Laird Hunt - Ray of the Star

Possibly mad, he wandered the tree-lined streets of the city for weeks, shivering along with the slowly growing emerald leaves, and the animals in the modern but poorly maintained zoo he visited three afternoons in a row, where the wild boars bloodied their tusks on each other and small children climbed into the penguin exhibit and frightened themselves half to death and the owls flung themselves over and over again into the rusted bars of their cages, and with the old women everywhere on the streets, shivering in their hats and sunglasses, one of whom, he thought, said, “Poor man,” as she passed him, which, whether she had actually said it or not, made him laugh so hard he had to stop and lean against a lamppost, poor man, indeed: it was the acuity of this observation — whether or not it had been made by anyone or anything besides his bruised grapefruit of a head, let alone an old woman in a blue felt hat and long yellow coat dragging a handsome, though manifestly overfed Pekingese — its stunning incisiveness, which cut straight to the quick of his worn, unflattering outerwear, slumped shoulders, and rather saggy skin and vague, even sinister/vengeful puffery about assaulting life and so forth, with the result that as he continued his daily wanderings he realized 1) that given the level of sustained autoanalysis he was engaged in and no matter how much he might in his self-pitying, aspire to it, “mad” was probably inaccurate and that 2) well, there was no 2) but there might be, and that was something, maybe his sinister assault was underway after all, and how spectacularly interesting, and perhaps, well, perhaps it was time he took a little better care of himself.

Given that over the next few days Harry continued to agree with himself that better self-care was probably indicated, and convinced that both body and mind probably should, if something meaningful were to occur, be equally implicated by any eventual attentions, it struck him that he might well pay a visit to the acupuncturist whose more elaborate than average literature, which spoke of addressing just those things, had found its way into his mailbox, so he called and, almost before he had had a chance to finish his first explanatory sentence, was told to come over immediately, an injunctive that Harry was only too happy to comply with, and on the way over, sitting near the front of the bus, holding the acupuncturist’s literature in his hand, which featured a series of awkwardly rendered but nevertheless appealing body-mind slogans, e.g., in approximate translation, “Have a Happy Way!” not to mention, in each of the accompanying photographs of the doctor and his office, the presence of the sort of bell to be universally found on hotel front desks — at least filmic representations thereof — and which Harry had always found most compelling, he felt quite sure that he had taken a promising step indeed, one that couldn’t fail to help him, by dint of the renewed mental and physical vigor he would enjoy, to prosecute his assault,

“Come in,” he was told by the very Doctor Yang pictured holding one of the bells in the literature he had carefully folded and accidentally left sitting on the bus,

“Many thanks for seeing me at such short notice,” Harry said,

“Fill this out,” said Doctor Yang, handing over a clipboard and asking him to ring the bell that sat on a little teak table next to a chair in the corner, for which request, despite its absurdity in the face of the petit office and Doctor Yang’s continuing presence in the room, Harry was grateful, because it sufficiently mitigated the impulse the clipboard inspired — which was to immediately make for the door — for him to be able to make his way through the five or six pages of questions about his mental and physical health, which seemed so very poor on paper that, he thought, he might just as well go and lay himself down in the nearest meat locker, rather than on Doctor Yang’s table, which is where, nevertheless, after dinging the bell, he found himself gazing up at a mauve-colored drop ceiling as Doctor Yang — who had looked at his chart, checked his pulse, and rather cryptically asked him if he ate a lot of pizza, “maybe too much pizza?”—inserted authentic thick needles into twenty-six points in his upper and lower body, which at least every other time made Harry jump, though Doctor Yang told him that this was a sure sign that the width of the needles and their placement was correct, that amateur acupuncturists who had not undergone sufficient training, or who were naturally sloppy — like the employees in a nearby practice he had recently infiltrated by posing as a patient and subjecting himself to their woeful ministrations — tended to use thin needles and incorrectly insert them, which was completely pointless, unlike what he was doing, which was serious and ancient medicine, whereupon, having offered these contextualizing remarks, he set one of the bells next to Harry’s left hand and, giving it a cheery little whack, instructed him to ring it if he needed anything, and although Harry didn’t do any more than tap the side of the bell with his left ring finger during the long hour he lay twitching on the table in the half dark listening to what he thought was Gaelic chanting coming through a boombox somewhere on the floor, the bell continued to accord him a sense not just of comfort, but also of well-being, so that even though he was sure upon leaving that — although he had been happy enough to have had the experience — he would not make a return visit to Doctor Yang’s offices for the long-term course of follow-up needlework that was recommended to him — what the fuck, in short, had he been thinking? — he did that afternoon procure a bell at an office supply store near his apartment, which he placed on his bedside table and would ring or imagine ringing from time to time in the coming days and weeks, and he did go out to a charming restaurant near his house and order a large pizza, draped with asparagus and anchovies and drenched in extra cheese, which he ate with great appetite, while gazing out the window at the handsomely clad passersby and wondering if, rather than looking into alternative forms of treatment, he shouldn’t just go shopping.

Yes he should, he thought the next morning, and, giving his new bell a whack, decided to start by looking for something to replace the ill-fitting gray windbreaker he had dug out of the closet just before leaving, which, now that he was here in this city of smart sport coats, made him feel even older than he was, and which in collaboration with a bowling shirt, plaid trousers, and a park bench would have been all too perfect for pigeon feeding or coffin shopping, or so he put it to himself as he went up and down the mirror-lined escalators of a downtown department store, seeing himself over and over again from similar angles, none of them consoling, but before he could find men’s wear, he was called over to a glittering counter by an extraordinarily fragrant salesperson holding up a bottle of crimson skin toner and a cotton pad, who, after remarking on the “energetic” patches of eczema around Harry’s nose and mouth that were obscuring his finer attributes, worked his face over so vigorously with so many products that as Harry walked away with a bag of skincare items under his arm, he had the feeling that the salesperson had surreptitiously ripped off his face and replaced it with a lacquer mask, an impression that was not altered in the least by the sight of himself, again, in all the mirrors he was obliged to pass as he exited, suddenly too fatigued, despite the pleasure he had taken in being so assiduously scoured, after sitting there under the bright makeup lights and the salesperson’s cotton pads, to continue looking for a sport coat, in fact, too fatigued, he thought, especially in light of the previous days’ exertions, not to mention the nocturnal indigestion he had suffered after his overlarge meal, to do anything other than go back to his apartment and lie down, and he likely would have done just that had he not passed a small vintage clothing store, in the front window of which hung a worn, but nevertheless appealing brown velvet sport coat, which looked like it might fit him, a supposition that proved, happy event, to be accurate, and so pleased was Harry by this bit of luck, that he let the young woman helping him convince him that he should acquire a stack of green, blue, orange, and red T-shirts, each with a different image emblazoned on its chest, to wear under it, that this was the sort of thing that was fashionable in many cities, for men of all ages who cared about their appearance, as were thin-soled high-top sneakers with red stripes—“suitable, outside the urban context, for wrestling”—a gently used pair of which she slipped onto Harry’s feet and, a moment later, collected his money for, while simultaneously and courteously dropping his windbreaker and short-sleeved polyester button-up shirt in the garbage and handing him an indigo silk scarf, “on the house,” that a customer she didn’t like had left behind several days before, so that when after getting directions to a café where he might gently celebrate his purchases Harry took his leave, he found that his fatigue had left him, and that there was even a certain amount of spring to his step as he moved across the variegated grays of the sidewalk in his new shoes.