Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (21 page)

Buzzing. Buzzing. Buzz. Zing. Wave after wave of shimmering rainbow-colored vibrations fly off his magic Black & Decker wand. The vibrations roll toward me, breaking like giant waves, and I feel my chest tighten as I wonder how close they will get. Should I duck or take cover? I am relieved when they dissipate before becoming a serious threat. Crisis averted. But the uncomfortable tightness lingers. Need another vodka.

I rub my hands over the smooth table. It is porous and miraculously cool. I lean over and lay my cheek down next to my hand, pressing my ear hard against the table, hoping to dim the buzzing. This table, I decide, is the only cool place in Africa. I let my eyes roam over the rest of the bar, covering as much territory as I can without actually moving any body parts. Smoking cigarettes. Smoked fish. Buzzing flies. Buzzing. Endless. Buzzing. And Pulsing. And Vibrating. Living. Alive. Banging down my door like the Big Bad Wolf. Driving down my intersecting, interchangeable super highway of fucked-up, misfiring, hydroplaning neural pathways. And there is nothing super about it.

It is Just Fucking Irritating.

I lay my empty glass down on the table next to my face and use my tongue to fish out an ice cube. Held prisoner between cheek and gum, it melts quickly. I slip my tongue through my lips and stretch it out flat like a paintbrush on the table. I lick up and down and around my fingers, tracing the outline of my hand. But I run out of saliva before I can complete the project.

And frankly, I am disappointed that the table—the stone—does not have a more unique taste, something more intrinsic to its stone-ness. I sit up, fall back into the big wicker armchair, and take a deep breath—only to find my mouth filled with the sickly sweet aroma of gardenias budding but not yet in bloom. Want vodka.

The woman at the table next to me bursts out in a high-pitched cackle and I dig my fingernails into my forehead to keep from throttling her.

Yessssssssss. For a moment I am distracted by the pleasantness of the pain.

I let my head fall back onto the tabletop and think of things I’d rather be doing. Running naked through heavily thorned shrubbery is the first thing that comes to mind. But it doesn’t have to be thorns. Almost anything sharp would work. Anything sharp enough to provide some kind of equally intense but opposite sensation to counter the effect of my supersenseless senses. I probably should have stayed upstairs in my room—away from things. And people. But I’ve been trying to carry on a normal life—despite my developing superpowers. And so far I don’t think anyone has noticed.

But today feels different.

And with each new addition to the already cluttered cacophony—spoon clattering onto slate floor, waiter chewing out busboy in Swahili—I know I am coming closer to the edge.

“Sir? May I bring you anything else?”

Without bothering to open my eyes, I pick up my empty glass and rattle the quickly melting cubes in the waiter’s direction.

“Very good, sir.”

A moment passes before I realize I still have my glass raised. I open my eyes and examine the hand wrapped around the tumbler—mine, I assume, since it is attached to my arm. But not exactly the hand I remember. It is puffier, meatier than any hand I remember having. I lay it flat on the table in front of me. I stare at the thick purple vein that rises like a mountain range out and over the top of my hand.

The woman—that fucking woman laughs again. It is an assault. I am sure I can see my pulsating purple vein pick up the pace. I turn and glare at the witch but she is oblivious. Her companion—a fat, pasty turd with an impressively three-dimensional mole on her upper lip—leans in and whispers to her. German. They are German. Nazi German bitches. Pig-fucking Nazi bitches. The women drinking tea at the next table are responsible for the deaths of millions.

A distant voice in my head tells me I should turn away. Because I’ve been known to act impulsively. And then regret it later. Although right now I can’t think of a single example of that. And anyway, this situation is entirely different. These Nazi pig fuckers are guilty of genocide. My homicidal rage is completely justified. I mentally bury the little voice under a pile of biochemical landfill and continue to stare at them, idly turning the hotel silver over in my hand and letting the heavy dull knife and fork clatter onto the table. Picking them up, letting them fall. Picking them up, letting them fall. It is gratuitously obnoxious. Irritating and annoying. At least I hope so. Why should I be the only one to suffer?

The witch shouts something at me in Nazi. Which I neither speak nor understand. Then she spits—just as the waiter is crossing between our tables bearing my drink. The viscous glob lands on his black trouser leg.

He is speechless. She is shocked, appalled, and, screaming at the waiter in German, points a gnarled red-tipped finger at me. Her turd companion is mortified and apologetic and jumps from the table to wipe at the bubbling spot on his pants with her linen napkin.

I smile. I have willed it into being. I have another superpower.

“Madam, please,” the waiter says, trying to shake the prostrate turd-woman off his ankle, “that is not necessary.”

He puts my drink and a bowl of salted nuts down in front of me.

“Will you be needing anything else, sir?”

I have been pressing the heavy, three-tined fork against the bulbous purple vein on my hand, watching, fascinated at how its weight, pressed at just the right angle, forces the one vein to become two—forces the blood to flow otherwise. I poke one of the thick tines into the outside of my even thicker purple vein. It makes a benign indentation. Like poking the Pillsbury Doughboy. How far from the surface could the blood be, I wonder. It is purple enough to see. Purple and pulsing.

“Sir?”

“I’ll have the shrimp cocktail,” I answer without looking up.

The cackling woman has left. Fled. But her cackle has stayed behind. An aural parasite, it has taken up residence in my chest. Like millions of tiny cackling wings all flapping inside me. I can feel them. Cackling, buzzing, building a hive in my chest. Bees. Buzzing. Inside. A giant, humming cancer filled with buzzing, stinging, cackling, crackling insects, angry and desperate to break through the cramped confines of my chest wall. When I put my hand over my sternum I can feel it getting bigger, strangling my heart every time I try to breathe.

The waiter returns with four perfect shrimp—cleaned, peeled, and hung over the side of an ice-filled silver bowl at the center of which is a little dish of cocktail sauce. When he sets them down in front of me, I spin the plate around several times, check under the paper doily, and finally tear it apart, sifting through it all with my hands.

“Sir?”

“Where’s the damn fish fork?” I ask. I am furious. My hands are shaking and covered in cocktail sauce.

“But sir, the shrimp have been peeled, they don’t require …” He stops talking and looks at me. Then, taking my linen napkin, he wipes my hands off—gently, carefully, completely. Cradling first one and then the other in his large, cool, dark hands, he takes his time. As if this were a normal part of his job. Like preparing Caesar salad tableside.

I should be angry. But I’m not. I should feel embarrassment and humiliation. But I don’t. I want to cry. But I can’t.

When my hands are clean, he makes the dirty napkin disappear behind his back.

“Fish fork. Very good, sir. Right away.”

The moment he leaves, the bees are back. Buzzing. I breathe in and feel their tiny feet in my bronchi. Buzz. Wings beating in my alveoli. Flutterbuzz. He is back in a minute. He sets the fish fork on a clean napkin. Then he nudges my vodka toward the far end of the table and puts a very tall iced tea that I did not order in front of me.

“Just brewed,” he says. “Very refreshing.”

“Thank you.”

“Not at all, sir.”

Flutterflutterzzzzzzzbuzzzzzz. I have to do something to make it stop. I have to feel something simple. This—flutterflutterflutterbuzzzzz—is too complicated. Too confusing. I want to feel something about which there can be no argument or debate. Something about which everything will be known. Here. Now. Something that will make all the rest stop.

There is an exquisite and audible pop when the hooked tip of the center tine of the fish fork punctures the fat purple vein. I have enjoyed every delicious second leading up to the final breaching of inner and outer—the sharp poke of the tiny dagger pushing, pushing, pushing. But now that it’s in and the blood is leaking—slowly at first, then faster—the sharpness of the pain has receded to a dull ache. And I am aware once again of the fucking bees. The buzzing that is everywhere around me, inside me, all the time, all at once. I want it gone. I pull the single tine out of my vein but have to tug a little when the hooked edge gets stuck inside. The nearly translucent skin tears easily and the gush that follows brings a windfall of unexpected sweet relief.

It is good. It is a beginning. But it is not enough. So I lay my left arm flat on the table, palm facing upward, and squeeze my fist open and closed. Open and closed. Watch and wait. I sigh, relieved, as my hot, swollen veins finally rise to the surface—the fattest, purplest ones just at the inside of my elbow. So that is where I plunge the fork.

Yesssssssssssssssssss.

For a moment the pain is blinding. Wonderfully, beautifully blinding. I feel the smile spread across my face as my brain scrambles to readjust and rewire its sensory priorities. This pain is precise and delicious and totally satisfying. It is exactly what I have been craving.

Leaving the fork just where it is, and thankful that the perfect shrimp are in fact already peeled, I pick one up, bathe it in cocktail sauce, and lower it into my mouth. The flesh is sweet and tender and has just the right crunch when my molars come together on top of it. And the sauce, redolent with horseradish and fresh lemon, has just the right bite. I eat the second and the third and by the time I get to the last shrimp I have run out of sauce. I hate that. Also, there seems to be a puddle of blood covering the stone table and threatening to run down the sides.

Someone screams. But the sound is fuzzy, distant, cottony soft. I raise my hand to signal for more cocktail sauce and notice the fish fork sticking out of my inner elbow like a harpoon.

Oh yeah, that, I remember distantly. That was a little dramatic. But it worked. Stopped the buzzing.

I yank the fork out of my arm. There is a sudden spray of blood. Like from a drinking fountain. Then it subsides to a generous trickle. There is a commotion behind me, and when I turn I see my waiter running toward me, a stack of clean white napkins in his hands.

My waiter kneels beside my chair and presses the napkins gently but firmly against the oozing punctures.

“Sir?” he asks. His eyes search mine for an answer.

But I don’t know what he wants to know.

Behind us, back toward the hotel, there is more commotion—a siren, some men in white uniforms wheeling a gurney. But none of it bothers me. It is all gauze and honey and a distant wind and I will ride it.

Floating. Held. Safely in safety. Until I feel falling. The panic of the fall. Not me. I am—was—on my feet. Running. To get there. To stop her. Falling.

My feet cannot move fast enough.

“Hold him down.” There are voices and clattering.

Over the green grass. Across the playground blacktop. To catch her falling body.

“Restraints, now!”

She hits the ground.

“No!”

It had seemed so simple—a Sunday, a park, a family. And now all I can do is run with her held against me—red seeping into white—and drive. And make promises to God about everything I will do from now on if He makes her okay.

The happiness of a simple Sunday crushed under the heel of an accident that was no one’s fault but will be riddled with guilt and blame anyway.

God made her okay. But I let go and now I am falling.

“Noooo!” Panic rising. Overflowing. Into consciousness.

“Can you tell me your name, sir?” a female voice asks.

Who wants to know?
I think, awake now, eyes still closed. There is noise and bright lights shine through my eyelids.

“Sir, open up your eyes for me and tell me your name.”

What’s in it for me?
I think, still shaking from a nightmare I don’t recall. But I don’t ask. It’s not a good way to begin a negotiation.

“His vitals are stable.” This time it’s a male voice—with an African-British accent. “He’s just being difficult.”

Fuck you
, I think. If he thinks I’m difficult now, just wait. I feel my personal space is being violated when, without my consent, the asshole shoves his thumb in my eye, pushes up the lid, and shines a penlight around.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck,” I mean to say. But apparently I have grown an extra tongue or three. “Eeezz Cryy, whaaa” and some drool is what actually comes out of my mouth. My head feels as if I’ve been dropped on it. From a third-floor window. This feels familiar. Like Stanford. Like Thorazine.

I try to shield my eyes but find my hands are inconveniently tied to the bed rails.

“See, his pupils are reactive,” the asshole says.

The woman rolls her eyes at the asshole and shakes her head. “Page Dr. Mijumbi. Tell him his patient is awake.”

“Mr. Dowd? Mr. Dowd?” I feel a cool hand lightly tapping my cheeks. “Wake up, Mr. Dowd.”

“He was awake a minute ago.”

At the sound of the asshole’s voice, I open my eyes.

“Ah, there he is. Welcome back, Mr. Dowd.”

And for a brief moment I experience consciousness in a vacuum. There is no place. No time. No identity. Only the awareness of Is. It is the single most stress-free instant I have ever known. And it is over far too quickly.

“Come on, Mr. Dowd, wake up. Stay with us.”

Dowd. Mr. Dowd. Nope. I am drawing a blank. But the metaphysical ground has shifted. Now I know it is me, Greyson, who is blank. How disappointing. Why, when there are so many other, better choices, am I back to this again?

I feel the gentle tapping on my cheek again. I open my eyes. Because I must have closed them again.