Noah returned to his apartment, hoping that Don’t Touch Me had returned to Mars. He opened his email as he worked his way through the untouched martinis. A note from the TV show that had dropped him asked if he could return two DVDs he had rented for research on their account. Terminator 2 and Casino were two months late. The next was from his cousin James. “Dear Noah, We’ve taken care of the will and Mom mentioned in it that there was a picture in the house you liked—a photo of Salvador Dali taken by her cousin Simon Barber in Malaga in the 1940s. Evidently Simon was pretty famous in his day and Mom wanted you to have it. Distributions to family are being handled by Louise O’Hagan. Her number is below. Call and she’ll arrange to have the Dali sent to your place. Your condolences and help at the funeral were greatly appreciated. Cheers, James.”
They had fucked him as expected.
He finished off the first martini and slumped back in his chair. He stared at the wall across from his laptop where all of his TV “idea” notes were taped. What a fabulous, delusional, fucking joke, he thought.
The list had been there for so long it had become transparent to him. But now that he forced himself to read his ideas, it started to make him sick. Not because the ideas were so bad, but because they represented an aimless mind lacking any intellectual standards:
“Don’t Breathe: miniseries—accidental release of contagious bio-weapon spells end of world played out on fictional CNN.”
“The Seduced: contemporary Macbeth—a cop investigating murder of a rich businessman falls in love with wife who committed the crime.”
“Life with Cheetah: reality show—a chimp is adopted by a normal middle-class family and how they deal with it.”
“Know Thyself: PBS documentary series—although your life is made up of thousands of days and incidents, they can all be reduced to one moment when you know who you are, when you see yourself face to face. Middle America looks in mirror.”
The list went on and on, a jumble of naive long shots and dated insights, none of which would be pursued. He reached over and ripped as much of it off the wall as he could with a few swipes, then dropped back into his chair and finished off the second martini. Even this act felt like a third-rate drama that would have been cut from a good script. His mind flipped through the last few months: his wrecked marriage, the McEwen betrayal and his novel rejection, his mostly regrettable sexual adventures, the loss of his TV job, the Dali photo in lieu of his “rightful” share of the inheritance. Add it fucking up, there was a conspiracy against him. Not an organized conspiracy—it was more insidious than that. None of the parties knew the intent of the other. African killer bees, he thought, don’t know what’s on the next bee’s mind and don’t know that their group effort will kill, but the biological conclusion is the target’s death. This is what he was now convinced was facing him. Noah represented pointlessness in an absurd universe and this made him a threat to the false god of order. He had to be eliminated.
Noah felt assaulted by his manic self-examination and needed air. He left his apartment just after three in the morning and walked the streets. He had never done this before at this hour and wondered if this was also a bit of cheap drama. His mind was racing. Just because he recognized the crimes of others didn’t mean that he was beyond guilt. McEwen’s role-playing, his competitiveness, his self-serving friendships, his references to obscure books he had read and even ones he hadn’t read, his need to impress, to exaggerate his achievements, to take credit—these were Noah’s crimes as well and he knew it. But McEwen was at least a player.
The street was locked up, and the clutter of lit neon and plastic signs gave it an empty glow. An orange traffic light flashed off and on like the city’s pulse. The odd taxi passed. Garbage men in fluorescent yellow vests loaded a garbage truck. Noah noticed two men coming in his direction. He recognized one, a local street character who had been around as long as Noah had been in the neighbourhood. He was in his thirties, grimy, with a beard that curved up the sides of his face and covered his cheekbones, encircling darting, cold eyes. He wore a ball cap on backwards as if his sense of cool was a good ten years out of date. His jacket was ripped and decorated with heavy-metal patches. His jeans were tight and unwashed and his white high-top sneakers looked like he had taken them off someone of a different size. His partner was taller, wiry, with unhealthy long hair that hung along both sides of his abnormally narrow face and below his shoulders. Noah moved to his right as close as possible to the storefronts as they passed.
Then, “Hey, man.”
Noah looked over his shoulder but kept going. They turned in his direction. “We got a friend back there who just threw up blood and we gotta get him to the hospital. Can you loan us a twenty?” The urgency of their request was out of whack with the nonchalance of their lumpen demeanour.
Noah said “Sorry,” and kept walking.
“Hey, man, our friend’s dying. Is twenty bucks gonna kill you? He’s fucking dying.” Noah kept going then felt something slam into the back of his head and neck. He sprawled forward onto the cement. The Ball Cap smashed him again with a large plastic garbage can, this time letting it go after the blow. The Long Hair was now on top of him, digging at his pockets while The Ball Cap started kicking him hard in the back. Noah could feel a deep stabbing pain with each blow and knew that that had to be his kidneys. He curled his arms over his head but one kick got through and felt like it had ripped off his left ear when a horn started blaring. The two men took off. Noah got to his feet and felt his ear. There was blood on his fingers. He noticed a guy in a car, stopped in the middle of the street. He assumed this was the horn blower. The driver yelled out a silent “You okay?” from behind upturned windows. Noah waved him off. The car drove away. The men were gone.
Back in his apartment, Noah washed off a cut and scrape just below his ear and held a paper towel to it since he had no Band-Aids. Band-Aids were one of the many normal necessities he would not think to buy when furnishing his own place. Each time he raised his right arm above his waist he felt the stabbing echo of the kidney blows. He poured himself three ounces of vodka with his left hand then returned to the bathroom mirror to admire his wound. For some reason the attack hadn’t unnerved him. This wasn’t a game of one-upmanship he was used to winning or losing; this was the “real thing” and he was still standing. He drank his vodka, eased himself into his couch and turned on CNN.
Noah got up late and went down for a coffee at Starbucks, then walked the two blocks to his magazine store and picked up his daily New York Times. On his way back he passed the laneway that led off the main street and split the block in two. This was where restaurants and stores left their large garbage containers for pickup. In the lane about fifty feet from the street entrance he spotted The Ball Cap who had mugged him the night before. He was drinking a coffee and shifting from one foot to the other. It was obvious to Noah that he was waiting to sell or buy crack. He had seen other dealers in the lane and they all behaved the same way. Noah passed unnoticed and was sure that had he been seen, it was unlikely The Ball Cap would recognize him or even remember him. Noah hurried up to his apartment and, in a move that seemed oddly normal to him, got his old hardball bat and returned to the street. It didn’t feel unusual or provocative to carry a bat on the street since he had done it before in his life on the way to pickup ball games. Leaving his building’s front door, he turned in the opposite direction from the lane and circled the block. He passed the rear of his building down another lane that ran parallel to the main street and intersected with the lane that ran off the street where The Ball Cap was stationed. He turned into the intersecting lane and saw The Ball Cap facing away from him, still moving from foot to foot with his coffee in his left hand and a cigarette in his right hand dangling down by his side. He knew he had to move without hesitation. He had seen enough “guy” movies in his life to know this basic principle of violence. He also remembered a colour commentator during a World Series game on TV—it could have been Tim McCarver—commenting on a third baseman’s ground-ball error, “Play the ball—don’t let the ball play you.” Noah never forgot that elegant rule. He picked out a spot on The Ball Cap’s right forearm and without breaking stride swung all out. Noah felt the bone snap under the power of the bat as the searing pain from last night’s kidney blow took his own breath away. The Ball Cap screamed, stumbled to his left into the garbage containers, slipped onto one knee, staggered up and without turning back, his left hand gripping his dangling right arm, ran straight out of the lane into the street and disappeared. Noah hadn’t expected this reaction. In fact, he hadn’t thought what might happen beyond the initial blow and now realized how stupid he had been and how lucky he was. He turned and quickly retraced his route back to his apartment.
He felt more shaken by his attack on The Ball Cap than by The Ball Cap’s attack on him. This capacity for violence was something he had not known about himself. It both surprised and excited him. He poured a vodka. It was only ten-thirty in the morning, and on this occasion it was to calm his nerves. However, Noah knew he was drinking daily for self-medication. He drank to quell his anger over disappointments. He drank to handle the reality of his unemployment and financial state. He drank to end-run his ambivalence during sexual advances. He drank to forget the sycophantic impulses that dogged him in his half-hearted efforts to become a person of reputation in a social world he despised.