Chapter 7

‘Poverty’s no big deal,’ thought Simon, sipping a cup of coffee at a diner. After all he had been through, he handled it well, and lately he had been wearing his black leather jacket, a representation of a deep mourning for what happened on September 11th. The world had changed dramatically. People on the street wore tee shirts with American flags on them. Bumper stickers said ‘God Bless.’ A young woman even dyed her hair the colors of red, white, and blue.

September 11throcked people hard, and Simon, being future-oriented, felt a great pang of regret as well as a deep sense of loss that gave him little energy to get things done. Nevertheless, renewal sprouted all around him. People still worked. The large buses waddled down the avenue, the subway cars grumbled below street level. He had come to the point of no return, and he hung over a cliff on the verge of jumping.

Life tugged at his wrists despite his resistance. No one in their right mind likes to be born again, but the aftershocks of September 11thchanged everybody. Things stayed uneasily quiet as New Yorkers slowly rebuilt their lives. He could feel screws coming loose in his mind, but after a few weeks of low living, these screws tightened until he felt whole again, and also at peace. The more things changed within him, the more things changed externally. Everything was hush-hush. One of the papers advised that citizens should remain civil to each other, smiling, keeping low tones, playing respectful and courteous. Simon played along, and he felt much better as a once leaky brain tightened and reformed, as though its different parts were communicating or at least in sync with the whole.

He acquainted himself with his neighbors, getting a feel for them by hanging around the hotel. They were an unusual cast of characters, most of them persons of color – Hispanics and Blacks, a few Indians and Pakistanis. He felt out of place, like one of them would attack him for no other reason than the color of his skin. He moved among them cautiously, losing himself among them but keeping a comfortable distance. They stared at him, curious stares that made him feel a little naked. His expulsion from the world he knew could have devoured him, but he accepted it and moved on.

The hardest part involved entering his father’s apartment building across the street. Charlie had purchased the building with other low-income housing credits, and now Stewart and his Wall Street pals planned to buy it and convert it. Not only was it haunted by weak floorboards and pockmarked walls, but some of the tenants loitered the hallways. Doors slammed up and down the corridors. He double-checked his reasons for being there. Yes, he needed a job, but no, he didn’t need a job that badly. At one point he wanted to turn back, but he knew the building as his father’s and trusted the spirit in which the building was built. Charlie built it to house the poor, even though he planned to kick them out. Nevertheless his perception of danger proved to be more than the actual level of danger.

He held an unhealthy and irrational fear of the place, a fear of its people delivered by faulty media messages. He saw these people as ideas more than people. They signified danger. Some parts of the hallway were kept neat, the dust and litter swept away from the doorways. Other parts were disheveled and dull. But he admired how the tenants lived. They were a tough lot, and righteous. They had seen more pain in a day than most people experience in their lifetimes. Everyone struggles, but these tenants dealt with battered psychologies, the threat of crime hanging over them, the ideation of their own inferiority, endless work, the need to escape and flee the gangs, the drugs, the low incomes in the face of American excess. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t level the playing field. It took them generations to see the light of day, and yet they still remained underground, as though the higher the floor, the more lowly the lifestyle.

After walking up and down the hallway in search of the disabled man’s apartment, he couldn’t fathom how his father could own such a crestfallen property. It needed a complete renovation – new paint, a sprinkler system, maybe carpeting and an exterminator. The tenants didn’t play games with the landlord. They simply chewed on what was left of the infrastructure. He wanted out of the building, to fly down the broken elevator shafts and flee to places that were whiter, a place of lawns and horses and polo mallets. But the system of things thrived, and no matter how hard he tried to escape it, it always boned up. No matter how hard the revulsion, it adapted to that specific revulsion and learned what caused it. Then it made him reform. Resistance was futile indeed, and those who resisted were placed in the projects.

Before it was all child’s play: the games he had played with Charlie and Stewart along with the idea that he could resist and get away with it. He saw first hand what happened to those who resisted. They wound up dead and buried, stored within memories only to be unleashed through the dream-world of ghastly apparations. He sensed that the only way to real freedom involved moving inward. In the apartment building he was a half-dead mouse traveling through the tube of a serpent’s stomach. He knocked on doors and looked for clues in their eyes. At one door he completely lost his sense of place and stuttered through his question:

“I n-n-n-need to find Norris.”

“Oh, you mean Norris.”

“Yes. I’m Simon Sample. I’m here for the assistant’s position.”

The job paid minimum wage, but at least it was something he could hold on to. He stepped inside a small one-bedroom, a small kitchen to his left, a row of closets to his right. Furniture from yesteryear had been packed into a small, tight space, and Simon had to work his way around a maze of boxes, a vinyl recliner, and a woolen loveseat to find him. On an antiquated television set the news flashed scenes of September 11th. In front of the television sat Norris, a tall black man in a cowboy hat, a leather vest, and chaps for pants. He wore a pair of old cowboy boots dry and cracked with age. He also wore dark sunglasses.

“Who’s this?” asked Norris of the woman who lived with him.

“This is Simon Sample,” she said. “He’s your new assistant.”

“Assistant? I don’t need an assistant. I’m doing just fine on my own.”

“Now, Norris, let’s make him feel comfortable.”

“I told you, I don’t need an assistant.”

Simon thought he should probably get going. Working in such a crummy place wasn’t worth his time.

“If he doesn’t need an assistant, he doesn’t need an assistant,” said Simon.

“I don’t need an assistant.”

“Why don’t I make us a nice pitcher of Kool-Aid. You like Kool-Aid, don’t you Mr. Sample?”

“Maybe I should be on my way.”

“Not without my extra special glass of Kool-Aid.”

Simon thought ‘what the hell,’ and soon enough he sat on the couch next to Norris drinking a red punch that tasted like tap water. They drank from paper cups. Simon gulped his down quickly.

“Well, I’ve got to go,” he said.

“Not without my homemade biscuits.”

She brought over a plate of what looked like cookies.

“Very good, ma’am,” said Simon.

Norris stayed away from the cookies.

“So what’s your name again?” he asked.

“Simon Sample. I’m here to assist you.”

His words sounded incredulous.

“Simon Sample? What kind of name is that?”

“It’s a name, I guess.”

“What kind of name, I said?”

“Just an ordinary, plain-old name.”

“And what am I supposed to do with you around?”

“I guess we take it a step at a time.”

Simon noticed Norris’ guitar case in the corner.

“And what do you think of this war?” he asked.

“The war?”

“Yes, the attacks on the? The? The Palestinians and the Israelis? What do you think of that?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“It is my business, by the way. I want to know who I’m dealing with.”

“I work for Angela and the agency.”

“Angela who?”

“Angela Ruiz at the newspaper. She sent me to assist you.”

“Maybe I don’t need an assistant.”

“Maybe you don’t.”

“For the wage, I take it. That’s all you people want from me – money, plain and simple.”

“They’re not paying me enough to put up with this. Good day to you, sir.”

But then the woman returned with more of the cookie-biscuits. They were oily and tasteless.

“Oh, Norris, leave him alone. Norris gets a little cranky when he hasn’t eaten anything. Norris is a guitar player. Tell him.”

“Yes, I’m a musician,” he said.

“Really? What kind of music do you play?”

“Mostly bluegrass and country. Some blues.”

Simon didn’t like any of the above. He preferred whatever music they played in the clubs and the classical stuff they played at. His life had been far removed from ecstasy tablets, Armani suits, and bottles of Krystal, far removed from elegant evenings at Avery Fisher Hall. So far removed in fact that he could only recall brief flashing images of laser lights and disco balls, European models in skimpy dresses, and especially Caitlin. His heart bled a little just then, as though it let out a tear from the harrowing loss of it all. In her place he got an old man, half-blind with cowboy gear and an ordinary guitar, which Norris took out of his case.

“This here is my guitar,” explained Norris. “I’ve had it all my life.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

He strummed it for a bit, and then tuned it.

“I need help getting around from gig to gig. Someone to carry my guitar case.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. How often do you play?”

“Every night there’s something going on. I play mostly down in the village. Nights, I play.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” said Simon.

“Even if you don’t like what I play?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, you haven’t heard any of it.”

“There will be plenty of time for that.”

“Okay. Meet me here tonight, because it will sure be alright,” he sang while strumming.

He didn’t know what he meant, but his singing loosened him up a bit. Norris had a soft, plaintive voice with a Midwestern twang. He had somehow gotten away with singing all of his life. An odd fellow, this Norris, and also quite a novelty – a different sort of artist, a recording artist, yes, and probably in his younger years he packed them in. He noticed from the pictures on the walls that he had a psychedelic streak in him, an era Simon loathed, its aftershocks still felt. He couldn’t tell where Norris fit in along the political spectrum, but he certainly wasn’t apolitical. Simon didn’t expect him to have a political mind. When Norris asked him about the war a second time, Simon played dumb.

The Kool-Aid and cookies made him a little queasy, and he left the apartment with an appointment to return the following night. He walked down the corridor carefully. He didn’t want to get mugged. He was an easy target, although lately he tried hard to look like a ruffian. Such a look must have taken years to perfect, and even though he bought the right clothes, he still looked like a young kid from buying drugs in a black neighborhood. He wouldn’t be surprised if the cops stopped him. He was the only thing white in the chocolate.

Angela gave him an identification badge from the paper just in case. How he came to fraternize with these once liberal enemies he wasn’t sure. They knew about him and the entire scandal, and the smiles on their faces reminded him of it. He didn’t trust Angela Ruiz either. Perhaps she gave him the job to teach him a lesson – the poor little rich kid who got sideswiped by the press. He had no one else, though, and he made a decision to trust them a little more. They didn’t exactly like him like the way Stewart and Caitlin liked him. It hadn’t been easy at all to make new friends and feel comfortable in his new surroundings. Norris, however, didn’t mention the scandal at all, and he wondered if he knew about it.

There was something intuitive about knowing him, the way he strummed his guitar and sang a couplet. He may have known everything about him, his past, his inner fears, the way he lived prior to the attacks. He sang the couplet with a grin, a strange double-speak that told him not to worry so much, because everything about him was already known to some giant brain in the sky that distributed information to everyone in the building. He couldn’t make sense of Norris just yet. It would take time before he trusted him.

He spent the next day in a state of sullen boredom. He masturbated to Caitlin in his hotel room, but even these memories grew tired with every revolution of the clock. It didn’t matter if it were Sunday or Tuesday. Every day was a weekend as far as he was concerned, and after a short time it felt like some great spirit had imprisoned him in the economically challenged environment.

He paced the room. He went out for fried chicken only to return an hour later and sleep on the bed. He gained weight and bought a small radio. He found a station that played the same tunes over and over to the point that he knew all of the tunes by heart, the same melodies carried over from an era when he was happiest. It all seemed a little phantasmal, and he wondered if he would ever bust out of the eternal funk, like a company’s stock that’s consolidating if only to break out above resistance at some later date.

He imagined himself as someone else, the man he could have been had he cooperated. In this delusion he had fashionably wavy hair, a crisp Brooks Brothers suit on, a pair of mahogany loafers with pennies in them. He shook hands, talked about the weather, became the center of attention. But in reality he didn’t know how to communicate with the life he once knew. A huge gap separated him from anything familiar. His body sagged under the weight of his dreams, and he found the entire process of living a big, incomprehensible problem that begged for some ultimate solution or at least a better design.

He bought the newspapers and read about the impending war. Reading the papers used to give him joy, especially when he used them to bounce his political theories off of the boys at the club. The papers filled his empty bags of anger, anger due to his impotence at controlling events or at least his inability to connect to the same wavelength that once gave him a sense of power, however false it was. He had touched a ceiling and paid the price for it. He now walked in circles, keeping his feet in line with the patterns on the carpet. He stared out into a no man’s land of thought and idea and came back with nothing. Surely he found himself in the wrong moment and in the wrong place. Yet he came to realize that this strange period needed to happen. He needed to be forced down from his lofty height and engage the world, engage the ghetto, engage a cowboy guitar player in order to rid himself of the utopia he had nearly achieved. His life with Caitlin, he reasoned, was the utopia.

“There is no such place,” he said in front of the bathroom mirror, eyeing himself.

His reflection didn’t seem real to him, his instructions to himself just another vague set of unauthentic ramblings. He was weird all of a sudden, or at least a little off the point of normal. It scared him and thrilled him, because now he could do anything he wanted. He could spit at his reflection, he could piss on the carpet, he could drink himself asleep, and it really didn’t matter. God’s hands shaped him with both care and affection, testing his limits as a human being and slowly turning him into the strange animal at the primordial core of his being, as though he were the awkward result of centuries upon centuries of Simon Samples, from the caveman to his own timeless body and mind. It should have happened a long time ago. It’s as though a man needs to descend in order to grow. Very odd.

The awareness of himself as a potential animal punished him a little. He had always thought of himself as refined and morally couth, an idealist with a heart of gold. The contrast gave him a better understanding of his father and why he did the things he did. He couldn’t understand Stewart, though. He hoped the tables would turn on him for being an animal before his time. Stewart would one day reflect and know in his heart that he had failed miserably and hurt a lot of people in the process. Simon didn’t long for revenge, however, as his view was more enlightened. He did not want to initiate yet another cycle of revenge to be stored in the closet with billions of other cycles. Brilliance became the point at which these terrible cycles broke and splintered in the wake of a higher good. It’s no wonder then that Simon felt more like an imbecile the longer he hung around the hotel room, the longer he let his seclusion rather than a higher good mold and shape him into the person, not imagined, but more aligned with the truth.

He had to forget his illustrious past. That was the first item on his list of things to do. Although in the past he tried vigorously to control his life and live it on his own terms, he realized that he had little control over anything, and the harder he tightened the grip the more miserable he became. Sometimes one had to trust where life led him, even though the end result of the journey looked bleak and unrewarding. A man just had to trust it and move forward into the oblivion of his fate. He could not see his future no matter how hard he tried, and the stuff he could see loomed over him dark and foreboding. No, there was no way back to the life he once knew. He didn’t want to see Caitlin either, even though he vowed to rescue her. It all seemed a little absurd that he could one day search himself back. He accepted his new life with the guitar player and noticed too that the more he accepted it, the more he became directionless and head-empty in his pursuits.

By the time he returned to Norris’ apartment he had resolved to make the best of it. He was paid minimum wage to lug Norris’ equipment from to the Village clubs. They took the A train from Port Authority. Simon led the way with Norris’ guitar case in hand. Norris followed him from a distance. He walked slowly with a cane, and at times Simon had to wait on the side of the walkways for him to catch up. Norris also carried a dulcimer in a case slung over his shoulder. After walking through the maze of hot, underground passageways Norris looked like he was on the verge of collapsing.

“I’m getting too old for this,” he said.

Simon couldn’t tell how old Norris was. He seemed timeless, his face worn like an old horse’s, his body the scent of leather and mink oil. He looked like an original with the rest of the passengers as his backdrop. He looked like a cowboy in a Spaghetti Western, the first black cowboy in a rodeo, someone who belonged out in the dust bowl trading crops and cattle.

“Norris, I’m sorry, I just have to ask: do you have any normal clothes? I mean, is there anything in your wardrobe that isn’t country and western?”

“These are normal clothes.”

“We’re on a subway in.”

“So?”

“I’m just saying that maybe tomorrow we can go out and buy some new clothes, that’s all.”

“But I already have all the clothes I need.”

“You wore the same kind of outfit yesterday.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s just that if you want to make it as a musician, you have to dress, y’know, a little more -”

“White, is that it?”

“It has nothing to do with color. It has a lot to do with, well, at least wearing something to a show that appeals to your audience.”

“Have you heard my music yet?”

“What?”

“I said, have you ever seen me perform?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Okay then.”

That’s about the only real conversation they had for the rest of the evening. Simon didn’t know what to think of him, but he sensed a tender side, a side that wanted to explain the nuances of a musician’s life. Time had pelted his skin like a hailstorm, and his clothing reflected it. Maybe he was originally from the. Simon couldn’t tell.

Simon never liked getting drunk very much, but on this night he finally understood why people liked it. The place, in all senses of the word, was a dive. The barstools they sat on almost cracked under their weight. The customers wore cowboy hats and ornate belt buckles the size of. The beer was icy cold as it slid down his parched throat. It gave him time to reminisce about how good things were before the fucking terrorists blew up the, before his father ruined his life. The past injustices, while drunk, came to Simon like a dream, and even though the dark environs of the bar conflicted with his version of what a civilized bar was like, he acted as though he were still at the club, talking conservative politics to a girl on the next barstool.

“I’m not that conservative, really, I’m just a little old-fashioned,” said Simon.

The girl ignored him.

“Okay, we’re on,” interrupted Norris drinking red wine on his other side.

The emcee introduced him. Norris warmed up another act. He took the stage and sang an old Stephen Foster tune. Simon then understood why he dressed the way he did. His purpose became as lucid as the spotlight bathing him. He sang as though he were on a freight train heading West through thickets of cornfield. Simon paid attention to every note of his guitar, a symphony of chords that played slightly askew, a sound clumsy and rough-hewn like a half-dull knife whittling down birch-wood. It conjured up images of shack-dwellers by the waters cooking fish over fires, chewing on twigs and tobacco, letting the dark simplify what the day could not. And a young crowd hung onto his words despite the age of his songs. For all of their technological cleverness and otherworldliness, the young crowd witnessed a part of ‘s history without knowing it.

Norris influenced them subtly while teaching them a lesson in the same breath, as though he carried the souls of fallen musicians on his shoulders only to release them and have them commingle with the newer souls in the room. Most of the young people were amazed, and a few of the older ones who had heard him before opened their jugs of nostalgia to music that actually meant something before the hyperactive pace of culture endangered it.

Simon felt out of place at the onset of the evening, only because he had been conditioned to the fakery of his former life. The more opulent the setting, the more he mattered. The more scholastic the speech, the more seriously people took him. Yet within the dark nightclub with those he saw as commoners, his superiority had been outstripped. No one cared that he came from good stock or at one time moved with ‘s elite. Even if he dressed in tux and tails or even a business suit indicating wealth and prestige, no one in the bar cared. It shook him a little. For the first time in a while he wasn’t the center of attention. No one cared about his image, or the way he talked, or what girl loved him. The past few months of living on the edge reinvented him. Shadows of the past added to his newfound confusion. He became a statistic, a face in the crowd, a stranger in black leather. No one cared whether he lived or died, and before it seemed like a lot of people cared about his wellbeing. People at campaign headquarters looked up to him, people on the street smiled at him, men emulated him, and if he could count the number of women he could have had, had he not fallen in love of course, the number itself would have exceeded any man’s expectations.

The more he drank, the more he neglected Norris’ performance, which included his dulcimer and then the banjo. He slipped inside an envelope of self-pity, longing to return. Maybe he had it a little too good, and good times, no matter the age, always have to end. Ideas that he would never rise to the same height, never mend broken fences, never make love to a woman in the same ballpark as Caitlin engulfed him still. He thought he had conquered these feelings, but in the bar where no one paid attention to him, he couldn’t defeat them. Under all the self-pity and doubt he understood that he was finally free of having to impress people day-in, day-out. This new freedom felt awkward, even a little uncomfortable, like a man diving off a cliff into cold water.

The scotch, however, made him dizzy after a while. Norris ended his set after a few songs. The audience, awestruck, clapped as though they had just heard a great philosopher lecture them on the finer points of nature. It reminded him of a teach-in or at least a strange gathering of idealists and agitators, in cowboy gear no less. A guy a few chairs down broke out a joint, and no one in the bar minded. Considering the amount of smoke wafting head-level all around him, Simon thought he should shower before he hopped into a clean bed. He also couldn’t afford the next drink.

Lately he had to budget, and the results were less than spectacular. His days at the hotel were numbered, and every drink meant a dollar less for room and board. Eventually he’d have to move into the apartment building as stipulated in his contract. Either that or just collect what was remaining and fly to, just jump on a plane with the few clothes he had. He could find work in the sewers or at some jazz club where they played Jacques Brell all night, or maybe live with a prostitute. These things did sound appealing compared to what he faced in, captive to what he considered to be street life. sounded like the best bet. He had been there a few times before, so he knew his way around. Of course he wouldn’t be able to stay at the same luxury hotels or dine at the finest establishments like before, but he could live away from the epicenter of struggle which was. All he needed was a ticket.

“Could you loan me fifty dollars,” asked Simon on the subway ride home.

“I don’t loan out that kind of money to people I don’t know.”

“I’ll send it to you.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“I’m catching a flight to. I’ve had enough of.”

“?”

“Yeah, it’s just that isn’t really a good place for me right now.”

“You mean because of the attacks?”

“Not necessarily. Don’t you know who I am?”

“I can’t see you.”

“Well, why don’t you take off your sunglasses.”

“No. I like it dark.”

Simon waved his hands in front of him. Norris didn’t flinch.

“You’re blind. I didn’t know you were blind.”

“No, I just wear my shades all the time for the hell of it.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“Not fully blind, mind you. Partial blindness. I can still see shapes, and I hear better than the Bionic woman, so you better be careful what you say around me.”

“I’m flabbergasted.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m amazed.”

“You said ‘flabbergasted.’”

“Oh.”

“And what’s this about? You work one night with me, and already you want a vacation?”

“This is a one way trip. I’m not coming back.”

“So then how will you pay me the fifty dollars?”

“I’ll get it to you.”

“What if it gets lost in the mail?”

“I’ll send it Express Mail.”

“That’s most of your fifty dollars right there. You may be able to squeeze in a trip to the Post Office.”

“It’s for part of the plane fare.”

“Well, if you stay on, you could pay for your entire trip and then some.”

“I realize that, but that’s the idea. I don’t plan to stay.”

“You better pan to stay, because there’s no way I’m lending you fifty dollars.”

“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Simon chose not to ask him for money again.

He collapsed on the bed as soon as he got in. He drank a little too much, and all that pot in the air tired him. On his mattress he felt like he was falling in an elevator shaft like the one near Norris’ apartment. In the empty shaft he put out his arms and legs as brakes and came to a halt at some bizarre level unbeknownst to him. He went from the top of the shaft to the bottom in a few heartbeats, and then, a little dizzy, he passed out.

“It’s a tough road, sure it is,” said Norris at the bar one night.

“How long have you been at this?” asked Simon.

“What?”

“How long have you been a traveling musician?”

“All my life.”

“And you’ve never received a reward, or you’ve never played, or you’ve never had wealth – why the hell do you keep doing it if there isn’t a return? Don’t you get impatient at all? Don’t you want more things? I don’t get it.”

“I love to play. That’s why I do it.”

Simon couldn’t understand why so many people lost themselves in their art. For him art remained a commodity to be bought or sold. People talked about it at dinner parties. Students studied it as though it were the only thing worthy in the world. And the artist-types he used to know? Well, they were pieces of work themselves. They didn’t care about much, it seemed, at least the artists who frequented the gallery openings to which he and Caitlin were often invited. He trembled at the sight of these artists, living some Bohemian dream, lost in their own thoughts while getting by on someone else’s hard-earned money. It seemed a bit stupid to pursue art, and with Norris he didn’t get why he had sacrificed his entire life to make it. Even the painters he met he couldn’t understand. They espoused an art-based religion. Most of them would one day wake up and get jobs, if only to realize how foolishly they had spent their lives. And the contradiction to this criticism sat right in front of him – a black man in a cowboy hat, his shades so dark he couldn’t discern the color of his eyes, his gait so imperial that every man and woman looked at him and steadfastly paid attention. Norris slipped through the fingers of natural law. He trespassed in areas that were not traditionally his, a criminal who resulted in a beautiful contradiction to what Simon thought became of artists. Or maybe Norris hid his wealth as cleverly as he hid his eyes from the light, his clothing only a disguise for the millionaire beneath the dusty old vest. He radiated that sort of mystique, which begged the question: