Read Online Numb by Sean Ferrell - Free Book Online

image popped back up, out of focus and shaking, about to perform the trick that drove me out of Texas.
    My friendship with Mal ended just that quickly. He’d gone from being a guardian in Texas to abusing me in New York and now he’d kicked me out in an effort to get away from my success—if you could call being on a late-night video show success—angry that we’d headed east rather than west. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I was hungry and there was food on the table in front of me. As I continued to it I bumped into the young doctor, only now he had a mop and a bucket. Revealed as not a doctor but the janitor, more concerned with the cleanliness of the floor than the suffering of those on it, he slapped water to tiles.
    â€œHey, asshole,” he said. “Quit walking around. You keep bleeding on my floor.” He pulled the mop after me as I walked across the room, all the way to the cookies, and smeared my bloody footprints with his dirty gray water that smelled like black cherry soda.

three
    FOR A VERY brief moment after Mal kicked me out of our hotel room, I thought I would end up living on the streets. The idea didn’t scare me. The street just presented itself, without any other options around it. I left Mal at the hospital and took a cab to the hotel. On the way back it occurred to me that I held the money from my unexpected performance, so when I got to the hotel I stopped at the front desk to get a room of my own. I wondered if I’d ever had a room of my own.
    The thin woman behind the glass, with her ringed eyes and beakish nose, looked like a strange, denuded bird on display. I thought she would never leave her cage, and it looked rarely cleaned. She asked if I wanted the room for the night or just for an hour.
    â€œThe night,” I said.
    â€œWait, you’re one of the guys in room seven, right?” She pulled out a piece of torn paper, a corner from a tabloid. “You got a phone call here while you was out.” She slipped the paper under the half-circle hole in the glass and on it I found, written in the neatest hand I’d ever seen, a simple, telegram-style message:
    Michael. Agent.
    Saw show. Must talk.
    Please call.
    The Manhattan phone number at the bottom looked important; somehow the digits all made sense together. I memorized them without trying.
    Mal was right. I’d have little trouble finding money, an agent, or attention for doing what came naturally to me: inserting sharp and jagged objects into my skin.
    The next morning I called the number to talk to Michael. Instead I talked to his enthusiastic assistant, Robert. Robert took my call as a great sign. He’d seen my “show” live and gotten my number from Redbach.
    â€œI know Michael will be happy you called.” Robert spoke in a professionally manic voice. “You know, I showed him the tape. Even though it was, like, a copy of a copy of a copy, it was still pretty good. Michael agreed. We both thought you just have to have an agent.” He sounded like a prophet revealing the mysteries of life.
    â€œGreat.” I fought an urge to hang up. “Thanks.”
    Michael’s office was in Times Square. The womanbehind the desk, who under any other circumstance would have crossed the street to avoid my type, warmed to me as if I had diamonds falling from my pockets.
    Alternating mirrors and movie and television posters lined the waiting room walls. I glanced around. My face flashed by in the mirrors. I sat down and buried my face in an issue of People .
    When Robert came to get me he led me down a hall lined with more mirrors and posters. Only then did I realize how bad I looked. I had worn my suit because I really didn’t have any other clothes. Mal had lent me most of my other outfits. Now I was myself: crumpled, dirty. And the tear in the right pants leg from Caesar’s claws hadn’t repaired well.
    â€œI’m so glad you called