Benjamin Hale - The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

Yes, I admit that I am not as altruistic as Superman. That is why Superman is Superman and Bruno is Bruno. I am not a hero. I am a cowardly pernicious sniveling selfish wretch, who would destroy the world for his own happiness. But does that make me a villain?

I stood before the outer door to the apartment building, glancing up to notice the honking flocks of blackbirds that burst and fluttered from tree to tree in the blue and orange gloaming of that March day. I steeled myself, and sank a long purple finger into the buzzer. I hopped up and down on the toes of my shoes in anticipation. I crushed the green roses to my nose and drank them in. I took in a deep breath and let it slowly out. I cleared my throat. I wondered if she wasn’t at home. I pressed the buzzer again. A moment later, a crunching of static and a voice — a woman’s voice, but not Lydia’s — electronically croaked through the speaker.

“Hello?” said the crunchy voice in a confused but polite tone. “Who is it?”

“Lydia?” I said. My voice squeaked. I cleared my throat again. “Is Lydia Littlemore at home?”

“Who is this?” demanded the voice, less polite now.

“A friend,” said I. (I wanted to surprise her.)

The speaker buzzed, and I pulled on the door, went into the hallway and let it thump shut behind me.

I stood in the hallway. The door to the apartment I had shared with Lydia opened up about a quarter of its width — apartment 1A, the only door on this floor — and a figure stood in it, holding the edge of the door, peering past it into the hall.

“Hello?” said the figure, in the same voice as I had heard, but without the staticky distortion of the buzzer. “Can I help you?”

I waddled closer to the door, flowers and suitcase in my respective hands, hat on my head.

As I came closer I saw that the figure who stood in the doorway was Tal. She looked much the same as before, except that she was not clothed in the flowery gypsy garb she was wont to wear when I had known her best. Instead she wore more drably conservative garments: sweater, jeans, socks. Her thick wavy black hair was bound back in a ponytail reminiscent of the way Lydia used to wear her hair. Standing before her in the hallway, I transferred the bouquet of green roses from my right hand to the crook of my right arm, carefully, so as not to damage them, the paper and cellophane crinkling in my hand during this delicate operation. With my right hand thus freed, I moved it to the top of my head, pinched the shallow depressions in the crown of my natty black hat and slowly, gentlemanly, removed it. And there I stood in the dimly lit hallway of the apartment building in which I used to live in bliss with Lydia, my first and only true love. In the same building in which Griph Morgan, with his bagpipes and his parrots, used to live upstairs. In one of the only places on earth so formative upon my memory and consciousness. There I stood, in my coat and scarf, with a bouquet of green roses for Lydia tucked beneath my arm, carrying my hat and suitcase, my three feet and ten inches of stature heightened slightly by my shoes.

I looked up at Tal: I smiled at her and said hello. I admit that my gaze sank momentarily to the missing segments of the middle finger of her right hand, before I remembered myself and redirected it back to her face.

I did not know what I expected to happen then on her face, but the look of absolute horror that subsequently appeared on it as soon as she finally recognized me was not exactly what I had been angling for.

“Oh my God,” Tal half-whispered, slowly backing away from me. She edged herself away from the doorway, narrowed the openness of the door, and stood inside the apartment with one hand on the doorknob, ready to slam it shut if necessary.

She said: “ Bruno? ”

I said: “My name is Bruno Littlemore. Bruno I was given, Littlemore I later gave myself. I have come for Lydia.”

“What in the world ”—she hissed, her expressions roving elastically from fear to confusion to disgust—“happened to your face ?”

“Ah, this?” I said, tapping the side of my proud human nose with a long purple finger. “This is my nose. Do you like it?”

I smiled in the friendliest way I could.

Then Tal did, in fact, slam the door in my face. She locked it and slid the deadbolt.

I felt the blast of wind the door displaced in my face. If I had been any closer, the flat hard door would have certainly squashed my beautiful nose against my face, immediately undoing the careful work of my surgeon.

As I wailed and hammered on the door with my fists, pleading with her to let me in, I felt an unpleasant wave of déjà vu. A wave of déjà vu as visceral and stomach-clutching as a wave of nausea. I felt at that moment that I had spent a great portion of my brief and unhappy life engaged in the labor of screaming and pounding in desperation on doors that were closed to me — crying, begging, shouting — sometimes in rage and sometimes in despair, to be let in. Or out. Begging either to be let out or let in. I have always stood on some threshold. They have never let me in… or out.

After seeming hours of my loud and pitiful bellowing — after angry neighbors upstairs opened up their doors and shouted down at me, demanding first to know what the trouble was and then simply for quiet for God’s sake — Tal finally opened the door a squeak. She kept the security chain hooked.

“Tal!” I screamed into the crack of light. “Please let me in! I won’t hurt you! I won’t hurt anyone! I just want to see Lydia!”

“Why?” she snapped. “Are you going to smash anything or bite anything?”

“No! I’m a new man! I promise! I’ve changed! My days of smashing and biting are behind me! Please —,” I whispered, “please trust me.”

Tal slammed the door again, unhooked the chain and slowly opened it. I slipped inside, suitcase banging against the doorjamb, roses crinkling to my chest. I stepped into the foyer and shut the door behind me. Tal was wearing boots, now, and she was holding a big kitchen knife.

“That’s not necessary,” I said. “I won’t hurt anyone.”

Tal spat out a reverse-gasp of sardonic laughter. “You’re too late for that,” she said.

I let my head dip down in shame at this comment.

“Where the hell have you been ?” she said. “What do you want ? I can’t believe you came back here. How did you even get back to Chicago?”

“In time,” I said (sagely, I hoped), “all shall be explained. But, Tal, please…” I knew my voice had a tearful tremor in it, now.

I was still standing in the dark and muddy foyer of that apartment I knew better than almost any set of rooms in the world, feeling less even like a guest than an intruder, wondering if I should take off my shoes or presume enough even to unbutton my coat, still awkwardly juggling in my arms flowers, hat and suitcase as I said: “Where is Lydia? Please… I want to see Lydia.” I felt tears surging up beneath my cheeks, threatening to cloud my vision.

“Are those for Lydia?” said Tal, pointing at the bouquet of green roses in my hand with her knife.

I held the flowers out a little from my chest. For a moment the crinkling of the cellophane and paper they were wrapped in was the loudest sound in the room. I couldn’t answer her because I was afraid that I would cry if I tried to speak. I only nodded yes.

Tal sighed through her nose as she looked down at me, holding the green roses. She backed into the apartment and set down the kitchen knife she had wielded at me on the dining table with a click of metal on wood and beckoned to me to enter the apartment.

Everything inside the apartment had changed. All the furniture was different except for the dining table. There were new pictures on the walls. The living room wall had been painted over with sunflower yellow paint. Some of Tal’s disgusting lacquer-faced wooden puppets were sitting in a row like spectators on the fireplace mantel.