The Last Laugh Page 6

  “Not a joint, no,” I answered. “I got high without touching any drug at all.”

  “Well, c’mon, Matt. Spill the beans. Did you go out with your beautiful waitress? You have the look of a man in love.”

  “Yes, she was there, but that’s not the point, Paul. Something has totally changed. I just keep seeing God everywhere.” Even as I said the words they sounded wrong. Paul knitted his brow. This was going to be harder to talk about than I had thought. Paul reached for a cigarette.

  “What do you mean, seeing God?” he asked quickly, leaning forward and lighting his cigarette. He took a long drag and sat back in the sofa, stretching out his legs. “What does he look like, anyway?” The filmmaker in Paul was obviously getting intrigued.

  I told him the sequence of events as best I could. I even tried to recapitulate my talk with Joey. “It has become really clear that I am not what I was pretending to be,” I concluded. “And neither are you.” The more words I used, the more uneasy Paul looked. “I feel so good.” I was trying to make it better now. “Everything is perfect. Everything. Losing the money, Rebecca leaving, all of it. It’s all the way it’s supposed to be.” Now Paul looked more than confused; he looked angry.

  “Are you taking those pills from the shrink, Matt? You really need to get things together, you know. You can’t go on like this.” There was a pregnant pause. We looked away from each other.

  So I lied. I told him I was taking the pills, although I had not even opened the bottle yet. Paul switched the TV back on. He abandoned Rio nightlife and flipped to the cable channels. We sat together in awkward silence, trying to be amused by a late night stand-up comic. I bid him goodnight and climbed the stairs to my attic.

  I dropped off to sleep caught between two opposing realities. Paul’s cynicism was cozy and safe, like a mad relative to whom I felt uneasy loyalty. The ability to doubt intelligently was familiar; it had held all of my friendships in place. It was the very quality that allowed me to excel as a journalist, and it had put food on my family’s table. I had worked hard to earn a reputation as the champion of reason held up to all this spiritual jargon. But it had led me to a dead end. Doubt had enclosed me in a world devoid of hope, devoid of faith.

  Beyond this small harbor of logical understanding lay the open waters of an unfamiliar freedom—something new, as yet unnamed, perhaps unnamable, which my aching heart longed to embrace. To enter the universe Joey had unveiled meant leaving my old world behind on the quay, and braving the uncharted waters alone.

  CHAPTER 6

  DOING LAUNDRY

  As always, I awoke before dawn. At first it seemed the pain was gone, just stillness and heavy ease in the body. Then, as I reached down with morbid interest again, I found the familiar black hole in my chest. My gut tightened. The previous night’s events seemed to have opened something bigger, something which contained the pain and was not affected by it. I was only half hurting, I was also just here, just watching.

  Laying on the foam pad in my sleeping bag, I surveyed my kingdom. There were piles of dirty clothes both in and all around my suitcase and the duffel bag. The window that looked out onto the mountains was layered with dust and grime. A roll of carpet leaned against the wall in the corner, despite the fact that I was living on bare boards. My universe was crying out for the action I had been avoiding.

  I jumped up from the pad and attacked piles of laundry. Every last stitch I owned was to be found here—all of it dirty. Each garment reminded me of some memory of family life, but I was learning now not to dwell there. They were just dirty clothes on bare boards.

  I threw on a sweater, socks, and my gray sweatpants, a gift from Becca two years before; I headed back down the five flights of stairs to the park, claiming again my membership among the ranks of the committed. As I ran through the park at dawn, everything damp and cold, the air so crisp it seemed to burn a little, it was actually impossible to make sense of anything from the night before. A sense of space remained, an alive excitement; there was no way to make logic from it all.

  On my return, it was clear the laundry would not tolerate more indecision. I sorted it into piles, like my mother had shown me as a child. What would she say if she could see me now? She died when I had hardly begun to shave, and with her died the simplicity of whites, colors, and delicates. Stay here, stay now. The machines in the basement of the building demanded quarters for their service. By plundering the pockets of every available garment, I raised the ransom. And so it was that the morning after my first meeting with Joey, I had all three machines frothily rotating. It was the token start of the great cleansing.

  I found a broom in the basement, and brought it up to my turret. The room looked empty without its laundry pile, stark even. I emptied what little remained into the hallway, and swept the floor. All the time, Mother, Dom, Becca, old movies, and everything else fought with the simplicity of sweep, sweep, sweep. I took the roll of carpet from the corner and uncurled it on the floor. A perfect fit. In the corner of the room where the roof slanted down was an opening in the wall, only a few feet tall. In the dim light, I became aware of all kinds of old stuff in there.

  I knocked on Paul’s door. He was still asleep. I made us coffee and used his shower. Nothing felt more important now than to be clean. I scrubbed under my toenails, and washed my hair, rubbing deeply into the scalp. Soon, Paul was wandering around in his bathrobe. He eyed me suspiciously as he sipped his coffee, as though my newfound cleanliness might be an infectious disease. Common sense told me not to mention God or any related topics.

  “I took the roll of carpet in the attic and put it on the floor,” I confessed.

  “No problem.” He paused, and peered at me again, still cautious. I decided not to mention that I was into my second shift of laundry.

  “There’s a bunch of stuff in the attic under the roof. Does it belong to anyone?”

  “No, it’s been there for years. Help yourself.” He turned away, and scratched his crotch thoughtfully.

  We had breakfast, Paul glancing at me now and then, noticing something different, but unsure if I had had a haircut, or shaved off some facial hair he could no longer remember. Finally, he left for the studio, and I finished my laundry.

  I scavenged through Paul’s magnificent collection of flashlights. When I found one that actually worked, I took it upstairs.

  Further exploration of the storage area yielded a table, a lampshade for my bare bulb, and a magnificent collection of National Geographic magazines, to add a splash of color. Soon the room was transformed. By midmorning I had my clothes folded on makeshift shelves, a clean window, and a variety of views of the Grand Canyon and sites in Peru pinned on the walls.

  But the need to clean, to restore, would not give in. Midday, I began tentative inroads into Paul’s world, trying not to disturb the private version of order known only to himself. There must have been 12 years of accumulated grime and mold in his fridge. I emptied and scrubbed it, washed all the piled dishes in the sink, washed every surface in the bathroom, and then took another shower. Every time I stopped, there it was again. The same anxiety, the soreness in the chest like the feeling just before you need to cry, and underneath it, like a watchful parent, an ocean of something still.

  While wiping the shelves underneath Paul’s bric-a-brac, I found a video he had shot in our house, years before. Becca had put up with Paul as a relic from my past, just as one might accept an old and drooling dog as a part of the package with a new roommate. She never truly liked him, but she tolerated him as a gesture to me. I slid the video into the VHS player. The kids had dressed up as fairies. Paul filmed them through filters of colored liquid gel. I watched my beauties transformed through Paul’s artistry into psychedelic apparitions. Sarah was only two then, skipping around after Dom, imitating his every move. I was lost in the unmapped wilderness somewhere between laughter and longing. Impulsively, I picked up the phone and dialed the Chicago number, my family’s kidnappers.

  Becca answered the
phone. I was not ready for this.

  “Hello?” That voice still melted my belly, even after all these years.

  “It’s me, Becca. It’s me. It’s Matt.”

  “Hey …” I could feel her collision of conflicting moods. After so many years, just the rise or the fall of a word speaks volumes. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve been cleaning. But listen, Becca, things are changing. I’m going to pull things around.”

  “Is that him?” A voice boomed from the distance. My father-in-law. “Ask him if he’s got a job, Becca. Ask him if he’s making any damned money yet.”

  “Matt, I can’t talk now. Let me put the kids on the line.”

  “Daddy, where are you?” came Dom’s voice. My son, my very own son. My chest exploded to hear his voice.

  “I’m at Paul’s, Dom. Hey Dom, I just saw that film of you and Sarah, remember, with the fairy wings?” My voice was cracking up. I was choking.

  “Yeah,” his voice trailed. I could see him looking at the ceiling, thinking his father was just as wacko as everyone was telling him. “Why can’t you come here for Christmas?”

  “I can’t, Dom. Not this year.”

  “Are you still going to give me the Connect-it set you promised?”

  “I’ll have to give you that later, Dom. I sent you something else.” It was a book. A small and short book.

  “Dad, Grandpa says you’re a loser. He says you lost all our money, and that’s why we have to live with him and Granmama. Are you a loser, Dad?”

  I wished I hadn’t called.

  “No, Dom. It will be okay.”

  “I wanted the Connect-it set,” his own voice began to crack. There was a silence. He had no other way to express his rage and confusion. The restoration of his universe was distilled down to a set of colored plastic pieces.

  Next came Sarah on the line.

  “Daddy,” she yelled. “Daddy, Grandpa bought me another dollhouse, and a pink tee vee, and lots and lots of moovies.” We had never had a TV. Waldorf education discouraged it. “Daddy, Grandpa says he will take us to Disneyland and we can stay here as long as we like.”

  “I love you, Sarah,” was all I could say.

  “I’m going to watch more TV now.”

  In a few short minutes the call was over. My heart was heavy, my body aching. I was no closer to resolving my mistakes. All that had really changed so far was that my best friend now had a cleaner kitchen.

  Despair and failure led me to arrive early, too early to go up those fateful stairs, so I wandered into the café. Alan was behind the counter making an avocado, cheese, and sprouted millet sandwich. The distance between the bottom slice and the top was about the same as the width of the sandwich. As he triumphantly set it before his patron, he saw me.

  “Matt!” he exclaimed. “How wonderful to see you. Are you hungry? Let me make you a sandwich you’ll never forget.” Alan was starting to grow on me. I sat down at a vacant table. A few minutes later he brought me an offering even more magnificent than the last, and refused any payment. He sat down with me.

  “Is this your café?” I asked.

  “June and I have had this place for years. I took it over when I first came to the States, back in the late seventies.”

  “So is the upstairs yours, too?”

  “We own the whole building. June and I usually live up there, except when Joey’s in town. Then we stay in a little room behind the café.”

  “You mean Joey’s not here all the time?”

  “My God, no! Joey’s the most elusive man you’ll ever meet. Here today … gone tomorrow. There’s no rhyme or reason to his movements. He started a community a couple hours out of town near Idlewood. But he’s not even there very much anymore. He goes where the wind blows him.”

  “So how long will he be here in town?”

  “Until he’s gone. That’s all I can tell you. He usually jokes and says that when there’s more than fifteen people, it smells like a crowd … and that’s when he takes off. How many were we last night? I think I counted twelve. Three more to go, and that’s it.”

  “Oh my God!” I said. “I gave out the number to someone in Taco Bell last night. I didn’t realize these seats were so precious. ”

  “Yeah,” he laughed. “A lad named Carlos. He called me this morning wanting to buy some drugs. I told him to come tonight. Joey will love him.” He leaned toward me over the table. “But how are you, Matt? How was your day?”

  “Not so great,” I said. “I felt fantastic last night, but then I got home and talked to my roommate, and I got very confused. Then today I had a lot of energy again. I was feeling great until I talked to my estranged wife in Chicago.”

  Alan laughed. “That will do it.”

  “Yes, but how can you stop this from going away?”

  “Keep your questions for the old man; he’ll sort you out. Never failed yet!”

  I drowned my sorrows in the sandwich Alan had given me and waited till it was time to go upstairs. When I did climb the stairs to the apartment, I was only the third person there. Maryanne, the therapist, and Jack in the business suit were already sitting silently with their eyes closed. I took a cushion and closed my eyes, too. My body felt heavy. I was still replaying the phone call in my head. I think I must have dropped off, because the next thing I remember was the sound of laughter. I opened my eyes abruptly. The room was full. There was the beautiful Sam, as well as the same faces from the night before. Carlos was sitting in front of me, and to my left, Joey was just taking his seat. He grinned at me, placed his two palms together at the level of his lips, smiled at the assembled friends in the room, and closed his eyes. We all followed suit. The whole room fell extremely quiet.

  My mind was still racing with thoughts of having blown the previous night’s attainment. I was wondering if I could ever get it back. Then there was Carlos. He seemed to be making some kind of clicking noises at the back of his throat. Every time I opened my eyes to see what was happening, he was fidgeting and looking nervously around the room. I felt responsible for him being there, and his clicking completely obsessed me.

  Finally, I heard Joey’s murmur … “I kiss your sweet hearts. Welcome, welcome.”

  With that, Joey raised one eyebrow and looked with a curious and amused expression at Carlos sitting before him.

  “I understand that you’re a close colleague of our friend Matt,” smiled Joey.

  “Hey no, man. Just met him last night,” Carlos bubbled, obviously relieved to be talking again.

  “So what can I do for you?” asked Joey.

  “Well, man, like this guy comes to Taco Bell last night, man, where I work, see, looking real high. Told me if I call the number on the paper, I could get me some too. So that’s why I’m here, man.”

  “Very good.” Joey smiled and paused for a moment, “man.” The room laughed. “I suppose you wouldn’t believe it if I told you I’d been waiting for you forever, would you?”

  “Sure, man. Anything.”

  Joey again paused for a long time. He stared at Carlos with a grin and said, “Cool.”

  Now the room erupted in laughter. Joey continued, “So you want to be high.”

  “Sure, man, doesn’t everybody?”

  “Tell me,” said Joey. “What kind of high would you like? Would you like a high that goes away again? Or would you like a high that keeps going?”

  “Well, like, you know, I don’t know if my body is up to that, man. You mean, like, just stay high all the time?”

  “You don’t worry about the body. The body will be okay. Are you ready to pay the price?”

  “Does this stuff cost a lot?”

  “What have you got?”

  “Well, maybe fifty bucks, but I need some of that, man.”

  “I need more than that!” laughed Joey.

  “Whoa! Slow down here, amigo. Well, hey man, like, what kind of shit is this, anyway?”

  “Here’s what I need,” said Joey. “I need you to give me you
r mind.” Carlos looked around the room with a wild expression on his face, then looked back at Joey.

  “Come again?”

  Joey repeated himself very clearly. “I need you to give me your mind and you will be high forever.” Carlos looked caught between conflicting emotions, like he was choosing between pulling a knife to defend himself and running away crying to his mother.

  “So you’re saying that if I give you my mind, you’ll make me high forever?”

  “Does that sound like a deal?” beamed Joey, triumphantly.

  Carlos braced himself in sudden resolve, like a prizefighter about to enter the ring. “Sure man, I’ll try it.” Then he paused and frowned. “How do I give you my mind?”

  “Look for it,” said Joey. “Look for it, find it, and give it to me.” At that moment, Joey’s eyes heightened in their intensity. The life force that was already shining through them suddenly became radically brighter. Carlos looked right back into Joey’s eyes. Everything stopped. Then he fell face forward to the carpet, and his body began to shake uncontrollably.

  After several minutes he looked up again, straight into Joey’s eyes as though mesmerized, and kept repeating, “Whoa man, this is something else! Whoa man, what is this?” Joey was smiling magnificently; the rest of the room erupted into laughter.

  “How do you do that, man?” Carlos asked, finally.

  “I assure you, I didn’t do anything,” replied Joey. “I am quite innocent.”

  “Do you guys do this kind of thing often?” asked Carlos.

  Joey replied enigmatically, “You can come as often as you like. And besides, your friend Matt will be a great help.” This seemed like a cue to pour my troubles at Joey’s feet. Joey looked over to me with an inquiring expression. “Any problem now?” he asked.

  “Well,” I replied, “I feel like I blew it.” I told him the story of getting home to Paul. The feeling of a crash landing, the renewed energy in the morning, the pain of talking to Rebecca and the kids. I felt like a sorrowful creature, sitting before him. He paused a while, like a puppet president waiting for the answer to be relayed to him in a concealed earpiece. Finally he spoke slowly.