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The Many Sides of You


By Robert M. Kubicek

James woke a little before ten and watched the fluorescent display of his clock tick away a few minutes before making the effort to get up. He sat up gradually, struggling against the mound of fat that had colonized his mid-section over the last seventy some years and began to feel for the cold tile floor with his feet.  Risking his balance, he bent over and picked his clothes from off of the floor.

The old man had his faded brown corduroys past the crook of his ankle before he realized he hadn’t removed his pajamas yet.  Deciding the whole process wasn’t worth the effort, he jimmied the brown carapace over a bunching of fabric and pulled them to his waist. I’m usually cold anyway. He took off his pajama top and slipped on a jean-blue shirt that he had spilled oatmeal on yesterday. The oats had dried overnight leaving a visible smear along the front. Returning to bed, James covered himself as though he had never gotten up.

9:58.

He heard the sharp click of the door handle as the nurse began to open it slowly, quietly, as though she was afraid of disturbing him. He’d never understood her caution; she had intruded upon the sanctity of his room for precisely that purpose. A harsh ray of too-white light invaded from the crack in the door, highlighting the edges of her brown hair, turning it an almost strawberry color. One blue eye peered into the room to check if he was awake.

 James closed his eyes.

The nurse entered the room and made her way toward the window. In one quick movement the shade was up, accompanied by a "Rise and shine, James." Truly one of the most obnoxious ways to wake someone, but he was already up, so he tried not to let it bother him.

"Up, up, up!" she said with increasing volume as she whipped the covers off his bed. "You're gonna' miss The Price Is Right." She went over to his dresser not noticing his unique bedtime apparel. "What do you want to wear today, James?"

            He didn’t answer; instead, a smile spread across his face as he edged himself up in bed so his mischief might be revealed. The nurse turned around, an outfit in hand, her textured lips covered in a moist, cherry-red lipstick. A polite smile divided the red mess revealing a set of brilliant-white teeth save one discolored incisor. The flaw succeeded in ruining what otherwise might be considered a classic piece of living art.

            "Did you sleep in your clothes last night?" she asked, helping him out of bed. "Oh, James, that shirt is filthy.  I can’t let you wear that," she added, seeing him for the first time.

She made him change into the white, long-sleeved shirt she was holding and returned the rest to the dresser. Thinking her work was done, she made her way to the door, hesitated, and said: "You better not be wearing your pajamas underneath again.” She walked toward him and pulled up his shirt, exposing the elastic of his improvisational long-johns.

"Why...?" 

James said nothing as the nurse left the room—he’d said nothing the entire time. Pushing the thought from his mind, he headed for the television.     

The corridor leading from his room opened into a capacious main area.  Along the west wall a number of tables had been set up. Some days the plastic surfaces played host to a game of chess, other times to a group of card players. The area was the sanctuary of the bored: the elderly still enough a part of this world to feel monotony.  The Puzzle Lady also dwelled there. Each day she returned to the same table to continue the work left from the day before: a never-ending process which made it hard for James to believe she had ever done anything else.

James made his way across the room and went into the lounge , his four reflections in tile floor following him . Once he was carefully positioned over the couch opposite the TV, he allowed his legs to give way, sending his body crashing into the already indented frame. The impact of his body sent a ripple down the length of the couch, causing a string of drool to separate from the gaping mouth of the only other person in the room. At least he has the television on the right channel, James thought. 

His morning antics had cost him dearly: Bob Barker was already inviting a member of the audience to fill the first vacancy on Contestants’ Row. James looked back at the door hoping for a last minute arrival, finding instead that he would be forced to share his favorite hour of the day with a man who was liable to drown in his own saliva. He glanced over just in time to see a spit bubble burst, adding fresh reserves to the glistening line already trickling from the man’s chin.

His prospects for enjoying himself were less than great; he needed to alter the situation. First he needed to think of a name: a name determined height and weight and even personality. If he couldn’t think of a name, James knew he shouldn’t even bother breathing life into his imaginary counterpart; such an experience would be painful for both of them.

The whiny voice of the show’s new announcer broke through James’ thoughts as he began reading off the product descriptions for all of the prizes included in “Secret X.”

The new guy is a real jackass. What I wouldn’t do to have Rod Roddey back. James turned left, zeroing in on the voice. A man with brown hair and dark brown, almost black, eyes sat between him and the drooler now. The man had a red-pink scar that ran vertically from his left eyebrow to the top of his high cheekbones only to get lost in steel bristles that sprouted from his face. James was pleased; his new friend was both insightful and rugged.

“No, I’m serious. It was like he sat down and said, ‘How can I make my voice obnoxious sounding?’ He started by pinching his nose and when that wasn’t enough, he went after his balls.  There’s a third factor, too,” the man said while demonstrating the effect the two actions had on his own voice, “but I haven’t figured it out yet.”

James snorted. “While I agree the new guy is nothing special, Rod Rodney wasn’t all that great, either. I mean, the man’s face gave me nightmares. After I saw that, his voice was ruined for me.”

“Oh, he was homely for sure, and I made the mistake of hating him, too, but once this new guy showed up I realized the error of my ways.”

The contestant had won both of the extra X’s and was looking to the crowd to see where he should place the second one.

“What a moron,” James’ friend declared.  “There are only two places he can put the damn thing and they both cover the middle square.  What the hell does he need help with? There isn’t even a choice.”

“See that’s why I like Plinko; it robs the contestant of the chance to be stupid. They win some chips and let ‘em fly.”

“You know,” he paused, “I never could figure out why I liked that games so much, but that seems as good a reason as any. It’s just too bad they only play it once a year.”

“What’s your name?” James asked.

“Ron.” He extended his hand.

“Well Ron, today is your lucky day.”

James shook Ron’s hand with a quick jerk as the men refocused their attention on the television.

The contestant was a woman in her middle thirties, overweight and sporting a t-shirt that read: Barker’s Beauties.  Moments before she had gestured out at the crowd to reveal a long row of equally unattractive women sporting similar attire and a few balding, obese husbands in tow.

Bob was attempting to explain the rules to her when she insisted on giving him a kiss.

“It amazes me that Barker can always manage to smile when someone like that wants to kiss him. Personally, I’d be too busy trying to swallow the vomit in the back of my throat to look flattered. Hell, it would take all of my willpower not to run away.”

James cheek bones were beginning to hurt; he hadn’t smiled like this in a long time.

“That’s why Bob is standing on stage and you’re sitting here with me thrilled beyond belief that you get to watch someone drop plastic chips down a board covered in pegs.”

Ron grunted. “Well said.”

* * *

James had been searching the main room for entertainment for almost an hour, but the staff was watching him with particular attention being paid whenever he neared the Puzzle Lady. Fleeing their gaze, he sought refuge by the relatively unmonitored bird atrium. Cocooning himself in a thick, woolen blanket, he wedged himself between two of the exiled and mocked their languid gaze. James wasn’t long in realizing he was the only one watching the birds—the people here had retreated even further into themselves than he had. Fortunately he did not have to stay long in the midst of community isolation; the nurses were no longer watching him. He stood up and made his way over to the west wall, making sure to grab a candy bar wrapper from one of the card tables along the way.

If there was anything in this world that James could count on for entertainment, besides Bob Barker—who, he might add, was no help at all on the weekends—it was the Puzzle Lady. He was not sure why he meddled with her work. Maybe he was jealous of her ability to become completely absorbed in puzzles, maybe on some level he always hated art (and weren’t puzzles just a rudimentary form of art?), or maybe he was just a dick; whatever the reason, he enjoyed it.

The scenario unfolded the same way every time. For some reason, the Puzzle Lady required an immaculate work table in order to concentrate. After lunch James would walk over to her table and drop a wrapper onto the surface as he pretended to watch with interest. The Puzzle Lady would immediately pick up the wrapper and head toward the waste basket that sat in a corner several meters away. It was in this window that James enjoyed his afternoon snack.

Shoving a single puzzle piece into his mouth, he would suck on it violently in an attempt to produce enough saliva to transform the piece into a soggy wad of cardboard.  In the old days, this was an easy task, but since the advent of laminated puzzles, James’ teasing had become considerably more challenging, often requiring him to chew the piece before swallowing it. Depending on how long it took the Puzzle Lady to complete her puzzle, James could usually devour enough pieces to do serious damage to the overall aesthetic quality of the picture.

“James! What are you doing?” One of the helpers hurried over. “You need to stop wandering around; you’re making me restless.” This one was short and blonde. He figured she was a high school student—too sweet, too eager to avoid conflict. Dropping the wrapper, he turned to face her.

“Why don’t you come over here and trying playing solitaire? It’s a lot of fun.”

What the hell is she thinking? Is solitaire ever fun? If I had children I would punish them by making them play solitaire in a corner for a few hours. They would come so close to dying of boredom, they wouldn’t dare break the rules again.  Yet here this girl is presenting it to me as a form of entertainment.  Just because I’ve gone a little senile doesn’t mean I’ve become an invalid. I still have enough brain power left to deduce that solitaire = crap.

“Don’t give me that look, James. If you give it a chance, I know you’ll have a good time.”

James sat down. She was too pathetically nice to resist. It was 3:15. No, it was 3:14, so it might as well be 3:10. James had learned to always round down.  Now he only had to wait one minute for the five minutes to pass until 3:15 instead of rounding up and needing six minutes to pass until 3:20. Six minutes can be a long time.  As James dealt, he got lost in the non-descript red of the Hoyle card backs. He looked up: 3:16. Five minutes had already passed.  He was only an hour and forty-five minutes from supper…if he could just make it to supper…he flipped over the last card.  Damn, he’d lost—3:19.

Swearing to himself, James stood up to begin wandering again. The time between him and supper would never pass like this. He didn’t bother cleaning up the cards spread across the table; as far as he was concerned, it was the aides’ mess. He was looking around the room to make sure no one was keeping an eye on him when he noticed the new edition to the west wall—it was a painting of a man, his children, and two others making their way to a lighthouse that was almost lost in a blue haze.

One of the first attempts at escape he had made upon arriving at his new home was in paintings. If James pressed his face close to a painting, so close that frame dominated his periphery, he could pull that new world around him. It was dangerous though; he could never seem to recreate it in its entirety. Sometimes he forgot to bring the sky; other times he would only manage the landscape; still worse were the efforts that created something new entirely. The people in those realities, if there were people, were always strange, too, which was why James had given the practice up. Today though, he was desperate.

Once he was in front of the painting, James placed his fingers behind the frame and tried to lift it from the wall. It came of easily, bits of plaster still clinging to the back. He flipped the frame over to identify the cause: it had been bound to the wall with four 3M Command strips—the wall didn’t have a chance. Retaking his seat, he laid the painting over the strewn-about cards and examined it before inching in: boat; people; lighthouse.

“And that’s where the ship went down.”

James found himself sitting in the back of a boat, tiller in hand. The old man was addressing another man of a similar age who was holding a book. At the front, a girl who must have been only a teenager leaned over the edge; she was probably running her hand through the water. A boy a little older than the girl sat fishing in the middle.

James peered out to locate the lighthouse and found it standing blearily in the distance as if it could scarcely make the effort to exist. He had done well; the only person missing was the boy who should have been sitting where he was. He had, quite literally, made himself part of the crew.

“Look out! Look out! You’re letting the wind out of the sails,” said the man with the book.

James tried to adjust the tiller so that the sails would catch the wind—he felt eager to please the man—but he couldn’t get it to move. He looked overboard to see if there was anything obstructing the rudder.

Sand. The boat was sitting in an endless sea of sand.

The other man was looking at him now waiting for him to correct the situation, and the girl was staring with disbelief, as if she couldn’t comprehend how he could disobey the first man’s orders.

“We’re on land.”

The old man closed his book and glanced over the edge, “So we are.” He paused to think, and that pause stretched out until it became unnatural silence, but still no one spoke. “We’ll have to find water at once.”

As if his words had made the world comprehensible again, the other people in the boat began to stir. James was losing control.

“What are your names?”

Confusion took hold of each of them. Their faces were scrunched up in the act of remembering, except his; his face looked thoughtful.

“I don’t remember.”

James suddenly felt like crying.

The man tucked his book away in the inner pocket of his half-buttoned waist coat and straightened his frayed blue tie before continuing:

“What’s yours?”

“James.”

Lost in thought again, the man reassumed his role as center of their world. James waited as if he had been waiting his whole life.

“Then let each of us take a part of your name. I’ll be M, my daughter will be A, my companion here shall don the name of E and his son will take S, leaving you to bear the J.”

The man seemed pleased with his solution as he climbed out of the boat. J sat alone in the craft, unable to put back together the pieces of his name.

* * *

 “James! What on earth are you doing with that painting?” The blonde teenage helper was hiding behind the arm of the nurse. “And why did you tear it off the wall?”

James looked up from the painting and collected himself. His eyes refocused on an old woman slipping graham crackers into a fish tank. Why don’t they ever yell at her?

“Oh no! The fish aren’t hungry. I just fed them this morning.” The nurse rushed over to prevent the old woman from adding another chunk to the tank.

“But they’re still hungry, I can tell.” The nurse began leading the old woman to the TV lounge. The old woman didn’t resist; she just shuffled along slowly, her neck craned so that her eyes could remain locked on the starving fish.

James handed the picture frame to the aide; she was unsure of herself without her shield. She accepted it with an uneasy smile and hurried away. He was glad to be rid of the painting; hopeful they hid it away in an attic somewhere. It was 4:45, fifteen minutes before he habitually went to supper, but he felt more restless than usual. He rubbed his eyes and made his way over to the cafeteria.

James could hear the signs of the living before he even entered the room.  A cafeteria anywhere else in the world would signal its occupied status via the shuffling of feet and a cacophony of voices. The life of this cafeteria, though, was expressed by the faint whir of motorized wheel chairs, the scrap of walkers, and the lone, distinct voice of the facility’s helpers yelling out the occasional command. He turned the corner just in time to see an old woman bump into the man in front of her and drop her tray. Some things held true everywhere.

While the rest of the facility was set up with fluorescent overhead lights, the cafeteria was bathed in the orange-yellow glow of your standard bulb, giving the room an almost homey glow. The room wasn’t exactly full, but there were enough diners strategically spread throughout it to ensure that he would not be eating this meal without a neighbor.

James went through the line, collected his mass-produced spaghetti and faux garlic bread, and began scouting the crowd in order to determine who might be the least bothersome among them. He knew the Puzzle Lady was a solid choice, but he didn’t know how she would react (she always got cranky when James littered on her table), so he picked a man dressed in flannel pajamas as his backup—any man that pulled the all-day-PJs was okay is his book.

One look at the Puzzle Lady’s face was enough to make up his mind. In a few seconds he was seated across from option B.

“Hi-ya.”

Damn, he would have been better off drinking in a steady stream of scowls with this meal.

James grunted out of politeness.

“Gotta shy one, do we? Well, that’s OK, I like to talk.”

White and black hair shot out from the cuffs and neck of the man’s red checkered clothing. It also shot from his nose, or did it grow out from the boogers? James couldn’t tell, but he was disgusted regardless.

“I’ve only been in here a couple of weeks, but boy, do I miss home cooked food. I can’t even imagine what a veteran like you must be going though.”

The hairs had to extend at least a centimeter beyond the man’s nostrils. They were thick and firm like trees emerging upside down from a gelatinous green swamp and appeared as though they might outlive the owner.

The man began cracking his neck with a left and right movement of his head; he was getting uncomfortable with James’ silence. As the man began the second round of stretching, James noticed that the tufts of white, black substance growing from his nose also sprouted from his back. The man was a monster.

“So what did you do before you came here?”

James continued to stare.

The man coughed uncomfortably and his head jerked down.  It jerked again and then the man gave into his impulse and became transfixed on his meal. James had won, and now silence was the order of the day.

James finished his meal. The spaghetti had been better than normal, the noodles had stuck together less, and the tomato sauce hadn’t dominated his palette. He even went back for seconds. This was turning into a rather good day. It was 5:40 now, and if James headed to the T.V. room, maybe he could conjure up Ron in time for Wheel of Fortune.

* * *

Despite his best efforts, James could not make Ron reappear.  He even tried thinking of what Ron would say during the local news which preceded Wheel, but he could never get the internal dialogue just right; he just wasn’t as witty as Ron.  He watched Vanna turning the letters with a light melancholy as the first puzzle got underway: his friend had left him for good. Bringing people back was never a sure thing even when you knew their name.

It’s never as much fun the second time, anyway.

He looked at the clock. He was restless for the show to be over but trapped by both routine and thoughts of the eventless evening that lay ahead.

Despite missing most of the letters, a woman managed to solve the final puzzle and win a new car.

Standing up, James stretched his sore limbs and walked out of the room. He walked through the main hall not once glancing at the Puzzle Lady or the group playing Bridge along the west wall. He didn’t see the nurse making her rounds through the building or take note of his reflections in the waxed floors. Instead, his thoughts were turned to bed. He was going to call it an early night, but first he needed to find someone to spend it with. She needed to have a name; that was the most important part. If she didn’t have a good name, well, then he shouldn’t even bother.