Zachary Karabashliev - 18% Gray

I promised him that I’d come see him again and asked if he wanted anything from the city. “Nichts,” the old man said, slipped down in bed, turned his unshaven face toward the tapestry, and closed his eyes.

I get in the car, turn on the lights, and drive.

Why can’t I remember what exactly we talked about? Why didn’t I spend more time with that fascinating old man? What more important things did I have to do?

Suddenly, in front of me appears a black, rectangular, coffin-shaped four-wheel buggy pulled by a black horse. I drive behind it, slowly taking a few pictures with my right hand. If it weren’t for the red reflective triangle affixed to it, this mysterious monochrome vision would have horrified me.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

This is Amish country. The Amish people, I know, have lived around here for centuries as if time doesn’t exist. They plow the land with horses and don’t use electricity, telephones, or cars. The Amish don’t believe in civilization, government, progress, art, music, secular love, taxes, 401ks, war, colorful attire, secondary education, or terrorism. The Amish believe in the Bible and its sufficiency, non-violence, equality and brotherhood, and the healing power of religion. The Amish believe in Jesus Christ as only Jesus Christ would believe in another Son of God. The Amish call themselves “plain people,” and Lancaster County is their territory. I take a little detour through Bird-in-Hand, Intercourse, and Paradise. These are all Amish towns. I can’t help but think about the vulgar connotations of their names.

I park in the center of Intercourse and step into a small, wooden cabin-store, illuminated by a gas lamp. The clerk is an elderly woman dressed like a servant out of a Vermeer painting. I also see two blond boys with typical Amish haircuts, wearing black pants, suspenders, and white cotton shirts. There is a red-faced old man with a beard but no mustache. All Amish men grow beards after they get married. Only beards, no mustaches. To them, the mustache symbolizes aggressive masculinity, conflict, and war. Intercourse, Pennsylvania. What if I ask the woman behind the counter for condoms? However, the silent humbleness of these people strangely tames my demons. I wonder if I should spend the night here. Intercourse. How righteous do you have to be, I wonder, to live in a town whose name meant “communion” two hundred years ago, and now is just the proper term for “fucking”? I exchange a few words with the old guy. I buy bread and milk, then get into my car, and figure out how to catch I-78 for New York. In a few hours, if the fog clears, I’ll arrive where this story has to end.

*

The morning Stella left, OPEC suspended most of its drilling projects, a train in southwest Germany crashed, killing forty-eight; in Kabul a suicide bomber took thirty-seven lives and injured 120; China approved sanctions on Iran; Pope Benedict XIV visited Turkey; seven American soldiers were killed by friendly fire in Fallujah; the problem with Kosovo’s status remained unresolved; and the Phoenix Space Mission was looking for a place to land on Mars. .

*

In Pennsylvania — and during most of my drive as a whole — it just drizzles, but in New Jersey, it really rains, in Newark it pours, and in New York City, it’s a deluge. I slide into the tunnel to Manhattan and drive in the left lane, with only a few cars ahead of me. The camera is loaded with color film now; the aperture is set at 2.8, the speed at 3 seconds. I open the window, holding the steering wheel with my left hand and pressing the shutter with my right. I know that the chrome throat of the tunnel will stay light gray, I know how the brake lights of the vehicles ahead of me will look — like curly red lines in the middle of the picture — the fluorescent lights under the roof will leave two diagonal white streaks that will converge in the middle to form a Y in the center of the rectangular frame. I know how this photograph will look, so why do I take it? Why do I keep taking pictures? Because I can or in spite of that? Why in the world do we do the things we do?

I step on the gas and accelerate. I want to get out of this tunnel. I want to cross to the other side. I’ve wanted to go to the other side for a long time now, damn it. For such a long time I’ve dreamed about going beyond and finding Stella and hugging her and taking her face in my hands and squeezing it like a rubber toy, and kissing her the way only I can — hurting her lips with my crooked eyetooth. I’ve dreamed of messing up her hair, digging my face into the small of her neck, sniffing the skin behind her ears like a dog — like the dog I really am. Shoo, doggy. S he’d pretend to chase me, Shoo! Go away, bad dog , and she’d laugh, and I’d push her down into the snow, and we’d roll around in it. She hates when I whitewash her, shoo, doggy! shoo! Stella hates the cold, shoo, doggy , but I do it anyway because I don’t know what else to do with my love. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how not to hurt her, when I now enter Manhattan through the merciless chrome throat of the Holland Tunnel.

Manhattan.

I am nearing the end of my journey. I can feel it. That buzzing in my head is stronger than ever. Buzzing in my head. Buzzing in the speakers is a sign that the system has not been grounded properly.

A little after midnight, I ring Danny’s doorbell.

“I’m coming,” the intercom crackles. Danny opens the door wearing a robe and white tube socks bunched up at his ankles and sagging in front, a couple of sizes too big. The loose socks with the dirty heels lead me up a flight of squeaky, wooden stairs. No woman should ever have to see a man in such socks, it’s disgusting. On the second floor, one of the apartments has no door — it’s just missing. The smell of marijuana, loud Indian disco music, and the voices of about fifty shouting people come from the inside. “We can join them later, if you want.” We climb up to his apartment. It’s the size of my garage in California. Loud Miles Davis blares from the speakers. “I’ll turn it down. I just can’t stand that shit they play down there. I don’t even know how they listen to it.”

A red paper lantern decorated with dragons from a Chinese restaurant has somehow been attached to the naked light bulb. The walls are painted yellow. Every inch is filled with books, movie posters, CDs, vinyl, tapes, paintings in different stages of development, photographs, newspaper cut-outs, and magazines. In the corner, there’s an amplifier and a guitar. Half of the wall is dedicated to small digital tapes labeled in Danny’s beautiful handwriting. “You’ll sleep here and I’ll sleep over there on that mattress.” I sit down. “What do you want to drink?” I lie down on the mattress, spread my arms, and look at the red dragons around the light bulb.

*

I had gotten up earlier than she did and was sipping coffee from a big yellow mug. The telephone rang. I turned down the TV and picked up. Jane. We exchanged words about Stella’s invitation to the Biennial. Stella appeared on the stairs, rubbing her eyes sleepily, wearing black cat slippers and a worn-out Fruit of the Loom shirt of mine covered in holes from countless washes.

Jane, Jane, how lucky was I supposed to be if Stella was getting out of the same bed I had slept in just moments ago?

Jane understood Stella, and Stella understood Jane. They talked about the theme of the Biennial— Author-Time —about Stella’s choice of medium, about the other participants — Kate Mason, Sarah Morris, Lou Meyer, Julian Hope, Malcolm Sype, Mary Heilman (unquestionably the star of the Biennial), Jim Dein, Robert Fox, Pyotr Oblonski (the new Russian prodigy), Bernard Foucault (who already lived in New York), Yasuma Morimura, and many others whom I hadn’t heard of. Stella would be one of the newest names there. I sat on the sofa with that stupid yellow cup in my hand. Between the muted CNN screen and me, the black cat slippers paced back and forth. Above them were the long, beautiful legs, covered with eternal blue bruises, the torn T-shirt which hardly covered her slowly freezing nakedness, the hand that scratched the knee, the other hand that held the receiver of the old black telephone.