruised legs and pipe-burnt chests, Hank Williams drags his voice over broken glass in the darkness.

X

Static white. Fields of snow and the feathers of doves falling around me. A thousand rose thorns stab my fingers and feet. Marcel's voice sends the feathers into spirals.

I blink away the nauseating soot and see a brilliant blue swirl above me. Tiny fists reshape the inside of my head.

“Henry?” His voice is made of cotton and I can hardly hear it over the reverberations in my skull.

The air is tactile and claustrophobic. Hot metal, copper and antiseptic. I blink, tell my fingers to move. One trembles, or that could be my vision.

“Henry, can you hear me?” His snaps are cracks of thunder.

I hoist myself up to my elbows, swallow. An anchor must be tied to the back of my head.

“Do you know where you are? What's my name?”

He snaps his fingers to the left, right, left, up and down, testing my reactions.

“What's your mother's name?”

I clear my throat.

“Henry.” Marcel takes my hand and looks me straight in the eyes. “Speak.”

I open my mouth and silence devours me.

II. On Introductions

A
bove all, you must be patient.

It may take some time to get a full answer, so don't be afraid of a little bit of silence. Prompting, such as “go on,” or “what are you thinking?” or “I'm going to beat your face into mashed potato pulp” will
not
help and will likely make them nervous. You should also generally avoid finishing their sentences when they pause for a moment. They want to articulate their thoughts in a particular way, so give them enough time to do so.

Listen carefully to their answers (but never write them down) and give positive feedback, such as, “You're doing a good job” or “That wasn't that hard now, was it?” Avoid threats if at all possible. Be sure to give sincere feedback between questions; if they don't think you mean what you're saying, it won't help you.

Express a positive impression of interacting with them. When it's time for you to part ways, smile and let them know that you appreciated talking with them. If you seem insincere, they may feel discouraged rather than uplifted. It is important to let them know this is nothing personal—it's just your job.

Appendix C—Recipe for Old Fashioned

2 oz bourbon whiskey

2 dashes Angostura® bitters

1 splash water

1 tsp sugar

1 maraschino cherry

1 orange wedge

Mix sugar, water, and Angostura bitters in a tall shaker. Dump in an old-fashioned glass, or if you are traveling, any glass will do. Drop in a cherry and an orange wedge. Muddle into a paste using a muddler or the back end of a blunt instrument (like a spoon, or the handle of a screwdriver). Pour in bourbon, fill with ice cubes, and stir. Drink in three gulps sitting down, shoes off, toes waving into the carpet threads. Repeat. Repeat.

Part 7—The Dance

There are no rules of protocol. The Client prefers you to use bullets. The gun is like your dick, The Client says. Hold it close, protect it. It makes you Who You Are, they say. A steady hand, scope, sniping away from a great distance.

Prefer something more intimate? A dance, then, with a partner who prefers to hover at the edge of the room, just in front of the floor-to-ceiling velvet drapes. Find him there, approach quietly from behind as not to startle. Put your arms around his and remember the waltz lessons Mrs. Kessel taught you long ago on that gym floor—
one two three, one two three
—and in Mr. Duncan's home economics class years after that, slicing through chicken quickly, efficiently—with confidence you get right through the bone. Trust the knife, silent like a goodnight kiss. Then pirouette your partner out,
one two three, one two three
. Thank you. Thank you.

Tip the concierge, but not too much. Too much will make him remember you; too little will make him remember you.

Part 10—Laundromats

Remove a bloodstain when it is fresh. Rinse the clothing in cold water. Then blot the bloodstain with some diluted Tide you buy for $2 in the vending machine in the back.

Laundromats are not glamorous. You never see James Bond in a Laundromat at 3:45 a.m., where the 24-hour fluorescent lights at the front entrance speak easy money for the enormous spiders and their webs. They know how to maximize their kills. Some of them you swear you can see breathing.

Ignore the bums sleeping in the corner or wandering through with wild eyes. Ignore the
thump, thump, thump, thump
of someone's bed sheets in the dryer. Ignore the smell of piss mixed with fabric softener. Focus on you, on getting through, on getting back.

If all else fails, try spitting on a bloodstain—especially if it's your own blood. Surprisingly, this may help.

On Dreams

Eating late at night makes for more vivid dreams. Eat as early as possible, and avoid drinking heavily right before bed.

Should you wake from one of the Terrible Ones, stand up immediately in the dark and jump up and down until your ankles start to hurt and the blood in your head feels hot. Remember you are here. Remember there is no God. There is just you and the dark and the carpet, the soft shaggy carpet you spent your first reward on that was worth every fucking penny because it is real and more money than your father would've spent on a car back in those days, back in New Jersey where all the houses squat sad and droopy and falling apart and fuck that, all that. Don't think about your parents either, those nights. Splash some cold water on your face and burn a fifty-dollar bill in the sunken marble tub.

When the fire dies out, eat the ashes.