Unfelt Smiles

I find inspirations and sources from everything around me. And I use them to enhance and feed my feverish but not original enough imagination. I only know I am driven and possessed with a desire to write, to tell stories so I don't have to kill myself. My telling stories is like an enacting of the drama from The Arabian Nights. I tell stories in order to postpone the termination of my own life. 

I am not unhappy or filled with anguish. Not really. I just find life quite absurd, devoid of meaning. And I am sometimes tired of trying to inject meaning into a meaningless existence. But I am getting ahead of myself. 

On the other hand I do think I am luckier than most. And as I get older, I even realize that I am not that stupid after all, not when compared with poorly reasoning, uninformed, selfish, lying, and cowardly blokes and blockheads I have met. Occasionally, however, I am pleased to run into somebody of similar intelligence and range of intellect as mine. Like yesterday, I met an ex-military intelligence officer who is now a lawyer. We had a lively, mutually satisfying conversation. I was pleased when he expressed admiration for my using a metaphor of "economic Frankensteins" to describe modern multi-national corporations. He said he had not heard of the term before. He queried about my vocation. I answered him and then talked about my avocation which is of course telling stories. Upon saying goodbye, he gave me his email address and told me to send him my latest story. So here it is. I pilfered, borrowed, and enhanced it from a story that I couldn't stop going back over and over again. A dumb and insensitive reader once asked me why I didn't write about my life experiences and why I didn't postulate about my own insights instead of copying somebody else's life experiences and insights. I heaved a heavy sigh and tried to stifle a yawn. I impatiently explained to the ignoramus that deep down human life experiences have universal application and relevance since humans are not really islands; we are all related and connected. Your joys and sorrows are mine also. I understand your pain and I share your celebration. Literature is the conduit  to bring us closer and to remind us that we are all the same, no matter how different and extreme some of us appear to be. Don't we all have flashes of extremity and irrationality going through our heads, but, unlike Jordan Delerian in the story below, we are strong enough to pull ourselves back from the edge of the abyss, instead of plunging head long into the vortex of destruction and self-destruction? We read literature so we could understand and perhaps identify and realize we are not really that alone in this world and life at the core is the struggle for survival against both external and internal forces. The realization that we all have to die someday throws us into an anguish because our finite existence highlights both the absurdity (lack of inherent meaning) of that existence and the need to justify why we go on living despite the fact we know our life will come to an end. I think the more sensitive and honest individuals among us grapple with that tension all their lives. In so doing, they eventually reach a conclusion that life has only meaning if they can overcome instinctive concerns and preoccupation with Self and pay more attention to the Other. In other words, Hell is not necessarily the Other, as Sartre asserted. We can reach Paradise here on earth if we truly love the Other, as we should. But enough of this extraneous lecturing and philosophizing bullshit, let's get to the story. But hey, lecture man, aren't our very lives stories in and of themselves? The way we walk, the words we use, the lies we try to foist on others, aren't they stories, too? Aren't they telling something about ourselves, unwittingly or not?

Two days ago, while Jordan Delerian was bludgeoning to death his two young children (a boy and a girl) after cutting the throat of his wife, I was sitting in Dr. Freuden's Sunny Side Geriatric Clinic in southern Florida with my father, who was just then temporarily at a loss for words. He had been trying to explain to the good doctor why he no longer felt comfortable being in the same room with his shadow. He'd said, If light can pass through the universe, why can't it pass through me? Dad's contention, as far as I could figure it out, was that light had a mind of its own and had taken to behaving arbitrarily in the last six months or so. After Dr. Freuden (German for joys, and has nothing to do with Sigmund Freud. The explanation is necessary as some dumb shit who read the draft of the story ignorantly made the false connection in a triumphant manner) clicked off his desk lamp, Dad took off his eyeshade, rubbed his rheumy eyes, and asked who I was. Freuden leaned back in his squeaky chair, cast me a glance, then gave me a wink. His wink annoyed me.

Freuden had diagnosed Dad with Alzheimer's. But Dad said he was merely closing shop. Still, he had his lucid moments. He was in and out, and he was hard to read. His expressions were often without nuance or blend. He was extremely angry, happy, or vacant. He could remember what he did on August 6, 1945, the day the bomb fell on Hiroshima (in bed with your Mom, busy making children), but not that he just turned on the gas without lighting the pilot light; which was why I had to move him into an all-electric, assisted-living facility. 

Jordan lifted the lifeless bodies of the children out of the bathtub and dried them off. He tucked them both into bed, pulled the sheets to their chins, covered their battered faces with the lace doilies from his daughter's vanity. He nestled cuddly toys next to their bodies. He choked back tears. Jordan decided to drive to the beach, stare at the ocean, clear his head. And then maybe surprise his parents by showing up early. He'd drive by Whole Foods and pick up lunch. He cleared the table, started the dishwasher, went up to the master bath, and hopped in the shower. 

I told Dad I was still Roberto, the same old Roberto. 
-Well, you look a little like my boy Roger.
-Roger was your bulldog.
-Like Rolando, I mean.
-Rolando is dead. So is Maria. I'm all you got.

Freuden had Dad take off his shirt---easier said than done---and climb up on the examining table. I turned the script toward the window light and read Willis's next speech. "It's like you're in ninth grade, and you die and go into high school. That's all death is." I was playing Willis Harris in the Gold Coast Theatre's production of Trailerville. Willis is a true believer. I'm not. It was one week till dress rehearsal. "Or maybe you're humming along in a big rig, and you see a long straightaway up ahead and you shift gears and jam that pedal, and just like that the hum of the engine's an octave higher. Dying's like that, like shifting into a higher gear." That was bullshit and baloney. When I first read the script about three weeks ago, I called my sister's former schoolmate back in the days when they were children. I knew her, too. I went to the same school. She is dying of some kind of woman cancer. I apologized to her for being nosy but I explained to her that I was going to be in a play and the character I was going to play was saying that Death was like the hum of a truck-tractor's going at a high gear and I wondered if that was she was feeling. Fuck, no, she said. Not at all. I am in fucking pain all the time and have to take high dosage of painkiller. I want to go right now. But I have no guts to kill myself. My children want me to go, too. I can see in their eyes. They are tired. Plus, they're looking forward to getting my money. And the son of a bitch that is my husband hardly talks to me. Dying is a drag. No fun at all. Let me tell you. Don't let anybody tell you differently. Make the most of your life while you're still healthy. Live. Have real sex. Don't masturbate. You've got to live life with a gusto, fill it to the brim. You should not masturbate your life away. Understand?

My cell phone vibrated. I looked at the number. It was from my friend, Detective Carlos Soledad of Miami Police Department. I excused myself and stepped out into the hall. 

Carlos had a situation in the Lakes subdivision. Three bodies, two weapons, one missing suspect, much blood. "I need you here. Roberto. Now."
-I'll have to take my Dad along.
-How's he doing?
-He's not himself.
-Ten minutes. 

I left Dad in the car. I opened the window and gave him a Fifteen Puzzle. I told him to slide the numbers around until they were in order.
-In order of importance?
-In numerical order.

I'm not a police officer. That morning I was a forensic consultant. Sometimes I work for lawyers who are trying to empanel the appropriate jury for their clients. Sometimes I sit in my office and help my own clients shape their lives into stories, so the lives finally make some sense. A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety. And that's when I call myself a therapist. And that's what it says on my business card: Roberto Wissai, MSW, Family and Individual Counseling. Carlos uses me, however, because I read minds, even if those minds are not present. I say I read minds, but that's not it really. I read faces and furniture. I look at a person, at his expressions, his gestures, his clothing, his home, and his possessions, and I can tell you what he is thinking. I've been always able to do it. Carlos calls me an intuitionist. Dr. Culebra at UM's Cognitive Thinking Lab tells me I have robust mirror neurons. I just look, I stare, I gaze, and I pay attention to what I see. I don't go to strip joints. Nothing to look there but loneliness and depression and unbridled commercialism.

Carlos showed me the framed wedding photo found on the slain wife's body. No, I said, I'd prefer not to see the victims. The photographer had posed the couple with Jordan's cheek applied to Carol's temple, and he'd canted the shot at a thirty-degree angle. I wondered what he saw that suggested the pressure and the slant. Jordan's smile was thin, yet wide, as wide as he knew was appropriate for the occasion and pleasing to the photographer. Adequate was unfelt. His eyes were eager, but slightly squinted. I guessed that the obvious accompanying brow lines had been Photoshopped out. You can't trust photos to tell you the truth anymore. Carol wore a diamond stud in her left ear and a thin silver necklace. She had a dimple on her right cheek, like she was used to smiling out of one side of her face. This ingrained unevenness suggested a lifetime of feigned emotion.

Jordan River Delerian was a thirty-five-year-old graduate of Florida State's College of Business Administration and the CEO of, and the creative force behind, Succeedingly Wealthy, Inc., a company that produced and sold motivational artwork. Like this photo of crashing waves on a rocky, forested coast, and beneath it, in case you think this is just an empty, if dramatic landscape, are Jordan's words: Sometimes amidst the waves of change, we find our true direction. Above his desk in his office at the back of the house hung his company's best-selling framed photo, a shot of a golf green in the brilliant light of early morning, dew still on the grass. The photo is titled Success, and beneath the photo, Jordan's inspiring words: Some people only dream of success...other folks get up early and work at it.

You can lie with your possessions, of course. I suppose we all do that a bit, leave thick books of Western Art on the coffee table, and hang a painting of Paris on the wall even if we have never set foot in the City of Lights. Jordan had lined his office bookshelf with the hundred-volume set from the Franklin Library of The Collected Works of the World's Greatest Writers, from Aesop to Thomas Wolfe. Each book has a gold decor on leather boards, gilt page edges, and a ribbon bookmark. None of the spines had been spoken; none of the pages in those volumes I checked had been thumbed.

The neatness of the office, the precise arrangements of items on Jordan's desk told me that he was a man with a firm handshake, a pumper, not a wrist grabber, a man who numbered his arguments, asked and answered his own questions, and was given to proverbial expression. Tucked inside the side rail of his mocha desk pad, a note on pink "while-you-were-out" message paper, presumably to himself: Stumbling isn't falling. I took a business card from the leather card holder. The S in Succeedingly was a dollar sign. 

Carlos handed me a sheet of lime-green stationery. "He left a note."

Jordan's writing was half print, half cursive. His words began with a flourish and ended with a flat line.

I killed the children. Five minutes of pain for a lifetime of suffering. I know that Jehovah will take care of my little ones in the next life. And if Jehovah is willing, I would love to see them again in the resurrection, to have my second chance. I don't plan to live much longer myself, not on this earth. I have come to hate this life and this unreasonable system of things. I have come to have no hope. I give you my wife, Carol, my honey, my precious love. Please take good care of her.

I told Carlos that no person who has ever tried to be honest for one second of his life could think like this.
Carlos said, He is deacon in his church.
-Of course he is. And he's probably a scoutmaster.
-Soccer coach.
-There you go.
-So you think the volunteer work is pretense? You don't think he's sincere?

I shook my head. "I think sincerity is his honesty. And I think you'd better find Mr. Delerian soon. He's not finished. The family was just a flourish. He'll kill again. My guess is he's killed before."

Back at the car, I nudged Dad awake, strapped him in his seat belt, cranked up the AC, and drove toward Federal Highway. I told Dad about the victims, omitting the gruesome details. He shrugged. "Life is nothing," said he.

-But it's all we have.
-Nothing's plenty for me.
-Did you finish your puzzle?
-The zero was missing.
-So what did you do?
-Killed some time. 

He picked up my script, fanned the pages, found a highlighted speech, and fed me my cue. "You want to lose her too?"
-"A man belongs with his family, Arliss. Where we came from, the elderly are not discarded like old rags."
-Are you listening to yourself?
-That's not in the script, Dad
-What was her name?
-Who?
-Your ex-wife.
-Laura. What about her?
-On my mind is all. You lost her. 
-She found someone else.
-So she's dead to you.

I dropped Dad at Clover House in North Miami, told him I'd pick him up on Sunday for the Marlins game.

On the way to rehearsal I took a chance. I took out Delerian's business card and called his cell. I told him who I was and said I was hoping he could design me a piece of art I could hang in my office. What I had in mind was one of those Hubble shots of distant space, maybe the one of the eagle nebula or some radiant spiral galaxy, and it'll say, I love the light for it shows me the way. I endure the dark for it shows me the stars. Something like that.

Jordan told his parents that the kid were swell, fit as the fiddle, never been better. He asked his mother to pass the tabouli. She told him to leave room for dessert, Carol's busy with the scrapbook project, he said. He told them when he was at the beach earlier he saw this cloud that looked like an angel. Did they see it, too? Like Michael the archangel. They hadn't seen it. What do you think it means? he said.
Rain, his father said.
Jordan said, He maketh the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.
Amen, his mother said.

Emotions don't lie, but you can lie about them. Of course, lying about them's not so easy. You're angry, but you say, I'm not angry, but then just for a moment, you draw your eyebrows down and together, flash those vertical wrinkles on your forehead, and press your lips together. Or maybe it's your body that leaks the truth. Your natural-born liar understands that everyone is watching his transpicuous face, and he knows an easy smile is the cleverest mask. Gestures, however, may belie that smile. He brushes a nonexistent piece of lint from his slacks, drum his fingers, leans forward. Lying is an art, like acting. It takes practice and talent to do it well. Like acting, some people should not even try lying because they are not good at it. It is downright embarrassing to see them at it. 

You can't command emotions to appear, but you can coax them, summon them. I learned that in acting class. Stanislavsky said if you move your hand in a tender way, you'll begin to experience tenderness. Change your expression and you change your nervous system. And you can use your life experiences and your remembered feelings to help you understand your character. Work from an aroused emotion back to the source of it. In other words, to lie on stage, you need to be honest with yourself.

Jordan Delerian asked his father Calbert to tie him on the cyclone fence in the backyard. Calbert smiled and turned on the TV. Let's Make a Deal was on. Jordan added that would be the best thing for all of us. Calbert told the contestant, a man in a hoop skirt and red baloney curls, to take just the cash and be happy with it. Cripes, he said, people don't know when they have it good. Jordan said, I have no way to control my stress. Jordan's mother said that she'd like to serve the dessert by the pool. Calbert said, Put on your sunscreen, Vernal. Jordan said, That way I won't fly away. Calbert said, What way? Tied to the fence with baling wire, Jordan said. And you'd better do it now.

While they ate, Jordan brought up the time his father caught him jacking off into a tube sock while he was watching Bewitched. His mother said now what she had said then. About Onan spilling his seed. And the thing which he did, displeased the Lord: wherefore He slew him also. Calbert said he couldn't remember what happened after he caught Jordan abusing himself, so Jordan reminded him. You took the TV cord off the old Motorola, plug and all, wet it, ran it through the sandbox, and put it in the freezer. Bringing back any memories, Dad? Then Mom filled a tub  with ice-cold water and had me sit in it. Then you had me stand naked in the kitchen; you took out the cord and whipped me with it. I've still got all the scars. Calbert said he wasn't proud, but it had to be done. You were committing an abominable sin, son. You were no better than a viper. And look how you've turned out. A success. A God-fearing, law-abiding man, a solid citizen, and a pillar of the community. You should thank me! Jordan poured his parents two glasses of sweet iced tea and proposed a toast to the discipline. Calbert said, You might want to try a little tough love with your own kids, Jordan. That grandson of mine has a sassy mouth on him.

Jordan talked while his parents dozed off. He'd dissolved six Ambien in their tea. He told them about how if you wanted to get away with killing anybody, you should kill them in a pool. Not that he was trying to get away with anything, you understand. Too late for that. Drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion, he said. It cannot be proven in an autopsy, cannot be disproved. 

Jordan explained to me how he had a crew in his office tearing up the place. So could we meet at your place? he said. That way he could take some measurements, note the color scheme, kill two birds with one stone. I gave him my address. That's over by the Fetish Box, isn't it? Yes, it is. Twenty minutes. 

Jordan pushed the office door open with his shoulder, and poked his grinning face into tge room. He held his iPhone to his ear, rolled his eyes, smiled at me, and told whomever he was speaking with or pretending to speak with that he'd get back to them with the figures ASAP. He scratched his nose. Okey-dokey. He nodded. Ciao!

He holstered his iPhone, clapped his hands, and stepped toward the desk where I sat. He said, "I pictured you bald, slight, with maybe a pitiful little mustache. Funny how a voice can fool you." He admired my autographed Marlins baseball, gripped it like he was pitching a curve. "Well, here we are, Mr. Wissai."

-Call me Roberto. All my friends do.
-I pegged you for a sociable guy.
-Except Carlos. He calls me Wisdom.
-And you call him the Jackal, I suppose.
-Have a seat, Mr. Delerian.

He pointed to the wall above the sofa. "We'll hang it there." He put his fists on his hips, swiveled and looked left, then right, looked at me, and shrugged. "No photos of the wife and the kiddies."
-No wife and kiddies, I'm afraid.
-Fag?
-Excuse me?
-Are you a faggot?
-That's an inappropriate question, Mr. Delerian.
-If you say so.
-But a revealing one.

He sat, crossed his legs, folded his hands behind his head, smiled, and I knew that he knew that I knew. "No kids." He clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Fruitless." He raised an eyebrow, stuck out his lower lip, and cocked his head. "No regrets, Wisdom?"
-Plenty.
He picked up the photo of Dad and me squinting into the sun at the News Cafe. "They fucked you up, didn't they?"
-Who?
-Your mom and dad.
-They did their best.
He smiled and aligned my Post-it note dispenser with my saucer of paper clips. Ordering his thoughts. He leaned back in his chair. I leaned back in mine.
He said, "I see what you're doing."
-You're a perceptive man
-Why didn't you call the cops?
-Who says I didn't?
-Your need makes you transparent. 
He steepled his fingers, brought them to his lips. "So what do we do now?"
-You tell me your story.
-And you process my behavior and feed it back to me.
-I listen.
-Why should I tell you my story?
-Why did you kill your family?
-Why not?
-Because it's barbaric, illegal, immoral..
-Insane?
-Did you think you'd get away with it?
-I already did, dipshit. 
He laughed. "They're dead." He put his face in his hands. "My parents had outlived their usefulness. They disgusted me. They smelled like rancid milk."
-How do you feel right now?
-Like I'm wasting my time. If you're looking for credible motivation, Wissai, you won't find it here.
-Every lie is a victory for you, isn't it?
-You want to make sense of this so badly, you'll believe anything I tell you so long as there's an element of horror and remorse. Am I right? You want the world to make sense, but it doesn't.
-It does if you bother.
-Most times nobody knows why they do anything.
-Most times they don't want to know.
-Don't you go to the movies? This is the twenty-first century, Roberto, the Age of Unreason. Kill someone in the morning; go to the theater at night. No reason, no resistance. Action is its own motivation. It's kind of funny if you think about it.

Delerian pulled a snub-nosed revolver out of a shoulder holster, said he bet I wasn't planning on this, and I told him he was right about that, and he told me he had nothing to lose, and I told him that I did. How on earth had I missed the signals? Had his lips narrowed while I blinked?  Did the pitch of his voice rise, not in deceit, but in anger? 

He said, "You know what's easy, Roberto? Lying to someone who wants to be lied to." He aimed the pistol at my heart and asked me if I was a religious man. I told him I was not. He said, "Too bad for you. You don't get saved."
-There's no salvation for you either, Delerian. Every child knows that this is our only life. Every pig knows it. Every snake. Just people like you who don't.
-People like me?
-People who feel the world has let them down, who can't imagine existence without their own presence.  Dishonest and essentially stupid people.
-The only honesty is a lie well acted.

I told him to put the gun down and let's talk. I said it like I was soothing a feisty dog.

Delerian picked up the Marlins baseball, lobbed it across the room, fired the pistol at it, and put a bullet through the window. "I suspect we don't have much time now." He pointed the gun at my face. I squeezed my eyes shut. I tried to breathe deeply to keep my heart from exploding out of my chest. I trembled and held onto my chair. I thought about my father waiting for me on Sunday, sitting with the cigarette-smoking attendants on the shady bench outside the Clover House lobby, tapping his foot, chewing his lip, trying to remember why the hell he was sitting there, and I understand without me around to fight for him, the health-care system would swallow him up, strap him to a bed in some some shadowy ward, and let him waste away. When they told him I was dead, would he know who they were talking about?

Delerian said, "Cat got your tongue?"
I thought if I could talk, maybe I could save my life, but in order to talk I'd have to think; only I couldn't think; I could only remember. I saw my brother Rolando and me, and we're six and shooting marbles with the neighborhood kids. One was cheating and grabbed Rolando's marbles and tried to run away and Rolando screaming "Roberto!" and I plunged forward, grabbed the thief by the waist and flung him down on the ground. 
 
Delerian said, "I called this game Meet Your Maker." He laughed. "Ten Mississippi,"' he said. "Nine..."
Rolando and I both clung to our mother. Dad was at work. Sister was at school. The neighborhood was on fire. We both cried. 
"Five Mississippi."

And I remember Mom and her temper and salty language. When she thought I was lying, she'd wash my mouth with soap and then put cayenne pepper in my mouth. Rolando called her The Beast. Rolando, who was my twin, who looked exactly like me, people said, but to me he was more handsome, who always knew how to make me laugh at the drop of a hat, who sadly fell into a life of drug addiction and robbed my parents blind, died in room 201 at the Pirate's Inn in Dania, beaten to death by his playmates with a studded mace and a stone war club. He was twenty-four.

I realized Delerian had stopped counting, and I waited and thought maybe I was dead already, that this dark stillness was life after life, that I'd been shot, that I'd been wrong about death too, and Willis had been right after all; there is no pain, no past, no present, no future, just the everything all at once, just a fleeting toward a resplendent and cleansing light, so I opened my eyes to see it, to let it wash over me, and I saw Delerian, who must have been waiting for this moment, with the muzzle of the gun in his mouth, saw him smile and wink. I reached for his arm, and he squeezed the trigger.


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 Afterword:

Most of the above words are taken from John Dufresne's The Timing of Unfelt Smiles. I added a few paragraphs here and there to spice things up, as if there wasn't enough spice and melodrama to choke up a horse. The story addresses a lot of issues that interest me:

1. Lying, acting, and the truth, including religious "truths" and assertions.
2. Child abuse and corporal punishment.
3. Meanings of life.
4. Violence.
5. Death.

The author might or might not quite have pulled it off in meshing all these themes into a cohesive, single, unitary message. But I felt he had a lot of perceptive observations. The conclusion was a bit predictable, though not unsatisfactory. I liked his minimalist style which was further enhanced by my condensing the narrative. In addition, I felt there was not a single false note in the story. To me, the author wrote it from the heart, trying to come to terms with the tension inside him. In real life, unfortunately, for the past two years there has seen a surge in false notes when certain people whom I happened to run into tried to rationalize their less than desirable personal traits as well as their political beliefs. I cannot help but compare myself with others in order to gauge where I stand. I hereby report in full recognition of the potential lack of objectivity, that the more people argue/debate with me, the more their dishonesty and propensity to strike false notes get more and more pronounced. I suppose in their zeal to prove their worth to the Other and to look for respect from the Other, certain individuals feel that they are always in the right even if hard evidence is brought to bear upon them, right in front of their eyes. Faced with presented evidence, the individuals turn a blind eye to them, and merrily continue their path of persistent disregard for truth and logic. Their attitude is very much like the adolescent  "reasoning ": "'I don't care what you say, I know I am right." They fall for the emotional trap that despite having no sense of honor nor a respect for truth and logic, they ironically crave for acceptance and respect from the Other. Ironically enough, instead earning respect, they earn mistrust and contempt. One cannot argue against facts. One can make assertions all day long, but if those assertions are not founded on facts and logic, they only invite contempt and dismay from the Other. And eventually the Other gives up reasoning with such individuals and walks away in complete contempt and silence. Silence is not necessarily synonymous with consent. It could be a realization of the futility of having a discussion with those who essentially have no respect for truth, for others, and even for themselves. The Vietnamese have a saying that it is fruitless to argue with those having an attitude of a garrulous old whore (ddi ~ gia mo^m). You can get a monkey out of the jungle, but you cannot get the jungle out of the monkey. Lack of self-respect has a myriad way to manifest itself, including an excessive chest-thumping of self-worth. A man who truly respects himself tends to be more quietly assertive and does respects facts and admits he is wrong if and when presented with evidence and reasoning to that effect. There is nothing wrong per se to admit one is erroneous in holding a certain view. It is the persistent clinging to an untenable view, despite all the contrary evidence, that tells the Other who one truly is and that deep down one suffers from feelings of insecurity and perhaps even self-contempt and hatred. Sadly, for those individuals afflicted with the malady, they fancy that they are "profound" and endowed with "original" thinking. 

Roberto Wissai