“Yeah, boss?”

  “Delphi wants to see you.”

  “Andy, have you been giving out this restaurant as your private address?” Delphi asked.

  She was seated behind an enormous ivory-colored desk but still she seemed like a giant.

  “No, ma’am, I’d never do anything like that.”

  “Then what is this?”

  She held out a handmade envelope. It was about a foot square, made from cheap brown paper with tape all over the place. It was addressed to Andrew Percy Piedmont c/o Porgy’s Restaurant.

  I hadn’t used the name Percy since before I was eight. That was my father’s father’s name and though it was on my birth certificate I never used it.

  “I can’t explain it Ms. Dartmore,” I said, taking the package. “I never told anybody where I worked.”

  “Okay then,” she said. “But you tell the people who sent this not to do it again.”

  I put the package in my carry bag, unopened. I didn’t have time for curiosity. It was time for me to get on that Chinese bus headed for Boston.

  I was on 69th Street past Madison when a man called out, “Hey, you, nigger.”

  I looked up at Carl the Killer. He had a pistol in his hand.

  Then I was in his head looking at me. A smile crossed my face and I had the anomalous feeling of wanting to kill myself and both enjoying and dreading the fact.

  “Bye,” I said along with Carl. He lifted the gun and suddenly a huge car screeched up between us. Men flooded out of the big black stretch limo and swarmed over the surprised killer.

  I didn’t see anything else with my eyes because I was running then, running hard. I ran for blocks seeing the nighttime streets upon which were superimposed the grim torture of Carl “the Killer” Randall in the back seat of his captors’ car.

  It was a deep surprise to me that Carl was so frightened. He tried to tough it out but somewhere after they punctured his left eye he gave in, pleaded with them to let him live. After the loss of his second eye he told them where the diamonds were.

  When they cut his throat he knew that he was dead. He was suddenly aware of my unwilling presence in his mind.

  “You fucking, nigger,” he said. “You killed me.”

  I was hunkered down in a doorway south of 42nd Street crying my eyes out. I felt death coming on. I died choking on my own blood.

  What was this power?

  I’d take solitary confinement at San Quentin any day of the week.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that I remembered the jury-rigged brown package. I had to cut it open with a knife because of all the tape.

  In it was the pair of glasses that the old man I’d met wore. And there was a note in lovely cursive script.

  Dear Mr. Piedmont,

  Excuse me for sending this letter to your place of work. I was worried that the broken mailbox at your place on 146th might be robbed. I’m sorry also that I have cursed you with the power you must have experienced by now. For many centuries this entity, this parasite, has lived moving from one soul to another absorbing the experiences of millions of human minds. What its purpose is I cannot say. I only know that it hungers for every vice and virtue, every quirk and inspiration it can have.

  I had to pass this power onto you otherwise it would have kept me aware even after death. It would have me in my coffin feeling the worms eating me away.

  These glasses will help somewhat. As long as you wear them the power inside you won’t enter just any soul you meet. Sometimes the power overwhelms the glasses however.

  Learn to live with it, Andrew.

  I have advanced cancer and soon I will be gone. I’ll probably be dead by the time you read this letter.

  Forgive me if you can, son.

  Estover Greely III

  That was three months ago. The experiences I have had since then have been exquisite and unspeakable. I have never been more alone or less afraid of death. The thing I fear now is life because I experience more in a week than most folks do in a lifetime. But I guess it could be worse. I meet people every day whose lives make mine seem like a newborn’s dream.

  SWITCHBACK

  A Brief Chapter on Monsters

  by ANN NOCENTI

  Little Mason is headless. It’s an awful moment of struggle, trying to contort the arms of a small child into a shirt. His right arm is crooked, caught in the long sleeve. The Mother yanks, forcing the pudgy little arm out. There are red marks from her nails on his pale flesh. Mason is still buried in the shirt, a squirming lump hidden in blue cloth, white clouds the shape of sheep float across his chest. That old “count the sheep fall asleep” shit on a T-shirt. The more innocent and saccharine the pattern, the more earnestly The Mother buys it, as if she’s fooling anybody. Mason’s still just a lump with one arm dangling, a few sprouts of hair sticking out the top like an unruly lawn. Undignified, for such a smart child. The Mother twists the other bent arm, forcing it out the left sleeve hole. Mimi watches, and hates her for it.

  Mimi is sixteen. Her lovely chestnut hair drips with streaks of vibrant red, like a cheap candy sunset streaking an otherwise natural hillside. She and her best friend Rachel conceived the hairstyle as an homage to Carrie. Her bluejean miniskirt is slung low on her hips, two bands of flesh flicker between its bottom hem and the top of her pink lace thigh-highs. Her T-shirt is tight and short, graffitied with a crypto-anarchist Buddhist design of her own incoherent making.

  Mason’s head finally pops out the top of the shirt. Big flop of vivid red hair no one else in the entire family tree has, a flashing red light that announces: Same Mom, Different Dad! Blotchy face from crying inside the shirt. But smiling now that he’s liberated from idiotic circumstance.

  They’re called toddlers. They toddle. Fall crawl drag grasp stand lurch droop fall. Like old drunks. Why don’t they make clothes gentler, Mimi wonders. Just soft cloth with easy Velcro or snaps to gently swaddle them into neat pain-free bundles. Why force those fat awkward limbs into the narrow tubes and tourniquets of adult-style clothes when they’re still drunk on milk and not ready for it. It’s every mother’s secret pleasure, that sharp twist of small arms yanked into shirts. Force those heads through too-small neck holes.

  Mimi sighs. Only so much time in the day to hate The Mother. Mimi’s a busy teenager. She’s got places to go, gum to chew, drugs to sell, instant messages to write.

  Her golden cell phone, slick as a waterbug, is twitching. It’s Rachel, texting:

  U kray-z.

  Duh.

  He a sick fuck.

  Sick fucks fuck good.

  U R sic. He shrinx heads.

  So. Mine needs it.

  The Mother tosses down two bowls two spoons, dumps cereal, sloshes milk.

  “Ma, I’m not hungry,” says Mimi, shoving the bowl away. This is the obligatory morning ritual of being chained to the breakfast table, ever glancing at the ticking clock that will send Warden Mother on her way to work. Even if they refuse to eat, it’s all her mother requires; that they sit for meals, as she often screams, “Like a goddamn ordinary family!” Like prison, mandatory meals in the mess hall, the rest of the day, suffer as you may.

  Mimi dips a finger into the sludge at the bottom of her coffee cup, smears a touch of brown on her eyelids, under her eyes, in lieu of available makeup, using a spoon for a mirror. She looks at her reflected eye cradled in the scoop of metal. She raises a second spoon to gaze at both her eyes, floating before her. Egyptian, she thinks. Surrealism. Shit she learned in school and actually remembered.

  Mason sticks both hands in his cereal bowl and screams.

  Mimi zones out the screech by zoning into an incoming.

  Whatchagot dollface.

  12 whites. Rit par-T?

  Hate shit makes me clean my room.

  So trade 4 weed.

  Gr8.

  Mason’s scream hits operatic highs. The Mother drags the huge metal garbage can to the breakfast table and dumps bowls spoons cereal all of it in the trash. Unstraps Mason from his bondage highchair and plops him in that cage she calls crib. The Mother smiles, happy now. Another breakfast down, five thousand eight hundred and forty eight to go. And she counts, you better believe it.

  Later, Rach. The big M is off-meds.

  Drag.

  The Mother pours herself a cup of coffee with her right hand, trying to open a pill bottle with left. She’s going to spill all of it.

  Mimi slips into her.

  Not “Mimi to the rescue.” Never Mimi to the rescue. Mimi hates The Mother but it’s an impulse thing. Unconscious as shivers before a flu. Can’t help it. An urge to steady the cup before it scalds her mother’s hand. Mimi’s skin crawls inside the skin of the other, The Mother. Meaning, it makes her skin crawl to be inside her mother. She can’t read thoughts so much as feel feelings. The big one now is how weary The Mother is. Weary of Mason. A new shackle. Her third shackle. Mimi plus Alvin now one more shackle. Three shackles four limbs. Motherhood as a torture rack. One limb still loose and flailing for rescue. Mimi peers out of her mother’s eyes, glancing at her own self across the room. She sees her own body slumped, as if a bit drunk, without anything inside to animate it. Mimi still can’t figure how to balance it so she can get inside another but keep her own shit together. She hopes that’s not drool slipping out her slack mouth.

  Mason crying now. The Mother’s hand poised to slap that baby face. Why am I helping this bitch, Mimi wonders. Let her spill that hot shit and burn. Mimi flinches, and The Mother has to flinch too. Get the fuck outta there before the hot coffee hits the hand.

  Mimi snaps back into her front-row-seat body just in time for the show. Listen how loud Mommy can scream. Louder even than Mason, ha ha.

  Stay out of others, Mimi reminds herself. You don’t want to know what anyone really feels. No more fucking altrusim. People’s thoughts might be benign as a river, but pluck any one drop of thought out of context, and it’s bound to be obscene.

  Cold water rushing, ice cube tray cracking, tears, ice tumbling. The Mother sees the bottle of pills spilled on the floor picks one up stuffs it in Mason’s mouth steps on the rest rushing back to sink and cool relief from hot, hot burn.

  Mimi holds out her hand. Mason spits the pill in her open palm. Smiles at his big sister. Secrets are fun.

  “You’re baby-sitting your brother today,” says The Mother, her head still hanging in the sink, water rushing over the scalded hand.

  “No way. I got stuff already.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Stuff.”

  “You mean like meeting your girlfriends and doing nothing? Bring Mason. Anyway, you gotta drive both boys to Dr. Leaver.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “You know what that shrink’s costing me?”

  “I don’t need to talk to that fuckhead.”

  “Fine. Maybe you don’t but Mason does.” The Mother turns to look at her daughter. She stands strong, a well-put-together woman, solid hips over solid feet, a square and planted self. “Or should we just give up on Mason?” she offers, cheerily. “Good idea, right?”

  Mimi is surprised to see a flicker of real pain on The Mother’s face. But it passes and she watches her mother lift Mason out of the crib and stick him in the garbage can instead, out of sight. “There. That’s better,” she says brightly. She smiles down into the can, satisfied. “Just leave him there. He’ll be fine in his new playpen. Or should I say pigpen,” she giggles. “I’ll dig him out when I get home.”

  The Mother glances outside, with that dangerous wandering look she gets sometimes like a jailbird that’s heard a real bird’s faraway song. The Mother shivers, grabs her bag, and leaves for work.

  Mimi walks over to the trash can and looks in. Mason’s down in there all up in it. He laughs, slapping a banana peel at his own face. A delightful little monster.

  The Mother is at work, the baby in the trash, and there’s a hole in our house where The Father used to be.

  A scribbling sound behind Mimi and she spins in time to see her brother Alvin taking notes. He has an old red bound book under his arm. He speaks into his sleek silver tape recorder.

  “Is there an instinct, in disrupting the conventions, to find a better one? A baby in a trash can. They seem to end up there quite a lot. Possibly a healthy impulse? Read Margaret Mead for anthropology on cultures that throw away babies. Visual equivalent: baby in trash can more Magritte than expressionist. Read Situationists for footnote.”

  Mimi chases Alvin into the library. Father’s library. She tackles him and tries to wrest the old red book from him, then gives up and enters him, forcing him to hand her the book.

  “Damn it Mimi! Get out! Switch the fuck back out! I mean it, switch back!”

  Mimi leaves her brother’s body. Mimi loves her brother, because inside or out, he’s the same. The thoughts and looks he expresses exactly mimic what he is inside. No secrets. She looks at the book and reads the spine: Mollusks. Wrong book. She tosses it back.

  “I hate it when you do that,” Alvin pouts. “It’s a violation of my rights!”

  “Where’s Dad’s monster book?”

  “I keep telling you, Dad must have taken it.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve got it.”

  “You’ve got to stop violating me. You can’t sneak into my body whenever you feel like it!” he whines. “At least ask first.”

  Mimi laughs. “You love it. It’s research. And what about you? Following me around like a whiney mosquito taking notes and sucking my blood? That’s a violation of my rights. What makes you think I’ll let you publish your stupid little paper? I didn’t give you the rights to me.”

  “It’s anonymous. You’re just my Exhibit M. Just like Freud had his Patient X.” Alvin leaps up and flips through the tossed book. “Did you know that mussels live for a hundred years? That’s a long time to spend clinging to a rock.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I didn’t. I was speaking of Mother. A comparison. Clinging to a rock for dear boring life.”

  Mimi climbs the ladder to the upper bookshelf. Alvin slides over casually and looks up her skirt. Takes a note. Looks again.

  “Where’s that picture of Dad?” Mimi looks down at her brother.

  “What picture?”

  “Don’t give me the innocent face. You stole that picture. And you were just looking up my skirt.”

  “Mom took it. Put it with all the others,” Alvin confesses, shoving his hands deeply into his pockets.

  “Fuck! She’s trying to make him disappear! Okay, Mother darling. Just for that …” Mimi searches the shelves till she finds an antique wind-up jewel-box. Takes it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “For every picture of Dad she hides, I get to pawn something.”

  “Interesting system of justice!” Alvin gleefully makes a note. Pauses. Speaks into his tape recorder: “Private revenge. You can’t prove it and you leave your foe paranoid. Excellent tactic.”

  “The Mother’s making me take you two loonies to the shrink,” Mimi said.

  “Brian the Brain?”

  “Yup. Last week he pegged me as a ‘narcissistic martyr.’ I asked him if I married a ‘humble sadist,’ would the kid be normal?”

  “You didn’t say that.”

  “No, I didn’t. Cool comeback but I thought of it too late,” admits Mimi. “Hey, let’s leave early and steal drinks from blind people.”

  “Okay,” says Alvin. “Where’s Mason?”

  “Still in the garbage where she left him, I guess.”

  They stare into the garbage can. Mason is smeared in coffee grounds, milk, spotted with cereal bits, squealing in glee. Alvin picks a neon orange ring off Mason’s cheek and examines it. “Hey,” he whines, truly hurt. “You didn’t tell me Mom bought Froot Loops!”

  Outside, someone starts up a loud leaf blower. Mimi opens the kitchen curtains covered in floating teapots and grease and stares outside, furious. Leaf blowers. Brain busters. She dashes into the man, he instantly turns the nozzle on himself. He’s blowing his own face. He screams and drops the machine, breaking it into silence.

  Mimi laughs and comes back to herself.

  “He blew his own face!” She convulses with laughter.

  “Where’d you go?” Alvin is peering at her. “Did you just go into somebody?”

  “Shut up.” Mimi slurs her words, thick-tongued. The aftereffects of entering bodies. She’s flush with the residuals: the man’s feelings stuck to her mind like bits of flypaper. He needs the loud leaf blower. He wants to leave his family and his leaf blower blasts the desire away. Mimi shivers. She looks outside. He squats miserably over the broken machine.

  “Where’d you go?” Alvin anxiously stares at her face, his nose pointed and twitching. Notepad poised in anticipation. “Mimi! Where’d ya go?”

  “Nowhere. Let’s take Mason out for a beer.”

  The Angry Squire is a dark bar with last year’s Christmas tinsel still strung in dust, and the bar denizens are mostly blind. The Angry Squire is next door to the School for the Blind, so a beer is just a short tap tap tap away.

  Mason crouches on the bar top, butt in the air, lapping ginger ale from a bowl like a dog. Mary, the waitress, reaches in with Celtic tattooed hand and pets Mason.

  “Hi doggy,” she says. “Good doggy.”

  Mason turns his head and barks at Mary’s belly button, which has a sapphire in it. He looks up at her nipples, which bulge under her shirt like they too sport jewels. He wags his tail and turns back to his soda.

  Mary laughs and wipes up a slosh of spilled soda.

  The waitresses like it when Mimi brings Mason in. They love playing “good doggy.”

  Mary turns her back to work the cash register, and Mimi dumps the ginger ale on the floor, steals a blind man’s beer and fills Mason’s bowl. Mason laps that up too.