THE MAN UPSTAIRS
There is a grieving man named Don who lives upstairs. He is going through another one of his morbid ice cream phases. He hoards tubs of the stuff in an old-fashioned freezer lining the north wall of the bedroom where he sleeps. Three times a day he trudges up the stairs with distended bags from the grocery store around the corner. Mornings I awake to empty containers stacked by the front door in tiny pyramids. I look inside them on my way to the shower. The residues are splatter paintings, mournful and determined. Don is grieving, after all: His pet greyhound Roland was recently murdered by the retarded kid next door. With that in mind, I’ve decided to put the kibosh on the jokey stuff. Sixty-six year old retired fighter pilots who live in your attic don’t find their dairy addiction to be a source of humor, I can tell you, especially if a dead dog is involved. “Pardon me if I take it personally,” he growled when I showed him a New Yorker cartoon last week, hoping to cheer him up.
K
There is a grieving man named Don who lives upstairs. He is going through another one of his morbid ice cream phases. He hoards tubs of the stuff in an old-fashioned freezer lining the north wall of the bedroom where he sleeps. Three times a day he trudges up the stairs with distended bags from the grocery store around the corner. Mornings I awake to empty containers stacked by the front door in tiny pyramids. I look inside them on my way to the shower. The residues are splatter paintings, mournful and determined. Don is grieving, after all: His pet greyhound Roland was recently murdered by the retarded kid next door. With that in mind, I’ve decided to put the kibosh on the jokey stuff. Sixty-six year old retired fighter pilots who live in your attic don’t find their dairy addiction to be a source of humor, I can tell you, especially if a dead dog is involved. “Pardon me if I take it personally,” he growled when I showed him a New Yorker cartoon last week, hoping to cheer him up.
K
Don wears ragged t-shirts and runs marathons with teenagers in bleak Midwestern states. For weeks at a time he disappears without a word. I ask him why no postcard. He tells me he that he lives to run, and he runs to forget. I tell him that seems tautological, and he pantomimes smothering an invisible person with a pillow. Then he laughs and tells me I’m all right. Sometimes he enacts his war stories on our patio out back. He calls it “O-Dark Stand-up.” Our neighbors the Calhouns pull up deck chairs and heckle him. Their kid is the murderous retard who strangled Don’s greyhound. He watches the show from the shadows of our backyard. It’s like a real live comedy club. “Out of Vietnam now!” Mrs. Calhoun loves to yell. “You spilled your soul in the Mekong Delta!” says her husband. Don really hams it up for them. They think he loves the attention.
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Tonight I stay up late working on a birthday present for Don. It’s a diorama of our house. My girlfriend Ellie helps out. She is an artist – a miniaturist – and she paints photorealistic pictures of poor Roland on the mini-walls. He looks sinuous and free. We get the photos of the dog from a dusty leather album Don keeps taped beneath the coffee table. Periodically during the night we can hear his trollish footfalls above our heads. “There he goes again,” Ellie whispers, following the sound of his trajectory with her eyes.
K
Tonight I stay up late working on a birthday present for Don. It’s a diorama of our house. My girlfriend Ellie helps out. She is an artist – a miniaturist – and she paints photorealistic pictures of poor Roland on the mini-walls. He looks sinuous and free. We get the photos of the dog from a dusty leather album Don keeps taped beneath the coffee table. Periodically during the night we can hear his trollish footfalls above our heads. “There he goes again,” Ellie whispers, following the sound of his trajectory with her eyes.
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The next morning we set the diorama on the kitchen island. “Surprise!” Ellie yells from behind a potted palm. Don wipes the sleep from his eyes and shakes his head. “Some ambush,” he says. “But I appreciate the effort.” He walks out of the kitchen into the foyer and instinctively snatches Roland’s old leash from the coat rack. “I know a thing or two about ambushes,” he says, turning to face me. “The enemy has a base camp in the folds of my frontal lobe. Under the cloak of night they ride the light rail down my spinal cord and fire mortars into my gut. But that’s not the worst of it.”
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I say, “What’s the worst of it, Don?”
I say, “What’s the worst of it, Don?”
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“I can hear their transmissions to HQ: my heart is a fifty-megaton bomb.”
“I can hear their transmissions to HQ: my heart is a fifty-megaton bomb.”
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He walks out the front door while Ellie adds tiny shingles to the roof.
He walks out the front door while Ellie adds tiny shingles to the roof.