Chapter 15

The Last Day

11:31:51 p.m.

The diner door quivered in the near gale. Twice it started to open. Each time it failed to complete the task. The steel workers laughed and hollered, "Come in already, Carl!" Every night at approximately eleven forty-five, Carl Rhodes walked fourteen blocks to the diner, then waivered for a few moments, unsure whether to enter or return home. He often tried the door, hoping it wouldn't open. Carl believed that if his warped concept of God didn't want him here, the door would simply refuse him entrance. The regulars were so used to Carl's frustrating condition that they simply hollered for him to open the door and come in.

Though he was agonizingly annoying, he had a childlike quality that sometimes caused people to think mistakenly that they could relate to him and help him live a more normal existence.

There was no chance.

Carl was and would always be one of the most intelligent idiots that ever lived. Besides his cornucopia of neurotic personality defects, he was host to a textbook of psychiatric complaints.

The world really was out to get Carl. The voices WERE talking only to him. Many thought Mr. Murphy must have known Carl personally, because everything seemed to go wrong for him.

He was one of the unlovable. He often turned on those who gave the most to his welfare. Sometimes his tirades would lead to fits of uncontrollable tears, wild gyrations, and chaotic outbursts.

Carl was ... unusual. His black coat matched his hair and shoes. (Carl always wore a black toupee that the other diner patrons referred to as "Hair by Monsanto," suggesting that Carl's hairstyle used more petroleum than most cars.)

Carl thought his black shoes rendered him invisible. Invisible meant safe, and Carl lived for safety. The owner of a serious case of agoraphobia, Carl rarely ventured out and when he did, it was usually to a destination where he felt safe.

Last Chance was one of the places where Carl felt he could cope. The people there had far better targets than his overweight, bald, and grotesquely out of shape body. His coke bottle lens glasses and rumpled clothing gave him a high school, nerdy kind of look.

His ever-present body odor and his obsessive use of hand sanitizer, coupled with a compulsive need to "explain" things, made even the most tolerant Last Chance customer grind his teeth. That allowed him pretty much to be left out of conversations and to stay safely invisible.

Carl had won a disability award in 1978. Due to his uncontrollable personal habits, it was impossible for him to hold a job. He had spent the intervening decades hoping for relief and dreaming of a world where he felt safe. Most people with whom he had shared his vision for a safe world instantly and correctly diagnosed him as a serious but harmless mental case.

He had never had a chance in life. Being born black with an astounding artistic talent, he possessed an IQ in the high one-seventies. That made many wonder with regret about the lost opportunities that could have come his way. A complete nervous wreck, he suffered life's minor indignities with all the aplomb of a bucking horse in a bad mood.

His fingernails were chewed halfway down to the first knuckle. His feet turned inward from a childhood malady that had been undiagnosed and untreated. Carl couldn't climb stairs. He feared heights so much that he often felt faint when forced to climb even a few steps.

He'd never had a romantic relationship, didn't know if he was gay, straight, neither, or both, and he wouldn't be capable of holding a conversation with a potential date under any circumstances. He was outrageously nervous, devoutly passionate about a religious dogma that no one could begin to understand, and so far out on the paranoid scale that anyone who made eye contact was thereby instantly deemed "unsafe."

Fight or flight was not even an option for Carl. Once the pathos of paranoia took hold, it most often outpaced his other compulsions. Those merely caused him to break into uncontrollable sweats, speak so fast you might mistake it for incoherent babbling, and shake all over as if caught outside in frigid temperatures. More than one concerned citizen had called 911, thinking the young black man was having a heart attack.

Hospitals were high on Carl's list of unsafe places. He hated hospitals. THEY were in charge in hospitals. You lost control of yourself in hospitals. Others gave you medicine in hospitals. You had no privacy in hospitals.

In those instances when a concerned observer called for help, therefore, Carl always disappeared before help could arrive. He had a perfect record of avoiding hospitals ever since that first hospital stay, the one that had qualified him for disability status.

On this night, Carl was slinking quietly toward the far corner, away from Tiny and the taxi cab drivers. His usual booth was occupied by a rather unsettling and unsafe looking woman. Rather than brave the brutal cold by going back home, Carl chose to sit one booth removed from his regular spot and see whether he could look out the window and feel safe.

He knew taxi drivers were exposed to all kinds of unsafe people so the farther he could stay from them the better. The corner was brightly lit and he could watch the traffic, envious of those brave souls that faced the danger of automobiles and trains, not to mention aircraft.

Carl longed to go away, see the world, and find a place to settle down. He knew Bethlehem was not home but only where he was temporarily sentenced to live until things changed.