Storymania - Crouton Island by Paul B Kramer

Crouton Island
Paul B Kramer

It is technically morning. In-between time. The dead become the living, the living - dead. Crashing or soaring. You’re one or the other. It’s just right of midnight, that is, choosing time for those of us who have the gift of intelligence that allows them to make that choice, or the bliss of ignorance that allows the choice to make them. It’s the luck of the draw, that is, it’s a clear choice either way. I’m stuck in the quagmiry middle.
Don’t tell me it isn’t luck. Simone used to tell me that I “think too much.” That I “feel too much.” I didn’t choose this brain, these thoughts, these feelings. I’d answer, “Too much what?” “Just stop it, Thurman!” she’d say. “Quit being so analyzingly morose about every fucking thing.” That’s why I loved her; she used words like morose and analyzingly. That’s why I thought she loved me; I am analyzingly morose.
Quagmiry? Okay. I’m in a morose morass, analyzingly so.
Eight stories up a bone-chilling wind traveling west over the glassy, black lake wails into life. The Sheridan Road pipeline is bone-dry. Eight stories below a bus hisses to a halt. Its door scissors open, flaps shut. Then it just rumbles on leaving a whirlpool of crisp, rotting autumn leaves in its wake. The pre-in-between time jetsam that’s been moving back and forth with the flow slows into flotsam, finding refuge in bus shelters, doorways, corners, taking a moment to regenerate before taking possession of the in-between world. The ghostly wind does likewise; it settles into the coffee-colored city before wailing on with a renewed life.
My in-between time is purgatory. What am I? Half dead? Half alive? Half. I can’t get out of myself. I need someone, or something, to take me out of myself. I need another half. I’m so fucking needy. Okay, okay. A name from the past just popped into my head. Anita Legge. She was a librarian at my old grammar school. I’m laughing, picturing her walking, or rather, limping, ha-ha-ha, like Quasimodo. Seriously! Okay, I guess it really isn’t that funny after all. If I wasn’t so needy I’d have a leg to stand on.
I can’t understand it. There was a time when I needed nobody. I was snug in my smug little world. It all just fell into place. College was a breeze, all I had to do was graduate, and I did-- with a solid two point three g.p.a. In general studies. Hey, at least I graduated. A year-and-a-half ago. It only took me five years. That guaranteed me two thousand a month for life. My parents call it “The Sanderson Sinecure,” a tradition started by my grandfather, thank God. If my father had a say, well, who knows where I’d be now. HMMM?
The wind rattles the window like a tin cup on prison bars as it bellows a plea. “LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT!,” it seems to say. Then, it whistles. “Let me in.”
I’m with GameBoy. I lose myself in GameBoy. I am GameBoy. I dodge bullets, knife fights, runaway el trains, and land mines covered in dogshit as I race against the clock for the open legs of my sweetheart, GameGirl, on Crouton Island. I see her in the distance, a speck on the horizon. A bubbling, radioactive soup is the only obstacle left separating her from me. I leap. I’m half way. She comes into focus, entwined with WeaselDude. My index finger cramps as I plummet into the soup. Game over. The clock ultimately wins. Time deepens the wound.
My game, my life, with Simone has been over for a year. To the day.
On the other side of the door I hear the floor creak. I zero in on the creaking floor like a bat using sonar. Approaching footsteps. Unique-- like fingerprints. They stop. My neighbor’s home. Her keys jingle as she works the door key into the deadbolt. The tumblers drop and the door, swollen with humidity, is shoved open. I feel the vibration coming off of our common wall when she slams the door shut. It feels like an aftershock from an earthquake that measures my g.p.a. on the Richter scale. A godsend.
I need some visuals. Surf’s up! Tube time! The remote control becomes my surfboard. I stop at Sabado Gigante, on Channel 66. My thumb goes shwing! as I watch a chorus line of Las Vegas-style senoritas-- plumed on top, bejewelled in the middle, and spiked at the bottom-- sashay and strut to the beat of the trumpet-heavy rumba band. I ogle the dancers up until their final kick, then an in-house commercial for Goya Frijoles makes my thumb go limp. I rub the glaze from my eyes. Now, I’m watching three tap dancing cans of refried beans with a rolling “r” voice over. Just legs and cans.
I readjust myself as I settle in for the long haul. Enough tubing. I turn the sound down. Yeah, okay, my neighbor’s home. Fuck Simone. The blue linen sheets are cool and smooth, cocooning my prone body. Setting the timer on the remote for shut-off in thirty minutes, I turn onto my stomach; my head fits my pillow like an egg in a nest as I breathe in the commingled scents of Irish Spring, Clairol’s Herbal Essence, and Kool cigarettes. Dammit, I can’t stop thinking about her. That’s our usual pre-love smell.
.She used to lie here with me at least three nights a week. We’d watch tv, crack jokes, make fun of all the losers on Jerry and Maury and Laura. During the day I’d tape them all, then later in the evening when she’d come over, we’d have a blast. We became the losers, role playing the topic of the show. Uncle Billy Ray is sleeping with cousin Amy Lynn. I am my mother’s pimp. My sister is my lover. All in dialect.
We liked Larry King, too, when the hicks would call-in with their asinine, (her word, oh how I loved her!), comments. One time Harlan Ellison was on to promote his new collection of short stories. Some kid, Gerald, from Brunswick, Maine, calls in. He asks, “Mr. Ellison, how do you get your inspiration?” His voice is adenoidal, twangy, real hickish.
Before answering, Ellison looks into the camera’s lens. I swear, he’s looking straight at us, as he rolls his eyes skyward. Then, after giving Larry a sideways glance, he shifts his eyes back to the camera and answers. “First, it might be a good idea if you learned how to read. Once you accomplish that task you might get a clue. Then, get a writing manual and learn how to string sentences together until you get something that resembles the tripe on the Best Seller’s list.” We stopped laughing just long enough to hear the phone being jostled back onto its cradle. That night I had the best orgasm of my life.
A roaring fire engine zooms by, then another, and as their sirens fade, I hear rubber rolling on pavement. A flashing blue light reflects in the window and fades out. Like my spirit. That’s why I loved Simone; it was her spirit. The spirit that she shared with me, that stoked an ember of a spirit deep within me that I didn’t even know I had. Then one day, a year ago, she disappeared. She moved without even telling me. Not even a good-bye. No one would tell me anything. For the past year all I could think of is why. I’m consumed by why. I’m a shell.
The tv shuts off. The wind is taking a breather; I can hear the vacuum cleaner-like drone of the traffic on the Drive. And then, “NOOOOOO WAY!!!”
It’s my neighbor on the phone. She moved in about a month ago and what she doesn’t know is that I can hear everything that goes on in her apartment. It’s not that the walls are that thin, but, she’s got an opera singer’s voice— throaty, deep, and LOUD.
“She did WHAT? You’re kidding! NOOOO WAY!! So, the little bitch’s feet were in the air? I knew it!” Now, I know it, too. I know that she once walked into the shower room in her college dorm and found a guy, her roommate’s boyfriend, masturbating. I know that her younger brother was arrested for drunk driving. I know she was at the Wisconsin Dells last weekend, that she hated it, saying to her mother, “They were puking all over the place.”
I realize that her phone calls have sparked something in me. I want her to know I know. I want her to know me. I need her.
Total silence. Then, a hair dryer. Its whirring gives me an idea. I go into the kitchen, plug in the toaster oven, and set it on high. Now, the microwave. Success! The floor shorts out. Complete darkness. Not even a sliver of light showing under the door.
I hear the door of her place opening, then, a flutter of light raps on my door. I take a deep breath. A bead of sweat sprouts from my forehead. I open the door.
“Hi,” she says. “My name is Lori. From next door? I think I blew a fuse. Can you . . . ”
“Hi, umm, I know. Ummm, I did it. It was me. You don’t know this, but I know you.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, I do. I hear everything. I...”
“You FUCKING CREEP!”
“Need you. Please?”
She storms back into her place, slamming the door. She’s on the phone. Talking to the manager. The wind reasserts itself as it issues out one plaintive groan after another. I go to the window and look out upon the pinkish orange alley. It's lit like a runway. I open the window and hear the wind. It's calling...FLY FLY FLY to me!