The Prisoner of Vandam Street (9 page)

T
he next day, at the crack of noon, Ratso and I seemed to be the only souls stirring about the loft. The cat was still asleep on my bed, having had a rather active night chasing cockroaches and, as Ratso didn’t waste a second to tell me, depositing a fresh Nixon on his backpack. McGovern was in a coma on the couch. Piers and Brennan had gone early in the morning to that place where people say they go when they have that thing that they call a job.

“I can’t believe that fucking cat took another dump on my backpack,” said Ratso, as he kicked the espresso machine into gear.

“Pinch yourself,” I said.

“I tell you, that fucking cat is anti-Semitic.”

“That’s not true, Ratso. Don’t personalize the incident. The cat’s not anti-Semitic. She’s antieverything.”

“Maybe the cat’s not antieverything. Maybe she’s merely projecting
your
attitudes toward the rest of us.”

“That’s also possible,” I said.

“Well, get over it. Dr. Skinnipipi wants you to stay put and, speaking on behalf of all of the Village Irregulars, we intend to make sure that that’s what happens.”

“Fuck Dr. Skinnipipi and the bedpan he rode in on.”

“Now there’s a mature attitude. No wonder Brennan calls you the Jewish Patient.”

“Fuck Brennan and the tripod he rode in on. Do we have anything for breakfast besides leftover take-out cartons of squid and pickled vegetables from Big Wong’s?”

“Of course! I did some shopping yesterday. Borrowed your credit card. Hope you don’t mind. I’ve got some fresh bagels.”

“The bagels are decaying.”

“The only thing that’s decaying is McGovern’s mind. Have you noticed his apparent selective hearing? Sometimes he can hear things fine and sometimes he can’t hear shit. It’s got to be some kind of pathological trigger mechanism, either conscious or unconscious. It’s one of the most irritating and sick things I’ve ever seen.”

“Say again? What? Your dick’s caught in the espresso machine?”

“Don’t start,” said Ratso. “He’s sleeping on the couch over there. He might hear you.”

“He can’t hear anything!” I said in a louder voice. “Except when he wants to!”

“Shhhh. Don’t wake him up. It’s a pleasant, peaceful morning. I’ll toast a few bagels and we’ll have some espresso. It’ll be just like old times.”

It was a nice Ratsolike sentiment, actually. “Just like old times.” It was, however, a sentiment that, in all good faith, I could not really share. There was an elephant in the room, you see. And I wasn’t merely referring to McGovern. The fact is, I was pretty sure that Piers had already spoken to Ratso and if he hadn’t, he would soon. All of them seemed to be reinforcing each other against me. They were probably all in it together. Dr. Skinnipipi, the cops, and my supposed friends. This was not good old-fashioned New York paranoia on my part. It was a concerted campaign to discredit me, disbelieve me, and disrespect me. It was better, of course, than being dismembered, which was no doubt what could be currently happening to the woman across the street.

The dynamic occurring in the loft was nothing new in the world. Once people begin to think of you as a patient you cease to be thought of as a person. But just because I wasn’t a person any longer did not mean that I wasn’t a human being. I could see the subtle changes in the behavior of my erstwhile friends. The hesitancy. The dismissiveness. The questioning glances shot back and forth to one another when they thought I wasn’t looking. Yes, I was obviously delirious at times. I was also seeing the world and reality in a new and different fashion, courtesy of Malaria Airlines. And one of the landscapes I was observing, with the practiced and penetrating eye of the detective, was an endless dusty plain fraught with the fragility and the futility of the human condition.

“So what do you think of Piers’s idea, Kinkstah?” said Ratso, as he brought over a tray of bagels and espresso. His words and his gestures seemed stilted, unctuous, and solicitous.

“I think it’s great,” I said. “What is it?” I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

“You know. He said he brought it up to you last night.”

“Oh, yeah. You mean Piers’s idea that he should be the one to sleep on the couch because he’s known me longer than McGovern? I believe he also stated that he’s responsible for introducing me to McGovern, which is certainly something to be proud of for an adult male Australian currently living on this planet. There is, of course, the small matter of getting McGovern off the couch first. This maneuver may require a forklift or possibly a team of Lilliputian engineers.”

“Kinkstah, Kinkstah, Kinkstah,” said Ratso, while eating a bagel at the same time.

“I hate it when people say your name three times like that. It means they think you’re fucking up and they feel sorry for you but they don’t know how they can help. Is that about it?”

“Kinkstah, Kinkstah, Kinkstah, Kinkstah, Kinkstah,” said Ratso. “What’re we going to do?”

“I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to throw up if you keep treating me like a sick child.”

“That’s what you’re behaving like!” shouted Ratso.

“No, I’m not!” I shouted.

“Look,” said Ratso, in only a slightly more conciliatory tone. “You’re like that little fucking kid in that fucking movie. You see dead people and you talk to them. I know this. I’ve watched you conversing with them as you’re lying in bed almost every night this week.”

“You saw ’em, too, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. They’re not there! That’s the whole point! Now you see a guy beat up some woman. Now you see a guy with a gun. What do you expect us to believe?”

“No matter how ugly it gets,” I intoned, “there’s nothing as beautiful as the truth.”

“Well, it’s gotten pretty ugly,” said Ratso, helping himself to another bagel. “Almost as ugly as the floor of this loft.”

“McGovern just cleaned the place up yesterday. I saw him do it. Or don’t you believe me?”

“Oh, I believe you. It’s just that McGovern’s a slob, Brennan’s a slob, Piers is a slob, you’re a slob, and I’m a slob. What this place needs is a woman’s touch.”

“Why don’t you ask the woman across the street?”

“That’s cute, Kinkstah. Maybe it’s time I reminded you that the cops couldn’t find the man or the woman you supposedly saw. They couldn’t even find an apartment on the floor you said it was. So perhaps Piers is right about you getting some—uh—professional help. And I don’t mean Kent Perkins. I mean a good shrink you can just talk to. Tell him what you thought you saw. Tell him how everybody’s stabbing you in the back. How there’s a great conspiracy against you made up of the doctors, the cops, and your old friends. Tell him you’re Jesus fucking Christ!”

“Let’s not drag Jesus into this. Jesus was a great teacher. He just didn’t publish. And it’s amazing what a rumor factory this loft is. Yes, Kent Perkins will be arriving soon, just in the nick of time, I might add. And yes, he is a professional, in the narrow sense of the word. But it is I, the amateur, who will be directing his every movement, other than bowel, of course. God loves an amateur! Kent will merely be my eyes! He will merely be my ears! He will merely be my legs!”

“I’ve seen better legs on a carrier pigeon.”

“—as I was saying, Kent will act at my behest, the amateur giving marching orders to the professional—”

“—and marching powder.”

“For I have no use for professionals, my dear Ratso, as mere professionals. Kent will be here in the capacity of my friend. I don’t require professional help, as you so sensitively put it, of any kind. Remember, my dear Ratso, Ratso, Ratso, it was professionals who built the
Titanic.
It was amateurs who built the Ark.”

I
had a lot riding on Kent Perkins’s much-anticipated arrival in New York, my success in this rather unusual investigation, my reputation as a private investigator, my interpersonal relationships, such as they were, and my likelihood of remaining an ambulatory citizen who doesn’t have to read a sign every day that says, “The Next Meal Is Lunch.” That is a lot of baggage for one Californian to carry and I just hoped Kent was up to the job. Perkins was, of course, not a native Californian. He was born and raised in Texas. As I always like to say, “It’s no disgrace to come from Texas; it’s just a disgrace to have to go back there.”

With relations what they were in the little loft community, and my condition what it was, waiting for Kent Perkins soon took on all the spiritual proportions of
Waiting for Godot.
I was coming to see his arrival as my last opportunity for resurrection after many days of being crucified by tiny baby ducks. It was becoming clear even to me that I was not getting any better. On the other hand, I was not especially getting any worse. I simply vaselined back and forth between feeling almost normal and then wandering around lost, shivering, delirious, feverish, hopeless, and disoriented in the grip of a ruthless, unforgiving malarial fugue. But the biggest problem was that all my ills, quirks, comments, and foibles were compounded by the fact that I was living my life in a bell jar under the intense, often misguided scrutiny of the Village Irregulars, and there was no escaping them. Once you’re in hospital, nuthouse, opium den, marriage, or gay men’s choir, it’s not so easy to get out again, and even if you’re able to, some of the crud invariably rubs off. The loft, I felt, had a little bit of all these institutions going for it, and whatever peace or freedom I’d once felt there now seemed to have dissipated like so many smoke rings crashing themselves to death under the heels of the lesbians. Everybody knew I was not well. Sometimes I even knew it myself. But reality was still reality, and regardless of my fevered, delirious state of mind and body, I fervently felt that I was observing this rare creature more clearly than ever before in my life. Hell, I thought, many people had never even seen it at all.

“Almost time for this poncey bloke from the left coast to be arrivin’, innit?” Brennan asked the question casually, but underneath I detected a note of quiet concern.

“He’ll get here when he gets here,” I said.

“So will Jesus, mate, but there’s no point in waitin’ up for him, is there? Do you get my meanin’? Should I stick around the flat to meet and greet or should I go out to the pub? That’s the question, innit?”

Brennan had been through about a case of Guinness that afternoon and it hadn’t seemed to slow him down a bit. If anything, he seemed slightly more dignified than usual. This was saying a lot for Mick because he did not suffer dignity gladly.

“The real question, Mick, is whether you care to get to the bottom of this mess or not?”

“You mean the flat, mate? It’s a true no-hoper. You’d have to dig through twelve archaeological layers of cat shite to get to the bottom of it. You’d probably find Troy and Atlantis on the way.”

“I always kind of liked Hector and the Trojans. I would’ve liked to have fought with the Myrmidons. They were ants transformed into soldiers. I’d like to have hosed Helen. I don’t know if I’d have enjoyed listening to Achilles always complaining about his heel.”

“Bet the Trojans would be proud to know they have a gumboot named after ’em.”

“But what about Helen of New York? What’s happening to her may be a crime that goes unnoticed by history. And she lives right across the street.”

“So you still believe in your fair lady, mate? Maybe the little treacle really exists. I’ll give you that, mate. Let’s say she does. Not much we can do about it, is there?”

“Maybe there is, Mick.”

“Like what, mate?”

“If nothing else, my dear Watson, we can rescue her from Troy.”

“Sod the Trojans, mate. I thought we were speaking about Helen of New York, weren’t we?”

“There’s only one Helen, Watson. She represents all womankind and it is the job of mankind to see she is not forever left to twist in the wind on some archaic tenement clothesline, strung out like a medieval banner, hanging there helpless between the sooty alleyways of truth and vermouth.”

“Cut the rubbish, Kink. When you start spouting all this Watson shite, it always worries me.”

“Et tu, Watson?”

“Sod Watson, I said! You’re crook, mate. We’re trying to get you well, aren’t we? Your bloke better pop in soon or you’ll find yourself back in hospital. And this time your room may have rubber walls.”

“If it’s good enough for van Gogh, it’s good enough for the Kinkster.”

But Brennan wasn’t listening. He’d already placed a fresh can of Guinness in his coat pocket and was headed for the door. The cat and I received his parting words in stoic silence.

“If your cowboy bloke doesn’t get here soon,” he said from the doorway, “he may as well not come at all. I owe it to you to tell you, Ratso and Akerman have been scheming with that sawbones Skinnipipi. I’d say your days here are numbered, mate. Just a word to the wise, innit?”

After the door closed behind Brennan’s low-to-the-ground, wise Irish ass, the cat and I looked at each other. We’d been expecting something like this, so it was no surprise to either of us really.

“Too bad they don’t make Gourmet Last Supper cat food,” I said.

The cat, of course, said nothing. Cats do not like to be doublecrossed by people they thought were their friends and they see no humor in this traitorous behavior whatsoever. Indeed, they see no humor in anything whatsoever. That’s why we call them cats. That’s why they don’t trust anybody. That’s why they never laugh at their own jokes.

Darkness was falling on the city and it seemed to be falling on my life as well. I glanced over at the ragged old davenport and I noticed that McGovern had left the building. It was almost uncanny how a large human being like McGovern could slip away like a thief in the night and not be observed by a great detective like myself. Maybe I was missing something. Maybe I was not seeing things clearly. Maybe I was already crazier than the guy who thinks he’s Napoleon.

“What if I
am
Napoleon?” I said to the cat.

The cat did not respond. Or maybe she did respond. However you chose to look at it, the question was barely out of my mouth when she launched herself almost violently into a new campaign of licking her anus.

“Stop licking your anus!” I shouted. The cat, of course, said nothing. This did not terribly surprise me. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to speak when you’re busy licking your anus.

“Why?” I cried. “Why are you doing it? Is it because you don’t like rhetorical questions or because you don’t like dictators?”

The cat now stretched and began walking rather dismissively away from me and toward the kitchen window. I got out of the chair and followed, continuing to try to reason with her. There was already enough misunderstanding in the loft and the world, I felt.

“Why can’t we all just get along?” I asked.

It was, of course, another rhetorical question. It wasn’t even original. What was the matter with me, I wondered? Why did I continue to constantly hector the cat with rhetorical questions when I knew very well how much she despised them? It wasn’t easy being a cat, I reflected. Dead dictators hated you for being independent. Sanctimonious Buddhists refused to include you in religious paintings of the animal kingdom. Delirious, wild-eyed cowboy Jews from Texas followed you around badgering you with rhetorical questions. Dogs barked, cars roared, garbage trucks grumbled. Large mammals came into your home and never left. Hell, whatever happened to playing with a ball of yarn?

I stood at the kitchen window, looking down at another narrow, lonely Vandam Street night, while dawning in my troubled mind was the realization that anyone who spends his time futilely attempting to empathize with an antisocial cat must, indeed, be sicker than he thinks. It was just about at that moment that I saw her. She was running down the middle of the street toward Hudson. She was running like a crazy woman. I didn’t need the opera glasses to know, perhaps instinctively, that she was the same one I’d seen before.

I glanced quickly at the building across the street. The light was on again in the apartment. Inside, I could see a dark, ill-defined figure pacing back and forth like a man in a cage, like the Wild Man from Borneo, doomed, determined, desperate to break out into the smoky night.