Pieces Read online

  My eyes darted to life. This is it!

  “But unfortunately, I do doubt that you are telling the truth.”

  Or not.

  “I’m not an easily deceived person, you see. However, as with playing cards, it is part of my job to risk, to gamble. I’m going to take a chance with you in light of what you have just told me, and hope that you, not I, turn out to be the winner.”

  She sighed a somewhat obnoxious, effusive sigh, the meaning of which I cared not to decipher, and magically produced the Little White Notepad on which she jotted down a string of intimidating-looking letters and numbers like X’s and 7’s, and gracefully signed her name.

  Well whaddaya know.

  She told me it was still against her better judgment, but considering my recent hardship she was going to write me a prescription for five Atavan—an antianxiety that would help me get some rest, which I desperately needed, she hastened to add.

  She tore the page from the pad. I tensed.

  “One last thing,” she said. “If I gamble on you, and lose—I lose a lot more than professional integrity. I lose someone who came to me, presumably, for help. I lose a person. I lose you. It will be my mistake. My misjudgment. Put simply, using our gambling analogy, if you’re lying to me about your mother just to get drugs, I will have misread your face, and lost big. But I will also get back in the game—the game of helping people. And if you do ‘win’ with some ace up your sleeve—so be it. But remember, if that’s the way you’re playing, the stakes are going to be a hell of a lot higher than what’s sitting on the table.”

  She looked at me as though waiting for something.

  “I’m telling you that if there is anything you truly want to say, anything that you don’t understand, anything frightening you, now would be an ideal time. The time is now. I think you understand.”

  “I’d just like to say . . .well, it’s just . . .”

  “Yes?” she asked in a voice softer than sleep.

  I suddenly felt the room spin; a confessional magnet was sucking at my burdens and lies; she looked like an angel. What was I doing?

  “It’s just . . .it’s just great that we finally understand each other. Thanks. Thanks a million.”

  Whew. This close.

  She handed me the slip of paper and, looking vaguely disappointed, started in on her paperwork.

  The nearest all-night pharmacy was on 93rd Street and Broadway, fifteen blocks and three avenues away in a snowstorm at one in the morning with work in less than seven hours. I started walking.

  When I got to the pharmacy, I was shaking and my feet were wet and my heart was pounding and my blood was hungry for chemicals.

  When the pharmacist heard the rinkydink, up-for-the-holidays doorbell announce my entrance, he put down his paperback book and said more to the front door than to me, “Someone’s pourin’ it on pretty thick out there tonight, huh?”

  “You betcha.”

  • • •

  As I handed the pharmacist my prescription, which I had, of course, doctored from five to twenty-five, I thought about Dr. Singh: the literary Indian woman with nice legs and an M.D. in Clinical Psychiatry who was quicker to prescribe drugs for an appalling textbook lie than she was for good-intentioned half-truths. What a sucker. She hoped I was the winner? Not too tough when someone throws the game.

  After I gave the man my money, he handed me the sepia container of pills. I made my way to the exit and laughed as I thought of Dr. Singh again. Yes, what a shame, what a nearsighted sucker, I thought, as I pushed open the door and squinted in the glare of streetlights bouncing off an unplowed, flakes-six-inches-deep Broadway. It had stopped snowing and somehow kids making angels and cabs cartwheeling slush hadn’t yet gotten to the snowfall. The snow was immaculate. A virginal blanket tucking in the big bad city.

  I admired it, then walked approximately half of a block before I realized how long and bone-cold and jittery the rest of the walk home would be.

  I quickly popped two pills and tried to dry-swallow them. I was so dehydrated that it felt like trying to swallow a couple of mothballs covered in peanut butter. They wouldn’t budge.

  So it was exactly here—on the southeast corner of 94th Street and Broadway, at an indeterminately late hour, with drugs stuffed under my tongue—that I knelt down, stuck my hands into that perfect blanket of snow, and shoveled past my chapped lips fistful after fistful of that cooling, brilliant wetness.

  That is to say, it was here that I finally swallowed the cocktail I had fought so hard to get.

  And then I waited. I waited for the ebb of sensation, the fuzzy whispers of a drugged mind, the illusion of peace.

  And then I felt the snow melting onto my legs; I felt the wind ripping past my ears; I felt the emptiness in and around me; I felt every miserable inch of the real world from which I was trying to escape, and then it dawned on me like a blast of hungover sunshine: I had gulped down sugar pills. I dumped the remaining pills into my hand and stared in horror at what I saw: big white dum-dums. The austere equation on Dr. Singh’s magic pad had added up to PLACEBO.

  I laughed. Slumped in the snow, soaked and alone for blocks, I laughed. I laughed for so long and so hard at the good doctor’s funny funny joke (to wit, she knew I was lying the whole time, and the only medicine she wrote a prescription for was a taste of my own—ha ha ha ho ho ho hee hee hee!!!) that eventually, as I completely fell apart and was swept away by fatigue, eventually the idea of falling asleep sober—the idea of falling into a dreamy nonchemical bliss where I am safe—eventually the idea seemed plausible.

  POLAROID

  Matthew Loren Cohen

  It is May Day in Paris. The sky is gray, almost purple. It is raining. Drizzling. The usual numbers of people flock to the Eiffel Tower. The tower looks the same as it always has except for one thing. On the top of the iron structure, a large red heart has seemingly been impaled there. Really it is made of fiberglass and supported by beams running through its middle that attach it to the tower. The spire and top observation deck poke out of the top of the heart. An artist has put this heart here. He had a vision seven years ago, and after years of construction and convincing the French government to allow him to put the heart on the tower, his vision has been realized. A huge heart has been stabbed by the Eiffel Tower.

  People line up underneath the tower to buy tickets to go to the top. They want to see the City of Lights from the observation deck. It sounds funny, but people have funny thoughts. The light rain hasn’t stopped these people from coming to the tower. In their minds and sometimes out loud they say, It will pass.

  The grass in the esplanade in front of the tower is green and the trees there are becoming green. Spring is arriving slowly this year in Paris. It is still cold. Not cold enough for snow, but cold. There is a slight breeze. If it weren’t raining it might be considered a comfortable day.

  Some people are carrying lilies. May Day is Labor Day in Paris, and lilies are a Labor Day tradition. The tourists wonder what the lilies mean. Some find out that they are a symbol of spring. Others are too afraid to ask.

  The people who are not waiting to ascend the great tower are at least looking up at it. They are taking pictures of it or marveling at the immense heart that takes up close to two thirds of the top section of the tower, the section above the second observation deck. Tickets can be bought for access to any observation deck. The higher the deck, the higher the price. There are three observation decks on the tower. One elevator stops at the first and second, and another carries passengers from the second to the third. It is also possible to climb to the first and second decks by way of stairwells located in two legs of the tower. The top deck is strictly elevator business. Because of the magnitude of the structure, it is advised that those afraid of heights remain firmly rooted to the ground.

  At the ticket window an elderly Swedish couple buys tickets to go to the top. She decides to ride to the top; he decides to climb to the second deck, where, he says, he’ll meet her so they
can ride to the top together. She asks him if he’s going to be okay climbing the stairs. He gives her a funny look and tells her he isn’t as old as he looks. She smiles at him. He takes the Olympus camera from around his neck and gives it to his wife. Be careful, she tells him. He says, Wait for me. He walks to one of the legs closest to the esplanade, the one with the only open stairwell on this day. He begins to climb. It is 16h09. The stairs in the Eiffel Tower do not close until 18h00.

  A young woman in a brown sweater and black skirt watches the man make his way up the first flights. His sweatshirt is very ugly, she thinks. She is leaning on a signpost. She looks back at the people under and around the tower. They’re always in groups, she thinks. They’re always with other people who look alike. She focuses on a small boy who is holding his mother’s hand. I want a child, the woman thinks. No, I don’t.

  The boy’s mother points to the air. She asks the seven-year-old if he likes the big heart on the tower. He answers, No, it scares me. I like it, the mother tells her child. Okay, he says. The boy looks at a man selling candy from a cart and says, Can I have a sweet?

  The man with the candy cart has sold candy underneath the Eiffel Tower for almost seven years. The man with the candy cart is unshaven and hates kids. He hates his job. He thinks it’s dirty and uncivilized. It always rains here, he thinks, but they still come. I wish the rain would melt them, he thinks. I wish they’d all flow away, down the Seine to the ocean, or to wherever the Seine goes. Two suckers, a woman says to him. Bien sûr, the man answers.

  Some people think standing underneath the tower will prevent them from getting wet. It helps, but the wind is really the deciding factor. The breeze blows to the north today, so the further north people stand, the dryer they remain. But the tower is made of open iron work, so water still penetrates. People sometimes forget that. A man with piercing green eyes and a tattoo of a snake wrapped around a sword on his upper right arm makes his way to the center of the area underneath the tower. When he gets to what he believes is the exact center, he kneels, takes his black backpack off, and opens it. He pulls out an original Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera in mint condition. He looks through the viewfinder and points the camera directly up. He presses the red button and gets an instant picture of the underside of the tower.

  The man with the candy cart sees him and laughs. He looks across the space beneath the tower to the leg opposite the one he is nearest. The man selling chiens chauds has a line at his cart. Fucking America, the candy man thinks.

  The man selling these chiens chauds or, literally, hot dogs, squeezes mustard onto one of his wares. He looks at the hot dog and thinks, If this is pig, then I’m the Pope. He hands the hot dog to the English tourist who ordered it. With a forced smile and a heavy French accent, he says, Enjoy.

  There are three women named Joy at the Eiffel Tower today. All are from America, but none knows any of the others. One is disappointed at the top of the tower. The clouds are ruining a potentially breathtaking view. One is reading a Metro map. She is on line with her son to buy tickets. She is studying the map intently hoping she will not get lost and miss her meeting with her husband at their hotel at 6:30. Her husband said he was going to spend the day at the Louvre or some museum, but he is on La Rue Saint Denis looking at other things. The third Joy is on the first elevator, which is making its way up one of the iron legs from the first observation deck to the second.

  The third Joy stands next to a woman who has a camera around her neck. Joy thinks the woman looks Dutch. These two women are looking out the window of the large elevator. The elderly Swedish tourist, who is the woman standing next to Joy, is excited to be making this ascension. She wonders how long it will take her husband to climb all those stairs to meet her. From the elevator, she cannot see the leg of the tower in which her husband has just begun to have a heart attack. She is instead focused on someone down below holding a bright red umbrella. It sticks out amongst the mostly black umbrellas in the crowd. How nice, she thinks.

  The woman who is holding the red umbrella is dressed in a red wool sweater and a black silk skirt. Her full lips are red, and her long, wavy hair is black. She is a twenty-six-year-old struggling playwright. She has come to the Eiffel Tower today to see the heart one of her favorite artists has put on top of the tower. Now she is waiting for her friend who lives in Montparnasse and whom she is staying with in Paris to come meet her. They set to meet at 4:30. It is 4:14. Screams from one of the far legs of the tower register in her head. She does not turn to look. Instead, she thinks, Art has gotten big.

  As she searches her purse for a cigarette, a twenty-four-year-old man approaches her. Est-ce que vous parlez anglais? he asks.

  I’m American, she answers. With the hand that isn’t holding the umbrella, she puts a cigarette in her mouth and lights it with a red lighter. Why are you talking to me? she thinks. She usually doesn’t mind talking to strangers, but she is not in an outgoing mood today.

  Really? the man asks. From where?

  New York, she answers. She blows smoke to the left of his head. She is taller than he is. He is wearing a black pullover with black jeans and a dark green jacket. He’s not bad-looking, she thinks, but those ears.

  He nods. She is stunning, he thinks. Even a gay man could be persuaded. Me too, he tells her. It’s nice to hear English, he continues. The French don’t like to speak English.

  Yeah, she says. That’s because they’re French, she thinks.

  And they don’t like it when I try to speak French, he says.

  I think they appreciate when you try, she tells him. She wants to say, What do you need so I can tell you and you can leave me alone?

  What are you doing in Paris? he asks her.

  Visiting a sick friend, she says. She inhales from her cigarette. She needs to quit smoking, she thinks for the third time that day.

  I’m sorry, the man replies.

  It’s okay, she says. It’ll be, you know, fine.

  The man senses she really doesn’t want to talk. He decides to ask her his question. Is there a closer Metro stop than Pont de Alma? he asks. I’m visiting a friend and we’re supposed to meet at five and I was just wondering ‘cause that stop isn’t so close and with this weather and all.

  She looks above his head. I don’t think so, she replies. I think that’s the closest. I’m being short with him, she thinks. I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m allowed to be short.

  Thanks anyway, the man says.

  No problem, she says. What’s your name? she decides to add.

  Adam, the man replies.

  The woman laughs. I’m Eve, she says.

  Wow, he says. How funny. How often does that happen?

  Right, Eve says.

  Paris is the closest I’ve gotten to paradise, he says, so maybe it’s no coincidence.

  Eve smiles. Do you like New York? she says.

  It’s the center of the world, he tells her, and he really means it. What do you do in New York?

  I write plays, she says.

  I design costumes, he says.

  No one does my plays, she says.

  No one wears my costumes, he says.

  I’m so tired of this, they both think at the same time.

  Well, he says, if anyone ever does your plays, I’d be happy to clothe your actors.

  Sounds good, she says. At this point in her life, she is convinced no one will ever produce her plays. She has applied to graduate school but doesn’t feel like bringing it up, especially to a stranger. She isn’t excited or happy about the prospect of going back to school. She feels like she’s failed.

  A policeman runs by Eve and Adam. Adam hears the word coeur over the policeman’s walkie-talkie. Heart. He cannot make out the rest and figures even if he could, he doesn’t remember enough French from college to understand what it means.

  Do you like the heart? he asks her.

  She hesitates. She wants to say something profound but cannot think of what to say. It’s big, she finally tells him.


  He is surprised by her answer. But he knows she wants him to leave. He stares at her red lips and says, It is. I think it’s pretty neat.

  No one says neat, she thinks. She gets a chill. It is still drizzling. She looks up into her umbrella.

  He looks at his watch. It is 4:19. Time to go, he thinks. Thanks for the help, he tells her.

  I didn’t help you, she answers.

  Thanks anyway, he says.

  Maybe I’ll see you back home, she says.

  Maybe, he replies. He says good-bye and turns to walk away. A man with a Polaroid camera and emerald eyes gets Adam’s attention. The man is dressed in all black, a black tank top and black pants. He has a tattoo of a snake wrapped around a sword on his upper right arm. He must be a model, Adam thinks. I wish I looked like that. Adam walks by him and stares. The man does not look at Adam.

  The man with the Polaroid camera gets Eve’s attention as he walks by her. She watches him pass. She is strangely and suddenly fascinated by the man. She looks at her watch. She has ten minutes until she has to meet her friend. She figures what the hell and follows the man with the camera and the snake tattoo.

  Adam turns around to see Eve and her red umbrella walking in the opposite direction, toward the esplanade. He wonders where she is going. He has an urge to follow her, but his thoughts are interrupted by a rapidly approaching siren. Adam spins around to see a small ambulance drive off the road and onto the pedestrian area. People scatter and leave a wide space for the ambulance to drive through. Adam watches as the ambulance proceeds down this path toward the tower, underneath, and finally to one of the legs. The leg with the open stairwell in it.

  Some people follow the ambulance. Some people go back to their business. After some consideration, Adam decides to follow neither Eve nor the ambulance. He heads for the Metro.

  A man in a brown suit sees a younger American-looking man quickly walking away from the tower. Easy, this man thinks. He briskly approaches the younger man and bumps into him. Excuse me, the man in brown says. Sorry, the younger man replies. The younger man, a little flustered, continues his walk. The man in brown walks back toward the tower with the younger man’s wallet in his hand. He passes a sign that says BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS in both French and English.