The Locked Man–2
The surface details of life the around him surged and rippled. The road wobbled and the trees sagged, the sidewalk buckled and bent. He felt the air grow thick around him and he thought he felt the sting of a million malignant germs, tiny but with a billion teeth. He staggered back and crashed into the fence then slumped to the ground. He squeezed his eyes shut trying to control the nausea but a display of fireworks shot off behind his eyelids and this made him feel dizzy. He focused instead on the the rhythmic tap of the footsteps flowing passed him and this calmed him down. With a slow reptilian grace, he opened his eyes and stared at a pebble. After a few minutes of this, he looked up and over his shoulder at the black and white poster. It seemed to be staring back at him.
He peered back at the eyes on the poster and they seemed to life right off of the page and tear through him. Is that me? He ran his hands over his face feeling the contours of his nose and cheek bones in order to reassure himself that he was still really there, to anchor himself into his self.
A sudden yoke of anxiety broke him. He jumped up from the ground and scanned the neighborhood expecting to see someone watching him. He looked at the windows in a row of hunched brownstones searching for a flash of light from the reflection of a pair of binoculars, a man in a black trenchcoat, a…a…a what?
He turned in circles looking back down the street, up ahead, at the far corner but nothing struck him as unusual. It was Fifth and Davis draped with the typical Saturday afternoon activity: people in suits held briefcases while waiting for the walk signal, a mother hunched over a stroller snapping the plastic cover down in order to protect her child from the from the biting wind, a jogger in black spandex running on the spot, finger to neck taking her pulse. A delivery truck rumbled by. Trees whispered secrets to the wind.
He headed around the construction site looking for a duplicate. There had to be another one; this was a prank or something. There had to be an explanation for it. But after covering the gated area for a full hour, he found nothing but the usual announcements for the events happening around town: the Cirque de Soliel halloween special, bands playing at The MIxture, reminders that there were only three days left for the Picasso exhibit at the Arts and Culture Center.
He went back to the original and tore it down. He stuffed it in his parka and headed down Davis, occasionally peering over his shoulder as he slid along.
Four blocks later he reached Burrard Street where he spotted a cafe among a row of undistinguished buildings. The Mug SHot Cafe was wedged between a stationary shop and a butcher’s market. It was a run down shop with a clever window display of two grim looking coffee cups standing in a police line with the caption How You Seen This Mug? written in black letters and forming a circle around the sinister coffee mugs. It looked like a good enough place where he could sit and regroup.
It was busy but quiet. A group of university students sat in a booth laughing and chatting over a table scattered with novels and notebooks, at another table a couple hunched forward and talked in hushed tones; a man sat in the front window, a ray of sunshine slanting across his table while he read the newspaper. He shuffled passed a couple who were paying at the cash register and towards the back of the cafe.
The store was lined with old black and white mug shots of John Dilinger, Ted Kaczynski and a young and defiant Al Capone number C28169. He slid in a booth with Lee Harvey Oswald on the wall. A waitress came. She was dressed in a prison orange shirt and a black skirt. According to the stenciling over her left breast her name was Eva and her number was Nf7533061. She laid a paper place mat with a sedated Jimi Hendrix after his Toronto bust, a wild eyed and frizzy haired Nick Nolte, and Anna Nicole Smith front of him. “What can I get ya?”
”I’ll have a cup of coffee. Two cream, one sugar,” he said lighting a cigarette.
”Will that be all?”
He nodded and she sped of into the kitchen. Burroughs took the poster out and spread it on the table. It was a typical, nondescript and slightly yellowed 81/2 by 10 inch poster. The picture had a grainy quality. The coal black pits where his eyes were supposed to be made him think of the sinister gaze of biblical prophets, Charles Manson, Raasputin. The jaw was chiseled and the chin more pronounced, nut even with these subtle gradations of of light and dark, there was no mistaking it. It was him. Or was it?
His coffee arrived. The waitress left. he sipped his drink and decided to call the waitress back. He put the poster on the edge of the table in order for her to see it. Maybe she would say something; give him the objective verification he needed that it was–or wasn’t–him. But he had no idea what he would say if said it was him. Who carries around a poster of themselves? he figured he’d just pass it off as art or something. The bigger problem was if she said she recognized the person in the poster; that was her roommate from college or her brother’s friend. How would he react to that?
He waved her over.
”Yeah?”
”You guys sell bagels?” he asked, dropping his eyes to the poster in the hope that hers would follow.
”Yeah,” she said without looking down.
”Okay,” he said trying to stall. He needed her to see it. It just had to seem natural. He didn’t want to ask her directly. Who asks if a picture of themselves is really them? “I’ll have one then.”
”Cream cheese?”
”Got garlic and chives?”
”Uh-huh.” She left and he crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. He felt stupid and shoved the poster back in his parka. A new plan struck him. He crumbled the place mat and tossed it under the booth’s long seat. He put the poster in its place. She would have to notice it there.
She returned. “Here’s your ba-”
The plate hung over the table top and she shot a look at the poster. for a split second a thought crinkled her face but it disappeared as soon as it came. Burroughs looked at her trying to read her but she flashed him a friendly smile and laid the plate down.
“Bagel,” she finished and dashed off.
He finished his bagel and coffee in silence, left five bucks on the table and slid back into the city.
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