| | THE BEGINNING
I
I remember that I awoke with a snort.
A skinny man standing ten feet away was staring at me, peering over his red-frame glasses.
He asked a woman standing near him, "Did you hear something?"
"No," she said. "What?"
"Like snoring."
This was too much: he was staring straight in my direction; why embarrass me further?
"You jerk," I grumbled.
"That!"
The woman looked around. "What?"
"I heard-- I thought--" He pushed his glasses back. "Oh, never mind."
I'm seventy-one, and this was not the first time I had awakened from an unintended nap in the library of the University Club. But this time, as I fell asleep while reading a large-type edition of Robinson Crusoe, I had slept right into the cocktail hour.
There were two dozen men and women in the library now. They milled about drinks in hand, or herded at the portable bar, like buffalo at a water hole.
I was grateful that everyone, other than the jerk who had sarcastically commented on my snoring, was politely ignoring me. Not wanting to embarrass myself more than I already had, I sat up straight. I decided I would get up, make my way across the crowded room and go downstairs to get a taxi.
I set my hands on my knees to begin what in the past few years has become the rather stiff process of standing. That was when I discovered that something was wrong with me. Something was very wrong.
I could feel my hands on my knees, but when I looked down, I saw only the black leather chair, and the faded orange and rose colored Persian carpet. What I did not see were brown suede shoes, grey slacks, blue wool blazer-- or the thin legs and round potbelly of my seventy-one year old body. I did not see me.
I was invisible.
II
I sat very still, yet felt an overwhelming dizziness, the same dizziness I experience when flying: the jet taking off, sharply banking, tumbling the ground into the sky.
As I would do when flying, I told myself to close my eyes. I did, and felt a little better. I made myself take slow, deep breaths. I warned myself: be calm. This could be a heart attack.
As I sat in my chair, I decided my invisibility had to be a delusion. A delusion of some sort brought on by a heart attack. The odd thing was, I was relaxed, calm. I simply accepted this delusion of invisibility as only another trick of aging, a new flaw in my deteriorating body and spirit. I addressed myself quietly, as if whispering to a young child, "Now, open your eyes slowly, and try to pay attention." I thought that was the least I could do, as these might be the last moments of my life.
I looked ahead. There were more people coming in through the large double doors, joining the few dozen already milling about the main floor of the big library. They were not unfriendly buffalo, the way they stood head to head in pairs, or huddled in groups. While some were talking, their jaws moving as if chewing cud, the others nodded their heads, shifted their feet, snorted a laugh now and then.
Slowly, I looked down again. Still, only the chair and carpet were visible: not me. Yet, I could feel my hands move from my wool slacks to the smooth leather arms of the chair. I could feel my short white hair brushing against the inside of my shirt collar. Staring down where my legs and feet should have been, I wondered, "Am I dead? Is that why I can't see my body? Is that why everyone is oblivious to me, because I no longer exist in their world?"
But if I was dead, how had taht sarcastic jerk in the red glasses heard me snore? No, I wasn't dead. My invisibility had to be a delusion affecting only me.
I felt I had to do something, yet I was too embarrassed to ask for help. I stood up-- and at once felt completely disoriented. I fell back into the chair, and the padded leather squeaked loudly.
In mid-sentence, the jerk broke away from the woman and stepped towards me. He pulled those ridiculous red glasses forward and peered over them, at me. I glared back at him-- but became uncertain if he was in fact looking at me, or at the seat of my chair. Finally, muttering something about "drinking on an empty stomach", he went back to the woman.
I had the overwhelming urge to bolt from the room. I thought, if I could reach a taxi, take it home, then maybe, in the private safety of my house, I could take aspirin and sleep off this-- this impairment.
I stood up again. And the sudden disorientation immobilized me. I shut my eyes against it for a moment. When I opened them again, I made myself stare straight ahead, and walk. It worked. I had discovered the First Law of Invisibility: don't look down.
Although slightly stooped from seven decades of resisting gravity, I'm still over six feet tall. As I negotiated the milling herd my field of vision was awash in middle-aged male faces, creased foreheads and receding hairlines. Just below eye level passed a variety of female hair, straight, curled, teased, sprayed and dyed. In my awkwardness I accidentally brushed against the backside of a woman. She spun around as I passed. I glanced back to see her spread a look of annoyed suspicion over all the men near her.
When I made it to the stairs I put my hand on the polished wood banister and stopped. The wide, red carpeted stairs seemed impossibly high and menacing. My fatalistic calm was gone: at my age, a broken hip is more fearful than an earthquake, or a stock market crash. I was perspiring. I patted my brow-- and noted that my handkerchief remained invisible during the act.
I looked down at the stairs, swallowed hard, and took a step. I stumbled. My knee hit hard against the wall. If I had not strangled the banister with both hands I think I would have bounced all the way down into the lobby.
I scrambled up, shaking, and examined those acrophobia inducing stairs. I exhaled slowly and recited the First Law: "Don't look down!"
I closed my eyes, and stepped forward. III
I came down the stairs, in my self-imposed blindness, without a mis-step.
At the bottom I opened my eyes and crossed the lobby.
While I was fairly convinced I was plainly visible to everyone but myself, people seemed to behave like over-heated molecules, and randomly zip in front of or in back of me. Several times, when it seemed some rushing person was about to crash into me, I made sudden changes of direction or nervously side-stepped. Then I suspected my own unpredictable movement must have been creating these near collisions.
I scooted to a corner near the front desk and stood close to, almost behind, a potted tree. I tried to appear confidently aloof, casually distracted. I wound up fidgeting.
Beyond getting to a taxi, I had no idea what I might do. Yet, below my surface behavior of fidgeting, I felt reasonably calm. I was able to move, to think, to make a plan, as humble as it was. I was coping with my inexplicable condition in a way that seemed natural, a matter of instinct. Like Robinson Crusoe, I was laboring to make the best of a bad situation.
I came out from behind the potted tree, keeping my eyes on the level and restraining my urge to jump aside when people briskly passed around me, and set a course for the doorman. He was a large bald man in blue blazer and grey slacks that pinched at the seams. When I saw him start the revolving door spinning for a woman who was exiting, I slipped into the section of the door behind the woman, and was smoothly spun outside.
As I came down the steps, I saw a tall, orange-haired woman slam a taxi door and stride toward the steps. She was lugging a suitcase and hoisting a shoulder bag. Before I could step aside, she swung the shoulder bag wide and it hit against my chest. I stumbled aside from the blow. She passed, her orange curls bouncing over the collar of her green overcoat with each step, leaving a trail of good perfume and focused energy. As she went through the revolving door, I rubbed my sore chest. I could never have imagined that the next time I would see this woman, she would be naked.
That incident should have confirmed for me beyond any lingering doubts that my invisibility was not limited to just me, but I was too dazed to understand the demonstration. I gingerly crossed the busy sidewalk, and went up to a cabby who leaned against his taxi reading a newspaper.
"Excuse me," I said. "I need a taxi."
The cabby hesitated, his gaze lingering on the newspaper. Then he briskly folded the paper, looked straight at me, and said, "You've got a taxi!"
"Oh! Good!" A man said behind me. "Excellent."
I spun around and saw a grey haired man wearing a beige raincoat and carrying a black briefcase smiling at me. "Excellent," he repeated.
My mouth opened to protest, but I couldn't think of anything to say.
"I'm going to the airport," he said.
"Great!" The cabby said.
I turned and saw that he had opened the taxi door; the grey haired man was inside before I could speak.
"Wait!" My voice was hoarse. "That's my taxi!"
But my voice was one sound in the torrent of sounds from the cars, buses and rushing pedestrians. The taxi pulled sharply from the curb. Stunned, I actually stepped off the sidewalk, lifting my arm in a futile gesture. I knew that the cabby had heard me when I had spoken to him, but finally, I understood.
The way the cab driver and the grey haired man had both looked straight at—and through —me, seeing only themselves, proved that I was not only invisible to myself, but to those around me. IV
I stood in the street in front of the University Club, transfixed.
Everywhere I looked, men and women were spilling from office buildings, flowing through the streets, eddying at corners. The sky was darkening and the wind was cold. The city was a vast ocean teeming with dangers. I felt an immense aloneness. What could I do? The sensation of vulnerability was like a deep bruise on my spirit. I was petrified, just imagining the effort and danger of navigating through the rush and crush of all those visible bodies, cars, buses, and darting bicycle messengers. I looked down at my unmoving feet and of course saw only a collage of debris in the gutter; cigarette stubs, candy wrappers, an empty bottle, shriveled leaves. Looking down made me dizzy.
So I looked up. I saw a black Mercedes sedan turn sharply out of the traffic and come at me. Almost like the cross-hairs on a rifle sight, it's gold hood ornament aimed at my frail, invisible body. Like the proverbial deer caught in headlights, I could not move: I could not even close my eyes against the impact. It was like standing in the very front of a giant movie screen: my field of vision over-flowed with the image of the black hood of the car about to crush me.
There was a chirp of brakes on pavement and the car stopped. The hood ornament was only inches away, on a level with my reflexively sucked in pot belly.
A man got out of the driver's side of the big car. In his early forties, with streaks of grey in his precisely cut and brushed black hair, he walked behind the car and around to open the passenger's door. A silver-haired woman, every bit as trim and vigorous as the man, but at least twenty years his senior, got out of the car. Had I been reading newspapers or watching television in the past five years I surely would have known instantly that this woman was Marta Holden. But in my ignorance, I only dumbly stared as one of the country's most controversial personalities, took the man by the arm and walked with him across the sidewalk, the man tossing the car keys to a valet hurrying out from the Club.
As I stood in the gutter in front of the University Club, staring at this striking, silver haired woman and the vigorous man by her side, the heat and smell of their car's engine flowing over me, I realized I no longer had a plan. I did not know what to do next. I understood only that the crowded, rush hour city was not a safe place for me. I was old, slow-moving—and invisible!
I looked at the Club, its solid facade of cut brown stone rising four stories to the clay tiled roof of many peaks and turrets. The Club, I realized, was my best hope, my best refuge. I could navigate its familiar halls and rooms, even hide in its countless nooks, corners, closets. I understood how it worked and I knew, at least superficially, both the people who made it work, and the people who used its meeting rooms, dining room, overnight rooms, squash courts, massage room and sauna.
Out here, the rushing currents of traffic and pedestrians would toss me about like a cork. Inside the Club I would be on solid ground.
When the valet got into the black sedan and started its engine I stepped back onto the sidewalk. I picked my path through the shifting streams of pedestrians, and positioned myself near the revolving door, ready for the doorman to spin someone out, and in doing so to unknowingly spin me in. |
