THE SECRET OF SUCCESS (c) Copyright 1993 by Franchot Lewis I. The old man said, "You can be who you want to be by day, but by night you must be what you are." I was at his door, holding, then turning the knob. "Go," he said. I opened the door, held my car keys and jingled them in my unsteady grip. "Stay?" he asked. I paused to adjust to the cold outside. The winter air rushed in, carrying with it the odors of a barren street. No fumes of traffic, no sweat of people, only the smell of ice. "Close the door or go," he said. I moved away from the door, walking backwards. "Will you please sit down, again, Mr. Washington?" the old man asked. "So you can insult my intelligence again?" "You have come to steal my secret for success like the others." "I was invited here." "Yes, recommended by an old friend, who thinks you will make a nice car salesman on his lot, but you need to be trained." "I need the job." "Just a job?" The old man took an old worn Bible from the end table, said, "I lend you this, take it and read." "I've read the Bible," I said. "Good," the old man replied. "I thought you would be more helpful. Mr. Frost, my employer --" "Who wants to promote you," said the old man. "Mr. Frost warned me about your insults." "He warned me about you too. You are a young man with ambition." THe old man smiled. "Here," he said. He took a plain silver colored cross from the table. "Take this and carry it." "With all due respect, Sir. You are wasting my time." I started to leave again. "Wait," he said. "A career won't be enough for you, you want to be a boss. Take this." He took a small golden ornament in the shape of a pentacle. "What is this? A joke?" "No, young man, I repeat what I first said to you, you can be who you want to be by day, but by night, you must be what you are." "Riddles, riddles," I groaned. "More riddles." "All day long until twelve midnight, you can be what ever you want, a captain, a king, a poet, but at night, from twelve midnight until six in the morning, you must be what you are." I made a rude laugh. "A challenge?" he asked. "Good bye," I said. "Go to this old woman, I shall send you to, and you will never have to work for any one again, or worry about anything again, by day, that is." "Shit," I said. He grinned. "You are a young man who can not resist having your dreams. Go see the old woman and be rich, or come back and call me an old fool. Young man, go for your dreams." "You're wasting my time," I said. He laughed. "You will go, a young man like you can not resist." II. I found walking to the old woman's house troublesome. A half foot of snow was on the ground. Sleet was falling; the wind blowing. The temperature was dropping. The street was overgrown with ice. I wanted to turn back to my apartment with its tight windows that held in the forced air heat, but my feet kept saying, "No. That way. -- That way, that way, that way." Though I could feel my bones growing cold, and my back cramping and wet from the chilling dampness of the ice and wind that seeped through my coat, I could not turn back. My soul, itself, was cold and wet in the cramped air I breathed, every day - air twisted and worn thin by misfortunes past, and by the poor financial condition of generations of my kin. I went forward, over sidewalk that was loosen by the ice. A great chunk of concrete, a slab, heaved and broke under the weight of my feet. My feet under the influence of their now frantic nature wouldn't wait for balance to be restored, and in their impatience made a futile effort to keep from falling into the chaos that the ice and the snow had made of the concrete. I got up. Ice and snow were all over me. I shook myself. The air was somehow thicker now, or my lungs were sucking in harder. A burning sensation had joined the dampness and the chill that were clawing at the skin of my back. I felt down, cold and bruised, but my heart's thoughts now joined my nagging feet's. "I must press on." I would press on. The old woman's house was a shack. It looked terrible. It wouldn't have passed the most lenient inspection codes. I hesitated outside, checked the house number, walked back to the street corner and checked the street sign. I had come to the address I was given. She had a door bell. I rang. As the door opened, a rush passed over me, heat, the place was hot, like on fire - and the smell of lilacs - sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. I swear, I felt the tingle on each vertebra. My eyes blinked. Maybe, I looked as if I would faint, because she stared with a pair of redden black eyes, both with the clarity of burning coals in an old fashioned stove (I remembered my Grandmother had). Her eyes bore into me, like sometimes my grandmother's had, when I'd looked sick or afraid, because of something I had done. I looked away, hoping to avoid more of that stare. The old woman yanked me back to those eyes, "Young man," she said. "Won't you come in from the cold? Are you bashful? Afraid to look a lady in the eye?" "Afraid? No ..." I lingered. "Young man!" I looked, my eyes blinked. She smiled and escorted me into her house. Lilacs, flowers, blooms everywhere. Her living room was one garden sea of potted plants, filled to nausea. The plants odors were loathsome. The house heat was enough to push me toward a propensity to faint. My mind felt as if it was bending, I was leaning, inclining to fall, but my spine held. My mind said, "hang in there." Then, the garden sea like odors in the room filled me with a sea sickness, and my stomach with the propensity to vomit. "Young man," she called me to look her in the face again. I did so with a look of loathing, feeling disgust. "Drink some tea, young man," she offered me a cup, holding the cup up to my face. The odors from the cup broke the thin thread that kept me up on my feet. How long I was out? Hours? Days? I don't know. III. I awoke slowly. I could just make out the outline of the massive stacks of books in my attorney's office, when I heard him speak. "Mr. Washington," he asked, "How are you feeling?" Every muscle in my back ached and tightened. "Should I call a doctor?" I turned to a window. The curtains had been drawn. We were on the sixtieth floor, too high up to tell the time. My heart felt as if it would shatter, my flesh as if it was wearing down, as was my bony frame. My mind kept asking my brain, "How dark was the night? The deep darkness of midnight?" I had to get up and away. I was being held there, to the floor. I tried with all my will to project myself as a whole man, and to keep myself whole through the pain. I willed those organs that were crying out to break down to calm themselves and to hold. I knew what why what was going on inside as I knew that the darkest time was going on outside. I tried to get up and move toward the door, but the slightest movement brought great pain. After what seemed like an eternity of trying to move, I was no nearer to the door. "I'm calling a doctor!" I struggled to speak. My throat and jaw muscles tightened, and my efforts to speak intensified, as my attorney announced, "I am sending for an ambulance." Real or imagined, I thought I saw a sliver of light brown scamp across the wall, or perhaps a ceiling somewhere in my attorney's office or within. But from which? My heart pounded. The pain came like electrical charges that now went through me, following closer after each other. Opposites attract? Me and that brown scamp that ran across the wall? It leaving a slick, oily, female smell that drew me to nausea. Somewhere, here or there, the irrational compartment of my mind screamed in total terror, yet I could make no audible sound. I became acutely aware of each individual hair on my legs, and every nerve in my skin stood on end. The smallest draft brought the oily scent, and sent a trillion neurons screaming the imperative for my will to hold. I heard the rustle of legs rubbing together, and smelled the oily female gas. I had to get on my feet. My body felt elastic, like it would shrink in a second if all my will was not brought to bear. The brown spot on the wall looked static. I focused my will on the wall, forming my thoughts in a ball of electricity to demonstrate the power of man to resist. The spot was a smudge. My eyes watered with relief as I forced my voice to a near-audible whine, "No." Incredulously, my attorney was not moving to bend to my will, but was moving toward a course that could put me closer to ruin. He looked so concerned for my health, while my mind screamed, and I tried to force my tongue to echo the urgency I felt within outward to him. Lost in the torrent of my irrational truth was the rationality of his lawyerly mind. My eyes screamed, as his gentle eyes sought to know why mine were demanding no doctors. "Mr. Washington, I am getting you a doctor." I glared at him, and for a second his eyes looked as if he wanted to run for safety. Rationality drowns in the overflow of irrationality, or falls meaningless to the irrational will. I let my voice go into its most guttural form. My jaws ached as I forced out the words, "If you want me as a client, for God's sakes no, just get me a cab." "You may have had a heart attack," he replied softly. "I am a three-million-dollar-a-year account to you, get me a cab!" My attorney shook his head, quietly. I uttered, throat muscles straining, "The Hell with you, get me a cab!" He wouldn't. He would. We had talked late into the evening. A big meeting was planned for tomorrow. A merger could result that could make his firm many more millions, and me, a cool billion. "A cab," I made a tight smile. He was a good lawyer, a past President of the bar association, a man of high ethics and methods. But I could smile. I saw the first hint that he would forget about doctors and do what I told him, rising as a distant cloudy glint at the back of his eyes, looking like the front lights of a midnight train approaching through the fog from a far on a cold night. "I do not like doctors," I explained. "My fear of them might not quite be real, yet it not imaginary either." I pulled my lips into my mouth and let my tongue wet them, as if to wash away some of the intense anxiety I felt. The cab took me back to my hotel. I locked myself in the room, put a do not disturb sign on the door. I stumbled and fell on the bed, without opening my coat. I lay on the covers and let the pain go, and let my will rest, as I lay behind the now massive hotel room door. After laying in the dark for a moment, my eyes rested upon the huge walls. They were clean and white, with not a smudge. This was a fine hotel, like the pictures of it in the magazines, without a single speck of dust. Transfixed to a spot on the bed, I stood on my hind legs and peered into the face of this giant that looked like a monument when I awoke and shook, knowing that my sanctuary had been invaded. "Christ!" the giant screamed, the covers on the bed shook. "A cockroach in Trump's Plaza, I would not have thought it." The instinct for survival is the perfect knowledge. I was immobile not a second longer. I would ponder later, construct reasons, discuss their motive for invading this place. My legs did not fail me, but gave me speed to flee as the giant swatted the blanket with his hat. I scooted along the bedding, down the sheet and around under the bed to the frame and a wooden slack. I hid in the darkness, listened, and waited for them to leave. "Where is he?" I heard another voice near the center of the big cavern that was now the room. The lights were on, still I had the impression that I was listening to shadows, but I was the one in the shadows hiding under the bed. "Look at that! His clothes are laid on the bed like he's just stepped out of them. This is a set-up. He was tipped." "No way, man." "We have a leak in the organization." "No way, man." "Let's get out of here; he's not here." I had to see them, to study their faces, so I could identify them. I worked my way around the other side of the bed and among the debris of my papers that they had thrown on the floor. "Nothing here to tell us where he is." As I pushed forward, the door opened and the sound that it gave off made a loud noise which led to a burst of explosive gunfire, that echoed off the walls as would thunder in a canyon. I jumped involuntarily, my body tingling from the overabundant instinct to flee. I heard rumbling behind and in front of me, a man was losing his balance, and feet were thundering forward. I saw a shadow in a corner where I could hide that had a straight line of sight to the doorway. A hotel guard was down on the floor, and two other giants were running away, walking over his body as they fled. I wondered, how long before six? I couldn't be found in the room after six. I had to get to some place where I would be safe at six, where there was clothing, so I could get dressed. {END} (c) Copyright 1993 by Franchot Lewis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.