I Regret Everything (13 page)

Adrenaline had lit a pain-immolating fire that now began to subside and I noticed my leg ached at both the calf and knee. My pants were torn. My fingers were scraped and sore and covered in blood that I realized was from a cut on my face. I folded my jacket and held it to my cheek to stanch the bleeding. When I realized I had nearly been trampled to death my knees began to shake. I needed to settle down. Tomorrow was the first day of chemotherapy. I leaned against a car and took deep breaths. I stretched my legs and arched my back. After a couple of minutes my nervous system regained some equilibrium. A call to Spaulding didn't go through. A dead zone. Was all this the result of my exhortation to be bold?

I shambled toward Brooklyn and hoped she was all right.

A hot shower and a glass of ice water. A bandage on my jaw. Beached on the sofa staring at the bookshelves I tried not to think about what was going to happen tomorrow. To distract myself I thought of all the writers Spaulding had yet to experience, all the books I could pass along. Did she know Frank O'Hara? Had she read “The Day Lady Died”? I needed to act before it was too late. She had the courage to pitch herself into the heart of a roiling mob yet I was paralyzed. More than that, she had the courage to reach across the chasm of age and propriety that separated us to try to forge a connection. It was inspiring. It was unmooring. I wanted Spaulding but were we supposed to get married and move to Westchester? And it wasn't as if I could quit my job and run away with her. To do what? Travel around the country until I became too sick and then waste away and die in a desert motel in Arizona? I was having chemotherapy in the morning!

This entire train of thought was ridiculous. What had she done, pecked me in a taxicab? While she was drunk! Spaulding and I hardly knew one another. Was I now simply projecting pathetic hopes of salvation on a convenient screen? Whatever it was, I couldn't control it. Unable to read or watch television and tormented by a vision of Spaulding devoured by that mob, images of my death mixed with sexual fantasies of the most lubricious kind in a phantasmagoric mash-up of coffins, female breasts, and weeping mourners. This reverie abruptly ceased with the rapping of agitated knuckles against my door.

Through the peephole: My neighbor, the pit bull of Dubrovnik. I opened the door.

Bogdan was average height but with a weight lifter's build. His dense black coif was the grooming equivalent of free jazz and he sported the kind of thick mustache favored by old-school dictators. His pupils looked as if an artist using a brush with a single hair had painted them. He wore loose white trousers and his loudly patterned shirt caused havoc with my brain waves. Under this fashion calamity, an object bulged against the right side of his abdomen. I was pretty sure it wasn't a colostomy bag.

He was holding a covered tray.

“Pierogis,” he said. “Dvotchka made.” I had no idea who Dvotchka was but accepted the proffered gift and thanked him. It was difficult to discern why Bogdan could possibly have come brandishing a tray of dumplings. There was a moment of awkward silence during which I expected him to go away. It was at this juncture the emerald-green teardrop-shaped bottle of slivovitz he was holding came to my attention.

“I come in?” It would have been easy enough to claim I had another engagement but Bogdan was going to force this exchange at some point so best to get it over with. I waved him toward the living room. He asked if glasses were available and I fetched them from the kitchen.

We sat facing one another, Bogdan on the sofa, I on a wing chair. He sipped the slivovitz from a shot glass. Mine lay untouched on the coffee table next to the pierogis. Bogdan was not particularly adept at making conversation and the only thing we had in common was a shared wall, so after five minutes, all of which I had spent trying to find a way to get him to leave, he swallowed the pierogi he was chewing and came to the point of his visit.

“I want to buy your flat.”

“Why would I sell?”

“Generous offer.”

“Bogdan, the apartment isn't for sale.”

“You have not heard offer.” I exhaled and leaned back. He would not depart until he had made his pitch. “Please,” he said, a word used as a placeholder, not as a request. Please in Bogdan's mouth meant I would pin your throat to the chair with my forearm if that was what it took to get you to listen. “Please.”

He mentioned a figure well above market value. Slightly taken aback, it made me consider my stance for a moment. What he wanted to do was break through the walls, connect the apartments, and, in an ages-old New York tradition, create the enviable home he believed was his due.

“Why don't you move if you want a bigger place?” This was said in a tone meant to be affable but Bogdan's expression blackened. Rather than physically attacking, he remained in conversational mode, albeit a slightly strained version. In his temple a small vein pulsed like a poker tell.

“It would be better if I stayed in building.”

“Then you're welcome to stay.”

Although Bogdan had been my neighbor for over a year it was impossible to discern what he did for a living. That it was probably criminal was evident given the look of his confederates. And Bogdan was of their ilk, a hulking predator escaped from the Balkans and roaming Brooklyn. He ran ringed fingers through the unruly mass on his head. Chest hair protruded from the neck of his white undershirt. He poured himself another shot and knocked it back. Then he rinsed the residue around in his mouth and displayed his teeth. It appeared to be a tic because it was hard to believe he would literally bare his fangs. Mouth coated with crimson liqueur, it looked like he'd been chewing flesh. This was not comforting.

“Jeremy.” His voice, already low, now sounded as if it were emerging from a grave. And I'm certain it was the first time he had called me by my name. “Liberal proposal.” I reiterated my opposition to vacating the premises. The offer on the table would have allowed me to move to a fancier place, something in Brooklyn Heights with a view of New York Harbor but, really, why bother? In what way was that going to help me finish a book of poems? Or live a longer life? Here is what would be engraved on my headstone:

 

Jeremy Best

Attorney/Poet

Angels Envied His Apartment

 

If I aggravated Bogdan enough I might be able to get him to kill me, thereby ending most of my problems. But upon reflection, if I was going to take the suicide route, a bottle of pills and a glass of whiskey seemed a lot cozier than being murdered by a Croatian gangster, although, given what I had said to Spaulding about self-annihilation, more than a little hypocritical. Bogdan nattered about my apartment for another five minutes and I nodded periodically so he would think I was paying attention. Then he raised his offer. Considerably.

“I have to get up early tomorrow, Bogdan. Thanks for the pierogis.”

I walked toward the door. From his perch on the sofa, Bogdan regarded me through calculator eyes. He could have been weighing any number of things including how much he should spend on a blood diamond for his girlfriend or whether to have blini or boiled chicken for tomorrow's dinner, but likely he was considering how to eliminate me with as little fuss as possible. Ordinarily I would have looked away but I held his gaze and shrugged as if to say, what can I do? Kill me if you want, you're not getting this apartment.

A few more seconds elapsed before my neighbor rose to his feet and, grabbing the slivovitz, slowly moved toward me. Was he going to smash the bottle over my head, shards of glass and a wash of viscous liquid arcing through the gummy air? Suffocate me with hairy fingers then spread out in my living room, text his colleagues, and have a drug-fueled party over my corpse before tossing it in Sheepshead Bay to be consumed by flounder?

Bogdan stood directly in front of me. Although we were about the same height, his homicidal aspect made him seem considerably larger. The scent of tobacco and smoked fish became more intense with each hostile breath. Garnished with the bouquet of slivovitz, it was sickening.

“Good offer,” he said. “Think about it.”

When the door closed I collected myself. This had been a remarkably strange evening. Immediately I was delivered from my thoughts by the chirping phone. A text from Spaulding!

I'm in the back of a police car. What rhymes with misde­meanor? To the cleaner? Once you've seen her? Help!

A police car? What? Could this be true? Impossible to know. But the savoir-faire she displayed whether the situation was real or fictional was an undeniably attractive quality. I texted back:

In between her . . .

Spaulding had somehow found the path that led over the drawbridge and into the castle. For years its inner reaches had been hidden, protected, inaccessible. But getting involved with her could destroy my life. I needed to flee. From now on I would carry my passport.

E
ven after the quadruple espresso I was still pretty buzzed from the liquor and when I saw the cops converging on that guy right after I had told Mr. Best he should break a vase it seemed like a good time to make another kind of statement. So I exploded from the cab and hurled myself into the middle of the melee like some kickass roller derby chick. I didn't want to look over my shoulder to see if Mr. Best had followed me but I wanted him to. I wanted him to save me. But if I wanted him to save me why did I tell him about the mental hospital? All that would do was make him feel sorry for me. I didn't want to be his emotional charity case. I wanted him to love me the way a five year old loves cake.

The cops were waving nightsticks but they looked a little confused about using them when they saw me screaming my lungs out in front of the guy who had been knocked down. There must have been a dozen horses and these pulsing walls of sinew and muscle look even bigger and more powerful when they're surrounding you. The swirling crowd was all jacked up, twisted faces yelling
DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH THAT GIRL LEAVE HER ALONE DAMMIT GET AWAY FROM HER MOTHERFUCKERS POLICE BRUTALITY
!!! and I was screaming my guts out, too, and the fallen guy who I thought needed my protection was devoured by the crowd and an older cop who seriously needed to go on a diet grabbed me, cleared a space through the crowd, and threw me in the back of a police car.

Everything started to slow down as soon as he locked me in. I looked up and down Third Avenue for any sign of Mr. Best but he was gone.

The mob stampeded. Cops reeled and gave chase. Horses floated through the crowd like great ships and I thought about books I read as a kid that had horses in them. Those horses were never in cities wading through angry swarms of humanity. They were meant for more beautiful things than herding masses of pissed-off people. Then I began to laugh at myself for thinking about storybook horses because I wasn't nine years old anymore. But the image of stallions running free made me remember the last time I was locked up and I started to bang my head against the glass. For what felt like a long time, I screamed for them to let me go, crying and yelling until it felt like a sandpaper cylinder was plunging my throat. No one paid any attention to me. It was like they had talked to my parents and all agreed I just needed to sit there and shut up.

My throat / is torn / I sink / into / the seat.

For twenty minutes I stewed as the spectacle continued to unfold. A police van materialized nearby and cops periodically packed it with handcuffed protesters. Already on a tight leash, how was I going to explain this one to Edward P and Harlee? The last of the throng streamed up the avenue and began to dissipate. The potbellied cop appeared and asked me for my father's name and address. It didn't occur to me to lie so I gave them to him. Then he unlocked the car door and told me to go back to Stonehaven.

Drowsy drunks in baggy suits and stoned preppies clotted the 12:35 back to Connecticut. In a row by myself, I stared out the window as the train rolled north through the dark tunnel.

Will you try to put your bonus in my partnership
?

Sometimes you say words you want to retract the moment they're heard. The self-destructiveness. The humiliation and remorse. The sublime stupidity. After that question flew out of my mouth remaining in the cab was pointless. My continued presence would only decrease my chances of repairing the damage done to Mr. Best's opinion of me. Not to mention that I had barfed on his shoes. On his shoes! He was perfectly cool but it was hopeless. And then I kissed him in the cab? I had swallowed an entire tin of mints but what did my lips taste like? Coffee and sick? I disgusted myself. No wonder Mr. Best chose not to follow me. Is this what Dr. Margaret meant when she advised I approach social situations like a character named Spaulding? I don't think so. Unless that character was demented.

The whole fantasy was wrecked. I sank into the seat and tried to imagine some kind of future but all that appeared was a gray sameness of days, weeks, months, years of being captive in this body. I had an urge to call Dr. Margaret but it was late and my lack of impulse control had already made me hate myself enough for one night.

Why was I so interested in Mr. Best? Simple. A native New Yorker with divorced parents and artist's attitude, a poet stuck doing something he's not meant to do, he was some future version of me but with inner reserves I didn't possess because he had managed to thrive. Still, he was nearly twice my age and there was no point putting him in an untenable position. He was not into younger women. Either that or he was gay and after having given the possibility some thought I was pretty sure that was not the case.

It was a sweet shock when between the New Rochelle and Larchmont stations my smartphone coughed up one of his poems and a text that read:
In between her . . .
(his response to
What rhymes with misdemeanor?
). Despite my appalling behavior, Mr. Best was flirting back. Then another text:
Are you all right?
Immediately, I texted back that I had survived and was on my way to Connecticut.