they say the owl was a baker’s daughter:
four existential noirs
Pablo D’Stair
Copyright © 2011 by Pablo D’Stair
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Kaspar Traulhaine, approximate
Yesterday
was such an easy game for you to play
But let’s face it things
are so much easier today
-The Kinks
On Friday, it was terribly cold, but I’d not felt like going home after work, was just sitting out, reading a magazine of allegedly true macabre stories, the first one I opened to beginning That morning, Lester Hauss was feeding the tail of a stray cat to the lizard he carried around in his leather briefcase.
I wanted to buy a new sweater, my sweater having worn nearly threadbare. I wanted to buy a belt, my pants awkward because I’d been dropping weight the last several weeks.
Everything was spooky, the nights coming on earlier and the magazine not helping.
I was on a bench far enough away from the road that the few pedestrians out for strolls wouldn’t bother with me. I’d probably have slept on the bench awhile if not for finally noticing someone was watching me. A plump little man, not so little, a fat man still dressed as though from work, lingering up on a subway platform. He was staring at me, though it was obvious I’d caught sight of him. I read for fifteen minutes straight, hoping when I glanced up again, making it as casual as I possibly could, he would be gone, or at least facing the other direction.
He was still looking at me, puffing from a sour little cigarette, holding a cup that was probably empty.
Unsettled, I lit my own cigarette, suddenly wanting to be around other people. So I stood, started to walk in the direction of a fountain with a cobbled walk around it, a few monuments, streetlights lit mint white and orange, couples and families likely still lounging in the grass, talking, eating, having a moment of pointless calm.
I gave a look back over my shoulder as I got ten paces or so away from the bench. The man was no longer there.
***
I stopped at a street kiosk to buy coffee and a candy bar, double checking that I didn’t also need more cigarettes.
A block later, there was a movie theatre, a small one I’d never known about before. It seemed out of place, just a slim entrance between a take-away restaurant and a laundromat.
The entrance door led immediately to a rather steep staircase, the door at the bottom opening into the theatre lobby which was well lit and rather busy, throwing me off a bit. A young woman who worked there must have noticed my confused expression, because she approached politely, asked if there was something she could help me with. I smiled, shaking my head, sort of nodded Thank you and kept looking around while she strolled back to where she’d been standing.
I bought a ticket for something that turned out to be a documentary about a family that tried and failed to run a franchise restaurant, the tone of the film bitter toward various commercial interests, though I felt that the flop was all the family’s own fault.
I stayed in my seat until the credits were nearly done, then got up, a sudden burst of needing to urinate. As I moved down the theatre aisle, I was certain that the man walking in front of me, just pushing through the auditorium door five steps ahead of me, was the man from the platform.
It was.
He was out in the corridor. I walked right past him on the way to the toilet.
He was still in the corridor as I followed the exit signs, coming to a much larger, more accessible entrance to the theatre than the stairwell I’d come down.
Irritated, I walked at a brisk clip for two blocks then ducked in to a coffee shop, ordered an espresso and a cookie, took up a free newspaper and took a seat at one of the tables. Within two minutes, I saw the man loitering outside, leaning on a bike rack, scratching his nose then taking a tissue from one of his pant pockets to blow out what seemed a thick wet of mucus. He got a cigarette going and stared at the coffee shop window. He wasn’t looking right at me, because the window glass was tinted, probably only showed him his own reflection, the street behind him.
But he was staring.
It might as well have been at me.
***
Thinking to call his bluff, to put a bit of a scare in him, I immediately walked up to him, asking just what he wanted. He gave me a sort of condescending smile, a gruff of air down his nose, took out his damp tissue and wiped at the skin above his lip. He got a cigarette out, asked me did I have a light, to which I told him to go fuck himself, so he took out a book of matches, got the cigarette lit and started to walk away.
I was not about to walk in the opposite direction, because it was obvious enough how that would play out, he would just start following me, again, putting me right back in the same position.
So I followed him, very quickly catching up, keeping pace a few steps behind him.
It was absolutely childish, but there was something about the sogginess of his appearance, about the ugly shumble to his steps, the dandruff over his coat shoulders, the worn out knees of his pants, about the sole coming off of his left shoe in flops with each step, something about his whole way of carrying himself that made me tense, more terrified to walk away than to see what he did next.
He went into a drugstore and I lingered outside.
If I ran, it seemed I’d be able to get away. But, this made it the wrong thing to do. If he was willing to give me the opportunity, it was just because he was flaunting his power in the situation over me.
I had to wait, I knew, because he knew where I lived.
Obviously.
I started to get sick to my stomach.
Had I ever seen him before?
Absolutely not. No. Absolutely not.
He exited the drugstore, slapping his cigarette packet in his hands, giving me a little nod, a pleased kind of flat smoothed his lips out. He put a cigarette to his mouth and stood there, squaring himself as best as his plump, slung over body could manage.
He waited what must have been a full five minutes before it dawned on me he wanted me to light his cigarette.
I stepped up to him, spit on his chest, then stepped back as his eyes narrowed.
-I’m going to turn you in, three days from now, he said, his voice smooth and still with a higher pitch like an adolescent.
I felt empty. Nothing. Just stood there.
I could have asked What do you mean? but it was pointless. Everything was pointless as soon as those words were out of his mouth.
I got out one of my own cigarettes and he held across his matches, but I took my lighter from my pocket, tried to get it to flame, the flint just clacking sparks, scuffing, my thumb tip sweating and sore.
He struck a match and shielding the flame with a cupped hand, he slowly moved it toward me. Disgusted, I slapped both his hands and shoved him hard, a few passersby giving us looks, slowing, waiting to see what would come of it.
I struck and struck and struck at my lighter, finally getting it to flame, my lips trembling with the lighting cigarette in them giving its first crackle.
***
I followed him up the street until he entered a bar, one I’d had drinks at myself, from time to time. He no longer seemed to be paying me much mind, but that didn’t surprise me. There was no reason to be following him, any longer, but I was sick and couldn’t think of what else to do.
In three days he’s going to turn me in. That was the claim.
I looked at him, obese, exhausted from his day, hair two licks of glaze over his blotchy forehead.
A few patrons moved by me, one of them nudging me, saying something sharp I didn’t quite catch.
I glanced around until I found the toilet, took a seat on the bowl without pulling down my pants, sat there, tense elbows digging into my thighs while I massaged my temples.
It was certainly conceivable that this man had witnessed me, but after four months I didn’t see what good it would do for him to go to the authorities.
And with what evidence?
I got on my knees, vomiting hot liquid. As I spit strands of putrid phlegm into the mess of the toilet water, I realized I’d started to cry.
What evidence?
I didn’t understand.
And what possible connection could this man have with any of it? Did he know Claudia? Did he know Gavin?
Neither of those options seemed the least bit likely, especially considering neither Gavin nor Claudia even knew me.
I tried to get a picture in my head of the stairwell in Gavin’s building.
Had there been windows? Someone lingering a few flights up the stairs, peeking over?
Even if so, Gavin’s body hadn’t been found for twelve hours, not until the afternoon after I’d left him in the corner, covering him over with bags of trash, cardboard boxes.
***
I got myself cleaned up, straightened my clothing out as best as I could, exited into the bar and looked around for the man. It took me a moment to find him, though he’d done nothing to hide himself.
He was with a woman, now, some ugly woman who was laughing at whatever story he was telling, his hands flopping out, up, showing the sweat pushed through the fabric of his shirt under his arms, his coat slung over the back of his chair.
I took a seat for myself at the end of the bar, ordered a bourbon and sipped at it carefully.
The woman didn’t seem like his date, just an acquaintance. The impish appearance of the both of them made me think they might be related, if not brother and sister maybe just cousins, or maybe just ugly friends from a long time ago.
He was obviously deranged. It went without saying. But there must have been a specific reason he’d come to this bar. It was clear enough that I would have followed him this far, though he’d done nothing to coax me along. The threat he’d made was enough to keep me tethered to him. He must have known that, plain as day. Just as he must have known that I would follow him wherever he went next.
I downed my bourbon, ordering another, giving the whole thing some consideration.
He wanted something from me. He must. It was not just some coincidence, he hadn’t just decided to screw around with a complete stranger and luck-of-the-draw made his threat to someone who just happened to have killed someone four months ago.
He knew what he said he knew.
Absolutely.
I sipped at my new bourbon. Watched him. Now he was eating some cheese fries that had been brought. He and his woman friend both. Their round bulbs of fingers digging in, their mouths opening, the fries swallowed whole, both of them too greedy to even let the things cool down, their swallows clearly not the least bit pleasant.
***
The woman left when her boyfriend or husband showed up, but my accuser stayed behind, not even giving up his table, just ordering a drink for himself, having a brief conversation with the girl who took the order.
I ordered two more bourbons, taking one as a shot, paying, leaving a considerable tip, then took my last one with me over to where he was sitting.
He eyed me, then scratched at the sour skin of his neck, smiled, asked me what I was going to do with my time.
I felt crippled from the tone of the question. Without any heart, I asked him what it was that he wanted from me, his reply just a rubber shake of his face while he scratched the damp soup of sweat and scalp that layered the thin hair over the back of his head, flakes littering down over his shirt shoulders.
I pressed on, though, knowing the futility of it, telling him I didn’t have much money. But I worked, he must know that, and I said I could easily get him more money regularly, as much as he liked. I admitted that he had me completely under his thumb.
He just slurped up the scum of beer from the long empty base of his last glassful, not listening to me at all.
I chuckled, at first faking, but then it became genuine. I would have started laughing, broken down into tears again if I hadn’t forced myself to cough then slap my bourbon down my throat, wincing to keep from choking it back up.
-Three days, what time? I asked, letting out a long breath, leaning back in my chair.
That made him smile, sweetly, like I’d finally gotten around to something he was interested in. It was a very unpleasant expression, it suggested an intimacy, like I’d just off hand mentioned I liked his favorite song.
-Early afternoon, early afternoon, he said, and just like that the paste of disinterest came over him.
The warm of the first drinks I had taken crept up my back. My eyes blinked down a long time, my head swaying as I took a steadying breath.
-It is about Gavin, all of this, you can tell me that at least?
He took out his wallet, took up the bill that had been left folded next to a water glass, condensation having soaked the receipt paper through. I was staring at him while he calculated how much tip he was going to leave.
As he stood up, he looked at me. I turned down my head, not wanting to see his smugness. But I could tell he was looking at me, still and when I lifted my brow to meet his eyes he told me quite sadly that there was nothing I could do about it, so I really shouldn’t bother.
***
I kept at least half a block distant as I continued to follow him, spent most of the time looking down at my feet, my cigarette smoldering, fizzling out, dropped from my fingers.
Each time I looked up to make certain I’d not lost sight of him, I felt further removed from life, from the past week, from months and months, everything.
I wondered if I should go in to work the next day and got upset, a hissing conversation about it jabbing the backs of my eyes. First, I’d think I should certainly not bother, but no sooner would this settle than it would seem a kind of admission of defeat. Worse, it seemed like I’d accepted my circumstances without even contemplating some escape, that I was so certain of being defeated I’d already stopped breathing.
What would I do if I didn’t go to work and if I didn’t go out the next night and if I didn’t do whatever it was I’d had in mind to do two days from now, even if I’d had no concrete plans?
Nothing I can do, he’d said. Shouldn’t even bother.
He knew exactly what I’d get to thinking.
Even if I wanted to do something to him, how could I? When?
If he was this full of himself, this meekly assured, it was apparent enough that he was right, there was no point in bothering.
I slowed, letting him get almost out of sight, but then a choke of panic kicked around in my gut, my bowels tightening and feeling hot. I hurried, trying not to break into a jog, was half a block behind him, again, five minutes later.
It was pointless, these conversations with myself. I was trying to pretend there was anything left to do.
He’d been taunting me when he’d said those things. The sadness on his face had been condescension.
He was doing this to me, getting his kicks this way, loving every step I was taking. He probably was having to keep himself from laughing when we crossed the street into a quiet block of closed shop fronts, just the sound of his flopping shoe sole burping in echo, my ears pricked to each suck of it.
***
We entered an apartment building, the lobby smelling of stale mop water, the carpet moist, pulping when I stepped on the rubber mat just inside the entrance doors.
While he collected some mail, I noticed two elevators off to the left. My chest tightened up.
Did he want me that close to him? Closed in a box?
I could kill him right there. Obviously. Taking only the slightest chance of being witnessed.
No.
Pointless thinking.
Even if I thought I could overpower him, even if I’d been armed, even if I was certain he wasn’t armed, for that matter, there was no point in killing him. I just had to wait. At least until I knew what was actually going on.
I was feeling drunk, a bit feverish. Before I realized it, he’d moved past the elevators, holding some correspondence in his teeth while he used both hands to open a larger manila envelope.
He leaned in to the stairwell door then started to climb, his breath gravelly and raw with each step. I let him get up two floors before I began my pursuit. His funk was everywhere and the constant bubbling ooze of his breathing crept along the stairwell walls, moistened the banister, made my breathing short, harsh, anger rising, my cheeks clenching taut.
I was ascending the second two flights, listening to him gurgle his way upward, when he let out a peel of flatulence, first high pitched, then chugging and obscene, the taunt of a child with food smeared over salivating lips, the sound of it pip-pip-pip-pip-pip-pip-pip.
I punched the wall, collapsing from the pain of my strike, rolled onto my side, then righted myself, stood with my forehead against the painted cement. I mumbled that he was a bastard, hated him for his disregard, for making me walk through breaths of his waste.
The alcohol in my system dulled the throb in my hand, but not entirely, so I knew I’d done some actual damage. Still able to hear his progress, I waited another minute before following, again.
***
He climbed all the way to the tenth floor, was blowing his nose, smacking his lips as he made his way into the corridor. He was hobbling, doing the best he could to keep his thighs from rubbing against each other, not that he could do much, his pants ridden up between the cleft of his ass, his socks, the elastic in them long worn out, were piles on the tops of his shoes, the dry skin of his ankles showing a few inches, thick spots of red from where he likely scratched and scratched and scratched at them.
I leaned in the open door, getting a cigarette going. For a moment, I thought I’d made a mistake about the elevator.
Why hadn’t he gotten in? Was he actually afraid of what I might do?
This made sense, I supposed, if looked at in certain ways. He’d only just started this game, knew I must be flailing, struggling, desperate. Maybe he’d thought I would get overcome, not think things through.
But I could’ve overtaken him on the stairs, at any time. I could have gotten ahead of him or just lunged at his exhausted back, knocked him down a flight, done away with him there with just as much privacy as an elevator.
It didn’t make sense.
Did he always put himself through such an ordeal? A kind of exercise? Or had he done it to be certain I’d follow him, learn where he lived, not just give up, wait down in the lobby, walk away?
He stopped outside of an apartment and gave a knock, using the same tissue to wipe at his forehead as he did to blow his nose.
An older man answered and they chatted for a minute. The older man glanced in my direction, narrowed his eyes on me, but there didn’t seem any particular malice in it. I was, after all, loitering in the stairwell door, leaning with a cigarette drooling over my face. Any tenant would have looked at me
Both of them went into the apartment. The door closed. I started in the direction of the door, myself, but stopped, uncertain of how to proceed.
I felt drunk, sick with it, the cigarette smoke making matters worse, even if I didn’t inhale.
Had he brought me here so that man would see me? What could that matter?
It wasn’t his apartment, at any rate.
Did he even live in the building? Did he just want me to wait?
I sat down against the wall, closing my eyes, pressing the long of my palm flat over my furrowed brow.
It annoyed me that I was spending so much time asking myself what he might be doing. I didn’t care. Or didn’t want to care.
And the thought that the older man might be his deranged little friend, his ugly lover, intruded overtop of everything, making me seethe, making me growl aloud. I couldn’t do anything about it, of course, whatever they were up to. They could both be in on it, the fat one having dragged me here, a little prize to show the old one. They could be chortling while they jerked and tugged at each others naked bodies, gloating while they orgasmed in each others sweat dampened hands, laying in their joint stink while they knew I was helpless, smoking drunk on the stairs of a stranger’s apartment building.
Nausea closed my eyes, but I popped them open every three seconds or so, the thack of blood in my ears sounding like feet up the stairs, feet down the stairs, somebody coming up on me, down on me and I didn’t want to be seen in such a state.
***
Of course I could just have walked away, left town, run as far as I could manage. The option was plain enough and tempting. It wouldn’t stop him turning me in, but I doubted that not disappearing would make matters play out any differently.
It couldn’t possibly matter, considering how this lunatic was conducting himself. He seemed comfortably assured that I wouldn’t do him any violence, which meant that he must have evidence beyond his saying so that would interest the authorities.
But what could it have been? A photograph?
It was impossible.
Fingerprints?
The strangulation had been sloppy, I hadn’t done anything beyond the most superficial wipes to areas of the body I thought I’d touched, not to mention my prints would’ve been all over the stairwell, the trash bags, the trashcans. But my fingerprints were on file, they’d been taken more than once in the last five years. If there was any such evidence it would’ve been found out in the course of the police investigation.
It must have been a photograph, no matter how ridiculous it seemed.
I’d never confessed, never even let anyone know I had an interest in Claudia. No one I knew even knew who Claudia was.
What in Christ’s could he have on me?
It was something, he had something. It was beyond even the most warped imagination that he knew what he knew but would start all of this knowing he couldn’t prove it out.
Or would his dropping my name be just enough to connect the dots of an investigation?
I was reasoning this all through as calmly as I could, would’ve been jotting notes on paper if I’d had any.
He must have known about me before witnessing the crime, there was no way around that. So, he knew about my infatuation with Claudia.
Had he intuited it from seeing me once or twice watching her, no matter how casual I tried to make the behavior? Had he then decided to document me, gotten it in his sick little mind that I might get up to something? Had he traced all of my movements? Had he collected bus slips, kept a diary of what trains I took, maybe taken pictures of me, kept it all neatly in order? When I’d broken, when I’d killed Gavin, had he seen that too?
I got annoyed.
No.
None of this had happened.
Four months ago. Four months. I’d not even walked past Claudia’s workplace since then, hadn’t even gone in to that part of town.
Reaching into my pocket for another cigarette, I found I had none.
Was he going to sleep in there with that old man?
For all I knew, he’d gone out the window, plumped his way down the fire escape. It was as reasonable to assume as anything else.
***
More than partway tempted to knock on the old man’s door, I stood up to stretch myself out, no longer swimming with drunk, but a headache gripping in, fatigue in my bones doubled by the churn of my thinking.
I couldn’t even kill them both, though images of doing just that gnashed in sharp lines through my other thoughts. But, if his being dead wouldn’t change anything, it definitely meant there was physical evidence. Something in an envelope. Maybe in that envelope he’d been fingering, tearing into on his way up the stairs, though this seemed peculiar to consider.
And since this old man was likely privy to things, how many other monsters did this imbecile know? How many other people were included in on this? Or was it just an innocent seeming package he’d asked a friend to mail for him on a certain day, maybe not even addressed to the police but just to a particular detective by name, to an acquaintance at a newspaper, to Claudia, to anyone?
I’d been in the stairwell or a few paces down the corridor for an interminable amount of time. Maybe an hour at most, but it felt longer, felt shorter, didn’t feel anything.
Memories of waiting around when I was a young man for a girlfriend to get off work, for the metro station to open, for weeks to pass before some anticipated event, thoughts of more pleasant waiting got into me, made me feel wretched, a weakling. Beautiful waiting, but waiting that still disappeared, didn’t matter, felt like no time at all.
Just like this. Just like this, now.
And it mattered just as little.
This man might not even be the person who was behind all of this, though his demeanor didn’t suggest he was somebody simply playing a part in someone else’s revenge.
Revenge? Could it be that?
Not from Claudia. Gavin had hardly even been her lover, they’d seen each other twice and she’d gone to bed with him, yes, but would hardly be moved to these sorts of machinations.
Gavin’s parents?
They would just walk up to me, slit my throat where I stood.
Or had this man loved Gavin?
Absurd.
All of it was absurd.
None of these people had anything more to do with each other than they individually had to do with me. And they had nothing to do with me.
I was just some morsel to this creature. I doubted he even cared. Nothing in how he behaved seemed to call out that he did. The opposite. He couldn’t care less a gun to his head.
***
I’d started walking the length of the corridor, back and forth, was nearly back to the stairwell door on at least the fiftieth lap when my accuser exited the old man’s apartment, a laugh on his face, the door gently closing behind him.
I squared myself and watched as he took a key from his pocket, entered another apartment, two doors further along the corridor, the opposite wall. He didn’t even look over at me, not even to verify I hadn’t left. He probably could tell peripherally that I was there, had maybe glimpsed me before I’d turned around.
Not that it mattered. I didn’t know why I was considering it.
His door closed. Locked. The sound of two more latches or bolts.
He just left me in the corridor.
But it couldn’t have been as simple as that.
However, I now knew where he lived, so there was no need to stay around.
Almost as though this were a cue, my stomach gurgled viciously, an insistence of grime tapping to be defecated, a sour breath lifting from my gut out in a whispered belch, my eyes stinging from the paste of sweat that had been settling on my face.
I walked to the elevator, rode it down to the lobby unsure of every movement, watching the elevator doors spread open, revealing the exit to the building, found myself up the block, ducking into a gas station toilet, giggling like an idiot the bowel movement felt so relieving.
I bought cigarettes, three pack, then reentered the little shop, glad to see they sold alcohol, though nothing very strong. A slim, tall bottle of red wine caught my eye. On sale. I bought two.
I found a bench in a little grassy area in front of a library, had a seat, stared at my foot, one leg crossed, raised so that the heel of my shoe was balanced on my knee.
What could he want me to do?
I pondered this, reminding myself, actually whispering the words as though the sober wisdom of an adult to a child, that I didn’t have to do what I thought he wanted me to do.
I nodded and nodded and nodded my head.
I didn’t have to. Certainly not. But it seemed a mistake not to at least figure out what it was. He was going to end my life. No question. I couldn’t not know why. I couldn’t not struggle. He had no right. And if nothing would move him, to not struggle made me twice as pathetic, like I was killing myself but blaming him as a cowardly dodge.
Listening to myself, all my thoughts, justifications, arguments, philosophies, psychological analyses, I hated myself. I hated myself, putridly. But not enough to think myself less than some fat, filthy maggot who felt he owned me, however right he may have been.
***
Into my second bottle of wine, I suddenly felt paranoid that I’d better not get caught just sitting around drunk. I don’t know what I was worried might happen, but I stood, thought about finding a restaurant, but my train of thought narrowed and I began back in the direction of my accuser’s apartment building.
As I walked, I slouched through my options, my thoughts erratic, not staying in place long enough to fully flesh out any one full course of action.
Supposing I were to leave, I thought, but then interjected that there was no need to jump to that, there was plenty of time to mull things over, the option of leaving always open, right up until the early afternoon of the day I’d be turned over.
So, I never wound up thinking about how I would go about leaving, if I did.
I did try to calculate how much money I’d have, but also didn’t get to a solid sum. Instead, I fixated on what would be my last paycheck. I did have two work shifts left before the deadline, but as both of those shifts combined wouldn’t amount to but one hundred twenty dollars, I decided against work.
-Added to which, I said aloud, a violent whish and closing fast of my hand, I wouldn’t get this last paycheck at all.
I stopped, staggered against a wall, knelt down, swigged two long drains of wine, pretending to be tying my shoe. I didn’t want to stand up, so glanced around, saw no one, stayed as I was.
I’d not even be able to pick up my last check. It would be three-fifty, four hundred dollars, not a fortune, but money I’d earned, would come in handy if I did leave.
I wanted to cry, but it was too pathetic. It was my fault. How many times had I meant to sign up for direct deposit? If I had, that money would be waiting for me.
Idiotic.
I felt I was being viciously abused by everyone.
So, I took the last of my wine in a series of chokes, lobbed the bottle at a wall, watched it hit the cement of the sidewalk without shattering.
***
I got a cigarette going in the lobby of my accuser’s apartment building, the inbreaths of it tasting like thick brown foam, my throat dry but cankered with softs of clumped phlegm.
I hit the button to summon the elevator, but turned away, blundered over to the stairwell instead. I started to take the steps at a jog, but by the second landing was winded, dizzy, wheezed in discomfort. The drink in my head throbbed and I vomited, looked at it, wondered if I should clean it up, then furiously grit my teeth at it, continued slowly to ascend.
I got to the floor where his apartment would be, stepped into the corridor and became suddenly uncertain of myself.
Was it the tenth floor?
I peered down over the stairwell railing, looked up, leaned in the opening of the corridor and squinted. I saw the mat that was in front of the old man’s apartment. I glared at it, spit clumsily, only half aware, heard it blot on the tip of my shoe.
A last hesitation closed me up another moment just outside of what I’d decided was his door.
But, what could be the worst that would happen? I’d wake someone?
There was nothing anyone could do about it.
So, I knocked.
No response.
I pounded. I kicked the door, my limbs then going out of my control. I worked up a sweat, stamping in place, hitting my thighs with fists closed up so tight they went numb, my open hands shaking as though from the cold.
I looked at the peephole of the door, then covered it with my thumb, ashamed of myself.
-I’m not a weakling, I muttered under my breath, then put my cheek against his door and whispered, sure that he could hear me, You can’t just do this to me, because I’m not a weakling and I will grind your bones with mine if I have to, you piece of shit.
The last three words rose in volume, tone, were claps, crisp, stiff, sledging into the blank of his door front.
I pushed myself away with both hands, lost my footing, landed hard against the opposite wall of the corridor. That he could probably still see me no longer bothered me. I was spent, wanted to sink in cold water.
I wondered how many bolts that door of his really had. I pictured myself shrugging to stand, working up the nerve to kick and kick, getting the thing to crack open.
He could have a gun, waiting to lay me down just like that.
But it was more likely that he just had the door reinforced.
At least three locks, I remembered.
And what was to stop him moving a bookcase in front? A heavy desk?
I’d gotten a cigarette going, again, but didn’t want it but smoked from it anyway.
***
I decided what I really needed to do was calm down, get things in order. I’d made a huge mistake getting so drunk, was motivated to do nothing but sit there, bemoaning my state, mixing in with my new resolve vague thoughts of sobering myself up more quickly by forcing myself to vomit, by drinking a lot of water.
In the morning, I needed to talk to him. After all, it only served to reason that he’d wanted to see how far he could push me, see how quickly he could break me down. He was probably having a good time with all I’d given him, right up to blubbering into his closed door.
But, there would be something that he wanted. That is, if I believed he really had some evidence, as he claimed. I began to doubt it, or let myself humor some slapdash doubts I cobbled up from nothing. If he’d gotten me to this point in one night, he’d want to have it done.
Or was he so insane he’d go on risking his life? Didn’t it occur to him that if I felt trapped I might just think To hell with everything, decide to kill him, kill his friends, hurt him as much as I could before he could bring the ax down?
No. This had gone far enough. I obviously didn’t care about myself anymore, accepted I was in his grip and now was dangerously set on spiting him.
That might be what he was thinking, safe behind his bolstered door.
I was imagining all of this to myself, slowly making my way down the stairs, leaned to the wall, slithering against it the entire way, when I heard a warble of static, a voice over a radio, the sound of two people talking.
-We have some vomit, here, one of the voices said, sort of like an aside. Another voice added that Yeah, it seems pretty fresh, here.
I froze up.
He’d called the police.
The sound of them climbing the stairs became clearer with each blink I resisted. When I got up the nerve to glance down, there were two officers looking right at me, making quiet remarks to each other.
I felt ashamed, wanted to cry, so weak, terrified, didn’t know what to do. Even if I wanted to run, I was in no shape to, and so what would that look like?
I just waved.
-How we feeling, tonight? one officer asked me.
I apologized, said I was a little bit drunk.
-That you got sick down there, sir?
I stared at the second officer while he sideways talked something into a radio on his shoulder. They asked who I knew in the building and I managed some response, that I was there to see someone, couldn’t recall their name, had only just met them out that night.
They motioned that I should walk with them, the first officer keeping one hand on one of my arms, the second officer moving sideways in front of me. They walked me to the corridor with my accuser’s apartment.
-The thing is, we’ve got a complaint against you from one of the tenants of the building.
I kept saying I was sorry I was sorry I was sorry, that I should just get home.
But they weren’t listening.
The second officer walked down the corridor, knocked on my accuser’s door. It opened immediately, the fat slop standing there in lousy pajamas.
I sank into myself. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I tried to think about getting the gun off of the officer, but couldn’t even bring myself to look down at it, fearing a shift of my eyes would be enough to set the situation off.
They walked me to the elevator, talking the entire time, walked me through the lobby, asked for my identification, asked me to explain a few things, asked me if I needed a taxi home to which I said No and then they asked me if the address on my identification was correct, suggesting maybe I should catch a cab there.
-You can’t afford a cab, tonight?
I glanced up and down the sidewalk, nodding like an imbecile.
-A cab, I finally got out. Sure. Yes, I’ll take a cab home.
I apologized again while the officer made me sign my name to something, told me that I shouldn’t come back, that the man in the building didn’t want to be bothered.
***
The heater on in the taxi sighed a kind of hush over the dim of the radio and my head lolled against the window, my body screwed, doubled over at a peculiar slump. I wondered why the driver kept the radio that low, if he could even hear it.
It seemed far too soon that I was let off in front of my own apartment building. And it seemed there were too many people on the sidewalk, too many things happening.
My head was soggy with alcohol.
For a little while, I loitered near the entrance door, trying to get it right in my head where I was, what had been going on. The idea that I’d been sent home, ordered home, batted away like some bug gnawed at me. I disliked the sound of it. Sent. Shooed. But I couldn’t shake that it’s exactly what had happened.
Did he want me in my apartment, in particular? Or did he just want me away? Did he just want to reinforce that he’d meant what he’d said, three days, early afternoon, early afternoon?
I walked to the corner unit on the ground floor, found my key, opened the door slowly, cautiously, then felt an idiot, stepped in with as much arrogance, bravado, sense of home as I could manage.
When the door shut, I felt unseen, closed off, no place. I removed most of my clothing, drank three glasses of water, listened to the sound of my refrigerator and the hiss of nothing else.
For five minutes, sitting on the sofa, I was perfectly calm, relaxed, probably could’ve drifted off to sleep if the telephone hadn’t rung. I felt drained. Impossible to stand. My eyes widened and unfocused, pointed in the direction of the wall, the telephone ring sounding, sounding, sounding, sounding, sounding. Stopped. My voice on the machine, a beep, then a hush, nothing, a click, a beep, the silence of the room which had a grip now nauseating and perverse.
There were eleven messages on my machine, all in the time since I’d last seen my accuser.
No words. No message more than two seconds long of nothing.
I knew it was him, but I played with thinking it could’ve been any number of other things. Telemarketers suddenly had my number. Someone had a wrong number, kept misdialing, getting my machine, more and more insistent to themselves that they were dialing correctly, that the girl or whoever it was they were after had gotten a friend to leave my answering machine message as a joke, a trick, some way of confusing them.
***
In another hour, I was drenched in misery, trying to convince myself to sleep.
The telephone had gone off three more times and I’d not had the courage to lift up the receiver once. Not even when the telephone wasn’t ringing, just to vent, just to blather aggression, threats, profanities at an empty line. I was too afraid that the moment I took the receiver up it would connect me to my accuser, like he’d been calling in just that instant, no time even for the ring to sound. I sat hissing whispers at my knees, the tops of my feet, tired long past exhaustion.
Why these calls? To be sure I’d gotten home?
That made no sense.
To torture me, keep me awake?
I’d already been broken, his little scratching stray, mewling outside his apartment door, ready to do anything, so why would he send me home just to needle me remotely?
I was suddenly animate, agitated but brimming with more positive emotion.
I’d called his bluff. It laid itself all out in front of me. He hadn’t called the police as some bizarre progression to get me to go along with whatever his game was, he didn’t need me to be in my apartment, he’d just gotten afraid.
I clapped my hands, swimming through half formed thoughts to the kitchen where I drank from cupped hands at the faucet, then over to the bookshelf, reaching behind the second highest shelf for my bag of marijuana, two joints already rolled and waiting.
He’d called the police to get rid of me, plain and simple. He didn’t want me outside his apartment, because he really had no control of me.
These calls?
Keeping tabs, but not for any reason other than he was worried that I’d doubled back, that I’d not been so scared after all, that I was on to him. He wanted me to break, take up the receiver, scream, illustrate how beaten I was, or else he wanted me to just pick up the receiver and slam it down in frustration, just to know I was here.
The marijuana stung and I coughed, refusing to get myself a drink of water, taking three more quick drags even through the wheezing.
I needed to sleep, to get calm and soft, needed to sleep so that I didn’t become too weak to think.
He was just some slob, somebody who woke up one day to realize how he was less than his own filth, less than some dog’s shit. And then had stumbled on to me, thought to use me to vent his loathing, puff himself up with something other than his own lard, his waste, his pointlessness.
I started on my second joint, laid cuddled to myself, mostly naked, on my sofa, the television going, some programme I’d recorded a few weeks ago and already had seen. I giggled and then pretended to giggle more than I was.
***
Showering, trying to arouse myself but unable to, blaming the marijuana though marijuana usually had the opposite affect on me, I felt my thinking crumple, reduce to cinders that let off rank stabs.
No.
I didn’t want to think anymore, hated how I’d not fallen asleep and it was now practically daylight.
No. No.
I halfway toweled off, smacking myself as hard as I could in the face, mocking myself for always pulling back on the blow, called myself a cartoon, a make believe.
Had I really believed I’d gotten the upper hand? Was I letting myself deteriorate this quickly? Letting myself detonate?
I laughed, spit on the face of my reflection in the fogged bathroom glass. It was pathetic, but I was letting myself drain out the bottoms of my feet, dissolve, lose any sense of meaning, of preservation.
-How did you get the upper hand? I asked, sarcastic, making chicken juts of my neck, walking the apartment in oblongs. How? Tell me how you managed it. Idiot. Explain the line of thinking to me.
My eyes fell on the remainder of the last joint and I snarled, then rolled my eyes at myself, chiding, using the most insulting tones I could find in my head, told myself it was too late to lament little mistakes like smoking a joint, so I might as well finish it down.
Had I really convinced myself I’d gotten out of his clutches by doing nothing, by my pounding on his door for twenty seconds and throwing up on his stairs, waiting around like a starving mutt while he had a casual night with a friend and then went in to bed?
Christ, I hadn’t done anything and was so desperate I was starting to think I’d already escaped.
Why would I do that? So that when the trap sprung it could be sudden, it could be out from nothing, I’d not have to tense in anticipation, sick and heavier with every letter of every thought I groaned out?
I started going through the kitchen drawers, pulling out anything sharp, knives, a potato peeler, prongs for corn on the cob, thumb tacks. I made a big pile before walking away from the lot, not even understanding what I’d been doing.
Did I want a weapon? Was I looking for the implement of assassination I’d utilize to get out of this?
I began to think I’d lost my mind already. I began to think about Gavin, dead dead dead dead dead dead Gavin. Began to talk to him, imaginary, to tell him there was no reason I’d needed to kill him but the conversation didn’t go that far.
I didn’t care about Gavin. He was supposed to be gone.
Or Claudia.
What did she even look like, now? In the weeks I’d watched her, how many hair colors had she had?
***
At some point, finally, I’d passed out on the floor by the television, my legs straddling tight one of the couch pillows, my head on my bundled up shirt.
I woke, still quite high, not feeling rested, feeling panicked. I dressed clumsily and slow, breathing only out of my nose, breaths that whistled no matter if I snorted hard to clear whatever it might have been clogging my nostrils.
I left my apartment at half past ten, the sun outside cold and tender, it hurt to walk in, smelled like snow but not a shiver of cloud showed.
Purchasing coffee from a gas station, I made up my mind not to bother with calling out of my work shift. Things would either end badly, or I would get through and the hassle of trying to weasel back into my lousy job wouldn’t seem so bad. I needed other work, anyway.
-I needed I needed, I muttered, downed my coffee in uncomfortable heaps, threw the cup away into a trash can by a crosswalk.
It occurred to me I was thinking to walk back to his apartment, but I’d forgotten where it was. My head was nothing, I couldn’t think, the marijuana had a better hold on me than I’d thought.
I couldn’t have forgotten. I’d made it a point to note where the place had been. Cross streets. Everything.
Hadn’t I?
I sat to a bench, a creaking, fake smile yawning across my face, and I tried to keep the feeling of tumbling inertia from distracting me.
I’d been out. He’d been at the train station. Some movie theatre. We’d walked. Walked. I went into the bar. Had it been so quickly after the bar? No. Blocks and blocks. I could only picture the lobby, the stairs, the stale of the carpet in the corridor.
I started to feel on the verge of tears, walking again, walking in the direction of the bar.
It hadn’t been so far from there.
I saw a clock in the window of a bank. Nearly noon. He’d be at work. He didn’t have the liberty I had, had a life waiting to be maintained, lived in. I had a husk waiting to crumple, could do anything at all, everything bringing the same consequence.
Then, like there had never been confusion, like I’d remembered the name of some actor in a film that had slipped my mind briefly, I remembered exactly where he lived. I laughed, not hiding it, clapped my hands, looked at someone who happened to glance at my display, gave them a silly affirmative gesture, then waved them away though they were no longer looking.
***
Having a fourth cigarette, looking at the flat of his building, I tried another attempt at rationalizing everything. With a little bit of distance from all that had happened, with the buffer of having been alone in my apartment, all of the events of the previous evening seemed more condensed. It was just something that had happened.
What had happened?
A man knew I’d killed Gavin. He decided to turn me in. But, before, he wanted something from me. He said that he didn’t, nothing specific, no blackmail, so maybe it was just torturing me that he wanted. Kicks. Self satisfaction.
I’d given him too much credit, I thought, treated him like an apparition, treated him with reverence, as though he lived magically when it made as much sense that he just didn’t know what to do with me. He’d thought he had a nice little plan, but it overwhelmed him. He’d taken his chance, but had been afraid of confronting me. Coward. He’d copped out at the end, telephoned the police to scare me off. Christ, he’d probably telephoned me all those times wanting to call the whole thing off.
I should just take a trip out of town a week, two weeks, wait and see.
Except I couldn’t do that.
No.
I still was a mess.
What was I thinking? Coward? Called me to say it was over? Then why not leave a message?
And he’d let me follow him home.
Why?
He could’ve called the police from anyplace, any time. He was enormous, could’ve struck me down, rushed me, could’ve done anything.
He was insane. Was inhuman.
I shook my face and jogged up the stairs, slowed, got my breath back a bit, jogged up and was soon at the corridor end.
I was the coward.
-You can’t hide, I said to myself.
I knew I was writhing, death agonies, wanted anything rather than to look at his bloated face on the plump glut of his neck fat, but I had to. Otherwise, this would just go on forever.
Insane.
No one tells someone they’re going to turn them over to the authorities and then calls it off over the telephone, calls and calls and leaves no message.
I moved past the mat outside the old man’s door, steadied myself, gave a polite knock.
Almost right away, five seconds perhaps, the door opened, a woman, middle aged, dressed for taking a day off stood in front of me.
-I’m sorry I said, blinked, looked at the corridor.
I was in front of the correct door. I felt nauseous.
-I’m sorry, I repeated. I think I might have been given the wrong address.
I fumbled that I was supposed to meet a man, quite plump, made a gesture of a rotund gut with my arms in front of me, snapped my fingers and said the word Mister a few times, like I was searching my memory.
-What address are you looking for?
I pretended not to register this. I didn’t even know the address of this building. I recalled the number on the door front, though, so just said Ten Eighty-eight.
-They said it was apartment ten eighty-eight, right in this building.
I glanced back at the old man’s mat, gauging the space from it to where I was, certain this was the door. The woman kept apologizing, supposed it might be a neighbor, but couldn’t think of who fit the description I’d given.
***
I’d become accustomed so quickly to waiting in the stairwell, like a childhood bedroom or some bench I’d sit on everyday for months, smoking cigarettes after lunch.
I wanted the woman to leave before I knocked on the old man’s door, but didn’t know why.
Was I nervous she might leave while I was talking to him, see me, get involved, tell the old man I’d been bothering her as well, pretending to look for some fat man?
But the old man definitely knew the fat man, so it was stupid.
It was all stupid.
The woman obviously knew him, as well. Or else he had a key to her apartment, unknown to her.
I could call the police, have them back me up that the fat guy had been in there the previous night, had called them.
And prove what? To what end?
Added to which, the police would be upset to find me back, bothering people, wouldn’t humour me calling women in apartments crazy, conspirators in some game of threatening to turn me in for some murder I’d committed.
I knocked on the old man’s door, but no one answered.
Dejected, frowning and numb, ears buzzing with a rattle like coins spun underwater, I walked down a few blocks, sat in a fast food restaurant, ordered something after five minutes just to avoid being bothered by any of the people who seemed to be paying no attention to me.
The old man maybe had a key to her apartment?
He was a neighbor, it made sense.
So, the fat guy had asked could he borrow it to hide out for the night? Had gotten spooked I was still following him but didn’t want to just stay in the old guy’s room? Or what else? He used to be involved with her, still had a key, happened to know the old man and to throw me off the trail, had visited with him then ducked in to the woman’s apartment? But why would he call the police? How would he know she wouldn’t be back? Where had she been?
It was senseless. I felt I was trying to reason with the rules to a card game invented by a six-year-old.
Was it all just to screw with me, still?
After all, I was the only one treating it as though there was some outcome other than the one stated at the beginning. I only felt any of this was unreasonable because I wanted it explained, I wanted to be allowed out of it by promising something. It was pointless to even confess myself, turn myself in if that was what this cretin wanted. If I did what he was going to do, either way, I’d be no better off.
I finally stood up to go use the toilet, but only after honestly considering just wetting my pants, just sitting there, slumped over, urinating, staying put until it dried.
***
So I rode on the metro, read from a newspaper someone had left folded, jammed between the seat and the window, kept my eyes solid to the text, the photos, the cartoons, especially when the compartment got nearly full, people sitting all around me.
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