Elysian Fields

Elysian Fields apartment complex. I carried the toolbox and the hose up three flights of stairs. The apartment where I had to reassemble a waterbed vibrated from the sound music blasting. I knocked loudly.

Finally, someone opened the door. He had dark, uncombed hair and his eyes darted around haphazardly. The clothes he wore were mismatches of orange and plaid. He was blind, but not deaf.

“Come on in, the waterbed is back there in the bedroom. I can’t wait till you get it set up again,” he said.

He took measured steps, counting as he crossed the living room.

“Let me turn the stereo down. You want a drink?” he asked. “I’ve got Scotch, Bourbon or Vodka.”

“I’ll have a drink in a little while.”

His name was George and somehow he snuck the waterbed to the third floor. It was against the rules to have one there. He had a hell of a time with the plywood on those stairs, he said, but the manager didn’t see him.

“He couldn’t see a blind man or plywood. Go figure. Who’s really blind?”

​It didn’t take long to reassemble his waterbed that lay in pieces in the bedroom.

“You ever scored with a chick on a waterbed?” George asked when he walked into the bedroom.

“All the time,” I lied. “And bean bag furniture too.”

​George couldn’t see the frown on my face. I didn’t have a waterbed or a girlfriend. My apartment came furnished with everything except one.

“Something about a waterbed. Chicks put out for me more on a waterbed than a mattress. My sex life completely changed when I got the waterbed.”

I glanced at his eyes. They darted around in the sockets like pinballs ricocheting in an arcade game.

​”I’ll put some duct tape on the plywood and metal so you don’t get any holes in the mattress. And I’ll reinforce the frame with some L-brackets,” I said.

His eyes spun joyously.

“What kind of work do you do?” I asked.

​He chuckled.

“My family sold some property and put the profit into a trust fund for me. It draws two thousand five hundred dollars every month.”

“Far fucking out! Wow!”

“It pays the bills and gives me plenty of spending money.”

​He laughed again, even louder.

​”And I get a Social Security check and food stamps for being blind.”

​“Yeah, why not?” I shrugged.

​”It’s gets better,” he said.

​I started laughing too as he howled.

​“I started receiving a second Social Security check about a year ago. By mistake. I sent the first couple checks back, but they were returned. They’ve been coming ever since.”

​“That’s awesome,” I said.

“A friend of mine looked at the checks. The name’s the same, but one punch hole on the check is a little bit off. I opened another account for those checks. You can’t fight the feds.”

The extra check was triggered by a random hole on a thin piece of government graffiti. George’s eyes were blank holes, nothingness that the universe, like a whacked-out computer, kept sending stuff to.

“You want that drink now?”

​”Bourbon on the rocks. I’m gonna hook the hose to the bathroom sink.”

“Be back in a second,” George said.

He counted his steps as he walked away. The bed filled with water.

When the mattress was plump enough, George free fell backwards on it.

​”Good job,” he said after rolling off the other side of the bed.

I gathered my tools and the hose. Even though he was blind, George wrote me a check for setting up the bed. I guess he only saw what he wanted to see. Then he handed me a five-dollar tip.

“Will you drop these off somewhere? You can get thirty cents a pound for it.”

​He grabbed two garbage bags filled with aluminum beer cans. More junk for my living room.

“No problem.”