Motherless Brooklyn

“What’s that sign?” said Coney. He pointed with his glistening chin at the town house doorway. I looked.

“ ‘Yorkville Zendo,’ ” I read off the bronze plaque on the door, and my fevered brain processed the words and settled with interest on the odd one. “Eat me Zendo!” I muttered through clenched teeth.

Gilbert took it, rightly, as my way of puzzling over the unfamiliarity. “Yeah, what’s that Zendo? What’s that?”

“Maybe like Zen,” I said.

“I don’t know from that.”

“Zen like Buddhism,” I said. “Zen master, you know.”

“Zen master?”

“You know, like kung-fu master.”

“Hrrph,” said Coney.

And so after this brief turn at investigation we settled back into our complacent chewing. Of course after any talk my brain was busy with at least some low-level version of echolalia salad: Don’t know from Zendo, Ken-like Zung Fu, Feng Shui master, Fungo bastard, Zen masturbation, Eat me! But it didn’t require voicing, not now, not with White Castles to unscrew, inspect and devour. I was on my third. I fit it into my mouth, then glanced up at the doorway of One-oh-nine, jerking my head as if the building had been sneaking up on me. Coney and the other Minna Agency operatives loved doing stakeouts with me, since my compulsiveness forced me to eyeball the site or mark in question every thirty seconds or so, thereby saving them the trouble of swiveling their necks. A similar logic explained my popularity at wiretap parties-give me a key list of trigger words to listen for in a conversation and I’d think about nothing else, nearly jumping out of my clothes at hearing the slightest hint of one, while the same task invariably drew anyone else toward blissful sleep.

While I chewed on number three and monitored the uneventful Yorkville Zendo entrance my hands busily frisked the paper sack of Castles, counting to be sure I had three remaining. We’d purchased a bag of twelve, and not only did Coney know I had to have my six, he also knew he was pleasing me, tickling my Touretter2019;s obsessive-compulsive instincts, by matching my number with his own. Gilbert Coney was a big lug with a heart of gold, I guess. Or maybe he was just trainable. My tics and obsessions kept the other Minna Men amused, but also wore them out, made them weirdly compliant and complicit.

A woman turned from the sidewalk onto the stoop of the town house and went up to the door. Short dark hair, squarish glasses, that was all I saw before her back was to us. She wore a pea coat. Sworls of black hair at her neck, under the boyish haircut. Twenty-five maybe, or maybe eighteen.

“She’s going in,” said Coney.

“Look, she’s got a key,” I said.

“What’s Frank want us to do?”

“Just watch. Take a note. What time is it?”

Coney crumpled another Castle wrapper and pointed at the glove compartment. “You take a note. It’s six forty-five.”

I popped the compartment-the click-release of the plastic latch was a delicious hollow sound, which I knew I’d want to repeat, at least approximately-and found the small notebook inside. GIRL, I wrote, then crossed it out. WOMAN, HAIR, GLASSES, KEY. 6:45. The notes were to myself, since I only had to be able to report verbally to Minna. If that. For all we knew, he might want us out here to scare someone, or to wait for some delivery. I left the notebook beside the Castles on the seat between us and slapped the compartment door shut again, then delivered six redundant slaps to the same spot to ventilate my brain’s pressure by reproducing the hollow thump I’d liked. Six was a lucky number tonight, six burgers, six forty-five. So six slaps.

For me, counting and touching things and repeating words are all the same activity. Tourette’s is just one big lifetime of tag, really. The world (or my brain-same thing) appoints me it, again and again. So I tag back.

Can it do otherwise? If you’ve ever been it you know the answer.

“Boys” came the voice from the street side of the car, startling me and Coney both. “Frank,” I said.

It was Minna. He had his trench-coat collar up against the breeze, not quite cloaking his unshaven Robert-Ryan-in-Wild-Bunch grimace. He ducked down to the level of my window, as if he didn’t want to be seen from the Yorkville Zendo. Squeaky cabs rocking-horsed past over the pothole in the street behind him. I rolled down the window, then reached out compulsively and touched his left shoulder, a regular gesture he’d not bothered to acknowledge for-how long? Say, fifteen years now, since when I’d first begun manifesting the urge as a thirteen-year-old and reached out for his then twenty-five-year-old street punk’s bomber-jacketed shoulder. Fifteen years of taps and touches-if Frank Minna were a statue instead of flesh and blood I’ve have buffed that spot to a high shine, the way leagues of touri burnish the noses and toes of bronze martyrs in Italian churches.