"He looked as if he would murder me and he did."
I stared at this sentence on the page in my old and battered Underwood typewriter. I pushed a weathered fedora hat back on my head, loosened my tie. I always knew the end would come because of some dame. I just never realized how they'd get me. The two of them were in on it from the beginning. He was a lawyer, a shyster downtown, an ambulance chaser. She was a peroxide blond who wore tight dresses and too much lipstick, always carried a forty-five in her bag, had a tattoo on her back -- where the sun don't shine -- that said: "Hot Lips."
They were perfect for each other. I got in the way. They had no choice. I see it now. They had to get rid of me. I could almost forgive them for that. But they killed Madeleine. And that I'll never forgive. Today is the day of reckoning. I have a bullet for each of them.
This place isn't so bad. It's a lot like Jersey City on a rainy afternoon. I remember reading a ghost story that was kind of like that. I think it was Muriel Spark's "Portobello Road." There's a lot of guys, like me, wandering around in this black-and-white reality. If you have some unfinished business you may get stuck in a reality like this. I pack my 38 caliber police special -- Philip Marlowe had a revolver just like this baby! -- I step away from my desk, the typewriter, and the whole grimy office. I have to find those two grifters. I need some fresh air. Madeleine has to be here somewhere. I'm gonna find that dame.
I stroll through "The Mansions of Hades," which is a residential neighborhood for well-to-do existentialists and others dead before resolving the puzzle of their lives, still questioning, doubting, angry and unaccepting. Norman Mailer drinks at a bar nearby. Jacques Derrida scopes out the babes at the corner restaurant. Jean-Paul Sartre "lives" about a block away.
What does it mean to "live" as opposed to merely "existing"? How is hell different from the Marais district of Paris? Let's drop in on Sartre to discuss my predicament. I want to know how a dead man can kill the bastard who plugged him. No wonder all the great philosophers are here. Most of them are trying to kill their predecessors and teachers. Wittgenstein is hunting for all of them. Bastards.
I expect to find Sartre in his messy apartment that is filled with books. Instead, I find him sitting in a sidewalk cafe. Sartre holds a newspaper, stares at a cup of strong black coffee, his pipe sits on a dirty ash tray. I notice two books before him -- a collection of works in hermeneutics and the late writings of Jacques Derrida. I tip my hat in his direction, point to the seat before him as I glance at the Derrida texts. Sartre shrugs his shoulders, then gestures at the empty chair.
I sit and ask the philosopher: "How's it going?"
Sartre sips his coffee and says: "Everything just is."
"Yeah, I know the feeling."
"Feelings? Here?"
"Yeah, in a way. There's a constant numbness or dullness, a frozen quality in one's perceptions and an inescapable affective tone or mood to everything that makes life stale and flat. I have lately -- but wherefore I know not -- lost all my mirth in life ... or death. The world is black-and-white for a really good reason here, now. Cigarette smoke follows you everywhere. People dress in black a lot. The neighborhood is filled with existentialists and postmodernists -- like Hollywood."
Sartre seemed exited and child-like: "I met Humphrey Bogart, you know."
"I'd rather meet Lauren Bacall. The deepest circles of hell are reserved for analytical philosophers and the linguistic analysts. Nobody has been able to finish a sentence for centuries in hell because of all the parsing of meanings and debates over syntax. I hear they're planning to make George W. Bush deliver a speech for eternity in hell. Think about the poor saps who'll have to sit through it. 'No Exit' is right." Part of the meaning of hell is not knowing that you're in it.
"It makes you long for the guestapo." Sartre sipped his coffee.
"I want to ask you a question."
"Go right ahead. It won't mean anything."
"Well, I want to plug the bastard who did me in. I have no body. I can't physically kill the mug. What should I do?"
"Why not wait fifty years? That's nothing here."
"That's not good enough for me. I want to dispatch the guy, send him to his maker with all his sins upon his head."
"Are you sure you have the right man."
"Yes, but I haven't seen him in a while. He's a master of disguise who looks a lot like me."
"That is a problem. Your murderer -- like your self -- is an entity in the world. Definitely not a Cartesian 'I.' You'll have to trail him through his actions. Maybe you'll be able to draw a picture of the mug."
"A picture?"
"Yes," Sartre took a drag on his pipe. "You see, Schopenhauer (who lives about a block from here) said that, if you were to connect the dots of a person's actions or the deeds of his life, the image produced would constitute a kind of portrait of an external shape -- a ghost, if you like -- of the self. All of the inner life would be missing, of course, but everything else would be there. You would have a 'mug shot,' as it were, of the killer to put in post offices and supermarkets. Of course, we don't have either of those establishments in this neck of the woods. You might come up with the image of God or the devil ... either (or both) may look like you -- or me."
"I see."
With a wave to my favorite existentialist, I got up from the table and drifted, aimlessly, through the half deserted streets and muttering retreats. Sartre is still waiting for that waiter who is not there and may not be coming, like those two bums waiting for Godot.
I felt a breeze scattering some leaves, then I saw her. She was standing under a streetlamp wearing a beautiful suit -- maybe Christian Dior -- white gloves in one hand, a hat tipped over one eye. Perfect make up, cigarette on her lips, holding an envelope-type purse. She looked like Jane Greer as she appeared in Out of the Past, except she was a blond. She had trouble written all over her. I didn't care. I waltzed right up to her. In my best casual manner, I tried an opening line which is more direct than my usual coolness and distance from this sort of dame:
"You look a little too glamorous for this neck of the woods, sister. Can I help you find your way?"
I made sure she got the message. This was one tough dame. She didn't blink and gave it right back to me:
"What's it to you?" She blew some smoke in my face.
"Nothing. I'm just trying to be sociable. Mind if I walk with you. These streets can be dangerous."
"I'm dead. There's not too much more anybody can do to me."
There's something incomplete about this moment in history -- maybe it's only in my society, but I doubt it -- a feeling of deadness. Something remains unfinished in our culture and ourselves. The new age is still unborn. We are not yet what we must be. This state of being nothing applies to the living and dead. Maybe that's perfect since my name is Nick, Nick Orpheus. The choice is between "Being" and "Nothingness."
"Well, there's places and then there are much worse places. The local boys could drag you to New Jersey, which has to be the last circle."
"Anything but that." She chuckled. A lifted eyebrow said she didn't care if I walked with her or shot myself in the head. We could hear some music from nightclubs in the distance. I suggested walking in the direction of the music. It was all the same to her. She was looking for the no good bastard who shot her. I told her my story. I explained about Madeleine. She said that she must have known her from somewhere. She couldn't remember too much before she got to this place. Me too. Something about being murdered is cleansing. You leave something behind. Create something new. Her name was Jane Eurydice. She asked me about Madeleine.
"Well, Madeleine ... " I hesitate to speak of her. One of my rules in "life" is never to discuss one woman with another. The strange similarity between these women -- Madeleine's hair was chestnut colored, sometimes -- even if her hair color changed by the week -- and her eyes were dark. Otherwise, this stranger might have been Madeleine's twin: same height, weight. Despite the new arrival's blond hair and green eyes, red lipstick, and greater glamor, I felt like I was talking to Madeleine. It was enough to give me a sense of ... vertigo. Maybe "frenzy" is a better word.
"Madeleine was among those few women with a legitimate grievance against life. She was owed something for what was -- and is -- taken from her. I can't speak of her in the past tense. I love her laughter and curiosity, passionate interest in things and ideas. People fascinate and horrify Madeleine. They mostly horrify me -- especially the lowlifes and bastards she associated with."
"I am not a big fan of humanity." She said this with a hardness in her eyes I would not have believed possible for such a beautiful woman.
"You got something better?"
"There must be something better."
"Maybe that's what this place is about. Finding something better." The music was pretty loud now. There was neon in the middle distance. I gestured in a north-by-northwest direction, towards the light and shadows, smoke and mirrors.
"You want a drink?"
"Why not? You look like the best company I'm going to find in this town." Jane laughed as she said this. It wasn't meant as a compliment.
We found a cabaret that looked like something from "Casablanca." There were a lot of people dancing. Great jazz music was playing. Cigarette smoke filled up the joint. There was a never-ending party going on. I slipped the doorman a fin to get into the club, then looked for some little guy in a rented tux with gleaming dentures who would finagle a table for a brand new twenty dollar bill. Money works even at these levels of reality.
There were beautiful women all over this place. It was a lot like Hollywood. Jane wasn't worried a bit. Jane sat accross from me in the soft light of the place, removed her hat and gloves, pointed those big eyes at me posing an unspoken question. I ordered a bottle of champagne. She was some seriously beautiful woman. Her eyes were filled with intelligence and curiosity, also deeper levels of pain than one expected to see in a woman who looked the way she did -- not at her age, anyway. She must've been no more than twenty-five when she passed into this realm of blighted souls. Some women are even younger when they are ushered into this grim reality through horrible trauma. I do not envy those all-too brief lives.
"Should I make conversation? Or will you be witty for me?" A lifted eyebrow told me that she had little hope that I would succeed in amusing her. If you have eternity on your hands, she seemed to say, a moron is worth a few laughs. I was the moron.
"I'll just try to make the conversation light and fluffy."
"Go ahead and do that." I got a smile. Well, that's a start. I had a feeling that there was something about our being together, here, in this nowhere place, that was important to what we were both after. Maybe she sensed this as well, but would not articulate the insight. Women who look the way she always will, to me, are targets of every imbecile in the world. They develop techniques for wrestling with gorillas of all varieties.
The suspiciousness was understandable, shadows that fell across her features, the intensity and presence of pain or shock said that, somewhere along the way in her brief life -- probably when she was very young -- someone evil and perverse hurt her forever. Maybe she was here to find the guy or gal who would love her forever, balancing the scales. Maybe I could help. And just maybe, if I was right about these intuitions, by helping her I'd help myself. This could be the only way to get out of here.
Some things a guy in my line of work figures out by dealing with lives lost to squalor and crime, blasted souls and walking wounded in this bleak landscape where fine young cannibals walk the night. The band began to play "You Must Remember This." I fixed my tie, smiled, and extended a hand. After a few seconds of cold contemplation, Jane put her hand in mine.
We stepped on to the dance floor. I liked the feel of her body close to mine, the subtle but excellent perfume, the fabric of her dress. I liked the way Jane looked at me -- amused and expectant, cool and assessing, smart, tough, challenging, also curious. Never let a woman become bored with your mind. Most men are boring to women. In fact, most men are boring to themselves.
The most beautiful woman in the world becomes less interesting the moment it is clear that she's an idiot. I don't know why I feel that way. Most men feel the opposite emotions. They are attracted to women who will always be more ignorant and less intelligent than they are. Women who are physically attractive and intellectually dull seem to constitute one masculine ideal. Women who are easily impressed, I guess.
Life must be happier for idiots, male and female. Think of all the fools you know who are doing great. Have you ever seen the Republican Convention? They're all happy as kids in a candy store waving their flags and balloons. True, a lot of them get indicted for having too much candy, but you know what I mean.
Gradually, Jane relaxed and began to tell her story. She was the product of a broken home. Mother left early. Father liked to beat her. I suspect that he did worse. She liked boys. They liked her. Jane didn't care about much. There was a fatalism about her from the start. She expected a short life. She was certainly right about that abruptly-ended or -shortened life. Jane never thought of her life as anything other than an ordeal punctuated by moments of self-abandonment in pleasures -- pleasures of various kinds which is always an anticipation of death, a kind of living death or purgatory of the moment.
Any kind of mood altering or hallucinatory substance is about pain management. Eventually, the pain does the managing. Purgatory is the condition of a never-ending party, a nightclub that does not close, a celebration with strangers and without mirth, an eternity of boredom. Have you ever seen the Oscars ceremony?
There was so little love in Jane's life that she must have felt a desperate hunger for genuine affection or any true human connection, let alone real love. It was a wonder to me that people -- especially men -- had not taken advantage of this poor woman from day one. Maybe they did. Jane was carrying a neon sign around her neck that said: "Please exploit me."
Many women seem unaware of projecting emotional need and vulnerability, frailty, and spiritual loss. Predators feed on that sort of need and vulnerability.
At first, Jane didn't see her vulnerability as an invitation to every worthless bastard in the world. After a while, Jane didn't care or, maybe, she believed that things could never be different with anyone that she would meet. Despite the veneer of toughness and cynicism -- the edgy quality about her and Jane's formidable beauty -- she was a softie inside, craving affection, just made for the exploiters of this world, exploiters that she would seek out with a suicidal compulsion and apathy.
Jane was begging for destruction because, absurdly, she had accepted the one lesson that power always teaches its victims at every level of reality -- you deserve what I am doing to you. You are my slave. Never believe that nonsense.
"We need to find the people who hurt us." I said this and stared into her eyes. I held her close and felt the music surrounding us.
"Maybe," Jane whispered in my ear, "it's the only way we can be free."
That's when we turned and saw the man in the black raincoat. He was of middle height, his features appeared indistinct or nondescript because of the distance that made it impossible to identify him as someone familiar to me in life. He seemed like a man who knew too much. He was clearly observing us, maybe following me. He was with a woman -- dark haired, wearing dark glasses, even inside this nightclub. I didn't like the look of either one of them. There are all kinds of bosses and minor deities exacting tribute in these nether regions of lost souls. Jane saw what I saw.
"Let's get out of here." She grabbed my arm. I felt that this was right and good somehow, together we're unstoppable.
"Come on. There must be a back way out of here." Her nearness was reassuring. I want her never to be far away.
We pushed our way through the crowd. As we left the nightclub, it seemed that night had remained irremovably in place for years or eons. At this level of reality darkness ruled. There were parties everywhere, music, cheap perfume, cigarette smoke, the sounds of sex were often heard, but no love-making, street walkers at every corner. We wandered through twisting and darkening streets then came upon a man standing near a taxi. I could hear steps behind us, approaching. I (somehow) knew that it was the couple from the nightclub aiming to "get" us. They would shadow us, like a guilty past. I wasn't sure whether we could shake them off.
"Need a lift?" The man wore a cap on the back of his head, a cigarette behind his ear, unshaved, maybe forty. The car was a beat-up old checker cab with New York plates.
"Where you heading?" I asked and looked over my shoulder. Footsteps approached, quickly.
"That depends on you, buddy."
"Get in, Jane. Let's get out here pronto." We ducked into the comfy back seat. The cab peeled out into the night traffic faster than a bat out of hell -- or purgatory -- and we settled into a comfortable cruising speed, but were we heading in the right direction?
I tried to make out the streets in the darkness, deciding to trust my emotions and intuitions. I'd have to feel my way along. I would need to see through the blindness. Jane seemed to trust my judgment more than I did.
"That way," I said. The driver turned towards a dark and lost highway. We drove some ways, then -- I don't know how -- I felt there were familiar landmarks along the way, allowing them to point me in the right direction, they seemed to whisper to me, gesturing towards something known and true, a powerul emotion pulled me towards an ambiguous resolution to our adventure.
A glance behind us revealed a black cadillac, 1947, gleaming, menacing. The grill on that car resembled the smile of a hungry shark -- the caddie was gaining on us. I saw what appeared to be a very familiar street. I asked the cab driver to pull over quickly. I dropped a wad of cash in his lap, opened the door of the vehicle, then pulled Jane out of the car.
"This way." I suddenly knew the right direction. My office was on a street like this, maybe this very street. I looked at the numbers on the doors of the buildings. The numbers seemed blurry -- like in a dream or as if we were under water -- I concentrated and, somehow, I knew that I was only a few blocks from my old haunts. I felt like a man fighting his way out of a hypnotic spell, rescuing forbidden memories from the dungeon to which they were consigned by an evil witch.
"Come on, Jane."
"Where are we going?"
"Towards redemption."
I smiled at her with a confidence that I knew she could not resist. We made our way through darkened and dirty streets. No footsteps were heard behind us. This was further proof that we were headed the right way. I saw a building I knew, but everything seemed to be in the wrong place, shifted around in my recollection. I saw my office building. There was no one around. The entire area seemed desolate, abandoned, like a stage set. I thought that my old key might still open the door.
We made our way towards the entrance. No security guard. I didn't want to try the elevator. We climbed the thirty-nine steps to the fifth floor. My office door was closed, not locked. Jane seemed frightened. I offered silent encouragement. We both sensed that a revelation lay on the other side of that door. I opened it and was frozen to the spot where I stood. Jane's scream seemed to come from far away.
There were two corpses in that room. One looked exactly like me; the other like Jane. From the shadows, a man in a perfect tuxedo stepped forward and lit a cigarette. It was the cab driver, except now he was the epitome of elegance, with a pencil-thin mustache, a gardenia in his lapel, a neatly folded handkerchief in his pocket. His shoes gleamed. He sat on my desk before the two corpses, then smiled and tilted his head toward the empty seats before the bodies. He was the best dressed psycho I'd ever seen.
"I was wondering how long it would take you two to get here. These are the earlier versions of yourselves. They're as dead as doornails. I think you killed them."
He looked at me when he said this.
"Both of you, I mean." He chuckled merrily at this observation. "Pity, I wanted them to belong to me. I liked those two people. You took them away from me. I can't accept anybody who loves the way you two kids do. It's just not the kind of thing I can tolerate. You even offered to take the rap for this dame. What kind of a thing is that for a grown man to do? It ain't natural."
He reached for a drink that appeared in his free hand.
"In my position I have only a few rules. I try to be accomodating of every sort of person. I am a true democrat. I am tolerant of human foibles and peccadillos, even ... encouraging occasional sinfulness." He smiled. "With you two, I have ... failed to communicate."
The man in the tux walked around the room, smelled the gardenia in his lapel: "There is no space for you two and what you feel for each other in the realm where I am king. You two simply do not belong in the kingdom of shadows. You love her too much for that. It is that love that killed the darkness in you. The parts of you that I liked so much. Shame. I always get stuck with the stiffs."
Jane was unaware of speaking the next words: "But who really killed them?"
"You did. You 'transcended' them. I hate when people do that. Now all of you are bringing loving versions of this guy and gal to life by reading these words. It's all terribly complicated and annoying. Here's what I'm willing to do for you."
The man stood and opened his hands, holding them before our eyes like a carnival magician.
"Jane, doesn't really know you. She has no memory of her life at this lowest-level of reality. It's so similar to Union City in this sinister realm. If you can get her out of here, into the sunlight and the Springtime. If you can find the key to her love -- the old love that she felt and feels for you in the deepest part of herself -- then I'll punch your tickets and you can get to the other ride. You'll know you're there when you hear birds singing and everybody seems to be happy. They're usually all grinning like idiots in that place with the skyscrapers and a big park in the middle. I have to warn you the sex is awful in that town."
"What happens if she does not remember?"
"Then you stay with me in the kingdom of darkness becoming the two shadows of yourselves, corpses, that followed you from the club. Living dead, like everybody else in New Jersey. Whatta-ya say? Shake on it?"
Jane interrupted: "Listen, buster -- No one has to rescue me. I barely know this guy. I am not going to let him take the rap for me. I'll go any place you want. He can take off."
I was not going to let Jane risk eternity in that hell: "Not on your life. She's right. Jane does not know me. She can be very happy and better off in the sunshine. Maybe she'll find a banker or some very successful guy --"
" -- that would be hell." Jane said with a laugh.
Suddenly, I felt a blackness swallow all of my conscious awareness. The room began to spin around. I could not see Jane. I reached out for her with a desperation that I had never felt before. I lost consciousness. Everything faded to black. I knew that I might never again find the lady that vanishes.
I awoke after what seemed like hours. I was in a park or something. The grass smelled wet and clean. I heard children laughing, playing. I walked towards a small group of persons visible in the middle distance. I saw birds in a blue and white sky. I felt the warmth of the sun on my flesh and saw everything in beautiful technicolor. I was over the rainbow.
I felt dazed, walking, looking for someone. Then I saw her near some flowers, laughing with an assortment of children surrounding her. Her hair was light brown. She was wearing a sun dress. I approached, nervously and fearfully -- Did she know me?
"What are you doing here?" Jane smiled. Or was it Madeleine? "I thought for sure they'd never let you out."
