The Prisoner of Vandam Street

by Kinky Friedman

  “I’m worried about you, Kinkster,” said Piers. “Having been born and raised in New Guinea, I have seen the effect a prolonged case of malaria can have upon a man. Sometimes the victim never quite comes back, if you know what I mean. I’ve seen, in fact, several examples of this phenomenon occur in the tropics, resulting in the victim of the disease remaining emotionally unbalanced for the remainder of his often short and typically very unpleasant life. If they conquer the malaria, sometimes they remain in the category of the walking wounded, just a pathetic set of barely ambulatory skeletal remains.”

  I loved the way Piers pronounced the word “skeletal.” He placed the emphasis on the second syllable and made the word rhyme with “beetle.”

  “We’re not in the tropics,” I reminded him. “This is New York.”

  “I know that. And you know that, mate. But the question is does the Plasmodium falciparum know it?”

  “So what do you want me to do, Piers? Check into a fucking mental hospital?”

  “Take a look around at this place and some of its inhabitants and I’d reckon you’re already there, mate.”

  “You’ve got a point. McGovern did clean up the cat turds this afternoon though.”

  “Well, he did a shithouse job, mate. Take those opera glasses and check out this floor. If your cat were the size of a Bengal tiger she couldn’t have deposited this many droppings or this quantity of manure in one evening. I think McGovern’s part of the problem, mate.”

  “You’re right. On the other hand, good help is hard to get.”

  “The kind of help you might need, mate, I’m not sure McGovern, Brennan, or Ratso can give you. I’m not sure I can provide it either.”

  “What do you mean?” I said uneasily.

  Piers walked over to the refrigerator, opened it, took out two bottles of Victoria Bitter, deftly removed the caps, and handed one bottle to me. He drank about half of his VB in one swig. I sipped mine a bit more conservatively, ever mindful of my condition. Piers put his hand on my shoulder and looked me right in the eyes.

  “I’ve known you a long time, Kinkster,” he said. “Suzanne and I thought highly enough of you to make you the godfather of our daughter Pia.”

  I nodded numbly. I had no idea where Piers was going with this rather out-of-character soliloquy, but it sounded serious. I took a bigger gulp of my VB.

  “What I’m telling you, Kink, is that I’ve seen you at your best and I’ve seen you at your worst, but I’ve never seen you like this. I think you may need professional help.”

  “Interesting that you say that,” I said. “Great minds think alike, I guess. I was going to keep this a secret, but, as you may know, the only secrets I’ve kept are the ones I’ve forgotten.”

  “Very true, mate.”

  “Anyway, you know Kent Perkins from L.A.?”

  “Of course. Tall, blond Norouija board.”

  “Yes, well, he’s now got his own detective agency and he’s coming to New York next week to help me find out the truth about what happened across the street the other night. I can’t leave the loft, and I can’t rely on a bunch of doubting Thomases like the Village Irregulars to be of much assistance either. Kent’s ready to help me tackle the job and he’s a true professional.”

  “That wasn’t what I was referring to when I said you might need professional help, mate.”

  “You don’t think Kent’s a professional private investigator?”

  “I was talking about another kind of professional help, mate.”

  “Like?”

  “Like a shrink or a psychiatric nurse.”

  Suddenly the loft became quiet as a tomb. I was about ready to shit standing. Piers Akerman, one of my oldest, most trusted friends, with a level of maturity far exceeding that of most of the American members of the Village Irregulars, now was seriously doubting my sanity. A shrink or a psychiatric nurse. Fuck him and the koala he rode in on!

  Possibly sensing my rising anger, Piers did not say a word. Instead, he turned and went to the refrigerator, from which, not surprisingly, he extracted another VB and proceeded to drink the entire bottle while I stood there in a state of shock, still reeling from his suggestion. Piers, who had many Aussie friends who shit in women’s purses, took out their penises at every inappropriate moment, and carried on in the most outlandish behavior on the freaking face of the earth, thought I was crazy.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” said Piers. Still standing by the window in stunned disbelief, I watched him aim his large, antipodean torso toward the rain-room, as if nothing at all had happened.

  I didn’t know whether to kill myself or get a haircut. If Ratso or McGovern or Brennan had made the same indictment of my mental condition, it very likely might have glossed right over my shoulders, but coming from Piers, it hit me like a bullet to the heart. Piers was one of the few people I knew who, though younger than me, I’d always looked to for wisdom and advice. Piers, who was almost never serious about anything, now was being very serious, indeed. His words had angered me, confused me, saddened me, surprised me, and yes, even frightened me. In an odd way, I thought, it was a tribute to a man that his words could have such a profound effect upon a friend. That was the trouble. Piers was a friend. And I was, very possibly, a crazy man, standing at a lonely window.

  I don’t know how long I stood there like that. Alone, all alone. The cat was still sleeping peacefully on the rocker. The sounds of Piers’s shower like rain falling on the roof of a boxcar in a dream, on the track to Nowhere, Alabama. Then, like Hank Williams himself, I saw the light.

  The building across the street was dark and I could see the light clearly, like a lantern in an old church tower, like a lighthouse at sea, a cross on a hill. I knew in my gut that the light was illuminating the same apartment I’d seen before. I grabbed the opera glasses and focused on the window of the place. I saw the table. I saw the flowers in the vase. Then I saw the guy. The same guy. But I didn’t see the woman.

  The guy was sitting at the table, doing something I couldn’t quite see. His hands were on the table; they were busy, but it didn’t look like he was eating. More like he was putting together a puzzle or something. Then he stood up and moved a little closer to the window. He turned slightly and I now could see him fairly clearly in profile. He was holding something in his hands. Suddenly, I knew what it was.

  “Jesus Christ!” I shouted to a sleeping cat and a showering Piers Akerman. “He’s got a gun!”

  I ran for the rain-room like a man possessed. The door was locked and I banged on it with all my might, yelling repeatedly for Piers. At long last, the door opened and out through the steam came Piers Akerman like a stampeding bull elephant with a towel around its waist.

  “What the hell is it, mate?” he said. “Is the flat on fire?”

  “He’s got a gun!” I shouted. “He’s standing at the window, the light is on, and he’s holding a gun!”

  I shoved the opera glasses into Piers’s large hand and we both rounded the corner frantically, narrowly navigating the corridor between the kitchen counter and the refrigerator. Piers almost slipped once and I was very nearly hockey-checked by the espresso machine, but at last, we both reached the window. Piers put the glasses to his eyes, but I could already see that it was too late. The entire front facade of the building was in almost total darkness. The warehouse across the street looked as black as the sea at night under a moonless, starless sky. Where moments earlier I’d seen the lighted apartment, the man with the gun, now there was nothing to be seen. Nothing at all. Piers slowly removed the opera glasses from his eyes.

  “Hmmmmm,” he said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The next day, at the crack of noon, Ratso and I seemed to be the only souls stirring about the loft. The cat was still asleep on my bed, having had a rather active night chasing cockroaches and, as Ratso didn’t waste a second to tell me, depositing a fresh Nixon on his backpack. McGovern was in a coma on the couch. Piers and Brennan had gone early in the morning
to that place where people say they go when they have that thing that they call a job.

  “I can’t believe that fucking cat took another dump on my backpack,” said Ratso, as he kicked the espresso machine into gear.

  “Pinch yourself,” I said.

  “I tell you, that fucking cat is anti-Semitic.”

  “That’s not true, Ratso. Don’t personalize the incident. The cat’s not anti-Semitic. She’s antieverything.”

  “Maybe the cat’s not antieverything. Maybe she’s merely projecting your attitudes toward the rest of us.”

  “That’s also possible,” I said.

  “Well, get over it. Dr. Skinnipipi wants you to stay put and, speaking on behalf of all of the Village Irregulars, we intend to make sure that that’s what happens.”

  “Fuck Dr. Skinnipipi and the bedpan he rode in on.”

  “Now there’s a mature attitude. No wonder Brennan calls you the Jewish Patient.”

  “Fuck Brennan and the tripod he rode in on. Do we have anything for breakfast besides leftover take-out cartons of squid and pickled vegetables from Big Wong’s?”

  “Of course! I did some shopping yesterday. Borrowed your credit card. Hope you don’t mind. I’ve got some fresh bagels.”

  “The bagels are decaying.”

  “The only thing that’s decaying is McGovern’s mind. Have you noticed his apparent selective hearing? Sometimes he can hear things fine and sometimes he can’t hear shit. It’s got to be some kind of pathological trigger mechanism, either conscious or unconscious. It’s one of the most irritating and sick things I’ve ever seen.”

  “Say again? What? Your dick’s caught in the espresso machine?”

  “Don’t start,” said Ratso. “He’s sleeping on the couch over there. He might hear you.”

  “He can’t hear anything!” I said in a louder voice. “Except when he wants to!”

  “Shhhh. Don’t wake him up. It’s a pleasant, peaceful morning. I’ll toast a few bagels and we’ll have some espresso. It’ll be just like old times.”

  It was a nice Ratsolike sentiment, actually. “Just like old times.” It was, however, a sentiment that, in all good faith, I could not really share. There was an elephant in the room, you see. And I wasn’t merely referring to McGovern. The fact is, I was pretty sure that Piers had already spoken to Ratso and if he hadn’t, he would soon. All of them seemed to be reinforcing each other against me. They were probably all in it together. Dr. Skinnipipi, the cops, and my supposed friends. This was not good old-fashioned New York paranoia on my part. It was a concerted campaign to discredit me, disbelieve me, and disrespect me. It was better, of course, than being dismembered, which was no doubt what could be currently happening to the woman across the street.

  The dynamic occurring in the loft was nothing new in the world. Once people begin to think of you as a patient you cease to be thought of as a person. But just because I wasn’t a person any longer did not mean that I wasn’t a human being. I could see the subtle changes in the behavior of my erstwhile friends. The hesitancy. The dismissiveness. The questioning glances shot back and forth to one another when they thought I wasn’t looking. Yes, I was obviously delirious at times. I was also seeing the world and reality in a new and different fashion, courtesy of Malaria Airlines. And one of the landscapes I was observing, with the practiced and penetrating eye of the detective, was an endless dusty plain fraught with the fragility and the futility of the human condition.

  “So what do you think of Piers’s idea, Kinkstah?” said Ratso, as he brought over a tray of bagels and espresso. His words and his gestures seemed stilted, unctuous, and solicitous.

  “I think it’s great,” I said. “What is it?” I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

  “You know. He said he brought it up to you last night.”

  “Oh, yeah. You mean Piers’s idea that he should be the one to sleep on the couch because he’s known me longer than McGovern? I believe he also stated that he’s responsible for introducing me to McGovern, which is certainly something to be proud of for an adult male Australian currently living on this planet. There is, of course, the small matter of getting McGovern off the couch first. This maneuver may require a forklift or possibly a team of Lilliputian engineers.”

  “Kinkstah, Kinkstah, Kinkstah,” said Ratso, while eating a bagel at the same time.

  “I hate it when people say your name three times like that. It means they think you’re fucking up and they feel sorry for you but they don’t know how they can help. Is that about it?”

  “Kinkstah, Kinkstah, Kinkstah, Kinkstah, Kinkstah,” said Ratso. “What’re we going to do?”

  “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to throw up if you keep treating me like a sick child.”

  “That’s what you’re behaving like!” shouted Ratso.

  “No, I’m not!” I shouted.

  “Look,” said Ratso, in only a slightly more conciliatory tone. “You’re like that little fucking kid in that fucking movie. You see dead people and you talk to them. I know this. I’ve watched you conversing with them as you’re lying in bed almost every night this week.”

  “You saw ’em, too, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. They’re not there! That’s the whole point! Now you see a guy beat up some woman. Now you see a guy with a gun. What do you expect us to believe?”

  “No matter how ugly it gets,” I intoned, “there’s nothing as beautiful as the truth.”

  “Well, it’s gotten pretty ugly,” said Ratso, helping himself to another bagel. “Almost as ugly as the floor of this loft.”

  “McGovern just cleaned the place up yesterday. I saw him do it. Or don’t you believe me?”

  “Oh, I believe you. It’s just that McGovern’s a slob, Brennan’s a slob, Piers is a slob, you’re a slob, and I’m a slob. What this place needs is a woman’s touch.”

  “Why don’t you ask the woman across the street?”

  “That’s cute, Kinkstah. Maybe it’s time I reminded you that the cops couldn’t find the man or the woman you supposedly saw. They couldn’t even find an apartment on the floor you said it was. So perhaps Piers is right about you getting some—uh—professional help. And I don’t mean Kent Perkins. I mean a good shrink you can just talk to. Tell him what you thought you saw. Tell him how everybody’s stabbing you in the back. How there’s a great conspiracy against you made up of the doctors, the cops, and your old friends. Tell him you’re Jesus fucking Christ!”

  “Let’s not drag Jesus into this. Jesus was a great teacher. He just didn’t publish. And it’s amazing what a rumor factory this loft is. Yes, Kent Perkins will be arriving soon, just in the nick of time, I might add. And yes, he is a professional, in the narrow sense of the word. But it is I, the amateur, who will be directing his every movement, other than bowel, of course. God loves an amateur! Kent will merely be my eyes! He will merely be my ears! He will merely be my legs!”

  “I’ve seen better legs on a carrier pigeon.”

  “—as I was saying, Kent will act at my behest, the amateur giving marching orders to the professional—”

  “—and marching powder.”

  “For I have no use for professionals, my dear Ratso, as mere professionals. Kent will be here in the capacity of my friend. I don’t require professional help, as you so sensitively put it, of any kind. Remember, my dear Ratso, Ratso, Ratso, it was professionals who built the Titanic. It was amateurs who built the Ark.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I had a lot riding on Kent Perkins’s much-anticipated arrival in New York, my success in this rather unusual investigation, my reputation as a private investigator, my interpersonal relationships, such as they were, and my likelihood of remaining an ambulatory citizen who doesn’t have to read a sign every day that says, “The Next Meal Is Lunch.” That is a lot of baggage for one Californian to carry and I just hoped Kent was up to the job. Perkins was, of course, not a native Californian. He was born and raised in Texas. As I always like t
o say, “It’s no disgrace to come from Texas; it’s just a disgrace to have to go back there.”

  With relations what they were in the little loft community, and my condition what it was, waiting for Kent Perkins soon took on all the spiritual proportions of Waiting for Godot. I was coming to see his arrival as my last opportunity for resurrection after many days of being crucified by tiny baby ducks. It was becoming clear even to me that I was not getting any better. On the other hand, I was not especially getting any worse. I simply vaselined back and forth between feeling almost normal and then wandering around lost, shivering, delirious, feverish, hopeless, and disoriented in the grip of a ruthless, unforgiving malarial fugue. But the biggest problem was that all my ills, quirks, comments, and foibles were compounded by the fact that I was living my life in a bell jar under the intense, often misguided scrutiny of the Village Irregulars, and there was no escaping them. Once you’re in hospital, nuthouse, opium den, marriage, or gay men’s choir, it’s not so easy to get out again, and even if you’re able to, some of the crud invariably rubs off. The loft, I felt, had a little bit of all these institutions going for it, and whatever peace or freedom I’d once felt there now seemed to have dissipated like so many smoke rings crashing themselves to death under the heels of the lesbians. Everybody knew I was not well. Sometimes I even knew it myself. But reality was still reality, and regardless of my fevered, delirious state of mind and body, I fervently felt that I was observing this rare creature more clearly than ever before in my life. Hell, I thought, many people had never even seen it at all.

  “Almost time for this poncey bloke from the left coast to be arrivin’, innit?” Brennan asked the question casually, but underneath I detected a note of quiet concern.

  “He’ll get here when he gets here,” I said.

  “So will Jesus, mate, but there’s no point in waitin’ up for him, is there? Do you get my meanin’? Should I stick around the flat to meet and greet or should I go out to the pub? That’s the question, innit?”