Tampa

by Alissa Nutting

  His first expression was one of angry surprise, but finally, he nodded. “We could do something ceremonial with it … burn it together,” I offered. “Or tear it up and scatter the pieces over the ocean.”

  He said nothing, so I started the car. It wasn’t until we got to the highway that he conceded his thoughts. “That just seems depressing,” he said. I didn’t respond, forcing him to dwell on it—I needed him to see that he’d behaved inappropriately. Finally, tinkering with his seat belt buckle, he tried to channel his disappointment into a romantic proclamation of selflessness. “I just wanted to give it to you,” he said. “You know? What happens with it now doesn’t matter, I guess.” I thought he was going to say more, but those were his last words of the evening.

  From then on, in fact, he began to talk less in general. It almost seemed like he was trying to express his thoughts physically instead, but that in doing so he encountered equal frustration. Our sessions had gone from being short and multiple to being long and continuous; by the time he came Jack now looked tellingly exerted, so much so that he had to jump in the shower when Buck came home so his wet hair wouldn’t seem suspicious.

  *

  It was during one such marathon session in March when it happened, just before spring break was scheduled to start. Thinking back on it, I remember the lighting in Jack’s room as having been different that day—somehow localized and ominous, like the umbral flicker thrown from an open fire. Jack’s hands were cupping my ass cheeks as he pushed inside me; I was pinned against the wall, both of us standing up. Buck’s immediate view would’ve been Jack’s buttocks, clenching and unclenching, his scrotum swinging between his legs, my elbows braced against the wall and my head and throat tilted backward in the clutches of receiving. I was the one who first turned my face, thinking I’d heard a noise.

  “Shhh,” I said to Jack. I could feel him tense up inside me as he stopped and listened.

  “Shit,” he whispered, pulling out of me and beginning to dress. I began to get dressed too, though not with the same frenzy. I knew I’d seen Buck’s figure moving away from the open door frame, and my mind was racing at a disoriented pace: I had to come up with a plan; seduction alone wouldn’t be able to bury what he’d just seen. Perhaps his pride was the best course of appeal? If he went to the police and this was made public, all his neighbors and coworkers would know that he and his son had been sharing a lover. It was an angle I could take: he didn’t want the shame of it, didn’t want to put Jack through the embarrassment.

  Jack’s eyes met mine as a low wailing sound began to come from down the hallway—it would intensify, then fall completely silent and start up again. Was Buck crying? I picked up my pace and finished dressing, hoping his sadness might be an opportunity to go comfort him, even if I was the cause. Maybe I could say that Jack forced me to do it—he’d gotten into my purse, looked up my husband’s number on my cell phone, and had threatened to call Ford and tell him about my affair with Buck unless I slept with him. Even if Buck didn’t fully believe it, perhaps it would be a plausible enough story for him to play along with. In the distance, Buck’s warbled moan was growing louder and more frantic. How long had he stood watching at the doorway before I’d sensed him there and turned around?

  “Stay here,” I said to Jack. “Let me try to talk to him first.” Jack nodded but gave me a look that bordered on disgust—his eyes held a fluent jealousy, and I knew he was imagining that if Buck’s catching me with my pants unbuttoned had meant a bribe of sex, who knew what his catching us in the middle of the act might require. “Keep your cool,” I warned him. “The important thing is that he doesn’t call the cops.”

  Buck stood hunched over at the end of the hallway, his shoulder occasionally coming to life with a spasm. “Buck,” I called gently, walking toward him with slow steps. Despite my best efforts, my voice was trembling—I had no idea what sort of animal Buck became when unhinged. Was he about to get violent? Perhaps it would be a good thing if he began hitting me; he’d lose a huge amount of credibility if I’d been beaten up when the cops arrived. Jack and I could stick to the story that I’d just been there to tutor a student in need; the rest was a jealous delusion on Buck’s part. But the accusations alone could cause me to lose my job, and Ford, in a misguided attempt to prove my innocence, would probably do something over-the-top like have a forensic team sweep Jack’s bedroom. No, the police couldn’t get involved under any circumstances. I had to win Buck over at all costs.

  As I drew closer, I realized that Buck was bent forward in a near-comical manner. His torso drooped toward the ground as though a child had just pointed a toy gun at him and he was pretending to be mortally wounded. Occasionally he’d attempt to take a step, but his stance was so off-kilter that his body merely lurched in place; he was performing the slow, erratic motions of a zombified waltz. I stood for a moment, clearing my throat, confused. It was only as I moved around to the side of him that I began to see the discoloration spread across his neck, heard the restrictive choking sound of his lungs failing to get air. Buck was bent over holding his chest. “Oh my god,” I muttered. He contorted himself as best he could so that his face was looking over and up toward mine—its color alone nearly caused me to scream. His cheeks had taken on a reddish-purple hue. It looked like he was being hung with an invisible noose.

  I took a silent step backward, then laced my fingers together and stood to watch. With a wheeze, he impotently tried to call Jack’s name, his contorted lips silently mashing out the word again and again before he finally stopped trying. Though his face had seized up, one eye remained open and focused. His stare was filled with the hatred of clarity—he had now let go of all illusions about me. Yet unless his voice returned, I was the sole person he could appeal to. I glanced down the hallway, training my stare on Jack’s open door. If he peeked out his head and saw his father’s distressed posture, what could I say to Jack that would convince him to stay in his room just a bit longer?

  I needed time alone, without the shrill adolescent panic that would overtake Jack, to decide if Buck would honor the system of quid pro quo. If I dialed 911, could he really repay such a favor by turning me in to the police? Seemed impossible to me, yet delusions of morality could make people justify all sorts of actions. Regardless of my heroic efforts, Buck might feel that turning me in was the right thing to do. I could hear him now: The law is the law and my hands are tied.

  Looking down, I saw the judgment in Buck’s eye had been replaced with a bulging desperation. Straining, he managed to make a thin, nasal grunt in my direction; the sound caused me to recall the unfortunate memory of Buck dully thrusting between my legs. I looked back down the hall to Jack’s door. If only there were a way to be certain he would stay in his room until it was over—I’d simply have to make sure that he did. If I saw him coming out, I could run to him, pull him back inside his bedroom and say that Buck was very upset; Your father needs some time alone to think. Then, later, we would discover the body together. Jack couldn’t be allowed to interrupt this natural chain of events. Ultimately saving his father’s life just wasn’t worth the risk—Buck’s stumpy hands were no place at all for my fate to rest.

  I froze in place as Buck’s mouth grew wider and wider, seeking air, and a last flash of recognition passed through Buck’s eye in a way that nearly made me feel cursed. He was aware that I was choosing to let him die. Realizing he had no hope of convincing me otherwise, I watched every ounce of life he had left channel into a stare of malignant damning that radiated toward me with a tangible heat. One side of his lip raised back to reveal a small portion of tooth, as though he was preparing to give me a vicarious bite.

  I had the urge to wave my fingers in a small good-bye, but ultimately that felt too catty—I didn’t need to gloat. Buck’s open eye rolled back into his head and he fell to his knees without a sound—there were truly no words for the plushness of the Patrick household’s carpeting—then his head and the rest of his body surrendered completely to the ground
. Buck Patrick had just suffered a heart attack.

  I bent down to confirm that he was no longer breathing. His rolled-back eye was frozen open and bulging; I could see a sliver of my reflection in its glazing sheen. I found myself wishing there was a way to stuff his tongue back inside his mouth, simply to avoid the sheer vulgarity of having to look at it: its purple mass had fully extended out from between his lips, as though it was trying to slither away from his dying body. With a manicured toe, I poked at the flesh of his cheeks and got no response; just to be sure I placed my foot gently against Buck’s neck to feel for a pulse. There was none. A flush of excited energy ran through me, as if I’d won the lottery—everything was going to be okay.

  Removed from the thumb of Buck’s accusing stare, I finally had a chance to think. Why hadn’t we heard him come in? I tiptoed down the hall to the living room to peek out the drawn blinds, still not wanting Jack to venture forth from his room just yet. I felt a rare surge of nonsexual affection for him as I thought about how he’d likely stay quietly put for hours more if no one went in to fetch him—I could picture him now, seated on his bed imagining the variety of vile intimate scenarios he feared finding me and his father engaged in if he left the safety of his room. Particularly after the last time, Jack didn’t want to trade the calm security of the unknown for a definitive and cruel reality.

  Buck’s car was parked directly in the center of the driveway; mine was in the garage. It was almost as if he’d purposefully blocked me inside. Had Buck known about Jack and me? Had he been planning a confrontation? This seemed doubtful—cardiac arrest would be a dramatic response to something he’d half-expected to catch. No, Buck had been fully surprised, more surprised than he could handle. I had to assume he’d simply come home early and meant to go right back out—maybe he’d come in to see if Jack wanted to go grab a bite to eat with him. “This is complicated,” I said out loud.

  I knew Jack’s personal cell phone was in his backpack; if need be I could wrestle him to the ground for it. His secret phone was beneath his bed in a box and would be impossible for him to get at with me fighting him. I took Buck’s cell phone out of its holder on his belt, then walked to the kitchen and grabbed the home phone off its base; I hid them both in a drawer in Buck’s bathroom before heading back to Jack’s room.

  Jack was sitting anxiously on the bed. In the haste of having been caught, he’d put his athletic shorts on backward; I noticed the way the seam created an awkward ripple atop his genitals.

  “I have some upsetting news,” I began, “but everything is going to be okay.” I made a mental note that this phrasing might also be a good segue when the unfortunate time came and I had to break up with Jack: acknowledge the negative, yes, but don’t fail to highlight how life would continue.

  Jack’s forehead wrinkled with confusion. “Did my dad leave? Is he angry?”

  “No, he’s not angry. He’s in the hallway.” Outside, a car drove by with its stereo jovially blaring; its vibrations shook the windows in Jack’s bedroom. I couldn’t help but feel like Buck’s death had made the whole world seem a bit younger. Jack’s eyes widened and looked toward his open door.

  “Does he want to talk to me?” Jack whispered. I took my shirt back off; it seemed like the best course of action.

  “Put your hands on my breasts,” I instructed. “I have to tell you something traumatic and you need to be reminded of all the good that’s here in the world for you to enjoy.” Wordlessly, Jack clutched his palms onto my breasts and swallowed.

  “I’ll stop beating around the bush.” I sighed. “Your father had a heart attack.”

  Realization crossed his face like a time-lapsed shadow. He ran out of the room but I stayed behind for a moment to collect his two cell phones, secret them in my purse, and prepare myself for the possibility of a heated debate. I flipped through his personal phone for at least a minute, trying to find the photo he’d taken of me and delete it, but it wasn’t anywhere obvious and there wasn’t time to waste. It was the only solid evidence that linked the two of us, and Jack certainly wouldn’t offer it up to authorities. This was a triumph I was intent on maintaining—on Jack’s dresser, for example, there was a plate bearing a hardened scrap of pizza crust, a relic that held the small and perfectly imperfect indentions of Jack’s bite marks, his right incisor slightly askew. I had the urge to place this inside my purse as well; the prop of something his supple mouth had gnawed upon might come in handy in the days ahead if Jack chose to be upset with me and I had to fantasize about his lips. But I knew I couldn’t ever have anything related to Jack in my possession, no matter how organic and disposable.

  In the hallway Jack was kneeling over the body and crying silent tears. When I first laid my hand upon his shoulder, he sat down Indian-style and began rocking gradually back and forth. “We’ve got to call 911,” he finally whimpered.

  “You will.” I nodded. “Later, when I’m gone.”

  Jack shook his head but continued to talk to me instead of attempting to go get the phone. I was, after all, the adult in the situation. “We should start CPR,” he added, somewhat forcefully. But was I wrong to detect already a flat note of resignation in his protests—the knowledge that even if it were possible to revive Buck, it wouldn’t be in our best interests to do so?

  I sat down next to Jack and took his hands, which made him cry harder, and with volume now. “He isn’t breathing, Jack.” I spoke slowly and evenly, doing my best impression of a medical professional on television. “When the brain loses oxygen, cells begin to die. If they even could bring him back, he’d be a vegetable. We don’t want that. Your dad wouldn’t want that. We need to wait before you call the paramedics. We need to be sure.”

  “Be sure?” Jack cried. Mucus streamed out from his nose and began to mingle with his lips. His tears and high-pitched cries had a way of making him seem pleasantly preadolescent; in the moment I was not opposed to intercourse.

  “Be sure?” Jack asked again. “No.” His head began to shake. “We have to try. What if they can bring him back? What if he’ll be fine if we just get someone here soon?”

  Leaning my topless chest in toward him so that my breasts fell just below his chin, I gave Jack a look that told him he was being silly and wiped his face with my fingers. “Jack, he isn’t fine. He’s dead and that’s terrible. But at least he won’t have to be tube-fed on some machine for three months before they pull the plug anyway …” I paused, not wanting to be blatant, but I did need to close the deal. “And you and I can stay together,” I whispered.

  Jack’s face broke apart in a convulsion of tears. I wrapped myself around him and comforted him the best I could, holding him in a crouched position just inches away from his father’s corpse. Eventually the hallway began to darken as the sun set. “Let’s go sit down in your room and have a talk,” I told him. He allowed me to help him up, to guide him to his bed. He moved like he was sleepwalking.

  I figured that if I made an advance on him now he’d push me away, but I began anyhow—he seemed so dependent and clung to me with such maternal need that it was easy to channel Jack’s embrace into sexual action. I sat him on the edge of his bed and kissed up his thigh, pulled down his shorts and began sucking. I heard him start to cry again but also felt his fingers wind into my hair, grasping my skull tightly. When he came in my mouth he let out a protracted wail and covered his face with his hands. I wiped my mouth on his comforter, then wrapped the blanket around his shoulders to try to quell his shaking.

  A glance at Jack’s alarm clock showed that it was truly getting late. I needed to move the conversation forward; the logistics of my exit required planning. “Is your father’s car an automatic? Can you drive it?” I had to ask several times before Jack finally responded.

  “I’ve practiced a little bit with my stepbrother.” His voice sounded inhospitably distant, beamed in from somewhere dark and cold through patches of static.

  “Your dad’s car is parked in the middle of the driveway. Do you think
you could pull it out into the street so I can back out, then put it in the garage?”

  “I think so,” he said. After several beats of silence he amended his answer. “I don’t know.”

  “I need you to try. Take a quick shower while I wait,” I offered. “It’ll help wake you up. You don’t have to wash anything, just stand beneath the water.” I went to start it for him, then escorted his shaking frame into the bath, supporting him as though he had a geriatric injury as he stepped inside the tub. For a moment I remained there and watched him, the way the water was hitting his face but his eyes remained open. It was disconcerting; I pulled the shower curtain closed.

  Walking down the black stretch of hallway toward the corpse, I was resolved to check for any final quivers of life but in the end didn’t even feel compelled to grab his shoulder and shake: Buck Patrick’s death mask was unmistakable. His bottom and top lips had experienced a violent pull to opposing directions that made the shape of his mouth nearly rhomboid. I had a slight urge to look through his wallet and pilfer any cash—there would be a triumphant feel in buying something with money offered up by Buck’s dead body, no matter how minuscule the amount. I imagined purchasing a candy bar and savoring it in my car, the way its sugars would combine with the knowledge that Buck had taken my secret to the grave to form a flavor of extravagant complexity.

  Assured that Buck could no longer be revived, I replaced all the phones except the cell I’d given Jack, then went to check on him. Back in the shower, Jack hadn’t moved at all except to drop his head; a wet brim of hair covered his downcast eyes completely. I shut off the water and opened a towel to receive him in, then dried every inch of his body with gentle care as he sat slouched on the closed toilet seat. “Here’s what you’ll do,” I said, toweling at his feet as though he was a businessman I was giving a shoe shine to. “You’ll wait another half hour or so after I leave before you call 911. There might be trouble if someone notices me pulling out one minute and an ambulance pulling in right after. When the medics arrive, tell them you were playing video games and found your dad when you took a break.” Jack’s cold nipples looked like tiny eyes fixed open with shock at the situation. I went out to gather some fresh clothes for him to wear, raising my voice to continue talking at him from the bedroom. “There’s nothing unnatural about the death; they aren’t going to question you much. You’re bewildered and consumed with grief. If anything they’ll be trying to comfort you.” I walked back into the bathroom to deliver Jack’s clothes but wanted to relay the last of the pertinent information while he was still naked and hopefully more vulnerable to suggestion than he might be with his genitals covered. “The last thing is that I have to take your secret phone with me.”