Half Empty

Half Empty

Tim Hall

Copyright Tim Hall 2011

Published by Undie Press at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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I, too, instinctively avoid, I know not why, the baneful rays of the moon and the harmful company of human beings.

—Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

1

Dennis awoke to the sound of the old man upstairs beating his wife.

He had fallen asleep on top of the covers, still in his clothes. His back and neck ached from the awkward position; his head and heart were pounding. He was covered in a cold and sour-smelling sweat, yet his eyes burned from dryness. His mouth was coated with a foul substance, stale and sticky, which caused his swollen tongue to stick to the roof of his mouth.

He had been dreaming that he was drinking again.

Thump.

He stared at the ceiling as he massaged his neck, listening to the noise from upstairs. Maybe it wasn’t the wife this time. He could not hear her crying, or any of the usual pleas for mercy. It sounded more like a bowling ball was being lifted high and dropped onto the floor directly over his head, the latest trick in the old man’s campaign to drive him mad. Dennis counted the seconds between each crash, and imagined the old man leaning over, picking up the bowling ball, straightening himself up, and then dropping it.

Thump.

They had gotten along fine in the beginning. There was pleasant talk on the stairway, and Dennis would help Mrs. Delmonico with the groceries. The old man was rarely around except at meal times; most days he would sit at the social club down the block, while his hunched and overworked wife spent her days cleaning, cooking, and shopping. On the weekends, when she returned from the market, she would leave the cart at the bottom of the stairs and make several slow trips up the two flights, stopping frequently to catch her breath. Whenever he heard the old lady coming in Dennis had gone down and carried her grocery bags upstairs against her feeble and smiling protestations. The old man took him aside one day and said he was relieved the landlord had finally rented to the right kind of people.

Thump.

It hadn’t lasted long. A few late parties, including any number of the wrong kind of people, and the complaints and harassment had begun soon after. Dennis and the old lady still exchanged strained pleasantries on the stairs, but just try to put on a little music, or vacuum the apartment on a Sunday afternoon! Then the mad banging would begin, the old man sometimes even coming halfway down the stairs and screaming over the railing: TURN THAT GODDAMN SHIT OFF YOU MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A BITCH! Dennis would throw open the door and scream back, unleashing ever more vile strings of obscenities—Racist ball-licking goombah! Shit-sucking gravy monkey! Tomato nigger! —until both of them stormed off and slammed their respective doors.

Thump.

Dennis looked up at the ceiling and smiled. The old man didn’t realize that he had actually done him a favor by waking him up.

There was nothing unusual about the dream. He was in the usual place with the usual people, and they were all enjoying their usual pints and cigarettes. But it was the very banality of the dream that made it so terrifying. His dreams had become so lifelike that most mornings, the first thing did upon waking was cup his hand over his mouth. His breath was foul but there was no smell of booze on it.

The old man grew tired after about half a dozen drops, and the racket overhead finally ceased. Dennis settled back into the pillow.

It was almost always the same dream. Tony and Nick were there, and Fletch and Amanda and Pete, and they were all drinking and laughing. The place was packed, as usual, and he wandered the dance floor looking for the one person who wasn’t there, who he knew would not be showing up. As he looked for her his desperation turned to panic in the dream, and he would find himself pushing through the crowds of strangers, increasingly frantic, calling out her name.

Maybe that’s it, he thought. Maybe I’ve been screaming her name in my sleep.

Dennis suddenly felt nauseous. He sat up again and waited for the dizziness to stop. When he felt steady enough he got up and went into the kitchen. The sink was filled with dishes and oily, tepid water in which floated carrot peelings, coffee grounds, and used matches. There was nothing to eat but a tired apple and a few eggs in the fridge; a spotted banana sat limply next to a withered onion on the counter. There was almost nothing he could eat. Since quitting drinking his entire digestive system had been in riot. Food in general didn’t appeal to him and yet when hunger finally drove him to eat, his body would react violently: his forehead would break out, his palms would itch, and he would be possessed by a nearly suicidal depression. The doctor had found nothing wrong, and simply suggested that he take it easy for a while and allow his body to detoxify naturally.

Dennis put on water for tea. He looked at the small magnetic calendar on the side of the fridge. One of the dates on the calendar was circled, and he counted down from there, tracing his finger to the current date. He counted a second time to make sure. Then he stared at the calendar until the kettle began to whistle, his excited disbelief rising like the steam. Thirty days. He had made it thirty days!

In the past, a weekend would have been unthinkable, a week, impossible. But a month? Might as well hold one’s breath underwater for a month, or run without stopping for a month. There were some things the human body was simply not meant to do. And yet, somehow, he had done just that.

Dennis took the mug and went into the living room and sat on the couch. The revelation had cheered him somewhat, and as he looked around the room he felt a sense of peace despite the dreariness of his surroundings.

If someone looked at it, he wondered, what could they make of the person inhabiting the space? Everything was broken. Guitars needed strings, amps needed fuses, wires were exposed; broken stereo equipment was piled in a corner—left over from some half-remembered, absurd dream that he would someday learn enough about electronics in order to make the needed repairs. Books and papers were stuffed in milk crates and cardboard boxes. They were the remnants of a life that had never truly started, held together by no common thread.

Everything was piled; there was no uplift to the room either in spirit or design. It all seemed to pull downward, to tug on him. The dirty white walls were almost completely bare. The only decorations punctuating the gloom were the books leaning haphazardly on the hastily assembled bookshelves and a few postcards taped to the wall. These were the places he wanted to escape to, pictures he’d like to jump into and disappear forever.

There was a thick layer of dust over the television set. The cable box on top of the television served no other purpose than to tell him the time. Thirty dollars a month for a digital clock! And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to turn off the service. The red LED with the blinking colon was the only sign of life in the room, the only thing that changed. It was the only thing in the apartment that was connected to the outside world, besides the increasingly disused telephone.

Dennis suddenly picked up the remote and clicked on the television. He scanned the channels, appalled by what he saw. The bland faces, the sick canned laughter. He was not ready for that yet. He turned off the set, then went into the bedroom and lay on the bed. His skin was on fire, his heart was pounding, the blood throbbed in his neck. There was nothing to do. Time stretched out in both directions.

He got up and went back to the living room and burrowed through a milk crate in the corner. Not long ago it had meant everything, this going through crates looking for the perfect song. After a few whiskeys the records would be grabbed with shaking hands; the need for noise, engraved adrenaline, growing exponentially until he literally trembled with anticipation for the first jagged riff, the thumping beat.

Nothing. Sifting through those records now he had no feelings of any kind, apart from a slight annoyance that they were only adding to the clutter and disorganization of his life. The same artists whose supposed genius he had fiercely debated, championed, and dissected in the boozy late night hours now struck him as slightly absurd, with nothing truly interesting or original to say.

He put on a Don Covay record and settled back on the couch, as the first saxophone blast and gurgling organ began. The appreciation, the euphoria, was gone. It wasn’t the same. Covay’s mournful orchestrations and tortured voice were too much, and simultaneously not enough. It was the wrong tool for the job, like trying to listen through a telescope. He went to the stereo and switched it off.

Dennis went into the bathroom and began running the water for a bath. Then he pulled the hair back from his forehead and leaned into the mirror over the sink. Still going strong. Even the barber had said so: You’re going to have your hair forever. In 30 years I’ve never seen such hair. That was a dirty trick she had played, making him think he was losing it, threatening to leave him for it. I’m not going to be seen with a baldy! If you were in your 30s that would be one thing, but you’re too young!

Still, one had to face these things. The process, that’s what it was called. Must endure the process, must go over every inch of the wreckage.

Checking the teeth. Still wretched. You could have been an actor if not for the chompers. And those worry lines growing on the forehead. Remember to relax or you’re going to look like your old man.

Dennis turned the bathroom radio to a classical station, then went out and picked a few books from the shelves at random. It didn’t matter what he picked—he knew he would not be able to concentrate—but it would be a distraction that would allow him to spend more time in the tub. He stripped down and was just settling into the water when the first blast startled him.

It was a horrible sound, a loud electronic tone. His first thought was that it was old man Delmonico, using some devious new trick to torture him, but when the second blast happened he realized that the noise was coming from his own apartment. Dennis wrapped himself in a towel and stepped cautiously into the living room. It wasn’t until a series of short, persistent blasts began and he spun around in a karate pose that Dennis realized the sound was coming from his intercom buzzer. Dennis cursed, then stormed into the bedroom and looked out the window.

What he saw on the sidewalk below did not make sense; it took a moment to sink in. It was like something from an Ensor painting: a tribe of pygmies was milling outside, wearing gaudy outfits and grotesque masks, holding bags. As he watched, one of them reached up and pointed toward the door frame and the buzzer blasted again. Dennis pulled his head back from the window and his heart sank. It was Halloween!

He paced the floor of the bedroom, cursing. It was a crisis of unimaginable proportions. He knew from past years that the neighborhood kids were relentless; they didn’t take no for an answer. Each gang would be good for at least five blasts, ranging in time from one to ten seconds each, and there would be a new group approximately every thirty to sixty seconds. It was not yet quite noon, and they would be out until well past dark. He started to do the math, but a new blast startled him and he lost his place.

Shauna had taken care of such things in the past. She would remember to pick up a few bags of treats and had even worn a costume once. She kept the front door propped open too, so the little creatures could come right upstairs and pound on their door directly. She had genuinely loved all the holidays, and had somehow made it bearable, even fun. And if it got to be too much then they would get in the car and drive somewhere, to a mall or a movie or a bar.

None of those places appealed to him now. He was too jumpy to sit in one place, and at the same time too exhausted from lack of proper sleep to want to do anything. A quiet day at home was all he wanted. Dennis put his clothes back on and sat on the couch. He made himself as quiet as he could. Perhaps if he quieted himself the answer would come to him, he would get some kind of inspiration or idea, a sign.

A sign. Dennis jumped up and found a piece of paper, then grabbed the old coffee can that held his various writing instruments. He found a red crayon and wrote BUZZER BROKEN in big block letters on the paper. Stupid, but it might work. Just as likely, it would be removed by the next semi-literate delinquent who slouched by, in gleeful communion with the vandalous spirit of the occasion.

He went downstairs and taped the paper over his nameplate and button, taking care that nobody saw him do it. Then he closed the front door quietly and took the stairs two at a time back up into the apartment. He went down the little hallway to the spare room and pulled back the curtain slightly. A few seconds later, some mothers came by with a group of kids. Dennis heard the faint blast of the Delmonico’s buzzer upstairs and his body tensed, but after a few seconds without any response the group moved on. It worked! At least it had, this one time. Good, let the old bastard be tortured by the noise now. It was sweet justice.

Dennis remembered the bath. He ran into the bathroom but the water was cold; it would be at least an hour before there would be enough hot water for another. He sat on the edge of the tub and listened to the classical music as the water drained along with his spirits. He considered his predicament, that his entire equilibrium was currently being protected by a small rectangular square of paper and a red crayon. It almost seemed funny.

From where he sat Dennis could see the telephone table, covered in loose papers. From underneath, the small, faint red light of the answering machine light still blinked.

He had forgotten about the message. It had been there when he got home from work, and he made a point of ignoring it. There were very few possibilities, none of them good. A telemarketer, perhaps, or a wrong number: It could be anything or nothing, but if it was a message from her then he wanted to be prepared.

For the first few weeks his heart had jumped when he saw that blinking light, and he would rush to the machine hoping to hear it spill forth a melody of contrition, tears, and pleading for reconciliation. But her messages disappointed; they were always guarded and purposefully vague. And yet every time they would work their spell, and he would be dialing her number before he had taken off his jacket. This time he had waited; he had been able to resist her just by not listening to the message. It was so simple, and when the blinking light had become too much to look at he had simply covered it with some papers.

At the time it seemed to be an act of great strength and willpower; now it struck him as rank cowardice.

A second later he was at the machine, his finger hovering over the button. He counted to 10, slowly, and then recited the alphabet. He tried to remember The Lord’s Prayer but got lost in the middle. With a sigh he jabbed the button and turned away. To his surprise it was not Shauna’s sharp, nasal voice he heard through the little speaker, but Blum’s rushed and breathless baritone instead.

Hey man got back last week sorry haven’t been in touch but party tomorrow night hope you can make it…

Dennis smiled. The last time he had seen Blum was six months earlier, before Blum had headed out on his latest cross-country trip. That was Blum: He picked up on a moment’s notice and disappeared for months at a time, with little planning or seeming reason. Dennis would receive periodic postcard updates, or emails sent from an Internet café in Tucson, or Walla-Walla, or Cannes. Just as unexpectedly Blum would show up back in the city, bursting with stories and new enthusiasm and involved in some entirely improbable situation. He would be living with a German model in a SoHo penthouse, or have a job as an extra in a television show, or be helping to build a hip new restaurant. Eventually—usually