Mercy (61 page)

people on earth, really, and the streets get darker, and the wind

gets colder, and the Stoli goes down smoother, easier, faster,

and he unrolls the bills faster, easier, more, and I’m saying shit

I’m tired and I’m telling him m y sad story o f this night and

how I didn’t have anywhere to go and how I don’t have no

money and how things are and he’s concerned, he’s listening,

I’m saying how frightened I was and he’s taking it all in; and

shit I can drink like any man, you know, I mean, I can drink, I

don’t fold, and I say I can outdrink him and he don’t think so

but I fucking do because he stops but he keeps ordering them

for me and I know I’m going to be crashing soon so I’m not

concerned, there’s nothing I have to do but sleep, alone,

warm , inside, and we get to his place and I ask for his keys and

he says he’ll open it because it’s hard and he opens it, it’s a lot o f

locks, it’s locks that slip and slide and look like they have jaw s,

they m ove and slide and spring and jum p, and the door finally

gets open and he says he’ll take me up and inside the door

there’s steps but first he locks the locks from inside, he locks

them with his keys and he says see this is how you do it when

you come in, don’t forget now, and he pockets the keys and I

think I have to remember to get them so when he leaves I’ll be

able to lock the door behind him, it’s unfamiliar to me and I

don’t want to forget, and then there’s the steps, these huge,

wood steps, these towering flights, these creaky, knotted

steps, these splintery steps, there’s maybe a hundred o f them,

it’s so high up you can’t see the top, so you go up the first

twenty or something and there’s a big, em pty room, more like

a baseball field, it’s not like an apartment building where

there’s other people on the first landing, there’s no one there

and it’s em pty, and there’s another twenty or thirty steps and

it’s knottier and there’s holes in the middle o f the steps and

you’re trying to get up them without looking like a fool or

falling and there’s another floor that’s some cavernous room

with canvases and boxes and it’s brown, all brown, stretched

canvases and paintings wrapped in brown paper for shipping

and huge standing spirals o f brown twine like statues and

brown masking tape and these vast rolls o f heavy brown tape,

the kind o f tape you have to wet and you use it to reinforce

heavy boxes, and there’s brown boxes, cartons, unfolded and

folded and there’s brown crates, it’s a kind o f dead brown

room, the air’s brown, not just dark but brown as if it’s

colored brown, as if the air itself is brown, and the walls and

the floor and everything in it is dull brown and it’s not a room

in the normal sense, in the human sense, it’s more like an

airstrip, and you keep climbing and then there’s this next

floor, it’s big like a fucking commercial garage or something

and it’s completely covered in paint, oil paint, you could park

a hundred cars in it but the whole floor is thick with dried red

paint, oil paint or acrylics you know, like the blob’s all dead

and it died in here, the paint’s fucking deep on the floor, it’s

shocking pinks and royal blues and yellows so bright they hurt

your eyes, I don’t mean the floor is painted like someone put

paint on a brush and used the brush to paint the floor or a wall

or something, it’s more like the paint is spilled on gallon after

gallon, heaps and heaps o f it, it’s inches thick or feet thick, it

dries hard and sticky, you walk on it with trepidation thinking

you will sink but it’s firm, it gives a little but it’s firm, it’s dry,

it’s like an artist’s palette like you see in the movies but it’s a

whole real floor o f a room as big as a city block and you walk

on it like yo u ’re outside in the hills walking on real ground

that’s uneven and it’s been wet and you sink in some places or

at least you expect to, the earth’s higher and lower by inches

and you got boots to help you find your footing, your feet sink

in but not really, the ground just gives a little and it ain’t even,

you don’t fall but your footing ain’t sure, but it’s paint, not

earth, paint, it must be a million paint stores all emptied out on.

the floor and then rising from the paint, from the thick, dried,

uneven, shocking paint, there’s canvases and there’s paint on

them, beautiful paint, measured, delicate by contrast, esthetic,

organized into colors and shapes that have to do with each

other, they touch, you see right aw ay that there is meaning in

their touch, there’s something in it, it’s not random, it’s too

fine, almost emotionally austere, your heart sort o f skips a beat

to see how intelligent the paint is, you look up from the chaos

o f the paint on the floor to the delicacy o f the paint on the

canvas and I at least almost want to cry, I just feel such sorrow

for how frail we are. I just had never seen it so clear how art is

about mortality, finding the one thin strain o f significance, a

line o f sorrow, the thread o f a meaning, an idea against death,

an assertion with color or shape as if you could draw a perfect

line to stand against it, you know , so it would break death’s

heart or something. I can see w hy he wanted to walk me

through this because it’s his paintings, precious to his soul.

Y ou w ouldn’t want some stranger rooting around in it; or

even touching it. Y ou have to go through the whole room, the

whole distance o f it, its full length, to get to the stairs that take

you to the top floor where he lives. I keep being afraid I’ll sink

in the paint but I get to the stairs and they’re normal, ju st wood

stairs, even, sanded, finished, with a bannister, and I climb up

after him; it was different N ew Y ear’s Eve, soft and glow ing,

with grand tables and linen and crystal. N o w it’s pretty

empty, big, vast really; there’s a big blow heater hanging from

the ceiling and he turns it on and it blows hot air out at you, it’s

like being in a hot wind, it dries the air out, it’s a m usky,

lukewarm , smelly draft, and he puts it on higher and it’s like

being in a hot wind, warm but unpleasant, an awful August

day with a wind so steady and stale that the air pushes past

you, old air, used already. At one end o f the huge room is a

single wood chair. At the other end is a sort o f kitchen, a sink,

running water, a refrigerator, and in front there’s a kitchen

counter and in front o f that there’s a single bed to sleep on, a

sort o f sofa maybe, flat, no headboard, no cushions, no back,

nondescript, covered with cloth, it’s a couch or an old mattress

on springs or something. Way in the back, to the left o f the

kitchen, hard to see, extending behind the kitchen but you

can’t really see how far, there’s a kind o f cage, it’s chicken

wire, it goes from the floor to the ceiling, and there’s a double

bed behind the chicken wire, and I ask what it is, and he says he

sleeps there with girls, some girls like it, it’s his bedroom, he’s

got cuffs for it that fasten on the chicken wire but it’s got

nothing to do with me, I can sleep on the sofa, and I’m feeling a

chill, m y blood goes cold and I feel a certain fear I can’t define

and do not want to think about, and I’ve tried to shake him all

night but there’s the fact he’s sort o f stuck on, I can’t shake him

loose, and I’m feeling like I’ve been traveling a long time in a

foreign place, the land’s strange, the natives are strange, it’s

been a long w ay up the mountain and you don’t know if the

w ay dow n’s booby-trapped and you know the sidewalks are