Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

I get to the elevator just in time to see Chris look up and KC look down. The door closes and the elevator clanks down. That’s not very nice is all that comes to mind at first, but each echoing metallic bang triggers a new qualification. The statement devolves to fuck-chump bastards. Then just to what I believe to be the sensation, the feel and sound of heat in the brain. Fuckin’ bastards. I mouth it this time as though it will dispel the heat via tongue of flame, but it comes out as a mumble and a hiss. I remember to push the down button. I smack it. It doesn’t light. I smack it again and try to remember if the light had come on before. I smack it again and then am contented to believe that the bulb is out.

The elevator clanks below and then the doors wrench open. I look out the window. They go into the street — south down Greene. None of them seem to be talking. They move like an errant shoal — not quite in unison, not quite apart. What is the secret communication between them that allows them to effect a pace and direction? Perhaps it’s as simple as time and proximity — a tacit agreement, its only purpose being expedience. And they’re gone.

They’ve left the radio on and I hear the horns — trumpet and sax — it’s Sly. And the bass. “I Want to Take You Higher.” But no. It shifts. It cuts out. More synthetic drums. I try to continue with Sly’s version in my head, but it’s been corrupted, bent, and now I can’t remember the first words, the tune. I think, but the monotone babble keeps me out of the song. “I Want to Take You Higher.” “I’ll take you there” —fly away to Zion. “What we call the beginning is often the end . .” I can still recall, quite clearly, holding my mother’s urn while standing in a birch grove, wondering where my father was. The strange minister was waving his hand as though performing some hocus-pocus ritual to cleanse, or remember, or forget. Knowing that place then: knowing that place now; the street out there on a gray day. There aren’t any trees down there, only lamp posts. Patterns on the street flicker in light’s absence like leaf shadows in moonlight. Perspective and moonlight and memory shift, and you begin again and again. And what good is that? What good would it do to take a stand, to stop the cyclical occurrences? If the hero is the explorer, then the heroic act is to explore, to find origin, before the fragmenting effects of action, experience, memory, and meaning. Yes, I can smell the pear soap Claire uses for the children’s bath, the residue on her hands, the whiff of it when she’d scratch my stubble and whisper, “Shave,” in front of the babes, pregnant with sex. The ridiculous twinning of sacred and profane, the innocent and the erotic. “It’s going to be a rough row to hoe.” Whatever you said Gruntcakes, it was so true: No progress, Gruntcakes, in this twist of birth, fate, and fire.

Nothing has moved, so I push the button again. This time it lights and I can’t help but laugh, but when it comes out, it sounds like a nasty little cackle — unfit for a prince of the world.

It’s brighter outside than I thought it would be. Even in the gray I have to squint. I follow their trail, ignoring the fact that I can’t actually track them across the slab. It’s a shame, really, how dead my senses are. I want to be able to retrace their footsteps — moisture, scent, heat — like a pit viper perhaps, create an image in my brain with other sensory devices. Although I’m not sure what I would do when I found them — envenomate one, then swallow him whole.

* * *

I find them at the deli. Everybody’s ordering the two-dollar chicken — half a scrawny bird from the old rotisserie with two sides. My crew stands by the case, single file, not talking to one another. KC is no longer my friend, I suppose. He doesn’t acknowledge me when I get on the line. I look at the case, the processed meats with their claims of quality. The slicer on the back counter is gummed up with meat and cheese residue — mad cow prions on the blade. I follow their lead and get the special. I can’t seem to convince the squat man behind the counter that I don’t want the gray vegetables or any other side. He stuffs my container with gooey white rice.

They all pay and leave without me, still not talking to each other, and they stay a good twenty yards in front of me outside. When I get back to the building, they’ve already gone up, but someone’s wedged a small piece of cardboard in the door to keep it open for me. When I get upstairs, they’re all in their sills eating. I take my place behind the Baker and inspect my lunch.

When I open the Styrofoam container, I get hit with a moist blast of ancient fleshiness. I gag. That passes and then the odor turns somewhat pleasant and I’m suddenly very hungry. I poke at the breast with my plastic fork. The skin is dark and crispy with a slight oil sheen. The knife cuts through it all with surprising ease. My stomach says something rude and impatient. I take a bite. The skin is delicious, salt, olive oil, and garlic, but the rest is awful — overcooked to the point where the first bit of flesh has fused with the skin, transformed into an additional layer of dermis. It’s hard and sharp like densely packed fingernail clippings. I swallow it anyway.

I try another tack. I cut the chicken up, discard the bones, and mix the meat in with the rice, which is close to pudding in consistency. It should ease the passage of the flesh shards down. The others have finished. Some recline in their sills. Chris is up, headphones on, but he’s not nodding. He walks to each man, offering a cigarette. He makes it to me, offers, looks at my remaining food and apologizes with a shallow bow and step backward. I close the container and he offers again. I haven’t smoked since C was born, but I want one. I go for one and then see the label on the pack. They’re menthol.

“Why you boys gotta smoke on candy canes?” coos the Dubliner from two sills over. I lean out to see him. He holds out a pack of Marlboros.

“What you like?” asks Chris. I don’t answer, but I try to bend my face into an expression of sheepish apology. He understands, takes another, deeper bow, and backs away again. “Laddie, throw that back over this way.” He flips it to Chris with a slight grin, amused by his poor attempt at an accent. Chris takes one out, hands it over, and lights me. I drag and the smoke seems to fill my head instead of my lungs and I almost pass out. I exhale, and my senses return in time to see Chris zip the pack sidearm back to its owner.

I nod to Chris, “Thank you.” He puts his hands together, bows again, and turns. I wave to the Dubliner, “Cheers.” He waves back, shaking his head. He closes his eyes. I do, too. I take another drag and try to follow the smoke in, but all I see are hands passing chickens from a dingy walk-in, up a flight of stairs, to hands that skewer them, then hands that set the skewered birds in the oven; and I wonder how many times around does a raw bird spin before it transforms into a two-dollar special. I forgot how powerful and versatile a cigarette can be: as an appetite suppressant; a digestif; time bender, extender, or killer; a tool you can use to swap dull dinner conversation for a quick look at the moon and stars; and perhaps functioning best as something to focus on — an extension on which you can hang and let dry your rage and sorrow. I know I’m hooked already.

KC wanders over. He looks troubled. Everyone, through lidded eyes, watches him as though he’s going to say something. He stops a few steps away from me and paws at the air in my direction.

“Hey, man?”

I don’t respond quickly enough.

“Hey, man?”

“Yeah?”

He tries to keep a straight face, but he finds whatever he’s about to say too amusing.