by Paul Neilan
“I like girls. She was married.”
“Don’t like married women huh?”
I immediately remembered my landlord’s wife, and I hoped there wasn’t more involved in this than I first thought. Things suddenly didn’t seem so funny anymore.
Chapter 3
I didn’t know what I was doing in that city. I never know what I’m doing anywhere. I only know how I’ll leave. It’s always on a Greyhound. It’s almost too easy. They go everywhere cheap and all you have to do is sit back and look out the window and pretend that motion and direction are the same thing.
The drivers are nice to you as long as you’re not obviously drunk or touching people when it gets dark. Sometimes they’re funny and friendly. They tell jokes like, “Why are Tigger’s paws always dirty . . . because he’s always playing with Pooh!” and “What’s the worst part about having sex with a three-year-old girl . . . the fact that you have to kill her afterwards!” Nobody laughed at that one but me, and I was mostly being polite.
Sometimes they bark out a list of rules when you get on the bus and they try to be hard about it because they really wanted to be a cop or join the army but they couldn’t pass the physical and became morbidly obese bus drivers instead. Sometimes they say prayers for a safe journey, but it never feels like they’re violating your civil liberties. For the most part they just drive and leave you alone. They’re all right. Even that lady who told the joke about the three-year-old. She was just lonely.
It’s not the worst way to go once you know what to expect. There’s a baby crying on every bus, and a couple is always fighting. Teenage girls are going to visit their boyfriends and teenage boys are going to live with their stepmothers. There’s an old woman with huge novelty sunglasses and a pinwheel who won’t stop talking to everyone, and somebody’s car broke down and they have no other way to get home. There’s a pair of nuns up front who don’t speak English. Women with creased faces buy one-way tickets and men in camouflage pants eye you up because they think you want to steal their bags. And there’s an old man sitting on a bench and looking down at the ground outside every bus station in America.
It’s all the people who aren’t rich enough for Amtrak or airfare and aren’t bothered enough to care how they get to wherever it is they’re going. And when they start talking, and they always do, you find that each of them has a story they want to tell. Everyone, no matter how old or young, has some lesson they want to teach. And I sit there and listen and learn all about life from people who have no idea how to live it. Nobody knows how to just shut the fuck up and look out the window anymore.
The bathrooms are tiny and filthy and you have no choice but to piss all over yourself when the bus swerves, but the streetlights look like blurred stars exploding in the window when it rains at night, and you can sleep knowing that if there’s an accident and everyone on the bus dies it wasn’t your fault. Someone fat and snoring will sometimes sit beside you and sweat on your shoulder even though it’s twelve degrees outside, and someone else with a big head shaped like an onion and dirty hair that smells like fish sticks will sit in front of you and recline their seat into your lap. And you’ll be trapped and sleepless and sad for the entire ride. But then other times you get two whole seats to yourself, and when that becomes your idea of luxury you know you’ve found something that no one else is even looking for, and if you gave it to them for Christmas they’d return it the next morning as soon as the stores opened. And then you get to think of yourself like the little drummer boy, playing for Jesus even though he’s too young to understand, even though nobody in Bethlehem really likes percussion and they think you’re a cheap ass for not bringing gold or frankincense. And it’s a shame when you realize that you won’t get to be in the Bible, and it doesn’t seem right. But then nobody gets to be in the Bible anymore, no matter who they are or what they do, and the sooner you realize that the easier it all becomes. But it’s still a shame.
And that’s why I had to talk to Bryce. I wasn’t going to be in the Bible, so it was time to make other arrangements.
He was crouched low, painting the molding around the front door outside the apartment building. He was the landlord, so he had to do that kind of thing. Bryce was tall, about my height but built, with tattoos twisting all the way up his arms, snakes and hearts and daggers and all kinds of shit. He had a drawn, lean face and the transparent remains of a thinning rockabilly pompadour still clinging to his head. He’d probably been in a band a few years ago, bought into the entire scene, but it hadn’t worked out. And now he was stuck with the cigarettes and the sideburns and all those fucking Stray Cats albums. But like the working class hero he’d never become, Bryce hung in the best he could. So while Brian Setzer sang on Gap commercials and pranced around the stage in his fancy pants, Bryce still cuffed his dark jeans and carried his wallet on a chain, still kept the hairstyle even as it betrayed and openly mocked him, still shot pool with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth even though it sometimes fucked up his shot. If it wasn’t exactly noble, it wasn’t without conviction either.
“So Bryce, we need to talk,” I said seriously, but smiling. I was being funny.
“Oh hi Shane. Hi. How are you?”
He stood up from his crouch and held the paintbrush upright so the white paint dripped slowly down the handle and ran onto his tattoos. He didn’t even notice. He was too busy scratching the back of his neck and looking at my shoes. He was always much too nervous for a guy with so many tattoos.
“That’s just it Bryce.” I kept using his name to build trust, like a hostage negotiator. “I’m not so good.”
“How much are you short?” His voice cracked on short and he dropped the paintbrush.
I was stunned. The element of surprise was gone. I had no more time to build trust and pity. I was the worst hostage negotiator ever.
“Uh, about two hundred.”
“Oh . . . Oh . . .” He bent down to pick up the paintbrush but it kept slipping out of his fingers, the handle hopping off the steps with a tedious tink tink tinktink that was driving me fucking crazy. I wanted to kick him in the face and run away. Then he stood up without the brush and scratched his neck with both hands.
“We should talk about this,” he said. He was even more nervous than usual. He was tearing at his neck and jerking his head around like a frightened animal, looking everywhere except at me. I was about to be evicted. Fuck. This was no good. Obviously I wanted it to happen, but not yet. The timing was all wrong.
“Okay, this is serious,” he said.
Goddamnit Bryce, people are supposed to have more faith in each other. Landlords especially. I’m living in your building. That makes you kind of like my dad. Family is supposed to be important. When I stiffed him on next month’s rent, then he could throw me out with a clear conscience. Until then he was just being a bad father and a dick.
“This is about my wife,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you do, I’ll take the $200 off your rent.”
“Do?”
“Would you?”
Would I what? Did he want me to kill her? In every movie I’d seen that costs more than $200. Was I supposed to have sex with her? That would make me a whore. Did I really want Bryce as my pimp? No, he was paying me, he’d be my john. But what would that make her? She’d be the groom at the bachelor party who fucks the stripper. I’d be the stripper. What?
“I didn’t even know you were married,” was all I could get out.
“I am.” He was ripping up the back of his neck, digging his nails in and tearing it raw. And with the white paint all over his one hand, smearing it around, it was just making me sick.
“I’m not sure what you mean here Bryce.”
“I bowl on Tuesdays. Come by then. At seven.”
I didn’t know he was a bowler. I didn’t know a lot of things. He was in the middle of either a complete nervous breakdown or a fucking bipolar episode, I knew that. But he didn’t seem grave enough to be suggesting murder,
or depraved enough to be asking me to fuck his wife for $200 while he went bowling. He just seemed nervous and real sad.
“Will you? Please?”
The rims of his eyes had gone red. His neck was bleeding and there was that fucking white paint everywhere. His chin was starting to shake. I hate when people show emotion.
“Tuesday? At seven? Uh, sure.”
There was a good chance I was going to be murdered. Every scenario I’d imagined ended with me being dead.
If I was there to kill her, she’d suspect it and kill me first: self-defense.
Or I’d kill her, then Bryce would come home and kill me: life insurance.
Or I’d kill her, and Bryce would feel so guilty he’d tell the police everything and kill himself, then the courts would kill me: justice.
If I was just there to have sex with her, she wouldn’t know about it and think I was trying to rape her, so she’d kill me: feminism.
Or Bryce would come home, catch me fucking his wife, and even though he’d put me up to it, he’d kill me anyway: schizophrenia.
Or maybe he never meant for me to have sex with her, maybe he just wanted me to keep her company while he went bowling, play a board game with her or something, not fuck her. In which case he’d still kill me: miscommunication.
Whatever happened, there was a good chance I would die. So I made a rule: I wouldn’t try to rape or kill Bryce’s wife, and at the slightest hint of danger I would run away. This was a good rule, and still is, and if more people followed it the world would be a wonderful place.
I went to the door that Tuesday night with a plan. I would knock, and as soon as the door opened I would say, “Hello, my phone is broken.” Whatever happened, it would be said. I was fully prepared to have those be my last words. If Bryce’s bipolar pendulum had swung to homicide and he answered the door with a .12 gauge, if his keenly perceptive wife—unaware of my no-rape no-kill rule—was waiting with a can of mace and a meat cleaver, I would go down bravely, having said my piece. They would have been good last words. “Hello, my phone is broken.” That pretty much would have summed me up.
They lived in a basement apartment on the side of the building. They had their own entrance, a side door that led out to some steps and the sidewalk where the Dumpsters were. That was where they’d toss my body after all of it was done.
I knocked on the door, and just as I had decided to run away she opened it.
She didn’t have a meat cleaver, or a can of mace.
She was younger than Bryce and had dark blond hair, short and curly. She looked like someone I’d seen before, someone on a commercial, one for bathroom cleansers or soap. One of those women. She was wearing a navy blue bathrobe, maybe that was why.
“Hello, my phone is broken,” I said, suddenly realizing what an ass I was. This was my epitaph? Fuck.
Her face was an absolute blank. I watched her bottom lip but it didn’t move, and her blue eyes, a few shades lighter than her bathrobe, didn’t shift or waver. She had long eyelashes that beat in slow motion like the wings of a giant bird as I waited for her to pull a tommy gun from under her robe. Her face was a white sheet of paper with no words or punctuation. My paper face said, “Hello, my phone is broken” in very small type, and there was a fucking huge question mark in tiny parentheses taking up the rest of the page. The incongruity between the question mark and the parentheses was so great that it was comical, or it was very afraid.
Without changing her expression she turned, crossed the room, and went through another door.
After standing in the doorway for a while, I went in. My mind worked feverishly. She was in a bathrobe, but her hair was dry. Maybe I was just there to fix the shower. But I didn’t have any tools. Why didn’t I bring tools?
There was still a good chance I would die. I crossed the room trying to think of more last words, better ones, but I couldn’t think of any. They had shabby furniture but a nice TV. A big one. I wanted to see what was on, see if they had HBO. I went through the other door.
It was the bedroom. She was on the bed and her robe was on the floor. A ceiling fan was spinning overhead. The lights were already off and I shut the door behind me.
And then there was some sex. Technically, at least. Mechanically speaking, it was sex. Really we were just naked and smacking into each other. We were like two dead fish being slapped together by an off duty clown, swinging us by our tails, both of us slippery and cold, our eyes open and glassy, looking away. That’s about how passionate it was. Not that I’m much interested in passion. I always think of sex as somehow being orchestrated by an off duty clown, one who’s taken off the wig but not the makeup, and he’s in a T-shirt and sweat pants but he’s still got on the big fucking shoes for some reason. Whenever I have sex or remember it afterwards, even when I fantasize about it, he is there. But this was disinterested even by my standards. The only thing saving us from travesty was that we were too sloppy and uncoordinated to be formulaic.
And then it was done. We were both on our backs, and still the only words between us were “Hello, my phone is broken.” I wanted to ask her what was going on, why her husband had paid me $200 to have off duty clown sex with her, and if either of them planned on killing me for it. But she hadn’t said a word yet, and I wasn’t about to start talking.
This was a game, one I’d played hundreds of times before. Or eleven times actually, not counting her. It was like chess, but much more complicated because both of us were nude. Eventually she had to say something, had to spill everything, and then I would win. All I had to do was wait.
Then she broke.
“You should go,” she said.
A brilliant tactical maneuver.
I tried to mask my utter confusion and feign some dignity as I got dressed, but it didn’t work. It was dark though, and I don’t think she was even looking at me. I was doing it more for myself anyway.
I tried to keep my voice low and coarse when I said goodbye, like I was a lifelong smoker. And I did. I counted this as a victory. She didn’t say anything, so I just left. It was that night, out alone in a hotel bar, that I stole the first saltshaker. And then I stole three more.
It hadn’t happened in years. Not that I could remember anyway. And yet there I was, sitting before some asshole detective under that bright police spotlight, my face blowing up red because of an offhand comment that could have meant anything. And that was the problem.
“Are you blushing?” Sikes asked, smiling caustically. “You have a crush on me or something sweetheart?”
“Yes,” I said, and looked at him warmly.
He didn’t blink, and his smile only changed slightly. If he hated fags, or if he found me at all becoming, he did a good job of hiding it.
“I think I know why you were blushing,” he said.
“I’m not blushing, it’s just hot in here.”
“I think it’s a little chilly actually.”
“You’re not sitting under a spotlight.”
“You think that’s a spotlight? I’ll show you a spotlight!”
I did not know what to say.
He leaned back in his chair like he’d just bested me in a contest I did not know we were having.
“Now what did I say that made you get all flushed and rosy pink?” he said. “Do you remember?”
“I still think it’s the spotlight.”
“I think I mentioned something about married women. What do you have to say about that?”
“Not too much,” I said, holding my voice steady.
“Oh come on, you can tell me.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Well let me do it for you,” he said seriously, leaning forward in his chair. “I think you have a deaf girl fetish. And I think you had a perverted little crush on a married one who turned up dead. That’s what I think.”
He leaned back in his chair and looked at me. I felt immediately at ease. If there was anything to know, he didn’t know it either.
Doug was cryin
g again. The bus door had smashed him up pretty good this time. He showed me the dents in his head. When he asked if I wanted to touch them, I said no. Even worse, as he lay on the ground—dizzy, sobbing, a shell of a man—and as the crowd gathered around him, someone said, “Hey! He got his head stuck in the door two weeks ago. It’s the same guy! It’s Bus Door Head!” and some people laughed.
Bus Door Head. It was mean, juvenile and stupid. It hardly even made sense. I was rolling. Luckily I was laid back in the chair with a latex dental dam jammed halfway down my throat so the laughing made it sound like I was choking instead. Doug shoved a suction hose underneath the latex and I was nearly asphyxiated.
“I just don’t understand why. Why does this keep happening to me?” he said. And Doug cried like the girl in the After School Special who hates high school and boys and life. He didn’t understand, but I did. It was obvious to me. This was how Doug’s life was, how it had always been I imagined, and how I knew it would always be. He just had that look. Game show hosts, mountain people, those Masai tribesmen who are on every other fucking cover of National Geographic, women who say, “Why would I ever get married, I’ve got cats!” and amputees. You know just by looking at them who they are. You could pick them out of a lineup. And if you had to pick Bus Door Head out of a lineup, you would always pick Doug.
He had strawberry blond hair. That’s enough right there. That’s all you need to know. If you’re a man with strawberry blond hair and you’re not in the circus or a Viking, odds are you have not found your place in life and never will. Doug’s strawberry blond hair hung down in limp curls that always looked like they were wet, like he was an out of work Hasidic Jew who just didn’t give a shit anymore. But then he also had the monk’s tonsure up top where male pattern baldness had started its slow, inexorably humiliating crawl. Doug’s head was an aesthetic and theological mess. And he had a mustache. It was too big and too ragged and trying too hard to compensate for what he’d already lost up top, and it was a few shades more strawberry than blond. He looked like the star of a new “Would you leave your child alone with this man?” pedophile awareness campaign, one that would be very effective.
