The Superman Project

by A. E. Roman

  Giovanni was in the day-room area, stripped of his shoelaces, his belt, his clothes, his keys, and his wallet, behind the bolted door to the wonderland of doctors and nurses and patients and pills known as the Bellevue psychiatric ward.

  I looked over my shoulder at the police officer at the bathroom door and looked back at a patient swallowing pink horse pills and drinking water from a small paper cup, patients watching the evening news, some dazed and confused, most just bored and doped up. Giovanni, looking at a spot on the wall, turned as I approached, smiled big, nodded. He tugged nervously at his long blond hair and scratched at his hands and knuckles. He was handcuffed to a wheelchair, a paperback novel in his lap, at the front of the row of patients in chairs facing the TV, and he whispered as I approached, with a listless voice now, like he had cobwebs covering his brain, “Amico.”

  My friend Giovanni was wearing the standard blue hospital gown. He looked like the only non-black, non-Spanish speaking patient in the joint so far. His one free and nervous pawlike hand fiddled about his forehead, arranging and rearranging his mass of tangled blond locks.

  We shook hands. His were trembling.

  “Hey,” I said softly and nodded and looked at him sympathetically.

  “I saw you outside reading,” he said and pointed at Father Ravi’s book.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Reading. Nasty habit. I tried to kick it by smoking more but that didn’t work out.”

  “You and I are working together,” Giovanni said, looking over at a dude in a blood-spotted nightgown who was sedated and handcuffed to a wheelchair. “People are crazy in here.”

  “That’s the rumor,” I said.

  “I wasn’t always a patient here,” Giovanni mumbled. “I had a life. I do not even know why I am here and now they won’t let me out.”

  “You checked yourself in. Just check yourself out.”

  “Well, I did not exactly check myself in. They forced me.”

  “What?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus.”

  “What, amico?”

  “If they take you involuntarily,” I said, “they can keep you in the hospital for observation for as long as they want.”

  “I do not care of this,” he mumbled. “But I have had enough. I would like to go home today.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re involuntary.”

  “So what is this mean?”

  “Means,” I said, “that you go home when doctor says.”

  “How long? A week?”

  “It could be months.”

  “Months?” He laughed. “No. Giovanni am leaving here today.”

  “How? What’re you gonna do? Escape?”

  Silence.

  “How’d you get here?” I said.

  “The police take me away.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged innocently. “I was listening to Mozart and drinking Merlot.”

  “That all?”

  He looked away. “I was naked.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Oh,” he said, as if remembering. “I was in Times Square.”

  “That would do it.”

  He told me that he had decided it was a good idea to get naked in Times Square as an art experiment. The police were called. He told me that there was a misunderstanding. A female doctor in a white lab coat came out, and he gave her a hard time about checking him in and the cop handcuffed him to that wheelchair. He also discovered there wasn’t much to do in a mental ward except watch TV, or watch other patients pace or sit, some in handcuffs. The screamers would be told to calm down, and if they didn’t, they’d be taken into a bright room with an open door, where orderlies would hold them down and a doctor would tranquilize them with a shot in the arm—as an example to the rest. He found a novel in the tiny room that they had installed him in. Then he told me that he was God.

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  He smiled like a child. “Because I am God.”

  “A child of God?”

  “No.” He smiled. “I am THE GOD.”

  “God-God?” I said.

  “Yes,” he smiled.

  “Did you tell the police and the doctors that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I tell everybody.”

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  He lifted his handcuffed paw and laughed a bit. “Not too good.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t tell people you’re God.”

  “No,” he said. “They like it. It make them happy. They smile when I say I am God. They feel good. I like to make people feel good. I am God.”

  I nodded. “You’re crazy.”

  “That’s what they tell me.” He laughed.

  I had gone in to see Giovanni about the case. I didn’t ask him anything, though. I couldn’t. I thought about Joey. He had been Joey’s best friend and I felt sorry for the guy. Anyway, what kind of relevant information could you get out of a medicated dude who tells you he’s God? I’m no doctor but what I knew from people was that I could press Giovanni and maybe make matters psychologically worse for him. Some private dicks would still press a guy. I’m not that kind of dick. Not yet anyway. I’d wait a bit until Giovanni’s mind and feet were back on planet Earth.

  “As soon as you get out of here, you come see me and we’ll talk.”

  We shook on it.

  “Remember,” mumbled Giovanni. “You are not dead. You are alive. Don’t forget, Chico. As long as there is the life, there is a chance to do things different, to live different and have life. After I get out, we must make choices that will not lead down this road. Despair. Death will win in the end, but today, even if it does not look like it, I am winning.”

  “Sure,” I said, rising. “Sure.”

  “Mr. Vaninni!” yelled Rosie the Filipina nurse, coming over; she had three huge black orderlies beside her. “There’s an actor here. Kirk Atlas. He wants to talk to you.”

  Kirk Atlas?

  No way.

  “To me?” asked Giovanni. “Why?”

  “He’s doing research for a part in a movie. He needs someone articulate. I told him about your background.”

  “Send Silverman.”

  “No,” said Rosie. “He would like to talk to the Italian from Williamsburg.”

  “No,” said Giovanni.

  “Be nice.”

  “I am not the nice.”

  “Pretend.”

  “I will pretend I am Napoleon for you. I will pretend I like the Lebanese boy bands. But I will no pretend to be the nice.”

  “He’s in Dr. B’s office, if you change your mind. Anyway, it’s time to go up, honey.”

  “Home?” Giovanni smiled.

  “Maybe next week,” said Nurse Rosie. “The doctor will say.”

  “That’s what you say last night.”

  “We’ll see. Feeling better?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Giovanni. “Much better. Home now.”

  Rosie laughed. “We’ll see what Dr. B. says.”

  “Buono,” he said, standing up. “Where is he?”

  “No,” said Rosie. “Not now. Giovanni, sit down!”

  Giovanni said he was going home that day whether Rosie or the doctors liked it or not.

  “Vaninni!” said Rosie again, forcefully.

  The three black orderlies flexed and prepared to launch.

  “Sit down! You’re not going home today!” yelled Rosie.

  “I am God!” said Giovanni, coming to life again.

  I was asked to step back.

  I stepped back.

  “Let’s go, sweetie,” said Nurse Rosie.

  “Wait,” Giovanni said, hulking before the wheelchair. “There has been a mistake!”

  “No mistake, buddy,” said the equally hulking orderly, grabbing him by the arm. “Stay in the chair!”

  “I need to speak with the doctor!”

  Rosie the nurse soon had a magic needle readied in her small brown hand.

  “Relax,” said Rosie the
nurse. “Stay in the wheelchair so we can take you upstairs. I can give you a mild sedative if you’d like.”

  “No!” Giovanni protested. “My name is Giovanni. I am not crazy. There has been a mistake. I do not belong here.”

  “Sure,” said Nurse Rosie. “Nobody does. Yes, honey. We just need you to relax.”

  “I can no relax.”

  “Don’t you want to be cured, sweetheart?”

  “I am cured,” Giovanni said. “I just need the sleep, some time to think, to figure this thing. And I have work waiting for me in Williamsburg. I have my work. I have responsibilities. I want to go home now!”

  “Don’t you want to have a life like normal people?” asked Nurse Rosie, calmly now.

  “No!” said Giovanni.

  “But we can help you,” said Nurse Rosie. “Stay in the chair. Go upstairs. Do it for me.”

  Nurse Rosie said that they were merely going to push him through the long white corridors past men and women in white lab coats into an elevator going up.

  “Giovanni,” I said. “Relax.”

  “No!”

  I was asked to step back farther.

  Knowing when to fold and not being a big fan of straightjackets or needles, I stepped back farther.

  A cop was called in and he placed his hand on his gun, and the female doctor politely suggested that Giovanni sit and come with her. Giovanni glanced at the cop’s gun and the three orderlies and sat back down. Ah, politeness and a gun; they worked on him like a charm.

  But as they wheeled him past the glass partition at the nurses’ station Giovanni began banging on it.

  He was told to pipe down, didn’t, screamed, “Chico, now!” jumped up and was restrained by the three massive orderlies, the cop, the doctor, and Nurse Rosie and was dragged into a bright room and needled into serenity.

  Then a small man with dead eyes and a red Jewish Afro shuffled down the hall yelling, “Arabs! Kill them all! If we don’t fight them in Iraq, we’ll have to fight them in Boston!”

  “Silverman!”

  Silverman was also told to pipe down, didn’t, and was restrained by the three orderlies, screaming, and wheeled into the bright room and needled into serenity.

  I don’t think Giovanni would remember much about the struggle when he was discharged or how many people were involved in dragging him to the bright room. But I do know that the last things he probably saw were Silverman with the red Jewish Afro mumbling something about “Fucking terrorists” and me at the open doorway as he whispered, “I think you’re right about the God thing, Chico,” as the needle pricked his arm again and before the world went slack and his eyes closed.

  I saw Giovanni lifted up and placed in the wheelchair again and soon he looked like he was feeling mucho relaxed after taking the second injection they gave him to calm down.

  Giovanni was a dead end after all, I thought, then I looked over and to my shock I saw, laughing with a cop, the thin man, the one who ran from me and Pablo outside Giovanni’s studio in Williamsburg. He was tall, thin, in a white shirt and slacks, a young black man in a panama hat!

  He saw me, shook the cop’s hand, and made it out of there as quick as he could.

  “Rosie!” I went to the bolted door and yelled for the nurse. “Rosie!”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Little India in Jackson Heights, Queens, was a hothouse of Asian Indian grocery stores, clothing stores, restaurants, jewelry stores, glass, steel, and concrete. I felt like an Eskimo who took a wrong turn.

  The city was melting and an old Asian Indian man stood outside the 99 Cent Dream King, watering the sidewalk. He was a tall old man in his eighties with a potbelly, dyed black hair slicked back, wearing a brown suit jacket, white shirt, and tie in the oppressive heat of August like he was immune. His sweaty brown skin glistened. He was smoking a cigarette, gripping an Indian newspaper under his arm, and proudly admiring a brand-new silver Mercedes parked outside the store.

  I had followed the thin young black man in the panama hat in Zena’s Mini Cooper as he rode his Vespa motor scooter into Queens. Was Giovanni just playing crazy? And who the hell was this guy in the panama hat, riding the scooter? What was he doing in Williamsburg? Why was he visiting Giovanni in Bellevue? Why did he run?

  “Excuse me,” I said, knocking the old Asian Indian man out of his daydream. “Are you familiar with Giovanni Vaninni?”

  “Why?” he said gruffly, turning to me. “What is your business? How may I help you?”

  “My name is Chico.”

  “Chicken?”

  “Chico.”

  “I thought you said chicken.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You got any?”

  He looked at me curiously. “Why would I have chicken?”

  “How would I know,” I said. “You’re the one who brought it up.”

  “You are a strange young man.”

  “I’m also a friend of Giovanni Vaninni’s and a private investigator.”

  “Ah,” he said. “You’re not what I expected a private investigator to look like.”

  “Imagine how my parents feel,” I said. “What did you expect?”

  “I expected a white man.”

  “I gave that up last year.”

  “Obviously,” he said, “you are a black man.”

  “Obviously,” I said. “May I ask you your name, sir?”

  “Sir?” he said and smiled. “Manners at last. I like that. My name is Edgar Gupta.”

  “Are you familiar with Gabby Gupta?”

  “She is my niece.”

  “You’re Father Ravi’s brother?”

  “Yes,” said Edgar Gupta. “I am William Gupta’s brother. I was. But he’s not my business now.”

  This was the first time I’d heard of Edgar Gupta. Nobody had mentioned that Father Ravi had a brother. Maybe the people I’d talked to so far believed Edgar Gupta’s existence wasn’t my business either. Edgar Gupta was either an irrelevant detail or a secret. Well, I don’t believe in irrelevant details and I don’t like secrets.

  “Could I ask you a few questions?”

  Mr. Edgar Gupta took a long drag on his cigarette, dropped his water hose, and snapped his fingers for me to follow him into the store. “Come inside!”

  Inside, the young black man from Bellevue in the panama hat was stocking laundry detergent. An African girl stood behind the tall counter. I knew her.

  S of the African accent.

  Solange.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  On the wall behind Solange was an American flag. She was ringing up some plastic bottles of Coca-Cola, slowly eating away at the short line of bargain-hunting customers.

  Solange looked at me. She saw me. She knew me. She looked away, wished me away, sang me away, as Edgar Gupta proudly went around the store pointing out his wonderful and affordable items, blank notebooks, telephones, seasonings, cookies, toys, wrapping paper, cans of sardines. A small crew of African men, also in white shirts, ties, and black slacks rushed around the store stocking shelves.

  “I do not allow stealing in my store,” said Mr. Gupta. “No theft.”

  “I kinda assumed that.”

  “I’m not kidding. I will not hesitate to call the authorities. And no drugs.”

  “What about coffee and cigarettes?”

  “That’s between you and your God. I am talking about the illegal kind. Are you on drugs?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Are you an alcoholic?”

  “I used to be but only when I drank too much.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Gupta, squinting at me. “I see. You are like my cousin Pasha. You think you are funny. You are a smart-ass.”

  “Not really,” I said. “I’m exhausted and a long way from the Bronx and I really just want to have a few words with you and one of your men.”

  “Who?”

  I pointed out the young African I had seen running outside Giovanni’s studio and then at Bellevue.

  Edgar Gupta looked
away from me and yelled, “Kenyangi! Your detective friend is here!”

  Kenyangi was a tall, thin African man, dark skin, early twenties, neatly cut Afro, large round eyes, smiling with big, spotless, enviable African teeth. Kenyangi laughed, removed his panama hat, and greeted me like a buddy.

  “Welcome, my friend!” said Kenyangi with a big smile. “How did you happen to find me?”

  “I was running by and saw you in the window.”

  “You are a very fast runner.” He smiled.

  Edgar Gupta pushed Kenyangi away and pulled me by my arm.

  “Give me your business card,” he demanded.

  I handed him my card.

  Edgar Gupta shook his head at my card and said, “Now, go away, dabbawaalah, unless I call for you. I have work to do and you bother me.”

  With that, he snapped his fingers again, walked away, and yelled out, “Boys! Help this gentleman to the door!”

  The young African workers stopped their stacking and came toward me in a bunch.

  I backed out. “Thanks, fellas. I know the way.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  That same night, I stood on the corner waiting for him. After pulling down and locking the gates to the 99 Cent Dream King, Kenyangi sat on the sidewalk, removed his shoes, and rubbed his feet.

  I made my move.

  “You like, my friend?” Kenyangi whispered as I approached and pointed at Solange’s plentiful behind, at the other end of the street as she disappeared around a corner.

  Before I could respond, a skinny African man, approaching, angry, all puffed up and aggressive, said, “What is wrong with you, Kenyangi?”

  “What?” said Kenyangi, still seated calmly on the sidewalk.

  “You got a big mouth,” the skinny African man said.

  “Why are you being mean to me, brother?” Kenyangi said.

  “You told Gupta on me, that’s why.”

  “I’m just trying to do a good job, brother. A good manager reports the truth.”

  “We don’t need any more managers like you,” the skinny African said. “What did I ever do to you, Kenyangi?”

  “You come in five minutes late when you know that Gupta will not be here. I warned you before, brother.”

  “I live far away.”

  “Move, brother.”