Hey! You! Get Out of My Way! Part 14 Back in Albany New York

Mickey and Judy are nowhere to be found. Every day they are gone, Jonathan comes up with new scenarios of how it must have happened. “Maybe, they were so skinny they could have slipped through the bars,” he says summoning tears to his eyes. This creates an image of Bambi. I imagine that I am a hunter and plan to shoot his Mother.

I am not speaking to him and I’m making that perfectly clear. I enter a room he’s in and announce in a booming voice “Thank god, this room is empty!” Jonathan either stands in front of me or leans in my sight and clears his throat in the hopes that I will notice him when I say this.

I know that he did it. I know it in my soul. I don’t know why but I know he did something. I had two friends in a cage and I left them in his trust and he killed them. I don’t need a confession or a body. I want to kill him.

Jonathan mopes around the apartment constantly trying to get my attention. I walk out on the sun porch pulling the door shut behind me a light up a cigarette. I turn my back to the door but I can feel his eyes on me. Ten minutes later I hear the bell ring as he walks onto the street. The bell tells me the “monster has left.”

He glances up to the porch when he hits the sidewalk. I blow my smoke and watch it drift to heaven, ignoring him.

I know. Crazy to mourn over two little white mice that weren’t there that long. It is the story of my life, here briefly and then gone. I finish my cigarette and flick it through the air and it lands on the sidewalk. Turning around and walking into the apartment, I realize I am truly and finally alone.

That night when Jonathan got home he took out sticky mouse traps he bought so he could help get Mickey and Judy back. I am back to sort of talking to him; every now and then I tell him that I think I can see him.

In the following weeks, I discover that I no longer want to leave my house and am having a hard time going to school.

One day, the house phone rings. Jonathan and I look at each other as the phone rings again. I’m not sure who would be calling. I get a little worried because I have run out of food and money and in the past couple of days. I have had to sneak downstairs to steal food out of the group homes refrigerator.  Did I get caught? Do they really have the secret camera I always imagine them to have?

On the third ring Jonathan jumps up and runs across the room to answer it. Clutching the receiver he crams it to his ear. “Hullo?” he says all slack jaw. He looks at me and begins to answer whoever is on the phone. “Yes, no, huh?, huh?, what?, What? He then lifts the phone and walks it into the bedroom and closes the door. The cord is stretched across the room.“Ohhhh, a secret,” I think. Who would be calling Jonathan?

A short time later I am sitting in a chair in the living room when Jonathan comes out of the bedroom. He walks up to me and hands me a piece of paper. “Someone named Mimi called you.” I take the paper out of his hand and stare at him. His movements are slow and deliberate as if he is walking under water.

“When did she call?” I ask Jonathan. “Oh that was her on the phone,” he says yawning and falling asleep. He is standing in front of me and his head slides to his chest. His legs bend and he starts to slink to the floor. As if a miracle has happened he suddenly becomes reanimated and stumbles back to the bedroom. He moves like a junkie during a heroin nod.

I stare after him and have to close my mouth. “What the fuck just happened?” I silently ask myself.

Several days later I call Mimi back and accept a job in the chorus of Annie Get Your Gun. I don’t ask who was cast as the horse in Man of La Mancha, sounds like sour grapes. Jonathan asks if he can go to rehearsal with me. I don’t answer him and walk away. I am back to pretending that he’s dead.

Andy is ecstatic and takes me to the mall where he buys me a dozen roses. At the end of the day, Andy takes me to a pet store and buys me a white rat that I name Crawford……..after Joan.

To be continued………

 Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.