by Mark Dunn
Later that night, in the room he shared with Trudy’s younger brother, he waited until Bud had gone off to sleep and then he went over to the suitcase on the stand and he pulled out the notebook that he kept with him at all times. He went into the bathroom and locked the door, put the lid down on the toilet and sat and read the transcriptions of several of his encounters from over the last three years, none of which had led to an arrest or even a single suspicion, since Cleveland was a large city and Russell made sure to venture only into neighborhoods far from home or work. Reading from the notebook made him feel temporarily better.
By the next day, the snowstorm had transformed itself into a blizzard of historic proportions. And though in Columbus the Buckeyes and the Wolverines managed to do something that looked a little like football in the midst of near whiteout conditions, and Michigan to do it slightly better than Ohio State, the snow brought several states from the Great Lakes across the Ohio Valley and throughout the Alleghenies to a near standstill. And while the two-foot pileup upon the roof of his house made Mr. House worry about a cave-in, and while high drifts against the house made Mrs. House fear that they might soon be trapped within—this particular fear also resonating with Russell, who volunteered to keep the porch and front walk “semi-shoveled” (because full shoveling in a blizzard is a bootless activity)—Russell kept his head. He kept his head by shoveling and drinking.
Trudy explained to her parents and to her brother that Russell wasn’t ordinarily a drinker, but given the trying circumstances, surely they would excuse him, and Mr. and Mrs. House and Trudy’s younger sibling understood, even though Mr. House regretted seeing some of his best bourbon disappear right before his eyes.
That night—officially the third night of the powerful blizzard—and with the snow still falling like some grand meteorological joke being played on the Tri-State area, which was bearing the brunt of the storm, Russell tranquilized himself with gin (the bourbon whiskey having now been fully expended) and fell asleep on the ruffle-skirted black-and-white plaid colonial sofa where he had sat feigning politeness and equanimity and sanity earlier in the evening. At precisely two o’clock, he awoke. It was the chiming of the Houses’ faux colonial table clock announcing the hour that had disturbed his hard alcohol-abetted slumber. He felt woozy. His head was pounding. The house was quiet. He walked to a window. A nearby streetlamp illuminated the snow, its flakes still falling fast and thick.
Russell counted up in his head how many nights had passed since he had last been able to practice his unique hobby. Was it eight? Maybe it was nine. Russell had never felt that it was an addiction. Hadn’t there been periods in the past—three, four, five weeks at a time—that had gone by without his having terrorized even a single person?
And yet he missed it terribly, longed for the thrill of holding the lives of total strangers in his hands. Because the gun was always loaded. Because the safety was always off. There was power and authority in Russell’s trigger finger—a power and authority that stimulated and excited him both in the moment of the potentially deadly encounter and later in the sordid, orgasmic recall of it.
Tonight he wanted desperately to go out and yet he could not. Quietly, he opened the front door. What faced him was the white wall of a snowdrift, like something out of a cartoon.
He stepped back from the imposing barrier. He closed the door and stumbled to Bud’s bedroom. Trudy had turned down the sheets for him, perhaps thinking that he might later regain consciousness and want a more comfortable place to spend the balance of the night.
He stripped down to his underwear and slipped under the sheets. The house was cold. Trudy’s father liked to turn the thermostat down at night. Miraculously, the electrical current to the house hadn’t gone out. The power lines were still holding their own against the brutal assault of snow and ice. Just in case, though, Mr. House and his son had gone out that morning and brought in more wood for the fireplace. Russell had volunteered to help, but Mr. House knew that his guest had worn himself out trying to shovel the front walk, and declined the offer.
Russell closed his eyes. He wanted this night to be over. He tried to think of anything that might relax him. He remembered the last man he had engaged in the night. The man had been an especially timid fellow and there was a pitiful dog-like whimper to his voice that sometimes, when Russell was alone, he liked to try to emulate. Russell wished that he’d had some way to record those pathetic, yet thoroughly entertaining pleadings from his victims, so that he could listen to them over and over again the way one replays a favorite record.
“Please don’t kill me.”
“You’ll have to do better than that, milquetoast. Your life is in your own hands. Beg or die. Beg or die, little man.”
“Russell?”
Russell opened his eyes. At that same moment the lamp on the little table between the two single beds clicked on. Bud was sitting up in bed. He had Russell’s notebook.
“What is this?” Bud was holding the notebook by one corner as if he were pinching the tail of a dead rat.
“Just some of my scribblings. May I have it?”
“Why do you write this stuff?”
“The better question is, why are you in possession of something that doesn’t belong to you?” Russell grabbed for the book but Bud jerked it out of reach.
“This is twisted shit.”
“You had no business reading it.”
“Does my sister know that you write this kind of stuff?”
“No. And why don’t you be a good little brother and not tell her? Look, my head is killing me. Give me the book and let’s go to sleep.”
Bud shook his head. “Is this for a movie? Are you writing a movie script?”
“Yeah. I’m writing a movie script,” said Russell with sere sarcasm.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe whatever you want to.”
“I found the notebook under your mattress. I found this—” Bud pulled the revolver out from under his pillow. “—stuffed in the back of your suitcase. What are you doing bringing a loaded gun into my parents’ house?”
Russell didn’t have an answer. Even if he could concoct some halfway plausible explanation, his head was too cloudy to be able to deliver it successfully. He was caught. He had to fess up. Maybe the kid was like him. Maybe Bud had an interesting dark side of his own. Some people did. Sometimes Russell thought that maybe everybody did. He remembered the old man he had stopped near the lake in Euclid. Right behind a noisy polka palace. “Beg for your life,” he had told the man, whom he feared at first was too intoxicated to effectively play the game. But the man was sober. Cold sober. “Go ahead and kill me, hoodlum,” the old man spat. “I was about to drown myself in the lake anyway. You’ll save me the trouble.” Russell had ended the encounter with a few murmured epithets. “I should have obliged him,” he thought as he walked away. Then he laughed to himself. “‘Hurt me! Hurt me!’ cried the masochist. ‘No!’ returned the sadist with a leer.”
“I’m not going to ask you again,” said Bud in a voice suddenly devoid of all youthful innocence.
“I use the gun, Bud. I put the muzzle to people’s heads and I make them think that I’m going to kill them. It’s a game I play.”
“Why do you play this game?”
“It excites me. Aren’t there things that excite you? Things that you keep to yourself? Everybody has their dark corners, their little pockets of depravity.”
The gun had been resting on Bud’s palm. Now he took it into a proper grip so that he could aim it at Russell’s head.
“Have you ever killed anybody with this gun?” asked Bud.
“Not with that gun or any other gun. I just told you: it’s only a game.”
“If it’s just a game, why is the gun loaded?”
“It heightens the stakes. It makes it more exciting.” Russell swallowed. “Is that what you want to do, Bud? Do you want to play the game with me?”
“I don’t want you marrying my s
ister. I don’t want you to even see my sister again. You need to be put into a padded room.”
Russell licked his lips nervously. “I’ve thought that myself, on occasion.”
“All those people out there. I’ve read in your little book what you make them say. They’re going to carry this around with them for the rest of their lives.”
“You’re very perceptive for a kid.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m a freshman at Carnegie Mellon.”
“All right. Point taken. Just—could you just point that thing away from me?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to shoot me.”
“But I’m not like you, Russell—or should I call you ‘Stark Raving Lunatic’?”
“You can call me whatever you want to. And I’ve come to the conclusion that you are in no way whatsoever like me.”
“That’s right,” said Bud. “You never pull the trigger.” Bud fired. The discharge was loud and seemed to shake the walls of the small bedroom. “I just did.”
The bullet lodged in Russell’s left arm. There was a great deal of blood for Trudy (who assumed full responsibility for the mess) to have to clean up. It took a long time to get Russell to the hospital on account of the severe weather.
Trudy later confessed to her parents and to Bud that she had no idea that the man she thought she loved was a…was a…
“Was a stark raving lunatic ,” said Mrs. House helpfully. She was sitting with her daughter, running loving, maternal fingers through her hair.
“As insane as he was,” said Mr. House, “at least he never killed anybody. So far as we know.”
Everyone agreed with a nod. The House family was gathered around the fireplace drinking cocoa. The storm had finally let up. The Thanksgiving Blizzard of 1950 had come to an end. The long dig-out was about to begin.
“Did you mean to shoot him, Bud?” asked Trudy of her quiet and reflective brother.
“In that moment I did. I guess your lunatic boyfriend was right. We’ve all got a little something screwy about us. For example: I put several hundred dollars on Ohio State.”
Mr. House nodded sympathetically. “I did too, son. I did too.”
1951
PSITTICINE IN PENNSYLVANIA
“It was hard going there at first.”
“To Mrs. Lyttle’s apartment, you mean?”
“That’s right. But over time I got used to it. Would you like another Ladyfinger?”
“No, no. One hand is my limit. I really must be off. Sometimes I say that to Arthur and he goes, ‘Must be? Why, Pearl, you’ve been ‘off’ since the day I met you.’ Did James ever talk to you like that?”
“Not very often. I think he was afraid that since I wasn’t able to see his face I wouldn’t know when he was kidding. But I could always tell by the tone of his voice. Shall I see you to the door?”
“‘See you to the door.’ Do you say that to all your guests?”
“The ones who might think it funny.”
“I’ll let myself out, honey.” Pearl Patz kissed her blind friend Leonora Touliatos on her forehead. “Oh, and I’d stop going over there if I were you. I still don’t see how a person could ever get used to something like that.”
“It’s not her fault. It’s very hard to censor a parrot, Pearl—especially one that was once owned by a salty-tongued merchant marine.”
“But honey, don’t you still cringe to hear all that potty talk?”
“A little, yes, but I really do like Nancy Lyttle. We’ve spent some very nice evenings together.”
Pearl took her coat from the back of a chair near Leonora’s front door. There was an antique mirror by the door, for which Leonora had no use now that her son Tim was off at college, but Pearl leaned into it to check for bits of pecan in her teeth, which might have taken up residence there from the pecan coffee cake her friend Leonora had served with the tea. Her panties had bunched up a little, and she pulled at the elastic, appreciating the convenience of having a blind friend who would not be aware of such rude adjustments to her person.
“Goodbye, my dear,” said Pearl, donning her hat. “I’ll see you next week.”
“And I won’t see you!” tittered Leonora.
After hearing the front door to her apartment close, Leonora rose from her sofa to put away the tea things. She turned on the radio to listen to some music. She had heard somewhere that television was going to replace radio. All of her favorite programs would be gone, and she’d have to be content with a medium that was not kind to the visually compromised. “I hope, at least,” she said to herself, “they’ll still let me have my music.” Rosemary Clooney was singing “Come On-a My House.” Leonora stopped for a moment to allow the silly song to make her smile as it always did. She wondered if her late husband would have liked it. It was also a favorite new song of her friend Nancy Lyttle.
Leonora and Nancy were neighbors. Like Leonora, Nancy lived in the E line of their Philadelphia apartment building. Her apartment was only two floors above Leonora’s. The two women had met on the elevator one day and had taken an immediate liking to each other. Nancy had begun to invite Leonora to “Come On-a My Apartment” for supper every Friday night. Nancy was Roman Catholic and always prepared a different fish dish each Friday, and Leonora, whose father had been a professional fisherman on Lake Huron, loved fish as well.
Leonora agreed with her building’s superintendent Mr. Wachsel that Nancy Lyttle was an odd duck. She didn’t seem to make friends easily and was stingy with gifts to the buildings’ employees on holidays. She was also a very private person, and Mr. Wachsel was amazed that she allowed Leonora into her apartment. “I’ve never been inside. Even when her kitchen sink backed up into her bathtub. She had a cousin or somebody come in and fix it.”
“Maybe she makes an exception with me because I’m blind, Mr. Wachsel. Did you ever think about that?”
Mr. Wachsel chewed thoughtfully upon his lower lip as he nodded his head.
Leonora went on: “You know that she has a parrot, don’t you? It belonged to her brother. That parrot is quite a prattling polly. Do you ever hear him from the hallway?”
“No. But I’m not on eight very often—not since we replaced all the valves on the risers and radiators on that floor.”
*
Friday came and Nancy greeted her friend Leonora at the door with her usual ebullience: “Oh my goodness, Leonora—we are having the most divine meal tonight: steamed sole with tomato-leek sauce. I hope you like dill. It’s my favorite herb. Isn’t it my favorite herb, Meshak?”
“Blow it out your ass.”
“You remember Leonora, don’t you, Meshak? Won’t you for once show some courtesy to our favorite guest?”
“Blow it out your ass.”
“It’s going to be one of those nights. I’m so sorry, Leonora. I fear that one of these times you’re going to say enough is enough, and just give up on me entirely.”
“How long do parrots live?”
“Well, cockatoos can live to be over fifty.”
“How old is Meshak?
“Touch my cock! Touch my cock!”
“I’m not certain. Perhaps he’s thirty.”
“Blow it our your ass!”
“I can put him in the other room if you like, Leonora.”
“You said he doesn’t like to be put away when I’m here.”
“That’s true. Believe it or not, he does like you. He doesn’t know the meaning of the words he says. He just gets excited when you’re here and says the things that my naughty brother taught him to say.”
“You fucking whore!”
“I have cheese and crackers for our appetizer. And I bought some Chianti. I know it doesn’t go with fish, but it’s very good. Let me have your hand. Isn’t this a lovely wicker cozy the bottle came in?”
Leonora rubbed her hand along the bowed contour of the bottle holder. “It’s nice. Nancy, I’m curious: the other guests to your home—does Meshak talk to them this way?�
��
“Oh good mercy, Leonora! He most certainly would. That’s why I can’t have anyone over. You are the only one. You understand. I’m not sure that there’s anyone else who would stand for it.”
“You fucking whore! Touch my cock! Touch my cock! You fucking whore!”
The fish was delicious. Nancy Lyttle was an excellent cook. After dinner, the two women listened to their favorite music programs on the radio over cups of Sanka. Nancy was happy to report that Meshak had fallen asleep. But when it was time to go—Nancy always accompanied her blind friend home late at night, even though Leonora could easily navigate the halls and elevator to get herself to her apartment door without assistance—the parrot was apparently awakened by the rustling and the sound of voices nearby.
“Eat shit, bitch!”
“Goodbye, Meshak. Nancy, may I pet him?”
“Just a gentle pat on his back. He doesn’t like to be handled by anyone but me.”
Nancy guided Leonora’s hand to the soft feathers. “That’s a good bird,” said Leonora. “Can you say, ‘I’m a good bird deep down’? ‘I’m a good bird deep down.’”
“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
Leonora laughed. “I’m not giving up on this old bird. Maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but I might be able to teach Meshak to be just a little more respectful.”
“Amen to that! Let me get you home now, Leonora. It’s past both of our bedtimes.”
“Blow it out your ass!”
Several days later, as Leonora and her friend Pearl Patz were walking across her apartment building’s lobby so that Pearl could take Leonora to buy a new toaster at Wanamaker’s—her present one had a slightly frayed cord and Pearl was afraid that Leonora might accidentally electrocute herself—the building’s superintendent Mr. Wachsel called out to Leonora.
