The Family Unit and Other Fantasies (20 page)

He was awakened by the cello sounds from upstairs—the perky change, to be exact, that his neighbour momentarily made before shifting back into misery. The sprightly segue seemed oddly longer than usual tonight—never-ending, actually—and Selwyn pulled a clock radio closer. It was three
A.M.

Jesus, he thought, am I the only one in the building who hates hearing this? Or is this how it is up in the country, live and let live past the point of absurdity? The little jig grew more and more lively, stopped for a second, then restarted; Selwyn could have sworn that the man had slowly turned the instrument around, spanked it, then turned it back again and gone on playing, in an elderly imitation of how Jack Lemmon played in
Some Like It Hot
.

Shocking himself, Selwyn flew out of his chair, left his apartment, and in seconds was outside the old man’s door. He didn’t tap timorously this time; he banged with the force of a full open palm. After a second, the jaunty music guttered out in a discordant note. Then the old man was standing before Selwyn, fully dressed, in plaid shirt and pleated pants, as if it were the middle of the day.

“Yes?” he said innocently, and more than slightly startled.

“Can you stop it?” Selwyn said in a belligerent tone he barely recognized as his own.

“Can I stop what?”

“Stop what. The music. Of course.”

“The music?” The man actually rubbed his chin, in an old-fashioned I’m-taking-in-new-information way. “Why? Is it bothering you?”

“Look—” Acting almost without volition, Selwyn leaned in close to him, nearly nose-to-nose. “Let’s not play games.”

“I’m not. It’s just that no one’s ever been bothered by it before.”

The man, appearing “interested,” was clearly really flustered, clearly really needy of keeping to his custom of playing hot and cold cello at all hours of the day and night. It was as if someone had threatened an animal he owned, Selwyn thought, with a contempt that was the opposite of the usual “compassion” he showed to anyone irritating him, and that prevented his taking any action.

“That’s it,” he said conclusively, and pushed past the man. The instrument itself, leaning against an elegant old wood chair, was too big to deal with. But the bow was nice and light. Selwyn snapped it up, then placed it “protectively” under his arm.

“Well, we’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see what happens now.”

And with that, followed only by a weak, mewing-like whimper from the man, Selwyn left the room and slammed the door.

The bow was placed in a corner of his apartment like a spoil, a scalp, and Selwyn stared at it with a sense of petty, gloating triumph—another new emotion for him. Each time he passed the old man after that, his neighbour was obviously always about to beseech him, and Selwyn always shot him back a look that said, don’t push me, you’ll be sorry, and the man backed off.

Early one afternoon, Selwyn was appealed to by proxy. Tim the super came to the door and opened it with his own key.

“Oops,” he said, seeing Selwyn, who was still sitting staring at the bow. “I assumed you’d be at work.”

Nice try, Selwyn thought, with a flash of hatred and then—without even intending to—shot out, “Nice try. That’s a cheap trick. Next time, knock.”

Tim seemed pushed off-stride by so quickly being called on the carpet. He began stammering an explanation that his tenant didn’t let him finish.

“Maybe you can get by with that up here in the boonies,” Selwyn said, “but I’m not from here.”

“I’m well aware of that,” the super said, trying to evince a sense of cynical humour but only succeeding in looking as if he had entered the far end of his forty-to-seventy age range. “Believe me, I know.” He pointed a now-shaky, suddenly liver-spotted hand at the implement in the corner. “I just came to pick up a piece of Merce Caldwell’s instrument.”

“Oh, you have, have you?” Selwyn stood then, and though shorter than the lanky upstater he now moved with an intimidating bantam scrappiness. “Well, why haven’t you come here about
anything else
?”

With that, he grabbed the super by the back of his plaid shirt and pulled him harshly towards the closet, which he opened, the man recoiling from the door coming only inches from his face.

“Look at those nails! Look
down
at them! Do you know what damage they’ve already done to me? Do you know how long ago you promised to fix them?”

“Yes, I’m very well aware—” Tim stuttered, trying hopelessly to retain some dignity “—that I said I would—”

From there, Selwyn hauled him to the other sites of neglect, first nearly sticking his face into the wall of the unpainted kitchen “—Look at that splotch! Do you know how long ago you promised to—” and last, jerking him into the bathroom, where the super finally fought free, obviously fearing where his face would be directed to acknowledge the faulty flushing of the toilet.

“I said that I’ll do it!” he cried, cheeks aflame. “Though I seem to recall you were in no hurry before!”

“I was lying!” Selwyn yelled, elated by admitting it. “I was lying to be nice!”

“All right then! But if I were twenty years younger, you wouldn’t stand a chance!”

Selwyn knew that, at whatever age, the man was fit and feisty, so he didn’t argue. He just, with relish, rubbed it in. “But you’re
not
, are you?”

The super looked at him with the kind of revulsion he reserved for the most pestilential vermin; to Selwyn, it felt good. The older man made a sudden feint to retrieve the bow, but—as his tenant had started bobbing in goalie-like anticipation—he reconsidered and reluctantly fled the room.

Once he was alone, Selwyn felt something that went way past an indecent sense of success. He experienced a rush of arousal unlike any he’d ever known, an acknowledgment of great power inside himself, regardless—or because—of how meanly and inappropriately he had expressed it.

Looking at the laptop still sitting before him—now sporting a screensaver of a grotesquely animated cow jumping over a madly grinning moon—he knew what had caused it. He had thrown his old self in the sewer, along with all the money his old self had owed, the people to whom it had (pathetically) appealed, the jobs to which it had (pointlessly) applied. All of his weakness had been washed down a drain, and bubbling back up, overflowing, inviting his submersion, was only one element: aggression.

Selwyn listened for the thump, but it had subsided. Or had it? He didn’t know.

That night, he had been ravenously hungry. Still with no wheels, Selwyn nearly ran the ten blocks to Hilly’s, the diner, where he ate like an animal: burger, bacon, and bun, topped off by a piece of chocolate cake suffering under a huge and oozing scoop of ice cream. This was a far cry from the man who had known and bought every brand of low-fat yogurt and fat-free cheese in the city.

“God, that was good!” he cried and slapped his distended gut. Then he paid for it with nearly the last of his father’s cash, but he didn’t care.

The student/waitress gave him his change, watching him with her usual avidity.

“What are
you
looking at?” he said, making her and himself jump.

“Nothing? What do you mean?” She had that tentative, teenage, every-one-of-my-sentences-is-unsure style of speaking.

“I was just kidding,” he said, aware he’d come on strong, amazed he wasn’t mumbling—
as if!
or however the hell teenagers talked today; he only knew what he saw on TV. “Sorry.” He sensed he was being unbearably sleazy but just hoped she was green enough not to know.

“Forget it?” she shrugged.

Now he realized that he had underestimated her idea of her own experience. She seemed to think she had a completely clear understanding of what he was—which was wrong, but
whatever!
—and felt she was not too young to know how to handle it.

“You’re a writer or something?” she said.

“Yes—how did you know?” he said, immediately.

“You’ve got that pale, sort of pompous look?”

She laughed, and then he did, too. How could he be offended? She wasn’t teasing him; she was teasing someone else, a man she thought he was. And since it was the man he had always wanted to be, why would he mind? In fact, he could be that person now; he could be anyone at all.

“You’re an English major?” he asked.

She nodded. No wonder she had been eyeing him: he fit perfectly the fantasy of a tough yet neurasthenic novelist she had been taught. Here was one right in the town where she worked to pay her way through school. He was like her homework assignment.

Selwyn, of course, had always been tormented—partly by his father, but mostly by himself—but now he had become a tormented
artist
, and that made all the difference.

“It’s a hard row to hoe,” he said suavely. “It’s just you and that blank piece of paper, in the boxing ring, circling each other.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors?” she said smartly. “That’s not very good writing?”

“I’m not writing
now
,” he said testily, his transformation into this man complete enough to include his touchy, insecure, kneejerk reactions. “Not at these prices.”

His comment quieted her; she backed off then walked away. Had he insulted and scared her? So what if he had? Stupid kid, he thought, as this new man, bitter and sage. He’d find himself a
real
woman.

Then he got his answer as to what impact he’d had. She returned to his side and, in what seemed an apology, filled his coffee cup again.

“On the house?” she said, as a secret.

When he took her back to his apartment—and who cared if there were no couch as yet, this new man could use the floor—he completed her assignment in a way she could never tell any teacher. And he warned her, too, about confiding in a counsellor or a parent or—worse yet—a reporter.

“Why would I want to do that?” she asked, still acting as if she were old enough to handle this, too prideful to admit how hurt she was by how horrendously he had treated her. Tears hid in her eyes, waiting for the chance, once she was alone, to fall. “Get, you know, real?”

Before he made her walk home, he grabbed her bag and took her tips for the night. He was, after all, almost broke. Then, by himself, he opened his window and howled like the most dangerous wild dog in the world. And no one in that dumb hick town dared answer him.

Because they never do, things did not go backwards. Selwyn soon spent the last of his money—mostly on beer, even though he’d always been a one glass of white wine man in the city, and firecrackers, buying them for the first time and setting them off in forests and on the sides of roads.

To finance himself further, he shifted his focus to the diner, for his young girlfriend was an impeccable inside source. After an evening of excruciating (for her) intimacy, he forced her to promise that she would pilfer from the register. This kind of robbery went on for weeks—with far more efficiency than he would have expected—until she entreated him tearfully to let her stop: there were suspicions, and she needed to keep her job to stay in school. He angrily agreed, but at a physical price, her vocal response to which upset his neighbours much more than an old man’s music, and caused them to bang on all the walls and ceilings.

With four-legged cunning, he kicked away the artist now like a skin in spring and shifted tactics again, to take advantage of the stupid trusting nature of his community. Hardly anyone in the apartment complex (and how “complex” was it compared to where he’d come from? Not at all!) locked their door, or if a lock was turned, it was old and vulnerable. During the day, Selwyn entered the apartments of those still young enough to work, and, after the departure of ambulances, church cars, or casino buses, the homes of the elderly. When he got tired of preying on his own little house, he started stealing from those that surrounded it, eight in all.

It took a while—for the idea of a crime being committed in the country spreads slowly, because it occurs rarely and so is believed reluctantly, as opposed to the city where it is always immediately accepted, no matter what the circumstance and whether it’s true or not—but people began to catch on. Fliers were posted in the laundry rooms beside and in marked contrast to the benign, hand-drawn ads for babysitters or “chest of drawers for sale.”

“Has cash been stolen from your apartment?”

A complex-wide meeting was called and, so as not to attract attention, Selwyn went. He sat right amidst the others—it was a good turn out and not all old, since he’d been democratic in his thievery—and though unshaven and unable to remember the last time he’d bathed, he tried only to be obtrusive by craning his head to hear better what was said. Still, more than one neighbour moved away.

A dumb and dumpy local cop spoke: hallway “watches” were to be established, and Tim the super (whom Selwyn could have sworn stared at him suspiciously the whole time) promised to change all locks.

Selwyn realized he had been all too clever, because now not only did he have to stop stealing, for it was too big a risk, but the new security would mean higher rents, so there would be more that he couldn’t afford.

Soon he maxed out all of his credit cards. His furniture, which had
arrived so recently, began to get repossessed and carried out in broad daylight, before the prying eyes of other tenants, some of who spied from behind their Venetian blinds. One day, the fliers in the laundry room contained a police sketch, which while looking nothing like Selwyn did not look unlike him, either.