Fifth Monday Fiction: My misadventures with Ron Rudnick

A true story

By Bob Boldt

[The names have not been changed to protect the living or the dead.]

Some had started to believe that the fifth floor of our building was jinxed. Being an urban pioneer of sorts, I was one of the first to settle the unoccupied warehouse at 110 W. Kinzie in Chicago. This was in the late seventies, a decade before gentrification, in which the visionaries, artists, and assorted freaks who inhabited such seemingly unlikely urban spaces were inevitably turned out by landlords eager to “develop” the properties and raise the rent on the very occupants who had made the neighborhood hip and trendy by their presence.
    In my first three years in the space on the third floor I had watched as many occupants came and went from the top floor. I had originally considered that loft for my own but, in spite of its size and superior natural light, I had a bad feeling about it. That consideration and the prospect of clients hiking up five flights made me decide to take the third floor. After Chuck, the last occupant, had asphyxiated himself in an unsuccessful attempt to sustain a nitrous-oxide high, the fifth floor loft remained unoccupied for about three months – something to do with probate.
    Late one Friday morning there was a knock on my door. I looked out through my wide-angle peephole and saw a huge eyeball followed by a wildly distorted face staring at me from what must have been inches away – someone trying to look back in at me. A little weirded out, I enquired loudly,
    “Who is it?”
    “It’s me, Ron,” came the friendly reply. It was as if I somehow was supposed to know who this Ron was.
    “Ron who?” This was becoming a real-life knock-knock joke. I was in the middle of painting a new wall I had put up for a sound recording room and I was standing there with a drying, dripping paint roller losing my patience.
    “It’s Ron your new neighbor from five.” The voice on the other side of the door shot back in a kind of sing-songy rhythm. It had a hint of mild exasperation in the tone, I suppose because I hadn’t immediately recognized him.
    I threw the latch on the door and was happy to see that this Ron guy looked a lot less grotesque than his image distorted in my peep hole had first made him out to be. Actually, as later experience was to prove, my first distorted impression was to be perhaps the more accurate one. He was dressed in an expensive purple jump suit fresh off the rack from Abercrombie and Fitch, with equally stylish, expensive, matching-color Nikes. He had an athletic presence, such as might be intimidating in spite of his five-foot-four or so height. His height did little to allay my initial apprehension, as it is usually short men that often have something to prove. Never start a fight with a short guy in a bar. A tall guy will often as not walk away; a short guy never will. His broad grin seemed to belie some of these impressions. He had a short-cropped head of hair with freckles and the complexion that would have declared him a redhead, even without a look at the hair.
    “Hey, I’ve got a favor to ask you.”
    I really love people who get you to agree to something before they specify. I’m kind of busy—” I started, with an obvious glance down at my dripping paint roller.
    “Oh, don’t worry. It won’t take a minute,” he interrupted, “and I’ve got some primo weed upstairs. How ’bout it, neighbor?”
    His presumption was really beginning to irritate me, but I figured, hell, why start off on the wrong foot. I would have to get a better handle on exactly who this new denizen of the fifth floor was, and his scene.
    I dropped the paint roller on some newspapers, grabbed my keys, and followed him up the stairs. His jaunty pace took the stairs two at a time, soon leaving me behind.
    “Welcome to Chez Rudnick!” he exclaimed as I was rounding the fourth floor landing. I looked up and he was standing at the top of the stairs. The trap door that was the entrance to the top loft was open. “I just need some help moving my freezer into the kitchen.”
    Great! I thought when I saw the huge top-opening freezer sitting on the freight elevator. It looked like it would take four men to even budge it. Actually I was relieved to find Ron had the moving details pretty well worked out, employing a clever system of four piano dollies. We moved the huge thing in mere minutes.
    I was a little too apprehensive to ask him why he needed such a large freezer and he offered no explanation. Except for the kitchen and bathroom appliances, the loft was bare. Several cardboard boxes, a waterbed, and a large, expensive Italian leather sofa were the only accommodations occupying the nearly four-thousand-square-foot space. Nothing remained of the unfortunate previous occupant’s possessions.
    “Hey. You gotta try this primo dope. I just got it from Panama.” I was happy to hear he at least remembered his promises. In order to get any work done at all in my life at that time, I had made it a strict policy never to smoke marijuana till sometime in the afternoon. But after all it was nearly eleven thirty a.m. and it was a beautiful Friday in the spring.

Four o’clock found me giggling my way back downstairs and prying my dried paint roller off the newspaper. The whole enterprise struck me as so funny that I finally gave up and tossed roller, handle, paper, and all into the garbage. I was mostly interested in the contents of my refrigerator. That was some of the best dope I had ever smoked.
    Six days went by with no sign of Ron. Having decided to see if he was still there, I knocked on his trap door. No answer. I could hear Joe Cocker playing on the phonograph. The door was cleverly counterweighted so it took almost no effort to raise it. I carefully pushed it open a crack. It was amazing. The whole place was completely, even elaborately furnished as if it had materialized overnight. It was pretty bizarre, being as how all the furnishings, drapes, and kitschy art looked as if they would be more comfortable in a Rogers Park suburban split-level ranch than in an industrial loft. Ron was in a long, heavy, terrycloth bathrobe, silhouetted against the front windows, headphones on, playing air guitar with Joe Cocker’s spastic gestures. A fifty-foot umbilical tethered him to the amp along the wall in the middle of the loft. I tried waving him down from the stairway but he had his eyes closed. Not wanting to startle him, I walked over to the stereo and slowly started turning the volume down. As I did so, his movements became slower and less animated as if his body needed the volume in order to find the energy to perform. Soon he was crumpled on the floor in a position of frozen coma. He must have been peeking out from under his nearly closed lids, because when I started to advance toward him to make sure he was still all there, he suddenly jumped up and screamed: “Gotcha!”
    I nearly shit. Ron seemed to think this was hilarious and proceeded to hop around the room in steps reminiscent of native dancers at a powwow.
    “God, I’m hungry!” he exclaimed, abruptly ceasing his dance as suddenly as he had begun it. “Let’s eat. My treat.”
    “Hey, Ron. Are you okay?” I asked, looking for something like a normal response for a change.
    “Never better,” he said, a little too enthusiastically. “Be a sec’,” he said, closing the bathroom door. “McDonald’s okay?” he yelled over the sound of running water. I already didn’t like the rapid, staccato, manic shortness of his responses. Less than two minutes later he emerged looking a little disheveled with a raggy, paint-stained T-shirt, and torn jeans. His shoes were not much of an improvement. I felt a little apprehensive even being seen on the street with him, let alone sitting down in a McDonald’s. With his characteristic two-step-at-a-time descent, he reached the first floor landing a full minute before I did. He seemed to be mocking me as he struck a jaunty pose rubbing his nails on his ragged shirt and blowing on them in an attitude of one who had been waiting for hours.
    “Finally!” He pushed open the front door of the lobby, immediately flooding the space with daylight. “Arrgh!” he exclaimed, arms warding off the harsh afternoon sunlight. I couldn’t tell whether he was really uncomfortable or just doing a vampire imitation.
    The new McDonald’s had just opened not far from us across the river. The fresh air seemed to settle him, or at least change his mode. Now, instead of short bursts of words, he switched to longer, rambling sentences. It was about three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. There was light street traffic, a few pedestrians – about normal for a commercial neighborhood just north of the Chicago loop. A faint breeze was blowing out of the east, reminding one of how close Lake Michigan was.
    “Did you ever see it so deserted? Like a holiday. I wonder what’s up. You think somethin’s up? Do you smell fish?”
    “Nothing’s up, Ron. It’s just a normal day in town. You still hungry?” I returned, trying to keep the discussion as banal as possible. I was already regretting having accepted his invitation. Then it dawned on me. “Hey, Ron, you still trippin’?”
    “Not much, I just took half a tab three hours ago,” he said in a deliberately nonchalant way as if he were reporting on a couple of aspirin he had taken for a headache. “Sometimes it doesn’t go too well with my medication.”
    “Great!” I thought. Here I am walking around with a freaking time bomb. I figured it wouldn’t be long before he might be climbing the lampposts.
    “It’s okay,” he said, “I peaked a little while ago. Everything’s pretty much under control now. No reason to freak out. Okay?”
    “Okay.” The fact that he seemed to be aware of my concern was somehow reassuring. I didn’t insist on a quick return to our building, which may have been my big mistake. I got a little concerned crossing the State Street bridge when Ron got fixated looking down at the water. “What if he decides he’s a seagull?” I pondered. We were soon safely across. In the brief, ten-minute walk Ron had filled me in on the dysfunctional Rudnick family history, too-graphic fragments of his sexual conquests, the complete pharmacology he had been on since high school to treat his manic depression, including the time he was institutionalized for paranoid schizophrenia, and the fact that the CIA had a large file in Washington devoted solely to his covert political activity.
    I was gratified to find that by the time we were safely ensconced within one of the plastic upholstered booths at McDonald’s his energy level had dropped noticeably. Being located in downtown Chicago, this McDonald’s had a bit less of the utilitarian feeling of the standard suburban franchise accommodations. In fact, certain features had been added to give this venue a simulated plush air. There were even some framed Monet and Lautrec prints on the wall. The booth we were in was distinctly womb-like, with high backs that tended to cut off our conversation from even our nearest neighbors. Thank the gods for small favors.
    “I seem to have misplaced my wallet,” said Ron, who after a quick survey of his wardrobe was now looking behind the napkin dispenser and lifting the little basket containing the condiments as if his wallet might be hidden beneath.
    “Ron?” I said, interrupting his search. “You left it back at the loft.” He smiled in gratitude that his search was over.
    “My treat, okay?”
    “I’ll have a Big Mac with everything,” he said.
    “Double fries?” I thought that getting some food in his stomach might help level him out.
    The place was between shifts and nearly deserted. It took only minutes to order and in no time I was back at our booth with the food. I didn’t really have that much money on me, as Ron was supposed to be the one treating. I just got an iced tea and small fries for myself.
    “This guy thinks just ’cause he’s the king of sporting goods, that makes him some kind of authority on how to live a life….” He was still finishing a story about what a son of a bitch his father was that he was working on telling before we entered the restaurant. For all I knew, he had been talking the whole time I was up front ordering. I settled in figuring that we were safe as long as he was focused on talking.
    “Would you mind getting me a milk shake?” he said. When he saw me fumbling in my pockets to see if I still had enough cash for the drink, he adde, “You do know I’ll pay you back, dontcha?”
    My probing fingers found an extra dollar and a five dollar bill in my pocket that had somehow made it through the laundry. I pulled them out as if unwrapping two of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The kid at the counter took them in payment with the same distain as if I were offering used toilet paper.
    Ron was delighted with the shake. He seemed almost back to normal. I knew that LSD did not wear off that quickly – even half a tab. But it was good to see even some semblance of normalcy. The father diatribe had been left by the wayside. I sat quietly sipping my iced tea as Ron now launched into a sentimental series of philosophical reflections on how alienated society needed some common vision, some shared sacrament to make life holy. “You know what our generation has – that the people with the blinders on don’t – is our drugs. When you take LSD with someone there is a bond, a thing that transcends….”
    I didn’t want to tell him that I was at least five years older than him and was getting closer to the dreaded “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” crowd by the year.
    He droned on for another half-hour. I was really mostly humoring him, as little of what he said seemed all that original. It was mostly regurgitated sixties hippy BS that had already become pretty passé – at least to my tired ears. Not that I disagreed. It’s just that I had really heard it all before.
    I can’t tell you exactly when I realized that everything was getting weird. I had finished my iced tea and I remembered I hadn’t touched my fries. It did seem strange that I had failed to notice my fries all that time. While listening to Ron drone on, I found myself wondering why I had failed to notice my fries and on top of that wondering whether that was something worth wondering about. I noticed Ron smiling to himself during parts of his monologue – parts of his narration that didn’t really seem all that funny.
    It was getting late and business had started to pick up a little as a few early leavers were stopping in before heading out shopping or beating the rush hour home. That’s what I liked about living so close to downtown. Downtown practically was my home. Sunlight glancing off passing windshields cast little rainbows of light that danced across the walls and the framed art prints. One picture I hadn’t noticed before surprised me. It seemed particularly inappropriate for such a deliberately bland environment. Over in the corner partially obscured by one of the plush window drapes was what looked exactly like a copy of Goya’s painting of Saturn Devouring One of His Children. I couldn’t believe it. Why would McDonald’s put such a deep, meaningful, and distressing work of art in a setting that was deliberately designed not to disturb?
    “Notice anything?” Ron’s smile seemed positively demonic. His teeth seemed vast and white and still far across the table from me, miles from me, and yet the teeth seemed so close.
    “You son of a bitch.” I realized he had spiked my tea with LSD. Now, I certainly had no aversion to the occasional entheogen, and pot was a nearly daily ritual with me at that time. It’s just that I would never take as strong a psychedelic in such an uncontrolled environment, or near rush-hour traffic in a large city – even on foot. “I’m out of here, you son of a bitch. You’re on your own.”

    I pushed past some customers who seemed to have the heads of various predatory animals on their shoulders, which was not all that strange to me. What was strange was that it seemed quite natural, as if it were clearer than everyday-walking-around reality. After all, the ancient Egyptians had tried that trick quite successfully. Out on the street I noticed that the animal-head effect only occurred when people came within about ten feet of my bubble of vision – and then only if I looked directly into their eyes. The temptation to look was nearly overwhelming but if I was to make it home safely, I must remain resolute. In spite of my apprehension and my initial anger at the dirty trick, I seemed to be able to negotiate the outer world rather successfully.
    The only other time I had taken acid was when I had spent a weekend completely alone in a cabin deep in the forest. It had been a profound experience filled with miraculous events, like talking to a family of curious raccoons who seemed to enjoy the fact that we could communicate with each other. They told me they had never met another human like me.
    I didn’t know how I would fare negotiating the distance back to my loft past countless other conscious beings of dubious intent and crossing intersections filled with tons of flying metal objects hurtling past at high speed.
    Somehow I made it home, took the phone off the hook, loaded the record player with Johann Sebastian, and waited for the end.

Copyright © 2015 by Bob Boldt