Siam's Tales

With his thumb shaking and becoming pale white, Siam makes an impression on his cell phone where the “End “ button is. He had just finished talking with his mother about his finances, and due to his actions the prior week, he would not be receiving any financial help from his family for his college expenses. He snickers and glances at his phone; the phone he will now be having to pay for. The time is 7:49p CST. He walks back into his school’s overly air-conditioned library, and returns to his wooden cell to find all of his belongings where he had left them. The laptop’s fan was running on high, indicating that the computer was over-heating, which struck Siam as absurd as the library managed their thermostat as if they were responsibly and safely trying to thaw a frozen pork shoulder. Unbeknownst to most of the students who frequented the library, there did exist a thawing pork shoulder that would be shared by the library staff in a cabin that they all secretly paid rent for and attended each fall, playing the types of games that would make their families not be able to look them in the eye.

Siam was cold, but his laptop was hot. Checking his e-mail became as common as the times when he blinks his eyes. He could check it on his phone, but frankly, looking at his phone in the current moment reminded him of his mother, which would make his blood boil, and might be a pragmatic solution to his cold state, but Siam didn’t believe in or have time for such silly things. He spent most of his time nowadays on serious things, like looking for work. Alas, the words on the screen make Siam’s nose tingle, and the hairs on the back of his ears stand up and applaud. It is a reply message from a very competitive teaching program. The e-mail seems promising. Double-click. Success! A representative named Judith Roundplant informs him that he has been accepted to a program in New York City, teaching chemistry in a high school setting.

Direct statement to the audience: Hello reader. From this point on the story will become two separate stories. One will continue to tell of Siam’s night after learning about his acceptance in to this wonderful and respectful teaching program, and the new second story will detail an event that Siam encounters two years later. The two stories will switch back and forth, and the reader should be astute to this fact, if he or she wants to learn of Siam’s tales. Think of it as a game, can you keep current as to which story you are in?

He’s leaving John Jay Jefferson High, and, as he has been doing unintentionally for a couple weeks now, still wearing a pair of chemical safety goggles on his head. He almost hits the over-bearing plastered blue jay, which sits at the top of the school’s stone entrance. The over-bearing blue jay was one of the last traditional pieces untouched by recent renovations. John Jay Jefferson Jr. refused to dismantle it out of respect for his father, despite now having to wear a helmet to school now to protect himself from another head contusion. The Knicks’ game is over as a group of fans stumble out of a near by bar, yelling at each other in a friendly way. Siam has several blocks before he would reach the first of several subway stops until he arrived at his brownstone apartment. The next morning arrives before he gets there. The sun rises, filling the gap where the World Trade Centers had resided, Siam opens his eyes as though the lids were attached to old creaky door hinges. Some crust lightly falls off from the outer corner of his eyes. He reaches to feel the back of his head, and determines that he has a large gash present in the area. An elderly walks out of her home for her daily walk, noticing Siam is on the ground with a bloody pair of lab goggles on his head, she immediately runs back inside, stubbing her left foot on the second to last step up, and calls NYPD to bring an ambulance. The next several days for Siam were taken in the West Wing of Lennox Hill Hospital. He is talking with a doctor, who is interrupted by having to go to the ER- a woman has just come in injured by being accidentally hit by the dumpster truck mechanism that tosses the trashcan in to the back of the truck. He is now talking with the police. They want a description of what had happened last night.

His heart rate accelerates as he reads the e-mail’s words over again. He jumps out of the confines of the wooden cell that the library offers him. A girl studies for her upcoming MCAT examination in the cell next to Siam. She glares at him with cold eyes. She wants to go home, but it would let her family down if she didn’t do well on the MCAT, so she refocuses and continues her studies. Siam leaves the library, and he begins his several block walk to his Victorian apartment. After the third block he hears an unfamiliar sound, “click-click”. The unfamiliar sound is produced by a 40-something man inspecting a seemingly new tricycle by having it wrongside up, turning the chains, “click, click.”

“It shouldn’t sound like this.” The man informs Siam. Siam pauses for an amount of time that allowed the man to have several flashbacks of ex-girlfriends that would never leave his memory.

Siam reaches a conclusion, and posits, “Maybe I can help.”

Siam squats down, smells the oil on the chain, and takes a good long look. His intention to help is true and warranted. Not too long ago Siam eagerly pursued a single man pedicab business. He bought a tricycle, attached a comfortable bench to the back, and put himself up for hire. He only stopped when he took his first economics class, and learned about opportunity costs.

“Here’s your problem!...No wait, no it’s not.” Siam rides a roller coaster of perceived emotion. He makes an observation, creates a hypothesis, and tests it. A few more reproductions results in:

“Click…Cl-Click…Click…Cl-Click.”

“By gee wilukers, there it is!” exclaims the 40-something.

“I heard, click...cl-click...click..., and then I woke up,” Siam is trying to recall any information he can of the night before. The officer doesn’t seem pleased, and adjusts his utility belt.

“Well, if you can think of anything else, gimmie a call, and in the mean time we’ll keep check on your credit cards to see if we can get a lead that way.” The policeman hands Siam his card, which includes all the pertinent information. The card has a vague smell of vinegar, which almost causes Siam to gag, he is so very light headed.

“It’s time for you to go. You’ve been determined by the hospital to be in good enough health to care for yourself.” The nurse hates this part of her job, telling wounded patients to leave. She wants to tell the junkies who come in trying to get high to go home, but she doesn’t want to tell people like Siam to go home. Siam’s face made the nurse feel warm inside, but now she felt cold, again. Siam rotates himself out of the bed and walks down the pale yellow hallways of Lennox Hill’s west wing. A gust of wind blew across his face as he made his first step outside for some time. The wind seemed to direct all the blood in his body to pulsate right in the few square inches of his wound. His eyes brows, nose, and lips all converged towards the center of his visage, it was an emergency town-hall meeting.

A genuine motion of the 40-something’s mouth indicated that he was happy, and his eyes showed a true thankfulness.

“I’ve been spending hours on this thing, and you were able to fix it!” He projects with half-excitement and half-bedazzlement.

“I was only able to help you because of the amount of practice I’ve had with tricycles.” Siam wants to come across as modest, but after hearing his words echo off the white walls of the 40-something’s home, he is worried that his tone was slightly haughty. He swallows his on spit in the incurring silence.

It is approaching dusk, and the long slinky shadows of the city’s skyscrapers being to crawl over the smaller buildings. Siam is fully unimpressed by the officer that he communicated with in the hospital. His smell of vinegar, and perceived lack of interest makes Siam feel unappreciated. New York City’s murder rate has been slowly increasing over the past few years, so since Siam had not been killed the previous night, he was sure not to receive as much attention as the 6 murders that had occurred last night as well. It is either Siam’s instinctive nature for adventure, or the medication that is now settling nicely in his blood stream, that motivates him to want to investigate his own case. His eyes begin to glare, and his left fist clenches. He knows where he must go, he must return to the scene of the incident.

“How are you at fixing people?” mutters the 40-something. The respect he has given Siam for fixing what he could not was now blinding him. Siam is a boy, just 22, the man’s logic was flawed, as skills with fixing tricycles does not directly correlate to skills with fixing people. The man regards himself as someone highly skilled with mechanics. Thus, any other person who has more skills than he must also possess the skills that the 40-something arbitrarily ascribes to that person. In this case, Siam holds a medical background comparable to a recent graduate of Harvard’s Medical School. Siam likes watching shows that have doctors as the main or supporting actors or actresses, but in terms of real world knowledge of medicine, Siam knows to take 2 Advil when he drinks too much brandy with a 72-year old man, who calls himself Grandpa Boogy. Siam writes for his post-graduate applications that he is out-going, so he locks his eyes with the 40-something, and drops the line,

“What’s the situation?”

Siam returns by taxicab to where he was picked up by the ambulance several mornings before. He remembers an elderly lady who was comforting him before the ambulance, trying to serve him Earl Grey tea. He said he preferred Green Tea, but told her that her efforts were appreciated. Some of his blood still remained on the sidewalk, and some had drearily drizzled down to the street’s gutter. Siam reenacts his movements of several nights before, looking all around him for anything peculiar. About 20 minutes of searching was proving to be fruitless. He thought he might have shown up to the scene, spent a few minutes surveying, and find a very important clue. His idealistic prediction made the actual experience of searching for clues that much more bland and boring. He almost doesn’t care that he had to have staples put in the back of his head to hold together a gash that when opened, some say they could see his mind. He is making another graze through the scene, he starts shuffling around some debris that rests between the side walk and a set of apartments. He bends down. Wedged between where the sidewalk and rising brick that starts a staircase lies something familiar. He snatches the piece of paper from its position and peers at it. Reaching to his back pocket, Siam pulls out his wallet. From one of left pockets in the wallet, he pulls out an identical card to the one he has found at the scene. They both describe the information of Lt. Earl Johnston, the officer that he had been interviewed by at Lenox Hill Hospital.

Siam enters the 40-something’s home, whose carpets smell like burning cigarettes. The walls are scattered with family photos, there is an air of love in the home. The 40-something leads Siam to the room his mother is resting in. He has been half listening to the 40-something tell him that he thinks the doctors have mis-diagnosed her ailment. The medication is expensive and not covered by insurance, and he wants to hear an alternate idea of what could be the source of his mother’s pain. They enter the room, and the 40-something introduces Siam, and explains to her what he is here to do. Siam is so far in over his head, he is barely able not to panic. He tries to stay calm on the outside like a duck sitting on the water; the animal appears to be resting calmly, but its feet are churning ferociously to keep itself afloat. He prods the mother’s body and asks questions that he thinks might be appropriate for trying to diagnose a patient. The 40-something, kneeling on the side of the bed, clutches his mother’s left hand and carefully smiles. Siam feels ridiculous and beings to hatch an escape plan. In the midst of deciding whether he should just make a run for it, or tell them that he has another patient to see now, the mother’s limbs start to flail uncontrollably. The mother is looking at the 40-something, the 40-something is looking at Siam, and Siam is looking at the mother. She won’t die right, the words pass hopefully in his head.

He knows that Lt. Johnstone had not been to the scene of the crime yet because he overheard him telling the doctor so when he was laying in the hospital bed. Was he sure that he over heard that? He is confused like the time when he didn’t know what to do when that old lady was convulsing in front of him. He was so scared for her life.

He is so scared for her life. Seconds turn in to long moments. Siam and the 40-something are frozen, and the mother moves more fluidly than ever before. The convulsing stops, and the mother asks what has happened. She is alright from what the two men can tell. Siam musters up something along the lines of making sure she is taking the right dosage of the medication if this is the first convulsion she has had. He is proud of himself for coming up with something so medically relevant that he gathers the confidence to leave quickly without seeming rude.

Was it the Lieutenant who had hit him in the back of the head, and then stood face to face with him in the hospital to ask him what happened? Siam returns to the hospital to find the doctor of who he had thought he had heard conversing with the police officer about his case. The doctor confirms his initial thought, the officer had affirmed that he had not been to the scene of the crime. Siam exits the hospital after his conversion with the doctor, and he reflects on the madness of the situation. At the height of his mad reflection, he spots the Lieutenant busily walking from East to West on the opposite side of the street. Siam stealthily follows Lt. Johnstone. It is hard for Siam to keep up with the Lt.’s pace without looking conspicuous. 8 blocks later the Lieutenant strides in to a cafe where he proceeds to sip two espressos over the course of 45 minutes. Siam intently regards the Lieutenant from a rival cafe across the street, also sipping a total of two espressos. At 10:24pm EST the Lieutenant arises from his seat, tips the cute waitress, and leisurely strolls down a side street. Siam can notice, even from the lack of any investigative work, that the Lieutenant is following a short man walking with a briefcase. The three of them, the short man, the Lieutenant, and Siam, walk in a Northerly direction equidistantly apart. Siam is not familiar with this part of the city, but he tries to stay focused on what the hell the Lieutenant is doing.

Shaken, Siam leaves the 40-something’s home, and he heads straight back to his apartment. Siam would never find out, but the next day the 40-something would take his mother to the doctor, and would discover that she was taking the wrong dosage. The dosage was meant for someone 40 pounds heavier than she, and a prolonged period of that dosage in her body would have been a very terrible thing indeed. The convulsions were the beginning path to a whacky insanity. The mother would receive the right dosage, and would make her wealthy to a healthy recovery, so that she could enjoy the rest of her years with good health.

Siam’s stomach moaned maliciously, but his eyes were motivated to observe. The Lieutenant gradually increased his pace, slowly closing in on the short man with the briefcase. Siam increases his pace and notices a small object in the Lieutenant’s right hand. The lights are dim in this neighborhood, and the vision of the Lieutenant fades in and out in between street lamps, so Siam moves in closer, trying to keep his head down in case the Lieutenant looks behind him. Lt. Johnstone never looks behind him and makes his way directly behind the short man, and the Lieutenant begins to raise his right arm with what is now evident to Siam as a small metal billy club. Siam screams to warn the short man that he is real danger. A very perceptive man, the short man had already put the Lieutenant on his radar, and upon hearing the warning shout, the short man whipped around, took out his concealed pistol, and put a shot right in the center of Lt. Johnstone’s stomach. The Lieutenant was moments from swinging on the short man, with the intention of adding another victim to his sick game that he has so greatly enjoyed over the years. Siam’s details helped confirm that the Lieutenant had been responsible for a string of unsolved cases of robbery. Over the next couple weeks, Siam would be hassled by reporters that wanted his story. Many articles, several books, and one short film were directly or indirectly the result of Siam’s curiosity of solving his own case.