Topless

by D Keith Mano

  do you think?” And I thought, you’re dancing for Ethel already,

  oh Jesus, Saviour of us all.

  I got to The Car in six minutes. Northern Boulevard was still.

  I double-parked and went quickly to the door. It was locked. I

  inserted my key, then stopped. I had remembered Ethel’s

  strength, remembered her yanking Pearl out of the water with

  one arm. Reinforced by fear and the special manic power of her

  delusions, Ethel would be formidable. I went back to my car

  and got a tire iron out of the trunk. I could, at least, fend Ethel

  off with it—even if I were unable, as I would be, to strike a

  woman down. Then I turned the key and stepped in.

  Silence. But several work lights had been turned on. I knew

  that the performance, if there were any, would be on stage. I

  raised my tire iron. Then I sidled around the partition. I was

  right.

  Kay hung upside-down, nude, from the trapeze.

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  I rushed to the kitchen and got Jako’s linoleum knife from his

  kit. Then, holding Kay’s waist with one arm, I sliced the trapeze

  ropes. We fell together. Kay was unconscious, profoundly sedated, but alive. From that position, hung upside-down at the knees, her face and throat were engorged with blood. There

  were superficial cuts, X-shaped, above each nipple. Lengths of

  blond hair had been sheared off and strewn around. I spoke to

  her. She didn’t acknowledge sound. I slapped her, in my panic,

  roughly. She swallowed and that commonplace reflex encouraged me. I let Kay’s head rest upright against the mirror. Then, disengaging myself gently, I went to the pay phone.

  And heard someone walking down below.

  Perhaps I should just have stayed where I was, called 911,

  and let the police supervise Ethel’s capture. But I wanted her

  taken at the scene. That would be conclusive proof. And, yes,

  I was curious to see how Ethel had pulled it off. Curious, even

  more, to meet her face to face. Would Ethel be the same bluff,

  sardonic person I had known at poolside? Or would her eyes

  now be wild—in a kind of werewolf metamorphosis? Would she

  stink of feral acts? I had to know if—if I should have guessed it

  long before. If I had been derelict: allowing my instinct as a

  brother-in-law to jam my radar. And three young women to die.

  I took my tire iron. Then, after listening for a full minute, I

  heaved the trap door up by its metal ring. There was a light on

  down below. But no one had been startled by my entrance.

  Cautiously, crabwise, I went down the wooden staircase. My

  heart was playing a snare drum solo. I waited. Among and

  between all those stacked cartons there were a half dozen nooks

  where a person might conceal himself. I flushed each one out:

  nothing but shadows. And then I saw what I had expected to

  see. Though I would never have found it on my own.

  The entire beer cooler had been moved sideways. It ran on

  four oiled tracks. Beside the cooler was a two foot wide doorway—and I knew why Ethel always reminded me not to stack cases there. (The passage had been built and camouflaged by

  Prohibition Era bootleggers. Tony and Ethel must’ve come

  across it by chance.) The party wall, however, had shifted

  slightly with time. There was just leeway enough, behind the

  beer cooler, for a small cat to insinuate itself through to Big

  M arty’s—even when the metal chamber had been shoved back

  into place.

  I peered into the adjoining basement. No light shone there.

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  But, with illumination from my side of the sliding door, I could

  see that it was unoccupied. Just to my left, against the wall, was

  a wooden staircase made—I would imagine—by the same carpenter who had fashioned ours. Ethel was up that staircase. I figured she wouldn’t leave The Car until Kay had died. It made

  sense for me to lie in ambush just this side of the cooler. But I

  was concerned that Kay might go into shock before then.

  So I crossed the threshold and, holding my breath, I climbed

  the staircase.

  I came out at the rear of Big Marty’s—just under the mechanical rack, which at that point had risen, in its roller-coaster way, to a height almost ten feet overhead. By dim streetlight from the

  store front, I saw skeletal coat hangers dangle. Nothing moved.

  I thought perhaps, hoped perhaps, that Ethel had gone already—

  yet it didn’t make sense: Ethel would never have left the sliding

  passage open. She was somewhere in the store.

  I moved forward: the light, after all, was in that direction.

  The mechanical rack, having traveled for fifteen yards at a ten-

  foot elevation, came down in a gentle slope until it was at eye

  level. I stood near the store counter. Ethel, I thought, would be

  crouched on the other side. But she wasn’t. Ethel was behind

  me—she had stepped from a small, curtained dressing room—

  and, as I turned to oppose her, she struck me with some sort of

  steel reinforcing rod. Above my left ear.

  I went down. I never lost consciousness, but—for a moment—there was no essential communication to my extremities.

  My left ear had become a loud, cavernous place. Blood splashed

  into my palm. The best I could do was crouch head down, in

  anticipation of successive blows. But Ethel didn’t strike. She

  was behind me, over me. She attached something to my foot.

  Then, quite gently, Ethel drew me upright in a powerful Heimlich grasp.

  “ Tony, baby,” she said. And she wet the nape of my neck

  with her tongue.

  I didn’t even fight it. Given my dazed state, her hug was

  invincible. Ethel lifted me, then set me down again. Her right

  hand, reaching from behind, found my genitals and held them.

  She pinched me there: she wanted to arouse me. Her teeth bit

  my earlobe. Her legs had come around my thighs—it was as

  though she were the male, I the submissive female. She ground

  herself into my body.

  “ Tony, baby,” she said.

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  “ Ethel. I ’m not Tony. I ’m Mike. You killed Tony, don’t kill

  me, too.”

  “ Aaaaaah-no, ” she groaned. It might have been a cry of

  recognition and despair. It might have been a cry of orgasm.

  Then Ethel set me free. She backed away toward a small control

  'panel beneath the rack. I tried to walk off—I had some vague

  idea that I could exit through the storefront door and out onto

  Northern Boulevard—but I was brought up short. I stumbled. I

  was on a leash. Something had arrested my left foot. I bent to

  look. A thick wire cable ran from my ankle to the mechanical

  rack.

  “ Tony, baby,” Ethel said. And she clicked the control-panel

  switch.

  A mechanism whined. Hangers began jangling. With a jerk

  the clothes rack took off toward the rear of Big M arty’s. I was

  dragged on my behind for ten feet, scouring the floor, shoving

  old cardboard boxes aside. The rack moved inexorably. And

  then it began its long slope up. My entire body hung from that

  one ankle. Skin was sliced through. I hung four feet off the

 
ground, flailing, bending my body upward, double, trying to

  disengage my foot. I screamed. I know how foxes feel, caught

  by one paw in a trap. I screamed like a girl.

  And, yard by yard, Ethel followed me. She had another length

  of wire cable in her hand. With it she flayed my chest and head.

  Each blow cut. And, at each blow, Ethel elaborated on her anger

  toward men.

  “ You had to do it.” She cut me. “ You had to do it.” Cut

  again. “ Couldn’t ” —cut—“ keep it in your pants, could you?”

  Ethel cut and I screamed. “ I ’M SICK AND TIRED OF YOUR

  PATHETIC COCK.” She cut me there. “ After all I did for

  you,” cut. “ After the money you pissed away on your dancing

  whores,” cut, cut, cut. “ And gave me clap,” cut. “ And shamed

  m e” —cut—“ in everyone’s eyes,” cut and cut. “ And took my

  womanhood away. You lousy pim p.”

  “ Please,” I screamed. She thought I was Tony. I would be

  Tony forher. I begged Ethel in my brother’s voice. “ I ’m sorry,”

  I said. “ Please let me go, I ’m sorry.”

  The rack began its slope down again. My head smashed into

  the floor. And on the way down Ethel’s cable whip caught me

  across the nose bridge. I felt intolerable pressure in the left eye

  socket. Something there, some soft component, gave way. I was

  sightless in that eye, bumping and flailing through the metal

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  rack’s half circle. I knew my Achilles tendon was almost cut

  through—and, as the rack sloped up again, it broke. My ankle

  was a floppy thing, loose. Another round trip and it might amputate itself.

  Then Ethel stopped the machine. I hung, swaying. She had a

  gun in her hand. She held it against my temple.

  “ I ’m doing this because I love you,” she said. “ I ’m doing

  this because you can’t help yourself.” She kissed me. “ You’re

  a beautiful thing, but you’re a slut. I won’t be humiliated again,

  Tony. I won’t. I ’m your wife and the mother of your children.

  And I made you, Tony.”

  “ I ’m—I ’m Mike,” I said. “ I ’m not Tony.”

  “ Does it matter?” Ethel said. And she put the gun into my

  open mouth.

  I have not really been alive since that time—so apparent was

  my death to me then.

  But Ethel heard a noise. A noise of flapping, enormous footsteps. And, chest first, Bert ran through the dry-cleaning store window. (He had come to deliver the night’s take to my bed in

  The Car.) Glass rained down behind him like fangs closing. Bert

  staggered through. He knocked the counter over. Bert might not

  have seen Ethel even then, but she fired at him twice and got his

  attention. Both slugs ricocheted off his metal chest. For a moment they wrestled, belly to belly, trying to use the leverage of their weight. Then Bert and gravity rode her down. They shared

  the gun: it was gripped between their hands—her right, his left.

  Gradually Bert inched the barrel back, away from him. Ethel

  was losing her grip.

  But, just before she did, Ethel surprised Bert. Instead of resisting him she went with his strength. Ethel turned the gun barrel away from Bert’s head towards her own. Bert let her: he

  took the guilt on himself, he exonerated me. Ethel fired and

  blew her forehead away.

  EPILOGUE

  It is sometime in November now, the 17th or 18th, you lose track

  of time on the road. I write this in a motel room just outside

  Tucson, Arizona. All six of us are painfully sunburned from a

  day in the desert, and the smell of Vick’s is like tear gas around

  me. We have been heading west, as Americans often do when

  they need to heal.

  Amy has lapses—now and then I can see Ethel’s fury in her

  eyes. But probably I ’m over-sensitive to such things. They’re

  children. The younger two don’t really know what happened.

  And, yes, we’ve hidden it. That’s one reason we’re on the road.

  The girls understand that Mommy and Daddy were killed in an

  accident together. “ Together” is important right now. And, fortunately, I had become for them a useful, if not wholly convincing, imitation of their father anyhow. (This meant, however, keeping the mustache—which Kay loathes—at least for a while.)

  Kay agreed to marry me in spite of that: in spite of the harem

  I bring with me now wherever I go. Indeed, I could never have

  adopted my four nieces, if Kay had not given her support. She

  must love children—she’s two months married and two months

  pregnant. We follow the get-it-over-with-now-and-hand-the-

  clothes-down school of family planning. And I couldn’t expect

  Kay to mother Ethel’s children without giving her offspring of

  her own. People will think I ’ve converted to Catholicism.

  Kay says—passing me with a child under her arm—that she

  married me because I ’m a cripple now. That she was waiting

  for something to slow me down. She exaggerates. I walk pretty

  good, limp or no: the reconstructive surgery on my ankle was

  done by a top pro-football orthopedist. And there is even h o p e -

  guarded hope—that I may see out of my left eye again. Healing

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  time is needed, clots have to dissolve, before anyone will propose an operation. But, Kay says, I look handsome wearing my black eye-patch. Who needs to see in three dimensions anyhow?

  I ’m not angry at Ethel: and I consider that a great gift of

  grace. Anger is a distraction I can do without. We’ve learned

  since that Ethel had spent much of her mid-teen years in a mental hospital. (Her father, evidently, raped her repeatedly throughout her early girlhood.) Ten days before her death, Ethel

  went to Weintraub and made a new will. She left me everything

  ‘ ‘in hope that he will take care of my children who, as I do, love

  him deeply.” I have not speculated on the nature of her love.

  As I have not speculated on her need to kill me. Ethel was mad.

  And is, right now, in heaven.

  We hope to make a home in California. We sold The Car and

  Ethel’s house for nearly $500,000 between the two. (As yet no

  one will buy the Cahoga place.) And I ’ve received an obscene

  amount for my story. Kay and I intend to write the screenplay

  together. Marriage we may survive, artistic collaboration will

  likely destroy us. The profits from Topless, as I call it, go into

  a trust fund for the children.

  I would like to be a writer—though I ’m not sure how much

  talent I possess. Next time I write there won’t be such a sensational true story to tell—and that will be my test. People distrust fiction these days. Storytellers aren’t held in high regard. People

  care only about what really happened, because their imaginations have lost muscle tone. If Topless had been a novel, probably no movie company would’ve bought it.

  And someday—when I am a grown-up, when I have finished

  doing what children do—someday I may present myself to the

  church again. That’s a long time off. I am not repentant in all

  ways yet—though I repent my unrepentance absolutely. But I

  have seen things, felt things, that deepen my faith in God and

  His Son. When those things are fin
ally clear in my mind, I may

  be able usefully to communicate them. For we are both of the

  spirit and of the body. That paradox animates the mystery of our

  nature. As it animates the mystery of Christ’s great Incarnation.

  It is the reason why we are sinful. And the reason why we are

  interesting.

  Some day, as a priest of God perhaps, I ’d like to talk about

  all that.

  About the Author

  D. Keith Mano has served as contributing editor to Playboy and

  the National Review. He is the author of seven previous novels,

  including Take Five, The Bridge, The Proselytizer, and The Death

  and Life o f Harry Goth. He lives in New York City.