No Sleep till Wonderland (9 page)

“We’re going to flip for it.”

“Sorry, that wasn’t very nice of me.” She says it, but I don’t think she means it.

“Do you know why Gus sought out the group?”

“He likes to share his deepest and darkest with strangers. He’s needy and an extrovert. He had a tough childhood, like everyone else. Who knows? I’m his friend, not his shrink.” She laughs, at me, I think. “Why do you go? Why does anyone go?”

“I go because my mother makes me.”

Ekat covers her mouth with the back of one hand and laughs all over it. She thinks I’m joking, but the joke is on me. There’s a big difference between the two.

We go back to our corners and our beers, waiting to hear her ring tone. I’m still surprised that Gus hasn’t called back. If pressed to choose, I’d now place his folder in the something-happened-to him file.

The weight of my fatigue is increasing. The fatigue, it’s always there, like walking around in wet clothes that don’t dry. Need to keep talking if I’m going to stay awake. I say, “So. Seeing anyone, Ekat?”

“You’re not good at small talk, are you, Mark?”

“No such thing as small talk. Just details.” Wow, even I have to admit that sounds as lame as I feel.

I didn’t notice before, Ekat has multiple thin rubber bands on her wrist. She picks at them, absently, and says, “No one at the moment. Been on a bad luck streak, thanks for asking. Anything else you want to know about me?”

“Sure. What’s life after bartending going to look like?”

“I don’t know. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but I dropped out of Suffolk Law School like five years ago, been bartending ever since. I’m waiting for a spark, something to excite me, I guess. I’d make a great writer or an artist if I was creative.”

I try to smile politely. It’s what I’m supposed to do. I can’t say what I really think: that an early-thirties bartender who drops out of law school doesn’t have an apartment in Southie like this unless she’s living off Mommy and Daddy’s trust fund. Might be an accurate assessment, might not be, and never mind being fair. And I think it like I’m some working-class hero who isn’t living off his own mother. My situation, my case is different. It just is.

She says, “Every once and a while I think about going back to school or going off in some whole other direction, like living in the Ca rib be an or Mexico or something, but I’m not there yet. Not really motivated for some big jump. I like what I’m doing, who I work with. It’s easy, and I’m mostly happy.”

“You could always become a private investigator. The pay sucks, but the respect the occupation engenders is worth all the toil.”

“I bet.” Our second beers are quickly becoming thirds and more.

It’s probably rude of me now that we’re chummy, but I’ve got another curveball to throw—a twelve-to-six bender. I ask, “Did Detective Owolewa see the suitcase?”

“What suitcase? Oh, you mean the one next to my bed.” She doesn’t hesitate, and her answer is no quick and easy denial. My curve didn’t have as much break in it as I thought.

“Yeah, that suitcase. The one cowering under your covers.”

“I don’t know if he saw it. He didn’t ask about it.”

“I’ll ask. Why’s it out?”

“I was sitting here alone last night, and Eddie and his call to my work was really getting to me, scaring me, and I started thinking about calling in sick to work, then staying at my parents’ house in Hull for a few days. I got as far as taking the thing out of my closet, but staying at home would’ve been too much of a headache.”

“Sounds like it would’ve been a good plan.”

“I know, but I didn’t do it. It probably sounds silly, but I didn’t want that fucker to think he could change how I lived my life with a phone call.”

“That’s not silly.”

“Cheers, then.” She drinks and says, “So let’s hear it, how did you become a PI? Me and my stories, right? What’s the Mark Genevich story?”

I’m learning to hate the word
story
, especially when applied to someone’s life, especially my own. There isn’t enough gravity, not enough weight to the word. It’s disrespectful, borderline demeaning. Stories are simple, silly, for bedtime. Stories aren’t reality. Stories have good guys and bad guys, morals, inspiring plots. Stories are what you tell kids because they don’t know any better. Stories are what you tell kids because you don’t want them to know any better. Stories hide the truth. Stories…

“Yo, Mark, you still there?”

Ekat is standing, bent over, and snaps her fingers in my face. She tries hard not to laugh. I don’t know if I should be mad at her or thank her.

I say, “I’m fine. Just a quick recharge of the batteries.”

“Good. Let’s hear it, then.” She sits back down on the futon and holds her beer up in a silent toast, presumably to me.

Here’s mud in her eye. Mud being my story, the highlights and lowlights. I find it less inspiring in the retelling and rehashing. I tell her that my father died when I was five, and Ellen and I stayed on the Cape. I tell her that I was beautiful and everyone loved me. I tell her that, somewhat like her, I left school. After three semesters at Curry College, my best friend, George, and I left to start our little businesses. I tell her about the van accident. George was driving us back from the Foxwoods casino. I don’t know how it happened exactly, but the van found a drainage ditch and rolled all around in it. George died, and I was left broken on the outside and the inside. I tell her about the arrival of my narcoleptic symptoms shortly thereafter, the stork dropping the cute, fuzzy bundle into my unsuspecting lap. It all happened millions of years ago, the Jurassic age of me, but the expanse of time doesn’t make talking about it any easier.

She says, “That’s terrible.” What happened to me is terrible, or my story is terrible. There’s no difference, really.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

I could tell her more about George. I could tell her the worst part is that he has ceased being a person and become an unattainable ideal of “friend,” as if our relationship had never had an uncomfortable moment and we were always good to each other.

I say, “So am I.”

“So you didn’t start experiencing your narcoleptic symptoms until after the van accident? Huh. I didn’t think it would work like that.”

And just like that, she questions who I am. But I know who I am. I do. I’m Mark Genevich, the one who lived, he who emerged from the van wreckage as the monster, the misfit, he who sleeps alone, and my clock always strikes twelve. But is that right? Thinking back to preaccident and postaccident is suddenly difficult, almost impossible to remember. My Jurassic age has giant gaps in the fossil record. Am I remembering what actually happened or remembering some previous retelling or reshaping of what actually happened? My life as a game of telephone where the original message was lost and screwed up eons ago.

I think I’ve had too many beers. I say, “It does work like that. Trust me. I’m an expert.” My words come out loud and dangerous.

“Whoa, big fella, I didn’t mean anything by it.” She stretches a leg out, kicks the base of my chair, and laughs.

I don’t laugh. I pout. It’s my narcolepsy, and I can cry if I want to.

“I’m sorry. That was rude of me. Hey, I don’t know anything about narcolepsy; I was just asking. I believe you, Mark.”

She believes me. Do I? Doesn’t matter, ultimately. I’m done with the past. There’s nothing left there for me. My here and now is already confusing and surreal enough. Who I am now is who I’m stuck with.

I say something like “No worries,” then add a flurry of words, some joke about her running the group therapy circle, but it makes no sense, so I mumble and trail off, fade out. I cover it up with a yawn and stretch as big as the room.

She asks, “Am I boring you?”

“That’s an awful line.” I check my watch. Quarter of eleven. Gus hasn’t called back.

“Shut up. It wasn’t a line.” Ekat chucks a throw pillow and connects, mashing into my face and hat, and everything goes dark. I take the pillow off my face, fix my hat, and when I look up Ekat stands in front of me and the papasan chair. Her arms are out in front of her chest, and it looks like she’s shaking hands with herself, but she’s not. She fidgets with the rubber bands on her wrists. She smiles an odd smile, one I haven’t seen in a long time, so long as to be unrecognizable. Some PI I am.

I ask, “What’s with the rubber bands?”

“Oh, you finally noticed. It’s my thing.” She sounds a little tipsy; the
s
in
it’s
blends into the rest of the sentence. Ekat takes the rubber bands off her wrist, one at a time, and snaps them audibly. “I’ve been collecting them since I was a kid.” She grabs my right hand and holds it up. Her fingers are cold and strong. She molds and kneads my flatbread skin and slowly rolls a rubber band over my fingers and onto my wrist.

“What am I, a lobster? Ow!” I flinch as the tight band yanks out some hairs, but I don’t take my hand away.

She laughs at my pain. Someone else’s pain is always funny. “The fun part about my rubber band collection is that I leave them in odd places, places where people wouldn’t find them.” She does the same to my left hand and wrist. Her fingers are still cold, but I’m warming up. This second rubber band she puts on me is thick and green. I don’t match and am off balance. “Or if someone does find them, they’ll wonder how the hell the rubber bands got there.” She alternates putting each of her rubber bands on my wrists. “I’ve put one inside a concert piano, on the back leg of my old neighbor’s annoying dog, buried one in some random apartment’s flower box on K Street.”

I say, “And now my wrists.”

“Right. It’s as good a spot as any.” Ekat pulls the bands, intertwines them tightly around each of my wrists and hands, locking them together. The thin rubber is surprisingly strong. The accumulated bands pinch and pull at my skin. She lifts my arms and pushes my bound hands behind my head. “Sometimes I forget where I put them and find them all over again. Last week, I took one off the toilet handle at work.”

“It’s my sincerest hope none of these were on that toilet.”

Ekat pulls my fedora over my eyes; everything goes dark against my will, as is usually the case. Her hands are insects crawling over my body; they caress and tickle but make me nervous too. I wonder if they’ll bite.

She pulls my legs out from under my ass, which takes some doing. My legs eventually cooperate and hang off the chair frame. I sink deeper into the half-shell bowl of the chair. My back bends and chest contorts, folding in half, folding into myself, a flawed pearl in a giant oyster.

My wrists are bound but my fingers are free, and I’m able to pinch the brim of my hat, slide it up off my eyes, and back onto my head. Proper appearances must be maintained.

The lights aren’t on in the apartment, but there are candles. Everywhere candles, and of every size. She should know me and fire don’t mix. Ekat is naked from the waist down and straddles my lap. She’s lighter than a daydream. I’m naked from the waist down too. A show of support.

My skin is hypersensitive, her slightest touch a detonation. It’s too much. I feel everything and nothing at once.

There’s music coming from somewhere. It has an odd rhythm, is psychedelic, and not all that appropriate for the moment. The moment is something that hasn’t happened to me in a very long time. She quickens her pace with the music.

The candle flames brighten even as the wicks burn down, and I’m disappearing into the light. Her arms extend above her head and across the room, across the whole apartment. Her T-shirt and then bra melt off her body as if made out of wax.

I’m made of wax too, and I’m melting.

The cab dumps me in front of my building. I didn’t leave the lights on. The office windows are dark, and I walk upstairs in the dark to my dark apartment. The dark; it’s where I’m normal.

I shed my sports coat, hat, tie, shirt, my outer skin, onto the couch. The skin bit is a metaphor, though sometimes I don’t know the difference. I don’t turn on a light until I enter the bathroom.

I blink and adjust, which takes time. Everything has a price paid in time. I brush my teeth, and my visible world is still blurry, still fetal. Things take their shape and form, and I stop and stare at the face in the mirror. It’s the same jumbled one I had when I left. I could draw another picture.

Further inventory: My wrists aren’t red or raw; they aren’t sore. No rubber bands. My belt is still buckled, and the button of my pants is still there. I can’t remember if that button was supposed to be there or not. Ain’t life a mystery? I decide to take a shower, even though I don’t think I need one.

I turn on the water and let the steam billow and roll over the mirror glass. I slip off my shoes, kick them up against the back of the bathroom door. The heavy thud they make is deeply satisfying.

Next come the pants, and I take them off like everyone else; they fall down in their hurry to meet the floor. I step out of them, my socks still on. There’s a rubber band around my left ankle. It’s so thin I don’t even feel it there. I reach down and take off the rubber band, then aim and shoot it at the steamed-up mirror. I catch it on the rebound and put it on my wrist. I’ve never done this before.

Inside the shower, under falling water, I close my eyes and replay the end of the evening in Ekat’s apartment; the disjointed and fading scenes are still with me, those dream scenes that are both inspiring and frustrating. I’d try to convince myself that those scenes are enough for me, but I’m too tired. So tired that I can’t sleep.

I dry off and collapse into my bed. Only problem is that my bed isn’t working. It has performance anxiety. No matter how much I flip and flop around, changing positions, I can’t get comfortable and I don’t sleep. I relocate to where I tend to spend most nights anyway, the couch. The couch doesn’t reject me even if I continue to callously scar it with cigarette burns.

The cruelest irony of narcolepsy is that sleep won’t always be there when you need it. And so tonight, I briefly change identities. I’m my own odd couple. I’m Mr. Hyde’s Hyde. I’m the insomniac me, a completely irrational and infuriating being.

I lie on the couch, thinking about everything, and hope a runaway train of thought will take me away like it usually does. I try to trigger and invite the narcoleptic symptoms against which I spend my days battling. Nothing works. I yawn and my eyes water and want to close but won’t. Sleep as the wish that won’t ever come true.

I turn the TV on and off. Late-night talk shows do nothing for me, and the infomercials are more than depressing; they’re harbingers of the end. I’m on the couch and wide awake in America, where my every thought falls apart and dovetails into dire scenarios and conspiracies.

The minutes and seconds are glaciers, but night eventually becomes morning. I’m witness to the painfully slow transformation. And my transformation back to the narcoleptic me is as painful. Not exactly a here-comes-the-sun moment. I know I’ll spend the rest of my day fighting and losing to the many-tentacled beast that is sleep.

The sun is up, but it’s too early to do any real work. I try to watch the vapid a.m. morning news shows, but I nod off and wake up and nod off and rinse and repeat. Eventually, I detach from the couch, emerge from the cocoon, but I’m no butterfly. I apply coffee and cigarettes liberally before descending to my office. I check my messages and e-mails. There aren’t any. It’s too early to call Ekat, but I try Gus again. He’s a hard habit to break, and he doesn’t answer.

I browse and read local news sites and blogs. The fire is still the lead, as are the puff pieces on Fred Carroll, the hero. Good for him. No named arson suspects yet, though one member of the Police Department who spoke on the condition of anonymity said a suspect was interviewed and released.

There are more articles on Jody O’Malley and her troubles and history with the DSS. Her son is in critical but stable condition. There are op-ed pieces demanding renewed DSS oversight and regulation.

And I almost miss it. There, on the
Boston Herald
’s site, is a link tucked away from the bright lights of the block letter, sans serif font of the lead headlines. A digital afterthought, an article on the fire’s lone fatality: Aleksandar Antonov, a Bulgarian man who had an expired work visa. In the opening sentence the
Boston Herald
describes the man as an illegal alien, of course. Journalism at its finest. His most recent employer, Financier CEO Wilkie Barrack, issued a statement via his lawyer saying that he and his staff mourn the loss of such a hardworking and good man. They empathize with Antonov’s friends and family, while Barrack regrets the innocent but unfortunate oversight of the expired visa. His personal employment practices are something he’ll attend to with greater vigilance in the future. Blah blah blah.

I lean back in my chair, the jackpot almost too much to take in at once. My alien dream now has context. I slept and dreamed through Detective Owolewa’s a.m. interview, and he asked if I knew anything about the man who died on the first floor, Aleksandar Antonov, the erstwhile illegal alien, to quote the
Herald.
And the CEO is suddenly back in my life. The reappearance is ominous, unpredictable, a tornado warning.

I search for more stories and find a blog linked to Nantucket’s
Inquirer and Mirror
newspaper. A former employer of Antonov’s, Midge Peterson, says that Aleksandar was her custodian for eleven summers. He was kind, friendly, and the victim of the current immigration squabble and impasse in Congress. Peterson, an owner of a small hotel on Nantucket, relies on seasonal employees from Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, and other countries to fill her summer needs, as do many of the local seasonal businesses. Congress has yet to renew the program that grants work visas to the large numbers of foreigners who enter the United States legally, so Peterson and the hundreds of other businesses have had to scramble to find employees. She’s running her hotel at only half the normal staff, and, consequently, at half capacity. Peterson lost contact with Aleksandar Antonov after he was denied his usual visa. She said Aleksandar, like most of the seasonal workers, could not accept an offer of H-2B status (and be allowed to stay continuously in the country for thirty-six months) as he had to go home every fall. Peterson is planning a fund-raiser to help Antonov’s family in Bulgaria.

My to-do list is suddenly as tall as the Empire State Building. I guess that makes me the doomed giant ape with a cool name and no girlfriend.

First, I call Midge Peterson’s hotel, but she’s not available and won’t be for a few days, so claims the clerk. I find an address for Jody O’Malley’s friend Rachel Stanton, the one she was with on the night of the fire. I let a call from Detective Owolewa ring out and go to voice mail. I find a phone number for O’Malley’s and Antonov’s landlord. She answers and tells me that Antonov was renting month-to-month, but she didn’t really know anything about him. I call Ekat. She’s at the gym and in midworkout on the elliptical. She hasn’t heard from Gus yet, and she’ll call me when she gets back. I try not to sound too desperate to hear her voice.

I nap and smoke and make phone calls, and not in that order. Still, I’m on a roll—for me anyway—but I need to get out, move around, or I’ll lose the rest of the day to my fully fatigued system, and then I won’t be able to sleep again tonight. I stand up, stretch, try a couple jumping jacks, but they’re more like gyrating jacks.

All right, before stepping out the door and making a little trip back to H Street, I commit to one more phone call.

Timothy Carter answers after one ring and grunts his name. Someone’s tightly wound. Or just an asshole.

“Timothy, your good friend Mark Genevich here.”

“Oh, goody. I thought today couldn’t suck more balls than it already has. I was wrong. What do you want?”

Charming. His voice jogs the too-clear memory of him strutting into my office wearing his two-month-salary suit, those big sunglasses, and his avarice. Carter oozes the same arrogance and privilege, even on the phone. I say, “World peace and just to hear your sweet, sweet voice. But what I really want is for you to pretend you’re human for a second, and tell me all you know about the unfortunate late Mr. Aleksandar Antonov.”

“Why do you care about Mr. Antonov?”

“I’m a people person. And I’ve been hired to investigate the fire that killed him.”

There’s the briefest of pauses on his end. So brief that I might be imagining it. He says, “Mr. Barrack released a statement to the press concerning Mr. Antonov, and we’re fully cooperating with immigration officials.”

I don’t say anything. Let’s see if it makes him uncomfortable. Let’s see if it makes him want to say something more.

“Is that it, Mr. Genevich? I’ve got more important things to do, like clip my toenails.”

“Ew. TMI, Carter. Though I am surprised you’d deign to even touch your toes, like the rest of us.”

“What are you talking about? If you have something to say—”

I interrupt, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I wave my hand in the air, even though he can’t see it. “I’ve been saying it, Carter, you’re just not listening. Don’t bust a pretty cuticle. A few more questions before you hang up in a tizzy. First, forgive the cliché, but I find it odd that our paths would cross again so soon.”

“That’s not a question, Mr. Genevich.”

“You’re right. How’s this: isn’t it odd that our paths…”

“Very odd. Truly, a most unfortunate and cruel fate for me.”

“Come on. It’s fun.”

“Anything else? I’m giving you thirty more seconds of my time.” I know he wants to punctuate that statement with “which you can’t afford.”

“Did you know Mr. Antonov?”

“Not well, no.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means he was summer help, a driver. We chatted, but never for long and nothing more than destination and directions. Nice guy. Always clean. English was good.”

“That’s lovely, Carter. You should give his eulogy. So who hired him?”

“I think I’m done with your shtick. Our statement to the press should be sufficient for your needs.”

I haven’t even started my shtick yet. So I hit him with it. “Did you ever find out who the other Madison was in my surveillance photos?”

“What? No. And why the fuck would I care? Shouldn’t I be asking you that? Have you found out, Mr. Screwup? Are you daring me to sue you, Mr. Genevich?” He’s shouting. His words are clumsy, have two left feet. The earlier pause might’ve been an audio mirage, but this is legit. He’s way past the city limits of annoyed and entering bothered and concerned.

Something’s going on here, so I’m going to push him some more. Keep jabbing him in the chest with my big fucking finger. I say, “I’m triple-dog daring you to sue me, Carter.”

Carter laughs, an ugly sound, capable of killing flowers and other pretty things. “As you wish, Mr. Genevich. Expect some paperwork within a week.”

“Fuck you, too.”

I hang up and stomp over to the coat rack by the door. I want to pick it up and break it over my knee, but it’s a good coat rack, loyal like my couch. I spin it, instead, and watch my sports coat billow out toward me. My anger feels good and the temporary adrenaline rush feeds my energy-starved furnace, but I have to be careful to not overload. Mine’s an ecosystem always at the tipping point.

It’s pushing the midnineties again out there, so I’m going to H Street sans jacket. I adjust my hat and tie, roll up my sleeves. I say to the rack, “He’s bluffing about suing. I know he is.”

The coat rack, smartly, doesn’t say a thing back.