Man Gone Down

by Michael Thomas

  “Eliot, Modernism, and Metaphysics.”

  He smiles and nods. “Ah yes. Did you make progress? Did you finish it?”

  “No.”

  He slumps, showing his age. “May I ask why?”

  “Because it was ‘archaic and therefore frivolous and a man of my history, background, and talents should know better.’”

  “Oh.” His neck turns to rubber, and his head drops. “My son. I am truly sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “All is well then?”

  “Every little thing, yes.”

  He slides his hand across the desk but stops when he has to lean.

  “What about my book you borrowed?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

  He clears his throat, pushes away from the desk.

  “To whom do I address this letter?”

  19

  By the time I get to the post office, I’ve had it. I climb to the top of the stairs and sit down. My neck starts to tremble and I taste acid in my mouth. I close my eyes and start a letter to Claire in my head—nothing—just static mixed with the sounds of traffic moving uptown on Eighth Avenue. I try to see her; I can’t—can’t hear her, either—her face and voice are missing. A wave of sleep passes over me. I get lost in it—blind, breathless. It passes and I open my eyes.

  I watch the city empty. They go north. They go east. The sun seems stronger—perhaps because of the late-afternoon redness it’s acquired, the haze of pollution, exhalations from people and machines.

  This used to be a station. I suppose it still is: once for trains, now for mail. Whatever the case, the whir and hum from the internal turbines, the trucks backing in and pulling out of the loading bays on the adjacent streets, and these warm stone stairs make the building feel alive. Perhaps all the people who’ve passed through—those who continue to pass and leave their marks—charge it. Even now in this empty city they seem to materialize on the sidewalk below and, regardless of shape, size, or age, bound up the stairs in their own way to the revolving door. Some nod or even wave to me, mistaking me in their haste for the greeter. It’s not what I want to do. This isn’t a casino, anyway. They give those jobs to ex-fighters out in Vegas—the ones who went broke, were broken. Maybe it was a sort of punishment—watching the high-rollers who made money off the beatings you gave out and took, making more off a new generation of meat—your sentence for overreaching. I get up and move away from the door.

  Gavin had a special walk when he was unusually high, happy, or both. And crossing Eighth Avenue he has it now. It’s different though. It has that boyish energy and lightness but coupled with a man’s confidence—almost like a man riding a small unicycle with an oval wheel. He carries two coffees, holding them out in front of him like they’re handlebars. He cuts through the stopped traffic. His brim’s pulled down low—new shades. I start to wave when he reaches the sidewalk, but he looks up directly at me.

  He mounts the stairs and when he reaches me, leans against the handrail, hands me a coffee, pulls off his shades and rests them on his visor. I expect to see a shiner or a hemorrhaged pupil, but his face and eyes are clear.

  He points to the B on his hat.

  “In town tonight. Pedro’s pitching,” he mumbles. He throws a slow-motion pitch, beans the imaginary batter, points, then waves him in, mouthing, “Come on.” He puts his dukes up, sloshing the coffee out the sip hole, moves his head from side to side, then grins. He stops his mock bob and weave, checks his hand, wipes it on his new-looking jeans, and his face goes blank. Now he looks his age—older, even patrician. I see the gray poking out from under his cap, accentuated by the navy blue. Nicotine lips, the creases of time around his puckish nose. Darkening skin beginning to absorb his freckles. I can’t help but think that if Gavin had a title, an address, a bank account—anything—people might actually listen to and respect him. Another wave comes. No, it’s more like a clammy hand that passes through me into my guts and opens a compartment, secret to me, full of nausea.

  He opens a new pack and offers me one. I refuse. He smokes.

  “Nice suit.”

  “Thanks.” My voice sounds low and robotic.

  “Whose was it?”

  “Claire’s dad.”

  He wrinkles his mouth, nods. “Nice.” He takes a long drag and does one of those smokeless exhalations. “You look beat.”

  “Haven’t been sleeping much.”

  “Oh yeah?” He points at my coffee. “Watch that stuff.”

  I nod and leave my head down. I almost take a sip, but I get a preliminary shot of what it will feel like to my heart and stomach. I breathe on the lid instead.

  “Yeah.” He takes a deep pull. “You look thin, too”—he yanks at the air around his whiskers—“your face.”

  I look up at him. He fills his cheeks with air. “Oh no, not me. I’ve had three squares a day of institutional starch.” He grunts a laugh and pats his nonexistent belly. “I just scarfed down two chocolate bars and a milkshake on my way here—should’ve brought you one. I’m sorry.”

  The notion of sweets makes me gag and shiver at the same time. I check my hands to see if they’re trembling. He checks them, too. He can’t tell, but he sucks his teeth and shakes his head slowly, turning to look across the avenue to the Garden as he does. I follow his gaze to the marquee.

  “Aerosmith?” He shakes his head, sings, “Dream on . . .” in a craggy falsetto. He finishes his smoke and jabs it out on the rail. “You ever miss Boston?”

  I shake my head.

  “I used to, but walking here to meet you, it was odd. I used to get bummed out, walking around Manhattan, especially midtown—all that high-end shit that just yells out “Chump!” at a guy like me. But I walked all over today—Fifty-seventh and Fifth, all that, and I seemed to pick up on some internal rhythm—you know? Something felt right. So none of it got to me.” He studies my profile closely, covertly, and raises an eyebrow. “So I decided that I’m taking over this city, but not in that typical revolutionary way.” He waits for me to respond, gets nothing, and continues. “I’m not coming for blood or money. I want something more dear—I’m coming for answers.” He opens his arms to the city. “But I need help—are you with me? Can’t you see it? Oh my god, what a sight, what a notion, what a catastrophic, idiotic idea, Lorna Buffoon and Big Chief McBlackie running loose in the twenty-first century demanding answers!” He makes a fist, waves it in the air, and raises his voice an octave. “Who’s responsible, goddamnit! I demand transparency! I demand accountability! Throw the shrines to the founder and the cryptic and indulgent logos out of the boardroom, you sons of bitches! I want answers—one-to-one ratios, you slippery fuckers!—Horrors! No. Don’t let it happen. I mean, I just don’t think that I could handle it.” He checks me again, waves the vision away. “Sorry, man, I’m rusty. Haven’t seen you in a while.” He bites his lip, puts his coffee down, and makes two fists.

  “Wanna fight?”

  I give him a dark, sideways look then turn to watch the people continue to mount the stair. I study each one, trying to pick out a specific trait to help me remember them, because no one seems to be coming back down.

  Gavin watches me watch the climbers. He shoots a thumb at their path. “What, am I causing a scene? Are you worried about them? Look, if it pleases you and them, I’m willing to be Billy Conn to your Joe Louis. You can knock me the fuck out—right here. Maybe we should go over to the Garden. Then they would love us, both.”

  “Conn and Louis became friends.”

  He slips his head and raises an eyebrow as if I’d jabbed at him.

  “Schmeling, too—he was never a Nazi.”

  He shrugs his shoulders, mumbles, “Well, at least I got something.”

  I nod vaguely.

  “So what’s that place you’re staying at?”

  “A friend’s.”

  “Nice digs. What kind of criminal is he?”

  “He’s a lawyer—for bankers.”

  He goes for anot
her cigarette, turns back to the street. “You know, if I’d turned out like my old man wanted, I would’ve been an I-banker—after winning Olympic gold. Maybe I’d have been out there, been able to pin you down, give those guys the heads-up about poet-hustlers on the links. He elbows in my direction. “Win anything?”

  “Not enough.”

  He sighs, studies my face again—openly—and shakes his head. “Sorry.”

  I straighten up, rub my face. “I should’ve come to see you. I’ve just been—fuck—how are you?”

  “Me—oh please—detox is detox. You know the drill, anesthetization and humiliation. It’s just sanctioned.” He offers me another smoke. I shake my head and then have to hold my breath so I don’t puke bile. Gavin leans down next to me, still offering the pack.

  “Dude?”

  “I’m a black hole.”

  He straightens. “Pardon?” He shakes his head, snorts, and pushes the cigarettes at me. He snorts again. I look up at him, but he’s looking down at the sidewalk, grinning. He turns to me, widens his grin, buckles his knees, and winces with silent internal laughter. He shoots his head out toward the street, as if asking me to look. I do. Two young women make their way toward us and stop ten steps below. Gavin puts a cigarette in his mouth, thumbs at me, and mumbles to them, “Don’t sit too close ladies, lest ye be sucked in.” I take the pack from him, and he continues mumbling, a little louder, to everyone now, “Pretty sloppy, using an astrophysical metaphor to talk about being broke.” He turns to me and barks, “Hey, Socrates, ever consider the B-side—you know, death star, dead star. What about calling yourself Super Nova?”

  The women are still standing. They both look up at Gavin and smile. One is brown skinned with a shaved head. The other is olive toned—lighter perhaps—with blonde hair, dark shades. She’s holding a shopping bag. The brown one bends, picks through it, and takes out a small package. She points up at the revolving doors. The olive one nods and sits. Gavin sits next to me.

  “A hundred bucks one of them bums a smoke.”

  I light my cigarette, inhale, swoon, and almost pitch forward down the stairs. I shoot my cuffs instead, and that seems to clear my head and settle my insides. The second drag feels good.

  “You in?”

  “Whatever.”

  The brown woman starts up the stairs. She’s wearing an indigo sarong and a charcoal tank. Her arms are well muscled, and she moves athletically. She makes sure our eyes meet and smiles broadly. She’s big eyed, gap toothed. We both nod. She nods back and passes. We look down to her friend. She’s lifted her glasses onto her head. Her bright green eyes, even from here, are striking.

  “Shit, captain, some things never change.” I’m not sure what he’s referring to, but I let it go and exhale smoke with a sigh. He elbows me. “Come on, man. You’re in your prime. I mean, you look a little sleepy, a bit thin, perhaps even emotionally devastated, but other than that, yer aces, kid—a fine poet-warrior like you. Go forth,” he waves out to the avenue. “Do your thing.”

  When I don’t respond, he waves a few more times and gives up. Then he starts nodding.

  “So I started writing my poetics last night, but it turned into a screed against consumerism, then an autobiography. Ugh—I detest memoir.”

  I shift. The brown girl passes, does a half turn, smiles, turns back, reaches her friend. She sits, and then they both turn and smile. The olive one reaches into the bag and pulls out drinks and sandwiches.

  Gavin covers his mouth with his fist and coughs. “She looks like your ex.”

  I perk up, look around, trying to find her. “Who?”

  “Sally.”

  “No, I know that,” still searching for her. He points down the stairs.

  “The bald one. Skirty.”

  I sag again. “I don’t see it.”

  Gavin waves slowly. “It’s her nose, but also the way she moves. I remember. She moved freely, she had a bounce when she didn’t think anyone was watching.”

  I put my head in my hands. “Unless she was walking with me.”

  “Fuck,” he hisses to himself. “What do you want?” He squints, looks away to the south, shakes his head, and takes a long pull from his coffee. He turns back, softens his face, and looks for the right words somewhere above my head. “You were a poor young poet and she was a poor shy girl. It was doomed.” He points down at the women. “You know, don’t get mad, but at first, I thought you were really stretching that Irish thing to get in her pants.” He starts to chuckle to himself. “But then I realized that wasn’t it. You wanna know why?” He seems too pleased with himself to stop.

  “Why?” I grunt.

  “Well, the last thing that bonnie lass wanted was some broke Irish poet. So, true or not, it was such an ill-conceived and misguided plan or confession or sharing that I found it moving.” He snorts and spills some coffee. The women look back to see if he’s laughing at them. The brown one raises an eyebrow at him and turns away.

  He gestures down at her with his cup. “Wee Sally has become emboldened over time.” He checks my face and my posture, then leans my way and whispers, “Look, if you had some dough, would you be like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what—slumped on the stairs on a beautiful afternoon with nothing but apocalyptic visions in your head. Give them up.” He sighs heavily as though conceding. “We’re a couple of horsemen light now anyway.”

  “Sorry.”

  He shakes his head, goes to pat my leg, but stops.

  “No, I’m sorry about teasing. I shouldn’t. You’ve got pressures I don’t even know about.”

  “It’s all right.” I take a last drag, but it’s gone out, and all of a sudden I don’t have any wind.

  “No. No. It isn’t. It’s just that I’m coming out of a strange place.”

  I nod, though not convincingly.

  “Hey, you got time for a story?”

  I look across to the Garden. He looks, too. It’s 4:50. I wonder if Gavin will want to walk me to the station to catch the nonexistent bus. I can’t picture myself running or even walking fast for that matter—so ten minutes to Port Authority from here.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, but first, I have a confession. That night I called—I don’t know how I got that number, probably from your wife, which is, now that I think about it, the reason she sounded worried when I called again. I did want to wish you happy birthday, but I also wanted to ask you if I was going crazy.”

  He checks to see if I’m listening, seems satisfied, and continues.

  “So there was Ricky and there was Mindy. Ricky was my roommate. The first morning I woke up to him standing in the middle of the room, eating a banana. They had me on a frightful amount of Librium, so I questioned what I was seeing: He finishes it, goes to his drawer, gets out an aerosol can of Raid, holds the peel out, sprays it, then puts them both away in the drawer.

  “So then I’m in and out of time. The next thing I remember is finding a copy of The Souls of Black Folk in my bag. I must have clipped it from your place. I felt so stupid in that moment because I realized that I’d never read it. And you know, I’ve been to so many detoxes that I decide right there that I’m going to blow off the ‘Keep it simple, stupid’ stuff and shove my head so far up my ass that they’ll have to cut it off to get it out. I tear into DuBois. I’m really loving it. Then I start thinking about you at Harvard, and then me at Harvard, and a few days later I decide to talk about it during group. I look around while I’m telling everybody about you, and I can see that they don’t believe me. And I remember being in detox back when you were in school and telling people about you, and they couldn’t believe that my best friend went to school there. And then later, my classmates wouldn’t believe me when they asked why I was such an old undergrad, that I spent most of my early twenties institutionalized.

  “So I give up and say thank you. It’s Mindy’s turn. Ricky had a thing for her—this little blonde chick—heartbreaker. Fifteen. Drying out. Already a
veteran trick. So she’s sharing and I’m trying to pay attention, but I really don’t want to: in part because I’m still a little sore, in part because I’m still a bit screwed in the head, but mostly because it’s too awful to watch—a nearly ruined teenage girl. Everyone else is riveted to her, though. And she knows why—she says so: ‘No one really loves me.’ She’s leering out at them like she’s gonna tear their faces off. ‘Girls hate me and I can’t trust guys ‘cause they’re only after’—oh my goodness, and I quote—‘my little pussy.’ So Ricky stops leaning forward at her, snaps upright—and I’ve been living with this guy, listening to him talking in his sleep, his mad mumblings. Anyway, he stammers out, ‘That’s not true!’ And they let him cross talk for some reason. Mindy’s like, ‘You’re full of shit, ya fuckin’ screwhead.’ Calmly—cold. So Ricky points at his heart and moans, ‘No, fuck you. I’m not like that. I don’t care about that stuff. I love you.’ And she turns to him slowly, nodding, looking him right in the eye. She spreads her legs, puckers her butt cheeks and lips, points at her crotch, and hisses, ‘You love this.’ And they go back and forth until he jumps up screaming, ‘I love you! I love you!’”

  Gavin makes a fist, holds it in front of his face, and stares at it—wide eyed. “And Ricky balls up his fist, still screaming, ‘I love you! I’ll prove it! I’ll prove it!’ And then bam! Smashes himself right in the face! Bam! Knocks himself back in his chair!” Gavin reenacts the scene, stopping his fist just short of his face but reeling with each pretend blow. “Blam! He goes to stand, but he’s wobbly—Bam! He’s bloody!” Gavin knocks his hat off and his glasses go flying. “Bam! ‘I’ll prove it!’”

  He lurches onto his back and pretends to reel. I shake my head, snort, and cover my face as though my nose just dropped off. Gavin stays on his back and snorts, too, which makes me grin and chuckle. He grabs his sides, wheezes, and shrieks. I bury my face in my hands, but I can’t hold it off—the combination of his near hysterics and the recurring image of him knocking himself out play in my head.