Anthology Complex (20 page)

While I'm putting one of them up, it falls out of my hand and lands open
on the ground and I see a page titled "Calm The Devil's Grin." I read
a sentence about how giving something freewill will allow it to end its own
existence, but before I can read anymore I hear a loud knock at my door. It's
definitely not Lynne.

I open the door and standing in the doorway is a man who thinks that he
is everyone's best friend. That he is so likeable and lovable that he can do
and say as he pleases, and that is exactly what he does. He shows himself into
my apartment and at the same time begins to talk about his trip to the other
side of the world. His name is Tao and had been visiting his relatives in China
for about six months, and now he's returned. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't
live right under me and was always coming over. If the opportunity ever strikes
in the right place at the right time I will kill him.

Tao makes a joke about how he comes back home at the wrong time, with
the power being out and all, and then he asks me how everyone in the building is
doing, as if I were everyone's keeper. I tell him that Joe had an accident and
is in a coma, but that doesn't seem to jar him.

Right after he asks me about who the new woman is right across the hall,
and I ask him if he means the short lady with the two kids. He says yes, that
one, but that he doesn't know about any kids. I tell him that her name is Lynne
and that she is pretty cool, although a bit strange, and he tells me that he
likes strange and then makes a facial expression that can't be expressed in
words.

Then jumping onto the next subject as he likes to do so quickly, he
starts to ask me about what's going on in the west side of the city, what's
with all the dead bodies and cop killings he's been hearing about in his short
time back. I think of Derek.

I tell him I have no idea, and then he says that we are probably past
due for another riot like we had nine years ago. I didn't live around here
then, so I didn't know what he was talking about, but he was probably right.
Then he starts to talk about a cop that got shot and about how he knew one of
the cops' friends. He says that he heard that five black kids were hanging out
on the stairs in front of an apartment building talking, and then four white
cops drove up and told them all to get against the wall.

The four white cops check the five black kids for drugs and weapons and
anything else that is illegal to carry unless told otherwise. They don't have
anything on them, but in an effort to prevent crime one of the four white cops
taunts one of the five black kids, and that particular black kid at the time
has had enough of all the unusual cop presence which was enforced because of a
prior killing of two young innocent bystanders, so instead of taking the
bullshit he pushes one of the cops back and is arrested.

After seeing their friend being put in handcuffs, another black kid
begins to argue with one of the cops claiming it was bullshit and that the
other cop acted first, and after this black kid has said his piece, and after
he is ignored, he insults all four white cops and is then also arrested. The
other three black kids who are not in handcuffs don't say a word, but they
don't need to because there is an older black man across the street yelling and
laughing at the actions of the law enforcement officers.

The older black man begins to shout about how cops don't have anything
better to do than to make quality of life arrests which implies he is more
knowledgeable about the inner workings of a police force than he looks. One of
the white cops looks at him and threatens to take him to jail if he doesn't
shut up, and now this event begins to draw a crowd. People are looking out of
their windows, stopping on the sidewalks, crowding and talking with each other
about what is going on.

Now the older black man has gone back inside his home, and the crowd
that had gathered has taken his place and claim that the cops are never around
when they are actually needed. A common claim. Frustrated, one of the white
cops gets out of his black and white and tells the crowd to back up, but one of
the individuals in the crowd attempts to spit at him and misses. As he is
beginning to walk towards the person who tried to spit at him, the other
officers look in his direction and notice what is going on.

At the same time that they are looking in his direction, the older black
man walks out of his home with a model of a Smith & Wesson handgun and
yells something in the direction of the officers, and then begins to shoot at
them. You've walked so far and you are finally at the edge, and all it takes is
one little push.

After everyone has scattered, and after all the rounds have been fired,
there are four fatalities and two damaged police vehicles. The fatalities in
question are two out of the four cops, one out of the two kids who were
arrested and the man who initiated the shooting. One of the police vehicles had
a window shot out, and the other a tire popped.

People at the police department are looking into various things such as
why there were four police officers roaming the same area. I realize that this
is what the people on the radio station were talking about.

Tao starts to go into his racist mood, talking about how all the blacks
are ruining the communities they reside in, but before he can begin to preach
we both hear yelling just outside my door. I look through my peephole but I
can't see far enough to the right to see what's going on, so I open my door and
I see a woman standing behind a man who is trying to break down the door to
Lynne's apartment. It's Claire and Silvio.

Claire turns around and for no logical reason starts to yell at me, and
when Silvio realizes this, he too starts to yell at me, again for no logical
reason that I can find. Claire starts to insult both her sister and her mother,
and I can't help but remember the Claire that was so sweet and soft-spoken.
What did Silvio do to turn her against her family? Is Claire some kind of crazy
person who has crazy mood-swings? That whole damn family seems crazy.

Now Silvio is in my face telling me to stay away from his kids, and when
I just stand there and don't react to him, he pushes me. After I laugh and tell
him that he should just go home, he knocks me down and starts hitting me. I
block all of his punches, but before I know it I see Tao standing there
threatening to hit him with my metal baseball bat. I forgot I even still had
that.

The threat might seem real if Tao didn't look so afraid. Claire and
Silvio laugh at him, and the distraction allows me to trip Silvio and put him
in a headlock. I always assumed a headlock was suppose to be more painful to
the person in the headlock, but this particular one is causing me more pain
because I have Claire hitting me in the back of the head with her damn purse.

After about six seconds, I can hear Lynne screaming, and her scream
makes me realize what we are all doing. How we are all acting like animals.
After Lynne's scream, Claire stops hitting me and I let go of Silvio, and
surprisingly he doesn't retaliate. We are all just awkwardly calm, but waiting
for any move another person might make. In my head, I laugh at Tao.

Right after, the police have arrived unusually quickly thanks to Emily,
and they sort every thing out. Imagine if the response time was this quick in
the city.

After I close my door, I look at Tao and I start laughing. All he can
really do is shake his head, he is probably still wondering what just happened
and what I had gotten myself into with these people. In the back of his mind I
know he wants to ask me what all those composition notebooks are about. He had
to have seen them because that metal bat was in the same room. After I stop
laughing, I say "welcome back."

Chapter 35:

SOCIALIZATION

Tao apologizes to Kathleen as if it were his fault that Joe was in a
coma, and then he says that it's unfortunate that he has to meet her under
these circumstances. As arrogant as Tao may seem sometimes, in an unfortunate
situation he is always sociologically correct.

He is trying to show support any way he can, which I guess is what I did
as well, even if he can't do much to help. Tao and I leave Kathleen the same
way we found her and we exit the hospital. On the way to Tao's car my mind
wonders and I ponder why I act differently when I'm in the presence of
different people. I've thought of this before. When I'm alone I'm an angry and
obsessive person, but when around others there is a switch that flips on and it
makes me socially acceptable.

Sometimes the personality changes from person to person or from group of
people to group of people; for instance who I am when I am with my mother is
different than the personality of who I am when I am with my father. Both
personalities differ slightly, but both still fall under the persona that is
socially acceptable rather than the sociopathic demeanor.

Who I am when I'm with a bunch of strangers differs from who I am when
I'm with a bunch of friends. Of course, pretty much everyone is like this, and
these changes in behavior visualize social fragments. Social fragments of many
masks that imply you are who you are depending on your environment.

When you really start to think about it, it's almost as if the people
around you are the ones who determine who you are, or at least some large
percentage of who you are. So now when I think of Joe, I start to wonder that
if I know the people who he knows, if that could help in trying to figure out
who Joe is. Will knowing his friends, family and enemies help me to know him
and determine which social bracket he resides in? Discovering his social
bracket and his social class might help define who he is.

Tao closes the car door, and he tells me that some people stay in a coma
for years. There have been people who have stayed in a coma for over fifteen
years, and some who actually wake up from the coma and proceed to live a normal
life. Thinking about that makes you wonder if these people have lived a
completely other life inside their coma. If they had dreamed of another life
and actually lived it in all the time that they were in that coma. Everyone at
many points in their lives daydream of another life, but these coma patients
have taken it a step further.

The light is green. It's still green. Tao probably thinks he can make
it, but at that very thought it turns yellow, then red, and he is forced to
stop. After a few seconds of waiting Tao asks me about Silvio. I know how he
works, he's breaking his way into asking me about my weird obsession. I tell
him that Silvio is the ex-husband of the woman who just moved into the
building. Lynne hasn't just moved into the building, but to Tao she has.
Relativity.

He asks me why the guy has it in for me, and I actually have no idea. I
have no idea why Silvio would attack me. Maybe Claire is putting ideas in his
head. The light turns green.

Tao jokingly asks me a question, "Would you kill him if you had
to?" I tell him to define the situation, and he says Silvio has a gun and
is about to shoot me, but I have a chance to kill him first. I ask him if there
are people around, if it's day or night, if the gun has a silencer. He looks at
me strange, and I guess I sort of gave him the answer. If someone tried to rob
me in broad daylight with people around and used a gun as incentive for me to
give up my prized possessions and currency, I'd say the chance of the person
actually willing to pull the trigger and kill me is less than ten percent.
Unless the person is crazy, then that number increases sharply. Otherwise, if a
person is actually willing to kill you for an unknown amount of wealth, it
might be because they have ice water in their circulatory system. Veins go
towards the heart, arteries go away from the heart.

When observing the actions of Silvio, one might prefer to categorize him
as a sociopath, or at least one on the verge to sociopathy. An antisocial
person who is not completely aware of the sociological normalities of our
society.

Instead of beating on a man who you have no evidence against, the
correct procedure would be to obtain information from a certain party, in this
case Lynne or I, regarding your assumptions that your ex-wife might be involved
with someone. Instead, a sociopath might just submit to his primal urges.