Chapter 4

He could say that through his many years of non-stop work and then returning to his apartment alone that his mind started to play tricks on him in ways that it never had before. After he had painstakingly filed away all of the leases and rid his desk of the heavy piles of legal paper on which a litany of terms and conditions were agreed to and then signed by the tenants, he checked his watch and noticed that it was already ten in the evening. He had remained busy enough for time to pass swiftly through the day. He was a bit blurry-eyed as he walked back home in the darkness, forever vigilant of any odd faces that may have popped out at him from the side-streets and the alleyways that branched off from the main avenue.

The streets that night were eerily quiet, and for a moment while walking he heard the squeaking of rubber soles on the sidewalk that he thought were someone else’s. He checked behind him every few hundred feet, and yes, despite how busy his mind had become, almost like a jumble of wires that had completely rearranged themselves due to the stresses of the day, he recognized that he really was alone on the street that night and chided himself for being so paranoid. Luckily the town had rebounded from a not-so-good crime wave a couple of months ago. Even though people struggled, they still got by, which meant that the killers and the rapists became a little less frustrated by their inability to have free reign over the neighborhood. The gangs had been gradually moved out by the local cops who made way for the new money that was rumored to be infiltrating the town any day now. Supposedly low crime and low taxes were the keys to getting the city-folk to move in.

Regardless of how placid the streets were, Charlie knew that he would be spending another evening by himself, and he often wondered what kind of effect this had on him. It is true, for instance, that after every period of great social activity, such as one’s school years or hanging around a gang or a group of friends for prolonged periods of time, that a man yearns for some solitude, probably because there is something in the mind that is worth contemplating and processing for a time, and the pleasures that come from solitary thinking are of a higher priority at the time than continuing the superficiality of fun and mischief with one’s friends. And so Charlie, after high school, wanted to be by himself for a change, not only to find out what existed beyond the classrooms of his youth but also to prove to himself that he could withstand the punishments that most of the town’s toughest had to put up with, as though beating oneself with chains was the only way to prove he had a mental strength and toughness that would hopefully outlast his emotional neediness.

Perhaps his lot in life was to remain alone as the seasons changed and the sunshine came and went. He would always fight against being alone now but hopefully without killing anyone. With a new friend in Artie he grew impatiently optimistic that he would meet a fine girl at his party, fall for her and she for him, and play out the rest of his days in the harmonium that came with the enduring and ever-changing nature of love between a man and his wife. That was his plan, and he prayed that God didn’t laugh at his plans this time.

While entering data into the computer on his desk and filing away old leases that afternoon, he tried hard to dump the obsession of the quintessential American girl. There were problems at hand, and these were not only linked to his income and status as a minimum wage worker. There were other more pressing issues to consider. For instance, would he actually have to win her love through some sort of battle with another man or some authoritarian body, some sort of fight or duel that would end up injuring or hurting the other man, and if so, would that man or reigning authority, if defeated, exact a revenge? Was this not the task that Charlie Zero really avoided through all of his plans and schemes and drunken fiascoes at the corner pub?

Sure, while drunk he could do or say just about anything he pleased, but when sober he felt very badly about competing for a woman’s affections. Competition for women could result in anything, from the death of one man to the death of millions—a shard in the mind that leads an innocent suitor to numb himself to the emotional ordeal of beating down another man using physical violence. Nor did mental or psychic incursions into her heart persuade her very well either. What happens is that the woman ends up possessing the man who plays such chess-like games, not the other way around. And if the emotional toll of hurting another man to win her love is that great and that much of a threat to a community’s stability, then does Charlie Zero love her any less because he has the capacity to realize that it would threaten the good orderly direction of the community they share? Was there no other way to go about it but to move cautiously and slowly while avoiding the type of killing that may destroy both himself and herself, while at the same time letting her know through whatever subterranean channels possible that he was absolutely and positively smitten with her? Wouldn’t a man in love have to avoid danger at all costs rather than provoke it by showing his love through killing someone? Wouldn’t he have to find some other medium, some other method to communicate such a longing?

Charlie wasn’t too sure what that medium would be, but he knew that whatever tricks and stunts he pulled to win her affections certainly weren’t working. And people generally find out about such clandestine activities sooner or later, and it seemed that a life lived in stealth was a terrible price to pay for moving nearer and closer to her heart, as the journey towards her heart became fraught with all types of difficulties and complexities, tortures and abuses of both mind and body. One wonders if a simple love song would suffice, or whether or not even more betrayal from those radioed lyrics or poetic verses in his head were worth its weight in static any longer. After all, he didn’t mean to hurt anybody, especially the women whom he invisibly stalked. He didn’t mean to reveal how shallow a man he could be.

Nevertheless, the superficiality of getting drunk and desperate at some down-and-out pub, although terrible for one’s outlook and perhaps detrimental to the pursuit of well-being, should suggest to the woman serving him the drinks—this Renee—that something far deeper is going on within his heart than the mere bliss of alcohol. The drunk, in fact, medicates himself for the inability to have his affections heard or acknowledged, and having the world overhear that he loves her would either kill him in front of millions of stares and judgmental eyes that are ready to devour him and send him into exile or to jail or even worse: to embarrass him and to make him blush when his manhood was something he was continuously striving for.

Already Charlie knew that too much damage had been done—too many dead and wounded—all a result of the competitive, market- driven freedom people relied on to court and pursue the objects of their affections and desires. He asked himself whether or not he should continue to chase someone who was inherently incompatible. The question was no longer whether or not he alone could unlock a woman’s heart using his own sordid logic, bag of magic tricks, and strange potions, but rather how a woman would do him the service of unlocking and revealing his own heart that was now buried beneath the gloomy weight of a bellicose pursuit of her.

Perhaps he thought, fearfully, that he would no longer be the same old person if their hearts were to connect—that he would somehow change and find himself in another universe entirely. Maybe this was what she saw in him—his natural fear of bending to her, much like a plant does to sunlight? A possibility, he mused.

He felt like he was in another universe indeed when he slipped on the leisure suit that had been hanging in plastic wrap in his closet after the work-week had ended. He hadn’t touched the suit in several years, but the plastic had preserved it like new. The thin fabric of the dress trousers felt cool against his legs, and when he finished dressing, he looked in the mirror and saw a different person altogether. He felt a bit stronger, his face a bit meatier, as though his perception of himself had changed after he had donned the suit. A confidence returned that he hadn’t seen in some time, as though the image of himself in the mirror had altered a bit. He was no longer haggard or too scrawny or too immature, but instead a bit sturdier and muscular, as through there were certain things about him that had completely changed overnight.

He buttoned up his blazer and straightened his tie, and he knew right away that an end to his ceaseless obsessing about how to talk and what to wear and how he would be perceived fell to the side and was no longer a priority, at least for that day. He didn’t seem so concerned with what others might think of him if he broke out into a sudden fit of dancing at the party or went up to a woman and had a conversation. It really wouldn’t be that humiliating at all. People may have a zillion thoughts in a day, and most of these thoughts are forgettable if not downright absurd—so why be a slave to what other people thought? What people thought certainly didn’t make them what they were. What he thought may happen at the party if he didn’t act perfectly no longer held sway either. Why become a slave to the fear that awaits around the corner if only to end up being trapped by always thinking about what may come next, as it’s impossible, really, to predict anything. Maybe if he danced people would actually get a kick out of it, people would smile, they would laugh, not necessarily at him but at the condition that makes him dance, because dancing in itself is probably one of the silliest looking things a man could do, and others may think him the hero or as foolish as a clown. So what? One doesn’t have to be Denny Terrio in order to dance—although it does help with the ladies—but generally who the hell cares? So who really gave a damn what others think—although he made sure as hell to be considerate and not to get so boozed up that no woman would want him. He made a point of not drinking anything when he arrived by bus at the edge of town and the corners of the resort-like sprawl where Artie lived.

The hardscrabble streets had melted before his eyes, and a pale green forest emerged from where a broken stretch of concrete and rubble trailed off into muddy trails. He had hardly noticed the individual trees along the edges of the forest before, but somehow they seemed more inviting and less foreign to him than they had been a few days ago. The trees stood very silently and vertically erect as though they were guardians of sun-drenched gardens where the women of the posh village retreated when reality became too strenuous. He wondered what these trees whispered, if they said anything at all, or maybe it was the wind that rustled their tops and blew down through their trunks and branches, almost like a voice that carried old ghosts.