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CONTENTS

“The Other Side of Michael Baker”
by
Forrest Anderson

Side 1
CHARACTERS:
The detached observer
I.

The piano mover

Michael Baker was a fat man with an Elvis hairdo. He had a harelip hidden by a moustache and a tattoo on the inside of his wrist of two lesbians fucking. I said they were fucking but that was just the impression I got. It wasn’t a good tattoo. I once asked where he got it and he said in a level 2. That meant a minimum-security prison for felons. Michael’s voice was surprisingly high-pitched, not feminine, but like a cartoon. He tended to string his words together, which gave his voice a pleasant warble.

The landlady

An old black woman named Mae. Mae owned several cats, each named Gullah after the language she spoke. A small wart sprouting a single gray hair twisted the corner of her mouth into a smirk. Her upper lip, covered with gray and black stubble, and her chin, growing three or four pubic-like whiskers, gave her a feline charm. When she spoke her accent and countenance made me feel like she was toying with me, the way a cat molests a half-dead frog before devouring it.

Tattoo
Fled.

The convenience store clerk
Dead.

LOCALES:

The house on Lucius Street
A run-down shotgun house located at the end of a dead-end street between an auto detail shop and a rest home. Shotgun means a man could stand on the porch and fire a shotgun and the shot would go through every room in the house. In this house, the shot would pass quite easily because it only had two rooms, or three, if you counted the paper-thin partition that divided the backroom into two separate apartments.

Mae occupied the front room. It had the only bathroom, but she didn’t benefit because the house didn’t have running water. She rented one backroom apartment to Michael Baker and the other to me. For fifty dollars a month, Mae provided a gas camp stove and a flashlight for electricity. To enter our apartments we had to climb through the backroom’s only window, which was equally divided by the partition. Something about the arrangement seemed criminal, but like I said the rent was cheap.

The electric and gas company

The electric and gas company sat on a small piece of land, not far from the house, near the basin of the city’s three rivers. A short chain link fence topped with razor wire circled the company’s property. The company’s workings – fifty low-standing high-voltage poles and an equal amount of eggshell-colored gas tanks – were illuminated by stadium lights that gave the property the transparent blue glow of natural gas.

The convenience store basement
I think of a rusted black metal staircase, cinderblock walls covered with pinup calendars, spider webs and small roaches, a dusty and stained concrete floor crowded with bundled pornographic magazines, cases of Schlitz, and boxes of Twinkies and women’s hosiery.

EVENTS:

My neighbor’s habits
Michael Baker lived in the house for quite sometime before I moved in. I never saw him, but I listened to him through the partition. His habits were less than courteous to a light-sleeping neighbor. He constantly cooked; I always smelled the grease of hamburger and the starch of noodles. He paced the apartment and shouted to himself. It started as pleasant conversation, but as the night progressed it turned into violent swearing. At first his language amused me – it sounded funny in his Mickey Mouse voice – but the violence started to frighten me. I asked Mae about my neighbor’s rampages, but she said, “I hear you. No one else.” I assumed this was because my apartment butted against her room.

Noodles, hamburger and marijuana

After I lived in the house for three months, Michael introduced himself. I had just unrolled my air mattress and blown it up for bed. I heard the window squeak open. Even though the room was dark, I felt someone watching me. After a tense and quiet moment, I heard the flint of a lighter and deep breathing. A red ember flickered above me like a detached radio tower beacon.
“Hey man. You get high?”
I decided to pretend asleep.
“I just heard you blow up your mattress, jackass.”
I felt certain Michael could not see me. Without electricity it got so dark at night that I often talked to myself to make sure I hadn’t ceased to exist.
“Catch,” he said and tossed the joint into my bed.
“Hey asshole,” I said. “What if I’d been asleep?”
“I knew you were awake,” he said. “I’m Michael Baker. Come over and eat some spaghetti.”
I climbed out my side of the window and back through into Michael’s apartment. His room looked more lived in than mine. A pullout couch leaned against the wall, three or four packing crates served as a coffee table, and a full-sized gas range and oven sat on a dirty piece of linoleum.
“Mae charges me extra on account of the amenities,” Michael said and pointed toward the stove with the toe of his sneaker.
I gripped the couch to steady myself. Michael had rerouted the stove’s gas hose and duct taped it to a propane tank. What if I had been asleep and Michael’s joint lit my mattress? Enough flame and Michael’s rigged up stove would blow the house.
“Fire up another joint,” Michael said. “Help burn this excess propane off.”
This was an example of Michael’s sense of humor. He enjoyed poking fun at dangerous situations. I didn’t find it funny, but I laughed to be polite. “What are those penguins doing on your arm?” I asked.
“Penguins? It’s two lesbians. I got it in a level 2,” Michael said. “I ain’t got sauce. I hope you like noodles and hamburger.”

Hornet’s nest, 7 glass bottles
Over the next month, the pacing and the shouting stopped. Michael got into the habit of surprising me with invitations to late night dinners. He always cooked spaghetti, but he never had any sauce. One night I brought some to his apartment. He seemed happy enough, but he spilled it before serving dinner. This seemed to upset him a good deal. After dinner and a couple of joints, Michael reached under the couch and laid a small handgun on the coffee table.
“You have a gun under your couch,” I said. I was good and high.
“I saw an old hornet’s nest by the electric company,” he said. “Let’s shoot it down.”
“What about noise?”
“This is a twenty-two. It’s quiet enough.”
It seemed like a good idea at the time. The electric company was not far from the house. A hornet’s nest hung from one of the high voltage wires. After Michael taught me to work the gun, I took the first shot. It went wide and right, pinged off a gas tank and tore through some shrubbery.
“Watch the tanks!” Michael shouted. “Hit one wrong and we’ll be cooked.”
I apologized and compensated by aiming left of the target. I squeezed the trigger. The bullet went left, but I compensated too much. It hit a fence and a cat screeched.
“I think I shot a cat!”
“Good riddance,” Michael said and grabbed the pistol. “I’d like to shoot one of Mae’s cats. Send the bitch a message.”
I said nothing. I assumed this was Michael’s sense of humor. Michael fired. The bullet ripped the nest’s paper shell and it fell from the tree.
“You’re an excellent shot,” I said.
Michael agreed. He bent over and picked up a glass bottle. “I bet I can shoot this clear off your head.”
This seemed like a bad idea. Michael sensed my hesitation. “Hold the bottle,” he said and he rounded up three more. He lined them on top of a gas tank. “I hit these three. You let me shoot one off your head.”
It seemed impossible for him to hit all three bottles. I now realize this was flawed logic.
“Just be cool,” Michael said. I was having trouble standing still. Each time Michael raised the gun, I made a donkey sound – the combination of a giggle and a scream. I had already dropped and broken three bottles. “I can’t relax,” I said. “Talk to me so I don’t know when you’re going to do it.”

Cool Hand Michael

“You see this tattoo,” Michael said. “I told you I got it in prison. I’ve only been there one time. Remember that movie Cool Hand Luke? Luke got put away for stealing parking meters. That part of the movie seemed unbelievable to me – serving time for parking meters. So I ripped some off. I had just started moving pianos; no one bought pianos in this town. I needed the money. Just like Luke, I served time.
“The guy that gave me this tattoo copied it from his memory of a magazine. I’m not sure why I got it. Tattoo and I were friends. That’s what I called him. I guess I didn’t want to let him down. A couple months after I got out, he was out too. We were both having a hard go. Tattoo wanted to rob a gas station. We cased one across from a bank. The clerk shut down for five minutes at two o’clock everyday and crossed the street. Tattoo said he was getting money for the night shift.
“I bought this stolen gun for seventy-five dollars,” Michael said. “I’ve always liked guns. Where I grew up it was nothing but fields and woods. Nothing to do but hunt deer; I got to be a good shot. Tattoo decided it was best I carried the gun.
“Five minutes earlier everything would have been different,” Michael said. “The clerk was depositing money; we got less than fifty dollars. Tattoo started yelling, telling me to shoot. I guess I didn’t want to let him down.
“Tattoo ran off, left me with the body. No way I was going to prison again… ever. I hopped the counter and put the clerk on my shoulder. He was a little fellow, light even in death. I counted twenty-two metal steps to the basement. I remember because he kept twitching – legs and arms going the way a dead deer’s will do on occasion. The nerves keep firing for some time. I laid him out on the concrete floor and turned my back.”

Glass tears
“I’m just fucking with you.” Michael fired. Glass stung my eyes and scratched my cheeks.

Death by mayonnaise
After that night Michael stopped opening our window. For a while I listened through the partition while he cooked his noodles and smoked his joints, fearful of an invitation. I couldn’t stop remembering the convenience store basement – a terrible place to die. But the invitation never came and my life started to pick up, I got a part-time job at the state mental hospital, and I almost forgot about Michael Baker.
Then one night the pacing and the cussing started again. I came home tired from work and climbed onto my air mattress. “It’s okay, baby,” Michael said in a singsong voice. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
I jumped out of bed and grabbed my flashlight. It sounded like he was in my room and trying to seduce me. I flipped the light on and realized he was on the other side of the partition. This only momentarily appeased me, though. The thought of listening to Michael seduce some poor woman turned my stomach.
“Come here you little bitch,” he screamed. Something – a body part – banged against the partition and almost knocked it down. “You motherfucker!” he wailed. I heard a second muffled scream and the sound of something dragging across the floor. I threw the window open and jumped into Michael’s apartment. “Get away from her,” I yelled.
Michael yelped. He was on his hands and knees in the middle of the floor. He wore potholders on his hands and a brown paper bag over his head. “You sick fuck,” I said. He whimpered and pointed a muffed hand to the corner.
A mayonnaise jar with four furry legs ran in circles, twitching, shaking and tossing its head back and forth. It crashed into the partition, fell over and whined like a Fisher-Price toy on low batteries. “Mae’s kitten,” I shouted. I could see her pink nose and open green eyes mashed against the glass. “What have you done to it?”
“She got into some mayonnaise,” Michael said; he removed the potholders and bag, and grabbed the jar by the tail. The feet sprung nails and lashed out at Michael; I spotted the deep scratches on his face and arms. “She shoved her head in the jar trying to get at it, but her head got stuck.”
Michael let the kitten dangle too close; it lurched and gripped all four paws into his face. He started to scream, but I told him to shut up before Mae got suspicious. “We have to do something,” I said. “The kitten’s suffocating.”
“I’ve tried,” he said and tugged at the kitten, but her claws set deeper and tore rivulets of blood into his flesh. “Maybe her head’s too fat. Maybe in a couple of days she’ll be skinny enough to get out.” He gave up and dropped his hands to his sides.
“She’s suffering,” I said. “Where’s the gun?”
“You want to shoot the kitten off my face?”
“I want to break the glass!”
“No shooting. It’s too dangerous.” Michael doubled over and pulled until the kitten came free. Chunks of flesh hung tangled in her claws. He swung the kitten by her tail cowboy-style; the kitten’s legs reached, trying to regain their grip, but Michael slammed her headfirst into the coffee table. The glass jar exploded.
The kitten screamed; it almost sounded human. The glass split open both eyes, blinding her. The mouth of the jar hung around her neck – a glass collar stabbing her throat, mixing her lifeblood with greasy mayonnaise. The darkened animal ran circles around the room, biting the floor, running her paws over her punctured eye sockets, until she collided with the propane tank. I grabbed the spaghetti pot off the stove and beat the kitten until I was sure she was dead – a terrible way to die.

Tiny Explosion
Michael walked over and stood beside me; together we looked at the dead cat. He took the spaghetti pot and tried to light the burner. I worried he was planning to cook noodles and cat; I never knew what to expect.
“What are you planning to do, Michael?”
“Cook supper,” he said.
“I’m taking Gullah to Mae,” I said. “She’s probably worried about the noise.”
“The cat’s dead friend.”
I picked the kitten up and cradled her in my arms. “She’ll evict us for this.”
“Fuck her then.”
I paused on the windowsill and looked at the cat’s head, split in two. “We’re not friends.”
Mae reached up and snatched my arm; I recoiled, but she held tight. “What you doing in that room?” she asked, her mouth twisted into a smirk. I glanced over my shoulder, back into the apartment. Michael Baker seemed to have disappeared. “Michael Baker – ” I began.
“You kilt Gullah!” She dropped my arm and picked the kitten up by her glass collar. Mae looked ready to pounce. “Answer Mae!”
I struggled for an answer. “I didn’t want her to suffer.”
“Who’s suffering, child?” she asked and drew a fingertip along a deep scratch on my arm. “You got to leave my house.”
The warble of Michael’s voice started from inside. Mae shuffled into the yard, knelt down and started digging a small grave with her nails.
“This isn’t your house,” Michael said from the window.
“I fixed it up,” Mae said. “I charge rent.”
“It’s abandoned,” Michael said. “We’re squatters. You can’t make us go!”
“Leave!” Mae said, her eyeballs wide and white against the night sky.
I heard the pistol’s hammer click.
“You took Gullah’s eyes?” Mae asked. “Now you take my life?”
Michael screamed – the words so violent they ran together like an air raid siren. “I’m taking the house!”
I smelled the excess propane. Michael fired.

Side 2

CHARACTERS:
The attached observer
I.
The burned prisoner
I don’t want Michael to sound like an ugly person. Despite the haircut and the tattoo, he looked regular, quite handsome. I imagine if he shaved his moustache, put some Grecian formula in his hair, and put on a suit, he wouldn’t look at all out of place behind the desk at some bank or insurance agency.
The nurse
A plain voice in a plain white dress.
The pianist
Alone.

LOCALES:
Hospital room
A beige room full of the typical hospital accessories: hospital bed, heart monitors, I-V tubes, TV bolted into the wall, and a flowered curtain pulled around me during sponge baths.

Pianist’s apartment: a small studio up under the roof to discourage visitors and salesmen

The apartment had several windows, dirty for the most part, but it made no difference because they were always open. A fine layer of dust and soot covered the pianist’s possessions. A magnificent piano crowded the front room. In the next room, she slept and in the last room she cooked on a small gas stove. A bookshelf held pictures of children pushing each other on tire swings and young couples holding hands on empty beaches – whatever pictures came with the store bought frames.

EVENTS:
Visiting Hours
About six months later, I dreamed I was living on an organic farm with six other people. We grew mushrooms, tomatoes, cilantro and garlic – all of it pest and pesticide free. In the dream, I received a letter from the state penitentiary. It came in a blue envelope with lots of pink markings signifying that it was forwarded several places before it reached me. I knew without opening it that Michael Baker sent it. That night, I cooked a pot of spaghetti; I used my farm’s own ingredients to make the sauce. The next morning, I went to the prison during visitor hours.
I woke up from the dream at this point lying facedown on my hospital bed. My head was pushed through a toilet seat-type hole and a mirror was positioned beneath me that allowed me to see around the room. I had regained consciousness from the explosion only a few days ago. A nurse explained that the police found me lying on the smoldering ground – my clothes burned away, my hair singed and my entire back scorched black. My front side wasn’t harmed, but the nurse said the degree of burns on my back damaged my entire nervous system. It was a miracle that I regained consciousness. I was just relieved that my front side looked normal.
“Michael Baker?” I asked the nurse. “What about him?”
“Excuse me?” the nurse said.
“Did Michael Baker survive?”
“I’m not sure.”
“And Mae?”
The nurse didn’t answer. I drifted in and out of consciousness over the next few days and I didn’t speak to anyone.
After my spaghetti dream, I was anxious for a visitor. I wanted someone to turn the mirror so I could see my face. Even though the nurse said my front side was fine, I was naturally skeptical. I called out until I heard the door open. Michael Baker stood in my mirror and waved. He looked like a JC Penny model in an orange jumpsuit.
“Pardon me for not sitting down,” he said. “Our asses got cooked well-done.” He laughed loud enough for the entire hospital to hear. I laughed too until it felt like I split the black skin on my back into wide red grins. He hadn’t lost his winning sense of humor.
“What’s with the jumpsuit?” I asked.
“I’m in prison. I blew up the house.”
“I just dreamed you were in prison. How long are you in for?”
“Might as well be forever. They traced the twenty-two to the clerk.”
“You weren’t fucking with me?”
Michael laughed again. I trembled over the memory of him pointing the gun at me, but then I started laughing too. “I’m still dreaming,” I said. “You can’t be in prison and at the hospital.”
“But you are.”
“Are what?”
“You’re in prison and the prison’s hospital.”
“But you blew up the house.”
“Tell it to the cops,” Michael said.
I didn’t understand at first, so I stared at Michael’s face in the mirror in hope of a clue. I again admired how handsome he looked. The cat scratches were all but gone and the scars that remained added rugged charm to his looks. He reached up to primp his Elvis haircut and I spotted the skin on the backs of his arms scarred a dark red like spaghetti with the sauce. My body jolted backward in shock and the restraints on my hospital bed dug into my skin tearing my flesh away like wet paper. The blood drained from my face and I felt like I might pass out.
“Relax, friend. I know how you feel,” Michael said and bent his body to peer under the bed and into my eyes. “Just remember they’re two sides to everyone. The good side gets you through prison. I remember one lady… she’s my good side.”

The pianist
“Before that job I ain’t really heard a piano,” Michael said. “I mean I heard them on the radio, Billy Joel and that other queer. But not in person I hadn’t. Most of the jobs we just carried the thing off the truck, set it up in the customer’s fancy room and left. I think those people bought them for conversation: a look what I got type thing. Not this woman.
“She lived up five flights of stairs, no elevator. Seemed like each step the stairway got narrower like in some nightmare. I remember she had an ugly face: brown hair parted down the middle, greasy and stuck to her scalp. She had these green eyes,” Michael said and pointed to his own, “pale but able to see through you, and a little tiny mouth painted bright pink. She was so timid like a little mouse. But in her own way she was beautiful.
“I had to tell the crew to take the keyboard off and cut the legs to fit it up the stairs. It liked to have killed her. ‘Don’t bang it against the walls,’ she squeaked. Most times someone says that to a piano mover we bang the hell out of it. Not her though. Seemed to take everything she had to squeak it out. Course we banged it a couple times by accident, but we got it upstairs in good shape. Damn piano near about took up the whole apartment. It was a tiny place. Didn’t look like anybody lived there. No family pictures.
“We screwed the legs on, put the keyboard back and set the piano in the center of the room. The crew went on downstairs while I got her to sign for it. She was so excited. It was like she’d waited for this her whole life. She sat down at the piano and tried a key. It sounded all right to me, but she yanked her hand back and squished her face up at it.
“I told her to play something. I surprised myself; I’d never cared to hear anybody play before. I’m a rough looking guy. But she looked at me and I think she saw someone worth playing for. And she played.
“I don’t know what it was, Mozart or some shit. But I tell you I could feel the music. I don’t mean I saw pretty pictures in my head or had nice thoughts. I could feel it moving inside me like I was part of it. Each note she played, I felt. Parts of the music made my heart heavy. Others made me feel light. Like a dead weight I’d been carrying on my shoulders, felt pressing me everyday, weighing me down, was finally getting lifted off. She poured her soul into that song and I felt it flowing inside of me. That’s why I knew she was beautiful.
“When she stopped playing she saw my head down. She started apologizing for the tune, but I told her to shut up. Tears were in her eyes. I looked up at her and let her see I had tears in my eyes too.”

The end
“You’re just fucking with me,” I said.
Michael snapped his head up surprised to hear my voice. “Just fucking with you,” he said after a moment.
“You killed her, too,” I said. “You went back and cracked her skull against the keys.”
“How do you know, friend?” Again he laughed for all the hospital to hear.
I saw the nurse open the door in my mirror. “Who are you talking to?”
“Michael Baker,” I said, but Michael disappeared from my mirror the same way he disappeared the night of the explosion.
“No one’s here,” she said.
“I know.”
The nurse stood over me checking my charts and reapplying my bandages. I could see under the hem of her skirt, until she accidentally bumped my mirror. I saw the top of my head, my hair cut in an Elvis pompadour.
“Could you do me a favor?” I asked. “Turn the mirror so I can see my face?”
The nurse turned the mirror. Scars from the kitten’s scratches covered my face. I was the other side of Michael Baker.