Hum A Radiant Sickness

There’s the scuttling of a receipt lightly drifting over the cracked, pot-holed pavement, taken in but not wholly spirited away by a warm, slow-breathing wind. Arid sound scrapes at and rattles off the houses and condos, all built so close to hug each other down this part of Ashe. Most of them are turned sideways, hiding their doors from the street off of cramped courtyards set behind chain-link or thin-picket fences. The single coating of various pastels on their walls absorbs the night’s darkness, holds it in like a sponge, while the sharp white paint on the balconies and banisters gleams away like day. There’s the smell of salt and mud in the air, weighting the wind. Every third house or so is abandoned and worn. Sheets of plywood obscure their windows, conceal and render mysterious their innards. The panel siding on these rundowns warps out from its original lay, the pastels peeling back to leave bare the strips of old graying wood. Flesh crumbling before the bone.

Staggered with about the same frequency as the run­downs, short palmetto trees poke out from their little patches of grass just wider than their bases. Their grayed-out green blades stab at the night, at the pale light from the streetlamps robbing them of their color. The wind passes through them all rustling, sshh, ssshhhh now.

Cars are parked on both sides of the street, constricting the driving space to one way and producing the illusion that everything’s stuck closer together than it really is. But no one drives through here this time of night anyway. You could cut backflips right down the middle if you wanted.

The road is flat. The whole city’s flat. When it rains, the water doesn’t have anywhere to roll off to. It just sits there and piles up stagnant until it can slip down the drains or evaporate or soak into the concrete. The sky’s clear now though. It’s not going to rain. The weather’s nice, riding the ridge between cool and warm, soothing. It’s Spring. Late March. Friday. Around 10:30 PM.

A receipt is scraping along the pavement. It scurries on near the tail of a white-spotted-orange-haired cat that’s picking at some garbage by the driver’s side hub of a powder blue Volvo. Looks like a fast food wrapper—the garbage, not the Volvo. Might have some cheese stuck to it. “Cheese.” Whatever that shit is anyway, that feral cat’s sitting over it hunched and nervous, sticking his neck out timidly to bite, to feed. He’s got some weight to him. Looks like he does alright, and it’s not hard to see why.

He’s got his girth down low on his paws, tense, ready to flee, his loose belly not quite flush with the road. His ears are twitching. His tail’s flopping back and forth. He’ll take a few bites and pop his head up to look around, make sure nothing’s after him. Then he’ll drop back for another nibble. After a while, he’ll freak, prance up and skip away fast, then slow, keeping his back to the wrapper like he’s not interested and doesn’t even know it’s there. But he’s sure as hell interested and knows damn well it’s there. He’s just pretending. And when he sees it’s alright, that there’s no other cat or car or other such demon crawling out from his paranoid hallucinations to scare him off from his meal, he turns and hunches himself down to slide back in and eat.

In the distance, off outside the dome in which the cat is poking at his timid meal, just beyond the zone of silence in which the wind is hushing the night, seeking its plaisir in the branches of the palms—right outside of all that, there’s the sound of footsteps coming in, heavy.

You can’t quite hear them yet, but that cat can feel them, yes, even through his mind full of cheese. Small vibrations in the pavement ripple beneath soft paw flesh, jumping right into his bones to tremor on up and through to his teeth, where they shoot out and mix with his startled mewing, kicking him into action, flight.

You can hear them now. The footsteps. Both sets—depending on where you’re listening from I guess. There’s the little ones with the terror in them flying patta-putta-patta-putta-pat, and there’s those big ones too, stomping with that madness thudding in twak-twak-twak-twak-twak, slapping the fear of death into our little cat-man-fella.

Since we can hear him, we might as well take a look—at Conor I mean, that jackass sprinting on his toes after the cat, not to snatch up any remaining bits of fake cheese shit for himself, no, but just for the hell of running him off it seems. Not even that though. If that was all he wanted to do, then he probably wouldn’t be after him still, and gaining on him too with each long stride.

Grinning like an exhausted mare, its lips pulled back to show the teeth, he’s got a rabid look in his eye, manic. Not eager or yearning but past that. Hollow eyes in the skull of a man gone a full day without water, in the desert, staring off with crazed glee at that oasis up ahead, that mirage… I don’t know if that’s the look in them just before or just after they’re sapped of life. I haven’t seen a pair of eyes like that myself, but I think you know what I mean.

Our man anyway looks like he’s in well enough health. Not quite as burly as that cat, but tall and lean to be certain. He could probably stand to gain a few pounds, but maybe that’s why he’s after the cat, who knows.

He looks like an Ivy League dropout. Whatever that means. Dirty Harvard sweatshirt, thick khakis, heavy leather boots—all of which have a grand smell I’m sure and a general wear like he’s been sporting them for just about all his damn life. Four to five days’ stubble shades his face, and his long brown hair’s two to three days tasseled and frayed out of a haphazard mouse coif in the surprisingly spotless bathroom of his dealer’s house. There’s an aura too that hangs around him. A haze of booze and tobacco smoke that almost dulls, but not quite, the pang of intelligence in his taut face and peering eyes.

But forgive me for focusing on the subject at the expense of his surroundings. It’s really just the same stream of close-knit cars though and houses that I mentioned to begin with, except now it’s all a blur coursing past the runners. So get off my back about the setting and let’s just worry about the action.

Not counting the block he ran before the cat noticed him, the chase has been going on for about two and a half blocks, which might as well have been the same block turned over like a treadmill. No real difference other than that grocery they’ve just passed on the corner of Line, with its flashy beer posters, neon lights and bars in its windows.

Conor’s still moving pretty quick, but he’s breathing hard. It doesn’t look like he can keep pace for much longer. The cat’s getting tired of this bullshit too it seems, changing up his strategy, jutting off the main road, hopping smoothly between the rusted bars of a short cast-iron gate blocking entry to an alley between one of those rundowns and one of those houses that hasn’t yet gone to hell.

Wrestling with his momentum, Conor halts just past where the cat’s cast his final, well really his first gambit. He turns and almost acts on the impulse to hop the gate, but the cat’s already vanished back there, in the tall grass and out the other side. So that’s it. The game’s over, done.

He starts working at trying to catch his breath, his head steaming, temples pounding. He’s got that airy feeling in his skull that comes with exercise like his brain has shriveled back a bit, unstuck itself from the bone. He’s worked up a sweat, but it’s drying in the wind—a bared, salty feeling on the flesh. He rolls up his sleeves and lets his mouth hang open, let’s the air move in and out of him until at last he disappears beneath its flow.

And that’s what he’s really been after, what would have him grinning wide right now if closing his mouth wouldn’t strangle him: that static in the brain, that drone, that hum.

His mind’s starting to clot again, thickening and remolding itself in spite of all the blood flushing his veins. This is what he’s been trying to avoid. Can’t face it now. Look for another hook to stick in the cheek.

That rundown across the street seems inviting. All of the paint on it except for a few green strips tracing the windows is chipped or chipping off. Even the paint on the door, red, is hanging down in tethers as if something big and gruesome’s been clawing at it. Looks like no one’s been in there for a while, like no one would care if he made his way in to explore for a bit. Why not go for it?

A quick check up and down the street before trying the faded bronze doorknob. No luck. He skips back from the house to check out the windows. Sure, he could probably kick one of those boards in, but it would be too loud and not quite worth the trouble. Might as well look for something else.

He takes a few paces down the road, and I’ll be a gator’s bloated kidney if he doesn’t find exactly what he’s looking for: a bottle of wine just sitting there on the steps leading up to a pink house. That’s got to mean something. A sign, neon, flickering bright in all caps, DRINK ME! There’s no use trying to argue with that kind of providence.

Another quick peep along the street. No one’s coming. Go for it. He walks over and grabs the bottle by the neck and feels the dark weight swirl. A little less than half in there, but that’s better than nothing right? Damn right.

Better not drink the stuff down in front of this house, though. He continues his stroll along Ashe, armed now with the vino, taking that curve up ahead into a dead end, a cul-de-sac turning the street back upon itself.

Along the bend there’s a tall chain link fence. Conor finds cover under a tangle of trees there. Not palmettos. Just your typical small city trees. Myrtles? Elms? Under their branches anyway he pulls out the cork, phloomp, and tilts the bottle back. Bitter. Red on the tongue, dark in the mind, crawling in softly to massage the lobes, knead out the sore spots.

He watches through the fence, laughing to himself at the sparse traffic, at the cars periodically whooshing past. Highway 17’s on the other side. This thin fence is really all that’s separating this quiet part of the city, where everything’s still and you can wander free in that stillness to lose yourself so easy, from the world out there, where everything’s moving and timed and set and rigid and looks down on you for not keeping up your end of the action, for not strapping on tight the mask you were handed backstage at some point in Act—ah, but no one knows where we are exactly in the script, if there’s a script, but we still have to pretend of course, to play, to carry on like there is, like each word, like each action’s bearing the subtle collective meaning that can and will only burst forth from the womb of our closing action finally in the end, because there’s got to be an end you know, where everything will just come together so nicely, woven so snugly to swaddle up time, place and history in its warm, so warm, so cozy denouement. Ha!

He takes another swig before he plops himself down to lie on the ground, letting his mind go quiet listening to the cars, rolling in and out of view, one after the other—whoosh, I’m a car! whoosh, whoosh, I’m a CAR! whoosh, whoosh, I’M A CAR DAMMIT! whoosh whoosh whoosh… But his mind doesn’t buy into this trick for long. He can feel his angst coming for him. He takes another bigger drink. That should do it. But it only makes it worse. Cars fall away, stop their coming and going, never were. Road, fence and body too. No more of that bullshit out there. All dissolve in the soft boil of his conscience. No more illusions conjured up to keep himself from himself, from his dread, from his sense of impending doom in the gut of that number. Fifty-seven-thousand.

It coils around, rough scales scratching, reminding him of its presence. Fifty-seven-motherfucking-thousand. And that’s not counting the interest. It squeezes and contorts him, steals his breath. He’s fucked. He’s fucked up. He’s a fifth-year senior, about to graduate in a month. His debt’s a result of massive overspending—not because tuition has been ramming him (he actually has, or has had, scholarships covering most of his fees), but because he’s been living it up, staying in a sleek downtown apartment (though he hasn’t been keeping it so sleek as of late), eating at nice restaurants, wearing expensive clothing, treating himself and his friends to the high life while the getting was good. After all, if his college years were supposed to be the best in his life, then he was going to make sure they were one hell of a ride. He figured if he played the part well enough anyway he’d be able to maintain that lifestyle even after he graduated, even after the government stopped playing at being his sugah daddy.

But that was a lie he told himself to keep happy, to let himself carry on without fear of future. That future’s now though, and it’s become painfully evident that he’s underqualified for any job that would grant him funds enough to cover his debt, let alone keep on throwing money at the incessant revelation of his own mediocrity, lack of purpose, direction. Whatever happened to the good ol’ American dream? After five years living off the fat of Uncle Sam’s bankroll, he’s going to have to turn on himself for sustenance, self-cannibalize.

That sixty grand’s looming over him, salivating, hungry, ready to sink its teeth in, chomp him down before he can get the first bite. And it’s already licking at him. He knows but denies it. The world’s going to devour him. He’ll have to give in, run his course through its gut to pay it back what he owes.

Instead of changing though, instead of cutting back and preparing himself for the implosion of his luxurious lifestyle, he’s been spending money at double the rate, unable to control himself. He’s beyond frenzied, frantic, anxious—shat right out the other side of all that heart-constricting sentimentality into a numb, idiotic optimism rallied by a hedonist lifestyle. He’s been spending all of his time seeking out new pleasures, new fun, new means of plunging, burying, tucking himself away within the fat folds of this American land.

And so far, it’s been working. At least enough to keep him moving, wandering on. But he knows of course it won’t last. He knows he’s just twisted himself into a labyrinth to hinder, delay his emergence into the shock and awe of his fuck up. And he knows the minotaur’s still there, growling low in his gut, stamping mad, sharpening its—

A car horn blares, gores him, thrusts the world back in.

Wine? Not much left. He tosses the last of it back and hurls the bottle at the ground, temporarily elated in the spray of glass.

No need to think of what he’ll do next. Back toward where he came, enjoying now in the return soft cushioning of mind from drink. In no time, he’s opening the door to the corner grocery. A bell sounds as he swings it open, again as it closes under the force of its own weight.

Out of the corner of his eye, a large black moustache is frowning at him. He turns away from it, tugs on the chrome handle of one of those coolers, and feels a brief magnetic cling before the seal breaks—pok—and cold air falls lazy all over him. He shuts his eyes for a moment as it phases ghostly through. Then he searches the cooler and finds his mark. Tall boy. Yeungling. 24 ounces.

At the register, he goes ahead and buys a pack of American Spirits. Why not? Light blues. Ignore the grimace on the clerk’s face.

“What were you running after out there?” the man asks him, as he puts the beer in a completely inconspicuous paper bag.

“Nothing,” Conor says, “Have a good night.”

The bell rings twice more.

He makes a left turn onto Line, beginning the walk toward Coming, toward King. He pops the tab, peeks around, slurps and sips. Mostly foam. He’s been wandering the streets like this lately, no real goals in mind, no plans, no one to talk to about his worries, his fears, not even himself. And that’s just what he wants: a dull rushing of wind combing buildings, buzzing of street lamps, slapping of feet on concrete. That’s it. That’s all he asks of his nights. A steady stream of porous cement, same disheveled slabs even, over and over, for miles.

He’s been reading up on Zen meditative techniques recently. Mindfulness anyway. Though he’s grossly misinterpreted the purpose of the exercises, shirking spiritual enlightenment for outright escape through self-obliteration, he’s at least been able to find some peace in the ritual.

Keeping his head down, he tries to watch his steps, not to think. Step, step, step, step, sip. He peeks every now and then, noting what he sees: some empty lots, a church, tall grass, slick though illegible names of graffiti artists, a few garbage bins, the occasional sign protruding from a window or left out for bait on a corner, promising, promising…

Observing these variances doesn’t keep him from his self-hypnosis. They are not distractions. Instead, they help him to further sedate, further suppress himself. If these changes in the scenery bear no significance, after all—if they serve only to add detail to the mask rather than to remove it, reveal what’s behind—then none of it matters, and there’s no point in paying it much attention. If nothing’s significant, then there’s no need to keep anything present. And that’s a good thing. Right? Let it all fade in his breathing, pulsing blood, contraction of muscles, gliding of skeleton over pavement.

Wind blows through palmettos above him, rustling leaves, dulling in his ears the resounding of his stepping. Take a drink from the can, and hear and feel the cold churn and slop of the beer transferring from aluminum to mouth, burning softly the esophagus, splashing in, fizz­ing at bottom of stomach. Belch.

He drops the can back to his side, returning to the swishing of the bag on his thigh, the thudding of his boots, the rise and fall of his breathing.

As he walks, the sidewalk shrivels, narrows. Intermittent trees and telephone poles keep him nudged over close to the buildings. A comforting feeling. Repeated wooden presence so large, so near. Cement beneath him too. Everything so firm, so solid, yet so soft on the senses. All of it cups you, cradles you, bats you like an eyelash dropping mind into sleep. There is no you. You are only your walking. Your walking’s only the passage through everything. Without everything to walk through, you wouldn’t be anything. If you’re only your walking, you aren’t anything but everything. You can’t be everything, so you’re not you. You’re—Shh, Shh, Shh, Shh, Shh, Shh, Shh, Shh…

On Coming Street, a throughway opening on 17 and 26, Conor’s got to look up to not get killed. But that doesn’t mean he’s got to focus. No need to shake off that buzz. Just watch your shadow get murdered on the street. Just think nothing of it. Just let intuition take over: Any light coming? Yes. But not much. Well stop walking anyway. But keep breathing. Keep watching your breathing. Drink. Go on. Observe.

In trance all cars, buildings and trees take on meaning, seem swollen for all his not looking, and gleaming. No expression though, only the feeling—more and more drunk, less and less serenely sober.

There’s no fence keeping him from the traffic this time. But don’t worry. His shadow was enough roadkill for one night. He watches the cars pass by, waiting, empty. Again, the whoosh, whoosh whoosh. But it’s not really as simple as all that, you know. Not as quick and done. Following the initial rush of sound, the whipping of the wind as a car passes, the sound lingers, expands, fills the air. And it never quite dies out. It gets softer and softer, nearly silent as the car moves on and vanishes away. There’s the rush, the echo of the rush, the memory, the ghost, its miasmic breath, particles of that breath fis­sioning off into their smallest bits, hardly perceived but continually felt, left in the brain to drift, or shooting through all brains, too small to notice, minuscule, like dust unseen, until slats are opened and beams fall through to gilt… He notices he’s started to crawl back in with his thinking, notices too that his thoughts are vapid, have no bite. And he starts to think about that, to berate himself for his lack of poignancy, lack of substance. But he remembers the American Spirits, and he’s spared from all that fear and loathing.

As he continues to wait for the light, he removes the pack from his pocket, peels off the plastic, enjoys the feeling in the tension of its smooth surface holding, then giving, splitting open easy. He stuffs the plastic in the paper bag around his can, not wanting to litter. Good on you, man! Then he tamps the tobacco, slapping the box against his palm a few times quick. Turn and give it a few more slaps. Pop the top and pull away the foil. Draw the second cigarette from the left—who was it that told him that was good luck?—pinch between your lips, and flick out your Zippo as the light turns red overhead. Guard flame from the wind with one hand and light with the other. Pull in a good drag, catch up the beer and carry on.

Halfway across the street, he exhales. A little cloud of smoke lingers there for a moment and fades, or dissipates, all of it going somewhere and gone there by the time his boot crosses over the curb on the other side of the street. Just what he needed. American Spirits, fuck yeah, right? Draw on them again, exhale, take another sip and let the pissy aftertaste sit in the mouth. Drop head back down, let flow of concrete take in and scramble. Blur.

Walking without thinking, without knowing, without being. Churning of self out through body to splash into world, trickling a bit more now into the pot, just a bit more now with each step. Crossing already over St. Phillips, King and Meeting, surprisingly undistracted by the sudden openings of space at each intersection, showerings of new light and sound.

He takes a turn at random—or the turn takes him, or there is no turn and there is no him, and Nassau Street’s nothing more than the whorled rambling of some phantom’s wandering fantasy. But something really exists here, for sure, on top of all that nothing. And Conor’s pulled back into it, slopped again onto the tray of solid being, when a voice swoops down out of the night, sinks its talons in, takes a bite.

“Yo man, you got a cig?”

Far off it seems, but here it is again. Closer. Right in front of him this time—“You got a smoke?”

Look up: a massive man in an oversized hundred-dollar bill t-shirt is looming large in the middle of the path, clogging up the sidewalk.

“N-nah, sorry. I’m about to finish my last one.”

He doesn’t like to give his cigarettes away to people he doesn’t know, especially if they come out of fucking nowhere and ruin his whole routine. So he doesn’t offer the man any of his nineteen remaining Spirits. Instead, he walks on, arcing around the man, managing at last to break orbit and get him out of sight.

This distraction past, he thinks again to take a drink. But there’s a shortage of substance in the can. Probably his last sip he thinks. He kicks it back and keeps moving, holding on to the empty vessel, preparing to slip back into his trance.

But there’s the voice again. “You don’t got no cigs mothafucka?” And then there’s the man’s body again, rushing in front of him, grabbing his Harvard sweater in one of his big hands and sticking a pistol under his ribs with the other. He’s grinning, showing rows of white teeth. The loose folds of his t-shirt flap in the wind, roll over Conor like waves.

“You got any money then mothafucka?”

Staring. Processing. Conor can sense the difference of power in this man’s body and his own. Tense muscles full of anger and need and hunger against twigs of unworked flesh and bone. And he can feel the dark aura of death too, seeping out though not yet fired from the barrel of the gun. He can taste his fear of the bullet on the roof his dry mouth. But he isn’t really scared. That’s just his instincts fucking with him, his glands firing off adrenaline unordered. No, he’s not scared. He doesn’t care. Shit, this might even be why he led himself down here.

He lifts a hand to take another drag on his cigarette, which has almost but not quite burnt out. Those Spirits last a long time, don’t they?

But of course this is a dumb move, and of course the mugger isn’t having any of Conor’s bullshit. He headbutts him in the nose, too close to get a good punch in. A flash of pain, forfeit of control. So he wasn’t going to pull the trigger after all. What a pussy. Conor falls back from the blow, opening himself to a solid left hook. He doesn’t feel the impact on his jaw, but you can bet he feels the impact with the ground, within whose sudden embrace he’s sent into a deeper daze than he could ever manage to work himself into with his trance.

The mugger’s going through his pockets. If Conor could think clearly now, he’d probably be thinking something like: Ah, who cares about the money anyway? I can just pull out more loans. It’s not like a few hundred dollars is going to make any difference now. And of course, he’d be thinking this, but he’d be feeling that knotting in his chest tightening—and he’d do his best you know to look away from the face of his future getting buried away deeper down in the dirt of his debt. And the mugger finds his cigarettes too. And if Conor could think clearly now, he’d probably be thinking something like: Fuck!

“Thought you didn’t have any smokes bitch!”

And there’s two kicks. One to the spine, and one to the head. And there’s the dwindling sound of steps losing themselves in distance. And there’s nothing. Or there’s always been nothing you know, just below everything. Not hiding either but glaring and screaming. We’re the ones that cover it up, paint it over, try to muffle the cries. It doesn’t do any of the things we accuse it of. It doesn’t do anything. It isn’t anything. It does everything. It is everything. It’s the hole you can never fill inside you, that is you. You know what I’m getting at. It’s your death. Mu.