From The Prophet Avery
No one knew who Avery's father was, although some people believed that it was the Dominican who had, for a brief period in 1986, lived down the hall from Avery's mother. Some thought this explained Avery's uncanny behavior. This Dominican man, whose name was either Arthur or Alfred (no one in the building could remember exactly), had been taken away one warm Sunday afternoon by four men from Western Psych. They had strapped him down onto a stretcher with vinyl restraints, and as they carried him away, those who watched through the peep holes in their doors, as well as the more forthright neighbors, who observed freely from the hallway, saw him struggling violently against the plastic manacles and heard him shouting something about the unspeakable beauty of "the eternal kingdom." He never returned. Three or four weeks later, a tired elderly woman came alone to clear out his apartment. The few residents who had the opportunity to peek inside his open door as they passed by said that there was little more inside than a bed, a chair, and a desk, from what they could see. The windows were wide open and curtain-less, like a row of unblinking eyes. And everything--even the few sticks of furniture that were there--had been painted stark white, in a shade so dazzlingly bright it was positively blinding.
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Strung (detail), 2002
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