[Or, the last three weeks of my life, as could only have been lived, dreamed, and written by me.]
I wake up on a Honolulu park bench around 2:45 in the morning. This may sound all glamor and paradise but it is anything but: January winds pelting icy beads of rain into my skin like transparent bullets. I finish what is left of my Red Dog tall boy before heading toward the park’s exit. A homeless man accosts me, grinning toothlessly out from under a dark fishing cap and dark raincoat, not unlike the antagonist from those tasteless B-movie horror film adaptations of Lois Duncan’s rather palatable young adult suspense novel. Thankfully, I don’t see a hook. But he does grunt as he proffers another Red Dog tall boy, unopened, and a single Marlboro Red, one in each hand. I make a snap decision to be sober until I get what I want, need, like those bargains with the gods and goddesses that even the most faithless among us sometimes make, e.g., “I will not x if and until you will give me y,” etc. I do take the Marlboro Red, though. Light it with my last drug store match as I exit the park one final time.
I wake up on a film set, apparently giving last-minute wardrobe approvals and final directing notes to whom I can only assume is my film’s star, Nicole Kidman. I don’t say “action” but I hear it, and suddenly everything is on: film, sound, lights, characters (as if I had just donned and switched on one of those dream replay tape devices from that disturbing final film of Natalie Wood’s that she never completed due to a watery death by drowning off Catalina Island). All ivory skin and fiery red hair and guilded period costumes, all rage and anger and golden daggers and dull butter knives, quickly cutting, all crystal-meth-and-coked-out-like, between the murders of two Queens on their thrones and the murders of two young boys, on a dirty sofa in a tenement room or a mobile home, in front of their screaming mother. I’m so freaked out and terrified by what I’m seeing I don’t even hear myself say “cut” but someone does and suddenly everything is offand the star is out of character and congratulating us on our hard work and would I like a spot of absinthe and a Marlboro Red? I can’t speak yet so I just snatch the Marlboro Red from her still-fake-(fake?)-blood-spattered hand and run off of the sound stage to a Starbucks around the corner where I order a grande decaf double caramel machiatto skinny which is a stupid order I think and definitely not my usual one but I take it anyway and light the Marlboro Red before I even exit the cafe.
I walk out into a public promenade of state buildings, all South Pacific and provincial, glowing white in the late afternoon island sun, and listen attentively to a husky man with a thick New York Italian raspy voice give me advice on how to sleep. “You gotta dress all in black, you see? And you gotta put something black over your face, you see? And wrap your hair up in black, too, you see?” I nod affirmatively as I kill my Marlboro Red and step on it. “‘Cuz you’re,” he stammers, talking with his hands, “you’re all…white, and blond, and shit, you see?” I laugh. I can’t stop staring at his New York Giants jersey and large chunky yellow gold Rolex or stop the name “Corleone” from looping through my head or stop remembering the amazing Italian food I used to enjoy at my favorite place in Little Italy, or while V.I.P. at family dinners at Salvatore’s, in Chicago. “Whiskey?” Corleone asks, brandishing a bottle of Chivas. I wince but I can’t remember why. “Marlboro Red?” he tries again, and I take it, light it, before sauntering further up the promenade into an area in which several too-young too-skinny skater boys and biker chicks are practicing their moves between the steps of two public buildings. They stop when they see me photographing them, and engage me in talk of photography, music, and alternative subculture psychology and fashion. One of the skaters wants to leave because he can’t do a hardflip and I chide him for being a pussy and borrow his board to show him myself how easy it is. Impressed, they offer me two dolphins of ecstasy, a bag of hash, and a Marlboro Red. I am briefly tempted by the E but take only the Marlboro Red as I skip up the steps of one of the buildings and enter the front door into a warm, cozy bedroom full of dark woods, velvet brocades, and soft yellow lights.
The bed is turned down and a black cat blinks sleepily up at me from the foot of it, inviting me in. I see an ashtray on one of the nightstands so I use the white-gold-plated art deco butane lighter I find in my tuxedo vest’s pocket to light the Marlboro Red. There are initials engraved into the lighter (Dunhill) that read “A.S.B.” all in lowercase. I climb into bed and hear running water shut off in the next room just before a much older version of someone I used to know and love, all gray-haired and bearded and bespectacled, enters the room and climbs into his own side of the bed, removing his spectacles to place on his nightstand before turning his back to me wordlessly as I sit smoking silently and the black cat stares at me unblinking, topaz eyes purring. I extinguish the Marlboro Red and watch in fascination as the aged, gnarled hand that I know is my own moves in slow motion from the ashtray to the shoulder of the man in bed beside me, breaking into normal speed as I hear myself say, as the man feels my hand on his shoulder and turns to look at me accusingly, “Are you…”
I wake up to hear myself speak “…mad at me?” out loud and into the cold, dark emptiness of an island pre-dawn, the deafening sound of the words quickly swallowed whole by the morning’s silence. I irrationally hope that no one heard me and think to myself what’s worse: asking those words at all, asking those words when you know that quite possibly your least favorite and respected journalist in all of history practically trademarked them, or asking them of someone you already know is no longer there, and didn’t care in the first place? All of a sudden I have a splitting headache and flinch at the sound of plastic rustling in the wind at my ear and rise to find that the Japanese witch of my late evenings, all raven-haired and sunglasses at night, has left me another present while walking the haunted hallways of my dreams: a bag of soft cashew butter brittle. I wonder vaguely how she knows that I love cashews as I fill my mouth with the sticky sweet salty softness and stumble in the dark around the corner of a building only to run into a midget clown all dressed up in blackface, who cackles maniacally up at me, face all evil and seen through a fish-eye lens straight out of that latest unsettling and claustrophobic yet amazing David Lynch film, jeering at me to take either the fist-full of those single-use dental flossers that you buy in bulk bags at your local drug store or a single Marlboro Red. I stifle a scream of horror as if there is nothing so scary to me it is a clown and realize that I had already flossed three times that day so I snatch the Marlboro Red and flee down an even darker alley I hope the midget clown doesn’t already know about.
I wake up on the grounds of a temple in the sky, preparing for a celebration, all electric Kool-Aid acid pastels and glittering crystals, all clouds and albino granite, all coronation and Palace of St. Bevelle. I pass a water feature to my left flanked by two mermaids carved out of ice and am welcomed by my family, alive and dead: father, mother, brother and his family, who all greet me with excitement as they can’t imagine I’d miss the grand opening of the newest restaurant of one of my favorite chefs. I can’t remember his name now but founded Aquavit in Manhattan where I dined every Saturday evening when I lived there and is a very sexy Ethiopian on whom I had a vague crush for several years. “We’re all V.I.P.!” mother sings cheerfully, sipping a martini delicately and informing me that there are similar celebrations occurring in New York, Oslo and several other Scandinavian cities I have never heard of, and the Belmont Ann Sather in Chicago, where they are giving away free hot cinnamon rolls. I wish vaguely that I was at the Ann Sather celebratory annex because I really love those cinnamon rolls, but stay instead with my family to sample various delicious, warm, and buttery delicacies whose names I can’t pronounce and listen to my eldest nephew’s account of his first year of undergraduate school before the chef whose name I still can’t remember but on whom I still kind of have a crush takes me aside to meet the celebration’s Mistress of Ceremonies. Apparently this is one of the water feature’s mermaids, who morphs before my eyes into Alyssa Milano during Phoebe Halliwell’s rather unfortunate Charmed mermaid phase a few years ago. She welcomes me warmly, admits she didn’t know my family was Scandinavian (“I didn’t either!” I exclaim, mouth full of limpa bread), and offers me an icy glass of aquavit and a single Marlboro Red as I hear the opening guitar riff of The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now over a public address system overhead. I nearly choke on my mouthful of limpa bread at the sight of the shot glass of aquavit but grab the Marlboro Red from between Mermaid Milano’s fingers before bumming a light from my father’s own art deco Dunhill lighter (yellow-gold-plated) and running into a corridor clearly marked “Designated Smoking Area.”
I wake up falling, and think I’ve somehow stumbled off the temple platform to plummet through the open sky, but in fact only fall a few inches before I land on my feet, Marlboro Red still happily burning between my lips. “You can’t smoke that in here, Silly!” I hear in my ear as two bronzed fingers pluck the Marlboro Red from between my lips. “It’s against Competition Regulations!” I look toward the voice and am startled to see another man from my past smiling widely and taking me by my right arm while excitedly explaining that the Pokémon Battles will begin soon but that my Pikachu still needs to eat some cake at the Pre-Battle Party. I begin to wonder if the Japanese witch’s soft cashew butter brittle had been laced with lysergic acid diethylamide or some other semisynthetic psychedelic but allow the man-boy to lead me anyway to a room in which a cacophony of people, all wearing day-glo-hued do-rags and matching backpacks, sit listening to Marianne Faithfull sing “you’re so young and pretty” in the corner while fixedly watching the machinations of an enormous mechanized cake. “They had it specially catered for the Competition,” the man-boy explains, and I can’t help but watch it as well, even as the animated striations and undulations the mechanized pieces are creating on all of the layers of cake, butter-cream icing, and fondant begin to make me ill. “Here!” the man-boy exclaims, taking my right hand and pressing a red and white ball into it, “bring your Pikachu!” And I throw the ball but instead of my Pikachu all I see is a silvery-white stag appear before me, seriously straight out of Hogwart’s, who shyly canters up to me and gently nuzzles my left arm. The man-boy sighs incredulously and leans in close to whisper into my ear, “When did you learn how to do that?!” I want to reply that I don’t know but I can’t talk, can’t breathe, can only shut my eyes tightly, can’t remember my name or where I’m from or what day or month it is or who won the Super Bowl or who’s ahead in the Democratic Primaries or when I last ate or what I ate or how thin I’m getting or how I might have pneumonia because I can’t breathe or to which agency I last submitted my résumé in Word format but not PDF or… “Look!” I hear the man-boy exclaim again, “there’syour Pikachu!” and I open my eyes and see the yellow mouse before me, smiling innocently, electric sparks still dancing off of the tip of his tail, and “Pika!” he screams, sweetly, thrusting his two paws that had been hidden behind his back toward me, one clutching a full syringe, the other, a single Marlboro Red, and I’m so cold and exhausted and hungry for anything than soft cashew butter brittle and mechanized cake and I shut my eyes quickly, tightly, and.
I wake up enveloped in warmth, the cheers from the Battle Stadium and Marianne Faithfull’s smoky crooning replaced by the lilting strains of slack-key guitars and the clinking of crystal and cutlery. “Sir?” I hear from in front of me, but open my eyes and turn to my left first, to see the last of the silvery-white stag disappear into errant wisps in the eerie violet of an island twilight, through the glass doors of the cocktail lounge. “Sir?” I hear again, and turn now toward the smiling voice in front of me. “Proper Maker’s Mark Manhattan with three cherries,” I hear, and look down to see the martini glass slide toward me, “just the way you like them, Mr. Bartelby.” I smile, look up, and hand the man behind the bar my MasterCard. “Thank you, James,” I say, before plucking a single cherry from its spear with my tongue, and pulling a substantial sip from the glass to roll blissfully around my mouth. I check the date on my Suunto watch, double-check my right front pants pocket for apartment keys on my Prada key-chain, and smile, glancing down at the black leather-bound notebook sitting on the bar in front of me. I sit staring into the liquid amber for several minutes, watching the ripples move out to the edge of the glass, before I see, from the corner of my eye, a single Marlboro Red roll slowly, deliberately, down the bar, until it comes to rest at the notebook before me, in which I have just now finished writing these words.
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