The Contortionist's Handbook Read online

  THE CONTORTIONIST’S HANDBOOK

  a novel by Craig Clevenger

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-59692-990-6

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  United Kingdom

  Telephone: +44 (0)1624 618672

  email: [email protected]

  MacAdam/Cage Publishing

  155 Sansome Street, Suite 550

  San Francisco, CA 94104

  www.macadamcage.com

  Copyright © 2002 by Craig Clevenger

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Clevenger, Craig, 1964 —

  The contortionist’s handbook / Craig Clevenger.

  p. cm.; Novel

  ISBN 1-931561-15-X (alk. paper)

  1. Forgers–Fiction. 2. Confession–Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3603.L49 C66 2002

  813’.6–dc21

  2002005977

  Book and jacket design by Dorothy Carico Smith; e-book by GSHolmes

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deepest and sincerest thanks to:

  The original true believers, Paul Fritz, Becky Fritz, Shannon Wright, Charlie Wright, Jill Nani, Tony Vick and Jim Matison. I’m indebted to you all for, among other things, braving the first blind, wet and screaming versions of the story.

  To Micky Clevenger, Phil Clevenger, Todd Bogdan, Scott Krinsky, Damir Zekhtser, Jerry Whiting, Susan Marshall, David Marshall, Jim Lambert and Yvonne LeCroy for their invaluable support; Jon Gonzales, Javier Roca and Dorothy Eckel for being behind me from before the beginning.

  To the bookstore crew for the support both on the job and off, Jeff Seibel, Melinda Reta, Kristi Gardner, Peter Conover, Katie Heimsoth and Rayshaun Grimes; and to Dawn O’Brien and her crew at the Mercury Lounge and the Firebird. And to Josh Bates and Eric Shiflett for those first celebratory pints.

  And finally, to David Poindexter, Melanie Mitchell, Amy Long and John Gray; especially to Dorothy Smith for sticking her neck out for me; and to Pat Walsh for doing so much in the name of good faith after that first phone call.

  I am grateful to all of you, more than you’ll ever know.

  My cigar is not a symbol. It is only a cigar.

  —Sigmund Freud

  I kissed her…. It was like being in church.

  —James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

  DANIEL FLETCHER

  ONE

  I can count my overdoses on one hand:

  August 1985. Percocet. The 5 mg tablets were identical to the 325 mg tablets which were identical to the generic laxatives. I was in no shape for fine print. ER, three ounces of ipecac and solid heaves of poisons and binder, thirty-seven hours of cramps and shitting blood.

  February 1986. Methocarbamol. Yellow caplets, bright like a child’s crayon sunscape. Those five pills stopped my heart and I saw the brain seizure tunnel of light before the EMTs shocked me back alive. They billed me $160 for that jolt.

  June 1986. Demerol and thirty-two aspirin reopening the damage I did when I was fourteen.

  November 1986. A busy year. Vicodin. Imagine waking up to your morning stomach knot and subsequent rituals:

  Shower.

  Coffee.

  Traffic.

  Talk radio.

  Hell.

  Home.

  Drink.

  But you remember that it’s Sunday. That four-second blast of relief is what Vicodin feels like for six hours. But overdose and you’re heaving blanks, a pair of fists wringing your stomach like a damp rag, trails of warm spit hanging from your mouth while you try to move your limbs but can’t. Words hit your brain like garbage churning in a breakwater, no order, no connection. Fingers. Name. Hear.

  February 1987. Darvocet. And a pint of bourbon.

  Yesterday, August 17, 1987. Carisoprodol. Comes in a white tablet like a big-ass vitamin, 350 mg of muscle liquefier for those tense, recovering athletes and furniture movers. Too much, and those relaxed muscles include your diaphragm, then your heart. It feels like drowning or a sumo wrestler sitting on your chest. I’d done three rails of blow to keep my heart from stopping before the paralysis set in, but they hadn’t been enough.

  That’s how Rasputin found me. Molly’s cat, fourteen pounds of mottled fur, she adopted him after his collision with the passenger-side Bridgestone of a speeding pickup. Rasputin was blind and near toothless from the accident, his remaining incisor jutting out ninety degrees from his mouth. He ate soft food. He would howl and stare at you with two transparent orbs of eye gel, the flaps of dislodged retina hovering inside. I used to shut off the lights and hold him while he purred. Put a flashlight to his face and look through his dead marble eyes and see his brain. Molly got mad when I did that.

  I tried to sit up, lift the weight of my ribs from my lungs, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t curl my fingers or move my lips. Couldn’t stop my tongue from sliding backward and clogging my neck. Wanted to sleep but forced myself to breeeathe, a mechanical wheeze that cut through my fog. I lay on my back, a lance of orange twilight stabbing me square in the face through a slice of curtain where the gaffer’s tape had come loose.

  Rasputin yowled for attention and licked my face until his sandpaper tongue burned through my stupor. A loud purring, the noise of a slow-motion wasp in my ear. He settled onto my sternum, sandbag-heavy. The walls of my lungs touched, stayed touching.

  Sounds: Door. Handbag hitting the carpet. Rasputin’s weight gone and a merciful rush of sweet, sweet air. Molly’s voice, Baby, oh God baby.

  I remember my eyes being peeled open, a blurry face, plaster ceiling over the shoulder. Words, chopped and scattered into a white noise seashell blast of static, shredded phonemes landing in and out of sequence. President. Are. Much. Day. Name. The electro-paddle-blast horse kick to my chest and I’m awake beneath nylon gurney straps, breathing into a plastic muzzle and being carried down the flight of stairs outside my front door.

  Best I can, I repeat the drill in my head: My name is Daniel Fletcher. I was born November 6, 1961. I had a headache and it wouldn’t stop. I had some painkillers. They weren’t working and I took too many.

  Open my eyes, Where are you taking me but my words are a numbed mumble of bloated syllables and spit-foam covered with an oxygen mask. Dream-coma blur: That’s not a dark blue medic’s jacket, it’s a dark blue suit. Then there’s Jimmy’s face, right over mine. I’ve got it all wrong, must have lost some hours because they’re not taking me down a flight of stairs, they’re lowering me into the dirt. Eliminating my position, phasing me out. I’m thinking At least I’ll be asleep when they bury me, so it could be worse. But then I wonder what they’ll do with Molly, and it is worse. Too weak to panic, my eyes collapse into dark.

  Here’s what happened.

  LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH

  Attn: Richard Carlisle, M.D., Ph.D.

  Sub: Assessment Referral

  August 18, 1987

  Richard:

  The following request for a patient assessment came late yesterday while you were still in conference. Overdose victim is a male in his mid-twenties. Queen of Angels Trauma Center personnel could not positively conclude whether OD was intentional or accidental and have requested evaluation of patient. You will find detailed history waiting for you at ER admission desk.

  Q of A has scheduled a 10:00-11:00 interv
iew today so as not to further delay discharge of patient. Patient’s history summary is enclosed; please interview and evaluate for signs of Depression/Bipolar Disorder and possible Somatoform Disorder and overall threat/risk level; cc myself and Dr. Lomax at Q of A Trauma Center.

  Rgds,

  W.K./p.l.

  QUEEN OF ANGELS HOLLYWOOD PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL

  To: Crisis Intervention Division,

  LA County Department of Mental Health

  From: Brian Lomax, M.D.

  Director, Trauma Center

  Re: Patient Assessment Referral

  Date: 8/17/87

  Please be advised that we are in need of a member of your staff to interview a patient currently detained as a possible suicide risk.

  Summary:

  Patient: Daniel John Fletcher

  Chief Complaint: Barbiturate Overdose

  Patient was found unresponsive at home following 911 call. Per significant other (Wheeler, Amelia) patient had been suffering from a severe migraine for several days. Had been taking unprescribed med. but did not specify (toxicology results pending).

  Patient received a field saline pump followed by activated charcoal flush. Subsequently went into fibrillation; defibrillation x1 administered. Patient is currently intubated (respiratory difficulty) and stable.

  Patient is chronic tobacco user, as well as showing signs of long-term amphetamine abuse. With no further history on file and no apparent cause for headache, and police background check yielding no prior criminal activity or suicide attempt, OD intent is indeterminate. Will discharge immediately, pending psychiatric recommendation.

  Full medical history and LAPD background check/report is available on site. Regarding patient’s history, a) Patient identified himself by his middle name, ‘Johnny’ during delirium, though A. Wheeler insisted he goes by his first name, ‘Danny.’ b) Please review carefully details in file under ‘Extremities.’ Note that patient has a fully articulated, extra digit on his left hand (likely a ring finger, based on identical proportion to fourth metacarpus); both the hand and all the digits, including the aforementioned, appear otherwise normal.

  Patient will remain overnight; intubation should be able to be removed during that time. On-site interview facility reserved tomorrow, 8/18 for 10:00 am for expedient processing of patient. Kindly provide someone to evaluate patient and submit referral summary to my attention ASAP.

  -B.L./b.r.

  TWO

  I need coffee. The nurse said No, you’re dehydrated, handed me a carton of apple juice with a plastic cocktail straw puncturing the top. Finish this and then you need to eat. Apple juice holds a mnemonic effect for me like the smell of isopropanol holds for a child awaiting a vaccination. It rapid-fire replays my every trauma center wakeup and close call waltz with a straitjacket.

  The woman in the bed next to mine looks maybe forty. Hard to tell. Two cops speak to her, writing what she says into a spiral notebook, but I can’t hear anything. She’s talking through clenched teeth, wired together to keep her jaw from falling apart. She’s pretty, with metallic hair the color of wet rock past her shoulders and parted straight, the way Mom wore hers, but this woman’s face is thinner, darker. A splint shrouds her septum, her left eye a protruding knob of mottled purple with a matching left cheekbone, a silver zipper of staples zigzags from her chin along the left side of her jawbone and a blue-black stain like an ink leak rings her throat, pronounced on the left side. Her husband must be right-handed. She pleads with the cops using her one, good eye—bloodshot and shiny-wet with the exit of shock and onset of reality—and gestures with her right hand (splints on her forefinger and middle finger, defensive splotches up and down her forearm). Her left arm is cast, so she’s right-handed, as well. One of the cops, the shorter one, sees me staring and closes the curtain.

  The orderlies have instructions not to give me my street clothes back. If I’m trying to kill myself, I’m a candidate for the State ward and they don’t want me to bolt. Either way, I puked on my T-shirt and the paramedics sliced it open with surgical steel scissors before they smeared me with saline paste and shot three hundred volts through my heart. They meant well.

  I make my case, that I don’t want to meet a psychiatrist while I’m wearing hospital garb. They concede, keeping my wallet and keys, bring me a tropical print shirt they’ve fished from their clothing bins—a mixture of donations and unclaimed DOA threads—and assign me to an orderly named Wallace. With my jeans and leather coat, I look like some porn theater doorman. Not the best option when meeting an Evaluator, but much better than the alternative. First impressions count. If I look like I’m crazy—and a hospital gown will have this effect—I might as well fold.

  So we’re clear from the beginning, my name is Johnny. John Vincent. John Dolan Vincent. Today my name is Daniel. Or Danny or Dan. Whatever. As far as the paramedics are concerned, my name is Daniel Fletcher. Same for the nurses, doctors, EMTs, LAPD and anyone else responsible for getting me here and/or keeping me alive and/or keeping me here whether I like it or not. My boss knows me as Daniel Fletcher, says so on my job application, so does the dispatcher, my regular pickups and drop-offs and the company’s insurance carrier.

  The only person who calls me Johnny is Molly, and only during sex. Usually once. Sometimes she’ll call me Johnny two or three times if I’ve got the stamina or the drugs. But since Molly’s real name is Keara, we’re even. I made her Molly. She asked me to. Wanted to learn the ropes.

  ———

  Keara was naked. She returned to her bedroom with a glass of water, set it onto the empty wine crate beside her bed. She coiled against me, settling into the curve of me beneath the blankets, closed her eyes.

  Yellow streetlight glow seeped through the curtains, a perfect crescent shadow below her cheekbone. I looked at her, watched the slumbering symmetry of her face, the simple lines. Even without makeup, her lips looked carved, set into her face and, in her sleep, she was a jewel. I could draw the contour of her profile from memory with a single line, my eyes shut. Sometimes I’d do that if I couldn’t sleep. Two hundred face lines, evenly spaced on a blank sheet, Keara’s profile repeated mantra-perfect, each line identical to the previous and the next.

  I placed my forefinger against her face, faint as a landing moth. I’ve got a gentle touch, when it’s called for. Ran a line down her nose, straight septum from bridge to tip, out to the peak of her cheekbone, corner of her lips, down to her chin. Counting the different angles, their degree, feeling the dips and peaks on the surface of her skin.

  “Don’t.” She moved her face, took my hand, interlocked her fingers with mine, kept her eyes closed.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Keara.” Whispered, wanted her to open her eyes. “Hey.”

  “I don’t like my face,” she said, then opened her eyes, held my left hand to the faint light, looked at my fingers.

  “What you told me today,” she said, “You do that by hand? No rulers or anything?”

  “Sometimes. Depends on what I’m doing.”

  “But you can draw a straight line, can’t you? I’ve seen you do it.”

  I cleared my throat, reached for the water. I don’t ever get to talk about it, what I do.

  “Yeah, but I still need certain tools. Templates, stencils. Sometimes an official stamp or seal. Whatever I make has to look perfect.”

  She smiled, the only unsymmetrical thing about her face. Her mouth stretched more to her right side than her left when she smiled, but her teeth were a perfect white and even row, her eyes squinting into twin sparks.

  “Show me,” she said. “Make me someone, Johnny.”

  The glow was as close to a coke rush as I got while straight and sober—laying out my process and putting pieces together, ensconced inside my own brain and feeling it fire, functioning in a way that made thought feel primitive, slow.

  “Okay,” I said. “But not the real thing. I’m not going through the whole proc
ess if the risk isn’t necessary.” But I owed her. She’d let me slide on my biggest lie, regardless of my intent, and so I wanted to indulge her.

  “Just give me a name.” She traced the outside of my fingers with one of hers. “Jones or Smith or something.”

  “That’s the first rule,” I said. “No Jones. No Smith. No Anderson or anything too plain. Names like that stand out because they’re too ordinary.”

  She sat up, took the glass from my hand, and I was caught up in the rush, showing somebody for the first time how I worked, unseen and unknown.

  “You want a name that’s common enough to bury you with other identical names in any kind of directory or list. But it can’t be too common.”

  “Like…?”

  “Like Scottish or Irish surnames. O’Fallon, McGuire. Or Anglo-occupational names. Wheeler or Taylor,” I said. “Archer, Carpenter, Cooper, Mason. Something forgettable to anyone who hasn’t met you twice.”

  “Fletcher?”

  “You’re quick,” I said and she giggled, nudged me. “But that’s if you’re doing it on your own. If you’re taking an existing name, you work with whatever you can get, minding nationality.”

  “What about my first name?”

  “Same rules, common but forgettable. How ’bout Molly?”

  She’d told me that a guy had been drunk at the bar that evening. Golf shirt yuppie with bleached teeth singing Molly Malone over and over, substituting baby-talk syllables for the words he didn’t know, which were most of them. She pushed her wheelbarrow, through streets broad and narrow and Molly Malone were all, so he sang them over and over, out of tune.

  “Molly Wheeler,” Keara said.

  “You’re getting it. I’ll make Molly Wheeler a birth certificate this weekend.”