The Opposite of Fate (6 page)

Stop, I said. Stop being ridiculous. I thought that he, like Lou and me, was nervous about the death threats the three of us had
received from a gang whom we had thrown out of the pizza parlor. Two attempts on our lives had already been made, knives and clubs had been drawn, punches exchanged, and my shin nearly broken by a kick with steel-toed boots. Pete had made the mistake of winning one fistfight and breaking his opponent’s nose. The gang was now doubly committed to killing us. When we called the Danville police for help, they informed us that our personal thugs had arrest records for dozens of assaults, but there were no convictions, nor were any likely. The best way to deal with future attempts on our lives, someone told us, was to equip ourselves with guns, learn how to use them properly, and make sure that the bodies fell
inside
our door. Outside it was homicide, we were told, inside it was self-defense. Moving to another town was also not a bad idea.

The latter advice was ultimately what we decided to follow. A week after Pete had the disturbing dream he told us about, Lou and I helped him move to Oakland, into a studio apartment in an art deco building. We were placed on a waiting list for a one-bedroom apartment in the same building; for now we kept the apartment in Danville. Pete had few possessions: a bed, a TV set and a stereo, a small table and a chair, his guitar and camera, books, and an expensive calculator that he had purchased with my credit card. There was also a .22 automatic, which he had bought to defend himself in Danville.

Lou and I stayed at Pete’s his first night in Oakland, in a sleeping bag on the floor. I recall Pete reiterating his feeling that something bad was going to happen, that someone might break in and kill him. We assured him that there was no way the thugs would know where he had moved. Nor were they industrious
enough to want to follow us. Nevertheless, Pete placed the gun between the mattress and the box spring, within easy reaching distance. We kidded him for being paranoid.

The next morning was my twenty-fourth birthday. I can admit now that I was deflated that nothing special was mentioned or offered from the start: no profusion of beautifully beribboned presents, no announcement that plans had been made for going on a lark or winding up at a banquet. But perhaps this seeming lack of preparation really meant that an even more elaborate scheme was in the works, and I would have to be patient to see what it was. Lou suggested we go for a drive, and Pete declined the invitation. He was going to unpack, settle in, and nurse a cold he had just developed. A ruse, I thought. He would be behind the scenes, getting the surprise party under way. As we left, I mentioned we might stop by later, but we would be unable to call ahead of time, since he did not yet have phone service.

As it turned out, my twenty-fourth birthday was a cobbled assortment of activities, spontaneity being the key and “Why not?” being the answer. Lou and I had an impromptu lunch at a restaurant, a drive through the country later, and then we took up an invitation from a friend in Marin County to have dinner with her parents. We spent the night in their driveway, sleeping in our Volkswagen bus. So there was no grand party. The day had been pleasant, but not as eventful as I had secretly hoped.

The next day, back at the apartment in Danville, an acquaintance called. He lived in the building Pete had moved into—we had learned of the vacancy there from him. I greeted him cheerfully.

“Oh,” he said flatly, “then you haven’t heard the news.”

What news?

“Pete’s dead. Two guys broke into his place last night and killed him.”

“That is the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” I responded angrily. But later Lou and I learned that, indeed, two men had entered through the bathroom window; according to a witness’s report, they did not resemble our thugs from Danville. These men had used Pete’s .22 to bash him over the head, then hogtied him stomach down, the rope lashed around his neck and ankles so that the soles of his feet faced the back of his head. When he could no longer hold his muscles taut, he let go and slowly strangled.

In one imagined version—I’ve played them a thousand times—the robbers stand and watch as Pete struggles to stay alive. That’s the worst. In another version, they leave him while he is still struggling. The police arrive, but seconds too late. Actually, that is the worst. They are all the worst. As to what happened after Pete was tied up, I have only these facts: The two men ran out of Pete’s studio with his gun and went to pound on the door of the apartment manager, demanding to be let in. When the manager refused, they blasted the door with bullets, then ran out of the building toward their car. A man on the sidewalk had the misfortune of being there; they shot and killed him on the spot. A newspaper story identified the man on the sidewalk as a business student from India who attended Armstrong College. I don’t remember his name, and I regret that, for no one killed in that manner should be nameless and forgotten.

I’ve often thought of that young man from India, and of his family, who must think of his death, as I do, every anniversary of
that February night in 1976. “Today,” I imagine them saying, “our son would have been fifty years old. Can you imagine? That’s older than we were when he died.”

The next day, Lou and I went to the Oakland Police Department to identify Pete on behalf of his family in Wisconsin. The police showed us only photographs, but what I saw is too obscene to relay in words. Since then, whenever I read stories of wars, or earthquakes, or murders, I have imagined those who have seen what I have, the face of a loved one, not in peaceful slumber as morticians might have devised, but as it appeared at the moment of death, a body unwashed, ungroomed, not prepared, in any conceivable way, to be viewed by another human being, let alone someone who loved that person.

After collecting the Saint Christopher’s medal that Pete always wore around his neck, we drove to his apartment to assist detectives in identifying what might have been taken. I remember seeing everything as in a TV documentary filmed in close-up, with no possibility of pulling away: the door, dusted for fingerprints, and the yellow tape; the opening of the door and my recoiling at the smell. It was the pungent scent of fear, a wild-animal smell of nervous sweat, and it was as potent as if Pete and his assailants had still been in the room, the torment happening in front of me. To the right was further evidence of who had been there, the powdery impressions of fingertips and palms on the doorjamb. Littering the floor were used tissues: so the cold had not been a ruse at all. On the table were the remnants of a dinner—a can of stew (what a poor last meal!)—and a bottle of NyQuil, half empty. Had he been too lethargic to hear the robbers breaking the bathroom window? Was he slow
to react? Did he think it was Lou and I who were trying to get back in, looking for a place to stay after a night of birthday-partying? Why didn’t he use his gun?

Also on the table was a letter he had written to a friend. I read the page facing up. In it, he described a dream he had had, similar to the one he had recounted the week before: He found himself enmeshed in wads of thick cotton. Soon it became as light as cotton candy, and when he broke free, he saw his wife and others, people whom he did not recognize but who seemed warmly familiar. It was a good dream, the letter said. It felt like a premonition. So that was the second dream. At last, Pete was reconciled with his wife.

When I turned to the left, I saw the rappelling ropes that had been used to strangle him, the bed with a large bloodstain from the blow to his head.

Lou and I listed what had been taken: a stereo; a small television set; a $600 Hewlett-Packard calculator, the prize of any bioengineering student; and a .22 automatic. I wondered whether a birthday present for me must also have been stolen. We were good friends, after all, and so of course he would have bought me something. But whatever it might have been, it was not there, and it pained me that I would never know.

When we returned to Danville that night, we held a wake with a small group of friends. We sat on the floor, on the gold shag carpet, and because we could not talk, we drank. I downed a lot of vodka to block out the images of death, the odor of fear. Soon I vomited, and when my mind became clearer, I heard Pete’s voice. By that I mean that it sounded as if he were speaking out loud. It was no doubt grief preying on my imagination,
drunken thinking taking voice. Yet I could not help relaying aloud what I had just heard: “The names of the guys who killed him are Ronald and John.” My friends stared at me. “Pete just told me,” I said. Cracked, their looks implied. She’s really cracked.

Four days later, two men were apprehended in a robbery in Oakland. In the backseat of their car were items that had been taken from Pete’s apartment, including the calculator that he had purchased on my credit card. The serial number on the receipt matched the one on the calculator. The police told us the names of the men in their custody: Ronald and John.

Lou and I were stunned to hear the names I had blurted the night before. The police guessed that the two had targeted Pete after watching him move into the apartment; robberies often occur around the time of such transitions, they said, as criminals size up victim and possessions. Other than that, the choice of Pete as victim was random, a bit of bad luck. Both men had long arrest records, for robbery, and assault and battery, and they had a nasty penchant for tying up people and beating them. The fingerprints taken at Pete’s apartment, however, matched only one of the men arrested. Because of what I had heard or imagined Pete saying, I was certain both men had been in the room. The police were too, but for another, more earthbound reason: A neighbor had heard two men’s voices in the hall just before they fired through his door. In the end, only one of the men, John, was charged with Pete’s murder.

The police said that I would be called as a witness, because I was the owner of the credit card. They cautioned me that I would have to take the witness stand during the preliminary
hearing and the trial itself, and I would be required to look at the morgue photos and once again identify the body. I was sickened even to think of the prospect.

The night before the preliminary hearing, I had a fantastical dream, the first of a series that would occur nightly until Pete’s murderer was convicted several months later. The dreams may have been delusional, the result of emotional trauma at having seen the gruesome evidence of a friend’s death. Yet even if that is the case, it does not diminish the importance of those dreams to me or what I learned and did as a consequence. While I have always been a prolific dreamer, one who remembers up to a dozen dreams a night, I have never had dreams quite like these before or since. For one thing, these dreams followed a singular convention: I was always aware that Pete was dead and that I was alive, and that where we were meeting was the consciousness called dreams. In addition, each dream consisted of lessons in the form of metaphors that were obvious in their meanings.

In the first dream, I arrived at the place where Pete was now staying. It was—as dreams go—a surreal land with glorious green mountains, flowering meadows, and canyons flowing with waterfalls. Elephants, mastodons, and people flew about, as though a circus had been cast into a gravity-free environment. Only Pete and I were on solid ground.

“Hey,” he said, “let’s go flying.”

“I’m not dead,” I reminded him. “I can’t fly.”

“Oh, right. Well, see over there, that lady at the stand? She can rent you some wings.”

He took off, and I turned toward the stand he had mentioned and duly procured a set of plastic wings for the bargain price of a quarter. I slipped them on, walked to the edge of a cliff, and
took off soaring, but uncertain as to what I should do next. With the wings I was weightless and could move toward whatever I wished to see. All at once, I had a disturbing thought: How can a pair of cheap wings enable me to fly?

The next instant I was plummeting, the weight of my body pushing down, the wind pressing up, and I knew that soon I would be smashed to pieces. How could this be? Hadn’t I been flying a moment ago? In the next instant, I was aloft once more, weightless. Relieved but still puzzled, I wondered again how I could be flying with wings that cost only a quarter—and abruptly, I was falling again. But I was flying a second ago, I said to myself. And immediately, I was aloft. . . . At the instant I realized the meaning of the dream, Pete spoke: “And now you see, it’s your belief in yourself that enables you to do what you wish.” With that, the dream ended.

The next night, a monster was set on me and I began to run. This was the boogieman I had known since childhood. I ran up a long stairwell, I ran through the dark streets. All the while, Pete was urging me to stop and turn around and look at what was chasing me.

“I can’t,” I cried. “If he touches me, I’ll die.”

“Turn around,” Pete said firmly.

Finally I did. Before me was a monster, as I had expected, and yes, he was hideous in every respect: a huge, scaly creature with a venomous look. But he was also surprised that I stood there examining him. After a few seconds he started to shrink, and then he disappeared.

“You see,” Pete said, “it’s your own fears that give them the power to chase you.”

And so the dreams went each night, a visceral truth played
out to heights of drama. I learned to make money come pouring out of pay phones that had been broken and never connected me to those I was trying to reach. I learned to fly down stairs in huge leaps, rather than being paralyzed with leaden legs and attempting only one small step at a time. I discovered that if I did not like what was before me, I had only to look at my shoes, then look up and walk ahead toward a fresher, more pleasant scene. During this time, my life changed—or rather, I changed my life, in ways I would previously have thought inconceivable. For one thing, I decided to quit my doctoral program.

This drastic decision was clearly born when the idealism of my twenties collided with the shock of tragedy. A valuable life had been lost, and to make up for it, I had to find value in mine. That was the gist of the feeling. The doctorate, I decided, would be a worthless appendage. Besides, there were no jobs in linguistics, and even if there were, how was I bettering the world by teaching others to examine the intricacies of dead languages and the like?