Sergio Lizardi had locked himself in a consultation room by propping a chair against the doorknob. He clutched a book he'd been reading minutes before and looked around for more books. Books and movies were his passion, but there were no books in this room. His eyes wandered over the yellow light from the lone brass lamp in the dimly lit room.
The thick carpet was pastel pink, as were the windowless walls. A heavy desk with skinny legs of chrome stood against one of the walls. Sergio sat forward on the edge of a couch facing the desk. His left leg crossed and dangled over the right. He held his head erect, brown eyes staring blankly at a framed print which hung on the wall above the desk and depicted the view from a gigantic picture window of a country house overlooking a field of tall wild grass and sparse trees. The center of the composition, it seemed to Sergio, was an ancient Sumac, its red and brown leaves decimated by an apparently harsh autumn. Thinking about how much he liked Sumacs lessened the fear of the crowd of people he knew were gathering outside the room.
The rectangular shape of the print reminded him of a movie screen. The semi-darkness or the room of a cinema house. This soothed him further and made the small space feel like a sanctuary. The way movie theaters had once been for him. Before his mother had locked him up in the hospital. He sighed deeply and sank back into the couch, transporting his mind to a time when he'd enjoyed the intimate atmosphere of a movie house.
II
"Mr. Lizardi!" A man's voice yelled from outside, "Unless you open this door immediately, we're going to have to break in, for your own safety. Mr. Lizardi?"
Sergio heard his mother's high-pitched voice outside the door as she yelled at the staff."Doctor, what are you waiting for?"
"Mrs. Lizardi, your son appears to be in a non-violent state at the moment, and there's nothing in there with which he could hurt himself. We are afraid of provoking the resurfacing of one of his violent personalities. The last time that happened he tried to bludgeon staff members with a broken chair leg."
"It's not his fault. The staff should have never acquiesced and gotten him that book."
"Please Mrs. Lizardi, your son is not a prisoner here. He is a patient. He loves to read and I authorized the staff to get some of his favorite books for the hospital library so that he might enjoy them."
"Yes, but Pasolini!"
"I had no idea Pasolini was a trigger for your son. There is nothing in his history about it."
"Damn incompetence! If you ask me, no one should be allowed to read anything coming from the filthy mind of that man! I walked in on my son once, while he was watching Chaucer's Canterbury Tales on video, the movie made by that degenerate Pasolini...all the obscenity of that filthy book brought to life in graphic detail--"
"Excuse me, Mrs. Lizardi, I must continue trying to talk your son out of there." The doctor put his ear to the door, then said, "Sergio, listen to me, please open the door."
"Please be quiet. The show's about to begin," came the voice from inside the room.
III
nside Sergio's mind, light began to flicker upon the glass of the framed picture. "Rome is still the newest city in the world," Pier Paolo Pasolini had written in the book Sergio now held in his hands, Roman Nights and Other Stories. On page 43 began the story "A Night On The Tram," a story Sergio thought read like his life. He identified with the main character, Rafele. Rafele's father and mother had died, "Thus Rafele finds himself with two strangers for a father and mother." How did Pasolini know?
Sergio's mind began slowly fabricating an apparition on the frame glass turned screen. The Sumac's sinews were becoming those of a man's arms, as strong as the tree's boughs. A young Roman man, like those described in Pasolini's story stood in the field of wild grass, just beyond the porch of the country house through which a cold breeze had began coming into the room. Slowly, as the cold air hit his face, the white, lace curtains hanging from the window became real in his consciousness, in the same subtle fashion that the Roman had become real to him.
The doctor knocked loudly at the door and Sergio jumped on the desk and ran out of the room through the window, across the field, toward the Roman who now stood in place of the Sumac. Upon reaching the Roman, who was sitting on the grass, Sergio said hello to him.
"Hello," the Roman answered in perfect U. S. English, "my name's Rafele, and yours?"
"Sergio. Is it okay if I stay here for a while?"
"Sure. What's going on?"
"I'm running away from an army of doctors and their helpers. Psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, LVN's, LPT's, orderlies... probably even the janitors."
"Why are they after you?"
"They think I'm crazy."
"Most people are."
"Yeah, I know, but I'm crazy times ten."
"Times ten?"
"Maybe more. They say I have many personalities."
"Is that bad?"
"In me they say it's a disease."
"How do they know?"
"Well, they say I fit the profile. According to them, I act like different people at different times, and I've had a traumatic event in my life that launched my illness."
"What was that event?"
"Geez, I've had so many...let me think. It must have been the thing with my stepfather. He wasn't really, but that's what I like to call him."
"Liked?"
"He's gone now."
"How?"
"Well...maybe I have time to tell you before they break the door down..."
IV
Joaquin Bohl was nineteen years old when he illegally crossed the border into the United States from Mexico. Unable to find work and without friends or relatives with whom he could stay, he joined the swelling ranks of the homeless in Los Angeles County.
By day Joaquin stood on a street corner in El Monte, along with dozens of other jobless men and would hire himself to anyone driving by and willing to pay for his services. For most of the men, pay for a hard day's work may have consisted of five to ten dollars, but not for Joaquin. He'd quickly learned that here, as in Mexico City, he could make more money by satisfying the lust of those willing to pay for their pleasures. And he always demanded money up front. Until now all of his customers had been men, but lately, he'd noticed a fat, old lady driving around the block, staring at him.
V
Consuelo Lizardi, a divorced., middle-aged woman, often shopped at the center in front of whichJoaquin stood all day. She had seen the men many times and had made faces of disgust at them. Theywere the wetbacks she loathed. The ones taking jobs away from good, law-abiding Americans. Still,there was one she thought didn't belong there. But then she'd seen him standing there with the other menagain and again. The blond curls of his long hair blew over his blue eyes, and his fair skin grew redderevery day under the relentless Southern California sun.
This young man intrigued her. Or rather, his type, his looks, fascinated her. After a while, the other menstanding on the sidewalk ceased to exist for her. All she saw was Joaquin. She decided to find some chore at home for him to do, and the day came when her courage swelled. She looked at her face in the visor mirror, touching up her lipstick and combing her dyed red hair, burned to a crisp from too many permanents. Noticing her double chin, she swore that she'd start her diet tomorrow. She pulled up by the curb next to him.
Hello," she said, opening the passenger side window of her Acura.
"Hola," he answered, smiling.
"You looking for work?" She asked.
"Work, yes...thank you." He leaned forward and she noticed his hard chest.
"You speak English?"
"English? Yes..."
"Good, because I don't speak any of that Spanish. But never mind, get in," she said, motioning with her hand and opening the car door for him.
VI
The grass in the field bent one way and then the other as the wind blew in each direction. Sergio was now lying down, chewing on a blade of grass, talking with the young Roman.
"The same afternoon that mother picked up that good for nothing hustler, I came home early from school."
"Oops. "
"Yes. And the sight should have been laughable, but... it wasn't. She was naked on the living room rug, and he was on top of her."
"What did you do?"
"I don't know what came over me. I mean, I thought of how she'd pushed dad away with her self-hatred. How she'd made me hate myself and here she was, being a selfish bitch. I pulled him off her and proceeded to beat the shit out of him."
"What did she do?"
"At first she was screaming, trying to stop me. Then, I guess she called the police. That's how I ended up here."
"I'm sorry. I wish I could help you."
"You can. Please trade places with me."
"Are you sure it's what you want?"
"Yes, yes!"
"Okay. Close your eyes and count to three. When you open them, it will be done."
And before Sergio could take another breath, his consciousness was inside the body of the Roman, and the consciousness of the Roman now inhabited Sergio's body.
"I must go now," the Roman said, "good luck." And without saying another word began transforming himself back into the robust Sumac.
VII
Sergio heard the sounds of bodies pounding against the door of the office. It was time to go back in his new body. But first there was something he must do so that he would never be in danger of going back to his old self.
He ran to the barn in front of the old country house and found an axe which he grabbed and took back to the Sumac. Then, he started hacking at it savagely. With the first strike, the tree let out a piercing cry, blood oozing through its bark. Sergio kept hitting it with the axe.
The blood from the tree had grown into a large puddle around his feet, but he continued his task until the mighty Sumac fell with a loud thud. Then, he dropped the axe and began running back into the office through the window of the house.
VIII
When the orderlies broke into the office, there was broken glass covering the rug and Sergio Lizardi, who lay, apparently unconscious, upon it. The framed picture above the desk had been broken and the print torn in half, at the exact spot where a Sumac rose out of the earth. The patient clutched the top part of the print in his left hand, a sharp piece of glass in his right.
"He's bleeding!" One of the orderlies yelled, "he's cut his throat! Code blue! Code blue!"
The code reverberated through the hospital by way of speakers on the ceiling of every room and every hallway. Within seconds there was a gurney, blankets, pillows, oxygen, and additional personnel at the scene. An ambulance had been called to transport the patient to a medical hospital since this psychiatric hospital was not equipped for such emergencies. But it was too late for the young Roman from the pages of Pasolini's book.
