Jukebox.
“I still maintain that I’ve nothing to do with it.”
The line goes dead for what seems like just a moment, but I know it’s the alcohol in my system that throws the time away like that. I’ve been here all night, on the telephone, trying to provide an alibi I’m not even so sure exists. Some of the gray areas have to get cemented in with quick lies; only they’re the type of lies I really do hope with all my heart turn out to be true. Like when the person I’m speaking to says this:
“There’s enough skin tissue under her fingernails to mold a new you like a silly putty model. And you know what silly putty does, right? You press it against newspaper and leave it there for a few seconds, and then you pull it away and look at the part of the putty you stamped against the print. And there you see a backwards story.”
I’m not quite sure what that means. The line buzzes. “I have another call. Hold on, Jacob,” the person on the other end presses. “Hold on. Please.”
And I do, even though the person clicked over before I could respond. There are two desk lamps in my room even though there’s only one nightstand; a tiny nightstand at that. I had to pull the plug on one of the lamps and set it down on the bed so I could have room on the top of the nightstand to open my small college-ruled notebook. I love the way blank lines encourage the prospects of filling it all in. It’s like somebody needs me. As long as the pages are empty, and there’s a pen around, somebody’s needed. The fountain pen I took from the lobby is bleeding bright blue over the pages. I’m not very worried about the next four or so pages sticking together because they’re all blank just like this one is, and there’s still half a notebook left to go before I’ll need to get another one. Normally I’d swipe that broken pen right off the tabletop and fetch another faster than you could say H-O-L-O-G-R-A-M, saving the purity and space of the four or so pages beneath the one I’m writing on so that they could beckon me when I’m ready to get beckoned. But it’s been a long, harsh night, and it’s been bitter too. And I’m open to just about anything right now.
The line at the other end clicks again. It reminds me of wiretaps. Maybe the line is tapped, maybe it isn’t. I’m very drunk, so I let it slide. “Jacob, are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Jacob, when you pull the putty away from the newsprint, you’ll find the chemical makeup of the putty is so strong that it pulls some of the print’s ink away. And the words as they appeared under the putty will be stamped into the putty, only as we see it with our naked eyes, backwards. It’ll be a backwards story, Jacob.”
Sirens outside that were faint a little before this conversation took up again are now so loud I think the sole window in this room might shatter. I can almost hear how loud it will be right now, and I don’t think I want to hear something like that. Thank goodness the blinds are drawn and tight, because I get scared of shattered glass. Once when I was less than a year old, I was pushed from an open window two flights up from a bread delivery truck. Windshields in those days were flimsy, and I went right through it, into the passenger seat. I bounced off the passenger seat and fell on the floor, crying on the vibrating plastic foot mats. My Uncle Logan tells the story every year at Halloween, because that’s when it happened to me. He says I wouldn’t stop screaming for six days. I heard screaming like that last night. It went on for hours and hours and hours. I don’t ever want to scream like that again, nor do I ever want to hear it from anyone else. Last night was pretty scary for me in that way.
“The things you’re telling me don’t make sense, do you see?”
“But that’s exactly what I was about to say to you,” I respond.
“It’s a backwards story, Jacob.”
The Emergency Room at St. Kellstead Hall was made of bricks, painted in a very dark green, with a long orange stripe about twelve inches from top to bottom streaming the circumference of the room like a racing stripe. On my first birthday Uncle Logan bought me a dark green long sleeve t-shirt with an orange stripe across the chest. He called me “skydiver.”
“Listen to me,” I breathe into the receiver, unsure as to what I think the person I am talking to needs to be listening to when I speak. “I wasn’t there. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I…I know people who can tell you I was in Dallas. I was in Dallas all night. All last week, too.”
“Jacob, what you’re telling me makes no sense, but I bet if I hold you up to a mirror I’ll see what you’re talking about a lot better, because the print will reverse itself and be right again. Just like the putty. If you stamp the putty with the print ink on it onto a blank sheet of paper, a little bit more of that ink will again rub off, and although you might have to strain your eyes a bit to read it, the correct way to read things will be right there just as plain as day.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard gunfire before. There’s a rapidly recurring popping coming from outside that sounds like a tape recording of firecrackers played on an incredibly loud stereo. This is probably what guns sound like during crossfire. And this is all new to me. There isn’t enough light in the room, so I reach over the bed and I plug the second lamp in. The bed is fluffy and sensitive, so every time my body shifts even just a little bit, the lamp falls over onto the bed sheets and it throws a beam of light into the corner where the closet is. I feel like I’m trying to tell myself to make a run for it every time that happens, but I don’t believe in that sort of stuff at all.
My coat is in that closet. I stare at the cracked wooden door like it could be my exit into another universe. It’s shabby and unpainted, much like the exterior of this motel, so why couldn’t it just be a mysterious entrance into another dimension? I keep staring at that door, ignoring the voice at the other end of the line as it proceeds to tell me about fingerprints on some body’s dead open eyes.
A suitcase I packed with two sets of pants is in that closet. I don’t know how many shirts are in there, but there’s at least a few; some socks and some soap and a toothbrush and some crackers I found unopened in the lobby. Last year or so I took a trip out of the state but never unpacked the suitcase upon returning, so whatever I took with me on that particular trip is probably still in that suitcase, too. That’s good, because I’m in such a strange place right now that I don’t know what I’ll be needing from one moment to the next.
“There’s enough skin tissue under her fingernails, Jacob, to fix a burn victims melted face. Do you see what I’m getting at? It’s like the putty. It’s all nonsense when you dig it out from under someone’s fingernails, but when a specialist lines up the fragments and smears side by side on a microscope slide, it starts to tell the straight story. Do you see what I’m getting at, Jacob?”
Uncle Logan, for my second birthday, bought me a parachute. What would a two-year old boy do with a parachute? It was dark green and it had orange stripes running from the center down to the edges. I don’t remember any of this from my own memory, but Uncle Logan tells these stories every Halloween. He doesn’t always break out the family photo albums, but I’ve seen those, too, so I know he’s not making this stuff up.
All I had to eat today was an apple and a tomato. I don’t much like tomatoes, but after I cut all the soggy parts out and sprinkled a bit of sugar over the drier parts, it’s not so bad that I would deny myself that little sustenance. And besides, everyone always says it’s healthy to eat fruits and vegetables in the morning to get a good day’s worth of energy started. I might need it to run anyhow.
The voice at the other end sighs, but it’s only barely audible because in the room next door, the windows are being shot out. So I know it’s not somebody’s stereo playing loud gunfire music anymore; it’s actually real gunfire. This sort of scares me, so I tell the person on the other end of the line to hold on. Throwing the telephone onto the bed, I quickly haul the nightstand and the lamp rested on it over to the other side of the bed. I end up knocking over the lamp that’s been on the bed, but since I’ve decided to cower on the other side of the covers in between it and the wall, I can use the bed itself to splay the open notebook on and therefore both lamps will fit onto the nightstand and I will no longer have to worry about having to keep picking it up again.
“Jacob, where are you?”
“I can’t tell you that. You know I can’t tell you that.”
“But WHY, Jacob? If you’ve done nothing wrong, then WHY is your location such a secret?”
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re trying to do? Listen, I know things. Innocent people get hauled off and executed every day, but it’s not happening to me.”
“Listen, Jacob. Nobody’s talking about executing you. We just want to arrest you.”
“But who the fuck ARE you?”
“Jacob. There’s evidence. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
I start to cry. Last night I dreamt I pushed my friend Alexander’s face through the side of television set and when I broke some tubes inside the thing it popped and some sparks shot out. Alexander started to scream, raking layers and layers of skin from my bare arms. When I woke up my girlfriend was sitting on the couch, cutting up some sunflowers with a straightrazor. She asked me why I’d been screaming in my sleep. Usually when I wake up from nightmares I can’t remember a thing, and that typically makes her worry a lot about me. I can understand her fear, so I tend to make things up about the dreams to avoid her worrying so. Yesterday I told her I was dreaming about being on a boat, and that somebody kept tipping it over to try to throw me out. She asked me why that was so scary and I told her it was because there were sharks in the water.
“Jacob, we just found your friend Alexander. He can still talk, you know, and he’s telling us about you.”
“Goddamnit, I said I was in Texas all fucking night! Can’t you get that through you’re damned skull? What’s fucking wrong with you?”
“Try to listen to me, Jacob. We’re in Texas right now. We found you’re girlfriend’s body in Dallas, and her friend-YOU’RE friend-Alexander, was picked up an hour ago just outside of Dallas. And you’re calling from Dallas. Jacob, we already know you’ve been in Texas all week. We have a trail of clues describing every move you’ve made this month, from Louisiana to Dallas. Are you ready to tell me where you are?”
When my voice started to go through that really embarrassing cracking stage when I hit puberty, Uncle Logan used to follow behind me in his van as I walked to school. He’d drive so slowly that I just knew he could hear every word I said as I talked with the friends I walked to school with, and every time my voice would crack I could hear a low chuckle from inside the van.
My girlfriend used to buy me sunflowers every Friday. She would cut them up every Monday so that I couldn’t enjoy how damned beautiful they were until she bought me new ones again. Every Friday. It was her own way of getting me through the workweek. I did the same kind of little things for her too, you know. Every Friday I would take her up to the roof of the Manhattan building and we’d throw water balloons down at the people on the sidewalk. And every Monday I would…No, I don’t think it’s quite the same.
“I’m in Dallas, Texas.”
“I know that, Jacob.”
Bullets rip through the wall next to the front door. Somebody screamed. In the open notebook on the bed, with the bleeding blue fountain pen, I draw a picture of one of those smiley faces that always used to scream at me when I was young.
The line goes dead for what seems like just a moment, but I know it’s the alcohol in my system that throws the time away like that. I’ve been here all night, on the telephone, trying to provide an alibi I’m not even so sure exists. Some of the gray areas have to get cemented in with quick lies; only they’re the type of lies I really do hope with all my heart turn out to be true. Like when the person I’m speaking to says this:
“There’s enough skin tissue under her fingernails to mold a new you like a silly putty model. And you know what silly putty does, right? You press it against newspaper and leave it there for a few seconds, and then you pull it away and look at the part of the putty you stamped against the print. And there you see a backwards story.”
I’m not quite sure what that means. The line buzzes. “I have another call. Hold on, Jacob,” the person on the other end presses. “Hold on. Please.”
And I do, even though the person clicked over before I could respond. There are two desk lamps in my room even though there’s only one nightstand; a tiny nightstand at that. I had to pull the plug on one of the lamps and set it down on the bed so I could have room on the top of the nightstand to open my small college-ruled notebook. I love the way blank lines encourage the prospects of filling it all in. It’s like somebody needs me. As long as the pages are empty, and there’s a pen around, somebody’s needed. The fountain pen I took from the lobby is bleeding bright blue over the pages. I’m not very worried about the next four or so pages sticking together because they’re all blank just like this one is, and there’s still half a notebook left to go before I’ll need to get another one. Normally I’d swipe that broken pen right off the tabletop and fetch another faster than you could say H-O-L-O-G-R-A-M, saving the purity and space of the four or so pages beneath the one I’m writing on so that they could beckon me when I’m ready to get beckoned. But it’s been a long, harsh night, and it’s been bitter too. And I’m open to just about anything right now.
The line at the other end clicks again. It reminds me of wiretaps. Maybe the line is tapped, maybe it isn’t. I’m very drunk, so I let it slide. “Jacob, are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Jacob, when you pull the putty away from the newsprint, you’ll find the chemical makeup of the putty is so strong that it pulls some of the print’s ink away. And the words as they appeared under the putty will be stamped into the putty, only as we see it with our naked eyes, backwards. It’ll be a backwards story, Jacob.”
Sirens outside that were faint a little before this conversation took up again are now so loud I think the sole window in this room might shatter. I can almost hear how loud it will be right now, and I don’t think I want to hear something like that. Thank goodness the blinds are drawn and tight, because I get scared of shattered glass. Once when I was less than a year old, I was pushed from an open window two flights up from a bread delivery truck. Windshields in those days were flimsy, and I went right through it, into the passenger seat. I bounced off the passenger seat and fell on the floor, crying on the vibrating plastic foot mats. My Uncle Logan tells the story every year at Halloween, because that’s when it happened to me. He says I wouldn’t stop screaming for six days. I heard screaming like that last night. It went on for hours and hours and hours. I don’t ever want to scream like that again, nor do I ever want to hear it from anyone else. Last night was pretty scary for me in that way.
“The things you’re telling me don’t make sense, do you see?”
“But that’s exactly what I was about to say to you,” I respond.
“It’s a backwards story, Jacob.”
The Emergency Room at St. Kellstead Hall was made of bricks, painted in a very dark green, with a long orange stripe about twelve inches from top to bottom streaming the circumference of the room like a racing stripe. On my first birthday Uncle Logan bought me a dark green long sleeve t-shirt with an orange stripe across the chest. He called me “skydiver.”
“Listen to me,” I breathe into the receiver, unsure as to what I think the person I am talking to needs to be listening to when I speak. “I wasn’t there. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I…I know people who can tell you I was in Dallas. I was in Dallas all night. All last week, too.”
“Jacob, what you’re telling me makes no sense, but I bet if I hold you up to a mirror I’ll see what you’re talking about a lot better, because the print will reverse itself and be right again. Just like the putty. If you stamp the putty with the print ink on it onto a blank sheet of paper, a little bit more of that ink will again rub off, and although you might have to strain your eyes a bit to read it, the correct way to read things will be right there just as plain as day.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard gunfire before. There’s a rapidly recurring popping coming from outside that sounds like a tape recording of firecrackers played on an incredibly loud stereo. This is probably what guns sound like during crossfire. And this is all new to me. There isn’t enough light in the room, so I reach over the bed and I plug the second lamp in. The bed is fluffy and sensitive, so every time my body shifts even just a little bit, the lamp falls over onto the bed sheets and it throws a beam of light into the corner where the closet is. I feel like I’m trying to tell myself to make a run for it every time that happens, but I don’t believe in that sort of stuff at all.
My coat is in that closet. I stare at the cracked wooden door like it could be my exit into another universe. It’s shabby and unpainted, much like the exterior of this motel, so why couldn’t it just be a mysterious entrance into another dimension? I keep staring at that door, ignoring the voice at the other end of the line as it proceeds to tell me about fingerprints on some body’s dead open eyes.
A suitcase I packed with two sets of pants is in that closet. I don’t know how many shirts are in there, but there’s at least a few; some socks and some soap and a toothbrush and some crackers I found unopened in the lobby. Last year or so I took a trip out of the state but never unpacked the suitcase upon returning, so whatever I took with me on that particular trip is probably still in that suitcase, too. That’s good, because I’m in such a strange place right now that I don’t know what I’ll be needing from one moment to the next.
“There’s enough skin tissue under her fingernails, Jacob, to fix a burn victims melted face. Do you see what I’m getting at? It’s like the putty. It’s all nonsense when you dig it out from under someone’s fingernails, but when a specialist lines up the fragments and smears side by side on a microscope slide, it starts to tell the straight story. Do you see what I’m getting at, Jacob?”
Uncle Logan, for my second birthday, bought me a parachute. What would a two-year old boy do with a parachute? It was dark green and it had orange stripes running from the center down to the edges. I don’t remember any of this from my own memory, but Uncle Logan tells these stories every Halloween. He doesn’t always break out the family photo albums, but I’ve seen those, too, so I know he’s not making this stuff up.
All I had to eat today was an apple and a tomato. I don’t much like tomatoes, but after I cut all the soggy parts out and sprinkled a bit of sugar over the drier parts, it’s not so bad that I would deny myself that little sustenance. And besides, everyone always says it’s healthy to eat fruits and vegetables in the morning to get a good day’s worth of energy started. I might need it to run anyhow.
The voice at the other end sighs, but it’s only barely audible because in the room next door, the windows are being shot out. So I know it’s not somebody’s stereo playing loud gunfire music anymore; it’s actually real gunfire. This sort of scares me, so I tell the person on the other end of the line to hold on. Throwing the telephone onto the bed, I quickly haul the nightstand and the lamp rested on it over to the other side of the bed. I end up knocking over the lamp that’s been on the bed, but since I’ve decided to cower on the other side of the covers in between it and the wall, I can use the bed itself to splay the open notebook on and therefore both lamps will fit onto the nightstand and I will no longer have to worry about having to keep picking it up again.
“Jacob, where are you?”
“I can’t tell you that. You know I can’t tell you that.”
“But WHY, Jacob? If you’ve done nothing wrong, then WHY is your location such a secret?”
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re trying to do? Listen, I know things. Innocent people get hauled off and executed every day, but it’s not happening to me.”
“Listen, Jacob. Nobody’s talking about executing you. We just want to arrest you.”
“But who the fuck ARE you?”
“Jacob. There’s evidence. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
I start to cry. Last night I dreamt I pushed my friend Alexander’s face through the side of television set and when I broke some tubes inside the thing it popped and some sparks shot out. Alexander started to scream, raking layers and layers of skin from my bare arms. When I woke up my girlfriend was sitting on the couch, cutting up some sunflowers with a straightrazor. She asked me why I’d been screaming in my sleep. Usually when I wake up from nightmares I can’t remember a thing, and that typically makes her worry a lot about me. I can understand her fear, so I tend to make things up about the dreams to avoid her worrying so. Yesterday I told her I was dreaming about being on a boat, and that somebody kept tipping it over to try to throw me out. She asked me why that was so scary and I told her it was because there were sharks in the water.
“Jacob, we just found your friend Alexander. He can still talk, you know, and he’s telling us about you.”
“Goddamnit, I said I was in Texas all fucking night! Can’t you get that through you’re damned skull? What’s fucking wrong with you?”
“Try to listen to me, Jacob. We’re in Texas right now. We found you’re girlfriend’s body in Dallas, and her friend-YOU’RE friend-Alexander, was picked up an hour ago just outside of Dallas. And you’re calling from Dallas. Jacob, we already know you’ve been in Texas all week. We have a trail of clues describing every move you’ve made this month, from Louisiana to Dallas. Are you ready to tell me where you are?”
When my voice started to go through that really embarrassing cracking stage when I hit puberty, Uncle Logan used to follow behind me in his van as I walked to school. He’d drive so slowly that I just knew he could hear every word I said as I talked with the friends I walked to school with, and every time my voice would crack I could hear a low chuckle from inside the van.
My girlfriend used to buy me sunflowers every Friday. She would cut them up every Monday so that I couldn’t enjoy how damned beautiful they were until she bought me new ones again. Every Friday. It was her own way of getting me through the workweek. I did the same kind of little things for her too, you know. Every Friday I would take her up to the roof of the Manhattan building and we’d throw water balloons down at the people on the sidewalk. And every Monday I would…No, I don’t think it’s quite the same.
“I’m in Dallas, Texas.”
“I know that, Jacob.”
Bullets rip through the wall next to the front door. Somebody screamed. In the open notebook on the bed, with the bleeding blue fountain pen, I draw a picture of one of those smiley faces that always used to scream at me when I was young.