PALINDROME (9 page)

I nodded. “I’m okay, Doctor. Just let me sit
down for a few moments. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“Yes, sit, please sit.” He helped me into the
reclining dental chair and adjusted the height so that my feet were
higher than my head. “Do you feel like you might pass out?”

“I don’t know, I just feel a little
weird.”

And then I guess he noticed Allie’s hazel
eye. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“I’m okay.”

“Your left pupil is fully dilated. You need
to be checked by an ophthalmic specialist to make sure there’s no
damage to your eye.” I looked in the mirror. He was right; my left
pupil was fully dilated, so much so that you could barely see that
the iris was hazel and not blue. “Wait right here, Lexa, and don’t
move. I’ll go call an ambulance.” I heard him running to the front
desk and then I heard his voice on the phone. “This is Dr. Moffet
at—”

In the middle of all the commotion, with a
patient in mid root canal and an ambulance’s siren wailing in the
distance, Darla, the receptionist walked through the door holding a
bouquet of butter-yellow roses. “My God, Lexa,” she looked
terrified. “What happened to you?”

“Lexa fall down and give herself a local in
the head,” I said in a childish manner. “Pretty clumsy, huh?”

Darla started to cry. “Are you all right?”
She was so nervous that she crushed the bouquet with her hands. “Do
you want some water?”

“I’m fine. Hey, careful, you’re crushing
those beautiful yellow roses.”

“What?” Darla was in a state of full-blown
panic, staring at me and showing no comprehension.

“The roses, you’re ruining them.”

Darla glanced down at the mangled bouquet.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. They’re for you.”

“Me?”

Darla nodded.

Dr. Moffet raced back into the room. “The
ambulance just pulled up. Are you okay?”

“Feeling no pain, Dr. Moffet.” I smiled to
ease his worry.

He shook his head from side to side. “You’ll
be fine. We just have to take all the necessary precautions. I
spoke to the EMS technician. The hospital will have an
ophthalmologist standing by. I’ll finish up with the patient in the
chair and come right over. Just try to relax.”

“No problem, Doctor.” I took the bouquet of
roses from Darla and looked at the note card. The card was made of
quality parchment paper. The note was handwritten in the most
exquisite shade of blue ink. It read,
I hope you are feeling
better,
and it was simply signed,
Emilio
.

Thirteen: Reconciliation?

The
only class I had scheduled that
afternoon was a lecture on contemporary literature, and I figured I
could handle that, even after having a needle removed from my
head.

The trip to the hospital had gone well. The
injection was not responsible for my dilated left pupil. The
ophthalmologist’s opinion was that the dilated pupil was a response
of the sympathetic nervous system. He surmised that the fall had
triggered an adrenaline spike and that the adrenaline, not the
lidocaine injection, was the pupil-dilating culprit. The lidocaine
had been injected subcutaneously and trapped between layers of
skin. So other than the fact that my temple was still numb to the
touch, there were no permanent issues.

Dr. Moffet gave me the day off with full pay
and was glad that he hadn’t incurred a lawsuit. Better still, I now
had justification for the hazel eye.
I smacked my head on the
floor and accidentally took a needle in the temple.
Who could
argue with that? It beats,
I have the unusual power to alter my
appearance, and I have one eye that just wouldn’t
cooperate.

I always sit in the last row of the lecture
hall. I’m sure the lecturer wasn’t pleased by the fact that a class
of fifteen couldn’t sit together in the front row of a
three-hundred-seat auditorium, but he never complained about it,
and I liked being the first one out the door at the end of the
lecture.

“You can wipe out your opponents. But if you
do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself,”
another Hemingway gem. This lecturer seemed to be full of them.
Hemingway was such a man’s man. Entire decades had passed since his
death, and the whole of contemporary literature was still smitten
with him. He is a god among writers, simple yet complex, brilliant
yet damaged. He is what all writers aspire to be, but will never
become.

Ax drifted in as silently as vapor. I wasn’t
sure how long he had been sitting next to me until he spoke. “I see
you’ve still got goggle eyes,” he said as he leaned over to examine
me. “Are you ready for some Chinese medicine yet?”

“How dare you use the words ‘goggle eyes’
during a lecture on Hemingway—show some respect.”

“I prefer the writing of Sun Tzu.”

“Now there’s a surprise. Let me guess, the
Art of War
?”

“Very good.”

“What should I expect from a great ninja
warrior?”

“Sage wisdom and unquestionable loyalty.”

My eyes welled up, and I kissed him quickly
on the cheek. Was this the path to reconciliation? A moment passed.
I had no doubt that it was. Loyalty above all else, loyalty at all
costs. There were billions of people in the world, yet Ax and I
were truly alone. No other two people possessed what we possessed,
and although we could look like anyone, we were like no one else. I
didn’t have to say thank you. My emotion was there for him to see
in my eyes. “Face forward and pretend you’re interested in the
lecture. He’ll never know that you don’t belong in the class.”

“Okay.” Ax turned and faced the lecturer and
spoke without looking at me. “I still don’t know what to do about
the money, but the fact that you deposited the check into our bank
account kind of takes the decision out of our hands. Everything
comes at a cost, and I’m worried that the cost of this money will
be great.”

“We’ll have to deal with it, whatever it
is.”

“We always have.”

“So what now? What do we do?”

“There’s nothing to do but wait for the fight
to come to us. Either it will or it won’t. Maybe we’ll get lucky
and nothing will come of it. Let’s just live our lives cautiously
and take one step at a time.”

“We’re survivors.”

We fist bumped. “Survivors,” we said
together.

I started to giggle and had to cover my mouth
to conceal the noise from the lecturer. I was thinking about the
spastic events of the day, tripping at work and taking a syringe in
the head. I mean c’mon, it’s funny when you think about it.

“What’s so funny?” Ax asked as he turned his
gaze back to me.

I shrugged and kept my mouth shut, but Ax
understood from my expression that I had another bomb to drop on
him. He rolled his eyes. I could see that he was preparing himself
for another emotional blow.

“What already?” he said.

“It’s nothing, just something funny that
happened at work. I’ll tell you later.”

“Your expression betrays you. It doesn’t look
like
nothing
.”

“I slipped at work and accidentally stuck
myself in the head with a syringe of lidocaine. I’m fine.”

“You call that nothing? Your life forces are
out of balance. That’s why these things continue to happen. Don’t
you understand? The altercation at the bar, slipping and injecting
yourself with poison; it’s caused by a spiritual imbalance.”

“It’s a fluke, nothing more than a random
series of events.”

“And maybe it’s God, acting incognito.”

“God acting incognito? Whoa, reaching deep,
aren’t we?” We were drawing attention from nearby students, who
heard us quarreling. “Let’s get out of here.” I stood and left the
lecture hall. Ax followed.

“Maybe we should think about leaving town
again,” he said.

“No way, I’m so close to my degree I can
taste it.”

“You can always transfer your credits. We’ve
done that before.”

“No!” I said loudly. A student passing in the
corridor turned to look at us. “No,” I whispered, adjusting the
level of my voice. “Let’s just stick to our plan and take one day
at a time. I like living here.”

“I like it too, so don’t create a reason for
us to have to move again. Long Island’s not the first place we’ve
liked, and it’s not the first place we were forced to leave.”

“How can we leave? We have an actual home
here. It’s not the same as before.”

“Aunt Sue’s condo? It’s a material thing. It
means nothing.”

“How can you say that? It’s our home and the
first decent place we’ve had in a long time. I don’t know about
you, but I’m getting too old to sleep in a car at the Home Depot
parking lot. You would have to leave the dojo!”

“I can practice my art anywhere, in a dojo or
in a dumpster, my surroundings are immaterial.”

“Well, I’m not as Zen as you are.”

“No,” Ax said, “you are not Zen, but you can
benefit from Zen wisdom.”

“Meaning?”

“Try the Chinese medicine. Be the change,
Lexa. Can you do that? Can you be the change? It’s a basic Zen
principal: don’t wait for things to change. Do it yourself. Be the
change.”

“I’ll try.”

Ax gave me an optimistic smile. “When?”

“Soon. Maybe soon—I have to think about
it.”

“That’s all I ask. Be the change, Lexa, be
the change.”

Fourteen: Compassion

Twilight
was fading as I got into my
car and headed to my friend Carli’s place. There wasn’t much
traffic on the Long Island Expressway. All the traffic was going
the other way, commuters heading home after a long day at the
office. I smiled because I was driving in the traffic-free
direction. I was feeling very Zen after Ax’s “be the change”
diatribe and related my western-bound serendipity to Zen
philosophy, thinking about the flow of things and the movement of
energy. Be the change? How could I be the change? Ax assumed that
everyone was at one with nature and that we all understood and felt
a spiritual presence around us. I was not so much into feeling the
spirit as being a loose spirit. Ax had implored me to take control
over my life, but I wasn’t sure it was going to happen right away.
Ax really wanted me to take his Chinese medicine, but I didn’t
think it was such a good idea. I didn’t understand his Chinese
medicine or what it would do to me. I really didn’t want to try and
didn’t know how to make him understand.

Carli lived in one of those old campers, the
one’s that looked like a giant-size, silver hotdog, the kind that
was covered with rust and had cinderblocks for front steps.
Recently washed duds were hanging from the clothesline. I could see
little Mark’s white blanket and baby towels drying on the line. I
threw the car in reverse, and it stalled. I wanted to get closer to
the front door so that I wouldn’t have to walk over broken beer
bottles in the dark, but the old bucket of bolts made that option
moot.
Fifty K lying in the bank and I’m still driving this? Be
the change
, I thought. Tomorrow I would be the change, whether
Ax liked it or not.

Batman was walking out of the front door as I
arrived. Okay, this wasn’t the Batman-and-Robin Batman, the one who
lived in a billionaire’s estate, drove the Batmobile, and
apprehended hooligans in the middle of the night. This was a much
less unique individual, but one that was nonetheless intriguing.
Batman was the name the other car service drivers called him.
Batman was the dependable ride, the honest hack who didn’t rip off
his fares. He was the guy whose car you could safely get into at
1:00 a.m. after taking the LIRR home to Central Islip. I gave him a
peck on the cheek, even though Batman was in desperate need of a
shave. Batman was a light-skinned black man with moles on his face
like Morgan Freeman and thickly matted kinky hair.

“Lexa, how are you, dear?” Batman had a voice
as rough as industrial strength sandpaper. It was downright
gravely. This was not the voice that came from a healthy set of
vocal chords. These vocal chords had been thickened and hardened by
decades of cigarette smoking until they vibrated with the resonance
of a contra bassoon. It was a voice that could only be reproduced
by a subwoofer. “Stopping by to see Carli and the little one?”

“We’ve got a regular thing. You just drop her
off?”

“Ya, I just picked them up at the clinic. She
took the little one for his checkup.” He noticed that I was holding
a six-pack of Bud Lite. “What are the chances one of those cold
Buds getting loose?” He was literally licking his lips.

“You took my friend to the doc, didn’t you? I
think the chances are pretty good.” I yanked one of the cans out of
the plastic scrim and handed it to the cape-less crusader.

He popped the top and took a long guzzle.
“Bless ya, dear, I’m always so dry.”

I didn’t want to tell him to stop smoking. I
was sure he had been told hundreds of times. I wasn’t going to
lecture him the way Ax had just lectured me. “Drive safely, my
friend.”

“No worries, takes a lot more than one beer
to mess up the Batman.”

I was sure he was right. He got back into his
livery car as I balanced on the cinderblock steps outside Carli’s
camper and waited for the door to open. When it did, Carli looked
just as I expected her to look, wearing a robe and moccasins. Baby
Mark was up on her shoulder. She held a cigarette at arm’s length
to keep the smoke as far away from Mark as possible. “Bring the
beer in, Sweetie; this girl is thirsty.”

I handed Carli the beer. She handed me the
baby, which was far more than an acceptable trade. Mark was the
sweetest little boy. He had a gorgeous little round face and
bedroom eyes. He never cried and never fussed. I guess he knew not
to expect much from life and that nobody likes a complainer. I held
him in front of me, blowing him kisses and cooing like only a woman
can. Mark made the sweetest little silly drunken face. It melted my
heart. I found it amazing that God had created such a wonderful
little person from a union of Carli and Sepp, two of God’s
lesser-inspired creations. He was such a beautiful baby. It just
didn’t make sense.