Lithium, Chptr. 20 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.
The streets of New York city are a river in the middle of the business day, be it lunch hour or ten a.m. The multitudes ensure that there will always be a human current of errand-runners and lunch breakers or even late-wakers going to the corner store to pick up coffee and the morning paper. In all his time living upstate, Mel had only a few occasions to drive the two-and-a-half hours south to Poughkeepsie, where he’d catch the MTA into Manhattan. And when he found himself on the sidewalk, in that human river, he found that he flowed without any extension of will, like a single fish in a school.
Skid Row was the part of a river that dug into the side of the bank until it created a eddy where the detritus floating along the top collected and stagnated. People barely moved from their tents and their blankets and their spots on the curbs where they could beg coin. Stagnant. But there were trickles in and out of the missions and the agencies and soup kitchens – slowly, at the latter – and Bethlehem Mission had a steady trickle in and out.
Hope had to urge Mel to go. He’d heard horror stories of shelters, in part from her, and as he was feeling right then, not all his fears were wholly rational.
“They do experiments on homeless people,” Mel said. “How do we know they won’t stick us and probe us while we sleep?”
“They don’t do that.”
“How do you know?”
Hope sighed. “I’ve been in shelters before, Mel,” she said. “And they suck mostly. But some are okay. And none of them experiment on the people staying there. If they even tried, the people sleeping there would probably kill them, and they know that. Now let’s just go in and look.”
They made their way in through the people coming out, one of whom bumped Mel, nearly knocking him over.
“What the hell?”
“Stop,” Hope said. “You don’t know that guy. Don’t start with him.” She turned his head to face hers. “I want you to pretend that everyone has a gun, okay? Cause a lot of them do.”
“How can people afford guns?”
“They can afford knives, right? And guns are like liquor bottles around here. You’d be surprised at how cheap they are if the seller is desperate enough.”
They walked down a small corridor, hugging the left edge to keep from bumping into any more people coming out. Mel looked at their faces. Some were disheveled; in fact, most were disheveled, but some weren’t. Why would someone fake being homeless?
“Some of these people aren’t homeless,” Mel said.
“All of these people are homeless, trust me,” Hope said. The walked into the lobby, which was spacious, with no seating. There was a row of cots stacked up against one wall, Mel counted fifty. No way that room could hold fifty cots, he thought. Twenty, maybe. If fifty fit in there, they’d be so close together as to compose one giant cot. Mel looked around for one giant blanket for them all.
The opposite wall was what truly held Mel’s attention. It was a giant mural. But it was more than that; the artist hadn’t just painted the wall; they painted through the wall, revealing the inner nature, not just of the wall, but of the building. Not just of the building, but of Skid Row itself, and not just that, but of the nation, and the world. The artist had revealed an anomaly in the current reality, tore the fabric of the façade and revealed its true colors in patterns that hugged curves and bathed them in vibrant, neon-to-pastel gradients.
Mel scanned the mural for an artist’s signature and found none. He knew what that meant. He rejoined Hope and Andy as they stood at the receptionist’s desk.
“That painting,” Mel said. “Guess what, Hope? It’s a portal. I painted it, but I haven’t done it yet.”
The woman behind the desk looked Mel in the eyes. He smiled. Then she looked at Hope.
“Like I said, we have a zero-tolerance policy on alcohol and drugs here.”
“He’s not on drugs,” Hope said, then under her breath, “I wish he was on drugs.”
“He’s not?”
“Lack of sleep. He gets a little loopy when he doesn’t sleep. A good night, and he’ll be fine.”
“I’m fine now,” Mel said. “I’ve never been better.”
“You need sleep. You didn’t sleep last night. Let me do this.”
She answered the receptionist’s questions and filled out the intake form, asking Mel only what she needed of him. For the most part, she asked Andy, because asking Mel anything elicited a paragraph of response.
“Now, we don’t let anyone come in to stay until nine o’clock,” she said. “I’ll give you guys a ticket each. You need to hold on to each one, because you won’t get in without them.
“And you’ll have to find somewhere for your sleeping bags. We don’t allow people to bring stuff in like that. We don’t have a storage space, and we can’t be responsible for it if it gets stolen.”
“That’s tough,” Hope said. “It’ll get stolen either way if we stash it out there.”
“We can’t bend on that, but we can get you a voucher to our thrift store, down the road. They might have sleeping bags if they just get them in. You might get lucky.”
She gave Hope the three tickets, assuming, correctly, that Hope was the responsible one. She took Andy and Mel out to figure something out about their sleeping bags,
“We don’t want to give these up,” she said. “We need to find somewhere to store these where no one would look for them.”
“How about we bury them in a dumpster?” Mel said. “Who would look in a dumpster?”
“It’s not a terrible idea, welcome back to earth, Mel. I wish I knew when they came to empty the dumpsters.”
“It’s a one in seven chance,” Mel said. “Or we could put them in a sewer. Hey, do people sleep in sewers here? If you clothespin your nose, it could be untouched real estate.”
“And you’re off.” Hope said. “We can try a dumpster, though.”
They walked through the thickest part of Skid Row in search of a suitable dumpster. Mel watched the people they came across, making a point to make eye contact, nodding, but he was really covering for what he saw. The void. Only it wasn’t seeing. The void was so much of nothing that sight could find no purchase with it. Rather, he felt it, perceived it in its fluid motion in and out of tents, clinging to the change a stranger threw in a man’s cup, wrapping itself around a prosthetic leg. The void sponsored the slow calamity of Skid Row, flowing into the eddy from all directions.
They found a dumpster in a parking lot near the edge of Skid Row.
“It’ll have to do,” Hope said as she tossed it in and tamped it down beneath the surface trash. “Now let’s go find a way to stay out of trouble until nine.”
***
Standing outside Bethlehem Mission waiting for the doors to open, Mel saw a sign on a bus driving by. And the sign itself was a sign that could only have been dispensed by the hand of fate.
It was an advertisement for the Getty Center. Three pictures of a pristine white complex with expansive windows of thin, modern framing, the pictures encased in a pure blue the likes of which he’d never seen before, as if the Getty Center made the color up just for themselves. Hope and Andy were oblivious to the bus, and thus, the sign.
“Did you see that?” Mel said. “On the bus. The Getty Center. The bus probably takes us there. We’re that close!”
“I don’t think that bus goes there, Mel.” Hope said. “It’s just a banner they use on the sides. There’s probably a few of them.”
Mel stood there, stewing a little bit from the buzzkill at his side.
“Do you like me anymore, Hope?”
She took a breath loud enough for him to hear. “Of course I do. I actually love you, but I’m worried,” she said. “You’re not taking this well. You’re all over the place and you need to focus.” She touched the top of Andy’s head, causing him to turn around. “There’s no net here.”
“We have to leave here.”
“We’ll try,” Hope said. “But everyone ends up here. Or the version of this in any city. Camps like the one in Nashville are rare, and easy to get kicked out of.”
“But there is something better,” Mel said. “I wish you could dream my dreams.”
“You’ll have to dream them for the both of us,” she said as the door opened and they started filing in.
Mel wondered who had the patent on the material that they used in the blanket he was given, how they could get away with putting such a hostile fabric in the world. Mel rolled down his sleeves before laying down in part because the inside of his coat and the pressure of the buttons and snaps still beat the rub of the blanket.
Mel had more going against him than bedding. Hope told them that, above all, theft was the most common bad thing in any shelter, and in Skid Row, theft was how people got to know each other. She told everyone to tie their shoes together, shoelace to shoelace so that the hoop they created went across their midsections. Which meant that Mel had to partially wake up to shift the shoes if he wanted to turn over. He was up for hours, lying in the dim lights, thoughts piling up on a conveyor belt that couldn’t keep up, so the thoughts just got bigger and more profound. And they revolved around the Getty Center, and a grand redemption.
Mel did get sleep, only drifting to when he felt a scratching on his belly. He woke up quick expecting a rat or some other vermin, only the vermin wore a stringy beard and hurricane hair and he stank the musk of body odor and his shirt had holes big enough to put an extra arm through. And he had a knife that he was using to cut Mel’s shoelaces.
Mel jumped up and the man wobbled back, nearly tripping over Andy’s cot, which woke Andy up.
“What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing?” He said.
The man held up the knife. “Shut up,” he said.
“That’s my knife. Give it back right now.”
“Dad?”
“You need to shut up, or I’ll give you the knife somewhere hard to get it out.” The man wasn’t steady on his feet. Mel thought they didn’t allow drunks to stay. They all had to blow into a breathalyzer at the door. Was this man actually sober?
“I’m not scared of you,” Mel said. “I’m not scared of anyone.” Mel sat up and was ready to leap on the guy. Better people had stolen from him. He had to draw a line.
“Dad?”
Mel got up, and the man backed up, ready to lunge. The staff had by then turned on the full lights in time to see the thief grunt and spit at Mel, throwing him off. He sprung forward to meet four feet and eight inches of blur. Mel felt Andy knock into him and them to the cot as they lost their balance. The staff had grabbed the thief and wrestled him to the ground.
Mel heard Andy shriek. He pulled his hand back from Andy’s arm, and it was slick with dark blood.
Ten stitches. Ten stiches and two hours of waiting in a sick bay. Arguably the worst night of Mel’s life thus far could be summed up in ten stitches, put into his son in the emergency room of a hospital, the name of which he’d either not gotten or couldn’t remember. A nurse and a doctor asked Hope more questions than they asked him. Hours of impotence and Hope’s harsh accounting of the events.
“You argued with a guy with a knife,” she said. “The hell is wrong with you? Are you manic?”
“That’s not fair,” Mel said. “Bringing my mental illness into this.”
“No, you’re bringing it in.” Hope said. “We need to get you help, and I’m going to keep saying it until you listen. You get that, right?”
“They give me pills I don’t need any more that I can’t afford to take. If I had all the money from all the meds, we’d have a bungalow above the Getty Center. What’s a bungalow, by the way? And it would be great. No worries.”
“I know, Mel,” Hope said after a moment’s silence. “I know.”
They were outside the hospital waiting for a bus when Mel made a decision. In fact, he’d made the decision, in one way or another, before they got to L.A., but it had to happen then.
“I have to go to the Getty Center,” he said. “I have to go get my painting, and then go there. It’s always been the plan, but it has to happen, and it has to happen now.”
“What do you think is going to happen?” Hope said. “They’re just going to hug us and put us up in the Ritz? And let’s say this is a move; don’t you need an appointment first?”
“We die back there,” Mel said. “We die tonight back there. This is the only way forward. We go to the Getty and seek asylum as artists.”
“That’s not a thing,” Hope said. “That’s so not anything.”
Mel paced back and forth the length of the bus shelter. He didn’t need an appointment. Hope didn’t understand that. He was in the gallery now. Regular people needed appointments. He was like the thing they had in fraternities – a legacy.
“I’m going to help us and save us,” he said. “Even if I have to do it alone and come find you. I’m doing this.”
Hope and Andy stared at each other.
“We’ll go with you there, but you have to behave,” Hope said. “I don’t want you to get hurt, but when this is over,” she paused. “When all of this is over, we’re through.”
***
The Getty was massive, which was fitting for the grand reunion of father and son that Mel was about to bring to it. He had his best work under him arm, cradled gently to avoid even the slightest of damage. He could see a veil covering the many structures that made up the campus. Was it a campus? Was it a school? Probably, and the students were about to meet their new teacher.
Of course, he only saw the grandeur in pictures and in the distant view of the center. To get in, a man on the street told him he needed to go in the parking garage, which he did, making his way to the waiting area of the tram that would take him to the entrance hall, oblivious to the fact that none of the other students waiting had canvases in their hands. But of course, they didn’t – he hadn’t taught them how to make art yet. Once he made it to the center of the gallery, once he introduced past and present, the work of the father to “The Son,” he would release all the art to exist in its natural state, and it will find homes with the people he was walking past.
He felt pressure on his shoulder; a grip, soft yet holding fast. Hope,
“You can’t do this, Mel. I know you want the truth to come out, to find the other painting, but you’re going about it the wrong way.”
Mel pointed ahead to the main entrance. “Only good way is through that doorway.”
“You don’t know who you’re going to see. Can you even get an appointment?” She asked. “You’re walking up there with a painting – how can you prove it wasn’t something you stole from them?”
“I can repaint this from scratch,” Mel said. “I have a photographic memory.”
“But you can’t repaint that in five minutes, and with what paints? You lost your paints at Nashville.”
“They have paints.”
“My God, I can’t believe we’re even talking about this. What you’re doing is nuts. You can get them the painting and tell them about your dad, and the painting they have, but you’re disheveled, you smell, your pants are all torn up from when the cops pulled you out of the tent. There’s no way they’ll take you seriously.”
“Dad, she’s right,” Andy said. “You need to let it go. We need help. We need help for you.”
“You don’t need anything for me,” Mel said. “I got paints in Nashville, and we had the best set-up. We had electricity, fans, lanterns, plenty of food – all because of my painting. I can remake the world with my paints, I can take care of myself.”
“Please, dad, come with us. Don’t do this to yourself.” Andy lifted his shirt. “See, dad? It’s almost healed up. You don’t have to do this for me.”
“I’m doing this for us,” Mel said. “You, me, Hope.”
“But I don’t want you to do this,” Hope said. “Andy doesn’t either. Not for him, not for me. There’s something wrong with you, and we need to figure out what.”
Mel shook her off and started through the garage. It brought him back to his morning run, which he hadn’t been able to do since they got to the west coast. He glanced back to see Hope and Andy in the distance. He knew things that they didn’t. He knew that he was in danger, and with him, they were in danger. The streets would eat them up and fertilize the medians with their bodies, trap their spirits in the streetlights. There was a void in the drains of the soup kitchens, swirling around the bottoms of change cups. In the soles of the shoes of the hypothermic.
He walked off the tram and jogged to the door to the entrance hall, which opened to the most spacious, cleanest space he’d ever seen. It was at least thirty feet high, with upper windows that would’ve let a brilliant amount of light in if it weren’t night. But Mel looked up to see beyond the lights, through the windows and could see a handful of bright stars and the moon shining their beneficence upon the massive space. Mel realized that heaven did exist, and he was standing in its embassy.
He saw a circular wooden desk with two employees with white shirts and black ties and heaps of paperwork on it. Or maybe it was brochures. They were his hosts and guides to his grand reunion. He walked over, taking his time, because there were men with guns standing by the wall. Guns were bad. They shouldn’t be in there with guns.
Mel made it to the round desk. Both people turned to look at him with genuine surprise, as if he had liberated himself from a sketch of poverty. He held up the painting.
“I’m Melville Miller,” he said. “This is my work. My father is Roy Miller. His work is here. His work is my work, and they need to join.”
“Um, that’s nice, Mr., uh, Miller, but we don’t take solicitations. I can give you a number to call about donating the work to the museum, but you can’t just walk around with that. And you need to pay admission.”
Mel pointed to the painting. “This is my admission,” he said. “I’m an artist, and without us, you wouldn’t be able to show the world its own wonders. This is my admission, and if you can’t help me find my father, I’ll tear the place apart.”
One of the white-shirt-and-black-ties signaled. Mel looked over to see the men with guns coming toward him. He knew words couldn’t come from lungs with bullets in them. He tried to ask The Son what to do, but he had taken off before any answer could come.
He raced up staircases and around corridors without looking to see if the gunmen were behind him. They couldn’t be – they didn’t have the zone, the purpose of running, the thought between breaths and the rest between beats. When Mel was running, his focus was singular. They had guns, and the possibility of having to shoot someone slowed them down. But the possibility of them shooting Mel slowed him down long enough to catch a childhood memory out of the corner of his eye.
“State Street,” by Roy Miller.
Mel held “The Son” up to the painting on the wall and braced for a supernatural happening. But the only thing that happened was Mel hitting the ground when the bigger of the gunmen tackled him.
More from Liam Sweeny…
