Bearing Down: A Six-Story Collection

Copyright © 2004, 2012 by Tom Trabulsi

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-1380-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-1379-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-1378-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012907263

iUniverse rev. date: 05/15/2012

Contents

Simon Says

The Man from Corinto

Stressing It

Fortunate Son

Up from Buckeye

Bearing Down

Dedicated to Michael James Davis

August 6, 1969–April 13,1982

Also by Tom Trabulsi~

Sandaman’s Riposte

One must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.

Leo Tolstoy,

Anna Karenina

Simon Says

The office is bland. To be more exact, the walls are bland, the ceiling is bland, and the only other person in the room besides me is bland. Not that the place doesn’t have potential. It’s in the corner office, on the fifty-second floor, in the penthouse suite. At this altitude, New York is a glass-encased zoo pushed to the top of the world.

The bland man drones on in that infuriating monotone voice of his. He reminds me of a television left on in a room no one wants to enter.

And it is important for you to understand where this anger is coming from, Andrew.

The sentence hangs like a volley waiting to be returned. For the umpteenth time since I initially started coming here a month ago, I study him. Like the stripe down the back of a skunk, he’s bald from each eyebrow back. The brown hair remaining surrounds both ears like broccoli. His eyebrows are bushy and out of control above hooded blue eyes. The nose, angled sharply, extends the proportion of his face, giving him a look like a hawk. Antique bifocals rest in an age-worn crook halfway down his beak. His lips are thin and pale, seemingly bloodless. They match his personality.

He’s an impeccable conservative, dressed, in other words, very blandly. His brown loafers, tan slacks, tan Oxford button-down, and brown sleeveless cardigan nearly put me to sleep.

His last statement is precisely why I detest him. Precisely why I, well actually my father, is paying him a ridiculous amount of money to ask the same question I have asked myself a thousand times this past month.

Why am I so angry?

***

I return his gaze and leave him nothing to analyze, the same way he looks at me. Like watching my own reflection. He seems ready to say something but I turn back to the view. Sitting in front of one of the two huge windows that double as walls, the landscape, a tourist site disguised as therapy, extends like a postcard without end. Behind me, the bland man’s massive leatherbound wingback chair looks ready to swallow him. I’m beginning to wish it would.

In his apparent boredom, he clicks a ballpoint pen half a dozen times.

I see you like the view, he says.

My head’s inclined on the headrest but I nod it anyway. In the ensuing silence, he cuts loose another barrage of clicks, asking, Is there something out there you’re looking for?

His voice is puzzling, hard to pin down, since it does not fit the body in which it resides—commanding, arrogant, masculine.

Andrew?

I don’t think I’m looking for anything, doc.

Well, maybe it isn’t even that complicated, he says. Lemme ask you something. Do you have any hobbies or outside interests … a girlfriend perhaps?

Um … no.

What about exercise? Jog, swim, anything?

No.

This negativity, he says, shaking his head, for someone barely twenty years old, is not entirely acceptable.

Watching him take notes, I realize I still haven’t told him that this isn’t my first time. Haven’t told him that I spent many hours years before, as the settlement allowed, putting that voice to sleep. At the time, young as I was, my uncle cautioned it was what all good boys did. But I couldn’t respond, since his hand was behind my head.

The bland man drones on. I wonder what he’d say if I tell him about how, last night, after I left my dormitory for a pack of cigarettes, a beautiful girl walked by. I could tell him that I followed her for eighteen blocks even though the store I was going to was just around the corner. I could describe what she was wearing, the song she was singing, and the sound her sandals made smacking along the street. During that moment, between he and I, if I ever had the guts, the truth, like a horrible accident, would find her sleazy pieces in that alley, stacked like blooded goods.

The worst part is that I don’t know why I think the things I do—why, wherever I go, whatever I do, I feel like the sickest, most vile person in the world. During our last argument, my ex-roommate, before he moved out, cursed me and I laughed only because he then said, Do you need a fucking shrink or what?

It’s because shit’s bad, I had to think. Damn.

***

The bland man says, Are you sure the incident caused all of this?

The Incident. By itself, it sounds so clean, so surgical. The Incident. He knows about the fucking incident from speaking with my ex-roommate and parents. I guess it could be called an incident if you had no imagination whatsoever. But I understand that I am speaking with a clinical, scientific man. I also understand that incident is an appropriately bland term for an event that’s anything but.

—and seem very hesitant, almost hostile. I’m sure you can see the two-way street that must exist between us.

I swivel my head and say, Somehow I never thought it would be that easy.

He waits, clicks his pen, and studies my face. Well, I think you’ve received the wrong impression.

Have I?

I’m not the enemy, Andrew.

Did I say that?

Did you have to?

Doc … you’re playing games.

He scratches his chin as I say, Traps …

Excuse me?

It’s because I don’t like traps. Or clichés. I fucking hate clichés, doc.

Clichés are the truth, are they not?

What did I just say?

Why are you here then?

Well, that’s …

His eyes narrow, but he says nothing.

Is there anything out there that scares you? I ask.

Of course, he says immediately. Fear’s a part of consciousness. I scare just as easily as you or anyone else.

What makes you think I scare easily?

Your attitude.

Which is?

Overly defensive. Paranoid.

If I told you I masturbate to pictures of little kids in a Sears catalogue, would you tell me I was mentally ill?

No.

So you tolerate child pornography? I think that’s pretty fucking disgusting.

You’ve got fifteen minutes left.

I hear him scribbling onto his pad as I ask, If I told you I was lonely, would you laugh?

Laugh? he asks, overly offended. Do you think I’m here to judge you?

That’s—

Do you think I don’t know that’s not the only reason you’ve come to see me?

Um …

Just start at the beginning, he says. Because the ending we both already know.

The last four weeks flash back in an instant.

My next hour’s open, he nonchalantly says.

Hesitant, I light up a smoke and say, I met Anthony Maliano freshman year, at this party that really sucked.

The bland man clicks on a tape recorder and says, Don’t be uncomfortable.

But this feels all wrong.

Go on.

After a pause, I say, Anyway, I was having a really shitty time. I mean all I wanted was to get at the keg and have a few beers. But the line, you should’ve seen it, doc. It looked like a bread line in some third-world country. Ladies first, right? It was ridiculous—chick after chick after chick. I started to get pissed, which was when I noticed that the guy in front of me was even angrier than I was. I heard him finally yell out, ‘Hey, man! Do you need a pair of tits to get a fucking drink around here?’ Next thing I know, a group of drunken Phi Delts jumped him and me both, beating us right out the front door. I ended up hanging out with that kid most of freshman year before rooming with him this year. We became best friends.

I look out the window before saying,Two weeks ago he packed up and moved in with his girlfriend.

I drag too deeply, cough, and squash out the smoke.

Before he left he told me it was all my fault.

***

Friday afternoon in the dorms are painful, I say. Classes are over but things don’t start happening till late, like eleven o’clock. So I guess you could say on this particular Friday, Tony and I decided to skip dinner.

I shake a fresh cigarette from the pack. Our dorm room was on the fifth floor. After his two o’clock, Tony brought back a case and a liter of vodka. I twitch my toes, the view no longer of interest. We got started at around three, and by five both of us were smashed. The liter, it was nearly finished, and half the case was gone.

Go on.

Well, I guess for the last month, I’ve just wished we’d kept our fucking mouths shut.

How do you feel about Anthony now?

Cheated.

Do you want a Kleenex?

No.

Go on.

The cigarette springs to life under the licking flame and so does my anger. He packed up and left, denying it all every step of the way.

Was he right in leaving when he did?

Probably. His denial game, it was really sickening.

But …

But now I stare out alone at that guy’s window every goddamn day.

And that bothers you. Okay. Is there any scenario of the incident in which you see no blame for yourself?

No way. Absolutely not.

That’s a significant obstacle.

This isn’t getting any easier.

Are you all right? he asks.

What’re you talking about?

Your hand, he says with a nod. It’s shaking.

I can’t stop it.

Is it any wonder, he says, that you feel the way you do? You’ve transferred the blame for this entire accident, which is all it really is, onto yourself. And if that weren’t enough, you’ve taken this self-pity to such an extreme that even your roommate packed up and left.

I thought you said—

Unprejudiced analyzation is not passing judgment.

I forget to ash and a long grey column collapses across my hand.

How long can you run in the opposite direction? he asks. How far? What’s the statistical long-term survival rate of someone who’s drunk by 9:00 a.m., smoking all day, not eating and not sleeping?

Um … The cigarette has burnt to my knuckles but I make no move to extinguish it. The heat feels too good.

That man, he says, was up in that window for whatever reason. Having a cigarette, admiring the view, whatever. The reason isn’t even material. The two of you, on the other hand, were utterly intoxicated.

I can still hear his voice, doc.

Whose? Anthony’s or the man’s?

Um …

What’s Anthony saying? the bland man urges, resting his elbows onto his knees.

I surrender the details because that’s what details are for, after it’s way too late, when what can’t be changed gets left behind for study.

***

Christ, Anthony says, look at that silly dick up there smokin. He’s just settin there havin a smoke.

Handing me a pair of binoculars, Anthony, swaying at this point, aims an arm at a guy on the ninth and top floor of the building across the street. I focus in and see the guy’s elbows are on the sill as tiny clouds puff from his head and up over the roof. At first, I think he’s looking out across the city as if he owns it. But then I squint through the lens and see his eyes are filled and spilling over, defiant. He drags on the cigarette, continuing to concentrate or mourn or whatever it is that keeps his