Another Kind of Madness

by Ed Pavlić

  So, with Shame, she thought she would experiment, maybe improvise. What was to lose? She met him, after all, at a basement party she knew better than to go to anyway. Somebody’s friend of a friend named Renée had thrown herself a Fourth of July birthday party that was supposed to be a reenactment of one she’d had in 1985 or something. Ndiya’s plan with Shame was to act like she had the false, everyday kind of confidence and protect her secret. She’d act normal. Brilliant. But it didn’t work. After the first few seconds of their first date, she needed the secret kind, at least.

  There was the first meeting at Earlie’s Café. Ndiya made it clear beforehand, this was not a date. She’d rushed—if it was possible to rush by bus?—to her brother’s place after work to grab her oversized and always overstuffed canvas handbag. She’d left it over there on a rare visit the previous night. Wanda, Malik’s girlfriend, answered the door. She blocked Ndiya’s path and handed her the bag. Aiming beyond Wanda’s attitude, Ndiya called, “Can’t stay, gotta meeting!” to the blue room the TV lived in, and bolted back to the bus stop thinking, “It’s time to empty this bag.” Traffic was bad, she had to transfer twice; she was at least an hour late. She kept reaching for her phone and then remembering that Shame didn’t have one. When she arrived he was waiting for her outside the café. He sat facing the street and leaned back on his hands on the top of a stone picnic table with his feet planted wide apart on the bench. “There he is, with his feather-light brown self,” she thought, “and there he’ll stay.” From across the street she let him know that she’d seen him with half a smile aimed at the ground in front of his feet. Then she focused on the door to his left while holding him in her sight. She thought, “OK. Keep him there.”

  Ndiya tabulated her quick survey from her peripheral vision: “V-neck T-shirt (bad sign) and faded jeans (neutral and leaning on what’s next like a spare in bowling) that rode up to reveal his unpolished (thank heavens) brown boots (the kind with the metal ring at the ankle, that could be OK) and what looked like a brown leather jacket on the table beside him.” From across the street she noted that his clothes all seemed too loose to fit but weren’t baggy. She thought, “It’s been a while since I’ve crossed a street for this kind of thing.” The dusk of the street and the blue light atop Earlie’s awning traveled the lines of Shame’s face. The shadows made it seem like his face had been sewn together from a haphazard assortment of three or four faces. She searched for the sloped lines she subliminally depended on when meeting people and found precious little to work with. She didn’t remember this from the porch at the party. “Not good,” she thought. “He damned near looked white.” But this wasn’t quite a thought. It was more like an itch near the corner of her mouth.

  All that changed when he got up to shake her hand and said her name: “Enter Ms. Ndiya Grayson.” First of all, he got it right. Áh-ndiya, accent on the first syllable and the a pronounced soft like the opposite of “off,” not sharp like the a in “candy.” No one got all that right, ever. He read the surprise in her face and said he knew the song. “That’s good,” she thought, because she didn’t. “What song?” He laughed and she remembered his easy smile. “A little too easy,” she thought. She noticed first, then, what she’d learn in stages later. Shame only looked like himself when he moved or when he spoke. And his voice sounded exactly like he looked; it was uncanny. When he sat still, pieces of his face and body pulled against each other. Then, she’d learn later, there was his life: his before-work vacant-self; the with-kids dude; the chef-Shame; and the piano man. In his life Shame was a kaleidoscope. He changed into a third, fourth, fifth person altogether. “One, two, three,” he’d say sometimes, “which Shame you want me to be, which kind you want from me?” He said it was a quote, or almost. She asked from where and he didn’t say. Her first, zero-sum impulse was to wonder where were the people whose faces he’d stolen, pulled apart and put back together. But she cut herself short before that. She was still on that whole “give it a chance to happen” thing.

  Still in the street, she replayed his voice from the night they’d met: “Gosh, I guess every day is Wednesday, right?” And she: “What?” And he: “If I’m not mistaken, you just said hello to me and looked at me with both eyes at once. That’s rare around here, that’s all.” And she: “If you say so, but—Wednesday?” And he: “The Mickey Mouse Club, you know, Wednesday: Anything Can Happen Day?” She: “Oh, OK. That’s cute.” And now, outside Earlie’s Café, she thought, “There he is,” and, seeing her reflection walking in the window behind him, “There you are. There you both can stay. Here can sit this one out.”

  When they shook hands she felt the thick skin of his palm again. He said, “Thanks for coming, I like your ride.” His open tone left no room and less need for her rehearsed, frustrated, CTA mass-transit-hell excuse for being late. Shame led her by the hand through Earlie’s as if the place was a tight, dark cave. In fact, the space was the opposite of cave-like, tall windows and high ceilings. Ndiya’s first impression, however, had been a kind of softness about everything in there. She followed closely. Shame’s right shoulder interrupted her view of palm trees, bushes, and shrubs of every size. She quickly forgot her trip over there, crazy-always-guarding-the-door-ass Wanda, her lateness, and her neutral corners rationale for asking him to pick a spot near where neither of them lived. She’d even forgotten the silly day-of-the-week thing about Wednesday.

  The softness came from what the music at Earlie’s did to the space she felt around her. At first, she didn’t hear anything. The sensation was that she had entered through a door in the wide hip of an upright bass. She heard Shame’s voice and saw his head gesture this way and that. He didn’t turn around. “I come here for the plants, the wood, and the sound. I can’t really hear the music anymore, but it’s good to know it’s there.” He continued while she followed thinking, “Maybe this corner isn’t quite neutral enough.” Shame said, “This place always makes me feel like ordering a Scotch so old you can’t even drink it, you have to just tip the glass, close your eyes and inhale it into your lungs.” He continued, “It’s the same with the sound. Do you know an amphibian hiccups to breathe under water?” Strangely, she did know that. But she let it blow by.

  Maybe Shame was nervous. He went on, “Do you know who Reggie Workman is? Red Garland? Wynton Kelly? Otis Spann? Errico Beyle?” “Ah, musicians?” Ndiya managed. He said nothing in response. He might have nodded but that could have been a way to silently say hello to someone at one of the tables. They came to a corner table between two windows looking out at a small garden, a courtyard. On the table stood a white card with “S. L., 7:30” written on it in black marker. The time had been crossed out and “8:00” had been written in; the “8:00” had been crossed out and, this time in red marker, “8:30!” had been added. Ndiya winced.

  Immediately after they arrived at the table, Shame sat down, swept the card into his back pocket, reintroduced himself and, before she could sit, asked if she had a tissue. Ndiya thought to herself how glad she was that he hadn’t made a big act out of pulling out her chair, etc. She asked if he had a cold and he said the tissue was for his glasses though he wasn’t wearing glasses. She rummaged around at the bottom of the bag. Playing off her surprise at feeling the slim plastic packet without having to go in after it headfirst, Ndiya assured him, “Of course, sure, here you ar—”

  Then the scene dropped like if she’d stepped backward off a ladder she didn’t remember climbing. When her hand emerged from her bag with the pack of tissues, a Velcro patch from her brother’s busted-open house-arrest ankle cuff caught her sleeve. The ruined hunk of plastic and wire leapt as if it had hurled itself out and landed on the table. It bounced once and turned over the sugar bowl and toothpicks spiraled across the dark grain of the floor and through the aisle coming to rest strewn about the feet of the couple at the next table.

  Shame sat looking at her with one hand on the table-top. His other hand was extended toward her to take the tissue. He hadn’t flinched,
he hadn’t moved at all. Judging by his relaxed posture, nothing strange had happened.

  Ndiya’s ears reduced the room to the sound of the flat-line, we’re-losing-her tone. The jolt triggered a kind of survival mechanism she had employed many times in her life but knew nothing about. Her body leaned into the immediate present, her brain snapped back and became surgically abstract. It all happened without her intending, and it worked. It was kind of the way her brothers and their friends used to discuss running from the police. You never run in the same direction. They called it fifty scatters. They described it all in comic, managerial tones: “Now, police show up, we out, fitty scatter on they ass. Meet up later and assess the situation.”

  Ndiya felt her body fifty scatter. Her mind abstracted, analytical: “No matter the length, all instants are exactly the same size. It’s the shapes that never repeat. Some twist and recede, some gape and come right at you, others, furtive, listen around corners.” She took account of the instant. The objects before her eyes on the table made no sense. She thought perhaps the place had been bombed. Maybe the toothpicks were splintered wood from the roof? Her mind a-twirl, the room somewhere bent and concave in the chrome mirror of the still-revolving sugar spoon. She couldn’t recognize the broken-open cuff of plastic on the table. Obviously, she had no idea Malik had hidden the damn thing in her handbag. As if laying down cover, her brain told her that it wasn’t a bomb. Her eyes recognized the torn blue flag with its four red stars, of the CPD. Her mind filled the instant with Malik’s milky-eyed, laughing, beautiful face.

  Ndiya watched her vision like a foreign film as it hopped from the broken cuff across the toothpick-strewn tabletop and landed on Shame’s face, Ndiya watched her vision like a foreign film. Then he did react. Ndiya’s mind backed away and took in the scene as if it was printed in subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Shame’s eyebrows lighted into an asymmetry of pure surprise and sheer pleasure. Ndiya watched as her mind leapt in to abstract the anomaly of Shame’s expression. She decided it was actually wonder and that, for Shame, at least, wonder must be a subset of pleasure. “Or maybe vice versa?” her brain asked itself. “No,” she thought as Shame’s expression replaced Malik’s face in her mind, songs pinned all over it, like a depth-chart of Lake Michigan with no water in it, “Definitely, Shame’s wonder is inside pleasure.” Ndiya’s mind continued on: “Pleasure’s the wider circle. Wonder is the deeper blue.” It concluded, “Shame’s wonder gets deeper as its surface area gets smaller. That’s about pressure. So the formula: wonder equals pleasure under pressure.” Then her brain gave up its finding: “In other words, this man is trouble.”

  Her analytical brain circled the wagons. Tactically, she could feel that retreat wasn’t an option. So, Ndiya’s body stood its ground before the absurd scene. The absurdity was her brain’s problem. The rest of her was right there. To an observer it might have appeared that showing up late and tossing a busted-up house-arrest bracelet out on the table was how she usually began a conversation with a man she’d just met.

  Ndiya heard Shame laugh in words, “Well, hey now!” And she felt his extended hand take hers, lightly, and guide her down to the chair beside him. She wasn’t blind, exactly. There were bowls of light playing in and out of each other. The whole plan about acting normal, about the false and real confidence was out the window. She remembered thinking, “Another blown date. So blown!” Another page of life had been slashed diagonally across the middle and torn from the book.

  All this was trivia, however. The real trouble was that the push and pull of Shame’s stolen faces was totally gone. A familiar play of curves appeared, somehow, from under the angles of his face. Her thought just then wasn’t a thought, it resolved a melody in her body. It was like a sound in her hands or a turbulent feeling around them as if she’d reached into rushing water. She sat down and turned toward a pair of eyes that looked like leaves on the bottom of a clear pond. Light brown, flecked with dark spots. “Sunspots,” she thought, as her brain informed her that sunspots are actually huge magnetic storms. Shame’s voice: “My cousin used to use an electric can opener and a Bic lighter, looks like you just slammed yours fifty times in your car door or something.” He looked under the table and laughed. “Is your ankle OK?” Then he turned to the waitress, who looked as if she was afraid to approach the table with the piece of wreckage on top of it: “Angela, may we have two Blue Labels, please, neat.” Ndiya saw the waitress staring at her out of the corner of her eye. The waitress said, “Right, Shame, sure.”

  This date was so blown. Oh so blown. Somewhere, she’d already begun to type the postmortem email to Yvette-at-work. Email. This thought brought with it its own waves of disbelief, but that was the story of date number two and, for now, that was too much. And, remember, date-by-whatever-name number two hadn’t ee-ven happened.

  Ndiya felt music around her. A distant song played, something about no mountains and no moving, no tides and no turning. She couldn’t quite hear it. Or maybe it was thunder? Shame’s voice was stuck in her head among the clanging sounds. She heard echoes of the phrase Bic lighter over and over. Then Shame’s voice: “Ever notice the tiny dude with the huge Afro on Bic lighters?”

  Shame’s honey and molasses accent. “Here I am,” she thought, “deep, in denied territory.” And Shame: “Let’s have a drink.” And she: “You already ordered.” And he: “So I did. Done! I stay away from expensive liquor, but in this case.” Her eyes focused on him again. She felt like he’d curved himself across the upturned spoon on the table. Her voice answered him as if on its own. It sounded like she’d whispered it into a wind tunnel: “No. No car door. I, I ride the bus.” He: “I know, remember, said I liked your ride, your carbon footprint?” He laughed. She: “It’s not mine, it’s my brother’s.” She saw Shame’s lips move but she didn’t hear him. She felt the music again, nearer. She nodded at whatever he said while a song too far off for her to hear chimed: Just as sure as I live, I will love you alone….

  ■

  Since that first house-arrest bracelet night, Ndiya kept a still shot of Shame’s face looking up from the table to hers. Obscure details like this burned into her memory. She replayed the instant between the points of his eyebrows and the tone of his voice, “Hey now … Bic lighter.” It had happened a thousand times: Shame’s voice with sunspots in his eyes, some far-off song holding on to her by her shoulders. She listened for the Doppler effect. She looked hard into the from-somewhere memory. She searched for Shame’s retreat but found nothing. There was only his wide-open face.

  The way that tangle of wire and plastic hit the table and Shame’s face fell through those pulled-apart lines and into itself, it was as if he appeared from nowhere. Ndiya had much too much experience with nowhere to trust it. And she prided herself on not being taken off guard. She depended upon that forewarning. She didn’t appreciate things like beautiful faces falling through themselves and appearing, unannounced, before her eyes. She searched his face again for the way people do their eyes, the eyes behind their eyes, like they’re pushing back from a table getting ready to stand up and turn away. It wasn’t there. Each time she recalled the scene her thought was, “OK, I’ll catch him this time.” But she couldn’t. The expression, the voice, the bit about his cousin with the Bic lighter, none of it added up. The shape of the instant appeared as itself, different every time.

  If she were paranoid, she thought, she’d be sure he’d planted the bracelet in her bag. If she’d gone crazy, she’d remember that happening very clearly. There’d be evidence filed in the precinct of certainty. She wasn’t crazy because nothing was certain. Or almost nothing. Later that week, she’d gone into a corner store and checked; there really is what looks like a little dude with a huge Afro on a Bic lighter. It was an instant in time. She had proof. So she halfway thought her sanity, or at least a kind of clarity, depended upon her ability to make one instant in time be itself. Be still.

  She tried but she couldn’t do it. What scared her was elsewhere. Somehow,
despite all of her expert deployments of abstraction, it took no effort, in fact, for her mind to fix itself on the image of a man who looked like Shame—that damned name—who could watch a house-arrest bracelet tumble out, catch a shower of toothpicks in his lap and the first thing that comes to mind is a description of a tiny blip of a mark with an Afro on his cousin’s Bic lighter? No matter the abstract expert, there was no man like that. What appeared was him, every time. Shame. His apparent ease, the clarity and concision disturbed her. The timing. But there it was, undeniable. No, she hadn’t known anything like it, like him. And she told herself out loud, repeatedly, she didn’t want to.

  She began to wonder what that cost him and where he’d paid. Then she banished the thought before the pressure had a chance to do its thing. “Wonder be damned at the bottom of the lake,” she thought. “Dolphins and parrots can go on and live wherever they want.” Somewhere else—or in the same somewhere, it didn’t matter—she didn’t want to know such a person existed. Not in Chicago, not across town, and certainly not with no random sun-spots happening at the bottom of a clear pond just across a table from her.

  ■

  Ndiya had accepted that it was some kind of personality trait she’d come by through genetic mutations. She had a knack for getting into bets with herself that forced her to sacrifice pledges and vows she’d made in the mirror. Here was another one. In no uncertain terms, she’d pledged, however impossible she knew it was, to erase all evidence of date, meeting, whatever-it-was number two with Shame Luther. She’d also vowed a new level of self-scrutiny that, she reasoned, was the only way to avoid disasters in her personal life. This was necessary now that she apparently had a personal life in which she wasn’t the only person. She’d promised herself that she’d go over all impressions of her brief and catastrophic times with Shame Luther before she’d see him again.