“Do I have kids, Freedom?” She remembers my name this time. This makes me sad. I think of her son and daughter, the ones who come by only to raid her medicine cabinets and pillage her jewelry boxes. I warned them once, trying to do Mimi a favor, but it backfired. And now they never come by.
“No, Mimi. You don’t have kids.” I envy her ignorance. There is a piano in her bedroom, the only room with the space in the apartment to hold it. And despite the dementia, she can always remember the right notes to play. I lead her to the bench, an attempt to put her chaotic mind at ease, before she starts talking like a porn star, before the demons of dementia possess her head.
“Do you have children, Nessa?” I never told her my name was Nessa. She flips through a songbook like it’s written in hieroglyphics.
“Nessa … why did you call me Nessa?” I straddle the bench right next to her.
“Who is Nessa? You’re Freedom.” There’s no use asking her anymore. She has the attention span of a tsetse fly, not her fault. But I thought I was more careful than that around her. When did I slip? Twenty bucks says it was some night when I was striding the apartment’s balcony in a drunken stupor. I’m Nessa Delaney! I let it go. The ringing from her head catches my attention once more. I help the hearing aid out of the side of her skull and speak loudly to her.
“I’ll pick up some batteries from the pharmacist this afternoon.” I flip through the pages until we get to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I put the book upside down on the music stand, for no other reason than selfish entertainment on my part. But Mimi impresses me. She plays it by ear, and I have to wonder how much of it she can actually hear. I take advantage of the somber melody and her deafness.
“You know, Mimi. There will be a day when I am gone, and that day will come before yours. And I’ll not be here to clean the eggs from the stove and to get you new hearing-aid batteries. And it saddens me, to imagine you dying in this home because you won’t know what the sound of the smoke alarm indicates.” I watch her hands create perfect sounds. In my head, I ask God that Mimi takes the whole apartment complex with her. And then I turn to the side of her face. “And when I lie dying next door after swallowing my suicide jar, I promise to think of you. Because I believe you were a good person, a good person who deserved better than what you got in this life. A kind soul, you were. And in some ways, I think you should consider the dementia a blessing. What I wouldn’t give not to remember anything about my life. And after the paramedics take me away, I take comfort in knowing that you will never think of me again, despite me being your only friend in this world.” The music fades with a few of the same notes interrupting the silence. Her hands curl into weak fists down to her lap.
“Would you care to have a cup of coffee with me, Freedom?” Mimi smiles. I appreciate her charm. “We can find that George Clooney on The Weather Channel, if we watch closely.”
“I’d like that.”
My name is Freedom and there’s barely room at the Whammy Bar to stick out my chest. Long, gray beards spotted with beer foam protrude from black leather biker jackets. Jailhouse tattoos with the Indian ink that fades to green. Pints of ale spill from the brims. Teeth rotted by crystal meth decorate the bar as they shout over the Allman Brothers Band and Pantera. A cloud of Pall Mall smoke inflates within the walls. And to my left, at the end of the bar, is Passion, though rare is the prostitute who uses her Christian name.
Passion gets stares from the bikers, and not because she’s a pro, but because she’s black; too many of the bikers don’t like black people. But Passion frequented the place long before it was a biker bar. She came with the HOT PIE, where she sets up shop in room number 12. And it’s that time of year when the air gets too cold and the hookers stroll in for a few minutes of warmth. They hide in the corners of the bar, though not for long after the men have a few rounds. They shiver in their fishnets and hover over pots of French onion soup and cups of coffee.
Passion is good people. She’s ripe at fifty, the mother hen to the other runaways and coke-addicted pros. A gold tooth at the front of her smile always catches my attention from the corner of my eye. Her short curly hair and long blue nails emerge from a long and old white faux-fur coat. And even above the loud music, and I mean decibels hardly within the human threshold of volume, I swear I can hear her lick and smack that gold tooth with her tongue. She always smiles. She always looks like she has a secret you’re dying to know. She’s great company, smart and up-to-date on all the politics and science and literature and such, and so I love having her around, someone in Painter I can have an intelligent conversation with. Yes, the only sensible person in the state of Oregon is a whore. Life’s funny like that.
I have a minute to rest. I lean near Passion from my side of the bar. She stares into a newspaper and uses a plastic spoon to stir her bowl. She smells like spearmint gum, latex, and onion soup. There’s a chewed-up wad of gum on the tip of her nail as she eats.
“Obama this, Obama that.” She folds the newspaper away. She must be the only black person in America who hates Obama. For some reason this makes me like her more, because she’s not a conformist. I wipe down the same patch of bar over and over again as we discuss politics.
“Sure, put all the gun crimes in the headlines to back a gun ban. But what good will it do? The guns aren’t the problem.” She blows on her soup from silver lipstick and raises her voice to get a rise. “It’s these crazy-ass cracker white boys who are allowed to have them.” Anyone else might take offense to such a statement. I know she means nothing prejudicial about it.
“I tell you what,” she says as a fat biker named Gunsmoke with a blond receding hairline slams his glass on the bar.
“That nigger Obama ain’t taking my rights from me.”
“Relax, shugga, I didn’t vote for him neither.” She raises her glass to Gunsmoke, but he looks away. Passion and I share a smile. I go to the blond and take his mug to the draft taps. Foam falls from the Pabst Blue Ribbon faucet.
“Passion, would you watch the register?” Passion’s practically management here. “Gotta go switch cans in the basement.”
“You got it, honey.”
I slip my way through the crowd with a few iron elbows to the door beside the restrooms where it says “Employees Only.” The hallway smells like urine after a few courses of antibiotics and crack, the smell of sweet hay. Not that I’ve ever tried crack, but let’s not be naive.
I hold my breath. Beyond the door, a hallway in darkness. Overhead are caged lamps that flicker, dim graves to fruit flies that failed to follow the sweet fumes of liquor into the bar. The sound of the music from inside is muffled behind the walls. I walk slowly. I hate hallways, I’ve always hated hallways, especially dark ones. I focus on these lamps, and I’m reminded of an interrogation room back in New York. The hall expands. The space grows darker. The music becomes distant. And suddenly I’m back in that interrogation room twenty years ago. Before I was Freedom Oliver. Before I met the whippersnappers. Before I went crazy. Back when my name was Nessa Delaney.
* * *
“Nessa, be smart,” said one officer. He and his partner circled around me like buzzards. Their