Apathy and Other Small Victories

by Paul Neilan

  “Sometimes you have to clear cut a forest so that other small plants can flourish.”

  “You know what? I don’t have to take this. I’ve put up with enough of your sarcasm. Your cynicism is a poison I’m not going to drink anymore,” she said with great dignity.

  I started laughing.

  “I don’t know what about this situation is funny to you. The bottom line is you screwed up. You made mistakes, big mistakes, and you need to take responsibility for them.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Making fun of a retarded man at work? Jesus Shane. I put myself out for you. I talked to my friends in HR on your behalf and this is what you do? How do you think that reflects on me?”

  “I think your reputation will survive.”

  “That’s not the point,” she said.

  “What is the point?”

  “You should have gone to Martha’s funeral. That’s the point.”

  “I knew it.”

  “And while we’re being honest, what’s with you falling asleep in my bathroom all the time? Do you have some kind of sick fetish or something?”

  “Uh, what?”

  “And what about all the salt? Why did you dump all that salt in my bed?”

  “Dump salt in your bed? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?”

  “I know how ridiculous it sounds, that’s why I’m asking you to explain it. The last time you stayed at my apartment I found two saltshakers wrapped up in my sheets after you left. Explain that.”

  That’s where they were. Fuck.

  “This isn’t about me, or your bathroom, or saltshakers. This is about you. You have an eating disorder,” I said.

  She stiffened in her chair, her spine springing straight up like she’d had a much too successful scoliosis operation. Her eyes wet instantly at the corners.

  “Who told you that?” she said.

  “You have an eating disorder?”

  “I did in college. It’s not something you ever really get over,” and she bowed her head.

  I was unmoved. Come on, who didn’t have a fucking eating disorder in college? That’s like saying you had a Bob Marley poster, or that you stuck your roommate’s toothbrush up your ass one time and then laughed as you watched him use it for the rest of the semester. Big fucking deal.

  We sat in a silence that I was very comfortable with.

  “No,” she said, looking up at me, fighting her wet eyes without even wiping them. She was using sheer will alone. “No. I won’t let you do that to me. I beat my food problem and it made me stronger. I won’t let you tear me down with that now.”

  God, she was so valiant.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Remember when I said I hadn’t figured you out?” Her eyes were wide now like she was a fucking maniac.

  “No.”

  “Well I was lying!”

  I didn’t give two shits one way or the other. I really had to piss.

  “Do you want to hear what I figured out about you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you want to know what you are?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “You’re a coward. And you’re weak and afraid and you’re a fake, fake person. You’re a fucking phony. You pretend to care about other people but you don’t.”

  “I never pretended to care,” I said.

  “That’s all you ever did was pretend. But really the only person you care about is yourself.”

  “That’s not true. I don’t care about anything.”

  “The whole time we were together, it was all just a lie. Like that crucifix around your neck. It’s just one of your props, like being a good listener. You’re probably not even Catholic.”

  “I’m afraid of vampires.”

  “It’s all just bullshit! You play yourself off as this totally different person and it’s just bullshit!” She accented her curses strangely, like she wasn’t used to saying them and felt a little embarrassed and empowered by them.

  I rose to my own defense.

  “That’s not true. That’s like you thinking I’m a ninja because I wear black pajamas to bed. Or in the fucking Viet Cong. It’s not my fault you get your outfits confused.”

  “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.

  “Well, you’re the one who wanted to get into this big gubernatorial debate about everything. I didn’t go find you, you came in here.”

  “Now you’re just trying to change the subject. You’re blaming me because you’re afraid. That’s why it had to end like this. You’re afraid to have a real life so you’re hiding in this dirty, disgusting bar.”

  I looked over at Sooj to let him know that I obviously disagreed and thought the Mickeypot Tavern was a lovely, lovely place. He was not amused.

  “You were afraid of stability and success so you threw your job away, by insulting the memory of a dead woman and making fun of a retarded man for god’s sake.”

  I again tried to mug for Sooj, for one of the old men even, but it wasn’t working.

  “And you were afraid of a committed, healthy relationship, so you threw that away too. All because of fear and cowardice. You had a real chance to be happy Shane—”

  “There was never that chance,” I said.

  “And you know what? You fucked it up. And you have to live with that.”

  “Somehow I’ll get by.”

  “And now you have nothing. I hope you’re happy. I hope you’re finally happy being unhappy. That’s the only kind of happiness a coward like you can know.”

  “That’s so ironic.”

  “Fuck you!” And she jerked herself out of her chair so she was standing over me, foaming at the mouth. “You fucking bastard! I come down here trying to help you, trying to salvage something, anything, and this is how you treat me? Fuck you!”

  She was livid, her fists shaking at her sides. I was smiling faintly. It was all very emotional.

  “So?” she said as I smiled up at her.

  “So what?”

  “So what do you have to say for yourself?”

  “About what?”

  “About this?” she said, and waved her arms around the bar, exasperated.

  I thought about it for a minute.

  “I’m just not sure what you’re looking for,” I said.

  “I’m looking for the truth.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “About this!” And she waved her arms around again, even more frantically than last time. “About you! About why you’re like this! I want an explanation!”

  “Um.”

  “You need to hear it as much as I do,” she said, trying to calm herself.

  “There is no explanation.”

  “There has to be!” she shouted, her voice echoing off the mildewed walls.

  “Why?”

  “Just tell me!”

  “What? Do you want to hear that a dental hygienist has been murdered and I’m the prime suspect?”

  “You’re drunk,” she said.

  “Or that I had to jerk off into a plastic bag and hand it to a detective named Sergeant?”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “What, we’re connecting! Isn’t this wonderful?”

  “EXPLAIN!!!” she screamed in my face.

  “I’m in love with my landlord’s wife! Is that what you want to hear?”

  “What?” she said.

  “Shit.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “Um.”

  The scream was primordial. I have never heard another human being make such a sound. Her jaw distended like she was a snake about to eat a small child and her whole body shook, her two fists out like she was a pilot trying to pull a 747 out of a nosedive. Then she lunged at me. I leaned back in my chair and put my leg up to defend myself, to fend her off, and she grabbed it with both hands and tore into my shin like it was a fucking turkey drumstick. Feeling her teeth go through my jeans and break skin I screamed and kicked with my
other leg, toppling backwards out of my chair and sprawling on the floor.

  What happened next was my own primal instinct taking over. It was like in a movie when two vampires are about to fight, a good vampire and a bad vampire—although it is hard to truly be a good vampire—and the fangs come out and there’s that crazed look in both their eyes and it comes down only to who will be more savage. I wasn’t proud of myself, but this was innate, one of those animal impulses that has been in Man since the days he lived in caves and howled at the full moon like a beast. I had no more control over my actions than the lion does when the taste for blood is on him. There are some instincts society can temper, but never tame.

  So I ran away. Fast, like my ancestors had always done before me. It was how we had survived. I faked left and then scurried around a table and through a door and into the men’s room where I barricaded myself in a stall—christ the lock was flimsy, the dead bolt as thick as a stick of Juicy Fruit—and I pressed all my quivering weight up against the thin, thin metal door. Gwen was still screaming as she barreled into it like a fucking battering ram, again and again, flinging me into the toilet with every shoulder she threw. The entire frame of the stall shook as her roars echoed off the grimed walls, but the lock held. She pummeled the door with her fists, denting it like cannonballs and caving in the metal, but the door would not fall.

  “Come out here you sissy! You fucking cheating sissy bastard!” she screamed, but the intervals between her charges were growing longer. She was slowing down. I was safe now and I knew it.

  “Leave me alone you fucking cannibal!” I shouted. “You hurt me during sex!”

  “Come out here!” she screamed.

  “Martha died in vain!” I shouted, and I laughed as she left a fist print in the metal right by my head.

  “Deadly force is authorized!” I shouted, and I knew that Sooj was right.

  It was strange, but I never felt closer to her than when I was cowering behind that bathroom stall door, cringing as she beat it into scrap metal.

  Exhausted, and with bruised, bloodied fists, she left without saying goodbye. And after a long time I was able to take the piss I so desperately needed to take. And after even longer, I unlocked the door. It dropped from one hinge as it swung open.

  The scene outside was as it had always been. The two old men were still at the bar, and Sooj was behind it with his arms folded, pissed off. It is good to have things you can count on. The only sign of nonsense was the overturned chair that I had fallen out of so long ago. I righted it, pushed it under the table, and everything was tidy again.

  “Women,” I said as I walked up to my stool.

  “You,” Sooj said, putting both hands on the bar and leaning forward. “Don’t ever come in here again.”

  “But I need you for my alibi. From last night. I was here, right?” I said.

  “I never seen you before. Get out.”

  I looked at the old men, both drooling in their alcoholic dementia. I looked at Sooj, for the last time. I grabbed a saltshaker off the bar and ran.

  Chapter 9

  I had a long, lonely, freaked out wait until Tuesday, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I had lost Sooj forever. I knew that now. And all of the depressingly silent camaraderie of the Mickeypot Tavern was gone too. I was alone. And drinking Miller High Life in cans in your salty apartment by yourself sounds immeasurably more sad than drinking it flat from dirty pitchers in a filthy bar flanked by drunk ass old men and the pissed off Cleveland-born son of Lebanese immigrants. So I bought a case of it from the liquor store and that’s what I did for most of Monday, and really it wasn’t immeasurably more anything. It was all right.

  And then I went for a ride on my bike.

  As bad a shape as I was in my bike was fucking worse. It was in the final stages of full-blown Parkinson’s. Everything shook and went the wrong way and there was nothing anyone could do to save it. The tires wobbled almost parallel to the street and the handlebars had nothing to do with the steering anymore. Sometimes they could make a suggestion but usually I just had to go straight. If I needed to turn I had to drag my feet and stop, then pick the bike up and point it in the right direction like a blind old mule. The high seat had lost all its mooring so it bounced and swiveled completely around, sometimes while I was on it. It was like sitting on the propeller of a retarded man-child’s beanie. That was what my life had become.

  I rode the piece of shit more out of spite than convenience. I refused to throw it away. I wanted to break its spirit first. I wanted to be there when it finally fell apart. When it realized it had lost all purpose and meant nothing to no one and finally died, I wanted to stand there and laugh as I pissed all over it. That’s what I was hanging on for. And if the breakdown happened while I was going down a hill or coasting through traffic I would definitely die too, but it would be worth it, so great was my hatred for that bike. I was locked in a death struggle of pride and bitterness, a consuming battle of wills with an inanimate object. If there was any meaning in that, I did not know what it was.

  But I still rode it. The chain was worn and would slip randomly and leave me helplessly pedaling like a fat man on an elliptical machine, and then just as randomly it would catch and the sudden resistance would lift me off the seat and drive the wire catch of my tiny helmet straight into my throat. I would wince and swallow and that would drive the wire in again and further, skewering my Adam’s apple like a fucking shish kebab. I knew that a punctured Adam’s apple would mean an emergency tracheotomy and one of those voice boxes that embittered smokers use on commercials to bitch about cigarettes after their larynxes have been removed, and I didn’t want to be one of those people, so I’d swallow again out of fear, the wire jabbing me again and harder. I couldn’t stop.

  It was a stupid vicious cycle and I knew exactly what I had to do to end it: stop being such a cheap ass and buy a new bike and a new fucking helmet, one that wasn’t made for an eight year old. But I did nothing, and I knew that I never would. And that pissed me off, which was good because it at least distracted me from how drunk and afraid I was. I was in a bad mess and my bike wasn’t getting me anywhere I needed to go. Soon I would have a voice box and sound like I was channeling the robot voice of deaf Marlene as I rotted in my tiny jail cell. It wouldn’t be ironic. It would just be very sad.

  Some days there’s a song stuck in your head and you catch yourself whistling or humming it at inappropriate times, like on a crowded bus right into some stranger’s face, or when you’re standing at a urinal. It’s awkward, and it gets annoying after a while hearing that same song over and over again, but it’s really not so bad. Other days there’s a song playing everywhere you go, like a soundtrack that you can’t do a goddamn thing about. Those are the days it is clear that there are other forces at work, forces which you do not understand and over which you have no power. Those are the days men propose to their girlfriends or commit suicide or subscribe to a magazine they know they will never read or don’t get on a plane that crashes an hour later, depending on what song is playing. My song that day wasn’t really a song. It was one steady, wet blow on a didgeridoo, that long wooden gourd-looking instrument that Australian aborigines used to play right before they cannibalized an entire village or cut someone’s dick off in a voodoo ritual. It was pretty fucking ominous.

  That’s why I’d bought a case of High Life and drank can after can hardly breathing. That’s why I’d left my apartment. That was the soundtrack I was spastically pedaling away from.

  I picked up speed downhill on a long street that was lined with upscale restaurants and coffeeshops and specialty stores with hardly any merchandise, a trendy strip that was always crowded with annoying people who had interesting conversations over lattes and dressed their kids like little, cuter versions of themselves. It was like a high class version of Mardi Gras how they walked in and out of places and then into the street like they owned everything, which they probably did. They always gave me dirty looks wh
en I almost ran over their children, even though there was nothing I could do because of fate and no steering. But I didn’t get any dirty looks that night, because there was nobody around. That night the street and all its buildings were deserted.

  And I knew then that I was the victim of some great conspiracy. Whoever was playing the didgeridoo took a breath.

  I felt the headlights behind me before I saw them. When I looked over my shoulder, my helmet wire stabbing me in the throat, I saw the car. It was about thirty yards away and closing on me fast, swinging to either side of the road. I pedaled frantically, uselessly as the chain refused to catch. I stood on the pedals and jerked the handlebars but nothing was working. I was coasting fast down the street hugging the curb, completely out of control. Whoever was playing the didgeridoo was totally freaking out, raising the pitch into inhuman registers. It sounded like Mumm-Ra’s theme song from Thundercats.

  Then the car was beside me. It was bright orange with tinted windows. The tires were huge and the engine was gunning loud. “01” was painted across the door in black. It was the fucking General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard.

  The whole world was still for a moment as I stood on my bike pedals and saw my reflection in the tinted window, saw my tiny helmet on top of my head, the car and I coasting down the street side by side. Then the world spun again, faster to catch up for the moment it had missed, and the General Lee swung to the far side of the street and then came tearing back at me.

  What came next I will never understand.

  I jumped, or I fell, from my bike right into a street sign pole, which miraculously snapped under my left armpit like we were both made of Lego. I hugged the pole and spun and spun full out like I was flying as the General Lee trampled my bike beneath its huge tires. Even as it was happening, I was singularly conscious of it being the coolest thing I had ever done in my life.

  And then I stopped spinning and slid down the pole and I landed on my shoulder and hit my head and just missed breaking my face. And as I lay on the sidewalk the General Lee tooted its horn, playing a whining, dying Dixie. Then it sped off swerving down the street.