The Next (2 page)

Fuck fuck fuck. Do I stop her? Do I even want to?

The street volume increased through the hall to my apartment and then cut out as she exited the building’s lobby three floors below. Thud.

One less person to fake being happy for.

My immediate thought was to call Paul and tell him it’s over. Paul hated her anyway
.

Except…

I inhaled deeply and felt a strangulation of pain in the effort.

There was no Paul anymore.

Click—
his death switched off all the goddamn painful memories.

I was not the kind that voluntarily sentimentalized the past with dusty rose-colored nostalgia. Particularly our past.

Happy Birthday.

Blow out the candles.

Blow out every fucking thing that burns.

Chapter Two

Eight blurry days later, my cell phone rang.

California area code.

I ought not to have answered.

With the sensitivity of a wire hanger the
greaser official in Placerville asked me where he should send Paul’s belongings. What would I do with a collection of Mozart records? I had no record player. What would I do with a collection of Enid Blyton children’s books? I had no intention now of having kids to read them to. And what the fuck was my brother holding on to our childhood books for anyway? Why would I want any group photo of Paul and his flunky friends, half of them high on meth, and the other half trying to get there?

I replied to Sergeant Flunky, “No thank you.”

“What do you mean
no thank you?
”

“Do you read?”

“Yes.”

“What luck! The books are perfect for you. They’re children’s books.”

“Sir, I can’t…”

“Listening to Mozart increases brain activity. That may interest you.”

“Sir, I can’t keep any of it.”

“Then shred it all. Burn it.”

I hung up.

Sergeant Flunky tried calling back and received my voicemail, which was the equivalent of tossing a message in a bottle down a dry well.

Chapter Three

The waiting for the Next began.

The next fall of a shoe that would end something. The next fluttering that would begin something. The next anything that might trigger anything else. But until then, all I had was the thick gelatinous weight of waiting. Of darkness behind the thick, dark red dusty curtains, closing in my apartment’s murky stillness. Of the revolving, oozing thoughts so inconclusive it’d become too much effort to bother reproaching myself for failing to conclude anything. Of deliveries of paper bags filled with bland cheese, tortillas, and let’s call it chicken. Of phone calls ignored, mostly to spare the caller from the obligatory compassion layered on their impatient need for whatever information. Of pointing my sunken eyes at the television and imagining the sound and sight of the impact that evil glass and metal apparatus would make if I dropped it off a gargoyle at the top of the Chrysler Building. Of imagining dropping myself off that gargoyle. Of throwing away underwear made threadbare by twisting in my chair with the agitation and pointlessness of merely sitting upright at all. Of gradually abandoning routines like a trip to the Laundromat because it required hunting for quarters, gathering clothes, hauling a bag, and making myself just a hair more presentable to distinguish myself from the piss-and-shit-soiled homeless people Rosalinda kicks out of her establishment because they only enter to beg for money and take a crap in the tiny pink can in the back.

Like the mice rustling behind the thin painted walls, I started becoming aware of all the encroaching
coulds
. I
could
do some sit-ups. I
could
catch up on missed episodes of Rachel Maddow. I
could
floss. I
could
write a song about a breakup. I
could
replace that light bulb. I
could
order a mushroom and black olive pizza. I
could
open the curtains and watch the neighbors. I
could
get a broom and bang the ceiling to tell the tweaking twinkie twat in the apartment above me once again to stop playing his fucking thump thump thump music at two a.m. I
could
masturbate. It’s all the same to me.

It’s all too much to tackle.

It’s all too little to tackle.

I
could
try and write a song about Paul.

Or could I?

Why can’t I remember crap about him? Me? Us? Nothing surfaces. Nothing. Not a single fucking bubble of detail.

I’d never had fantastic recall to begin with. I developed a dependency on some major memory jogs to recall even the street I lived on as a child. Jogs like writing music. Jogs like writing lyrics. Since songwriting in my curtained New York prison had become as plausible an activity as, let’s say, dressage, I assumed what little long-term memory I’d possessed fell victim to gangrene and was amputated months ago.

Perhaps dropping the turbulence of my past had simply been my brain’s natural evolution towards a more efficient present? Doesn’t a slump without the baggage of history speed your journey to recovery?

Assuming there was any recovery.

Or was this pretty much it?

Fuckity ho hum.

The door buzzer buzzed, startling me like a camera flash in a dark movie house.

“Yum Yum’s.”

“Come on up.”

I pressed the button to let the delivery boy from the Thai restaurant up. The door speaker buzzed again.

“Sir, could you possibly come downstairs to get it?“

“Why?”

“I’m double parked. Wanna keep an eye on my car.”

“No.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“You have to come upstairs.”

“But…”

I hung up and buzzed the door again. Part of me felt like an asshole. The dominant part didn’t give a shit. I had no injuries. I was not paraplegic. I was not too lost in any creative moment to be interrupted. I simply could
not
go into the hall, let alone go downstairs.

I never thought I’d become that New York housebound freak. The smelly, creepy, cat guy the neighbors all gossip about who lives in a dark hole constantly enshrouded in a mealy plaid bathrobe and a constant stale stench of old urine. Except I had no cats, and I don’t think any neighbors cared one flying fuck about my comings and goings—or rather my not comings and my not goings.

Perhaps the waiting for the Next is what eroded my desire to exit. Then my ability to exit. The gradual dismissal of all external stimulus, inch by inch, imprisoning me within a six-hundred and fifty square foot cell, enforced by loathing, fear, irritation, inordinate self-focus, and plain old plummeting of energy.

New York is a city whose very fabric is woven of smiles to the familiar corner store counter guy whose name you’ve never quite gotten. Of keeping half an eye out for the next musical you
have
to see. Of choosing between the expensive French-Argentinian cuisine and your favorite Thai joint around the corner. Of looking beyond the dog shit on the sidewalk to the twinkling lights a couple blocks down. Of smiling in spite of the freezing face-scraping wind as you sip your warm, mulled, hot apple cider in Bryant Park.

But my Manhattan monologue shifted restaurant-by-restaurant, dollar-by-dollar, subway ride-by-subway ride, block-by-block, toothy grin-by-toothy grin, until the balancing act became a wrestling match. New York’s infamous “bustle” became an onslaught of annoyances I couldn’t avoid. The seasonal delights every store and every theater shamelessly capitalized on became seasonal price hikes and overcrowding that robbed me of any delight.

I could see the new show starring Kelly O’Hara, but it’s all the same shit rehashed and priced higher. Couldn’t that fat fucker behind the counter stop making inane indecipherable small talk and take my fucking money before I smash his teeth in? If Mister Wallstreet Fuckface coughs without covering his pie hole one more time, I might torpedo his goddamn MacBook Air into the subway track and watch it explode on the third rail. Why go to the Thai Restaurant around the corner and risk another lovely bout of explosive diarrhea? Why push my way through the throng of umbrellas and spatially handicapped tourists just to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade when I can see it on television like every other sap across the country? Lighting the Rockefeller tree with Christmas lights? I give it a three. Setting it alight with a match? Ten.

Perhaps protecting everyone in New York from the vitriol of my silent monologue was the biggest catalyst for my initial resistance to leave the apartment. Perhaps it became a kind of social obligation to keep them from my self-acknowledged malaise of hatred, irritation, bitterness, and disappointment. Perhaps each encounter with New York’s eight million residents introduced one more opportunity to compare myself to someone infinitely and effortlessly more successful monetarily, creatively, emotionally, physically, everything-ly. Perhaps.

All I knew was that the hall became a trench of torture. I’d step onto the floor outside my door and my heart pole-vaulted into my Adam’s apple. I could literally see the veins on my wrist inflate and decrease with dizzying surges of blood, and someone with a hammer and a chisel began to gouge my forehead. Within seconds, my shirt would sag from soaking up sweat from every pore of my body. The door to the hall became an inexplicable trigger for hyperventilation and physical excruciation, a splitting headache, and a fucking larger pile of mildew-smelling, sweat-soaked laundry to hand wash. And then I quite literally stopped trying to go into the hall. Or anywhere.

The Dominican delivery guy from Yum Yum’s was fuming with one raised, thick, dark eyebrow and pursed white lips. He stiffly shoved the receipt through the eight-inch crack I’d conceded. I handed him a Ziploc bag containing nine dollars and twenty cents of coins and reached for the white plastic bag of Pad Thai Plop and Kung Crap Soup. He defiantly backed up twenty feet and placed the bag on the floor. He shot me a bitchy look and strode to the stairs.

Yappity yap yap.

Fuckity fuck fuck.

I guess I was eating the last of the Quaker oats tonight.

Chapter Four

December eighth turned to March eighth.

If there was a Next, it was hardly making an effort to seep its way into this hole of dazzling vitality. The utility bills now were underscored with red. Un-watered songs died in the drought. No more phone service. No more internet service. Johanna couldn’t contact me even if she wanted to, and it was more than plain she did not want to.

Disconnected. Totally disconnected.

I hadn’t heard the thumping music upstairs…since…God, I had no idea. A month? Six months? A year? I guess tweaking twinkie twat moved out. He probably hooked up with some Rockefeller Hilton Koch brother and was now living rent-free in a sparkling new loft west of the High Line in return for wearing twelve-hundred dollar distressed Boss jeans with a Velcro ass-flap for easy access by Daddy any time Daddy could get away from Wifey. Hoo-fucking-ray for Twinky Twat.

Tweaking Twinky Twat had a name...Nate…eh…something…

Roach in the sink.

Let it live or blend it into the disposal? I ran the water and flipped on the disposal. I let it run, growling furiously. On impulse, I took a shot glass and shoved it down the disposal just to hear the sound of it darting and banging, trapped within the metal walls, then resigning itself to being shaved with violent shrieking into slivers by the savage spinning metal blades, ground back into the sand it once was before someone melted it into hard fragile smoothness. Miraculously, the fucking roach climbed out of the disposal unscathed. With my bare palm…crack…squish.

I don’t feel anything.

The disposal continued to growl. My eye was caught by the light trying to pry into my cave between the cracks of the leveler blind in front of the sink. When was the last time any of the curtains or blinds had been opened? Since I moved in three years ago, I’d close them only when I was working simply to contain the banging on my piano keys and prevent my warbling from leaking to the courtyard or the neighbors. Then half a year ago, I kept them closed simply because opening and closing them every day became a hassle.

Neighbors. Curious word. It implies more than just proximity. Certainly the connotation of
neighborly
assumes some degree of watchfulness, friendliness, and interaction. But this was New York City. Those folks across the courtyard were the puppets who occupied the apartments of whatever windows you can see from yours. No more. Nobody cared for more, apart from entertainment. I don’t think the occupants I could see from my window across the courtyard were any more or less entertaining than any other apartment’s view.

In the building to the left at the top were the Couch Potatoes—a gay couple who did nothing every single evening of their smashingly glamorous life but plop their plump selves onto the couch with a plate of pasta and watch The Walking X Glee Revenge Dead Factor.