Any Deadly Thing

by Roy Kesey

  • • • • • • • • • •

  His lungs still burn like love or cancer from the run, and there is no girl, there is only this raincoated drunk. Perhaps the girl, the phone call, perhaps it was all a joke at his expense. His maid will have put away the razor and shut off the water and replaced the doorman’s cigarette. Perhaps. And off he runs again, holding his side but still running, the girl must be somewhere, must have taken another path, must be saved from you even so. All paths lead away from the tower and if he transcribes a circle wide enough her path must intersect it. He runs through the Algerian children exhaled from their dim homes, and their voices are dervishes that will come back one day to preach of the Spoils and the Thunder and the Night Journey revealed at Mecca. He runs through the passages and alleys, the urine vaults and corridors, runs and runs and at the gates of the Cimetière de Montmartre he stops. This is where her parents are. Might she have come here to hide? Traffic choruses overhead. He slides from stone to stone, finds Stendhal and Degas, Truffaut and Ampère, Nijinsky and her parents and he can do nothing to help them. Then the grave-tenders come. Sir, they say, for thirty-nine thousand francs, two square meters will be yours to fill. He turns to them, says, Please, I am not yet finished. Please, be silent. They silence. He listens, listens, hears nothing but the dead and their complaints.

  • • • • • • • • •

  It is evening. You follow the accordion girl down the avenue de New-York past the Musée d’Art Moderne, and the birch trees spread their arms, hang like thieves, past you the cars ring and ring and the museum walls are a shadow box, headlights kaleidoscoping through the leaves, the wall sings with the monochrome flurry and the accordion girl has stopped. She watches and you watch her and she watches you watch her and smiles. A family comes, mother and father and boy. They pass jealously. The girl scratches at the scabs on her face. You offer the plum, she takes your arm, and together you walk past the thinning gold of the palaces. The girl says something, the air laves her voice and she laughs, it is her great gift to speak only a language that no one else speaks, and you kiss the dark above her head. Amidst the crystal pyramids she reaches up under her dress and brings out a crust of bread, buries it in a planter and watches as it doesn’t grow. For the moment you need not worry about the man who will soon be the man who is running toward Stalingrad, and you take her legs softly on your shoulders.

  • • • • • • • •

  He can no longer run but walks through Place Pigalle, the opium prophets, the boys who dance without music, the shows and their posters of lovely girls with lovely shapes painted between lovely legs. He limps uphill past the Nigerian fabrics, the Senegalese hats and sandals, the Vietnamese flowers and teas to the ice base of Sacré-Coeur. The sky empties. Sweat slicks his face and hands. There is a bar, and a stool catches him as he falls. Have you seen her? he asks the bartender. Seen who? The girl. The one who called. Take your time, says the bartender, and have a good look around. He goes back to wiping the counter. The man stares carefully into each girl. I don’t see her. Well, says the bartender, there are plenty of others. A good selection for a Tuesday. Look, the brunette there in the corner. Four hundred francs. No. Three hundred and fifty, then, but I can’t go any lower—she’s the best I’ve got left. No. You’re sure you haven’t seen her? The bartender shrugs and the man grabs him by the hair, slams his face down onto the bar. Blood runs like grenadine. Why won’t you tell me where she is? Stalingrad, whispers the bartender, the last time I needed a girl I found her at Stalingrad.

  • • • • • • •

  It is ten minutes to midnight, you take her legs down from your shoulders, she is beautifully asleep and you lie with her in the nasturtiums. You don’t know how to name the color of her hair. The rain falls gently, gently.

  • • • • • •

  He arrives at ten minutes to midnight, hollow and foaming, vinegar tears. He pushes through the clotted crowd, and she is nowhere, not on the sidewalk, not at the ticket machine. He threads through the turnstile, descends into the grotto. There, two policemen are beating a man just arrived from Burkina Faso. They stop to ask again for his papers, and he says again that he has lost them, and smiles, his teeth are garnets and the beating begins again. Excuse me, says the man who has been running toward Stalingrad. Have you seen her? We’ll be with you in a moment, sir, says one of the policemen. The man whirls and runs to the elevated platform, a train comes and he checks the first car and she is not there and he checks the second car and she is not there and he checks the other cars and she is not in any of them. The injured silence swells. There is no farther place. He crouches beside the wall. When they are done with the man from Burkina Faso, the policemen ascend to complete their patrol. They see the man, go to him, ask if he is unwell. He opens his eyes. The policemen smile and help him to his feet. Another train arrives. The doors open. He thanks the policemen and walks into the first car, nods to the elderly couple seated across the aisle, and seats himself facing forward. The doors close. The train pulls away. The policemen stand silently, two islands in their own dark sea.

  • • • • •

  II. TOMORROW

  You will wake and wonder if you should walk. There will be no point in heading for the tower: the first girl, the one whom you stalk, will be at home asleep, a pillow tucked between her legs, her high young breasts loose in the air, a kitchen knife rigid on the nightstand; and the man you must save, the man no longer running toward Stalingrad, will now be aching slowly up his stairs. You will stand and scrape the pollen from your eyes. The accordion girl will still be lying darkly in the planter, found and silent, hungry and twitching for Seville. Is there any better place to wait, or any worse? The heroin hounds will scour the stones at your feet, will jiggle and grunt, will spill you for your raincoat and run. You will climb back into the nasturtiums, will take the accordion girl’s hair in your fists, will cry at how simple it is, and how hard.

  • • • •

  He will be certain that she needed not a savior but a fool. And he has been that for her, the clown in her court, who ran when he was asked to run, who fought where battle has not, will never be joined, so that she might laugh. He will hope that she laughed long and well, that he has given her this one last gift. The razor will be waiting in the cabinet, the water will run again. He will spit the diamond into the toilet and unwrap his wrist, will strip his shirt away, paring, preparing. His pistol—straighter path, but far less dignified tableau—he will set in the sink. He will pull off his right boot, and the phone will scream. He will ignore it. It will stop. He will pull off his left boot and place it beside the heater that throms and grinds. The bath will not yet be half full, the steam parting in shrouds when the telephone screams again. Again he will ignore it. As he slides his pants to his ankles the phone will stop screaming and immediately start again. He will try to ignore it and fail. He will step out of his pooled pants and walk. Yes? It’s me. And? I just wanted to say that I was sorry. He was there and you weren’t and I was so afraid. You saw him? Yes, but from a distance. I was afraid, Christophe, so afraid, I went another way, I ran out through the Champs de Mars, I changed trains a hundred times. It took me hours to get home. I was all over Paris looking for you, and the whole time I thought, I was terrified, I thought that he’d, that you…. I’m so sorry. And so? I don’t know. He could be waiting again tomorrow. You mean today. What? It’s after midnight. It’s already tomorrow. Or today. Yes. Could you meet me this morning then? Where? The bridge, of course. Very well. What time? Six o’clock. All right. The bridge at six. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I’m so sorry about today. You mean yesterday. Yes. Until tomorrow. You mean today.

  • • •

  You will wake. Fake light will still script the sky. The accordion girl will be gone. The bread crust will have sprouted, flowered, died, and it will be nearly time. You will stand and shake the soil from your hair. You will walk the long walk, and when you arrive you will wait not on the bridge but
under the tower itself. The stain of true light will be spreading into the sky, and then she will be there, the indispensable girl, and so will he, she will be close and he will be far, it will be very nearly time. She will not see you, will walk past, you will spring, and she will not turn quickly enough.

  • •

  He will be late and running and this time if no one is waiting the razor will at last do its work, there will be no reason to stop though the telephone screams and screams. As he crosses the water he will see you throw the girl to the pavement. You will tear at her coat, at her shirt, at her breasts, marking but not scarring. You will hear Judas singing from his throne at the left hand of God, will look up and see the man you will have saved, the man who once ran toward Stalingrad, the man staring down the barrel of the necessary pistol and you will smile.

  •

  Probably Somewhere

  I ROLL UP A newspaper and head to the park. It’s raining hard and the wind is blowing branches off the trees. Pretty soon the paper goes to mush in my fist. I sit down on a bench and have a look at the lake.

  The ducks still aren’t back from wherever, but they’re due. The last time I heard from Marie she was down in Costa Rica. Ann and Joan send their love—that’s how the postcards end. I wouldn’t write back even if I knew their address, and Marie knows that perfectly well, but the postcards keep coming, first of every month or nearabouts.

  I toss the newspaper into the garbage, unsnap my harness and take off my arm. Usually I wear the extension with the metal hooks in case I need to rip something open, but yesterday I jammed the wrist swivel trying to jimmy my toolbox, so today I went with the hand. It’s a nice model with adjustable fingertips, two-position thumb, the works. It doesn’t look much like a real hand, but the doctors or whoever, they did the best they could.

  Now there’s a woman coming up the far path. Her hair is either black or just looks that way from the rain. She’s carrying a big blue umbrella, but it isn’t helping much. She keeps turning her back to the wind, and the umbrella tips away and blows inside out, and she can barely hang on.

  She’s almost to the swing set when she gives up and lets go, or else the wind rips it out of her hands. The umbrella cartwheels across the grass, pops up off the pavement and flips into the lake. The woman stares after it. Then she climbs on one of the swings, sits there for a while, pushes off with her feet. She’s a big gal—the swing set bows a little with her weight. Back and forth. She arches her back and points her toes, her feet reach up as high as the top bar, and as she comes back down the bar snaps and the whole thing collapses on top of her.

  I strap my arm back on and walk over, and she’s making this sound that’s maybe half-zombie, half-goose.

  –You okay?

  She keeps gasping. I hunch down and rub her shoulders until her breath comes easier. There are pieces of swing set all over.

  –Whoa, she says.

  –I know.

  –I think my arm’s broken.

  –Yeah, looks like it’s twisted a little weird. If I were you I’d lay off the swings for a couple of days. Now she smiles.

  –Help me up?

  So I do. I brush the wet sawdust off her coat. She has her bad arm cradled, and it must hurt but she isn’t going to show it.

  –Should I call you a cab?

  –Would you?

  I kick at the ground a little.

  –I was just kidding. There aren’t any cabs around here.

  –Oh.

  –The hospital’s not too far away, though. I’ll walk you over if you want.

  I put my good arm around her and we head across the grass. It isn’t raining quite so hard anymore. I can’t tell what she’s like under the coat, but she has eyes bluer than the lake has ever been.

  –Sorry about your umbrella.

  –What?

  –I saw how the wind took it.

  –Well, yeah. I’m not used to all this rain.

  –Where are you from?

  –Tucson.

  –Arizona?

  –Is there another one?

  –Probably somewhere.

  I walk her around to the emergency room. For once there’s nobody else in line. The nurse waves to me, and starts asking her the questions that have to get answered before they’ll take a look at you. There’s nothing left for me to do, so I take off.

  I lost the arm at this mill I used to work at over near Ukiah. We’d just had Ann, and she cried all the time so we weren’t getting much sleep. At the end of a double shift on the chip conveyer, my hand slipped off the rail and the auger drew my arm in, sliced it off and chewed it up.

  The foreman drove me straight to the hospital, but he was pissed that I’d screwed up our streak of accident-free days. In the emergency room the doctor said there was still time to get the arm sewed back on, and asked if I knew where it was. I couldn’t get my mouth to make an answer. The foreman leaned over and whispered something about how the augers worked, and there weren’t any more questions about the arm.

  I got full disability for as long as I live, and started drinking for real not too long after. The blackouts came and went for a couple of years. I woke up one day and the house was empty. Nothing left but the sofa I was sleeping on, my clothes dumped in a pile, and a note stuck to the door with duct tape.

  We’re gone, it said. Marie’d had enough. She’d tried and I hadn’t. So she and Ann and Joan were heading south, and I shouldn’t try to follow them, or ever expect them to come back.

  Joan used to run a bar over in Cobb. She and Marie would talk while I shot pool, and if there weren’t too many other customers, Marie would throw some money in the jukebox, and she and Joan would dance around the tables. I thought it was kind of kinky the way they slow-danced together, looking over at me every now and then, but the truth of it, they were laughing all the way to Costa Rica.

  Bad sleep as always but in the morning it’s not raining so hard, just a drizzle that fades in and out like bad reception. After lunch I do a little work on my arm—oil the elbow cam, replace a grommet, adjust the socket to keep it from rubbing my stub raw. The rubbing’s cupcakes compared to the phantom pain, but there’s no oil for that.

  When everything’s set I strap on the harness, pick up a magazine and head for the park, and what do you know, the ducks are back. I watch them for a while, pairs of mallards swimming in circles, and a canvasback hen that looks a little lost. I toss some gravel out into the water, and the mallards think it’s bread and swim over. You can’t teach anything to a duck.

  There’s a kid from down my street playing alone on the teeter-totter, so I sneak up and smack him on the head with the magazine. He screams and starts crying. I should have waited for the older brother, who always does this dying act, hands over his heart as he tumbles into the sawdust. He isn’t as tough as he thinks, though—if I get him just right, tears come to his eyes too.

  –Gerry Hadler, you stay away from my children!

  The kids’ mom, over by the sandpit. Ingrid or something. Across the way are a couple of city maintenance guys trying to fix the swing set, and the gal from yesterday is there with them. She has her arm in a cast and a sling, and she has a new umbrella, red this time and rolled up tight. Her hair is black after all, long and wavy and nice.

  –I’ll pay for it, she’s saying as I walk up.

  –It was shoddy equipment, I say. You ought to sue their asses for a million damn dollars.

  The city guys don’t look up, but the woman does. She smiles, and it’s a great smile, big and white, and her eyes go crinkly at the edges.

  –Hey you!

  –Hey you yourself.

  –You snuck out of there pretty quick yesterday. Buy you a cup of coffee?

  She takes my good arm with her good arm, and we walk across the park. There’s a coffee shop called Belinda’s up on Towhead, better coffee than you’d think for a town like this. We sit down at a table in the corner. I call over to Belinda for a couple of cups. The umbrella woman scratches ar
ound the top of her cast.

  –So, she says. I’m Allison.

  –Gerry.

  –Thanks for yesterday, Gerry.

  –You’re welcome.

  Belinda brings the coffee, sets it down with a tray full of creamers, says, You still playing it straight?

  –Five years next month.

  –More power to you.

  When she leaves with the empty creamers, Allison says, What was that about?

  –Booze. I used to hit it pretty hard.

  –But not anymore?

  –Not anymore.

  She takes a sip of her coffee.

  –Wow. This is great.

  –I told you.

  –No you didn’t. You didn’t say a thing about it.

  Allison’s free on Friday, and she lets me take her to dinner at Konocti Vista. We work the slots for a couple of hours, and both of us hardly lose. I ask if I can drive us to my place, and she reminds me we came in separate cars, and then she smiles.

  I thought maybe the thing with my arm would bother her, but she’s more worried about thumping me with her cast. She spins me and knocks me back and picks me up. We take a water break, and tumble again, and rest.

  –Something I should tell you, she says. I’ve got a boy.

  –A what?

  –A boy. Jared. A young male person.

  –Well, hell. How old is he?

  –Twelve. Big for his age, though. Like me. Like his father.

  I let all this roll around in my brain while I get us more water.

  –So where is he?

  –At home. Asleep, I hope.

  –No, the dad.

  –Tucson. The one in Arizona.

  –Why’d you leave him?

  –Is that any of your business?

  –I guess it is now.

  Allison sits up against the headboard, and all of a sudden she looks old.

  –He used to beat up on me.

  –Oh.