John Lutz - Fear the Night

At times Joe thought that if he weren’t so fucked-up, he’d approach Tiffany, introduce himself properly, and try to get to know her. As it was, he’d probably frighten her to death, and that would be the end of the takeout containers. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t ever going to talk to her unless the voices informed him it was okay to do so.

Every night, or so it seemed to him, Joe would sit on the curb near the Aal Commerce Building, an ornate, iron-fronted structure on Broadway. High on the building was a tall metal antenna with a light on top that blinked red in the darkness. No voices emitted from the antenna during the day, but at night, when Joe sat on the curb leaning his back against the light post, the transmission would be just for him. Some of the voices even referred to him by name. They warned him who to watch out for, who was on the side of his enemies. Tiffany, the voices assured him, was not one of the rude people that made his life, and the lives of countless others, so difficult.

Joe DeLong’s schizophrenia hadn’t presented itself until he was in his early twenties-about the usual age for males, he’d learned later. The disease ran in his family, on his mother’s side, so he shouldn’t have been surprised. His uncle Roger had spent most of his life in a sanitarium in Virginia, and Great-Aunt Vi, whom he’d never met, was rumored to have committed suicide when she ran her car into a bridge abutment on her way to see her psychiatrist. But schizophrenia was a subject seldom discussed in Joe’s family. His wife, Eva, had never heard the word in his presence until three years into their marriage, when Joe became difficult and she had to turn to someone for help. After her phone conversation with his mother came the first visit to the psychiatrist.

When the disease struck, it struck hard. It shook Joe’s life and turned it upside down. Medication helped, the increasing dosages of lithium, but he couldn’t remember to take his medicine every time. You had to do that, take it every time you were supposed to. It said so in the instructions right on the vials or bottles, even though you were too sick to pay much attention, which was why you needed the medicine. Sometimes the voices helped him to remember. They gave him guidance.

The job went first. Who needed a phone solicitor who might say anything at any time, and to anyone? Eva left him; then Joe drove wedge after wedge between himself and the rest of his family. He began deliberately refusing his medication. Alcohol was almost as good. Alcohol was more socially acceptable than mental illness. Alcohol temporarily relieved the fear. But alcohol was sneaky, invented by the enemy. Alcohol exacted its price.

After one of the increasingly frequent arguments with his mother, and a fistfight with his father, Joe left home for good with nothing but a suitcase full of clothes and a wallet containing almost a thousand dollars-all the money left in his savings account.

The money lasted less than a month, as Joe sank deeper into alcoholism. Some of it went for booze and rent, and some even went for food. Hamburgers and French fries at first, then canned stew, then watery soup.

When there was no more money, he left the fleabag hotel where he’d been sleeping and began his life on the streets. It wasn’t as if he had a choice. He was broke, and the voices said his family, even if he had wanted to talk to them, were away somewhere on a ship. Eva was married now to a surgeon in Warsaw. The voices spoke of him as “the sawbones in Warsaw.” Joe always smiled when he heard that.

Joe’s luck didn’t last much longer than his money. He was mugged one night in Washington Square and walked thereafter with a slight limp. The pain never left his right hip. Wine helped that, when he had enough money to buy some. The wine dulled the pain and helped to keep his mind from shattering. The food left by the Candle in the Night actors helped to keep his body from destroying itself. The voices said that’s what the body did when it couldn’t get enough to eat: it digested itself. Joe often had bad dreams about that.

When the weather was nice, like this time of year, he didn’t think it was such a terrible life there on the streets. He’d perfected techniques for panhandling, for begging directly to carefully chosen fellow citizens. He could tell by their shoes, sometimes by their aura, if they’d part with some pocket change. Often enough, he was right. He took an odd kind of pride in being an effective beggar. Pride in what he did for money. That was a part of his soul that begging couldn’t smear.

Joe had in his possession about a third of a bottle of Pheaser’s Phine Burgundy. Now and then he’d duck into a doorway and take a carefully controlled sip. He suspected that when the wine ran out, his luck for the day would run out at the same time. He didn’t want that to happen before the actors came out of the diner and left their takeout containers. He was hungry.

So far, he wasn’t worried. The voices had predicted he’d be hungry. Joe laughed and spat on the sidewalk. That was an easy call. Sometimes he wished he could talk back to the voices and actually record their conversation and play it back over and over. But, if he wasn’t mistaken, something about that was against the law.

It was almost midnight when the actors emerged from the diner. Joe had been seated on the second step of the dark doorway he would occasionally back into to take sips of wine. He didn’t move when they came out the diner door, talking and laughing. His heart fell when he saw no white containers. Most of the actors had on dark clothes, like people wore in New York, as if they were mourning, and if they’d had containers, he would have seen them.

This wasn’t right! This was goddamned-

There was a flash of white against Tiffany’s dark jacket.

Yes! She was carrying a takeout container between her coat and her black purse. That was why Joe hadn’t seen it.

When the cluster of actors reached the corner, then crossed without waiting for the traffic signal to change, Tiffany unobtrusively and daintily placed the container on top of the day’s trash in the wire receptacle.

Joe stood trembling, waiting until the shadowy figures had disappeared in vaster darkness down the street; then he hurried toward the trash receptacle.

It was going to be a good night after all.

2001

After Verna’s departure, Dante applied himself all the harder. He focused on himself, on what he could and would do, and thought of the past as what it was-something that no longer existed. It was a delicate and protective attitude, but one he could maintain. If only he didn’t have bad dreams.

He graduated magna cum laude from ASU in three years, then promptly earned his MBA from the Wharton School. Corporate recruiters saw him as prime cut. A month before his graduation from Wharton, he had a position secured as a bond analyst in the Chicago financial firm of Koch and Banks.

Dante liked Chicago and was soon making a six-figure salary. Koch and Banks profited from his talents, and was generous in its bonuses and stock options. Investing was a game he found incredibly simple, and his own holdings grew exponentially. He wasn’t yet as rich as he wanted to be, but only because he hadn’t had time. For Dante, money wasn’t going to be a problem.

At least once a month he returned to the Strong Ranch and saw Adam. His mentor and surrogate father couldn’t have been more proud of Dante, and was still providing a kind of permanent home both physically and spiritually. Though he lived in a luxurious Lakeside Drive penthouse apartment, the ranch remained Dante’s still point in the universe, where he could always retreat to and regenerate himself when life became difficult.