But I had to ask myself what I imagined when I imagined London. I’d never been there. The only sense I had of it was an amalgamation of scenes I remembered from movies like Rude Boy and Riff-Raff, or pictures I created in my head when I read Great Expectations in high school, or photographs that I’d long since forgotten, or maybe even a bit of the gray and brick from this painting in front of me. And so London to me is almost entirely a fiction.
And what about Lola in London? Which Lola did I imagine? Was it the sixteen-year-old Lola I dated in high school or the thirty-seven-year-old Lola stirring brown gravy in my kitchen? Or had I somehow blended the two together in my mind to create a mid-20s London version of her? What did this London Lola wear? Was her hairstyle different? What song played in her head as she walked the Rude Boy streets? What did she fear? What did her daydreams hold? What place in her core identity did her father occupy: the monster of her adolescence or the meek man dying of cancer several thousand miles away? And when I thought of Lola’s core identity, what was she made of? Was it only these paintings, these stories that she told me, my incomplete understanding of them, my faulty memory of what she said, my randomly projected images of scenes?
Of course, I didn’t have to answer any of these questions. I was just playing The Professor’s game. And I was stumbling upon the answer that he likely was guiding me toward: that, despite any feelings I might have for Lola, I had very little knowledge of her.
I stepped away from the painting and sat back down in my armchair. I glanced at the back cover of The Professor’s book. I opened it and looked at the inside dust jacket flap. The Professor’s biography stated that his story began in Cincinnati, Ohio. So I thought of Cincinnati, of what that term meant to me.
Unlike London, I’d been to Cincinnati. It was fifteen years earlier, but the town still had some meaning. I’d been touring with my band, Pop Culture and the References. This was in the early ’90s. Our guitarist, whom everyone called Fester because he looked like a young Uncle Fester from The Addams Family, had started a feud with the bass player, who called himself Pop because he’d come up with the band name. Both Pop and Fester sang the songs. I played drums and stayed out of the feud. It was difficult to do this because the band was only the three of us. And the feud kept growing. Cincinnati was a long way from the Fresno we’d all eventually return to. I’d been on the road for thirty days, played twenty-eight shows in twenty-six cities, slept most nights on apartment floors belonging to people who I couldn’t call friends because I didn’t know them that well, but who I’d likely be friends with if time and geography and feuding bandmates hadn’t prevented it. The road home would take us north through the states that bordered Canada. We still had shows to play in Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, Fargo, Bozeman, Boise, Seattle, and, really, the whole West Coast. Pop and Fester were not going to make life easy.
First thing in Cincinnati, I left the van to Pop and Fester and moved off on my own, walking dirty streets, passing stares from crank dealers wondering if I was buying, lingering in the windows of tattoo parlors where college girls picked hearts and cartoons off the walls, and down to a record shop. The girl behind the counter had shockingly red hair. Not the natural, genetic, orange-red, but the bright, plastic red of brake lights. Perhaps it was too many days on the road and too many fast-food meals, but the red in her hair made me hungry. She was a little short and a little chubby, just like every girl I’ve instantly fallen in love with over the course of my life. I tried to focus on the records and remember the girlfriend in Fresno who, though I didn’t know it at the time, would go on to become both my wife and my ex-wife. I could feel the girl’s eyes on me as I browsed the records.
I picked out a copy of the Stiff Little Fingers album Go For It and brought it up to the counter. The record store girl wrote the title on a notepad. She said, “I love this record. ‘Silver Lining’ is a great song.”
I smiled and glanced down at the silicone flaking at the edge of the metal frame and glass of the counter.
She rang up the record and charged me half price. When I pointed out that she’d charged me too little, she said, “Employee discount.” She also handed me a flyer for my show that night. “Check it out. Should be a good time.”
She reappeared in the front row that night. The venue was almost completely empty of audience members who hadn’t been in the bands that shared the bill. It was almost completely empty of anything else, for that matter: just an old warehouse space with the concrete floor painted black, a three-foot-high stage for bands, vacant space where the PA was once rumored to have stood, some blankets hanging on the block walls to keep the echo from overcoming the music, a keg floating in a tub of melted ice in the back of the room, an empty trash can and a carpet of empty plastic beer cups, two geeky punk rock boys dancing in the middle of the floor, Pop abusing his bass, Fester battering his guitar strings, the two of them alternating their screaming vocals, me pounding the drums a little too fast. The extra speed seemed to match Pop and Fester’s feuding anger perfectly. The record store girl danced, it seemed, just for me. In my mind’s ear, music never sounded so good.
And so fifteen years later, that moment is forever frozen in amber and labeled as Cincinnati. When I analyze my concept of the world and think of the present day Cincinnati, it is forever this moment, though Pop died in the late ’90s in a jet-ski accident and Fester’s name reverted back to Brandon and he got a job in the advertising industry. The warehouse stopped doing shows in ’93. The record store girl’s story is forever lost. The neighborhoods I walked through have likely either deteriorated completely or been gentrified. And so on.
But I remembered this long-ago night and thought of Lola’s painting across the room and I projected these notions of London and Cincinnati onto the world. I coupled them with the nebulous understanding I have of everyone I know and the nebulous understanding I even have of myself. I started to understand how I came to know the world around me. My ideas of cities were based on movies and descriptions in books and paintings and neighborhoods I once visited and people who have long since moved on. My concepts of people were based on assumptions and stories and projections. It all seemed so fragmented and incomplete.
I’d thought that I was okay with how little of the world I knew. I’d read enough of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang-Tzu, enough Buddhism and Confucianism to confront that I knew nothing. But there was always this nagging part of me that said, “No, you know a little something.” Reading The Professor’s book gave me a perspective on how little that little something I knew was.
I stared at Lola’s painting for a couple of minutes, letting it all sink in. I wasn’t sure what to make of The Professor’s book or the exercise I’d just gone through. It occurred to me that there could be a unifying force to our understanding. If Dr. Bishop was right, if there was a Mindland that tied us all together, then our understanding of the world didn’t have to be as fragmented as The Professor made it sound. We could share ideas, thoughts, core beliefs. Mindland, as Dr. Bishop conceived it, would allow us to have an understanding of, say, Cincinnati that wasn’t frozen in amber. It would allow us to tap into Londoners’ perception of London, at least to some extent. It would bind us not only with our bodies but also with the minds of others. My understanding of Lola could have a stronger connection than just a grouping of fragmented stories. The core of my world could be floating in the ether all around me. Understanding it more deeply was simply a matter of tapping into it.
Lola snapped me out of all these thoughts, saying, “What are you doing? Dinner’s ready.”
I joined her at the kitchen table. She’d already plated the food. I didn’t have to do anything but sit down and eat. I looked into the soft brown eyes across the table. The world of The Professor and Dr. Bishop faded away. I was back to me and Lola and all the things I chose to believe in.
21
The #6 city bus dropped me off at the stop in front of the cemetery park. The springtime sun hung high in the sky. A steady wind
blew in from the west. Kite-surfers dotted the horizon, the vibrant colors of their mini-parachutes cutting a sharp contrast against the gunmetal gray and white-capping Pacific Ocean. After days of walking around with The Professor’s enquiry steering my thoughts, I was gradually becoming okay with my fragmented ability to view the world around me. What difference did it make? My life was straightening up. Every day put more distance between me and my divorce and the loss of my dogs. My job was going well. Lola’s leftovers filled my fridge. Lola herself helped ward off the loneliness that had lurked in the dark shadows and chronically knifed me since I’d moved here from Fresno. Even my scrotum had fully healed a week earlier. So what else was there? Life was good again.
I crossed Main Street and headed down a side street to my apartment. A long, black BMW idled at the curb in front of me. Ape Man exited the driver’s side door, walked around the trunk of the car, and stood by the rear passenger door. He folded his arms across his chest. His sleeve tattoos bulged and distorted, as if they’d been drawn on a balloon inflated to the point of popping. He blocked my passage on the sidewalk like a cosmic reminder that my life wasn’t necessarily good again, that I still had to contend with a mad scientist and her squirrel experiments. I still had to contend with Castor Oil Walters groping blindly for the fruits of the mad scientist’s labor.
I ignored the Maori tattoo and freckles on the Ape Man’s face and stared right into his eyes this time. The whites of his eyes had yellowed and were flecked with red from burst capillaries, but the irises were clear, clear blue. We stood for a second on that side street sidewalk, eyes locked, his arms crossed, my fists clenched. I stood slightly uphill. This made me almost as tall as him. I waited for him to make the first move. He stood there like a statue dedicated to the foibles of a wasted youth and the dangers of not thinking critically. One second passed. Two. Three. Four. Then, bam! Someone was suddenly on my back, wrenching my arms and neck into the full nelson, sweeping my legs out from underneath me, pushing and dragging me to the rear passenger seat of the BMW. Ape Man opened the door. Whoever had jumped me shoved me inside. I stumbled onto the back seat. My assailant slammed the door behind me. I got my feet out of the way just in time. Through the tinted window, I could only see his stomach, his white t-shirt, and his red suspenders. Walters had a regular skinhead army.
Frank Walters sat against the door on the other side of the backseat. He turned his head to face me. My image was reflected in his dark glasses. I thought about taking a shot at him, sending my fist into his scrotum or my elbow into his nose or maybe trying to break a rib. Strike back in some way. But, of course, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t attack a blind man. Not like that, anyway.
So I just tried to sound tough. I said, “What the fuck do you want?” The words fell flat from my mouth. I simply don’t talk like that. I couldn’t fake the sincerity.
Walters, on the other hand, could talk like that. He could sound tough. He said to me, “Squirrels? Motorcycle helmets? Do you really expect me to buy this?”
I answered with a nonchalant, noncommittal shrug. The gesture was wasted on Walters. I let the silence hang in the air. He could do with it what he wanted.
“I know Dr. Bishop’s research. She didn’t just stumble into this field. She built a career based on verifiable, highly reputable research. She is not senile. She is not crazy. She is not about to perform her greatest experiments with wild squirrels.”
Frank Walters slid off his smoky glasses. He pulled the silk handkerchief from his suit pocket and cleaned the lenses of his glasses. The act led me to ask myself again if he were really blind, because, again, he was dressed immaculately: a forest green, tailored suit; tie knotted so perfectly that I almost wanted him to show me how he’d done it; a crisp shirt with just a hint of green to match the varying shades of his tie and jacket. The handkerchief not only matched his tie, but it seemed to be cut of the same cloth. And, of course, I didn’t immediately understand why he would clean his lenses if he couldn’t see out of them. I glanced into his eyes. The irises were a murky black, clouded over, out of alignment. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.
Okay, so he was blind, but I had to know how he dressed like this. I wondered if he had a personal shopper or maybe an account with a tailor. Maybe he’d worked out some kind of advertising campaign with a fashion designer down in Los Angeles and traded ad copy for clothes. It had to be something. The clothes looked expensive and fit in a way that off-the-rack clothes don’t fit. I wondered how much money he had. What could a mid-level advertising executive, a guy who worked on the fifteenth floor and plotted a path to the nineteenth floor, make in a year? My best guess was enough money to buy a house in Agoura Hills and to pay Ape Man a modest salary. Enough to dry-clean these suits, but not buy them. Enough to bribe me with the first ten grand, but not with the subsequent thousands. Enough to buy this BMW, but he probably leased it. And, of course, he could have money coming in from another source. There could be an insurance settlement from the blindness. There could be a trust fund or inheritance. There could be side scams Walters was running. I had no way of knowing. I knew that I had to stop wondering about these things and focus on the moment and not Walters’ eyes or suits or money.
He replaced his smoky glasses. He set the handkerchief on his lap, folded it in threes, and replaced it in his pocket. Again, immaculate. And this, I gathered, was why he cleaned his lenses: to keep up appearances that even he couldn’t see.
“Where would one even get research squirrels?” he asked me. “Connor called or visited twenty-four different pet stores in the greater Los Angeles area. Not one of them sold squirrels. Nor did they offer Connor suggestions as to where he could purchase squirrels. One enterprising pet store clerk offered Connor suggestions regarding how he could capture his own squirrels. He drew a rough diagram of a trap for Connor. The trap could be made from a box, a stick, a string, and a piece of food. I’m sure you can imagine how this trap would work. The pet store clerk also offered a warning. He told Connor to avoid the squirrels in Griffith Park. As you may or may not know, these squirrels are rumored to carry the plague.
“Regardless, I wonder. Am I expected to believe that a researcher of Dr. Bishop’s caliber sat in the woods surrounding the mental hospital, waiting for a squirrel to take the bait, pulling the string, trapping the squirrel?”
I pictured the trap in my mind. It certainly would’ve been an easier way for Eric and me to catch Dr. Bishop’s squirrels. We wouldn’t have needed to hold the string. We could’ve just rigged the bait the way you rig a mousetrap and let the box fall on the squirrel when he grabbed the cheese or nuts or what have you. Come to think of it, baited, wooden lobster traps would have worked very well, too. Though, of course, neither of these ways would’ve been nearly as fun.
Even so, I couldn’t tell any of this to Frank Walters. I didn’t want to tell him anything, anyway. I spread my left arm across the top of the back seat and stretched my feet in front of me. Again, it was a gesture wasted on Walters. Giving the appearance of feeling relaxed still helped to relax me. I said, “Honestly, I don’t care what you believe.”
“Surely, this is no way to handle a business relationship. Things work much better between us when we keep them on a friendly level. When you remain honest.”
“Is killing my dog a way of keeping things on a friendly level?” I figured there was no harm in adding, “Did you kill my dog, or just kidnap him?”
Walters offered me a tiny, half-smile. “I heard you met my friend The Claw.”
“Who?”
“The Claw. He’s a mental patient with whom we’ve had some dealings. The poor man has a tendency to clasp onto the private region of an unsuspecting passerby. This can be problematic when he’s out on the streets. Luckily, he’s contained within the confines of a mental hospital. He rarely attacks people now. However, if you give him gifts, say, basketball shoes, or an mp3 player, he’ll clasp onto the private parts of certain specified individuals.”
As W
alters said this, I felt a bit relieved that all my non-verbal communication was wasted on him. He couldn’t see the surprise and anger that took over my face. I’d suspected that the patient who attacked me was another of Walters’ goons. I just didn’t want to let myself believe it was true. I wanted to think I was being paranoid. I wanted to believe that the attack had been a simple, random consequence of working in a psych hospital, not more of Walters’ madness. Forget it. Try to play it cool. I said, “And this guy. What did you call him? The Bear Claw?”
“Just The Claw.”
“Is he supposed to be at Oak View? Should I avoid him?”
“Are you being coy with me, Brown?”
“Are you going to get to the point?” I sat back up in the limo and grazed the door handle with the pads of my right forefinger and middle finger.
Walters brushed imaginary dust off his lap. “I’ll keep this as simple as possible: you’re going to give me real information, or I am going to make your life miserable.”
Walters paused. I knew he wanted to allow a second for his words to sink in. I barged into his pause. “I’m going to keep this as simple as possible for you. You can’t really threaten me. I don’t have anything left to lose. I have a job that I’m ambivalent about. My wife has already left me. You took my dog. Even if he’s alive, you’re clearly not giving him back. I don’t have any possessions I particularly care about. Your money means nothing to me. I have a feeling it’s running out, anyway. The only thing you have to lord over me are these little attacks by weak little men. You’re not as powerful as you think you are. You don’t have any power over me. So find another way into Oak View.”
I tried to give my own dramatic pause, but Walters was right there with me. He said, “Everyone has one thing they can’t afford to lose.”
Before Walters’ word balloon had popped, I was out the door of the limousine. Neither the Ape Man nor his skinhead colleague followed me. I stormed down the sidewalk, heading for home. The record needle of my thoughts got stuck. It skipped on one thought, repeating the words again and again. I’m going to get that guy. I’m going to get that guy.
Madhouse Fog Page 18
