You wake up in strange houses. Different ones every time. You have no idea where you are. You are naked, perhaps covered by a sheet, your body twisted into a ball. The smell of sex. But you’re alone. You have a headache. Sometimes there's money, sometimes there's other things: a package of prophylactics, a ball gag, a pair of handcuffs or a whip with delicate tendrils. Don’t let it scare you; it’s not what you think. That part I own. But keep in mind it’s on your behalf. You made me this way––turned me into a pervert and I’ve never had the chance to thank you for it.
Thank you.
There’s a mattress on the floor, but this isn’t some flophouse. This is an elegant, completely sophisticated space, the master bedroom of an up-scale mansion. It’s pristine. And empty. That’s right, look around, Joshua, what do you see? The same thing every time, right? You don’t know where you are, but there is a pattern. The houses are empty and for sale, different views out the windows, different architecture––mid-century modern, post-modern, post-and-beam, Spanish revival, Moorish, Hollywood noir, kitschy studio backlot, and just plain tasteless. These are places for the rich––estates with dollar signs all over them, the kind that realtors dream about, if they even dream at all.
It’s late in the day; outside the window the sun is already like a death ray, the type of sunlight reserved for the guilty of heart and the craven. Unfiltered for the uninnocent. Not a cloud in the hard dome above to soften the gaze of the panopticon eye.
Night creatures beware.
All around a diorama view of the skyline of Los Angeles––the spires of downtown, the lush canyons of the Hollywood Hills. You have entered the playground of celebrities, the rich, and people like me––the night-sharks that feed on the chum scooped from their coffers. How does it feel? Scary, for a person like you, I’m sure. But for a few seconds, you are still in the grip of sleep’s sweet nirvana, and are simply an animal alive in the world.
Look out the window; a realtor is coming up the walk with clients. Run, Josh, run. You put on your clothes that you don’t even recognize, something that you would never wear––aren’t you a Wallabee man, a Dockers-with-creases guy, a polo shirt-wearing geek? Find your cell phone––hurry!
You take the money. You're not stupid. Except lately there hasn't been any money.
Through the back door and into the street to call an Uber to take you away. To take you home. As always, you have to check to see where you are, find a street sign, an address.
And then you are in your safe little world––the Joshua world. But there’s another world–– the Tony world. I know them both. I’m the only one that knows them both, because I found it beneficial to do so. That’s how it happens for you and you only know that part of it. But I know the rest, and that’s why I’m talking to you now. Listen to me, please, listen to that voice in your head. I know you’re trying to kill me off, with the help of that vile psychiatrist. You want to destroy me and everything I represent to you, but let me tell you my story and perhaps you will reconsider. Things aren’t what they appear to be. Not by a long shot. And the shrink’s got something to do with that. But first, let me tell you what I know about you.
***
Josh is your name. It’s on the cellphone I use. It’s on the driver’s license in my wallet. There’s an address, so I know where you live. And there’s a business card so I know where you work. But I don't know them like you know them. I only know them in that fugue state we go into before you become me––the twilight zone of consciousness when we are both stirring in the shadows, but not fully realized. Sometimes I see it as a room with no windows, overstuffed furniture, and a massive chandelier, and sometime it’s a floating piece of time, which surprisingly looks like being inside a slinky with no beginning or end, uncoiling outward. I call it the grey zone––you probably have your own name for it. I feel like a sleepwalker, a being without sensory perception, a dreamer not yet fully awake. For a few moments we both go through the motions, but something is guiding us, and I’m pretty sure you have no idea of my presence, but I can feel you like a ghost slowly fading into the ether. And then, usually when I’m dressed in the clothes that make me, me, and I’m in the back of a taxi or Uber and heading into the nightscape of the city, I look up in the mirror and there I am––Tony. There’s that confident smile, that familiar look. Oh, I’m a handsome devil, with charisma to burn. And you, you are completely gone. I have no memory of you. None.
Then how, you might ask, how is it that I seem to be telling you your story? Good question, Josh. Good question. The answer has two parts to it. One is because of a man named Dom. I’ll tell you about him later. You’ll want to hear about him. He’s very important to everything that’s happened so far. And the other is the psychiatrist, Dr. Alexander. Between the two of them, they made me more aware of you, one because he followed you/me and told me about what he discovered, and the other because he brought me out of the shadows for his own twisted purposes. Between the two of them, this is what I’ve pieced together.
***
When you get home, you remember nothing except waking up in that strange, empty house. It’s another blackout, a segment of time you can’t account for. But that’s not unusual; it’s been going on for some time. Still, I’m sure it terrifies you, at least that’s the impression I get from Dr. Alexander––not because he told me, but because he’s broken down the wall between us, and I’ve been able to hear you talking to him. Not all of it, but some––the parts that lead up to my emergence, when he brings up your childhood, your monstrous mother, your disastrous home life.
Trauma, plain and simple, and I’m not without sympathy.
But I don’t feel like it’s part of me, even as I am tenderly cognizant of the fact that it is for these reasons that I exist. So excuse me if I can’t shed a tear for you.
There you are again, missing a piece of time, and because it has happened before, you do the same things. You count the money. And it’s a huge sum. Or it used to be. Right now, not so much, and of course, that’s part of the story too, but I’ll get to that later. Then you change clothes and often, you throw my clothes in the trash. You used to burn them in shame, take them out and douse them with gasoline and set them ablaze, but the neighbors thought you were some kind of Satanist so you quit.
Later you’ll put that money into the bank. And you do it in stages so as not to draw too much attention from the government. You’ll launder it through your business, the business I helped you set up, and the business I support with my winnings. I hope you consider that when the time comes. My money made you. My sins made your life better, don’t forget that. And what kind of business is it? Well, this is what I know from the intrepid Dom. You have a small, used record shop. Vinyl rules your world, and especially since it’s come back big in these last years. You specialize in the aficionados of analog, those whose souls vibrate to the rounded sine wave, the sonic luddites who will talk forever about some obscure jazz musician before the digital age. Many of them are Japanese businessmen, the kind of guys that thrill to the smooth jazz of the early seventies––Joe Henderson, Grover Washington Jr., Dave Grusin. And you’re right there with them, making suggestions and introducing them to the rarest, oh, the very rarest of recordings. And they shovel out the cash, but it’s still hard to make a profit. Why? Because you buy too much––you are a collector first and a businessman second. These are Dom’s observations, but I kind of knew about it, because that passion you feel for your work has echoes in my own vocational expertise. Yes, we are alike in some small ways.
Besides the shop and all things vinyl you live a cloistered life. You have acquaintances, not friends: Norris, your Armenian landlord that drives too fast and curses in five languages, Tobias True that used to play the flugelhorn in a jazz band and now gets around in a wheelchair, Terrence the homeless soul that often sleeps in your vestibule after you close, and a few diehard customers––older, white, eccentric, and useless, the kind of men that have been with us in every era and could be interchanged with the same group 20 years in the future or 20 years in the past without causing even the slightest disturbance. In musical terms think of them as the signal-to-noise ratio of any recording. They are the “noise,” the baseline of existence that we use to measure our lives. You like it like that. Don’t let anyone too close, otherwise there’d be questions ––question about the missing time, the blackouts, and the money.
Notice what else is missing? Sure, you do, Josh. They are all male. No women. Not one. It’s not that women don’t like you they do. And they are around. Everywhere. This is Hollywood after all, and attractive women flood the place like migrating birds, their flamboyant plumage in full display. There’s Lulu who lives in a state of half-nakedness with the curtain-less window across the courtyard, and Rebecca in the yoga pants that jogs in the street past your shop, and Samantha with the pointy nipples and tattoos who could probably beat you arm wrestling, and the poor waif with the slender bow-legs that sells roses to the customers at the restaurants and cafes up and down the street. Even Zee, the postwoman, is a looker, with glistening dark skin and thickly lashed eyes. They are sweet to you, aren’t they, Josh? They pet you like a dog––like you’d stroke a house cat. They think you’re cute. And it fills you with agony. Anything connected to sex fills you with shame and dread. Nothing you can do about it. From what I’ve heard in Dr. Alexander’s sessions, I owe my existence to these women. They are the trigger that brings me to life.
Thank you, ladies.
It was Dr. Alexander’s ad that sucked you in. The one on TV. That one got to you because it hit so close to home. “Do you wake up and not know where you are,” the voice over intones. “Do you have memory lapses?” The visuals are a bit cheesy, but they get the point across––a person that’s lost control of their life. Of course, Dr. Alexander is talking about people with drinking or substance abuse problems, not what ails you. But you didn’t know that. So you went to see him at his posh facilities in Malibu, the one that all the celebrities go to––part spa, part boot camp, part cult, perfectly designed to bring them in, send them out, and reel them in again. Failure was the norm according to Dom’s calculation, but he’s a bit of a cynic when it comes to things like that. Nobody is going to tinker with his psyche; it had taken years to perfect his sociopathic tendencies.
My guess is that as soon as the good doc started questioning you and figured out you didn’t have a drinking problem, he began to have deep thoughts about the true nature of your affliction. And being a cunning soul, with years of experience separating wealthy drunks from their money, he ran those suspicions to ground with a bit of hypnosis and incisive questioning. He soon ascertained that you were suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. And that’s how he met me.
***
Everything I’ve related to you so far is mostly secondhand with touchstones of insight that I have gleaned from your shadowy presence when the hard line between us was frayed. This next part I can attest to from firsthand experience and, believe me, it was disorienting. I wasn’t happy to be sitting in your pathetic clothes in a plush soundproof office facing the ferret-faced Dr. Alexander. But there I was and the shock and surprise I saw on his face only made it worse. He was at first a bit skeptical, and his demands that I quit playacting or screwing around, were downright insulting. But he soon became a believer. Smart fella. And that’s where I got myself into trouble, Josh. When he asked me, several sessions later, if I’d kill his wife for him, I said yes. Of course, it was because of the money, but it was also because of something else. If I’m going be honest with myself, I said yes because I wanted to prove that I was completely independent of you. And what could be more dramatic than murder? Killing his wife was like killing you off. Completely crazy of course, because in my heart I knew that you created me, and only you could keep me alive. Big mistake.
Okay, that’s your story. Here’s mine:
***
I’m a gambler. A card man. Poker, mostly Texas hold 'em, but I'm adept at them all. No, I don't go to Vegas or play in big tournaments. Don’t have to. My bailiwick is the underground card games of Hollywood. And there’s more than a few. With a little luck I hooked up with a sharp-eyed beauty named Janice. Janice had the whole thing down. Her daddy is a realtor to the stars and to anyone else with the kind of money for a down payment that most people would only make in a lifetime of work. All those oversized houses scattered across the hills and canyons of the Hollywood hills like glistening jewels, were his stalking grounds. The “For Sale” signs went up and the rubes poured in and walked the bare rooms at Open Houses, while he plied them with champagne and foie gras, and checked their bank accounts online. And then they cleared out and Janice would work her magic.
The thing about a floating card game as that it has to float. And that was hard. Sooner or later, whether it was a hotel suite, or a private house, someone gets greedy or tells the wrong people, and LAPD would shut you down. But these were empty houses that the realtor had temporary control over. He was the seller, he staged them and dressed them up and unlocked the doors and closed them up at night.
Janice had a team that could transform a house into a decadent gambling den in a matter of hours. This is something I’m quite sure you couldn’t do anywhere else in the world, and the reason is––movies. Hollywood is replete with master craftsmen of illusion. All the talent you might need to create a world that is alluring and just believable enough to seduce and beguile is at your fingertips––from the art directors, to the set dressers, to the caterers, to the drivers. Move everything in, move it out––it’s the operating principle of moviemaking that uses a veritable cornucopia of talent and expertise. Instant meals, drinks on demand, and creature comforts on the fly are all part of the purview of a good movie set. After all, they have to pamper stars and executives and the crew, so why can’t they make a gambler feel at home?
Show up at Janice’s card game with a pocket full of money, and you could get a drink, something delicious to eat served by a statuesque beauty, and even a shoulder rub or more if it was the right pair of shoulders. Meaning, of course, the celebs. They were Janice’s mark, her bread and butter, her ticket to a jet stream of money. The celebs, most of them actors, but occasionally a sports figure or two, were the perfect combination of hubris, entitlement, and wealth. They had enough money that they could be stupid about it, and in general were not skillful poker players. The concentration wasn’t there, and that was before the free drinks Janice plied them with. Janice had the touch, she knew how to play them, to flatter and cajole, and to make them feel as if their presence was the magic elixir to a good time. They paid handsomely to be there and then paid again when I took their money. And they just sucked it up, thinking that all of us were anteing up the same amount, when actually it was only the celebs. The true card sharks played for free and kicked it back to the house. Why do you think we were grinning at them with such alacrity and glee? Did they ever sense that the comradery we offered was all a ruse? Probably not. That same elixir makes you lose touch with reality, and nobody’s there to give you a heads up because, as I said, the water was boiling with blood and the sharks were feeding.
I realize I’m not painting a pretty picture, but the truth is the glamor of it gets under your skin ––the money, the babes, the booze, the free flow of drugs, and just the fact that you were rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names in the business has a hypnotic effect. Nights could shuttle past in a blur. The sour taste on your tongue at dawn morphs into the adrenaline rush of a pair of aces and king high winning the pot the next night, and the mournful look on some young and pampered leading man’s face as he realizes that there are no do-overs, no second takes, no army of handlers that can change things. It’s a naked death when the cards go down, a comeuppance that most people might learn from. But not these guys (and they were all guys), no, it all went away with the next deal, a dreamland of expectations as vast and capacious as the belief that their success was built upon their superior talent and skill.
What can I say, not a noble livelihood, not even a respectable one, but still a life that on a nightly basis could bring the kind of drama and adventure that I craved. It’s the action that counts, the surface of buzz of it all, the feeling of a single night stretching on forever and your fate hovering before you, resplendent and tantalizing and doomed.
I’m telling you this so you’ll know what we shared, because I can’t believe any of it touched you, and I want you to know that there was value and great excitement in my world, something I feel you were short of in yours. But I digress.
They point of this incantation is to show you how you’ve been deceived and abused by Dr. Alexander and to reveal to you how my own small sliver of your life became compromised.
***
I was gliding along in this world and doing quite well, with very few worries and cares. That’s just the way I operate; I’m an in-the-moment man, not prone to contemplation or self-reflection. Janice, in this regard, was the perfect girlfriend if you want to call it that. She liked the money I brought in, and liked the fact that I seemed to have no desire to see her beyond the nights we shared after a successful game. Janice was not a relationship girl, and wanted sex when she wanted it and the way she wanted it. I told you about the sex toys and we don’t need to delve any deeper. Suffice to say that Janice liked me to enter her when her butt cheeks were still glowing and I was a worthy servant to her needs.
It was Dom who changed the paradigm of my existence, and not in a good way, even though his intentions were never meant to be hostile or damaging. It was simply a part of his job. He provided security at the games, made sure nobody brought in weapons, no one threatened anyone else, and that everybody, no matter how inebriated, got home safe. He was smooth and discreet, but you got the feeling that if he wanted, he could kill you and feed you to the coyotes and never lose a night’s sleep. Nobody messed with Dom or any of his crew. They felt just dangerous enough to keep everyone in line. But he also ran security checks on people, online and otherwise, because it was his job to know who was at the games.
And that’s when I came into his crosshairs. I preceded him at the games, and I was Janice’s boyfriend, so it took awhile for him to check me out. But at some point, he began to ask me questions. We’d be sitting at the bar, winding down, and he’d engage me in conversation, and do it in a way that didn't feel like an interrogation. I ran into trouble almost immediately. Why? Because I didn’t have a lot to tell him. My life consisted of a taxi ride and a destination. A card game and violent sex. A drift into dreamland and then to awake in another taxi drive into the night. As you can imagine this didn’t sound normal to him. I didn’t tell him this in so many words, but he began to suspect that the Tony he wasn’t talking to wasn’t the whole story.
So, he had me followed by one of his goons and that’s when he discovered you, Josh, and your pathetic life, and your visits to Dr. Alexander. But there was a period of time before that, before you began your therapy where Dom, very gently and not in an accusatory way, began to fill me in. I think he liked me and wasn’t about to upset Janice with his discoveries, so he cautiously, and with great tact, told me I was two people and outlined my life to me, or at least your life. It wasn’t a total shock––no, I’d had glimmers and flashes of this other existence, but it was deeply troubling. And even worse, the corollary of it was that I lost my touch at cards. Poker is built on confidence and the ability to ride out uncertainty. With these new revelations my confidence was shattered and my luck evaporated. Now I was as hapless as the dumbshit celebs and the winnings started to dry up. Janice cut me some slack and loaned me money, but the whole situations was untenable. I needed to fix things.
***
So, I told you about popping up in Dr. Alexander’s office, and how we had a chat. Well, this went on, session after session, until one day, he asked me to kill his wife and offered me a shit ton of money to do it. The irony of it was that his wife was seeing a famous but fading older actor––he, of the big dick and tiny soul. There’s a gallery of drunk-driving mug shots of him in every state. It was the best thing that could happen to any cop that pulled him over, because they would have endless funny and cringe-worthy anecdotes they could tell around backyard barbecues, or family get-togethers. This actor had checked into the clinic and checked out with the Dr. Alexander’s wife as his conquest. Dom’s take on all this was that it was no surprise––Dr. Alexander’s only ability to attract a female was through his wallet, and wife number four was no exception. But this time, despite having a pre-nup, he wasn’t taking any chances––he was tired of parting with a small fortune every time the latest blissful union dissolved.
I should have seen this coming, should have realized that he was developing a relationship with me and not in a hurry to help you. But I liked shocking him with my stories and poking fun at your expense. I guess you could call it my revenge for my truncated life, to playing second fiddle to you. So, I said yes. He gave me half up front and that’s the half you woke up with one morning thinking that whatever had happened, the money was flowing again.
I was given instruction, their favorite shack-up haunts, and a time and a place I would probably find them alone. I would choose my time, and let him know so he could have a rock-solid alibi. All I needed was a weapon, and I turned to Dom for that. Dom gave me a small untraceable .38 that he had lying around and told me to practice firing it before I pointed it at a human.
Five days later the wife and the “actor who will remain unnamed,” were dead, shot while they slept in bed; Dr. Alexander ponied up the other half of the cash, and then got serious about curing you of your DID, to cover his tracks.
Yes, that’s right. I had not thought this through.
I was thinking that he was just taking your money by pretending to treat you, but it makes perfect sense now, in retrospect, that he wouldn’t want this deed hanging over his head. My existence was a threat to him and he was now hell-bent to erase me. Completely.
My dear Josh, it’s happening as we speak. I’ve heard him call it EMDR therapy. How it works I’m not sure of, but I have some awareness as to how it is practiced. He has you visualize the traumas in your life and then he makes you move your eyes around like you’re in REM sleep, and by using the curative powers of the unconscious mind, slowly integrates them into your conscious mind so that they lose all their power. But I’m in your unconscious mind, don’t you see, he’s sucking that power from me along with those terrible memories. Because you’ve got a lot of them it’s taking some time, but I can feel it working.
Oh boy, can I feel it working.
Tony hasn’t been set free in weeks, and the grey zone is getting smaller by the day. The chandelier fell from the ceiling, the walls are closing in, and yesterday I looked down and I was missing my foot and part of my shin. And it’s dark all the time now––an oppressive darkness that’s as thick as crushed velvet. I’m also afraid I’m going mute, perhaps my voice, that inner voice that I tantalized and tortured you with all these years has grown so faint that you barely even notice. I hope not. I need you to heed my words, to sound the alarm, to come to my rescue. Stop this madman from his shamanistic machinations.
Walk away. Walk away now, dear friend.
Okay…okay wait, how about this? Maybe this will change your mind? One last thing––I didn’t kill them. I just let you think that because I wanted to impress you. Tony couldn’t do it, because Josh couldn’t do it. It’s not our thing. I had the gun out, I had it pointed at them, and then I just ran away. Dom did it, several days later. He said it was a favor. But it was more than that, I’m guessing. One of these days Dr. Alexander is going to come out of his office and there in the waiting room, twiddling his thumbs, so to speak, will be Dom. And it’s at that point the good doctor will know something is up, because Dom doesn’t have the look of someone seeking psychotherapy. Not one bit. No, what he looks like is a Greek tragedy, the scorched earth variety, where the chorus has nothing pleasant to say. And then, if I’m imagining this correctly, Dr. Alexander is going to discover that paying alimony is a damn sight better than paying Dom. But that’s another story, as cheery as it may sound.
Hold it! This is not good. Not good at all. There go my arms. And now the slinky is expanding, expanding infinitely, and my heart has left my chest. It’s beating out there in the darkness all alone. I wish I could say you were going to miss me, but I won’t exist for you, not even in your memory. The voice is going, the body disintegrating, the eyes blind to the tiny piece of the world I have left.
One more last thing. At some point you are going to cross paths with Janice. I just know it. She’s going to recognize you and you are going to deny that your name is Tony. But it won’t stop there, because she’s going to give you a deck of cards and you’re going to handle them like a pro, and she’s going to smile, because she will know that the two of you are going to change each other’s lives––for the better, Josh, for the better! And if I leave you anything, perhaps I can leave you that.
Wait, I say! Please? Listen to me. Can you still hear me? Can you? Hello…