by Joe Nelms
He tells me they’re having trouble. His wife doesn’t respect him. Treats him like an assistant. A rented mule on which she can pile her troubles regardless of the strain to his back. An asshole. He claims to have had enough and if it weren’t for their kids (He has kids! Who knew?), he would have been divorced months ago. In other words, he would stand up for himself but he doesn’t have the sack. Their sex life is dead. They haven’t slept together since last Christmas. We’ve had dinner with them four times since then.
Not only can I not identify with any of this, but I find it irritating. Why are they wasting our time as a couple pretending everything is okay when divorce is the inevitable end result of all this fretting and hand wringing? I listen and I nod and I ask a question or two to maintain a facade of interest but I still don’t have the foggiest with regard to how much to commiserate or share or even to lie. What do other men do? How would guys I look up to react in this situation? How about the confident ones who intimidate me so easily with their natural charm and innate social skills? What would they do in my seat? Is this where I open up and talk about some common ground of misery? Is this where I tell him that inside I’m rotted and empty? I’m a human sinkhole waiting to collapse. I have it worse than you, Bub. Does that make you feel better? What do I share? I stand at the edge of the train platform sometimes and think Who would care?
How much is too much? Is he telling me this to get me to open up about my marriage? How could he possibly know what goes on in my home? He’s not that clever, and I’ve never told anyone. Does he really expect me to start now? Here, over the Cobb salad? And why would I pick him of all people? We’re not even that close. How do I know him? I can’t remember how we met. A friend of a friend? Is anything he’s telling me even real? I wonder if he’s making it up. Bait. Maybe. We have such a good time together as a foursome. I’m exhausted.
—What a bitch.
I didn’t know what else to say. I know he’s taking it as a statement of support, but I’m really talking about him.
He starts crying. Not real crying. The kind where his eyes well up and he catches himself and smiles like he’s embarrassed and now we have this little shared moment that I hope I can forget as soon as possible. In his mind we just became closer and this will lead to more chats like this. He tells me that no, she’s not that bad and she has her good side and it’s not fair to talk about her like this when she’s not here to defend herself. I feel like that’s the best time to talk about her. If only he could do it with someone else.
I’m quiet and hope that my distaste is mistaken for sympathy or empathy or who gives a shit what it’s taken for. By the time I finish the thought I’m livid. So angry I can’t see straight. I excuse myself and walk past the bathroom out the front door without telling Captain I-don’t-appreciate-what-I-have I’m leaving. He’s lucky I don’t punch his crybaby face.
I know I’ll never talk to that guy (the bitch) again. But then, I kind of knew that as soon as he started complaining about his reasonably attractive wife.
Later, I have a massive fight with Lisa but I forget what it was about.
49
I hate needles.
This one is shiny and sterile and razor sharp and I take a long look at it after removing it from its packaging. The tip is cut at an acute angle to make the finest point possible. It should go in so easily. Cut straight through my dirty skin.
I jam it through the rubber on the vial and fill the syringe. Tap the air bubbles out and gently push the plunger up. Pretty sure I got them all. Close enough.
I should clean my arm before I inject myself but I don’t.
Two days ago I was dead.
A few glistening drops slide down the needle. Taunting me.
What are you looking at, chump?
The drops are odorless. I have no idea what I’m putting in my body.
Rat poison.
Saline.
Angel Juice.
I don’t know.
Fuck it.
I’m lean. I’ve got good veins that are helped out by the belt wrapped tightly around my left bicep. They look like a road map. A guide I might use to escape myself. I pump my fist a few times and insert the needle into the winner on my forearm. I’m an easy stick and the needle is so god damn sharp it slides in like it wants to be there. Look at this plastic and metal technology sticking out of me. I can’t be helped any other way.
It’s come to this.
Three weeks ago I was a practicing attorney.
I pull the plunger back a little to suck some my own blood out of my body to mix with whatever I’ve already got in the syringe. I saw it in a movie about drug addicts.
Lisa would say I’m an idiot.
—A ‘doctor’ you met at the dog fights?
—They say she’s the best.
—Oh, well, They say so, huh? They being the disgusting child molesters who would have also been perfectly willing to recommend a good sex slave dealer? Well, as long as They recommended her. That’s as good as five stars on Yelp.
—I’m a deep, dark hole of black ashes without you.
Two years ago I was a rising star.
—She probably made that stuff in her bathtub. You don’t know if it’s sterile or spoiled or stale or expired.
—It’s not. Or it is. What else am I going to do?
—Not this. Don’t do it.
—You never called back. Not once.
A year ago I was married to the love of my life.
I do it.
I ease the plunger down and force everything into my vein. It hurts a lot. And then it doesn’t. I get the belt off my bicep before I lose all motor control. Didn’t get the syringe out of my vein. Too late now.
I wonder if I should have left a note.
Black.
Black.
Black.
I remember drinking a gallon of water at one point. I remember yelling.
Beyond that I was immersed in a velvety pool of dense nothingness that smothered my psyche and held everything that was me down, down, down so whatever needed to happen could happen. I had no dreams. I had no nightmares. I had no thoughts. I was awake and then I was asleep and now I am awake. I was not awake when I chugged the water. I was an empty robot. A drooling zombie. A motile humanoid with no conscience or will power. Just id and thirst. When I yelled it was nonsense. Passionate nonsense informed by nothing and fueled by empty anger. Yelling in tongues. I remember staring at the exposed brick wall in my apartment for what must have been an hour. Focused. But I was not awake. Whatever needed to happen has happened.
I wake up in a pool of sweat and shit and piss and vomit. I’ve lost ten pounds. My nails have grown half a centimeter. It’s daytime. I’m in my bathroom. The mirror is broken. The syringe is in the sink.
I’ve got a healthy crop of stubble on my face. More than I should for the time that has passed. But I look much better than I did before the shot. Less sallow. Less dead.
I’ve been out for thirty-six hours.
I shower and drink another gallon of water and realize I feel fantastic. I could run a marathon. I could lift a car. I could smile.
The rat poison/saline/angel juice worked. Who knows what kind of toll it took on my liver to get me here. I don’t care.
As I said, this is not a long-term strategy.
50
(Well, well, well.)
Our man has thus begun his master plan.
The calculated, and now medically assisted, death and rebirth of a man no one would miss. The selfish inquisition into a life history best left untouched. The archaeological reincarnation of a nobody. Ridiculous, yes?
No matter. He is of a single mind and dogged in his pursuit. Even more so, now that he has the unabridged support wrought from his new partnership with a mind so brilliant in matters of medicine and so open with regard to medical ethics. The good doctor. The stealthy resident of the Hippocratic fringe who now soaks in the spotlight on the center stage of the old boy’s world. She is
his new lease on life. She is the Watson to his Crick. The orange juice concentrate to his gasoline. They are complementary. Synergistic. Volcanic. Or so go his rambling bloviations, the manic projections of our man and his omnium-gatherum of ill-conceived twaddle.
As the old boy sits in this grimy diner eating his third full breakfast of the morning, he visualizes the immediate future and the tantalizing possibilities contained therein.
More death.
More memories.
More answers.
It’s intoxicating. His only concern is making sure to retain the good doctor’s attention and stoke her zeal for the project. She is shining bright with enthusiasm for the moment, but white star zeal has a tendency to burn intensely and then not at all. There may be no time to waste.
The odd sensation in the back of his head he will attribute to anticipation. Hope. Relief. He believes he feels the deep satisfaction of a meaningful connection. The long awaited access to untapped potential. This is the thrill of being on the verge of something great.
Had he questioned even the slightest bit deeper, perhaps he might understand the feeling to be less of an emotion and more of a warning. As if he was in danger. At risk.
As if he was being watched.
But by whom? The tired-out waitress? The decrepit Hispanic gentleman lingering over his free refills of bitter, bitter coffee? The mustachioed gentleman reading the sports pages with his back to us? Who would possibly be taking note of the old boy, cracked and corroded with his inwardly focused fascination? To put it in words our man might use himself, Who would give a shit?
Looking back one day, he might wonder why it wasn’t more obvious to him.
51
Fucking starving.
The waitress doesn’t blink when I order enough food to feed a boot camp. This isn’t the kind of restaurant where the employees are paid enough to give a shit about anything. I feel bad about planning to stiff her, but I don’t have much of a choice. I have to eat and fucking Flaco spent most of my cash getting me to Cordoba.
Cordoba.
She’s definitely passed the first test. I’m back in action without so much as a headache. She’s crazier than a shithouse rat, but she does cook up some powerful drugs.
The place is almost empty. It’s eleven in the morning. The waitress works the tables and I can hear a short order cook in the back. There’s an old guy at the counter nursing a coffee. A guy at the table next to me reads the paper. He’s facing away, but when he turns the pages I can see headlines about a financial crisis or a war or something.
My mind is empty. Cleared out by whatever I went through. The magic syringe. The endless black. A magnificent purge. I try to relax and pay attention to nothing. I want no distractions or miscellaneous information clinging and clogging up my now pristine mental facilities.
I slam the food down as fast as I can. Suck down another cup of coffee and I am ready.
I asked for my check a few minutes ago. To make it look legit. I wait until the waitress clears Newspaper Guy’s plates to stand up. When she heads back into the kitchen to dump the dishes, I walk out the side door I sat next to knowing I would be skipping.
No way the waitress could have caught up to me but the whole way home I feel like I’m being followed. I keep checking even though I know that if she found me there’s not a god damn thing she could do. She couldn’t even prove I was in her diner.
Cordoba told me it would be two days. I think I know why. My guts are churning as my body puts the food to work rebuilding me. Every ounce of energy I have is getting co-opted into the process. I’m fading fast. I need to lie down.
I keep checking but there’s nothing over my shoulders. Nobody racing to find me. Just the usual flotsam of city people bustling about with whatever they’re so busy with instead of paying attention to the breakfast thief.
Feels like someone’s there though.
I go back to my apartment and sleep for nineteen hours.
52
*It’s a year and eight months ago.
She’s not answering my very simple question.
Or perhaps that’s the answer in itself. None of your god damn business.
The little black Japanese character is such a brazen statement. It’s tiny and I’m not even sure how long it has taken me to notice it. It could have been there for weeks. Regardless of the timing, she won’t tell me what it means. Brushes me off like I’m trying to sell her something she already owns four of.
—It’s just a fun thing I did with Michelle.
Fucking hate Michelle. I always have. She’s baggage from Lisa’s past life and I know she doesn’t like me. I’ve never heard her say it, but my gut tells me so every time we’re in the same room. Not like a whisper in my ear that says Ooh, I think something’s up with that girl. More like a radio broadcast. A morning zoo DJ laughing at his inside information about Michelle’s feelings for me. And how they talk about me. And the lies she tells.
Michelle would say anything to cover for Lisa. She’d probably go get the same tattoo if it would make Lisa’s story more believable. Which it wouldn’t. Michelle is always the cover. Always the alibi.
I’m having lunch with Michelle.
I’m going to the movies with Michelle.
It’s girls’ night out.
I think it’s the same guy I almost found out about before. Which would make him a boyfriend. My wife has a boyfriend. Awesome. You know he talked her into getting the tattoo. Pissing on his territory, no doubt. Not man enough to face me openly, but clingy enough to leave his mark. Wuss.
Michelle probably set them up in the first place and gave them a key to her apartment. I bet she changes the sheets for them when they’re done. If she were watching this little scene play out, she’d work that cunty smirk of hers and shake her head the tiniest possible bit, but I’d see it. Fucking hate Michelle.
From what I can tell through my online research, the tattooed character means ‘Life’ in Japanese. Life.
So what does that translate to in Lisa’s mind?
I’m celebrating life with a tattoo on my hip?
I’m serving a life sentence?
I’m memorializing my father so he’s always with me?
I thought it was a pretty design?
I know what it means to me.
53
Why she feels it’s important to have her degrees on the wall, I don’t know. It’s not like she’s practicing legal medicine. Yale undergrad. Harvard Medical School. MIT. PhD. Who could she possibly be trying to impress? Herself? No way she has an actual practice. Could there really be a regular crowd of patients funneling through here? People desperate for alternative care who need the reassuring approval of big-name universities? The degrees look real, anyway.
The operating table I’m lying on is human size. There are restraints hanging from the side. Six full syringes lie neatly in a row on the tray to my left. Next to the syringes are scalpels and clamps and other frighteningly specific tools I don’t want to know about. That’s her business. What I do want to know is how the fuck she got here. Not this office, but this station in life. Nobody gets to this dark place without something going horribly wrong. Why the underground practice? Can’t just be a love of dogs. Certainly not the company.
—So what happened?
She answers like she’s bored of hearing herself explain her situation over and over. Like this question gets asked a lot. As if the answer is one that any number of people would give were they asked. Like it’s not wildly unusual. Meanwhile, I’m one of what can’t be more than five people in the world who have asked it. No way she makes small talk with strangers. No way she has friends. Maybe she’s bored with life.
—Stripped of my medical license for practicing advanced experimental psychiatric research outside of government regulation. And some other stuff.
All of the degrees bear the name, Cordoba. First name, Isabel. I wish I didn’t know that. She’s becoming a person to me. I liked her better as an ideal.<
br />
—And now?
She indicates to the operating theater around us. We’re in the back room of her loft. More machines. Monitors. Video cameras. The gleaming white of sterile surfaces. The doors on the refrigerators in this room have keypad locks on them. There’s a gun on the counter.
—And now I don’t have the patience to wait for modern medicine to catch up to my ideas. So I’m moving forward on my own.
I nod. The philosophical rationalization of dangerous medicine. Okay. Fine.
—Everything here is state of the art. Some of it is so cutting edge hospitals and research centers don’t even have it yet.
—They can’t afford it?
—They don’t know about it. I made it myself.
Uh huh. She might be more arrogant than I am. Harry would have referred to that as a fatal flaw. I like to think of it as a valuable tool. Armor.
—Have you done this before?
—Yes.
—Seriously?
—Let’s call it a hobby.
Let’s.
—With who?
—There are people who will let you do anything to them if you pay them enough.
—How much is enough?
—Usually twenty dollars and some meth.
Ah.
—Before we get started, any medical conditions I should know about? Allergies? Conditions? Diseases?
—No allergies. No conditions. I had some minor STDs in college. But who didn’t?
She nods and makes a note as she answers.
—Me. Anything else?
—No.
I’m shirtless. Lying on the table. The IV feeders inserted into the pronounced veins that line the gristle of my arms await syringes. My chest is riddled with patches connected to wires leading to monitors. The machines beep behind us. I feel like there should be a nurse or technician helping out here. Is she really going to do this whole thing herself? What if something goes wrong? What if she has a heart attack in the middle of the procedure? What if no one knows I’m here and I die and that’s it? We’d both be powdered bones before anyone would think to look for us. There is no safety net.
