Chapter 11

I could sense the Angel reading every word, but the quiet remained intact. When you are crazy, sometimes, quiet is like a fog, obscuring ordinary, everyday things, familiar sights and sounds, making everything a bit misshapen, mysterious. Like a road often traveled, that because of the odd way fog refracts headlights at night, seems suddenly to bend to the right, when one's brain screams out that in truth, it tracks straight ahead. Madness is like that moment of doubt, when I wouldn't know whether to trust my eyes or my memory, because each seemed to be capable of the same insidious errors. I could feel some sweat on my forehead, and I shook my entire body, a little like a wet dog, trying to free myself of the clammy, desperate sensation that the Angel had brought along with him into my rooms.

"Leave me alone," I said, any strength or confidence that I had sliding abruptly away. "Leave me alone! I fought you once!" I shouted. "I shouldn't have to fight you again!"

My hands were shaking and I wanted to call out for Peter the Fireman. But I knew he was too far away, and I was alone, and so I balled my hands into fists, to prevent the quivering from being too obvious.

As I seized a deep breath, there was a sudden pounding at my front door. The pistol-like blows seemed to burst into the reverie, and I rose up, my head spinning for an instant, until I regained some equilibrium. I crossed the room in a few, quick steps, and approached the door to my apartment.

There was another burst of knocks.

I heard a voice: "Mister Petrel! Mister Petrel? Are you okay in there?"

I leaned my forehead up against the wooden door. It felt cool to the touch, as if I were fevered, and it was made of ice. I slowly sorted through the catalogue of voices I knew. One of my sisters, I would have recognized instantly. I knew it wasn't my parents because they had never come to visit me at my home.

"Mister Petrel! Please answer! Are you okay?"

I smiled. I heard a small H sound preceding the last word.

My neighbor across the hallway is Ramon Santiago, who works for the city sanitation department. He has a wife, Rosalita, and a beautiful baby girl called Esperanza, who seems a most studious child, because she stares out from her perch in her mother's arms with a college-professor's look of attentiveness for the world around her.

"Mister Petrel?"

"I'm okay, Mister Santiago, thank you."

"Are you sure?" We were speaking through the closed door, and I could sense he was inches distant, right on the other side. "Please, you should open up. I just want to make sure everything is okay."

Mister Santiago knocked again, and this time, I reached out and turned the handle of the deadbolt lock, opening the door just a sliver. Our eyes met, and he looked closely at me.

"We heard shouting," he said. "It was like somebody was getting ready for a fight"

"No," I replied, "I'm alone."

"I could hear you talking. Like you was having an argument with somebody. You sure you're okay?"

Ramon Santiago was a slight man, but a couple of years lifting heavy trash containers in the predawn city hours had built up his arms and shoulders. He would be a formidable opponent for anyone, and, I suspected, rarely had to resort to confrontation in order to get his opinions heard.

"No. Thank you, but I'm fine."

"You don't look so good, Mister Petrel. You feeling sick?"

"I've just been a little stressed out lately. Missed a few meals."

"You want I should call someone? Maybe one of your sisters?"

I shook my head. "Please, Mister Santiago, they'd be the last folks I'd want to see."

He smiled back at me. "I know. Relatives. Sometimes they can just drive you crazy." As soon as that word fell from his lips, he looked stricken, as if he'd just insulted me.

I laughed. "No, you're right. They can. And in my case, they most certainly have. And, I'm guessing, they probably will again, some day. But I'm all right for now."

He continued to eye me cautiously.

"Still, man, you got me a little worried. You taking your pills okay?"

I shrugged. "Yes," I lied. I could tell he didn't believe me. He continued to look closely at me, his eyes fixed on my face, as if he was searching every wrinkle, every line, for something that he would recognize, as if the illness I carried could be identified like some rash on my skin, or jaundice. Without taking his eyes off me, he threw a couple of words back over his shoulder in Spanish, and I saw his wife and their little child, hanging in the entranceway to their apartment. Rosalita looked a little frightened, and she lifted her hand and gave me a little wave. The baby, too, returned my own smile. Then Mister Santiago switched back into English.

"Rosie," he said, demanding, yet not angrily, "go fix up Mister Petrel a paper plate with some of that rice and chicken we're having for dinner. He looks like he could use a good solid meal."

I saw her nod, give me a shy little smile of her own, and disappear inside their apartment. "Really, Mister Santiago, that's kind of you, but not necessary…"

"It's not a problem. Arroz con polio. Where I come from, Mister Petrel, it fixes just about everything. You sick, you get rice and chicken. You get fired from your job? You get rice and chicken. You got a broken heart?"

"… Rice and chicken," I said, finishing the sentence for him.

"That's one hundred percent right." We grinned together.

Rosie returned a few seconds later with a paper plate piled high with steaming chicken and fluffy yellow rice. She brought it across the corridor to me and I took it from her, just grazing her hand slightly, and thinking that it had been some time since I'd actually felt another human's touch. "You don't have to…" I started again, but both the Santiagos were shaking their heads.

"You sure you don't want me to call somebody? If not your family, how 'bout social services? Or a friend, maybe?"

"Don't have too many friends anymore, Mister Santiago."

"Ah, Mister Petrel, you got more folks care about you than you think," he said.

I shook my head again. "Someone else then?"

"No. Really."

"You sure you weren't being bothered by somebody? I heard voices raised.

Sounds to me like a fight about to be starting…"

I smiled, because the truth was that I was being bothered by someone. They just weren't there. I cracked open my door and let him peer inside. "All alone, I promise," I said. But I saw his eyes leap across the room and catch a glimpse of the words I was placing on the walls. In that instant, I thought he would say something, but then he stopped. He reached out, and put a hand on my shoulder.

"You need some help, Mister Petrel, you just knock on my door. Anytime. Day or night. You got that?"

"Thank you, Mister Santiago," I said, nodding my head. "And thank you for the dinner."

I closed the door, and took a deep breath, filling my nostrils with the aroma of the food. It seemed suddenly as if it had been days since I'd eaten. Perhaps it had been, although I remembered grilled cheese. But when was that? I found a fork in a drawer and tore into Rosalita's specialty. I wondered whether arroz con polio, which was good for so many ailments of the spirit, might help my own. To my surprise, each bite seemed to energize me, and as I chewed away, I saw the progress I had made on the wall. Columns of history.

And I realized I was alone again.

He would be back. I had no doubt about that. He was lurking, vaporous, in some space just beyond my reach, and eluding my consciousness. Avoiding me. Avoiding the Santiago family. Avoiding the arroz con polio. Hiding from my memory. But for the moment, to my great relief, all I had was chicken, rice, and words. I thought to myself: All that talk in Gulp-a-pill's office about keeping things confidential had been nothing but showy emptiness.