6. The Neighbor (2/25/07)

On the 3rd Wednesday of every month I visit fat Dr. Linski, an old demoralized psychiatrist who couldn't spot a suicide if the malcontent's errant bullet ricocheted off his desk and grazed him with a flesh wound. And chances are it would be a flesh wound. 'Cause he is packing. Flesh. Lots of it too.

That was the deal I made. 24 sessions with fat Linski and everyone leaves me alone. Like all shrinks, fat Linski talks in platitudes. Seize the day. Embrace your life. Let your life's purpose dawn on you. Let it happen.

Nothing will ever dawn on me. I think it all out so many times, I wouldn't recognize the dawn if, like a star, it popped up one morning and whacked me upside the head with 10 trillion tons of white-hot hydrogen.

Fat Linski doesn't know I already have Purpose. It started as a way to alleviate my boredom. Before the letters, I was a fool who sat on the couch and on the more ambitious days, tried to see if I could eat a stack of 4 sandwich cookies in one shot. But the letters – they've given me Meaning.

There are 2 crisscrossed train platforms outside my window. I have the urge to rearrange them into a new order, a slightly altered composition. The trains come by announcing themselves with a series of rolling bangs. But the 6:18 one, so rickety I expect it to fall apart any day now, is the one I wait for most. The noise assaults my nerves but I've grown used to it, how it makes my blood grow brighter. Because that's when he comes.

He calls to me every night from the street beneath my window. He calls like a loon who has grown tired of wearing its moonlit feathers and rose one morning in the form of a man. I look forward to it. I rush through my dinner, turn off my phone, position myself by the huge picture window that looks out onto the street 1 hour before he's scheduled to appear. I turn the lights off and sit on my window sill with my eyes peeled to the window.

He's coming. He'll be here soon. Won't disappoint you. Never.

I watch as he crosses the street to his building, 45 seconds, fiddles in his pocket for keys and opens the door, 26 seconds, checks for his mail, 20 seconds, takes the elevator up, 40 seconds. I see his lights come on. Some nights, I get out my camcorder and shoot without him knowing. I shoot in super nightshot mode, and slow shutter speed so that every motion seems exaggerated. Every step taken, like some monumental thing. Later, I rewind my tapes and play them. Because you never know. There's something I may not have noticed the first time.

She moved in 79 days ago – uninvited, purposeless. Sometimes I see her standing with him in that grainy square patch, inside of that infrared green world.

It is Monday night and I haven't seen him all day. First I believe he's been asleep. Then, with her. Then, dead.

Finally, I see him, he's at home, standing by his window, reading the letter. I shoot him at the slowest speed there is. I focus on his elbow. It resembles a mouth, the inside of a hungry mouth. For all I know, it could have been his elbow calling to me all along. Then, he moves and the lines blur. And in a small panic, I zoom in. Zoom in all the way, blurring the picture even more. So I zoom back out slow, controlled, regulating my breath.

prev: 2/23/07
Tony Meets a College Girl
                next: 2/26/07
Layers


The Letter
prev: 2/10/07
5. The Felafel Vendor
                next: 3/3/07
7. Elyssa

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