The Awful Possibilities Read online

I finally got into Annie’s when somebody else distracted him with a powdered donut, but he just stood there in the window pointing at me with the index of one hand and eating the donut with the other like eating a donut is such a tough guy thing to do and I have not been out after dark since.

  I try to remember if there’s anyone else who would give me three cigarettes and can only think of the epileptic who is divorced from Georgia, and I’m sure she’d do it, but she’d make me repay her by letting her kiss my shitty sneakers which let’s face it is demeaning to us all. So there’s nothing but to head for Sweet William’s apartment.

  Sweet William’s door is closed, but the hallway in front of it smells like smoke and I can hear some music playing inside though not enough to make out and keep your mind out of the gutter. So I put my ear to the door, just to make sure that I won’t be interrupting any God-knows-what, and also maybe to figure out what he’s listening to which turns out to be “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha which is about what you’d expect. And just when Don Quixote sings: “To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause,” the door opens and I fall forward into Sweet William’s apartment.

  Sweet William reaches out to steady me, and I reach out to knock his hand away.

  He says: “What are you doing?”

  There is a thing that I should tell Sweet William which is: What am I doing, Sweet William? I’m not the one opening his door wearing nothing but a terrycloth robe and a mud-mask, but remember, there’s no point telling him anything, so I don’t, which is why I said his name the right way.

  I push him back, but his head jerks forward and his mud-mask splatters on my shirt. Not much damage done, but doing the laundry in this building can be a huge pain in the ass due to a man down there who will tell you inappropriate things or so says the epileptic Georgia divorced. I’ve never seen him, but maybe that’s because I minimize my laundry-room time by trying to keep my clothes clean unlike some people.

  So I knock Sweet William to the floor instead and I put my foot on his neck but not hard. Just enough to keep him down.

  I say: “Sweet Wee-yum, this is not a bad apartment,” and it’s not. Same layout as mine, but he’s got a flair for decoration. For example: the white fur area rug that he’s laying on which makes me feel like I’m choking him on a cloud.

  “Thanks,” he says, squirming a little but not much. “Do you want another cigarette?”

  Of course I want another cigarette, but you can’t tell Sweet William anything so I say: “No, I want the truth,” which is true in a way.

  “Which truth?” says Sweet William.

  “The truth about Sweet Wee-yum,” I say. “The best one,” I say.

  I can’t really tell what’s going on down there, but the way his head lolls from side to side and his eyes roll backward, I’m guessing he’s thinking.

  He says: “I was a little boy who loved his grandfather,” and then he stops or pauses.

  If stop then okay but it doesn’t sound like the best truth. If pause it’s probably the beginning of a truth that’s going to make me puke.

  I say: “Is that the whole truth so help you?”

  “Do you want the whole truth?” he says. I really don’t think so, but he goes on right away: “He was in the war.”

  “The great one?”

  “Yes,” says Sweet William, “Korea.”

  Don’t bother to tell Sweet William that Korea was barely even good if you weren’t even there.

  “He used to call me his little prince,” he says. “And then, one night—”

  A pause when I want it stopped. I take my foot off his neck and say: “Stop,” and Sweet William gasps half the smoke-stale air of the apartment into his lungs, lets it go and takes the other half. You can feel it. The room has its own weather. He sits up and rubs his neck with his old lady fingers, rests his elbows on his knees.

  Maybe I can still get another cigarette.

  “What about the rest of the truth?” he says.

  “I don’t want the truth anymore,” I say. “I just want a cigarette.”

  He reaches into his bathrobe, flicks out a couple of cigarettes. He hands me mine and lights his own, but he doesn’t offer me his lighter because he thinks mine still works. He pulls a small, clean glass ashtray from the opposite pocket and uses it accordingly.

  “Why didn’t you just ask?” he says.

  “Because nothing gets through to you, Sweet William,” I say, “because you got traumatized by your grandfather.”

  Sweet William looks traumatized to learn about the trauma.

  “It wasn’t traumatic,” he said. “It would have been if not for the angel Tillie.”

  Who the fuck is the angel Tillie? Because I have read the Holy Bible cover-to-cover three times if you count the one I skipped every other word in search of codes and the gospel truth is Sweet William is about as sane as Our Lady of East Genesee Street.

  “Sweet William, who is this Tillie?”

  “He’s the angel who told me my grandfather was in a better place.”

  I say: “Bullshit, Sweet William. Everyone knows that angels are girls.”

  “Not this one,” says Sweet William. “This one was a little boy in a turquoise loincloth who floated around on a little cloud like this.”

  He runs his ugly fingers across the white fur rug on his way to reclining on this night with one elbow on the floor and his head in his hand.

  “That’s not an angel,” I say. “That’s a cherub.”

  I know because I saw a picture when I was ten, a circle of babies flying around their mom, and when the security guards pulled me from the canvas and got the pocket-knife out from between my teeth, they told me: “Cherubim, not babies.” My first and last field trip.

  “So I’ve been looking for the better place ever since,” says Sweet William.

  “What better place?” I say.

  Sweet William scurries over to the end table beside his baby-blue sofa, grabs a book, and hurries back, spreading the book on the floor in front of him wide open. It looks like a map from up here, but a map of what I can’t tell. Sweet William does come-hither fingers to the air and you can’t do anything about it, it’s his apartment, but my squat is hesitant.

  “New Jersey,” I say.

  Sweet William points at a blue line on New Jersey.

  “I’ve been saving up for a car,” he says. “They got a thing, the Korean Veteran’s Memorial Highway, and when I get there, I’m gonna pull over to the side of the road and shove my hands into the dirt until I got two good handfuls.”

  I look at his hands and wonder if he’s been practicing.

  He says: “I’m gonna shove the Korean Veteran’s Memorial Dirt in my pocket and keep it with me always.”

  Sweet William just keeps staring at the map as though he can see the highway, the dirt, his grandfather, the best truth, on it, but really it’s just a bunch of pastels trying to cover up nature so thick it smells like cat-piss, an oil slick I saw on an airplane my only time up before the knockouts kicked in, the impossibility of ever really getting anything across to anybody in the ugliest place.

  I’ve got my cigarette and my knees are achy. I stand up to let myself out.

  Sweet William stubs out his cigarette, passes me an ashtray, and waits for the pressure of mine. When it doesn’t come, he looks up and notices me for the first time since the truth came out.

  “Your cigarette’s not lit,” he says.

  I say: “My lighter died.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask?” he says.

  But I’m tired of asking.

  the champion of forgetting

  Here is a list of failures.

  I was staying in a hotel room with some people. I didn’t know their names. I wasn’t their friend. Not the kind where you say hi my name’s and hi my name’s and then you call each other names.

  Before I was staying in the hotel room I was walking down Market and they snatched me into their van so I was kidnapped.


  What’s that called after you’re kidnapped. When you’re just staying in the hotel room.

  There wasn’t tape on my mouth or chains. On my wrist or anything. You could walk around in it and watch television. You could go for ice so the door wasn’t locked. From the inside.

  The first time I went for ice I had to knock to get back in. That was when we made up the idea to put a thing in the door when I went for ice. Or somebody else for something else. A shoe or ashtray.

  One of the men slipped the metal chain from the wall between the door and the frame. That was the only chain unless it was a metal bar. The girl had failed the test anyway. It was a good hotel room. My first.

  It wasn’t the only hotel room. Sometimes there were others. One at a time. It looked like the other ones we lived in. Two men a woman and me. Four. And yes there was sex.

  Sometimes there was sex in the other hotel rooms. On either side of us unless we were on the end.

  Sometimes when there was sex in another hotel room a man said a woman’s name or a woman said a man’s.

  Sometimes in our hotel room a man said a woman’s name or the woman said a man’s. Sometimes when there was sex. Sometimes when there was not. I don’t know if it was the real names. Sometimes they were different. Sometimes they were the same which was not often. Or I don’t remember because I was the champion of forgetting.

  When we got to the hotel room. The first time I got to the hotel room. After I got kidnapped. When I wasn’t kidnapped anymore. When there wasn’t tape on my mouth. When I was in the van there was tape on my mouth but not in the hotel room.

  At first there was tape on my mouth and my wrists. That’s when the man who was our leader then said not to say my name. And the woman said better forget your name.

  If you don’t say your name you don’t forget your name and you always want to say it. This is how I was for a while. When the tape was on my mouth. Sometimes I said my name because who even knows what you’re talking about with tape on your mouth. But when there wasn’t any more tape I bit my tongue. It hurts to bite your tongue.

  When you forget your name you don’t bite your tongue. Why would you. You don’t want to say it and you don’t say it. If you do you don’t know because it’s forgotten. It’s suddenly somebody else’s and you’ve forgotten theirs too.

  This is the way it works.

  One time when it was my turn to register for the hotel room. They give you cash from the box of cash and you say you would like a room for your name and give the man or woman at the desk the money they gave you and the man or woman gives you a key. A key is a symbol of a room to them.

  I said I would like a room and the man. I don’t remember his name. The man behind the counter said what is your name. I didn’t remember my name because I had forgotten it. I gave him the money but he didn’t give me a key.

  When I got back to the van the man who was our leader then. The leader gives you money from the cash box and says what hotel to drive to or what hotel you are driving to if you ask and whose turn it is to drive and who to kidnap and who’s turn it is to register for the hotel room. Also some of the sexual things. That time it was mine.

  The leader said that it was a test and I had failed the test.

  I almost never knew when I was getting tested. Especially when I was first kidnapped and for the time after that I don’t know what to call. An example of this is the first test. The first test they said was a test.

  The first test. What I think of as the first test they did not say was a test. One of them said do you think she’s a screamer and another one said there’s only one way to find out. The one who said the second thing. She was the woman. She dug a little corner of the tape away from the skin of my face. Then she pulled off the whole tape.

  I didn’t scream. The girl said see she didn’t scream but not that I had passed a test.

  The first test that they said was a test. There was a needle and the needle went in my arm. I didn’t scream but that was not this test. Blood came out of my arm through the needle and filled up the tube of it.

  While I was not screaming but there was still blood coming out I said what are you doing. The man who was doing it. The leader. He said it’s a test.

  When the tube was full he gave it to the woman and the woman took it to the bathroom. I asked if the test was over but it was not. I got nervous about the test because some of it was happening in the bathroom where I couldn’t do anything about it and I didn’t know how much of it was happening where I was so I let him put a wad of cotton over the spot on my arm that the blood came out of and apply gentle pressure.

  It felt good until the woman came out of the bathroom with a look on her face. The pressure became more than gentle for a second.

  The woman said her blood is wrong and we can’t do sex to her right now.

  The man let go of my arm and walked out of the hotel room. He forgot to leave a shoe in the door, so I went and did it for him. Then I took a nap for loss of blood or to forget about the failure.

  There were more tests but they only admitted it sometimes. Only when I failed except once.

  This is a list of failures.

  The other time the door locked when I went to go get ice.

  There was a new boy that day so five but not for long. He failed the screamer test by screaming, but they didn’t tell him that. Or maybe they did but he was screaming too loud. I didn’t hear it.

  When they fail the screamer test there are two needles. The first one puts stuff in and the stuff puts them to sleep. The second one takes blood out for the real test.

  Other than being the champion of forgetting my only job was getting ice. This was because of the failures I told you about and other failures.

  I would get ice between when the tape got taken off. Sometimes I would take the tape off but that wasn’t a real job. And the first needle or second needle if the boy or girl was a screamer or not. It was just in case.

  One of the things about getting the ice being your job was you were supposed to be quiet. This is not easy when you’re carrying every empty container you can find and then it’s full of ice but I never got in trouble for that part. The ice rattled a little but this was not a surprising sound.

  When I got back to the door of our motel room. The outside. I had the mini trash can from the bathroom and the mini trash can from the bedroom and the ice bucket and the mugs for the complimentary coffee and the pot that you make the complimentary coffee in all full of ice and I shouldered the door like I usually did to get in.

  But someone had closed it and it had locked. My shoulder just made a thud against the door. I don’t remember if it was me.

  On the other side. The inside. I heard someone shush me but I didn’t know who. And I didn’t know what to do because a knock is louder than a thud from my shoulder. So I waited to see if they would notice that the thud was made by a person who had not brought the ice in yet because the door was locked.

  I waited a long time for them to notice but they didn’t. I wondered again if I should knock but I couldn’t knock anyway with my hands full of containers full of ice. The ice was cold and my hands hurt from it and my arms hurt from carrying it all so I put the ice down so I could have the choice of knocking if that was the best choice.

  I did a pros and cons and decided that because a knock is louder than my shoulder I wouldn’t knock. So I waited. I sat down next to the ice with my back against the wall and waited and fell asleep.

  I didn’t wake up until I heard someone scream what the fuck. The man who was our leader then. I didn’t know what the fuck for.

  I was only a little awake wiping my eyes when the door opened a crack and a head came out of the crack and it was the head of the man saying what the fuck again.

  He looked down at the containers full of ice. Over at me. The ice was turned to water and he screamed that at me too. He screamed at me to get up. The boy had passed the second test and someone else had passed the test of doing sex to him.
/>   I had already failed the test of doing sex with one of those balloon things and a steak. A couple of boys ago. That was a failure that you only get one chance at. At least me.

  The steak is a symbol of a boy or girl to them. The meat of a boy or girl. And the balloon is their skin. The scalpel cuts it right or wrong.

  We were alone in the motel room. The same one or different. I don’t remember. Me and the woman. She was our leader when the others were out kidnapping another boy to get him unkidnapped and just staying in the hotel room because he was no good for sex too.

  Nobody knew yet.

  The woman who was our leader was in the bathroom and I got nervous because of how I failed a test in the bathroom without being in the bathroom.

  I was watching TV with an eye on the ice to keep it from melting. She came out with the steak-balloon and said this is a test.

  I asked her if I passed and she said I can’t tell you ‘til you take it. I took it and said did I pass. She said the test not the steak-balloon. She said this is the skin and this is the meat. She said this is what you use to do it. It was a scalpel.

  Now do it.

  I took the scalpel. My first. In my free hand. The one that wasn’t holding the balloon. I brought the balloon up closer to my face to see the meat through the skin. I held the scalpel over it.

  I looked up at the girl who was our leader with only my eyes.

  She said not like that. She said you’ve seen how we do it.

  I couldn’t remember how they did it but I guessed up was bad so I put it on the bed in front of me and hunched over it.

  I acted like I was concentrating but really I was concentrating on how to pass the test.

  I looked up with my eyes and she just stood there watching. I put the point of the scalpel to the skin of the balloon. Same. I stabbed with the scalpel. Through the skin and the meat and into the bed. I kept my eyes on our leader.

  I couldn’t tell if I had passed or not from her face. She walked over and told my fingers to let go of the scalpel with her hand. She pulled the scalpel out of the bed but the meat stayed on like barbecuing.

  I asked her if I passed and she said no. I asked her if I got a second chance and she said that was a failure you only get one chance at. At least me.