Kissing the Wind

by A. E. Hotchner

  Charlie told Lydia about my changed circumstances, making it sound somewhat hopeful. I went back to my place feeling—if not encouraged, then at least less alone. But the minute I put my foot in the door, I realized I was going to be in forced company of a very different sort. The television was playing a channel I never watch, with a cadre of spectators clustered in front of it. They were wearing matching clothes with an identical yellow and black design. I turned off the television and without looking at me, they all headed toward the front door and disappeared without opening it.

  As I walked across the thick living room carpet I noticed that the usual flat surface was now disrupted by multiple abrupt drops and swoops. Of course I told myself it was perfectly safe and stable and all else was an illusion. I told myself I should not hesitate, but walk right back on top of all these seeming impediments. Nevertheless, I walked on them with hesitancy and fear.

  In the bathroom, I not only had the same grid covering the toilet bowl water, but there were tumbling capital letters embossed all over the floor, quickly changing into make-believe words: MVAQRU7TOR, GRUW109ZPQ, and the like. One moving group looked like it was trying to spell my name, getting to CHE before adding VR997QX and SWIRLINGINT, then swirling into several other groups of words that do not exist in any language.

  I went into the living room and, not turning on the lights, sat down in my favorite chair, intent on figuring out how I could improve my response to the aggressively proceeding situation. From what had happened so far, I had decided the syndrome was much more active and threatening at night than during the light of day, as if it prospered under cover of darkness.

  I turned the lights full on, and the light induced them to leave.

  * * *

  —

  It was not like a dream. There was no preamble, no perception of going to sleep. No, this was being doused in an experience with no introduction other than feeling a tightening on my wrists and feet and sudden awareness that I was in a large wooden crate, my hands and feet bound, heavy locks on the door, spaces between the wood slats of the crate.

  I could not move, but looking through the crate openings I could see that I was in a huge warehouse. There was a wooden box on the floor of the crate, facing me, and chipmunks were running out of it and over my legs on their way out of the crate. They did not stop on my body or show any interest in me but I felt fearful when the flow of chipmunks changed to hamsters, who passed higher up my body, their feet scratching my face. I cried out for help, but there was no response. The hamsters emerged from the box unendingly and I intensified my calls for aid. I tried to loosen my bindings but I couldn’t get them to give at all.

  A man came into view, well dressed, something about him familiar. As he moved closer I identified him as the handsome man I’d encountered watching television in my apartment. I called out to him, but he didn’t even look at me, gave no sign that he was actually aware of me; in fact he wore the same blank look he had when he was in my apartment. The flow of hamsters suddenly abated and was replaced by small white mice, who ran around the crate and all over me, going in and out of their box but not scampering out of the crate. It was too much; angrily, I tried to swat down any who ventured too close to my bound wrists.

  A horde of people appeared in the area beyond my crate, and as they walked past, I shouted a plea for help. They, too, did not look at me, nor even in my direction. They also didn’t make a sound, although they were animated, were well dressed, and seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  With their arrival, the mice scurried back into their box and stayed there. After the crowd passed by, the lights began to slowly fade and the crate became pitch-black. My hands had turned numb from being bound, and a fear rose in me that I might not survive. I tried to contradict my feeling of pending doom by dredging up Dr. Brevoro’s advice, but the reality of my bound body, my aching ribs, and this intractable crate with its double locks thwarted my efforts. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind.

  Surrendering to nothingness, I was rewarded with a band of brilliant light that swept me from the crate into my bed in my apartment. Panting, I checked down the length of my body: my hands were fine, not numb nor swollen, and none of me showed any effects from the ordeal in the crate. But I was trembling, and it took two of Doc Lou’s sleeping pills to help me go to sleep.

  chapter nine

  In my weekly session with Dr. Brevoro, we analyzed my crate experience and he compared it to hallucinations some of his other patients had experienced.

  “Yours is the most aggressive, the most imaginative of any of them. It may be the result of your own combative attitude toward the Bonnet syndrome.”

  “So my own brain is striking back at me?”

  “Crazy as that may seem.”

  “Are you suggesting I should be more friendly toward the hell the syndrome is raising in my life?”

  “No, you have to deal with it in any way you can to reduce its effect on you. You have my private number and I am certainly available to talk to you any time the Bonnet is overpowering you. But you’ve got to maintain your balance.”

  “Easier said than done, isn’t it?”

  * * *

  —

  In the wake of my crate experience I decided to trim the fat off the bones of my existence the best I could. To that end I asked Charlie to come to my office and talk about my participation in any future trials. I constructed a couple of martinis and we sat at my desk with them and a bowl of Virginia peanuts while I recounted my crate assault, feeling that he was perhaps the only person who would understand what the Bonnet syndrome was inflicting on me.

  “Did you have any idea where you were?” he asked.

  “None whatsoever. That’s what I want to talk to you about. Dr. Brevoro says it will probably intensify, that I should get myself prepared for its increased onslaughts. That’s what he’s observed in other patients, but he’s never had any patient so intensely assaulted as me.”

  “I thought you were going to stand up to them and try to fight them off.”

  “The crate has changed my mind. It’s like being on the back of a bucking steer. Just try to hold on for ten seconds before he bucks you off. Best I can do, I now figure, is limit the areas the syndrome can get at me. And cross-examination, as we’ve already seen, is a task it can exploit. It could cause enough trouble for me to jeopardize my legal status.”

  “But even your own practice occasionally takes you into litigation.”

  “Yes, but few of them make it to trial. They either settle or I get it tossed with a motion to dismiss.”

  “I don’t want to lose you, Chet. Not your talent or our experience of working together.”

  “Nor do I. But under this duress I am no longer a reliable partner. We blew our shot at getting the case tossed at the summary judgment stage. I hope we keep up our lunches.”

  “Of course,” said Charlie reassuringly. He looked like he wanted to say more but couldn’t land on what.

  “And if you need someone to take my place for the trial,” I continued briskly, “how about Mary Oakes? She beat us in the mock trial competition and she has her own thriving practice.”

  “She’d be fine, but isn’t she quite busy with her Me Too clients?”

  “Not that busy. I see her once in a while. Why don’t I give her a call and invite her to our usual place for a drink?”

  I asked my assistant Terry to get Mary on the line for me.

  “I’ll try her now.”

  * * *

  —

  I found Mary at the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue. She was a tall woman with a hearty laugh and a sharp tongue. I asked her if she’d consider coming on as trial chair for the Tee case.

  “I know it’s probably a dud, but if you can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat I’m sure the firm would be grateful and send more work your way.”r />
  Mary smiled with her mouth but not her eyes. Before she could say no, I blurted, “Think it over, no pressure,” and made a hasty retreat.

  I left the Oak Room bar and started to cross the avenue, but halfway across the street the numbers on the walk sign suddenly ran out and it turned to a red “Stop,” releasing the throbbing mass of waiting cars right toward me.

  I was hypnotized by the charge of approaching headlights and I froze, expecting the worst. Instead, the cars slowed down and moved around me. The passing drivers did not excoriate me angrily, shaking their fists, but rather accepted my presence as part of everyday travel, elegantly skating around me like Olympic ice dancers performing a practiced routine, all while I stood there, still as a statue, in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

  * * *

  —

  I was at my desk with Charlie, having our drinks, munching peanuts.

  “Mary Oakes isn’t available, Chet,” Terry said. “Her assistant says she’s in Chicago.” I wobbled for a moment, trying to focus. “Shall I leave word?” Terry was asking.

  I struggled to catch my breath. “Yes, ask her to call Charlie Epps when she gets back.”

  “Thanks, Chet,” Charlie said. “What’s with you? You look shook.”

  “I just spoke to Mary at the Oak Room bar. She’s thinking it over.” I finished my drink, made us two more.

  “Oh, my God,” Charlie said. “More syndrome hocus-pocus?”

  “I never left here, did I?”

  “No.”

  “Or get caught in oncoming traffic?”

  “No. Is the syndrome interfering with your work?”

  “No, so far I’ve been solid—except at the Norgaard deposition, of course. But now…I hope I can keep it secure.”

  “Lydia and I will see you in the country as often as usual I hope.”

  He was referring to the fact that we both had places in a little Connecticut town about an hour from New York, his an attractive place on the water, mine a small gardener’s cottage.

  “Are you coming out this weekend?” I could tell he wanted me to say yes.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it’ll be easier for you out there.”

  I didn’t tell Charlie that I awaited finding out much like I had the oncoming wave of traffic on my mental Fifth Avenue.

  chapter ten

  My Connecticut place had once been an outbuilding of a grand estate that has since disappeared, leaving my cottage the only vestige of what once was there. It was made of native stone and had an appealing gabled roof, its original tiny windows having been replaced with generous ones that let in copious light. The grounds were lush with a smorgasbord of trees, white birch, sassafras, pine, chestnut, weeping willow, maple, crab apple, cherry, fir, dogwood, and quince, and rhododendron bushes. There was a wide flagstone terrace overlooking a spacious lawn that featured a reflecting pool with a pair of spouting flamingoes and a family of koi that had prospered over the years. A small stone fence topped by anti-deer netting encircled the property.

  My hope that the Bonnet syndrome would not extend its dragnet to this heavenly retreat was quickly dispelled. To my eyes, the modest fence was now a huge wall of decaying, slotted wood that blocked my exquisite view. The pool’s surface was covered with feathery wood chips and the cottage’s windows were clouded, the bathroom abused just as it was in New York. Altogether, a thorough despoiling of this blessed place.

  There was also this peculiar restaurant affliction: there were many excellent dining places near me that I liked to frequent with Charlie and Lydia and other friends. That weekend, I managed to go to more than one of these places without incident, but invariably, on the drive from the restaurant back to my place, the road was encased with very high continuous structures of antique wood that rose above the trees and local buildings. These dark syndrome buildings had a medieval look, with windows and indented balconies but no sign of habitation. Decidedly spooky. And at times, whether I was in an Uber or in Charlie’s car, there would be mysterious lights hovering above outside the windows, and the perfectly smooth asphalt road would suddenly become bumpy and torn up, or covered with what looked like the shattered residue of a hurricane. That is what I saw; the driver of course experienced none of it.

  As if making sure its control resonated with me, the Bonnet syndrome took me on an extended hallucination. As usual there was no preamble, no warning. I found myself lying on my back on a street that was busy with promenading people. They were walking together in twos, threes, fours, dressed colorfully, some in military uniforms with bright medals on their chest, uniforms that were unlike any I had ever seen. There were mailmen, bus drivers, politicians, fishermen, mothers pushing baby buggies, doctors, nurses: a panorama of city people. They all walked past me paying me no attention. As the ones in uniform walked by, I put my arm up from the ground and called out, “Please give me a hand,” but it got no response other than a few sideways looks.

  As for me, I think I did want assistance, but at the same time I was fascinated by what I regarded as Syndrome City. Many of the pedestrians were identical twosomes, threesomes, and foursomes of an exactness that defied explanation. This also applied to the four perfectly replicated horses pulling a wagon, to the two policemen on the corner, to the three dogs on a leash. I was also mesmerized by the absolute silence. No automobile horns, no streetcar clangs, no barking, no voices—in fact, no city sounds.

  I implored cops, big men in butcher’s aprons, priests, anyone who looked likely to “give me a hand,” extending my arms to them, but although a few stopped to look at me like I was a zoo animal, they all moved on, except for a mailman who had his pouch on his shoulder. It took him a while to make up his mind but finally he reached down to my eager hand and grasped it. I responded, but there was nothing there, no substance whatsoever.

  The mailman pulled his arm away as three men wearing gold uniforms of some sort surrounded him. They concentrated their looks on him, but even though their lips and hands weren’t moving, they were obviously chastising him in some way for trying to help me, a human who, like all humans, was considered unacceptable and out of bounds.

  At this point I decided to impose my brain on this hallucinatory distortion. I deliberately heard echoes of Dr. Brevoro’s exhortations and I tried to overcome my acceptance of what this hallucination dictated by straining to stand up and get on my feet. But an inner voice asked me where I could go, what would I do, and, feeling a kind of hypnotic restraint, I abandoned my self-actualizing urge and succumbed to the grip of the syndrome.

  I was moved around what I can only refer to as “their city.” I was placed in their streetcars, but I couldn’t tell if fares were being paid as passengers got on and off. There were little lakes everywhere with small paddleboats occupied by two or three people, who seemed to revel in them. All these boats had colored banners flying above their sterns, and they appeared to enjoy racing each other.

  There were large ice-skating rinks populated with very adept skaters, and fields where games were in progress, but I didn’t recognize any of them as related to any I had ever seen or heard about. We passed one busy windowless building that had guards with swords outside, probably a jail. An impressive giant circus was in progress, funny clowns galore and beautiful horses adroitly performing with bespangled riders doing dangerous bareback routines at full speed. There were complicated high aerial acts featuring ten trapezes manned by twenty aerialists doing perilous turns.

  Suddenly, I found myself catapulted up the ladder to the aerial platform, and pushed to the end of the take-off platform as a trapeze was coming at me. I looked down fearfully at the ground far below—no safety net—but was given no chance to act before I was pushed forward into space to connect with the hands of an approaching trapeze artist. I grabbed them, but the outstretched hands had no substance, nothing to hold on to, and I flew past them, tumbling in space an
d landing in my bed in Connecticut, aware that I was screaming in protest.

  * * *

  —

  “It’s haunted me all week,” I told Dr. Brevoro. “I take it to bed with me, relive it while I eat, trying to make sense of my behavior.”

  “Did you try to convince yourself it was just your haunted brain playing tricks?”

  “Yes…somewhat, especially when I was thrown in the midst of the trapeze aerialists. But I was refuted by a kind of paralyzing lethargy, as if I’d been hypnotized.”

  “Would you say you were enjoying what was happening to you? None of this was actually threatening, was it?”

  “Not really, there were no monsters or ugly disagreeable characters…”

  “But they wouldn’t give you a hand…”

  “Well, to tell the truth, it was like when I tried to push those children out of my bedroom and found that there was nothing there to push. But still I regarded them as children, so expertly presented were they. So it was with these people on parade, on the barges, in the shops. The totally real way they behaved, their realistic, believable, authentic existence, refuted the scolding of my brain to the extent that I was fascinated by them.”

  I dropped forward, my head in my hands—it was a humiliating relief to finally be able to air my thoughts to a sympathetic ear.

  “It is almost how a great novel introduces characters who remain very real long after you’ve finished reading the book,” I said. “But the difference here is, of course, that I am propelled into the action and must contend with these upsetting characters who can thrust themselves on me anytime, anyplace they desire, thereby disrupting my existence. It seems foolish now, but when this all started I briefly had this fantasy the syndrome would break through my writer’s block—free ideas for life, right? But instead my head feels befuddled all the time and I can’t even imagine being able to write. I’m just choked all the time by fearfulness about the next syndrome attack.”