Day 149: The Gang’s All Here

Surprise visitors today! First came Bruno, the drummer from the LES DIY. He said they all worry about me because I told someone—he says he doesn’t know whom—that I hadn’t gone outside in more than two weeks. Hard to believe it’s been 17 days since I got robbed.

I must have come off like a psycho in tin foil. To start with, I couldn’t let him in. We chatted sotto voce in the hallway, our voices muffled by masks. I almost called him Bruno.

ETHNIC CLEANSING IN LA?I presumed he had come to pick up protective gear, but he brought me a big hot meal. I’d eaten a late breakfast, but roast pork with potatoes and greens was a scented mirage made real. I had to ask if this is really what they deliver.

He said the woman you and I know as ‘Anna’ created it specifically for me. Does Anna know the benevolent stalker? Is she the stalker? I had just finished concluding for the hundredth time that she can’t possibly be Evelyn.

Bruno says Anna is eating more, talking more. Sounds good, looks good. I haven’t seen her since Ric reopened his restaurant three months ago.

All this made me fat and happy till I read that Los Angeles gangs are engaging in formal military maneuvers. There were maps of an area that’s turning into an American Bosnia as young black, Hispanic, and Asian criminals strike at one another’s home turf. Inhabitants are being driven out with the expectation that they might never return.

This has evidently been happening for years between blacks and Hispanics. (Hollywood never noticed?) With Asian gang membership rising quickest of all—and less geared to specific localities—the H5N1 crisis is said to have prompted paramilitaries in LA and the valleys to draw their heaviest weapons. Encouraged by politicians and media to blame immigrants, they’ve all taken up ethnic cleansing.

The LAPD is accused of working hard to keep them all out of white ‘hoods. Are the Russian and Armenian gangs gratified or insulted?

Is this for real? Is someone sensationalizing minor events? It’s hard to tell from here. I wonder what the residents of LA think of their latest terror trigger.

Not that we don’t all have scary issues: I was googling LA gangs when someone banged on my door. I didn’t open up.

It was the bald guy I’ve never met from across the street. He’s heard rumors that I possess medical supplies. His wife is suffering chest pains, has a history, and the hospitals are inaccessible. He called an ambulance yesterday.

When I explained I had nothing for them, he waved a gun at the peephole and threatened to blow my lock off. The 911 operator didn’t speedily comprehend where I live, asked if I’m on the Upper West Side (East is the first part of my street’s name). It felt like I’d called Turkmenistan tech support. When I held the phone to the door so she could hear him, she hung up. Did his cursing affront her moral sensibilities?

I fetched a cast iron pot with which to mash the man’s cranium if he broke in. He yelled and pounded and bellowed and then vanished quietly. I don’t think he knows I’m the guy who used to watch his wife play piano before he nailed plywood over his windows.

I’m feeling sorry I tried to help my neighbors. All it did was blow my cover.

Day 150: My Storm Track

LA isn’t so bad. While a few readers say it’s worse than I reported, more say I slipped in melodramatic muck aimed at justifying martial law, or at least distracting Angelenos from the real issues—whatever those are. I’m told the celebrated flanking maneuver at Harbor Gateway was merely the accidental arrival of a bunch of well-armed gangsters who were fleeing from the cops when they saved their lucky allies from a bloody defeat. How reassuring!

EYE ON ORLANDO: HURRICANE LUKEI’ll stick to writing what I see from now on: The bald guy’s windows are sealed, silent, funereal. Has his wife died yet? My block is asleep or cowering silently.

Sneeky is licking his belly far too much. I see hairless patches with red sores. No idea what this could be.

Ric called. He sounds worse off than I am. Still, I bet his house is neater.

I’m watching Hurricane Luke on TV as I write. Reporters in foul weather gear stand manfully in rising winds, suffering for us in front of Disney World. Viewers seem delighted to kick back and experience Luke, an old-time disaster, on their big flat screens. We all know The Mouse will make it. This will be a comforting spectacle.

Day 151: Frozen Fruitlessness

I’m extremely sorry for my light-witted comments about Hurricane Luke. Orlando is in pieces. The looting is relentless. Local reporters pose before phalanxes of masked Guardsmen framed by flames. Will Disney World burn? Melt?

I could use some power, too.

BLINK (Kieran McGonnell)Early this evening I heard a woman screaming below. I leaned out of Sneeky’s window to see a woman in green backed against a car. I couldn’t see what she was scared of, thought it might be rats. Then she started pleading with someone human to leave her alone, a high-pitched spoken wail that conveyed real terror. It sounded like she said she had the flu, probably to frighten an assailant.

I grabbed a metal bar I keep handy and ran toward the stairs, putting on protective gear. I was ‘safe’ by the time I reached the last flight. She sounded about 20 feet from the door, bleating for mercy—desperate, deranged, maybe both.

I charged down the stairs, rod in hand.

My world imploded. I couldn’t breathe, realized I was choking on lunch. My heart went into overdrive. Hunched over, drenched in sweat, I shook for so long I forgot about the woman I was trying to rescue. By the time I remembered her, I felt better, clearer. I took another step, became horribly dizzy. I vomited into my mask and all over the stairs. Had I somehow caught H5N1?

People ran past the front door, shouting as they chased someone. They sounded like good guys, volunteers.

It must have been something I ate. I’m not a coward.

Day 152: Panic Becomes Me

I woke up to a volley of concerned emails. A lot of you think I’ve developed an agoraphobic panic disorder whereby my body freaks out if I try to go outside. But I read that this usually results from panic attacks; you don’t want to go outside lest someone see you suffer an attack. I’m basically extremely, um, reluctant to go outside because death is in the air. I undertook all this preparation so I could stay home.

WHAT LIES OUTSIDE: THE EAST VILLAGEAnyway, I just tried to step out. I get sickly near the door. Evidently it’s from resisting an overpowering adrenaline rush as my mind tells me to run away from danger. Fighting to go outside is maddening, like forcing yourself to walk into a fusillade of bullets. That can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. The most famous American foot soldiers of the first war with Iraq are Timothy McVeigh and John Allen Muhammad. Whatever happened to them in the Middle East, each brought the war home—in mass murder.

I’m just trying to get to the corner. Whatever my little problem is called, it’s the kind of thing that can turn syndromal. You’re right: I need to take a hike before I lose my mind.

Walking is what makes New Yorkers so healthy. A newborn resident can expect to live nine months longer than other American babies, and the difference grows annually. Since 1990, the average American lifespan has gained 2 ½ years, while that of New Yorkers has grown by more than 6.

Read all about it: We walk more, move faster. I’ll never forget the man in black I saw charging through a crowded Times Square sidewalk last year, roaring at tourists: “Outa my way, this ain’t *&@%$^ Kansas!” He was indeed thinner, cut through those people like a knife.

I need sunshine to cleanse the mold that afflicts my brain when I stay inside too long. Tomorrow I’ll get out, sheathed in plastic like a walking condom. Whatever it takes.

The White House Flu Prescription

For now, I’ll question the president’s wisdom in having waited so long to speak out and then delivering a kind of verbal coup d’état. The military is going to start assessing the nation’s needs on a regional basis. For now, troops will start checking ID on streets and in malls throughout the Southwest.

“Americans want to know that their nation’s resources are being used to help their fellow citizens, and it’s our job to show them this is true,” said the president. Washington will prove it by tripling the budget at RAISE and rounding up illegal immigrants.

How will that put food in our stores and water in our fire hoses? How will it reopen cemeteries? Clean up and resupply hospitals?

For more than 130 years the military was barred from conducting civil police activity. Now 20,000 soldiers are trained and equipped to do anything they’re told to do—on U.S. soil. I’m sure glad I live in the Northeast.

What followed was laughable relief as the president told anecdotal stories about resolute survivors and steadfast public servants saving the day in what must have been the 26 states with the most electoral votes. “Meanwhile, on the Colorado prairie, a paraplegic schoolteacher named Patience Pureheart crawls daily to her church to….”

Help!

Day 153: Angel Without Mercy

Bruno woke me without notice at noon. I was slow to fasten the chain as he explained he was on special assignment to get me to Ric’s apartment. He barged in and started making me put on protective gear as if I were going to visit Stefan next door. Then he marched me to the stairs.

I quibbled, but it was embarrassing to argue with a guy who was trying to help me get over something so stupid till we got to the bottom set of stairs and I started to flip out. My brain was climbing the walls as if I could just slip away and leave my useless shell with Bruno.

MY SAVIOR?When he pulled me onto the stairs, I started crying, gasping, hyperventilating. I’m pretty strong, but Bruno locked me in place and muttered friendly and supportive comments while I struggled and begged him to let me go back upstairs, home.

Then he told me she was waiting outside. I knew he meant my mystery emailer. Evelyn.

For the first time, I looked down. The door was bursting with light, broken by a shadow in the shape of a face and torso.

I still couldn’t move. But I wanted to, even though this would be a rotten way to meet her—pathetic, tearful, needy.

When my adrenaline ran out and I tried to sit down, Bruno half-lifted, half-dragged me down the stairs and out the door. He didn’t care that I was retching, drooling. No one else did, either. No one was there but a rat. Coincidence?

Bruno’s incredulous look told me that he had expected her to be there. He didn’t look happy, but wouldn’t explain anything. When we reached Ric’s building, he asked if there was any chance I’d get stuck in there. He wanted to go back to the restaurant.

I swore I’d make it home, thanked him lavishly. I was relieved to be outside, albeit furious. What had happened to she who confuses everyone? This was some kind of game. Am I the only player who doesn’t know Evelyn’s identity? Do they joke about me? I hope Bruno gave her hell.