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Welcome To My Seaworld

Joshua Sidley

    Jacob Medina was one for keeping an ear to the ground, and within ten minutes of leaving the 110^th Street subway station he had a clear understanding of what kids in the neighborhood—his neighborhood, once upon a time—thought about his clothing and his hair and his walk. He disagreed with most of what he picked up, though he believed one of the floating voices—maybe a boy, more likely a broody girl—had grasped the genius of his stylelessness, she (or he) just got it.
    In the time of his exile from Manhattan’s Cathedral Parkway, Jacob Medina had a New York State Identification Number assigned to him by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. To most non-inmates it was his name. To most inmates, he had no name, or many names...or any name that was screamed at him loudly enough, angrily enough. He was an uncontemptuous convict, impartial and unexcitable, except when he wasn’t. It meant something if you fucked with him; if you let him be, that was okay, too. He wasn’t there long enough to be presented with a fight he could win, though in losing, his bloodied face was always stiff with opposition, as if to say the next time would go down harder for everyone. Which it had.
    His release came in November, eleven months after his admittance. On both days, it rained, long and heavy. This enraged him, that the memories of each were indistinguishable. He kept his head, though. All the way out—making the sort of small talk he hated with the guard who was his escort—he kept his head.
    With Columbia University and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine among its neighbors, the Amsterdam Nursing Home sat on Amsterdam Avenue and 112^th Street. Today, there was nowhere else Jacob Medina wanted to be more. Tomorrow, of course, would be very different. Or not—it would depend, as it always did, on Miriam Salas.
    An orderly knocked twice on her door, saying she had a visitor. When she emerged, she looked almost exactly as he’d imagined. The same was true for her, it seemed, as she appraised Jacob in the hallway for too long. “Still?” she said at last. The orderly grinned understanding and left them.
    “I was wearing this when I went in,” he said. “The kids like it. I heard them on the way here.”
    “Ugh. The kids,” she scoffed and turned. He followed her.
    <>I“Come visit first thing,” he said once inside her room. “I hope you meant it.”
    “Of course I did, you wary orphan,” she said and sat slowly down in the chair she had likely been sitting in before the interruption and, quite possibly, since his conviction. “Naturally, it was a time-sensitive offer.”
    “Please. You’re like rock and roll. You’ll never die.”
    She gave him a warning look, which he got.
    “So what do people talk about when they come around?”
    She smiled in anger. “No one comes. This place is fucking depressing.”
    “I thought this was one of the best homes in the city.”
    “Dying is depressing.”
    He sighed in agreement. “Okay, so what should we talk about?”
    “How about criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree?”
    He smiled at her, his cheeks dimpling. “Most people would say it’s too late for a lecture.”
    “Most people...you know there’s a million fucking ways I could end this sentence and make my point.”
    “So make it.”
    “Most people are hopelessly goddamn stupid. Match point.”
    Her cellphone rang on the table beside the chair. She picked it up on the third ring, which by then sounded a lot like the theme to The Godfather. She explained swiftly, rather coldly, that she couldn’t talk at the moment: no, it was not an emergency: no, she wasn’t sure that it was not an emergency, how can one know that until the consequences are dealt: and what exactly was the appeal of such dipshit circular logic? She broke the connection and tossed the phone back on the table. It struck the edge of a stand-alone photo frame which Jacob hadn’t noticed until now.
    Lately, she had been getting calls at odd, wayward hours, she told him. “It doesn’t help that the smarter these phones get, the clearer the stupidity poisoning my brain. At least with my old dumbphone, everything was on an even keel.”
    “Who’s that?” he asked and pointed at the picture.
    She unanswered unforthrightly, “Margaret.”
    He waited, thinking he was supposed to know who that was; then he asked if it was her picture or if someone had brought it to her. Miriam shrugged slightly, as if to imply that the picture hadn’t been there one day, and the next day it had.
    “What are your plans?”
    “To give you an enthusiastic account of the trains I missed and the trains I didn’t miss to get here.”
    “The depth of your ambition frightens me, kiddo,” she said lightly, smiling. “You’ve scared me shitless, you’ll be glad to know.”
    Jacob Medina wanted desperately to talk about the importance of this visit and what it would determine. But he knew that he could not speak plainly today. He wondered if the situation was an ironic one, the concept always just beyond his grasp. “Actually, I was thinking about visiting Renny.”
    Miriam stared, unable to speak for what seemed a very long time.
    “He didn’t promise nothing when I was inside. And he only visited me twice, so it’s not like I got a hard-on for him or anything.”
    “Of course not. But what about his daughter?”
    That was very slippery of her but totally understandable. Lily was a damn fine-looking woman and had always liked him. Or seemed to. “She don’t like me.”
    “She doesn’t. You’re absolutely right. Good on you for seeing it.”
    He thanked her cheerlessly.
    “Lily’s secret—which isn’t of course a secret to me—is that she’s a dyke, masquerading as a bored hetero, and men exist solely to reaffirm her choice.”
    “Is it a choice really?
    “When they’re built like a brick shithouse, it’s destiny. When they’re built like my granddaughter, it’s a choice...as in she has one.”
    “That’s beautiful,” he said, eyeing her shrewdly. “Speaking of destiny—”
    “Don’t see Renny. It’s not a good idea now.”
    Jacob was perfectly still.
    Then, reconsidering: “He’s supposed to call me on my dumbass smartphone next week. You know what his calls are like?”
    He waited.
    “Tells me who he thinks is moving against him, which he’s usually dead wrong about. Then he goes on and on about books that mean a great deal to him and nobody else. If I say I like the same book, he says I don’t get it like he does. My child. You know who his favorite author is?”
    He thought he might but shook his head.
    “Robert Ludlum. Seriously. Any author who’s had movies made from his books, most could tell you right off if the book was better or not. Mario Puzo, John Grisham, hell, even Stephen King—whose stories all roll into one bloody mess—people can tell you if the book was better than the movie.”
    He agreed with that one. Those movies usually sucked.
    “Ask someone if a Ludlum book was better than the movie. Go ahead. They’ll probably say yeah, you know, just to say it. Sounds like it should be true and maybe it is. But they don’t really know. They. Don’t. Know. That’s my child all over. I can’t trust his word or his ways anymore. I can’t take the chance.”
    He locked eyes with Miriam Salas. Hers was the most purposeful gaze he had ever seen.
    A done deal. What he came for he now had. For the rest of the visit, he could relax. He would do his best. “Who’s Margaret?”
    “Wait just a second.” She raised her head, then her voice. “Is that you, Manny?”
    “Yes,” a man answered on the other side of her door. “A visitor for you.”
    Miriam threw her head back and roared. “I know that! He’s in here already.”
    “Not him,” said Manny. “Somebody else.”
    “Well, tell them to wait. No, tell them to come back tomorrow. I can’t handle two at once—not at my age.”
    Jacob hadn’t heard his footsteps before, but now he could hear Manny walking away, his pace uncertain.
    She looked back at him and narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “He didn’t get it.”
    Jacob wasn’t sure he got it, though he promised himself to review it later.
    “How’s Anthony?”
    “Tony Shakespeare?” She leaned forward. “Christ. You ever see the Twilight Zone?”
    He thought about it. “Guy with the glasses, loves to read. Survives a nuclear war, then finds the library— ”
    “Perfect!” said Miriam and leaned even farther forward in her chair. “That is a perfect, spot-on example. It’s like that entire series was bought and paid for by Merriam-Webster. It existed just to teach people—maybe not with every episode but almost every goddamn episode—the definition of irony. That’s all it was, you know?”
    He wanted to say he didn’t. He nodded.
    “Tony got accepted into NYU’s writing program this year. He writes this story, and they let him in. Just like that. I mean his grades are okay, nothing special but nothing that’s going to keep him out either, I guess. And it wasn’t just one story, it was a few. But according to Gloria, it was this one story that sealed the deal. How she knows that, who the hell knows. It took him longer than all the others combined, she says. Probably spied on him the whole time. You know how she gets.”
    He nodded, but Miriam didn’t look over to receive the nod.
    “So. High school. A guy and a girl. Here it goes. Girl’s beautiful, guy’s okay. He’s got friends and some kind of charisma because he’s had girlfriends before. He’s not a loser is what I’m trying to say. But the girl is untouchable, flawless. Jocks and rich guys barely get the time of day from her. And girls fucking hate her. Not to her face, but she knows it and she owns it, like anyone would. Then one day they bump into each other coming out of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. They go to that LaGuardia school for Art and Music and shit. Remember the movie Fame?”
    “I know the school,” he said.
    “Well, they had to go see some show as an assignment. I think because they’re acting students. Or musicians. Or maybe singers. Whatever they are, this show is their homework but the teacher says it won’t feel like homework. They’ll adore it, they’ll even thank him later. But they both hated it! Hated it, like a damn trip to the dentist. They’re laughing together at how much they hate this thing. So spring forward a week and they’ve gotten to hanging out a little bit after school every day. Brought together by a hate they shared one time—it’s bullshit but it’s cute bullshit. And it turns out they got a bunch of other things in common. Music, movies, the usual and some unusuals. Story went a little long on that part, like he was trying to show off.”
    “Probably what got him in,” he said without meaning to. “That part.”
    “More like the part that comes next. Listen. They get to fooling around one day. Her house, I think. Nobody around. Things heat up, she takes off her shirt and her pants. Guess what he finds.”
    Jacob winced. “No!”
    “No what?”
    “Like that movie?”
    “Which?”
    “Girl turns out to be a—”
    “Now that would have been something! That would have met with some hearty disapproval from Gloria, I’ll tell you that right now. You know how she gets.”
    He looked at her wearily. “So what was it? Scars? Whip marks? Burns?”
    “Keep guessing.”
    “Gunshot wounds?” He flinched the moment the words were out.
    “Colder. One more try.”
    “Hell, I don’t know.” He stared vaguely, discontentedly, away from her. “Tattoos?”
    She tapped her nose twice, her eyes wide. “All over her back and all colored up. Like a freaking mural. But not a dragon, thank Christ! I doubt any school admits a guy for the quality of his fan fiction.”
    “So what was it then?”
    “The ocean,” she said, smiling. “That’s what she tells him, anyway. Of course it looks more to him like a goddamn fish tank with a few fish. That’s what it would like on any normal-sized back, right? Maybe, maybe if she weighed three hundred pounds.”
    He shook his head. “It would just look like a saltwater tank.”
    She looked at him.
    “Those are generally bigger. Because of the chemicals and stuff.”
    “The author would like to thank Jacques Cousteau for his contribution,” she said over his head.
    He rolled his eyes. “My pleasure.”
    When her irritation wore off, she looked at the floor and remembered. “Now, our hero learns something about himself. He doesn’t like tattoos. Not. One. Bit. He’s never given it much thought before, but once he sees her unrobed, he knows this ain’t gonna work out. Of course, that doesn’t stop him from letting things take their natural course right then.”
    Naturally, he wanted to say but didn’t.
    “But the kid has heart. He really does like this girl a lot. She’s goddamn gorgeous and they have all kinds of silly shit in common. He wants to look past this! So one day he asks her if she has plans to get any more tattoos.”
    He raised his eyebrows in a pained expression.
    “Yes, sir. She tells him she’s got plans to squeeze in as many types of fish as she possibly can, big and small. No sharks, though. When she strips, it’ll be welcome to my seaworld! And if she runs out of space, her ass is up for grabs. No pun intended here, but in the story—well, you know.”
    He was starting to doubt he knew anything anymore. “I don’t know how you can remember all this.”
    She stared rancorously at him. “It’s Tony! It’s the beginning of something. And the ending is what makes it. Listen. He tells her. Just flat-out says he’s not liking all the tattoos. Can’t. Nothing personal, and he absolutely against-all-odds wants to remain friends. He tells her they have a connection and he doesn’t wanna lose it. He tells her it’s probably his loss anyway and he tries damn hard to sound like he means it.”
    “Does he?”
    She considered. “Can’t remember. Ask Tony.”
    He thought that was the cruelest thing anyone had ever said to him.
    “Nothing’s the same after that, of course. They still meet up after school, except now it’s only every couple days. Then it’s once a week, maybe. He always waits for her but apparently she’s got somewhere else to be most days. It’s killing him but he doesn’t know what to do about it, until—”
    “He follows her,” Jacob interrupted, absently.
    She bowed her head slowly, keeping eyes on him. “It’s what you would do, right? A man’s tactic. Yes, he follows her. Ditches his last class one day and waits across the street for her to show up. When she appears and starts walking, so does he, staying a block behind. Lucky for him, it doesn’t take too long to get to where she’s headed. Guess where.”
    He wanted to say he was tired of guessing. So he did.
    “That’s exactly right,” she said with a frown, eyebrows raised. “A tattoo parlor. He doesn’t want to wait after that. He feels the situation is even more hopeless now, she’s getting more tattoos just like she said she would. But then he gets an idea and decides to wait anyway. When she finally comes back out, he lets her get a couple of blocks away, then he goes into the tattoo parlor himself.”
    This surprised Jacob, for some reason.
    “He speaks to the tattooist, says he’s a friend of the girl with the ocean on her back. Describes her perfectly as well as her tattoos. Says he admires the guy’s work and was wondering how long it would take to finish up what she has planned. Believe it or not, his sister—who of course doesn’t exist—wants to have something similar done. That’s what he tells him. So the guy says that, based on her new request, it should take about 5 more sessions. The guy says she’s going all out, going all the way and in a hurry to get it all done. Even the goddamn tattooist is freaked out by her commitment.”
    “Poor kid,” he said.
    Miriam snorted. “Exactly! That’s what you’re supposed to think, and why not. He just got hit over the head with confirmation that she definitely ain’t the one for him and he needs to just move on.”
    Her cellphone rang again. She picked it up without saying anything. “Call me in a few days,” she said after a few moments. Then she looked at Jacob. “Call me tomorrow,” she said and sighed and hung up.
    They watched each other in frightened triumph.
    “Sorry about that,” said Miriam, looking helpless. “Do you want me to finish? You don’t gotta say yes just because it’s Tony.”
    “Are we near the end?”
    “Yes,” she said, sounding suddenly sick. “We are.”
    “Finish.”
    “Well, this part I don’t like so much. It’s not cute bullshit, but bullshit bullshit. You remember those movies with Molly Ringwald? Sixteen Candles and, like, five others?”
    Jacob told her he remembered them well, he was both proud and sorry to say.
    “Well, thanks to Renny, so do I. And in half those movies, you got a boy and girl who’d been best friends since they were in diapers. Somehow one falls in love with the other as soon as the diaper comes off, but years go by and the other is completely goddamn clueless the whole time. Then, in high school the wrong guy, or girl, steps in and hilarity and heartbreak ensues. Then, in the last five minutes our brokenhearted dumbass realizes that this longtime best pal is actually their soul mate...and maybe they themselves knew it all along? Puh-lease.”
    “So our guy has a readymade soul mate to take the sting out of losing tattoo lady? What was she, a lifelong neighbor?”
    She giggled. “What else? Lived in the apartment down the hall from him. Isn’t that convenient as all hell! Except—and I gotta give Tony credit here—it’s not the end. You think you’re getting some nice gooey conclusion out of left field, but the real end is what sells it. Remember the tattooist said the girl had 5 more sessions to finish what she wanted done. 5 days. And that shit takes time to heal, right? So a couple of weeks later, she’s waiting for him after school. He hasn’t seen or spoken to her in all that time. But there she is, and she wants to talk. Wants to show him something.”
    “Let me guess—nevermind.”
    “It’s not what you think. Trust me. So they walk over to Alice Tully Hall. Where it all began. There’s a stairway nearby that leads to the subway. She takes him down there and waits until there’s no one going up or down. Once they’re alone, she lifts her shirt.” She grinned, savoring the moment. When he looked sufficiently hungry, she said: “Nothing.”
    This did not surprise Jacob, for some reason. “She had it all removed.”
    “No,” said Miriam flatly. “You don’t go to a tattoo parlor to get shit removed. That’s surgery. With lasers. Remember how when the kid first saw her back, it looked like a fish tank to him—well, let’s just say she had the tank filled. Instead of an assortment of fish, she chose just one thing.”
    He looked first amazed, then disappointed. “What? His face?”
    She shook her head. “Sand.”
    He closed his eyes. “Of course. Perfectly flesh-colored, right? Probably couldn’t even tell unless you saw it up close, right?”
    She nodded once. “It’s part of the ocean, she tells him happily. And if the ocean were packed solid with sand, then everybody could walk on water. And we’d all be closer to Jesus.”
    Jacob sat back in his chair and breathed. “So she loves him and she’s crazy,” he said and squinted at the floor. “It’s bittersweet.”
    “It’s a Twilight Zone, is what it is. It’s just irony, signed and sealed. Approved and stamped. At the last minute Tony throws in the devoted neighbor girl and then hits us with tattoo lady’s wacky religious excuse to appease the guy—or herself—and boom, the curtain closes.”
    “That’s the end?”
    “Yes. Well, no—the very end is him getting off at his station. An elevated platform, the kid lives somewhere in Queens. He’s walking along, alone, thinking he’s got a hard decision to make. It sucks that he’s gonna have to hurt somebody, but at the same time he feels like he’s walking on—”
    “Water?” he guessed.
    “Air,” she said, smiling. “Yeah, I know. I call that irony lite.”
    He was staring down, with his mouth ajar, at the floor. “So that’s Tony. That’s where he is. Good for him, then.”
    Miriam arched her back. “Yeah, he’ll be okay, I think. He can only get better, right?”
    “Tell him that next time you see him.”
    “No one much comes around. Too depressing. I told you.”
    “Someone was just here. Remember that guy, what was his—Manny! He said—”
    “That don’t count. Trust me. That’s no visitor, that’s a goddamn nuisance,” she said, looking lonely and unsatisfied.
    “What about Renny?”
    There was a resounding silence.
    “He’s decaying. Getting...dreamy. Up here.” She tapped her forehead with her index finger and Jacob looked away, knowing what it would call to mind. Knowing she knew. “He’s taking chances he never did before. Look what happened to you.”
    Her room seemed suddenly unreal in the yellow light coming from the window. The rain had stopped at some point during Tony’s story, and now the sun was out, beautiful and in control. He raised his hands and dropped them helplessly. “That was my own fault.”
    “The hell it was!” she said hoarsely. “Cops were crawling all over the place. You know why? Because the disturbance that was supposed to distract them from what you were doing hit twenty minutes early. You had time to drop off the stuff but before you could unload the piece, they had already finished dealing with Renny’s diversion. Jumping the gun just like he did with those damn relay races in school. Fucking embarrassment that was. That—and this. My child.”
    She convinced him. Seeing Renny wasn’t going to do any good.
    “It wasn’t your fault, kiddo.”
    “Okay,” he said.
    “Know that.”
    “I do,” he lied.
    “You know he shaves now? I’m talking about Tony.”
    He hesitated, then nodded. “He’s starting college. Of course he shaves.”
    “Except one side of his neck he goes with the grain, and the other side, against. He thinks it don’t make a difference, even though he looks like he’s been laying out at the beach with his entire body covered except half his neck. That’s what happens when you don’t have a man around.”
    “Gloria doesn’t tell him?”
    “Maybe she does. Probably she does, but he’s probably thinking what the hell does she know about it?”
    He almost said he would tell him. But he wouldn’t be seeing Tony either. “Someone will say something eventually,” he said.
    “Miss Miriam,” Manny called to her from the hallway. “Another visitor for you.”
    “Jesus H. Christ!”
    Jacob smiled. “Nobody comes around, huh?”
    “A lot of nobodies come around. But you?” She rose to her feet with an impatient sigh. “I’m glad you came. You were good for all of us.”
    He believed her and followed her lead. “Me too,” he said and stood up. They hugged briefly. At the door he said in a pensive voice, “If you filled the ocean with sand, wouldn’t that just make quicksand?”
    Miriam frowned and raised an eyebrow. “Maybe that’s why Columbia wouldn’t take him.”
    “Oh. I was wondering if he applied.”
    “Of course he did. He wanted to stay in the neighborhood, if possible.”
    He said, faltering, “The neighborhood. Right.”
    “Bye, kiddo.”
    “Goodbye.”
    The door closed gently and he started on his way out. In the waiting area by the entrance, he saw a middle-aged woman standing against a wall. He recognized her immediately. Margaret. He didn’t know who she was, nor did he want to guess anymore. Suddenly, his knees were shaking. He walked out before she could see him.
    A few minutes later, crossing the street at Amsterdam and 112^th Street, he looked up to see if the poster of Johnny Depp from Public Enemies was still in the third floor window of the brownstone there. It was. That meant no one had been using the apartment. Renny owned it but Jacob had been living in it for almost three years before his conviction. He took out his keys and opened the front door with confidence. He walked past the stairway and—for the first time since he had lived there—waited for the elevator. When he got to the apartment, he inserted his key into the lock and breathed. It turned.
    Inside, nothing at all had changed. It was a small studio, tastefully furnished. One wall was exposed brick which still pleased him. His bed was made, though the staleness of the sheets made him wince. He sat down and was about to reach under the mattress when something in the corner of the room caught his eye.
    An empty fish tank. Forty gallons, unused.
    The idea to start a saltwater aquarium came about a year and a half ago. One day he had seen a display in a store window, a brightly lit 55 gallon tank filled with angels, clowns, gobies, tangs, dragonets, hatchets, wrasse and danios, and he had been struck by the possibility of awakening daily to something beautiful that needed him. But Renny had been keeping him busy then, so he’d kept putting it off, figuring he wouldn’t be so active for much longer. In Renny’s—Miriam’s—business, people who made moves one right after the other usually didn’t last.
    I can’t trust his word or his
    (people)
    ways anymore.
    Now he got up from the bed and walked over to it, stepping on a roach on the way. He bent down and picked up the tank which was covered in a fine dust. He was about to blow on it, then stopped himself when he saw the mouse droppings inside. Instead, he went back to the bed and placed the empty tank next to him. He stared at it for a few minutes. Warring emotions crossed his face with no winner in sight.
    Then he reached under the mattress again and pulled out a Baby Eagle 9915R semi-automatic pistol. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He repositioned the fish tank on the opposite end of the bed, away from him. Suddenly, he grabbed the pillow from underneath the sheet and placed it on the floor near the tank. If it fell, it should land on the pillow, he thought. Then he sat back down on the bed, aimed the pistol at his forehead, and fired.

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