The Prisoner of Vandam Street Read online

  “Sir!” said a stern female voice. “You can’t bring that in here.”

  “Shite!” said a voice I recognized as Brennan’s. “I’m behavin’ meself, aren’t I? This is America, innit?”

  “There is no alcohol allowed in the hospital, sir!”

  “What about rubbing alcohol, you silly cow? I was here before, wasn’t I? Just popped over to the pub, didn’t I? What is this? A poofter operation? Scratch the word ‘operation,’ luv. I misspoke meself. Don’t want to disturb a dyin’ bloke—I mean a sick bloke—”

  “Nurse,” I said, shivering under several blankets, “are the tests back from the lab yet?”

  “What tests?” said the nurse.

  “The bleedin’ blood tests!” shouted Brennan. “The sawbones is supposed to come tell us, innit he?”

  “The doctor has gone home for the day,” said the nurse coldly.

  “He will be here at seven o’clock in the morning by which time I trust this gentleman will be gone.”

  “Now wait a minute, you ol’ boiler!” shouted Brennan belligerently. “Just who you callin’ a gentleman?”

  Sometime later, after the nurse had driven off in a 1937 snit, I started feeling hot again, kicked the blankets off, then tried to get up and find my pants. As I sat up in bed, the room began swirling around me like a galaxy that had taken mescaline. I lay back down in the hell of my sweaty bed, waiting for a doctor who might or might not show up with test results or no test results at seven in the morning. I had no idea if it was night or day, but seven in the morning seemed an eternity away.

  The fever, if anything, appeared to be getting worse. Wildly contemplating what was wrong with me was pushing me to the edge of panic. It was at that point that I heard Brennan’s words wash over me. They were spoken from his chair beside my bed, sadly, softly, and sincerely, almost, indeed, as if he were speaking to himself.

  “No, McGovern didn’t slip you a mickey,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I think happened.”

  “What?” I said weakly.

  “I think somebody put a curse on you, mate.”

  “Why don’t we wait for the lab tests?”

  “Why don’t we wait for the pubs to open?”

  We waited. I looked at Brennan. He tried to smile, but I could see that he was a deeply worried man. That made two of us. Before I passed out again I saw a grove of banana trees, a sacred hornbill bird, and a group of little brown children playing beside a coffee-colored river.

  Chapter Three

  By all rights and all wrongs, I should’ve died that night, and there’ve been times, gentile reader, when I wish I had. Does it make that much difference to the world when another bright little spark goes out in the eye of a stray on the busy corner of truth and vermouth? I’m wearing the shirt my father died in and his arm is coming out of my sleeve. Is there anyone awake tonight in this little town or was it already dead before the virus hit? In that calm, reflective rage that inevitably comes to us all, I think we can agree that our lives are works of fiction, and that it hardly matters in what manner you lived or died or shat through a typewriter. Just assume, gentile reader, that we are walking in single file through the united nations of hell and you are walking slightly ahead of the character but slightly behind the author and then the author conks on page fifty-seven leaving only you and the character to fight it out over a few scraps of imagination. “But what happened to the mystery?” some discerning reader may no doubt remark. “What happened to the mystery of life?” We’ll get to that in a moment. Right now we have a dead author on our hands, and like all dead authors he gets better with time. And like all living authors, he knew that all he really wanted was fame and immortality, and like all dead authors he knows that it’s a trade-off and that the less you usually get of the former the more you often receive of the latter, if you follow meeeeeee, which you probably don’t. Not that I’m Jesus or anybody; I’m just another dead author looking for the right place to use a semicolon and aspiring to inspire before I expire which happily is never too late for a dead author. But now the editor who has just returned from a busy night of air-kissing Michael Jackson’s publicist at a cocktail party is scanning this shit and thinks he detects a slight change in the tonality which could either be a literary cry for help or a trendy new writing style that the casual critic might mistake for serious writing. It’s kind of a refreshing change from the formulaic mystery format, and what the hell, it’s only mildly insulting to the reader who might conceivably realize that he may have a dead author on his hands and sure as shit doesn’t want to see the fictional character killed off as well, so the editor e-mails the publisher, and while the dead author and his fucking typewriter are drifting off to hell through the torporous Texas night, he brings in a cold nephew from a blue prison or a well-intentioned highly alliterative asshole to complete the work after the fashion that a respectable cult of readers around the world has come to know and love. Like all good editors, the editor resents the author, and the publisher doesn’t care about the editor or the author, both of whom resent the publisher, and the author, like all good authors, writes with a total disregard for the reader, who, like all good lovers, loves the heart who doesn’t love him, and everybody hates Hollywood. The publisher thinks he owns all this shit, but he doesn’t. It’s a borrowed campfire.

  Most Americans should’ve probably skipped this chapter, anyway, but fortunately we’re too busy driving vehicles, taking dumps, whacking off all at the same time, and we’re afraid we missed something in the back-story. Or we might be sharper than that, and we might jump through our asshole and shout, “What asshole published this shit? What asshole edited this shit? What asshole wrote this shit?” And the dead author would probably say, “Me and my fucking typewriter are saving you a seat in hell because you’re the asshole who’s reading this shit.” And, you know, they’d all be right. That’s the way it is, innit?

  Chapter Four

  In life, I’ve always thought, it’s a good thing to practice waking up in hell because then, when the real thing comes, you’ll be ready for it. While it was true that Mick Brennan’s Irish-cockney style and rather blunt interpersonal techniques were cloying and somewhat tedious, they were far less maddening than McGovern’s pecking you to death with “Say again?”

  Moving from McGovern to Brennan, I felt, was like traveling up to a higher circle of hell. The next auditory sensation I experienced, however, convinced me beyond any doubt that I had plunged to new depths and was currently residing inside the very bowels of that fiery and terrible place.

  “Kinkstah!!” shouted the familiar rodentlike voice, far too loud and ebullient for the way my mind and body were feeling. “Kinkstah! I’m here, baby! Your favorite Doctor! Doctor Watson, of course!”

  “Ratso,” I said weakly. “Could you turn down your vocal mike?”

  “Sure, Kinkstah! Anything, Kinkstah! I came as soon as Brennan called me. He was in some pub run by a friend of his who kept it open all night because Mick was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Said something was seriously wrong with you resulting from complications brought about by McGovern slipping you a mickey at the Corner Bistro. I knew that couldn’t be it, Kinkstah. What’s really wrong with you, Kinkstah?”

  “Munchausen by proxy. I want to kill all of the Village Irregulars.”

  “That’s technically not the correct definition of munchausen by proxy, Sherlock. In munchausen by proxy, the primary care-giver—I’m your primary care-giver, by the way—”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “—could be a mother, a nurse, a nanny, someone like that. Anyway, the primary care-giver seeks to make the child sick or appear to be sick either physically or emotionally so that the care-giver gets attention or sympathy by extension—”

  “Ah, you’re so insightful, Watson! Only a keen, observant mind like yours would have the insight to realize my malady for what it is—a cry for help. That’s all it is. An attention-getting device. The fact that my temperature�
�s a hundred and six and that I’m alternately freezing to death or burning alive, and that I’m shitting and pissing and puking and delirious and hallucinating—”

  “Get a grip on yourself, Sherlock. No one’s saying you’re not sick. We all realize you’re sick—”

  “And I realize that you’re sick—”

  “And you’re the one shivering in a hospital bed with a face that looks like a death mask. But don’t worry, Sherlock. We’ll find out what’s wrong with you and have you back on your feet in no time! I just saw the doctor down the hall. He’s coming in to check on you soon.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “A waiter at the Bengali Palace.”

  “Why does every guy from India always come to New York and wind up being a doctor?”

  “Because they couldn’t figure out how to drive a taxi?”

  There were times when a little light banter with Ratso might have amused me, but this was not one of them. Here he was laughing and yapping away, and every time I closed my eyes I saw a pale horse. Or a coffee-colored river. There may have been times in my life when my grasp on mortality was more tenuous, but I couldn’t remember when. This could really be it, I reflected darkly. This was the way the world ends, not with a bang but with Ratso nattering away about the precise definition of munchausen by proxy, or Brennan calling the nurse an ol’ boiler or McGovern a wanker. Where was McGovern, by the way? A little strange, wasn’t it? I no longer believed he’d slipped me a mickey, but I figured he’d at least pop in to see what condition my condition was in. Maybe I was imagining things, but I was beginning to see a troubled, sadly vexed visage lurking just beneath the bright countenance of Ratso’s face. This troubled me too and vexed me not a little. If Ratso was worried, it was no doubt about a quarter past the time for me to be worried because, after all, I was the one who was hanging by spit directly above the trapdoor. One of the most depressing things about being in a horsepital terribly afflicted with a very serious, very mysterious ailment, is watching people pretend that it’s nothing serious. There is a gravestone I once saw in the bone orchard called Shalom Memorial Park just outside of Chicago where my mother and father are buried. The gravestone has the man’s name and dates of birth and death, and underneath those particulars it simply reads: “Nothing serious.” There’s another gravestone there that is inscribed with something in Yiddish, underneath which the translation is thoughtfully included: “The Cubs stink.”

  I seemed to be enjoying a brief respite from the fever and the shaking chills, but there was to be no respite, apparently, from Ratso. He was wandering back and forth, constantly moving from the room to the hallway, waiting for the doctor, all the while eating the breakfast that I couldn’t eat and yammering away about this and that. The current subject of his yapping, as near as I could tell, appeared to be the physical attributes of a young woman he’d met at the nurse’s station.

  “Jesus,” he shouted. “You should’ve seen the rack on that broad! She was kind of hysterical though. Her mother’s very sick, I think.”

  “Everybody here is very sick, Ratso. That’s why we call it a hospital.”

  “Anyway, I didn’t get her phone number.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  The conversation was sapping what little energy I had. Not only that, but the nausea now was coming in waves that also appeared to blur my vision and my thought processes as well. My auditory senses seemed to be fine, but it was not a pleasant prospect that Ratso might have to become not only my eyes but also my voice to the rational world, if indeed, such a place existed. At least Ratso was loyal, I thought. He positively luxuriated in playing Dr. Watson to my Sherlock. If at times he could be a pluperfect asshole, at least he was a fixed pluperfect asshole in a changing age. Now if he only was possessed with Watson’s medical abilities.

  “Watson,” I said, half-deliriously.

  “Yes, Sherlock,” said Ratso with genuine concern. “What is it?”

  “Watson,” I said. “What if I’m dying?”

  “You can’t die, Sherlock,” he said. “You’re only on chapter four.”

  “Ah, Watson! How practical of you to make that observation.”

  “And I’d like to make another observation,” Ratso sang out cheerfully. “Here comes the doctor now!”

  I looked up and saw a small man as thin and dark as a pencil standing before me and wavering like a mirage on a summer highway. Once my eyes focused a bit I realized that he did look a great deal like a waiter at the Bengali Palace. I found this oddly comforting. The doctor studied my chart assiduously for about six hours, stared at me balefully for about a fortnight, then, as I began sinking into a state of torporous confusion again, he spoke at last.

  “ ’Ello, my name is Dr. Q. Tip Skinnipipi,” he said, in an accent thicker than mulligatawny soup. “What you have, my dear fellow, is malaria.”

  “Malaria!” shrieked Ratso, in a voice that might not have wakened the dead, but certainly would have irritated them. “Where in the hell did he get malaria?”

  I followed the conversation but I did not seem able to form words or even wish to participate. Had I been able to speak, however, I probably would’ve asked the same question Ratso had.

  “Malaria is quite rare in America these days,” said Skinnipipi. “Quite rare, indeed. Has the patient come into contact recently with any migrant workers’ camps?”

  “The patient,” said Ratso, “has never worked a day in his life.”

  “I see,” said Skinnipipi gravely. I was glad that somebody could see. The doctor’s face was now resembling an old rugged cross between Gunga Din and a child’s Halloween mask as glimpsed through a rearview carnival mirror on a 1944 Jesus H. Christler as it sailed over some crazy cliff into Armadillo Canyon. Even I, as the patient, could sort of half-tell that I was delirious at the moment. In an offbeat way it was kind of fun listening to the adults discuss my condition in serious grown-up tones, as if I were a child who wasn’t there. I liked the way Dr. Skinnipipi rolled the “r” in the word “malaria.” I was hoping he would do it again. As it happened, I didn’t have long to wait.

  “There are four different strains of human malarrria, you see,” said Dr. Skinnipipi instructionally to Ratso. “They are caused by four different species of the Plasmodium parasite.”

  “Got it,” said Ratso, as he took copious notes in a little notepad. In my experience, I’ve never really trusted people who said “Got it.” It usually means they don’t get it.

  “The patient may have contracted malarrrrrrria many years ago,” Skinnipipi droned on. “It may have persisted in the liver and recurred. We do not know, you see. Even if the patient may know the answer, we cannot expect a coherent response for forty-eight hours, when the fever breaks.”

  “MamaMAmamamama!” I said.

  “Got it,” said Ratso. “By the way, doctor, what are the four strains of malaria?”

  “They are Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale, Plasmodium fuckmedeadmate, and the last, and only truly deadly strain, Plasmodium falciparum.”

  “Got it,” said Ratso, scribbling furiously. “Which strain does the patient have?”

  “Plasmodium falciparum,” said Skinnipipi.

  “Beedledeedee!” I said.

  “And that would be—” said Ratso, looking over his notes.

  “—the only truly deadly strain,” finished the doctor smoothly.

  Ratso, for once, was silent. The patient, as near as I could tell, was silent. Indeed, for that moment in time, all the sirens and subways and cell phones and dogs and babies and junkies in New York seemed suddenly muted by a cosmic finger. And, even in my state of fevered delirium, I suspected I knew which finger it was.

  At last, the doctor spoke again. This time he spoke directly to Ratso. He spoke in a soft, hushed tone, almost as if I was not lying there in a hospital bed but had already begun my journey, winding my way to heaven, or hell, or very possibly, to nowhere at all.

  “As you would say,” said Dr. Skinn
ipipi rather officiously, “he has ‘got it.’ ”

  Chapter Five

  McGovern surfaced about the time my fever broke. I was not pleased to discover that I was still in the same dreary hospital room, but I figured it was preferable to being on a cloud somewhere playing a fucking harp. I’d missed McGovern, actually, and the truth was he represented a very comforting force as he sat in a large comfortable chair by my bed, reading a newspaper and reminding me by his very presence that I was still alive.