by Bassoff, Jon
His partner, a heavily tattooed, well-endowed young woman said, “He did the same thing with Rutherford’s The Crucifixion of Mary. At least Rutherford had a reputation. What’s this fellow’s name? Max Leider? I don’t know a thing about him…”
“A masterpiece, he keeps saying. Rivals Gericault, Memling, or Bacon in terms of grotesqueness. We shall see.”
A strange sense of anxiety rose through my body. They were here to witness the unveiling of Leider’s painting Betrayal. They would judge and criticize. And if they deemed the painting unworthy, they would perhaps crucify. But why did any of this matter to me? Leider deserved whatever revulsion came his way.
It took ten or fifteen minutes before the albino and I were able to enter the gallery. An enormous man with an enormous beard and a flower hat sat on a little stool collecting money. Ten dollars entrance fee.
“Motherfucker,” the albino whispered, and fumbled in his inside jacket pocket for a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. “You better be right about this. He better want to buy it.”
“It’s just what he’s looking for,” I said. “Pay the man.”
Inside the gallery, people were milling around. Most of them were dressed eccentrically—there were fur coats and dog collars, tattoos and bolo ties. One man had hair below his waist, a beard to his sternum, and a pair of long pinkie nails, yet he wore a tuxedo and drank from a champagne flute. Another man was completely bald—even his eyebrows were shaved—and he wore oversized pink glasses and an oversized purple king’s robe. He was sitting on that old torn couch with human organs spilling out, with his legs crossed, talking to a woman who looked to be in her nineties at least. She wore a long flowing dress and a tiara. Lipstick was smeared from her lips to her cheeks, creating a Joker grin. She was drinking from a stein glass and laughing like a little girl.
And on and on it went. The man with the blue pompadour, earlobes hanging to his shoulders. The dwarf with spikes coming out of her cheekbones, holding the leash of a docile Great Dane. The beefcake, sucking provocatively on a lemon lollipop, his elongated cock hanging from his schoolgirl skirt. It was hard to tell a difference between the disturbing paintings on the wall and the people on the floor. (Oh, look, there’s The Crucifixion of Mary that they were discussing. See how she’s lying on the floor, hands and feet nailed to the hardwood, while a half dozen adolescent boys surround her with throbbing cocks, spilling semen on her face and neck and chest.)
“The hell is this?” the albino mumbled and I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. “Where’s the fellow you were talking about? I don’t want to hang out in this Gomorrah any longer than I have to.”
But we only had to wait another few minutes before strange industrial music started playing from some hidden speakers. The back door opened and the old sickly man with the bowler’s hat appeared. Much of the mob gathered around him, and for several minutes he was shaking hands and kissing cheeks like some politician.
“That’s him,” I whispered to the albino, and gripped the trash bag tighter.
Eventually the old man moved his way through the crowd and stood in front of the exhibit, which was guarded by a pair of burly men with identical Fu Manchu mustaches and mullet haircuts. There was a microphone stand and the old man stood in front of it and cleared his throat. I ducked down behind a woman and her snake, not wanting the gallery owner to spot me.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Oh and let’s not forget my favorite hermaphrodite! Thank you so much for joining me this morning. I am tremendously excited for the unveiling of Max Leider’s Betrayal. In terms of brushwork, he matches Vermeer. In terms of the grotesque, he matches Goya. But taken as a whole, Max Leider is very much his own painter, his own stylist. This painting, dripping with angst and anger, is a representation of a woman whom Leider loved deeply. A woman who deceived or, more appropriately, betrayed him. Instead of rejecting the betrayal, Leider embraced it, used the pain as inspiration to create a true work of art. And now, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I present to you, Max Leider’s masterpiece, Betrayal.”
As the guards pulled down the curtain, the crowd descended upon the painting, blocking my view. I could hear a collective gasp and then excited chatter. The albino, meanwhile, found a chair, and pulled himself up. I watched him as he gazed over the crowd and at the painting. His eyes narrowed and he shook his head and muttered, “What the hell? Are you fucking kidding me?”
That familiar feeling of dread, and I pushed through the crowd, grasping my own painting tightly. A few people pushed back, and quite a few cursed at me, but I managed to move my way through the mass until I had a good view of the painting.
I stood there for several long moments, not willing to believe my own senses. The painting, Betrayal, was identical—in every single way—to the one I held beneath my arm.
CHAPTER 28
When the gallery owner spotted me, he opened his arms as if he was going to embrace me. He stepped forward to the microphone once again and bellowed, “Here he is, ladies and gentlemen! Mr. Max Leider!”
And now there was soft applause that gradually became louder and louder until it reached a crescendo. Then they started pushing toward me in a frenzied force. They had formed a circle around me—the man in the king’s robe, the woman in the tiara, the dwarf with her Great Dane, and all the rest of them—and they moved closer and closer, the circle getting smaller and smaller, all of them trying to touch and grab the great expressionist artist, the man they believed to be Max Leider.
“Please, please,” the owner said, removing his bowler’s hat, “give the man some room. Don’t suffocate him.”
For a moment they fell back, just a few feet, and I used that moment to put my head down and begin barreling through the crowd.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” I heard a voice say, but she was wrong, because it had been done before and it would be done again, just like everything.
As I moved through the crowd, somebody managed to wrestle the trash bag out of my hand, and then a group of them tore at it with fingernails and teeth. In moments the bag was shredded and the canvas fell to the ground. And now their attention was taken more with the second painting, which was the same as the first, and I was able to stagger to the door. “A miracle!” the owner shouted. “He’s perfectly reproduced his masterpiece. Down to the last dollop of blood.” They didn’t care that it was identical. In fact, they loved it even more. They all wanted a piece of it, wanted a piece of her. Because despite my savagery, despite my best efforts at destruction, her beauty remained, and now they were like wild hyenas, attacking the canvas, tearing it to pieces, not out of anger, but out of lust. Claire’s face was scattered across the floor, and now every animal in the gallery got to their knees and snatched as many pieces as possible, stuck them in purses and pockets, against bosoms and inside orifices. And all the while the albino remained on the chair, shouting, “My mother’s money! Where’s my mother’s money?”
But he was unable to come after me, so frenzied was the crowd, and I managed to slip outside, into the Chinatown fog, and then I raced through the streets all covered with yesterday’s regrets.
* * *
Back in my apartment and I sat on my bed, staring at the phone, knowing it would ring, knowing Leider would continue to mock and torment, knowing he would never allow me to escape, not fully. But when the phone finally did ring, I was still startled and I sat there petrified and paralyzed. “Answer the phone,” he whispered, and so I did.
For a while, he just breathed heavily into the receiver, and then soon I could hear him chuckling. “Quite a fiasco at the art gallery,” he said. “Those people really are pathetic. If only they knew the truth. If only they knew that you were nothing more than a cheap plagiarist. First my apartment and my clothes. Then my woman and my murders. Now my masterpiece. You’ve gone too far this time, Mr. No Name.”
I could see my reflection in the mirror, next to where his self-portrait had once hung. Such a murderous expression.
If only I’d been loved. If only. I rose to my feet, looked out the window. Across the street all of the curtains were closed. Every single one of them.
Except hers.
She stood in front of the window, wearing that black veil, and even though I couldn’t see her eyes I knew that she was watching me, staring right at me, even though my lights were off, even though I was invisible in the shadows. And then her latest lover, Ryan, appeared, and he too watched me, and I knew they knew, and it was only a matter of time before the detective who paced the sidewalk below would enter the apartment and walk slowly up the stairs, hand inside his trench coat, fingering his weapon. And then what? A lifetime behind bars. A lifetime knowing that somebody else was devouring her beauty while I remained haunted by my failings.
“But why stop now?” he said. “You’ve got to finish the job. You know what you have to do. Use the blade this time.”
The blade, the blade, the blade.
And beneath the floorboards, the acid.
* * *
The woman was morbidly obese and was struggling with her grocery bags, so the very moment I saw that she was walking toward Claire’s apartment building, I appeared out of the mist and offered to assist her in carrying the bags to her third-floor apartment. Were Claire and her lover boy still watching me as I held open the door for the poor woman and listened patiently to her ramblings about her daughter Susan, who’d run off with that cruel-looking boy from the Bronx? Doubtful, as I heard no sirens, saw no flashing lights reflecting off the asphalt and tenement windows.
After placing all of her grocery bags on the kitchen counter and refusing a hug and a two-dollar tip, I returned to the stairwell and walked up the stairs slowly. I was doing what I was programmed to do. There is no free will, of that much I was now certain, and I knew once this miserable world ended, there would be no other.
I came to Claire’s floor and stood in front of the door. The knife was in one pocket and the acid in the other. I touched the door handle and twisted slowly (don’t make a noise, or they’re bound to hide in a drawer!), but it was locked. Breath wheezing from my lungs, I reached above the door frame, wondering if she’d made the same mistake as Turner, a mistake that had ultimately cost him his life, but my fingers came back empty, only smeared with dirt and dust. Slowly, I retreated from the door until my back was flat against the wall. I slid to the ground and pulled my knees to my chest. Then I waited.
Nobody came out, not from any of the doors, and I had the irrational thought that they were all gathered inside Claire’s apartment with guns and knives and rope, ready to tie me up and cut me apart and then feed me to the homeless gathered beneath the viaducts. But the irrational thought didn’t scare me. I knew that a vicious death was exactly what I needed. Because only when we suffer, only when we scream, only when we die, are we truly enlightened. The solitary truth in this world is horror.
The hallway lights fluttered and then I heard footsteps on the stairwell. Moments, long moments, and the stairwell door cracked open and I made eye contact with a girl, eight or nine years old, her face covered with filth. I’d seen her once before (she’d been grasping a headless doll). She pushed open the door and walked slowly down the corridor, her Buster Brown shoes echoing on the linoleum. Her dress was torn and her hair was a mess. And now I saw that dangling from her hand was that same murdered doll.
She regarded me for a few moments, a twisted little grin on her face, her green eyes twinkling above unwashed cheeks.
“Why are you sitting there, mister?” she said.
I didn’t answer for a few moments. Then: “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Oh. Is she someone you love?”
A pause. “Yes. I love her. But she doesn’t love me.”
“That’s called a love unrequited,” the girl said.
I couldn’t help but smile. “Right. Unrequited. You’re a smart girl.”
“That’s not what my mother says. Dumb as bricks is what she said.”
“Nah. She’s wrong. I’m a good judge. Smart and pretty. That’s what I think.”
That made her day. She sat down next to me, her body pressing against mine. With filthy hands, she stroked the back of her beheaded doll, and eventually she placed her head on my shoulder. We sat like that for a long time. I listened to her breathing, and I thought how it sure was a shame. All of it. These moments don’t last, not in this world. But the suffering does.
Claire’s door opened, and her latest lover, Ryan, stepped outside. He was dressed dapperly with khakis, a vest, and tie. When he saw me sitting on the floor with the girl and her headless doll, his mouth opened but no sounds came out. He took a step toward me and then another. Animal instincts in force, I maneuvered into a crouching position and then sprung toward him. The girl shouted, “No!” and started crying. I grabbed his legs and took him to the ground. He grunted, but didn’t make another sound, as if he was trying to be respectful of the rest of the tenants.
I climbed on top of him and he shielded his face with his arms. My body was no longer under my control, and I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the knife. Then I sliced his throat—just like I’d done to Turner.
The blood flowed quickly, and he choked and shuddered, his eyes as empty as a fish’s. I rose from his body and stuck the bloody knife back in my pocket. My own clothes and face were spattered with blood, but I didn’t care, not anymore.
A bitter grin on my face, I turned and looked at the girl. She was cowering against the wall, clutching her headless doll. I shook my head and whispered, “I’m sorry. It’s not my fault. I can’t be blamed. They made me that way…”
And now tenants were peeking out from behind cracked doors, and they saw the little girl, and they saw the still-warm corpse, and they saw the bloody me. A minute or more before the first scream, and it was loud and tormented, and then another scream followed and another and another.
But Claire remained inside her apartment.
A few of the tenants ventured into the hallway, pointing at me, saying I was the one, but it made no difference. Wiping the blood and sweat from my brow, I reached into Ryan’s pants and shuffled around until I found his keys.
I knew time was running out, so methodically I placed each key in the lock until I found the right one. The tenants just watched me. “He’s the one!” they said. “He violated God’s covenant!” I shoved open the door with my shoulder and stepped inside, the screams and accusations muted.
The apartment was dark—all of the curtains were pulled and all the lights were off—and everything smelled of mildew. I stepped inside and now I could only hear my breath and my cautious footsteps. I called out her name, but there was no answer. The hallway was dim and led into more shadow.
Finally, I came to the bedroom door. It was closed, but I knew she was behind there, knew that she was overwhelmed by terror, low groans arising from the pit of her stomach. She would live. I would see to that. But never again would she love. I placed my hand on the handle, twisted, and pushed the door open.
More darkness, more shadows. And now the low groans were coming from me.
I fumbled for the light and turned it on. Claire Browning sat in a wooden chair, her legs crossed and her hands folded across her lap. She wore her funeral clothes—the black dress falling to her feet and covering her arms, the black veil hiding her countenance.
I took a step forward and then stopped. Use the acid this time. She could have loved me, but she was rotten to the core. I knew that now. I knew…
When she spoke, it startled me. Her voice sounded strange, as if her mouth was filled with blood.
“Did you kill him?” she said. “Did you kill Ryan, too?”
“Yes. I slit his throat. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Her head dropped and I heard a faint sob. She was beautiful.
I took another step forward. It was time. I pulled the acid from my pocket. I hated to do it, but it was the only way. There was pounding on the door and sirens in the street.<
br />
I unscrewed the bottle and towered over her. She didn’t move, her hands still folded in her lap.
“It’s already been done,” she said. “I’m not scared…”
With slender hands, she pulled back the veil. I gazed at her face and saw what Leider had done to her, saw how he had destroyed her beauty, peeled away her skin with acid. So nobody else could have her. Not even Ryan. “Silly you,” Leider said. “He was only her brother…”
And now Claire’s lips spread into a hideous grin, her red skin the texture of bubbled wax. “Somehow,” she said, “I always knew you’d come back.” She raised her left hand and opened her fingers and something floated to the ground, just inches in front of my feet. Screams and sirens, screams and sirens. All we own is our suffering. I bent down and picked it up. I felt a stab to the esophagus and then heard Leider’s terrible laughter in my skull.
It was a playing card.
The queen of hearts.
I fell to my knees.
PART FIVE: AGAIN THE DARKNESS
CHAPTER 29
The world above was poisoned, maybe dead, and now I staggered through the abandoned tunnels, eyes adjusted to the darkness, ears pricked to the distant sound of a subway echoing against rubbled concrete. How long had I been wandering through these blackened corridors, my mouth mumbling nonsense, my fingers numbed to the bones? And now the clatter of the subway faded away, and the only sounds were the rats screeching and the water dripping and my breath heaving…
And just when insanity had gotten ahold of my neck and was beginning to squeeze, causing my eyes to bulge out grotesquely, I saw the faint glow of a lantern and heard the soft echoes of laughter.
