Jeff Jackson - Mira Corpora

Slowly my vision expands to include a bottle of neon yellow pills. It sits next to the glass. The twist-top is slightly askew. Gert-Jan must be passed out in the living room because otherwise he would have knocked on the door by now. He doesn’t allow the partygoers to sleep in the bedroom with me. “It’s dangerous to let them get too close,” he says. “I found out the hard way when I was your age.”

My usual routine would be to shake the foot and point to the door. But Reptile-brain suggests that I should be the one to leave instead. I stand up and pull a pair of jeans and my green sweater from a heap on the floor. Quickly paste them onto my body. Add a pair of muddy tennis shoes to my feet. Lick my palm and arrange my stringy black hair in the mirror. Careful not to look too closely at anything else.

Too late. Something catches my eye: It’s my dream, reflected back to me in the mirror. I mean, it’s a reproduction of the painting I ripped from one of Gert-Jan’s magazines. The image of the lone orange tree is stuck to the wall above the bed with thumbtacks. A picture of terrible totemic power. You can get seriously lost in it. Reptile-brain tells me to leave it and not chance waking up the body. That is, if the body can even be awakened. Reptile-brain assures me it isn’t worth the risk. But I rip the image off the wall anyway and stuff it in my back pocket.

I tiptoe down the narrow hallway. Reptile-brain instructs me to be especially quiet. Soft snores issue from the darkened living room. A handful of revelers lie slumped across the ravaged couches. As I thread my way through the room, a man with a massive bushy beard stirs and squints at me. He begins to beckon with an outstretched hand but drifts back into unconsciousness before he can complete the gesture.

Gert-Jan is positioned by the front door, curled in a shapeless armchair. An occasional smile creeps across his sleeping lips. He’s forbidden me to leave the apartment complex, but Reptile-brain insists on getting more distance from this place. I push open the door and stumble outside. A thick night fog shrouds the building’s concrete breezeway. Reptile-brain tells me to make for the stairs. I take the steps two at a time, but it almost feels like I haven’t left. It’s as if the gloomy weather is just an extension of the apartment.

I reach the sidewalk but have no idea which way to turn. Reptile-brain says any direction is the right direction. I start walking alongside a desolate strip of freeway, listening for the rumble of distant traffic. I can’t remember the last time I was outside. The mist shrouds the rows of rusting factories and rotting warehouses that hang back from the highway. The overhead constellations are little more than rumors. Further down the road, I make out the smeared neon lights of a bodega. Reptile-brain suggests some food.

The store inhabits the shell of an abandoned garage. Smudges of motor oil fresco the far corners of the walls. There are no other customers in the place. Under buzzing fluorescent lights, I roam the two skinny aisles. I pass packets of laundry soap, party balloons, multi-colored shoelaces. I finger bags of chocolate marshmallows, dried noodles, jellied fruit. Suddenly I know what I need in the way of nourishment: smokes.

The cigarettes will be at the cash register. Wherever that is. I scan the aisles and spot the checkout tucked away at the rear of the store. A brown-skinned man behind the counter glares at me. I realize I probably don’t have any cash and plunge an exploratory hand into the front pocket of my jeans. I come up with a massive wad of bills. Far more money than I expected. My heart leaps into my lungs, making it hard to breathe. Reptile-brain instructs me to peel off one bill and shove the rest back in my pocket. Fair enough.

I slap the bill on the counter and gesture at a pack of cigarettes emblazoned with a snarling pit bull. The clerk taps the hand-lettered sign affixed to the side of the cash register. It says the store doesn’t accept large bills. For the first time, I notice the stratospheric denomination of my currency. I’ve never even seen the figurehead engraved on the front. The clerk shakes his head and shoves the bill back at me.

Reptile-brain tells me to leave, but I want those cigarettes. I lean across the counter and grab one of the packs. The clerk becomes apoplectic, punching the counter and pointing to the door. He shouts a stream of angry syllables. It’s probably just as well the dialogue comes across as pure sound. I mean, words would be too heavy for me at this point.

I pocket the smokes and dash out of the store. Reptile-brain tells me not to look back. I run recklessly through the fog. The only thing I can make out are the fresh squares of concrete that keep appearing in front of my feet. The sidewalk seems to be moving like a conveyor belt. Every so often, the milk-blue glow of a streetlamp passes overhead. I try to tally them to determine how far I’ve traveled, but I soon lose track. Reptile-brain suggests a place up ahead to cross the freeway.

I sprint headlong across the four lanes. Once I reach the other side, I turn in the opposite direction, determined to leave a cold trail for any pursuers. My head feels pumped full of helium. It’s as if I’m high or maybe hung-over or maybe even experiencing some variation on normal. I walk deeper into the whiteness. The high-beams of passing trucks occasionally tunnel through the fog. In the distance, a five-story building slowly takes shape.

I find myself crossing two lanes of traffic and heading toward this structure. It’s a beacon in the bleached terrain. As the night drains away, I stand on a grassy strip of median and inspect its brick architecture and darkened façade. A solitary window on the third floor is lit up. A silhouette flits in and out of the frame. It takes a moment to realize I’m back where I started. The fitfully pacing figure is Gert-Jan.

Reptile-brain insists that I flee the scene, but my feet remain moored on the median. I’m hypnotized by the painted lines of the highway. The pattern of dotted and unbroken lines, the yellow and white stripes, form a sort of code. The message is easily cracked: All pathways lead to the same point.

I sit down on the traffic island. This overgrown patch of grass seems as good a place as any to figure things out. The occasional delivery truck rattles past and I imbibe the rippling plumes of diesel exhaust. A glass bottle lies tangled in the weeds. Several yellowish swallows of dirty vodka remain in the bottom. They leave a sweet and burning aftertaste.

I try to form some thoughts about the money. Reptile-brain doesn’t know where it came from, so I’m on my own. I stretch one of the bills between my fingers and examine the portrait of an unfamiliar man in a powdered wig. A microscopic amount of crosshatches form the details of the arched eyebrows, the haughty cast of the eyes, the fractionally upturned mouth that seems to prophesy a smirk. I’m pretty certain the money isn’t the answer either. It’s probably a trap set by Gert-Jan. Something planted in my pockets as a test.

An idea: I take my lighter and place the flame against the edge of the bill. Several moments pass, then the cash ignites and crumples into a tail of ash. The black smoke gives off a faintly sweet whiff, a mixture of wet hay and something sugary. Cinnamon, maybe. The tiny bonfire is a gorgeous conflagration of blue flames that vanishes as quickly as a mirage. I can’t say why, but I know this is the right thing to do.

I light another bill. More smoke, et cetera. Maybe it’s just the combination of the vodka, the ambient hum of the roadway, and the smell of burning money, but things are starting to make sense in a way they haven’t before. I light the rest of the bills. The figure in the building across the street leans out of the third-story window. He shouts something. The sense is lost in the squall of a speeding taxi.