Looking into another person’s eyes for an extended period of time proved to be a powerful thing. And if you don’t believe me, try it yourself.
Of course I began to see Nikki, which was strange because I was staring into Danny’s eyes, and Danny is a six-foot-three black man who looks nothing like my ex-wife. Even still, as my pupils remained locked on Danny’s, it was as if I were looking directly into Nikki’s eyes. I was the first one to start crying, but others followed. Our college girl came over, said I was brave, and then hugged me, which was nice. Danny said nothing.
That night I woke up to the sound of Jackie’s grunting. When I opened my eyes, it took a few seconds for my pupils to adjust, but when they did, I saw Danny standing over me.
“Danny?” I said.
“My name’s not Danny.”
His voice scared me because I was not expecting him to speak, especially since he had not spoken to anyone since he arrived.
“The name’s Mad Nipper.”
“What do you want?” I asked him. “Why are you in our room?”
“I only wanted to tell you my street name, so we could be boys. But we’re not on the streets right now, so you can keep calling me Danny.”
And then Danny walked out of my room and Jackie quit grunting.
Everyone in the bad place was pretty shocked when Danny began speaking regularly the next day. The doctors said he was experiencing a breakthrough, but it wasn’t like that. Danny just decided to talk. We really did become boys and did just about everything together in the bad place, including our exercise routine. And little by little I found out Danny’s story.
As Mad Nipper he was a rising gansta rapper from North Philadelphia who had signed on with a small record label in NYC called Tougher Trade. He was playing a club in Baltimore when some beef broke loose, and somehow—Danny often changed the details of his story, so I can’t say what happened for certain—he was struck in the back of the head with a tire iron, driven to the harbor, and thrown in.
Most of the time Danny claimed that a Baltimore rap group—one that was scheduled to perform before Mad Nipper—asked him to smoke up in an alleyway behind the club, but when he went outside with these other rappers, they started giving him some shit about headlining in their neighborhood. When he brought up his superior record sales, the lights went out, and he woke up dead, which is actually true, as his file says he was dead for a few minutes before the EMTs managed to revive him.
Lucky for Danny, somebody heard the splash Mad Nipper made when he entered the harbor, and this person fished him out and yelled for help right after the other rappers left. Danny claims that the salt in the water kept his brain alive, but I don’t understand how that could be, especially since he was thrown into the filthy harbor and not the ocean. After an operation that removed tiny parts of his skull from his brain, and a lengthy stay at the hospital, Danny was brought to the bad place. The worst part was that he lost his ability to rap—he just couldn’t make his mouth rap anymore, at least not as fast as he used to—so he took a vow of silence, which he broke only after looking into my eyes for a very long period of time.
Once, I asked Danny who he saw when he looked into my eyes, and he told me he saw his aunt Jasmine. When I asked him why he saw his aunt Jasmine, he told me she was the woman who had raised him up until he became a man.
“Danny?” I say, kneeling before the manger.
“Who are you?”
“It’s Pat Peoples.”
“White Pat from Baltimore?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re bloody. What happened?”
“God punished me, but then He led me here.”
“What you do to make God angry?”
“I cursed Him, but I said I was sorry.”
“If you really Pat People, what’s my name?”
“Mad Nipper, a.k.a. Danny.”
“You eat Christmas dinner yet?”
“No.”
“You like ham?”
“Yes.”
“You wanna eat with me and Aunt Jasmine?”
“Okay.”
Danny helps me stand, and when I limp into Aunt Jasmine’s home, it smells of pine needles and baked ham and pineapple sauce. A small Christmas tree is decorated with popcorn strings and colorful blinking lights, two green-and-red stockings are hung on a fake fireplace mantel, and on the television the Eagles are playing the Cowboys.
“Sit down,” Danny says. “Make yourself at home.”
“I don’t want to get blood on your couch.”
“It’s got a plastic cover, see?”
I look, and the couch is really covered with plastic, so I sit down and see that the Eagles are winning, which surprises me, since Dallas was favored.
“I’ve missed you,” Danny says after he sits down next to me. “You didn’t even say goddamn goodbye when you left.”
“Mom came and got me when you were in music relaxation class. When did you get out of the bad place?”
“Just yesterday. Out on good behavior.”
I look at my friend’s face and see that he is serious. “So you get out of the bad place yesterday, and I just happen to run to your neighborhood and get mugged on your street and find you here?”
“Guess so,” Danny says.
“It sort of seems like a miracle, doesn’t it?”
“Miracles happen on Christmas, Pat. Everybody knows that shit.”
But before we can say more, a petite, serious-looking woman—who is wearing huge black-rimmed glasses—walks into the living room and starts screaming, “Oh, my Lord! Oh, Jesus!” I try to convince Aunt Jasmine I’m okay, but she calls 911, and then I am in an ambulance being driven to Germantown Hospital.