Neal Pollack

In 1990, as it happened, I torched a service station, a blaze that singed the eyebrows of many a bystander when it got to the main gas tanks, and did time for it. In 1995 I got out and lit up the prison itself, which ain’t here in the record, but I did do it. I’m liberal with history, you might say; the details are there to be eaten and spit back out however you like. They run television commercials about people like me, and usually there is some woman whose voice is overrun with that of a man, and she looks very silly sitting in her posh kitchen at a polished-titanium table talking about the booze and whores she'’s gonna buy on the vacation she’'s gonna take to Tijuana on her stolen credit card. I ain’t in it for cash reasons, though. Money corrupts absolutely, to modify the old phrase. You might ask Tristam about that one. With me it’s more in the blood, you know.

I found a seat finally and just when I got relaxed an old bum strode by and knocked my legs. He was passing out badly reproduced leaflets on which were printed the Lord’s Prayer. The old son of a bitch stopped just by me and wailed on about the anointed cloths he was gonna give out to anyone with any bit of change whatsoever. He yelled through the bus, erupting brash and ugly in the center of this morning commute. Everyone ignored him but me. I could be him too, and was excited at the prospect for the moment, for I knew there would come a day when the pilot stumbled upon the fate of all gadgets of its kind, broke, and left me hanging with a story I couldn'’t play for keeps. I needed another option.

I asked the bum his name. He looked a little like me. He stopped his sermon and turned my way, his eyes going wide.

“My name is your name, Jehovah,” he said, which I promptly keyed into the pilot. “Jehovah,” the old bum repeated.

The bus slammed to a hard stop, the vagrant swaying with the tide. Yeah, I could be this guy.

“Last name, social security,” I said.

The bum’s eyes shot wider still, and he broke into the prayer on his mangled photocopied leaflets, holding one up close to his farsighted eyes and shuttling out the rear door in the same motion, midsentence, at Larrabee. On his way out he dropped one of those “anointed cloths” he was talking about. It was bright-blue, a pretty picture against the ribbed black rubber of the floor. Before anyone else could get his or her hands on it, I jumped. It’s a holy day, I figured. I remained standing in honor.

They were gutting the old Montgomery Ward building at the time, turning the commercial space into luxury condos. I looked out the bus windows from my spot and saw straight through the twenty-and-some floors of the monstrosity. Can’t break a structure that solid, been standing much too long now, and the developers figured it to go the route of the rest of the neighborhood south of Chicago this far east since the retailer shut down, absolutely fucking filthy rich. It wouldn'’t necessarily work out: On the north side of the street of course sat the outer edge of Cabrini-Green, the miniscule streets dead-ending before Chicago Avenue in cul-de-sacs, the single-story brick boxes reminding me of projects in cities much smaller. Say Charlotte, Atlanta. Long time since I'’d seen those places.

I could be Jehovah or any other body. Not like there was someone to tell me different. I got off the bus at State and trekked it two blocks south to the clinic for my checkup, then down to the old-school pharmacy on Superior to refill my many prescriptions. I left feeling truly like a savior in spite of the name on my health card. Arcadia I am not. I pulled the blue cloth from my pocket and brought it to my nose. It smelled like the bum, stale and musty, slightly sour with sweat and urban rot. But hidden deep in that stink was a sweet flower blossoming.

My prescriptions took up a ten-page stack of printouts from the doctor’s computer. The pills came prepared in a plastic, everything plastic, slotted box, one small compartment to correspond to each day of the coming month. I don’t know how I managed to keep up with them, Jehovah the meek, the persecuted, the resolute, the vigilant. I gazed up at the time on a digital display clock outside the Holy Name Cathedral, then at my plastic, everything plastic, watch and made my way to the next meeting, muscling to the back of the bus, pilot switched off in my little drug bag. Today, I would need it no more. My name was secure.