by Bassoff, Jon
Eventually, she stood up on her own and walked over to the bed. Without saying anything, she began to put her clothes on. I tried apologizing several times, but she only shook her head and sobbed. Trying to make things up to her, I pulled out two more twenties from my wallet. Without making eye contact, she grabbed the money out of my hand and stuck it into her skirt. Then she walked out the door and left me alone to face the shadows that I feared would soon swallow me up whole.
CHAPTER 8
I slept, and in my dream I was walking in a strange and silent airport terminal, completely empty but filled with distant screams, and then I saw a woman with long corn-blonde hair and candy apple green eyes, and I became paralyzed as she came closer and closer, and when she was directly in front of me, she smiled and whispered, “We’ll meet again,” and we did, but this time it was in a post-industrial wasteland, and she was being swallowed up by rubble, and I could see her face, but it merged with other faces, all burned and destroyed, and I scratched at my weak flesh and moaned through trembling lips, but every time I tried waking, every time I tried opening my eyes, I found myself drowning further and further into the deformed consciousness of Max Leider…
But it was the knocking, loud and incessant, that finally caused my eyes to peel open. I sat up in bed, my head aching from the remnants of the nightmare. Then I rose unsteadily to my feet. In addition to the knocking, I could hear somebody’s voice, somebody saying, “Mr. Leider! Please! Answer the door. Mr. Leider!”
I walked toward the door and the knocking continuing. I peered through the peephole and saw an old and sickly man, face pale and gaunt, a black bowler’s hat askew on his head. “Mr. Leider,” he said. “I believe you to be inside. Please. You have made some promises. Please.”
Again mistaken for the artist. But how did he know I was here? Had he followed me from the apartment? Terrible thoughts and I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my rib cage. I wondered if he too could hear it, like in that Poe story. I admit the deed! It is the beating of his hideous heart! I didn’t open the door, and the stranger kept pounding, saying, “I only want to talk to you. I have your money; the second payment,” and now he waved an envelope in front of the peephole. “Please, Mr. Leider. I believe in you. I believe in your work.” As I peered out with my vulture eye, I saw him bend down, place the envelope on the ground, and shove it beneath the door. Then he rose to his feet, nodded his head, and turned toward the hotel stairwell. I waited until I was sure he was gone, then I slid down against the door and picked up the envelope.
I stared at my hands as if they were the hands of a stranger. Fingers trembling, I managed to tear apart the envelope. And inside, as he had promised, cash. A stack of twenty-dollar bills. Thirty of them. And a note: For another portrait. I pocketed the money and crumpled up the note.
I sat on my haunches for some time, just trying to make sense of everything. A portrait, a portrait. But of whom? Of Claire? I should have opened the door. I should have explained to him that I wasn’t Max Leider, that I wasn’t an artist at all. But then I wouldn’t have the money. I rose to my feet. Then I yanked open the hotel door and slammed it shut behind me.
Down the stairway I raced, taking three and four steps at a time, dodging past whores and johns and addicts.
Early morning and the sun shone through a frosted sky. A cold wind was blowing yesterday’s newspapers down the gutter. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and craned my neck in both directions. A block or two away, he was easy to spot with that black hat and that long gait, and I hurried after him, keeping a safe distance behind, not wanting him to spot me.
Along the gutter I walked and it seemed that all around me was decay and despair and damnation. Buildings were crumbling under decades of neglect, windows shattered or boarded-up. Children, not knowing how to play, walloping each other with fists and feet instead. A crazy man muttering about the “miniature cameras” hidden in his cigarette. A black man in a wheelchair singing spirituals, despite the fact that God was waiting around the corner, ready to stomp his larynx.
With a rare sense of purpose, I dodged past the degenerates and stepped over the grime, keeping a close eye on the old man.
We walked and we walked, and not once did the old man turn around to check his surroundings and that was a mistake in this type of town (I believe in the innate meanness in strangers, even if that stranger is myself).
I was shivering badly (it had started snowing, the flakes whipping through the air). Thirty minutes or more and there was still destruction but not as much despondency, and now the old man did turn around as if he’d known I was there the whole time, and I stopped walking but there was nowhere to hide. He looked my way for a long moment, seemed to make eye contact, but then he swung back around and continued marching, and I wasn’t going to give up, not after coming this far.
My feet and face were becoming numb and the neighborhood had changed to bustle and noise and shoves. Storefronts were all fogged windows covered with Chinese letters. And along the sidewalks dragon fruit, decapitated duck, dong gu, dried squid, a bucket of frogs, $15 for a pound of fungi, women with hospital masks, deep-fried silkworms, nobody speaks English, and scorpions on a stick. I felt disoriented, and my vision was becoming narrowed, the result of an oncoming migraine.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them, he’d vanished. My head on a swivel, I glanced around and saw his black hat above a sea of bobbing heads. I pushed my way through the crowd, trampling a little man who shouted, “Zhùyì! Húndàn!”
Vision refocused, I watched as the mysterious man entered a store that seemed out of place in Chinatown. The words Pretty Pictures were written in bright yellow paint. The windows were filled with paintings, all of them grotesque: a woman, terribly emaciated, her bones jutting from her bandaged body; an elderly man, naked, wrapped from head to toe in barbed wire; a little girl holding and examining a bloodied fetus; a faceless man using a razor blade to cut a bloody mouth; and so on. They were paintings the likes of which I’d never seen. And yet people walked by without a second glance. Weren’t they shocked by the art? Didn’t they understand the ramifications?
I wanted to enter the store and confront the man, to ask him about Leider, to ask him about these bizarre paintings, to return his money, but something stopped me. Instead I crossed the street and entered a little restaurant with a metal door hanging off its hinges. Inside nobody was there except for the owner and he pounced on me and began hugging me and kissing my cheeks and speaking in Mandarin. He sat me at a table and rubbed my shoulders and when I asked for a glass of water, he only laughed and shook his head. Then he disappeared to the kitchen, and I stared out the window at the strange art gallery, a sense of dread spreading through my veins. Outside the snow was falling and the streets were packed with Asians, but in this restaurant it was only me.
My gracious host returned several minutes later. In front of me, he placed an unopened can of Tab soda as well as a plate of food. But what was on the plate? A skull of some sort. I shivered. Sensing my discomfort, the Chinese man spoke in halting English: “Skinned rabbit head. Is good!”
I didn’t have much of an appetite, but the strange man wouldn’t leave, so I took my fork and knife and began cutting—a lagomorph lobotomy. I placed a bite of meat in my mouth and chewed and it wasn’t terrible, so I ate more, and the man laughed and nodded his head and said, “Is good! I told you!”
I was nearly done, and the man wouldn’t leave, so I pointed to the art gallery across the street. “Strange paintings,” I said.
He studied me for a moment and then laughed. “Yes…yes.”
“What do you know about that gallery? Who would sell paintings like those?”
But he didn’t seem to understand me, just laughed again. I pulled out my wallet, but he waved it away.
“I can pay,” I said.
“No, no. No pay.”
“Are you sure? Thank you.”
I wiped my mouth with the napkin and rose to my feet. I nod
ded and smiled, but then, suddenly, he grabbed my arm and squeezed. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, and now it seemed that his accent had all but disappeared.
“A very bad store,” he said. “Art from the hand of the devil.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
I pulled away from him and staggered across the cement floor, pushing open the wounded metal door and stepping back outside to the madness that awaited me.
* * *
I crossed the street, eyes burning from the Chinatown glare, and stood in front of the art gallery, fearing that behind the glass door were heinous secrets revealed, secrets that I had no business discovering. I jiggled the door handle, but it was locked. Had the old man left without me noticing?
I glanced around at the early morning masses of people pushing shopping carts or carrying bags or shouting at their spouses or talking to themselves. Nobody was paying me any mind so I took a step back and lunged forward with my shoulder. The door slammed open, bouncing against the inner wall before slowing to a stop in front of my boot.
I stepped inside and gently shut the door behind me. I edged forward, the wooden floor creaking beneath my feet. From somewhere I could hear the faint sounds of a violin concerto. “Hello?” I shouted. “Is anybody here?”
Nobody answered.
There was no desk, no cash register. In the middle of the room there were several strange sculptures. The first one was an old ripped-apart couch, but instead of stuffing, human organs (heart, kidney, liver) spilled from the upholstery. Behind the couch there was a rusted metal iron with canine teeth protruding from the bottom. And finally, all by its lonesome, there stood a clay Southern belle, complete with a hoop skirt and cotton blouse, cooling herself with a folding fan, a contented smile on her lips, her throat slashed into a bloody gash…
The walls were covered with paintings from floor to ceiling, and all were of the same grotesque nature as the sculptures and the artwork in the window. I walked around the gallery slowly, studying each of the paintings in turn, feeling sick to my stomach. The violin concerto was getting louder. Where the hell was it coming from?
And then I reached the final wall, the final corner, and observed a painting covered with purple cloth. And above the artwork, a cardboard sign with words written in nearly undecipherable scrawl: “Coming soon: Betrayal by Max Leider.” Leider, Leider! Was it another yellow window? Or something worse? I could feel my brain throbbing and I rubbed my temples with my forefingers.
I needed to see the painting. Hands trembling, breath rasping in my throat, I reached for the edge of the cloth. But I had just started to lift the purple fabric when I heard the sound of footsteps. I spun around and saw, for the first time, a door in the back of the room, hidden by the human chair. And standing in the doorway, rocking back and forth, the old man with the black hat.
I was momentarily paralyzed from the neck down.
“What are you doing here?” he rasped. “Is that you, Leider? Yes, yes, the jacket. I’ve been looking for you. I’ve been—”
But before he could say another word, I marched across the gallery, kicked open the front door, and allowed myself to be consumed by the Chinatown crowd. Sidewalk slick with snow, I raced through the mob, glancing back every now and then.
The old man didn’t chase after me; instead he stood in front of his strange gallery, hands behind his back, eyes staring straight ahead…
CHAPTER 9
Back in the snow and the wind and the cold, and I found myself terribly disoriented, my breadcrumbs eaten by feral pigeons. Crisscrossing through streets and neighborhoods, leaving behind the bustle of Chinatown and stumbling through streets dark and violent, I continued onward, thinking about Suzanne Flowers, thinking about the old man in the hat, thinking about the woman behind the yellow window. But most of all, thinking about Max Leider and becoming convinced that I was transforming into him, physically and otherwise…
A minor miracle that I found my way back to the apartment, only recognizable because of the “Wigs” sign. My hair was wet and falling over my eyes, causing them to burn. I was shivering badly, pneumonia a real possibility. I pushed open the door to the apartment and raced up the stairwell, taking three steps at a time. And I’d just pulled open the metallic door leading to the sixth floor when I heard a “Hey!” from behind me. I spun around and saw small woman (was she a dwarf?) wearing a ratty bathrobe, her black hair splayed all over the place. Even from that distance I could see the enormous mole on her left cheek and I immediately knew it was the super, the one who was in such bad health…
“Can I help you?” I said. “I was just on my way to my apartment and—”
“Ain’t your apartment no more. Not for a lowlife like you. Now where’s my money?”
“Your money?”
“Four hundred dollars,” she said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t—”
And now she took a few steps forward, wheezing heavily. “Bullshit. I ain’t playing with you, boy. I best get me that money or else my son will do you harm.”
I smoothed back my drenched hair and shook my head. “Your son? But he’s the one I paid! That’s the misunderstanding. Didn’t he tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me shit,” she said and then began hacking uncontrollably for twenty seconds or more before wiping her mouth with a handkerchief.
“Talk to your son. I paid him. We’re square. He gave me no invoice, unfortunately.”
“My son,” she said, “is a thief and a liar.”
“I already paid him,” I insisted.
“And I think you’re a thief and a liar, too. Four hundred dollars, not a penny less. I better have it by Saturday or you’ll be sucking your food from a straw. Understand?”
I wasn’t about to argue with her more. I would have to find her albino son and get things straightened out. I only said, “Yes, ma’am. I understand.”
She remained in the stairwell, arms folded on her chest. “Now get on out of here. We don’t cater to lowlifes like you!”
My head was spinning and I felt like I was going to be sick. Instead of pushing open the staircase door and returning to my apartment (I’d paid for it! We were square!), I descended the stairs, made like I was leaving the building. The sickly old lady glared at me as I passed her by, and it was obvious that she was crazy, just like the most of them. And now a bunch of tenants were peeking in the staircase watching me. I just wanted to be left alone. They had the rest of their lives to destroy me with their furtive glances and whispers.
I stayed outside, hidden in the alley, for thirty minutes or more. Then, when I was convinced that the crazy super was gone, I returned to the building, tiptoeing up the stairs. Echoes of laughter and threats, but no eyeballs. I made it to the sixth floor, made it to my apartment. With hand trembling from cold and fear, I managed to fit my key into the keyhole. As I pushed open the door, I almost expected another tenant to be standing in the living room tearing apart Leider’s paintings, but when I stepped inside, everything was the same.
* * *
I sat in my room, on the edge of the bed, staring at the apartment opposite. Fourth floor, second window from the left. The curtain was shut, but she was there, she was there. And doing what? Standing in front of the stove, scrambling eggs and pouring coffee? Sitting on the couch, her legs folded beneath her, flipping through the pages of a magazine? Trying on a newly bought dress, spinning round and round in front of the mirror? Talking on the phone to her great aunt, the one who lived in Topeka, asking, “How are you, Auntie? Your rheumatism bothering you?” Or lying in her bed, eyes closed, dreaming of better days to come, a time with no sadness or tears or heartache…
I glanced down at the floor, and for the first time I noticed that my apartment was infested with spiders—I could see dozens of them crawling across the floor, not concerned at all with my presence, occasionally disappearing within cracks, other times molting or making decoys of themselves. And now the walls were covered
with spiderwebs, turning them a ghostly white.
What’s your name, what’s your name? somebody whispered, but I couldn’t answer the question because my name kept changing, depending on my mood, depending on the circumstances.
She was behind the curtain.
What was she doing?
She was behind the curtain.
And then I heard a bloodcurdling scream. It was coming from the street below. I rose from bed, and my temple was throbbing, splinters buried beneath my skin. I tiptoed across the floor, and the spiders were hissing my name. I yanked at the window, groaning as it refused to open for a few long moments before the paint finally cracked and it jammed upward. I stuck my head out the window, the winter wind slicing my cheeks and tearing my eyes. Down below I looked, and there I saw a woman sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth in pain. She was crying, “Why? Why?” and yanking out her hair, and now a crowd was gathered around her, staring past her shoulder at the basement floor of my apartment. Nobody was comforting her, but they were covering their mouths and shaking their heads and walking away in disgust. And then, for just a moment, the woman looked up, and I recognized her face. It was Suzanne Flowers, and I feared that she’d found her son, and I feared that the tears were just starting.
* * *
