I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  I turn off all the overhead lights and turn on my lava lamp, my illuminated world globe, my faux Tiffany lamp. Make a fire in the fireplace. Grab a blanket that’s still left on the bed. Something smells of garlic. Buster’s red sweater. I pull the sweater over my head and throw it in the corner. On the couch, I curl up under the warm blanket. The pitch in the firewood makes the fire pop and spit.

  In the middle of the night, I wake up. The fire is out and I make it into bed. Feels good, alone in bed and I stretch out. But there’s something along the edge of the bed. Something old. I know what it is but I won’t admit it. Three hours of sleep.

  The next day, Sunday. Rainy, cold, and dark, early June, Portland. About three in the afternoon I call Buster. I get is his voicemail. I don’t leave a message.

  My long clawfoot bathtub is the only place. Hot bath and boombox the only place left to go. My only CD I’m not sick of listening to is the CD of my favorite songs Ruth made. I don’t know if the CD’s a good idea, but I put it on.

  In the tub, surrounded by hot water and bubbles, Jane Siberry’s “The Gospel According to Darkness.” I wonder if I’ve ever cried so hard.

  Monday morning, Hank calls again. His voice is what I need to hear. His news ain’t good, though. He can’t make it in August. The doctor has told him he shouldn’t travel so soon. Airplane air. Maybe I can make it for Christmas, Hank says.

  A couple hours later that same day, another phone call. As soon as the phone rings, I know it’s death.

  It’s my ex-wife, Evie. I’m not sure at all what to say. How to make my voice sound. Finally, it’s the Catholic boy with the big apology. I mean me trying to cover that voice up:

  “Hi, Evie,” I say. “What’s up?”

  The silence before Evie speaks. All the years, all that we never talked about.

  “I just wondered if you’d heard,” Evie says.

  “Heard what?”

  “The Atlanta Boys,” Evie says. “Gary died last week. AIDS.”

  My breath goes away, but still I speak.

  “I didn’t even know he was sick.”

  “You’re not the best one to keep in touch,” she says. “The only way I got this number was I remembered your sister’s married name.”

  Then: “And you know about Reuben and Sal,” she says.

  I pull the kitchen chair over, sit down on it real slow.

  “In April,” Evie says, “their Jeep Wagoneer sideswiped a logger truck. They went over the side fifty feet into the spring runoff. They died on impact.”

  That’s what I do, too, fall fifty feet into freezing water.

  “Why didn’t anybody call me?”

  “That anybody would be me,” Evie says. “And I know you’ve been sick. And I’m calling you now.”

  THE KITCHEN CHAIR has no cushion, just my boney ass against the wood. My right leg crossed over my left. Outside the gray light, inside the house, dark. There’s no way I could get on an airplane. Even an hour flight to Boise. I can’t even get up off the chair. I sit there so long that when I finally get up my legs won’t work.

  When I turn on the light in the kitchen, in the dish rack, the one blue plate, the one fork, the glass with the yellow balloons, the thick white cup, Otis Café.

  At the sternum, right in the middle of my chest, the lightbulb. The filament flickering flickering.

  I call Hank. You know what you got to do.

  I call Ephraim, but Ephraim’s not home.

  That night, I do my deep breathing exercises, listen to my self-hypnosis tape. Babbling brooks and wind in the pines. Popping Xanax. But the Xanax doesn’t work. Every time I look at the clock ten minutes have passed. Outside the window it’s black. All I can see is my ghost self in the window in the room with low lights. At 3:30 I turn the clock around. I keep my eyes closed tight. Then the morning birds begin to sing. I open my eyes and outside the window it’s blue-gray.

  Buster Bangs’s answering machine goes like this: I’m off to Tennessee. Travel mode’s the key.

  I cancel class on Thursday and spend the next ten days and nights not sleeping. So easy to say now, that there was a time in my life, eleven days and nights in my life, that I didn’t sleep.

  After the third night it becomes a challenge. Sooner or later the fear will relent and nature will take its course and I will fall and there will be a place for me when I fall and someone or something will lay me down.

  The photo on my calendar is of Princess Diana sitting on a yacht at sunset in the Mediterranean with Dodi Fayed. All that peace and calm. Nobody is safe. I mark off the days with big dramatic black grease pen Xs.

  Your body just does things. I leave the television on day and night. Then on the third or fourth day, I shut the television off, unplug it, turn the screen around. I play all my old CDs. Look through photos of Hank and me from New York. That one of us especially, on the Brooklyn Bridge. We’re laughing hard at our joke. Instead of cheese, Hank has just said the thing Jeske always said, Got to go pal.

  But soon music is only noise. I pile my CDs in a pile behind the armchair where I can’t see them. Unplug the stereo. It’s the electric buzz. On my bed in the light of the lamp on the bed rail, I reread my first novel, my second. Sit down to write at the computer on my third book, but I cannot get past the first sentence.

  Finally, I turn my computer off, unplug it, set it in a pile behind the armchair next to the CDs. Unplug my clock. Set it back there, too. Unplug my phone. Unplug the lamp on the bed rail.

  By the sixth day the Xanax is gone. I don’t find out until later that the Xanax I think I’ve been taking isn’t Xanax at all. There are so many pills in my medicine chest. I can’t close the door on my medicine chest, there are so many pills. It’s steroids I’ve been taking, testosterone, that just looked like the Xanax.

  The following Thursday there’s a knock at my back door. Through the living room window, I can see the back porch. It’s filled with people for my writing class. No Ruth, though. I quick lie down on the floor, barely breathe. They sit out there on the porch and laugh and talk easy, the way people do. After an hour, they all leave.

  My bed is a corner of hell. Your body just does things. I move my bed so it faces the door. Sweep under the bed. Tidy everything up. That starts me on the rest of the house. Four in the morning, I’m cleaning out the vegetable bins in my refrigerator and I know I’m crazy.

  I forget what I eat. I know that I eat but I don’t know how I buy the food or how I cook it. In the last of the days at night in that dark I walk through my rooms, pushing my body against it. Darkness that I can actually lean against. I look into the abyss and the fucker looks back. At least there is something else that is there.

  It feels like God. God is too bright and full and is pushing me down.

  That night I don’t lie down, because if I lie down maybe I won’t be able to lift my head back up again. So I sit on the edge of the bed and do the deep breathing thing. All around me it’s a horror. Ghosts and goblins and apparitions. Avenues of fear. Dead aunts and uncles, the Shetland pony, the fucking red devil with the pitchfork. Huck-a-buckin’.

  The next morning, in the kitchen, I’m trying to make my protein fiber and oatmeal, my chamomile tea, but the way my neck is stiff, the way my eyes hurt, the brightness, the buzz the buzz, the ringing in my ears, I can’t stop shaking. I take my cup, the thick white coffee mug from the Otis Café, and throw it against the door. I’m yelling Fuck God Fuck Fuck Fuck!

  Out the window, my neighbor is raking up muddy leaves in his backyard. I see that he’s heard the loud crash, he’s heard me yelling. He flips open one of those new cell phones. Dials a number.

  As I watch him, he calls the police and tells the police he’s heard a gunshot.

  Of course, I have no idea.

  I SWEEP UP the broken pieces from the mug, pour them into the garbage can. It’s while I’m washing up my breakfast dishes that I think about my neighbor. That I’ve startled him and I should go and apologize. I think maybe I should change my
clothes first. Clean up a little bit. But I leave on my Ugg slippers, my Levi’s that won’t stay up, my green plaid pajama top.

  When I step out the kitchen door, just as I’m locking the door, I hear a loud voice. Right off, I know it’s God.

  “Step away from the door and put your hands behind your head!”

  A high-pitched homosexual scream comes out my mouth and I drop my keys. When I finally get myself together, I turn around and I’m not exaggerating. There are twenty guns pointed at me. The closest is a cop on my back porch, a young guy, not even twenty, his arms stuck out in a crouch position with a pistol. There’s another cop behind him, a woman. She’s young, too, prom queen beautiful, hair in a flip. She’s crouching and pointing a pistol, too. Down the steps, under the grape arbor, the wide-swinging gate is open and there are three, maybe four cops with rifles or some kind of big guns that look more complicated than rifles. Pointed at me.

  All these cops are wearing the same outfit. Dark blue almost black dungarees with big white lettering across the chest. SWAT. To the west, over the side of the cedar fence, there’s a guy who looks like Rocky Balboa in wraparound sunglasses. He’s pointing something like a bazooka at me. Or maybe it’s a flamethrower. The guy with the bullhorn is General Douglas MacArthur and he’s standing just under the guy with the flame-thrower.

  Down the brick steps and in the garden, there are two more cops in the same outfit, crouched down, arms out, with guns, just pistols, pointed at me. And these are only the cops I can see. Children. They’re all children.

  I step away from the door and put my hands behind my head. It’s then I realize the ringing in my ears has stopped. The fried place behind my eyes isn’t frying. No neuropathy in my feet or legs. No complaints from my stomach. No shit fears. Not one ache or pain in my body. The world isn’t dizzy. In fact, the world is fucking solid.

  General MacArthur shouts out:

  “Keep your hands against the back of your head. Walk to the porch steps, descend the steps slowly, and walk toward me. Any quick movement or unnecessary gesture will be taken as threatening behavior and you will be shot.”

  It takes me a while to speak, but I know I have to, and when I speak I speak loud enough so General MacArthur will hear.

  “My pants are going to fall down!”

  “Hands behind your head! Walk!”

  I wonder what pair of shorts I’m wearing. Either a stretched-out pair of Hanes briefs, the red bikinis, or the black seamless mesh briefs Ruth bought me.

  The two young cops in a crouch back up slow as I walk along the porch. At the stairs, I pass by them and just as I pass by them, they make a sound with their guns. Like in cowboy shows, that click that means they’re serious. Three steps down, I take the steps slow. With every step my Levi’s sink lower down my hips. The way the morning air hits my back, and the way it all feels down there, it’s then I remember. I’m not wearing underwear at all.

  Below me, my feet in my Uggs walk slow toward General MacArthur. I’m trying not to lift my feet, trying to keep my knees together as I walk. General MacArthur is holding the bullhorn and still speaking through the bullhorn even though I’m right there in front of him.

  “Don’t move your hands. Keep your hands behind your head. No quick and unnecessary gestures. Turn around slowly.”

  General MacArthur is about seven feet tall. Those kind of General Douglas MacArthur glasses. The bullhorn is the same color as his outfit. The same color as the other outfits.

  I turn around. It’s fast and rough the way they push me, grab my hands, my arms. In nothing flat, I’m handcuffed, my hands behind me. Still no panic. The way they frisk me, I damn near lose my Levi’s. But quick as I can I hold my hands against my butt and my Levi’s stay up.

  “Proceed down the brick steps and into the clearing. When you reach the center of the clearing, stop, turn around slowly with your back to the house.”

  Down the six brick steps, I’m walking real slow. I’m pressing my handcuffed hands into the butt of my Levi’s. Still my Levi’s are slipping. On the northwest corner of the house, there are three more cops in outfits, one with a rifle and two with guns that look like Star Wars. Across in my neighbor’s yard, more cops. One in particular leaning against the fig tree. This one’s the real Spaghetti Western. Square-jawed and crewcut hair, tanned, his sunglasses are mirrored. His face is a fuck-you staredown. His huge complicated rifle bazooka thing has a telescope on top of it.

  That telescope is pointing a red dot of light right in the middle of my chest. That place, right at my sternum, a little lightbulb that you can see the red filament flashing.

  You create your own reality.

  Portland’s version of Clint Eastwood has got the Running Boy in his sights. Exactly in that place in the middle of my chest. His little red filament right there just itching to blow open a bloody hole. As soon as I look down and see that red filament just to the right of my heart, that quick I’m the Running Boy’s and I got to run.

  Right then’s when Big Ben decides he’s had enough. He’s tired of being in this old body who can’t sleep. Tired of being sick and sober and anxious and dizzy and no longer in control. Tired of AIDS.

  On the third brick step, I stop walking. From my armpit, one slow drop of sweat rolls all the way down to my hip. A quick hot gust of wind in the bamboo. My body feels surprisingly free. Through the leaves of the fig tree, the Clint Clone, the guy I’ve always hated, envied, lusted after. Finally, finally, after all these years I stop. I take a breath and stare him back right in the eye.

  Over my heart, the red dot of flickering light, the way it’s searching.

  My whole life I’ve been waiting for this moment. A wave of my hand, a jump, or even a sneeze and my sick, fucked, anxious life will be over.

  Big Ben’s handcuffed hands lift away from the butt of my Levi’s.

  That quick, my Levi’s fall down around my ankles

  The sound of the beginning of World War Three. Military artillery clatter on alert. Safeties off, all those guns being cocked, hammers pulled back, rotating cylinders, pumps of the shotgun.

  Death By Cop.

  You wait for the blow to kingdom come.

  INSTEAD, HANDCUFFED IN my garden, my back to the house, I stand with my shoulders up around my ears, my eyes squeezed shut. My pajama top is long, but not long enough. It’s just me and my old pope and my skinny AIDS ass hanging out. All that artillery still pointed at me, as the SWAT team goes through my house, my drawers, my closets, my cupboards. I think about the marijuana in the top drawer of my nightstand.

  After a while and a lot of talking back and forth on the walkie talkie, General MacArthur walks down the brick steps and stands next to me. He doesn’t say anything, just stands there. I take it as a sign that I’m allowed to talk.

  “Look,” I say, “I have AIDS and I’m being treated for depression. This morning was especially bad and I yelled and broke a cup. I saw my neighbor make the call on his cell phone.”

  “Where are the pieces to the cup?” General MacArthur asks.

  “Under the sink,” I say. “In the garbage can.”

  General MacArthur gets on his walkie talkie.

  “Check under the sink in the garbage can for a broken cup.”

  That static sound. Above and behind me, I can hear the squeak of the cupboard door opening to under the sink.

  Static sound again. Something over the walkie talkie.

  “What color is the cup?” General MacArthur asks me.

  “White,” I say. “With an Otis Café logo on it.”

  From behind and above me, I hear:

  “Check on that white Otis Café cup, sir. There are broken pieces in the garbage can.”

  “At ease!” General MacArthur says.

  The clatter of guns and rifles and Star Wars weapons, the entire SWAT team puts their safeties on. Cops relax, start moving around, talking to each other.

  “Routine maneuver when a firearm is reported.”

  That’s what Gen
eral MacArthur says over my shoulder as he takes off my handcuffs. He hangs the handcuffs on his leather belt.

  Efficient, silent, quick. The way the SWAT arrived, they leave.

  I pull up my pants.

  IT’S RAINING CATS and dogs, cougars and wolves, in the Pioneer Cemetery. Tony Escobar is still naked but he’s wearing a Chinese hat and sitting under a colorful umbrella in a lounge chair with a cocktail in his hand. The big hairy chest of him. I sit on my grave, he sits on his. The world is spinning and my body hurts all over.

  Fear and trembling, man.

  Fuck the rain, Tony and I, we go through it all over and over about the fascist SWAT team and what America is turning into and who the fuck are they to handcuff me and let me stand naked and what the fuck is Bill Clinton up to allowing fascist shit like this in our country and civil rights and human rights and bullies with guns and the quality of life and what it is life and death dreams and waking nightmares and what is fear and why do I fear so much. Did AIDS get to my adrenals? What is AIDS dementia and how do you know you have it? Is it my pituitary gland, the Catholic Church, or my mother or my father or my sister the school bully, whatever the fuck that’s been stressed to the max, where is there comfort, even the Portland cops are after me.

  Tony tells me to hold on. Tony tells me to call my doctor.

  FOR DAYS AFTERWARD, a Portland City cop car keeps driving up and down past my house. It’s the Clint Clone. One day, out on the sidewalk, the whole time I’m doing my tai chi, he just sits in his cop car there on the corner of Morrison, the engine running.

  FINALLY, I GET a hold of my nurse practitioner, Madelena Papas. I haven’t seen her in months. Seven and a half months, she says. I try and sound like I’m not crazy. She prescribes me more Xanax, but I can’t drive to pick it up. I tell her I have no car and the buses freak me out.

  “I’ll have it delivered,” she says.

  “Today?”

  “Are you still having trouble sleeping?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you still seeing Dr. Hardy?” Madalena asks.

  “Avenue of fear,” I say.