Manhattan Loverboy (21 page)

“Crappy?” I guessed, sensing that somehow I was going to be equated to that chicken lion cub. But by the time we got to my inner door, I still couldn’t figure out how.

“What I’m trying to say is…”

“No!” Herman stopped him. “You can’t tell him nothing more!”

“But…”

“If you do, we’re both dead! You know that,” Herman said.

“You’re right,” Wylie responded, and added, “Kid, you’ve got to figure it out from there.” Without further explanation of their fable, they turned and left. Aesop they weren’t.

The Amy craving was still there. I tried calling her at work, but I hung up. I called information and then the American Psychiatric Association to inform them that to be honest to their reclining public, love had to be officially listed as a psychosis. They hung up on me.

The next day, I pursued puerile pastimes. I took the Circle Line. That evening I saw a play at Circle in the Square. Afterwards, I ate at La Cirque, which somehow reminded me of a circus.

I went home, and while thinking of how to spend my new life, I watched music videos. In the same way that the ’60s brought us the space program, music videos were the ’80s’ contribution to mankind. The phone rang. Not my phone, her phone. I answered.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have the wrong number,” the female said, and hung up.

The phone rang again. This time I raised my voice a couple of octaves, put my hand over the speaker, and said in a raspy voice, “Hello.”

“Amy?”

“I’ve got laryngitis. Identify yourself, quickly.”

“This is Sophie. I’m just calling to find out when the big event is going to be.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You have the wrong Amy,” I said and hung up. The conversation made everything tumble forth for me. What big event could she be referring to? My whole life was built around loving or hating her; I couldn’t withdraw. Another paradox of love is that the lover (dispeller of love) wants to use the lovee (the victim of love) as a physical and emotional toilet, wherein one can flush a variety of messy longings, freaky fantasies, and pathetic needs. If someone really loved someone else, they’d stay the hell away from them. Unfortunately for Amy, I didn’t love her enough to stay away from her. If she ever really did find her way to loving someone like me then something deep inside of her still loved me. (I don’t know why I knew this, I just did.)

The only way to get the love bug out of your system is by rendering it commonplace, through overexposure. Reconciliation would be the best thing for both of us. This would require: a) seeing her apart from the monster Whitlock, b) somehow showing her that my illogical state was due to the operations (my ego attack had given me an acute case of selfishness, but I had managed to regain my senses), c) proving my undying love for her (I might be able to pull that all off, but by far the hardest thing to do would be d)), and d) convincing her that her love for me, although fugitive from her consciousness, was still very alive, and not delusional.

I didn’t know where she was staying but I knew where she worked. I dialed her number, “I’d like to speak to Miss Rapapport.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Rapapport is unavailable.”

“Why?”

“She’s simply unavailable.”

I hung up. It was quite clear what had happened. The lady who called, Sophie, said it. The “big event” was going to happen. Amy had finally consented to marrying the Whitlock monster. This must have killed her drive to make stacks of money because no matter how brilliant or lucky she was, she would never be able to compete with the money she would marry into. But this would also kill all her purpose in life! Didn’t she know that? It would be just a Mme. Bovary revisited, couldn’t she see that? I had to prevent the marriage. Over the past week or so I had discovered that money was not the means to ultimate happiness; I knew that only Amy could bring me that. Since he had Amy, since he had everything, my mission was clear: I had to kill him. I picked up the phone and called him.

“Whitlock Incorporated,” said the horse-eyed receptionist.

“Yes, my name is Wilbur Whitlock, and I…”

“Oh no, I was warned about you. You stop calling here. Shoo!” She hung up. I dialed back.

“Hello,” I said in a brogue. “This is Father Dorris, and I’m supposed to conduct…”

“We know who you are, and we’ll notify the police if you don’t stop calling this instant.” She hung up again.

It was still daytime. I raced over to the rhombus-shaped building and waited in the cavernous lobby. The layout of the place, with the overhead mezzanine filled with security guards and the docile inmate-employees, reminded me of a minimum security prison—a day prison. And these were the day people. They were dormant in their homes at night and activated here by day. When the elevator opened, some suits got out. One suit in particular had the word “day” written all over him—he was pure rank and file. I followed him out into the street.

“Excuse me,” I said to the suit.

“Yes?”

“Do you work at Whitlock Incorporated?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know Mr. Andrew Whitlock?”

“Yes.”

“Was he out today?”

“Yes.”

“Would you know if he’s getting married?”

“Yes.”

“Is he getting married?”

“No.”

“Does the name Amy Rapapport ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Do you know if he’s romantically attached to anyone?”

“No,” the day-suit concluded. Then he began asking a few questions: “What is it you want?”

“A girl named Amy Rapapport.”

“Have you tried the phone book?”

“No.”

“You thought she had married Whitlock?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a friend of Whitlock’s?”

“No.”

“Are you rivals for this girl?”

“Yes.”

“Well, good luck,” he said, and departed before the long, dark, false lashes of evening could batt. I went home and, deciding to take the day-worker’s advice, called information and got a phone number for Amy that I vaguely recognized. I dialed it; it rang and rang. I faintly heard a distant ringing and realized that I had dialed the front half of my apartment.

The next morning, I found a letter in the mailbox addressed to Ms. Amy Rapapport. It was from the Bundles O’ Joy Adoption Agency. I tore it open and read it:

Dear Ms. Rapapport,

In response to your donation, I have located the requested information on an infant named Joseph, adopted by the family of Ngm. This file is marked “CONFIDENTIAL, refer to Whitlock Incorporated.” Please contact the Whitlock Corporation for information on this matter.

Counselor R. LaCosta
Adoption Officer

They had their hands in everything. Stopping at a corner store, I purchased a big bottle of Colt 45 and a “holiday-size” bag of M&Ms (with almonds). When I brought my goods up to the register, I saw a blurry, old jar sitting on the counter. I opened it and took out a long, stringy thing that looked like a very large beef jerky.

“What is that?” asked the cashier.

“Isn’t it beef jerky?” I asked nervously.

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s been so long since anyone opened that thing, I forgot it was even there.” Looking at the label, he noticed the price was twenty cents.

“Twenty cents? Wow!” I replied. “I never bought anything that cheap.” I took a bite out of it. It tasted like an old belt, but it made a challenging chew so I kept masticating, ingesting, and digesting as I walked home. About halfway through, I decided the jerky both tasted like and was as difficult to eat as an old purse. I returned, depressed, to my apartment, only to find it had been broken into. Whitlock or some ding-a-ling working for him had entered and rustled through my half of the apartment. Nothing appeared to be missing. Still depressed, I watched more MTV videi. I started feeling an intense bellyache, but fortunately I also started feeling irresistibly sleepy.

My dream started out simply enough. I was walking in the woods, but there was a bright light in the sky. A tractor beam lifted me, and I seemed to be a UFO abductee: I was entering into a clean, white room with an eye chart on the wall and a check-up table covered with wax paper. I was wearing a backless patient’s robe and was preoccupied with hiding my tushy. A doctor entered. He had Whitlock’s face, though he was fat, short, and oily.

“You’re a doctor?” I asked.

“I dabble.” He looked at my chart, and asked, “When was the last time you had a work-up?”

“What kind of work-up?”

“What’s your coverage?” He started surveying my body surface.

“What coverage?”

“What’s this?” He was looking at something behind my neck. I put my hand there and quickly located the suspected growth. “That’s a pimple. I’ve been waiting for it to get pointier before picking it. I’m okay,” I said. And for some strange reason, I added, “I just need a clean bill of health.”

He pushed the cold, flat, circular end of a stethoscope to my chest. “Cough.”

I coughed and asked him where he went to medical school.

“Did Hippocrates go to medical school? Did Galileo study physics in high school? Where did Plato study Plato? Experience and soul-searching! I’ve developed techniques that in a hundred years will become standard practice.” He removed a sample-size tube of KY gel from his top drawer. “When were you last inspected for rectal cancer?”

“No way! I don’t need a cancer test,” I said.

“But I broke the seal on this tube,” he replied.

“Tough titty.”

“Are there any cancerous predispositions in the family?”

“What do you care?”

“Look, if you’re sick, I’m sick.”

“Huh?”

Before he could answer me, I morphed into an olive-skinned, turbaned man. I was entering into another room—an office. The phone was ringing. The wall of the office was covered with diplomas commemorating everything: membership in obscure societies, completion of intensive and pedantic courses, cryptic licenses, honors bestowed for unspecified philanthropic services, and titles, including an honorary citizenship in some strange Balkan municipality. Then I noticed that some of the laminated diplomas repeated themselves. Another shelf-laden wall was filled with stone and wooden artifacts from around the world. A network of wooden shelves were covered with fertility symbols, carvings, and hand sculptures—bric-a-brac of all shapes and sizes. A big tom-tom made of a hollowed log was sitting in the corner; behind that, a large, ivory statue of Buddha; and next to that, a brass statuette of the dancing Shiva. On the shelf behind the statuette was a plastic bust of Pope John Paul II. Suddenly, a man in a tacky, plaid suit entered, reading a legal file; again the Whitlock face.

“Scooza mea,” I found myself garbling in a strange, indistinguishable dialect. It was apparent that I had only a nominal grasp of English.

“You want a green card, Raj?”

“Yeza, please.”

With great difficulty, he tried to navigate the language barrier over the better part of an hour, piloting around strange questions about my life: Whom had I married? How long was I married? What were the sex of my many children? What was my level of education? and so forth.

Finally the sleazy lawyer, Whitlock, asked the unsuspecting illegal alien—me—how much money I had. I smiled elusively and nodded. Again he painstakingly tried to unravel the mystery through primal communication, employing symbols, mime, and dance. Gradually, as it became clear that I was evading an answer, he drew closer and closer, and slowly, in a very nondeliberate way, he started frisking me.

“MONEY!” he said, burning off the last residue of patience. “I NEED MONEY!”

“But vhy?”

“Don’t you understand?” he replied. “You are the citizen! I’m the alien! Therefore payment must be made.”

The Whitlocker then shoved his hand in my threadbare pants pocket. Dreamy voices awoke me, and I drowned. This time I was intensely young: relentlessly stunning, luminously blonde, awesome blue eyes, a bone structure to end all bone structures. Handsome without compromise. Six-feet-two, one hundred and sixty pounds of rock-hard muscle.

I was in a studio or on a small stage; I was facing rows of empty seats. Through the darkness, in the furthest distance, I saw a poster with intense Svengali eyes penetrating outward. Below it read, THE LÖECHí TECHNIQUE. A slightly stooped Whitlock-mask appeared,
voilà
—he was an acting teacher. A white knit sweater was tied around his shoulders. A tight pair of slacks hugged his heavy midsection and sadly collapsed buttocks. Mascara meticulously struggled to hide his age, a male menopausal make-over. A tastefully colored toupee was carefully anchored into the sideburn hair, which in turn seemed to be woven to his copious ear hairs.

“To learn the coveted secrets of the Löechí will cost you eight hundred American dollars,” he said in a slight, untraceable accent.

“What’s the Löechí Technique?”

“White light rises from the core of this earth through the kaleidoscope of your feet. It electrifies your spine. We teach harmony, provide you a special water diet, teach you ‘exalted movements’…”

“What’s so special about this technique?”

“It’s movement-based.”

“So?”

“It works.”

“How do I know it’ll work?”

“We ask you to measure your bowel movements. They get longer as your motion gains in majesty.” I expected something simple, like sworn testimonials. He showed me sworn scatologicals in a photo album.

“Why do I want my waste any longer? I want to become a successful Hollywood actor.” Who doesn’t?

“We can’t control anyone’s destiny. All we can do is give you the tools. Take it or leave it.”

“All right, I’ll take it.” He then moved behind me. Grabbing me around the waist, he started bouncing up and down while yelling, “Jump, Löechí! Jump, Löechí!” I broke away.

“What did you call me?”

“Löechí. You are the Löechí!”

The implements of acting! Green cards of citizenship! A clinical work-up! I struggled up from between the diametric tension of two psycho dream-unweavers: Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. It all made perfect sense!

One glyph of recollection pulled from the accursed temple of sleep was something Whitlock had muttered about being in Tokyo during the early ’60s (probably eluding the Vietnam draft). I quickly upturned all my boxes until I located it, the birth certificate that Amy had located when she first arrived in my apartment. Sure enough, I was made in Japan, right in Tokyo. I was a Tokian while Whitlock was there. I was then adopted by the Ngms. It seemed odd that Amy, who knew everything about Whitlock, wouldn’t mention that our paths had crossed in Japan so many years ago. I sniffed a confederate.