The Enveloping Evening

The stranger wraps himself in the darkness of night. He hides in the squid ink discharge of evening. He slips and slides through the city with invisible ease. It’s important to be anonymous; to be nothing, to be no one in particular, indescribable and disappearing in the descriptive recall of the pedestrian mind. It is important for the stranger to interact as little as possible with the people he meets. This is an easy thing to accomplish in such a large city, black and grimy, thick with history and the nausea of the future. Everyone is in a real big hurry, everyone is such a big deal, and has a very important engagement; and no one can be bothered with courtesy or manners.

It is easy for the stranger to see the flames in the skyscraper eyes, the split in the concrete; hear the screams of pain and panic from the people under Pan’s spell, manic and crucial for the thinning of the herd. Architecture is not spiritual. The hermit crab does not love his borrowed shell or can. The bricks explode into dust. Noises brash and pounding burst eardrums. The stranger shuts his eyes to the visions and turns left down Tenth Avenue.

Liana Greenburg has an allergic reaction to the stranger. She breathes in his perfume. She coughs and gags, staggers back to catch her breath and is hit in the shoulders by a taxi cab. Her head splits open on the tarmac and the blood and the black make oil paintings of the bubonic plague.

The stranger takes no responsibility for the causality of his presence. His existence as exterminator gives him no satisfaction. He believes he is a karmic dispenser, a being whose nature is reflected in his attitude to whoever you are. If you are dissatisfied with yourself you will hate him. If you are happy and well adjusted to life you will have a more positive response from his presence.

Charlotte Metcalf smells the strangers perfume and smiles. She is reminded of her first night out on the town – when she was sixteen and riding the trains from the island to the city and that long passionate kiss from a boy she had a crush on all through junior high school, Billy Mantis. She shuts her eyes and remembers the sensation, the newness, the freshness, the endless possibilities and excitement of being young and untried. She misses her chance to cross the street. She decides to have a cigarette. She can’t find a lighter. A man she has never met before strikes a match close, but not too close to her face, and offers it slowly to her cigarette.

She blinks her eyelashes, which stick because of too much mascara and she sucks in the hazardous chemical. The man’s named is Billy. Charlotte, after introducing herself laughs a little. She knows that this is more than a coincidence.

The stranger wears no artificial perfume. His aroma is a sweet smelling gas that is floral and excrement, glandular musk and frenzied cellular decay. He is pungent and leaves a trail any beast could follow for days. He seldom bathes and often stinks, but the stink is part aphrodisiac.

The water is black glass, bottles crashing against the night, shipwrecks and partygoers. The stranger walks along the promenade watching the men and women dance on the party boat and consume the dizzying drink. He is not coming aboard tonight.

Memoires have no master. History is what you choose to remember, record, reinvent.

The nights in the city are not like the nights in the country. The evenings in the city are much more quiet and full of more stars. The nocturnal hunters tiptoe on quiet pads, unfurl silent wings and glide to the ground, mouse eats bug, owl eats mouse and if the fox or the cat could ever jump that high; dead owl. Sometimes the insects serenade the dark wooded area – crickets rubbing their legs together or a hundred times more deafening; the cicadas stiffening and rattling their tymbal membranes.

The stranger remembers his first assignment. Gloria Ratcliffe. She was a teenage runaway. Her father was a Methodist preacher. The preacher prayed to his savior to have his daughter returned safe, but his wife, Sheila Ratcliff knew better to hire the stranger.

The stranger found Gloria two towns over in Springfield. She was being used as a prostitute by her junkie pimp boyfriend. Both of them had a lot of growing up to do, but the boyfriend would not experience the future.

The boyofriend pulled a gun from his jacket, when he saw the stranger walking away with his girlfriend, his moneymaker. The boyfriend shot himself in the left arm with a 45 caliber hand cannon. The bullet severed a main artery and he bled to death in six hours. No one called the ambulance. No one heard him scream. He died hoarse and in shock.

The only justice is emotional satisfaction. The rhyme and reason of the maestro are a part of music’s greatest secret, the unexplained source vibrating communicable sounds. The painter uses images that fueled the big bang. Everything came into being because of the desire to come into being. The infinite void began to sparkle because of the urge to thrive – to orgasm into being.

The stranger misses the twinkle, twinkle little stars, the glittery ceiling of sky calming him with the constant remembrance of his insignificance in the grand scheme, and consequently his vast importance in the universe – which is no more alive than he is. He made ten thousand dollars for bringing Gloria home to the Methodist preacher. The preacher gave the stranger two gold bracelets as gifts, thick and cumbersome.

The stranger had the bracelets melted down into a lump. He sold the lump. The reason for this procedure, was, the stranger hates gold bracelets, and finds that only the sleaziest of men wear them. That is his opinion he knows; but life has taught him to learn from stereotypes.

The ceiling of light in the city is sky traffic – constant jets and helicopters. The ghetto birds glare down to the crime scene, with spotlight and stern warning from loudspeaker. The news choppers hover above the traffic problems constantly reporting the condition of rush hour. Passenger, military and cargo jets flow across the sky en route to or coming from JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, MacAuthor/Islip, Stewart, Brookhaven, West Chester, Danbury and a handful of other airports. Private helicopter rides for tourists, or from Mother Stewart’s enormous building on 26^th street to her home in The Hamptons.

The stranger listens to the Hudson River smash against the concrete wall below. The city lights of Jersey City glimmer with sticky licks across the undulating layers of black night glass. It is not always easy to do the bidding of his masters.

Jonathan Appelbaum was a gifted athlete who owed too much money to the wrong types of people. He liked to gamble. He liked to gamble large. He had a heavy line of credit when he was a star athlete, but since his ankle injury forced him into early retirement, he hasn’t been bringing in income. His well has run dry. Jonathan thought he was smart enough to become a professional gambler, but the joy and rush of gambling when you have nothing to lose keeps your head loose and free to take losing in stride. When losing carries with it a heavy consequence to your existence, poor decisions are often made. This type of gambler always loses. Jonathan is this type of gambler.

The stranger wears two long black coats. He does this for reasons which will become clear immediately. He opens the small bottle of chloroform; he soaks a handkerchief with the hazardous, sweet smelling liquid. The action takes place in his right pocket. In his left pocket he unfolds a knife.

Jonathan Applebaum takes his nightly jog. He loves the sound of the river against the concrete walls below. He loves the winter breeze against his face. It frees him of the angst of owing so much money. How is he ever going to get that money? How is he going to earn 250,000dollars in six months? Maybe he could return to the game? What about coaching? Inspirational writing? Could he tour several college campuses giving speeches about his times as a professional athlete?

Jon always takes a rest at the new pier 65. This is the three mile marker, from his penthouse. Here he walks. He stretches more. He does twenty pushups and stares out to The Statue of Liberty in the distance, another twinkling light in the city.

Routine is predictable. The last breath Jonathan Applebaum ever took was the sweet smell of Chloroform. The blade went in deep; deep into the kidney and the twist opened the organ to profuse bleeding. Jonathan passed out dying quickly.

Blood vomits all over the stranger’s black jacket. Jonathan falls to the ground. The stranger puts the chloroform, knife and handkerchief in a Ziploc back. He closes the bag and tosses it over the banister and into the river. He takes off his gloves and outer coat. He shoves the gloves into the coat and throws the bundle into the river. It is weighted down. It will sink.

The stranger walks quickly and quietly away from the scene of his crime. He is common looking – average, forgettable. He wears a coat and new gloves already, and there is nothing incriminating on his person. He is a pedestrian with no witness.

The evening welcomes him with a dark anonymity, incorporates him into the controlled chaos, the mapped madness, almighty anonymity, lulled loneliness…

There is no one action greater than the other, all bursts are proof of existence only.