Adios, Nirvana Read online

  Chaos XIV

  The difference between snow and rain . . .

  Snow is me and Telly

  poppin’ the five-stair

  behind Taft High School,

  heel-flipping over the rail

  behind Taco Time,

  shredding Highland Hill.

  Rain is hiding

  behind Vic’s garage,

  surrounded by old tires,

  shivering, back to back

  Snow is me and Telly

  racing down Delridge

  to drop our lines in Longfellow Creek.

  Rain is standing at his bedside

  watching the saline drip.

  On the West Seattle Bridge, some cars spin out, bang into each other, pinball, and slide to a stop, fenders interlocked, blocking the lanes. We grind to a halt. Our driver’s neck turns purple, but—well-trained Metro driver that he is—he doesn’t cuss or anything, though I know he wants to.

  Soon I hear “blurp-blurp-blurp.” A cop car cruises past, flashing red and blue. It stops beside us. The cop gets out, sticks his head into the bus. “A tow truck’s on the way,” he says. “For your own safety, do not leave the bus.”

  That’s my cue. As soon as he’s gone, I walk to the front of the bus. The door is open, for air, and I step right out.

  “Hey, what the . . . ? Get back in!” the driver barks.

  But I keep going and don’t look back. I hike past the jammed cars out onto the open freeway. I’ve never walked on a freeway before, let alone in the snow, let alone on a giant arched bridge over a river.

  The cop doesn’t notice at first. He’s talking to drivers. I go about fifty yards, and then I hear him shouting. He gets on his loudspeaker and pelts me with threats. I don’t care because I know he won’t follow me. His car’s trapped. And he’s not about to chase me down on foot.

  It’s beautiful up on the bridge—gusts of white wind, tumbling facefuls of snow. It’s a hundred times worth the cop threats.

  I hike over to the guard rail, which is exactly testicle high, and just stand there, my Nikes planted firmly on slick ice. It’s at least a hundred and fifty feet down to the Duwamish River. The water looks black. No question about it, the river is death. I’m only one slip away from Telemachus.

  One slip away from the great Adios!

  I close my eyes. Open my arms.

  Man, it’s so peaceful up here.

  I let the gusts tilt me back and forth.

  Then I jerk and jump back to safety.

  God knows, Mimi’s been through enough. And my thicks—Kyle, Javon, Jordan, and Nick—how can I do this to them? We were chubby babies in preschool together. And now we are lean, shaggy, guitar-playing, skateboarding, video-gaming, grape-tossing brothers. Even though our leader is gone. Even though he’s in skater heaven.

  My motto—Never compromise—came from him.

  Most of my best thoughts and memories came from him.

  I popped my first stairs because of him.

  I play guitar because of him. Not as well as he did technically, but I can make it howl. I can make it weep.

  I am a poet because of him. He got me started on Whitman. Got me going on Bukowski—“Uncle Buk.”

  God bless you, Telly.

  But I can’t do this.

  Even though Whitman wrote:

  Nothing can happen

  More beautiful than death.

  At least, not today.

  On the other side of the hump, I start skating. At first, I’m a little shaky and go only a short distance. Then I find a frozen tire groove and start running. I take off and blast down the ice. All the drivers in the oncoming lanes stare bug-eyed as I skate down the long span of the freeway bridge. On the wings of Nikes.

  I’ve got a decision to make. The first exit is Delridge Way, which will take me home. A bit later is Admiral Way, which will take me to Diaper Man. I’m wired from my flight down the West Seattle Bridge. But I’m also tired—tired in a way that will take more than a few hours’ sleep to fix.

  “I’m doing this for you, Birdwell,” I say, hiking past the Delridge exit and aiming toward Admiral Way. “For you, too, William Shakespeare.”

  Chapter 6

  By the time I reach Delphi House, I’ve walked ten miles. Okay, I’ve actually walked only four miles, but the snow makes it feel like ten. The whole time, night is slinking in, but it never gets dark. Just deeper shades of milky gray.

  The Delphi is a cinder block structure. Basic kindergarten design.

  I push inside and am sucked into a stream of smells: lemon air freshener, medicine, cancer, piss. It’s putridly, stomach-turningly foul, a foul that soaks your spirit, weakens everything, saps life. Worst of all, it’s the smell of false hope. Put that in a piñata, and I’ll smash it with a bat. It’s my moral duty.

  The urge to turn around and walk out is strong. I’m against everything this place stands for: Wheelchairs, breathing tubes, oxygen tanks, comas, clipboards, waiting to die. I saw it all with Telemachus. I’d like to bulldoze it into a giant iron box, weld it tight, and drop it into the deepest part of the ocean.

  But the spirit of the unholy trinity—Gupti, Birdwell, and Mimi—shoves me forward. I think about Shakespeare’s tide, how it has washed me here. Flung me like a flopping fish onto the sand.

  Two receptionists glance up. One is potato-faced. I can’t see her ass, but I know it’s about the size of a flat-screen TV. The other is . . . hmm . . . eighteenish, maybe even sixteenish, with long dreadlocked twists of hair and light green eyes. Maybe she’s Asian, maybe black. Hell, maybe Arapaho or Nicaraguan—or maybe all of them. A global smoothie.

  Just as I plant my hands on the counter, a buzzer rings. Flat Ass rises like a biscuit and floats away.

  This leaves Dreadlock staring at me.

  “I’m here to see one of your patients,” I say.

  “Guests,” she says. “Everybody here is a guest. We have no patients.”

  I point to a woman dozing in a wheelchair a few yards away. She’s hooked to an oxygen tank and some kind of drip pouch. “She’s a guest?”

  Dreadlock nods. “Mmm-hm.”

  We go eyeball to eyeball. I can beat those green marbles. Then I notice she, too, is sitting in a wheelchair. So I blink. Fumble in my pocket for Birdwell’s letter, hand it to her.

  “Do you have a guest named David O. H. Cosgrove the Second?”

  “We do.” She studies the letter. Looks up, puzzled.

  “You’re the writer?”

  “Hey,” I say, puffing out my chest. “I’m the poet. The wanderer at midnight.”

  I slip into my patter.

  “I hear America singing.

  When she sings out of tune,

  I tickle her nose with a pigeon feather.

  I smash her conscience

  with a ball-peen hammer.”

  Dreadlock’s mouth curves into a smile. The chill in her eyes melts, but only a drop.

  “Walt Whitman you are not,” she says.

  Whoa!

  My patter is based on Whitman—his “I Hear America Singing” stuff. It’s an inverse, Yoda-esque style of writing:

  I hear America singing,

  The varied carols I hear . . .

  “You know Whitman?” I ask.

  “What are you, twelve years old?”

  “Eighteen,” I lie.

  “Are you really the guy in this letter?”

  I slip back into my patter:

  “I am the beacon of hope,

  the messenger of the pope.

  I will free you with my rope

  and wash you with my soap.”

  I’m pretty sure Dreadlock hasn’t seen anybody like me for a while. If I’m lucky, she’ll banish me from the building. That would be a good thing.

  “You’re not the only poet around here,” she says. “C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”

  She flips open the door on the countertop, wheels out, pops a turn.

  We roll down the corridor. At room 1
14, she brakes. “Quiet!” she whispers.

  Inside, a night-light casts a glow of lavender death. It smells like a tropical garden—a little too ripe.

  Dreadlock squeezes the hand of the old woman lying in bed. “Agnes . . . Agnes . . .”

  The old woman jerks. Her eyes open. She is truly old—Guinness Book of Records old.

  “Look who’s here,” Dreadlock says.

  A little waterfall gurgles in the corner. A standing fan breezes back and forth. The old woman waves for me to come closer. She reaches out, grabs my wrist, walks her brittle fingers over my knuckles, pulls my hand to her cheek.

  In a trembly voice, she says, “You’ve come to bind up our wounds.”

  “Nah,” I say. “Just visiting.”

  “You have work to do,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “You got that right.”

  “Go down to the sea,” Agnes says. “Free the swimmers in the dark.”

  Whoa! This old lady is a poet.

  “Where is your lute?” the old woman says.

  “My lute?”

  “I want you to play for me.”

  “Hey, I don’t have a lute.”

  “Next time,” Dreadlock says. “He’ll play for you next time.”

  “Float a turd,” Agnes says.

  Coming from such ancient lips, this little diamond is so pure that it shines a light in the dimness. I feel better already.

  Agnes relaxes her grip on me. Her fingers fall.

  Out in the corridor, I say, “Is this what you do for fun around here?”

  “She knew you’d come today,” Dreadlock says. “She’s been talking about it for weeks.”

  “Hey, even I didn’t know I was coming till about an hour ago.”

  Dreadlock brakes her wheelchair. “Do you believe in second vision?”

  “Second vision?”

  “Prophecy.”

  “Hey, I’m a poet. I believe in everything.”

  “Well, try believing in this,” Dreadlock says. “Agnes is supposed to be in the advanced stages of dementia. But if you listen carefully and dissect her words, they start to make sense. Her mind isn’t gone; it’s in a different place. Maybe even a beautiful place. Who’s to say she’s not better off than we are? I call her the Oracle at the Delphi.”

  “Like in ancient Greece?”

  “Yeah,” Dreadlock says. “Like the prophetess who foretold the future for Alexander the Great.”

  “And you think Agnes can foretell the future?”

  Dreadlock eyeballs me from her wheelchair. “What’s your name again?”

  “Jonathan.”

  “You’re real quick, Jonathan.”

  We roll up to room 101. The nameplate on the wall outside the door says DAVID COSGROVE. Dreadlock pokes her head inside. “You have a visitor, David.”

  She shoves me into the room. Pulls the door shut.

  Click!

  Now I’m standing alone, facing David O. H. Cosgrove II. He’s propped up in his hospital bed. He turns his head. “Jonathan, is that you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s about time.”

  Chapter 7

  David is long and stringy, old and tanned. But his tan is not healthy. He is kidney-bean bald. His eyes are the cloudy earth as seen from the moon.

  “I follow the news,” he says, waving a finger at the TV. “Seems you’ve had quite a season.”

  “A season?”

  He nods, feels a sneeze coming on, gropes wildly for the Kleenex box. He misses and sneezes a magnitude ten onto his pajama sleeve. His hands find the Kleenex, and he grabs a wad. Blows. The room rattles with the thunderous unclogging of mucous passageways.

  “A season of tragedy and triumph,” David says, polishing his nose. “I’m sorry about your brother, Jonathan.”

  “Yeah.”

  Even that much is too personal. I fight the urge to walk out.

  “That literary prize—somebody compared you to a high school quarterback ready to enter the NFL. Is that a good analogy?”

  “Not really,” I say. “I wrote a few poems, that’s all.”

  “Let me turn this off.”

  He fumbles with the remote and clicks off the TV.

  “Sit down, Jonathan.”

  I find a folding chair in the corner, open it, sit.

  “I’m looking for somebody to help me tell my story.”

  “Why not tell it yourself?”

  He smiles. “I’ve tried, but it doesn’t come out right.”

  “Weren’t you a journalist a long time ago?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Sometime back in the eighteenth century.”

  I shrug. “Just talk into a tape recorder. Get somebody to type it up.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s not writing.”

  “I’m not cheap.”

  David Cosgrove frowns. “Of course not, Jonathan. Your fees have obviously gone up as a result of winning the Nobel Prize.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  There’s a dinner tray on the side table, but the food is barely touched. Everything looks injected with artificial colors and chemicals. Gray mashed potatoes. Pink ham. Gloppy vegetable. Hard to tell if it’s spinach or broccoli.

  A red plastic bottle stands on the dinner tray beside the juice glass. The brand name on the bottle is PEE-buddy.

  Under the name is a picture of a winking elf.

  The day is catching up on me. I’m aching from last night’s grapes. From my twenty-foot fall. From too little sleep. From dragging my sorry ass across the snowdrifts.

  And now the ripe surrealness of the Delphi—ancient oracle Agnes and globe-eyed David O. H. Cosgrove II.

  I’m not sure I can handle any more. The wrong word. The wrong smell. The wrong thought.

  I’ve got Gupti at my front. Birdwell at my back. Mimi at both sides.

  Everybody wants something from me.

  Till now, I could handle it. After all, I made it through everything with Telly. But now my brother is reduced to sticky gray dust and tiny bone shards. Sprinkled in his favorite places: Lincoln Park, Alki Beach, Longfellow Creek, Schmitz Park, the West Seattle Junction. A pinch on the back seat of the No. 22 bus. A teaspoonful at Easy Street Records.

  What’s left of Telemachus—about a cupful of dust—rests in a little black box in his closet. Above his yellow T-shirts. Beside his stack of guitar magazines.

  After Telly, I thought I could handle anything. Now I know there’s a limit. I can’t handle the sight of PEE-buddy on the dinner tray. Standing next to the plastic-looking ham. And watery spinach. Or whatever it is.

  That little elf winking at me.

  I stand up. Say, “Find yourself another writer.”

  Then I’m gone. Racing down the corridor, looking for the nearest exit. Dreadlock glances up from behind the reception counter.

  She senses me leaving forever. And I am. I’ll never come back. Not to this place, where death and spinach and piss sit side by side on your dinner tray.

  Chapter 8

  By the time I get home, I’m so disgusted, wound up, wiped out, and starving that I wolf down three bowls of Special K, heavy on the C&H pure cane sugar from Hawaii—my “partner in baking for over ninety-nine years.”

  In my room, I catch a few minutes of Seinfeld, but I’ve seen this one—Kramer and the fire truck—at least five times. So I hop in bed with Charles Bukowski. For weeks, his poems have been stunning me. He slops dirty varnish on the world, and when it dries, you can say only one thing: “Damn!”

  I should be studying for my French Revolution test, but I just can’t, not with Bukowski lying on the floor.

  I set my alarm for 3:30 a.m. and tell myself I will study. I place my history book beside my pillow.

  Then I fall into Bukowski:

  Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,

  change your tone and shape so often that they can

  never

  categorize you.

  Yeah, exactly. This is why
I’m a Greek among Romans, a gut talker in a sea of slam hoppers. Hop and Slam, there’s so much ranting and flying spit. Everybody’s standing on the same street corner making the same damn noise.

  Me, I wander alone.

  I’m the guy you see standing on the bridge as you flit across in your BMW.

  I write my name in water.

  When in Rome, do as the Greeks.

  When in West Seattle, do as the Aleuts.

  Be unto yourself.

  Most people trying to write poetry don’t get it. They build on fuzzy ideas like anarchy or love. But that’s like throwing a punch at the wind. You can’t connect. You have to build your poem on images, and tilt those images at your own angle. If you’re lucky, they’ll come alive. Take two images:

  Girl falls asleep on a Greyhound bus.

  The moon rises.

  By itself, the moon rising is nothing. It’s a cliché. But the girl falling asleep and missing the moonrise is everything. It blasts the poem with pain and possibilities. Figure out what those possibilities are and you’ve got a poem. That’s the secret—to close your hand on jagged glass, then open it and find a butterfly.

  Bukowski knows this a million times better than I do. A dozen butterflies leap out of his hand whenever he closes it on jagged glass.

  God bless you, Uncle Buk.

  Pretty soon, my eyelids droop.

  Finally—bam!—I’m down.

  Then Mimi comes home. Slams the door. Giggles. A deep voice follows her into the kitchen.

  My eyes pop open.