“It’s easy,” Tony said. “Knockers always white. That’s why we don’t serve white boys. Except you, Funboy. And you.”
“It’s tricky,” Henry said, “but I got the trick. Knockers always look you right in the eyes. Their eyes knock into yours. It’s why they’re called knockers.”
“Knockers don’t look at the dope right,” Dom said. “They look at it the way you might look at a beer. Or at Henry.”
“Knockers drive Toyotas,” Todd said.
“Knockers have white teeth,” Fathead said. “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their teeth.”
“Knockers mostly snort dope, they never shoot it,” Funboy said.
“If you ask a knocker if he a knocker, a real knocker gotta tell you,” the teenage dealer said looking at me. “You a knocker, motherfucker?”
“There are fake knockers and real knockers,” Henry said. “The fake knockers cover for the real knockers. They send ’em through and everyone freaks. Then they go and everyone chills. Then the real knockers come.”
“Knockers talk to the helicopter cameras with their finger moves so watch how they fingers move,” Chico said. He was one of Funboy’s friends.
“A knocker got me.” This was a girl I met at the Center for Addiction Medicine. “I can’t tell you what it looked like.”
“If you ain’t a knocker I wanna see you do that shit in front of me,” the dealer said.
“Knockers smoke Winstons,” Karen said. She stayed at Dom’s until the knockers got her.
“You can tell fake knockers ’cause they look more like knockers than the real knockers do,” Henry said. “Real knockers look just like us.”
“You can tell knockers by their money.” This was a pimp named Phil who hung around Dom’s. “I can pick the knocker bill out of a roll every time. I trained my girls to get the trick to hold up the bills before each date. If I catch a bitch with that knocker money I beat her.”
“Some knockers don’t even try to bust you,” Fathead said darkly. “They just buy your dope with that knocker money. Marked money. It’s like that dye they give you at the hospital so they can see all your veins. A dose of that knocker money and your whole system lights up for the goddamned knockers.”
“Knocker money is like AIDS,” Dom said.
“I saw you snort it,” the dealer said. “I ain’t see you do it. Knockers snort dope too.”
“Knockers look too much like junkies,” Henry said. “Dirty jeans. You know, Metallica T-shirts with holes. They look more like junkies than junkies do.”
“So what do junkies look like?” I asked Henry.
“Junkies don’t look like anything,” he said.
Over time, the odds of getting gotten by knockers are 100 percent. Even if you educate yourself on the many signs and symptoms of knockers, it’s just a matter of time. And those signs are themselves misleading. Trust them too completely and you might find out they’re traps.
Because the signs only work most of the time. Most of the time the knockers will have good teeth and look you straight in the eyes. Most of the time the knockers will drive Toyotas. Most of the time the knockers will be white. Most of the time the knockers will be black. But sometimes they won’t be.
The awful truth is that a knocker can come in any shape. And there’s something even worse. It’s hard to explain. It’s hard to find the right words. But sometimes the knock gets loose from the knocker. It gets loose in the air. It gets unshaped. I know it sounds strange. But you can have the knock without the knocker.
I started to pick up loose knocks during the fall of 2001. The first time was when I was standing in my kitchen staring into space. Dispersed. Then I felt the knock.
“What the fuck was that?” I said. I kind of went into myself, like a spilled glass of water going back into the glass. That knock humanized me for a second. I was all there.
Then I felt it again.
Someone’s in here, I thought. A person is in my apartment.
I listened to the air.
“Oh God, they’re in here,” I whispered.
I shut myself up and took control. I gripped my wild heart hard in my willpower. Willpower. I will not get got. Or gotten. I was standing in the kitchen. A plaster wall separated the kitchen from the open main space of the apartment. The front door opened into that space. The invader was in there. That much was certain. He wasn’t in here.
There was a window to my right. It shone like a mirror. It faced the open space. I saw the reflection of the edge of my couch in it. I saw the reflection of my white front door. The reflected image was so bright and clear I could see the chain was off my door. Why did I leave the chain off? I saw the reflected top of a little pile of garbage. Then there were the faint half shapes of unknown reflections. I examined each one in turn. Any one of them might be part or all of a knocker. Then there were the shadows.
I heard the boards of the living-room floor creak under the shifting weight of the invader.
I swallowed slowly. My throat hurt because the little punching bag in the back of my throat was swollen. The only way out of the kitchen was through the open space occupied by the knocker. The only way out of the apartment was through the front door.
How had this happened? What the fuck had I been doing before this? How long had I been standing in the kitchen spacing out? I pressed my long junkie nails deep into the flesh of my palm. Deeper. Ow. Good.
I began to peek around the wall. I did it like this: First I gently dropped down onto my knees. Then I stretched my whole body out flat along the floor. The very top of my head rested against the very edge of the wall. My plan was to slowly push my head out bit by bit until enough of my eyeball was out to let me see into the living room.
I soon realized the flaw in this plan. It had to do with the size of my head. The distance from the top of my head to my eyes was at least two inches. Two blind inches of me would be exposed to the invader before my eyes were out. The geological pace of head movement I’d planned would minimize the chances that the invader would notice the small dark object growing at the foot of the wall. But if he did, that same geological pace would seal my doom. It would give the invader plenty of time to tiptoe up and crouch down, waiting with a sharpened needle for my eyes to appear.
A long needle directly into the center of my eyeball! I’d feel it somewhere in my spine. Not in my eye. The instant nerve damage would send the pain skipping randomly into my body. I’d probably feel a sharp pain in my foot and then I’d be dead.
So I put the side of my face against the wall. There was less than an inch of face space between my right eyeball and the right end of my head. If I can put it that way. I was still lying flat on the ground. To edge my head sideways out the wall to peek into the living room while I was lying flat on the ground. That was my battle. The battle was with my neck. I had to raise my head until it was at a near ninety-degree angle to my body. It hurt like hell, but what could I do? It had been a terrible risk to lie down. I could not afford the commotion standing up would involve. Even if I spent half an hour doing it. My knees, for example, creaked terribly. So I craned my neck up and started to move my head slowly out of the shelter of the wall.
It was at this point that I began to feel terrified. I admit I lost my nerve. The new closeness of my eye to the edge of the wall, to the open…it was too much for me. A minute at the most and I’d be looking out at…what? Maybe a face. Maybe an ex-face. A face that had gone into things. The way smoke goes into furniture.
I put my hand over my lips. To make sure they would not move.
“Oh fuck,” I said.
With horror, I felt my lips moving under my hand. I couldn’t even say something mentally without moving my lips.
“That means I’m retarded.”
I must have said that out loud. I could practically see the vibration in the air.
Then, in the sudden sublime decision of total feeling, I pushed myself out of my hiding place and scooted out of the kitchen into the bare
floor of the living room. I scooted out by rapidly paddling the floor with all four of my limbs. Surprise, motherfucker!
I caught the damn knocker off guard. I surprised him so much he disappeared. Nothing of him remained but the ghost of a knock. I lay there on the floor while the knock slowly evaporated from the ceiling and the tops of the walls. Everything looked different. I noticed the two old cigarette burns on the couch, the off-white color of the walls, the unplugged phone sitting in the middle of the floor.
So this is what it’s like to be here, I thought, looking around at the world.
I stood up rubbing my neck and picked up the handwritten note that the knocker had left on the couch.
Dear Mr. Clune,
We have been contacted by your family and asked to check on you. Your father has called our office and expressed his concern at not having heard from you in several weeks. Receiving no answer to repeated knocking, we entered your apartment to leave this note. We also wish to remind you that October rent is now four weeks past due and your November rent is due in two days. Please contact us and your family as soon as you receive this letter.
Sincerely,
The Management
Needless to say, I made no reply to this bizarre and inexplicable communication. I didn’t know what all the sentences meant, but the gist was clear enough. It was some kind of knocker trap. I didn’t have the time to decode it. Or the energy. I was tired. My neck hurt. The little punching bag inside my neck hurt. I wanted to disappear.
I took down my dope utensils and a half-full red top from a hiding place that I’m not going to reveal. I wanted to do a little dope. The desire to disappear was inside of the desire to do a little dope. The way one color is inside another color in a Gobstopper. The outside of my desire was white, but the inside was clear. I wanted to disappear. I licked on my white desire wanting it to come clear. In a manner of speaking. I mean I did the rest of the dope and now I didn’t have any more.
I looked around my apartment. It was pretty clean. In fact it was pretty new. I’d moved in two months ago. I’d moved out of the last place in the middle of the night. It was starting to look like I’d be moving again. The only question was whether it would be a daytime move or a nighttime move. I’d done my job. The ball was in the knockers’ court.
I picked up the phone and called Cat.
“Hey, do you want to go get something to eat?” I said.
“Oh,” she said, “I’d love to.”
“Great,” I said. “Where would you like to go?”
“It’s so sweet of you to ask me. You’re so sweet, Mikey.”
“I just haven’t seen you in a few days,” I said modestly. “I just thought it would be nice.”
“Of course it would be nice,” she said. “Of course it would.”
“Then great! So where do—”
“But I can’t,” she said.
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Ah.”
“Yes.”
“Of course. Well.”
“Sometime, though,” she said.
“Yes, sometime soon. Well, good luck on your project!”
“What project?” she asked.
“Weren’t you just telling me? The castle thing? Never mind.”
“You can be so funny sometimes, Mikey!”
“Did I ever tell you the one about the Queen of England on The Price Is Right?”
“Oh yes! You can be so funny!”
“How about the one about the Big Baby?”
“I love that one,” she said.
“Yes, well, I’d better let you go now.”
“Good-bye,” she said.
I felt refreshed by this conversation. Refreshed, and a little bit exhausted. It wasn’t every day I got to speak to a person. I opened my wallet for maybe the twentieth time that afternoon and looked inside. The two green shriveled low-denomination knocker bills were still there. I fished one out and held it up to the apartment’s thick brown light.
“You little cocksucker,” I said.
There was a “one” in each of the bill’s four corners. Plus a “one” in the center. Plus some other ones in small print at the bottom. There were ones all over the goddamn thing. One is the loneliest number. I put it back in my wallet next to its friend. Two is the loneliest number in the world. Even lonelier than one. Nothing on earth is lonelier than two one-dollar bills.
I decided to pace a bit. Pick up the pace. The apartment had a kind of thick softness that cried out for vigorous pacing. Like a cat with thick fur, begging to be rubbed. I could pace back and forth across the living room all day and there would be no sign. Except a little something on the carpet. A kind of smudge. But no sign anyone could point to with confidence. Especially if I didn’t let any blood drip. And there was practically nothing to cut myself on, anyway.
Of course, accidents happen even in the safest places. Even in hospitals. But the apartment was nice and soft and furry. It invited endless pacing.
The desire to disappear was somewhere inside that pacing. Like the tiny face of the young Hitler in that famous photograph of a crowded square in Vienna at the outbreak of World War I. Do you know that photo? Go get one of your Hitler books out and have a look; it’s in there. What Hitler books? Yeah, right.
Now let me show you my bedroom. Immaculately clean. Especially the top of the dresser where I’d snorted all the dust off. In fact, most of the surfaces of the apartment were pretty well snorted clean. Periodically I’d have a little dope-flow problem, and would go around snorting for little specks of dope that might have gotten lost.
I bent over, looking carefully at a corner of the dresser. What was that? I rolled up a one and snorted at the corner for a couple seconds. I sneezed and straightened up. With my hands behind my back, I continued my pacing tour of the apartment.
Ah. The “office.” My pride and joy. A corner of the bedroom, really. But my computer was there. I’d gotten a new computer early in the fall. Don’t ask me how. Don’t be too nosy. Miracles occasionally happen, even in an addict’s life. A new computer had come to live with me. Call it proof. Proof of my unshakable intention to finish my dissertation. Proof of my faith in the future. And a willingness to take risks.
I picked up the camera I’d borrowed from Cat and took a picture of it. Then I got the two books I’d recently stolen from the Hopkins bookstore and posed them carefully next to the computer. I took another photo. I wished Cat were there to pose next to the computer and books. “Girlfriend with Computer and Books.” I became angry.
“Goddamn it!”
The desire to disappear was inside my anger like a bone is inside a fish. Supporting it.
I fell down a little bit. I picked myself back up off the desk. A burnt spoon was kind of stuck to the bottom part of me. I peeled it off. It was sticky. I took an antidepressant. I believed in them and so did my doctor. I counted some of my accomplishments on one hand, then I ran out of fingers. I needed the other hand for balance. OK, you’ve seen the office.
Now back through the bedroom. Here in this plastic bag are some vitamins Dom sold me. He told me they were Percocet. A new generic kind of Percocet. I’d stared sadly, unbelieving, when he held the bag out. He looked embarrassed.
“There they are, Mike. Real good Percocets. Forty dollars. These babies will really help you wean yourself off dope. That’s how Ron Howard did it.”
I looked at him sadly. I looked at the vitamins. They looked scared and naked in the plastic baggie. There’s something obscene about vitamins in a plastic baggie.
“I’ll give you five dollars, Dom. It’s all I got.”
“OK,” he said.
He gave me the bag. I never saw him again. I took one vitamin a day until they were gone. Now we’re back in the living room. I can’t stay long. It’s almost time to go to Chicago to kick dope forever. Just a few more minutes. I can’t kick in Baltimore. This is where the TV used to be. This is where the VCR used to be. This is where the
cable box used to be. I’d done a little minor dealing early in the fall and had some extra money for a while. I’d bought some cool things. I looked at the space where the TV used to be.
“From money you came, and back to money you went,” I said sadly to the TV hole. “Money to money.”
This chair is where I sit when I get tired of pacing. And this square of carpet beneath the western window is where the autumn sunlight disappears. I took a photo of it. There was still light left. I looked up. Reflected in the bright window I saw the part of me that shows up in mirrors. A brilliant white outline, with a clear center.
Later that week I had to meet with my advisor. I’d sent him the chapter I’d been working on. I had high hopes for it. Every time I read it over it seemed to mean something else. I took this as a sign of its intellectual richness. Now I stood outside his office door with a clean shirt on and my freshly washed hair still damp. I knocked.
“Come in, Michael!”
I trooped in and sat down, looking at him expectantly. He had my chapter on the desk in front of him. I noticed he was avoiding my eyes.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
“It’s…interesting,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Do you think the ending is clear enough?”
“The ending?”
He looked down at the chapter. He frowned.
“Well, to be frank, Michael, it needs a lot of work.”
“It is a draft,” I said.
“Yes. In fact it might be best to just put this…draft…aside for a while.”
“Put the ending aside?”
From deep down in my relaxation, I was a little shocked. That ending was good.
“No,” he said. “Not the ending. The whole thing. Just put the whole thing aside. Just forget about this whole chapter.” He peered at me. “You need a new perspective. And some rest. Are you getting enough rest?”
“Oh,” I said. “I’ve had a cold.”
“Ah,” he said.
In December, I flew out to Chicago for my father’s birthday. The occasion inspired me to try to kick dope. Well, maybe inspired is the wrong word. But I’d gotten clean before in Chicago, and I thought I might as well try again.
White Out Page 16
