Читать книгу August and then some - David Prete - Страница 7

From Tompkins Square, I walk back to my apartment, lay on a futon mattress that takes up a quarter chunk of the floor. From the fifth floor all the lovers’ quarrels, music, bed moaning, garbage and food smells—everything people let escape—pass through me on their way out the roof of the building. I’m the conduit for everything coming out of this building, a lightning rod in reverse. But not tonight. Tonight it’s quiet. And definitely not the same quiet as laying on a riverbed in Yonkers with Nokey, taking a slow ride on the Earth, moving on the same rhythm as all the other passengers. This is a throbbing quiet, like an ear infection. I see that woman in the coffee shop. My sister’s face under another girl’s skin. My sister standing on the footbridge over the river. Nokey looking at her. Noticing her. My heart starts tripping. And I’d put cash on the Dalai Lama not being able to slow that shit down.

Fuck. Here comes the panic. It shoots up the back of my neck, dries out my mouth and paralyzes my tongue. My heart flaps around my chest like a fish on a line. Every fucking night, the constant ringing and thinking will not stop—yelling at me that I should start drinking heavily close to the edge of a rooftop. I try to laugh it all off until the early signs of blue light start to seep in the windows, that’s usually when I get my hour and a half of sleep. I heard that resting is just as good as sleeping, which doesn’t help me, because I can’t stay still enough to rest. I clasp my hands under the back of my head. I can feel my hair growing back in. I’ve kept shaving it since I left the park. Don’t know why. I find all kinds of twisted positions to lie in, but eventually I stand up. Look out the window, open the refrigerator and see if anything has changed since last I looked. I pee. I grab a pretzel out of a bag from the counter. I drink some water. I try jerking off, and I can barely feel anything—I haven’t done the one-gun salute in months. I’m numb in a lot of places and it terrifies me, OK? It terrifies me like sleeping, like my own thoughts, like money, like death, like listening to my heartbeat, like thinking about my breathing, like feeling like this forever, like being alone, like being with someone, like jail. My eyes spin around this apartment looking for the right woman’s face, the cure, the quietest thing, but I find brick, wood, paint. A book. I scan a page in this Gabriel García Márquez book that I’m supposed to be reading for a GED class and can’t follow for shit. Tomorrow at work I’ll fight to stay awake while hauling a thirty-pound bag of rocks in each hand—when sleep isn’t safe. Or possible. No one is looking for me. See, this is what I don’t fucking want—a quiet building. I want kids running across wood floors, I want muffled music or domestic squabbles shaking the walls. I throw the sheet off, stand up. Look out the window, come back to the mattress, put my back to the wall and tap my right knuckles into my left palm for noise. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap … Faster, faster, faster. Louder. Keep going. Keep a rhythm. Go, go, go, go, go. All right, I gotta stop that shit. Now my hand hurts. Great. No way man, I can’t have the buzz in my ears be the only thing to listen to. I pace. Somebody give me a little neighborly help goddamn it, I need to hear some noise. OK stop. Breathe deep. This night will be over just like the rest of them. Breathe again. Why do they tell you to do that, it just makes it worse. This is like free-falling upward. SON OF A BITCH. I rock back and forth on my feet. Please. Everything is OK here. It’s way too early to touch that notebook, let it stay on the table. OK, sing Bob Marley: Everything’s gonna be all right. Everything’s gonna be all right. I need a stereo in here. “Danielle.” Everything’s gonna be all right. Yeah, right. “Table. Rocks. Patio.” Sometimes I say words out loud to drown the silence. “Neighbor, neighbor.” Sometimes it works. “Patio. Table. Hey. Hey-yo. Hey. Shit. Stephanie. Ste-phan-ie.”