For Ben
There reality was, being all realistic, when it blinked out. One second I’m looking at Sammy and Joe sitting on the stoop in their church clothes eating deviled eggs and rice casserole off styrofoam plates, when suddenly they’re—not. They’re still there, but they’re in sweatpants and pretending to eat plastic corn on the cob. Then boom: Easter clothes and eggs again.
I ask, Did anyone see that? All I get is shrugs. That’s the only answer they ever give me anyway. How’s ya’ day? Shrug. Wanna watch the game? Shrug. Whatcha wanna do with your life? Shrug. The youth don’t waste words on an old man like me.
It happened again the next day. Sammy came over to fix my TV, and one second she’s putting new batteries in the remote, still wearing her uniform from the market, and the next second–boom! She’s in a dressing robe with her hair wrapped up in a towel and holding what looks like a script in her hands. I say script because it was just a bunch of white paper stapled together. Then she said to someone I couldn’t see, I feel like we’ve shot this scene a million times.
Bing bada boom—she’s back in her uniform, handing me the remote, kissing me on the forehead, and out the door.
It’s not just my grandchildren flickering around on me. I walked to the bodega last week and as I’m reaching for a bag of pork rinds the whole snack stand becomes a two-dimensional poster board with pictures of chips glued on. Whole thing falls over flat like a pancake. I look to Eugene to ask what kind of prank is this, and there he is shaking his head (a different kind of shrug if you ask me). He comes out of his big plastic box where he sits with the cash register. I think he’s gonna show me where the pork rinds actually are, but instead he kneels down and picks up snack bags scattered all over the ground by my feet.
After the bodega episode, it happens more and more. People go from looking all normal in their normal clothes and saying normal things to wearing totally different things, holding props, doing voice exercises, going blank and yelling LINE?—the whole nine yards.
After a few weeks of this, I stopped freaking out so bad each time it happened. I did give a little gasp at the Met when Sargent’s The Portrait of Madame X went from being a big oil canvas of this hot broad to a stick figure with Xs for eyes drawn on a piece of notebook paper and stuck to the wall with gum. A few people stared at me, then the art. Maybe they thought I was moved or some shit. Then Madame X was back, staring over her shoulder, avoiding my eyes just like the strangers around me.
Truly, I was willing to let it all go. What’s it matter if I see things a little funny sometimes, right? I could use some excitement in my life. No one was ever gonna believe me anyway. But you see, when it happened to Leche, that’s when I couldn’t take it anymore.
Leche is a free spirit; I mean obviously, she’s a cat, what else is she gonna be. I’m a fresh-air kinda guy, so I leave the window to the fire escape open and Leche comes and goes as she pleases. She’s walking the railing of the balcony like an Olympic gymnast on a balance beam, and the next second she’s a stuffed animal with those beads for eyes and plastic whiskers and she’s fucking falling, excuse my language, to her death. Only how can it be her death when she’s a stuffed animal? But maybe she won’t be a stuffed animal by the time she hits the ground. We’re four stories up, after all.
I don’t move as fast as I used to. As I’m making my way from the couch to the window, just waiting for the screams from the sidewalk, my old ticker racing, imagining my poor baby Leche down there on the street dying alone, without me by her side, I hear a little meow. Not like a dying meow but like that little hey-what’s-up-whatcha-doing-oh-me-not-much kinda meow. I get to the window to see Leche climbing back up the stairs like nothing weird happened. And maybe it hadn’t? Or I’m the only one it’s happening to.
But I can’t ignore it if my sweet baby Leche is in danger. She’s my closest—verging on only—companion these days. What if it happens while she’s crossing the street or something? Even a plushie looks like road kill when it gets run over.
I make a firm decision to tell Joe the next time he comes over. Sammy won’t take it well. She doesn’t take anything well; or rather, she takes things too well, too close to heart. She’s got a lot on her plate, work and school and all, but Joe is my tough one. He’ll sort this out. He always fixes my computer, no matter what virus I download.
I start to tell him about the plastic food, the scripts, the furniture becoming empty like that time my bed became a group of cardboard boxes covered with a blanket. Then his eyes do that thing where they glaze over. When they do that, I know he wants to look like he’s listening, but really he’s off in dreamland.
I’m trying to tell him, my only grandson, that sometimes it’s like he’s not here when he is, that he’s an actor in the movie of his life, or maybe the movie of my life. I’m thinking maybe he is listening after all when he puts his hand on my arm in that real nice way and says, Pop, have you been reading things on the internet? There’s this conspiracy theory about the simulation. Maybe you’ve been reading about that. Maybe you should spend less time on the internet too.
I wanna say fuck ya stimulations, but I can’t say that to my own grandson. I wanna say what else am I supposed to do with my time; you hardly visit me anymore. He looks tired with those dark circles under his eyes like he’s just waiting for something, for someone, to make his day harder. I don’t wanna be that someone. So I say, You’re probably right, Joe.
For a while I hoped things were gonna change back to normal. Or rather, that they’ll stop being not-normal. Be patient, I tell myself. Keep the window closed and Leche close. Have the groceries delivered. No more rides on the subway. Bye-bye, bodega.
Then one day, I’m watching the sunset on the balcony. Leche curls up in my lap, and the fading light turns the clouds into pink cotton candy. Then actual cotton candy floats down onto my shoulder and I put it in my mouth and it melts as sweet and fast as the scent of jasmine flowers on a breeze. And I think: Why fight this?
And I’m not gonna fight it. I don’t mind going out the way that Truman Show guy came in. I’ll walk into the afterlife like I’m strutting onto a sound stage. I’m gonna go out with those big, bright movie set lights on me and the full studio audience laughing and applauding along with the sign. No one will shrug when they talk to me now. ‘Cause me, I’m not gonna die in the dark.