Filip held his finger to his lips. But Mr. Mason wasn’t listening. He was coming down the stairs, shouting and gesticulating, spittle flying off his lips, very red in the face.
“You have to be quiet,” said Filip.
“I don’t have to do anything!” said Mr. Mason. “This is my house. Get out!”
All Filip needed was a minute, maybe two, of silence. Give him that and the movie would be done. But Mr. Mason didn’t understand that. Mr. Mason was refusing to understand that.
Filip swung around toward him and the mic boom swung with him. Mr. Mason covered his head and flinched, as if he were about to be struck. Which was when, Filip tried to explain to himself later, he had gotten the idea of hitting Mr. Mason. In a way, he told himself, Mr. Mason himself had given him the idea.
He struck him once in the face, then again. The man went down in a heap, writhing. Filip kicked him in the temple once, hard, and he fell still. Now, thought Filip, now I can record in peace.
But halfway through, Mr. Mason began to groan.
So, for the sake of art, Filip tied him up. And gagged him. There he was on the floor, struggling, still managing, somehow, despite everything, to make noise, to ruin things.
Sighing, Filip took off the headphones. He knelt down beside Mr. Mason and very calmly explained to him that all he had to do was be quiet for two minutes and then he would untie him and let him get back to his life.
And to be fair to Mr. Mason, he was silent; he did manage to hold still. This time, the recording went smoothly. Filip finally had what he needed.
“There,” he said, when he was done. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” And he took off Mr. Mason’s gag.
“You fucker,” said Mr. Mason. “You shit! You’ll go to jail for this. I’ll make sure you rot!”
Filip had already reconciled himself to this. There would be a price for finishing his film: he had accepted this. Mr. Mason could not frighten him. Filip had gotten what he wanted and he was willing to pay for it. So he let Mr. Mason blather on while he imagined himself leaving the man tied up as he made his way back to the postproduction studio and inserted silence where silence was needed. He would finish his movie, then he would go to the police and turn himself in and arrange for Mr. Mason to be untied.
It might have worked that way, too, if Mr. Mason hadn’t been a fool. Filip, considering the matter in retrospect, when he had a lot of time to think, felt he should have known the fellow was a fool and should have planned accordingly, should have braced himself. But as it was, when Mr. Mason began to threaten not only him but also his movie, he was caught off guard.
“I’ll make sure your fucking piece of shit movie never sees the light of day,” was the first thing he said. And then Mr. Mason went on to explain, in excruciating detail, how he would manage this.
Perhaps it was the room, the scene he had filmed there some months before and what it suggested to him. Perhaps it was more the thought of something that he’d spent the last five years of his life working on being destroyed. Or perhaps it was simply that he felt Mr. Mason was more irritating than any human should be allowed to be. Whatever the case, a few minutes after the gag was removed, Mr. Mason was dead, his throat cut from ear to ear, the blood spraying everywhere.
He began to move around the house, wiping doorknobs, removing his shoes and smearing the bloody shoeprints into unrecognizability. He changed into a set of Mr. Mason’s clothing and burned his own clothing on what he had to admit was a rather nice new Viking stove that Mr. Mason had had installed. He obliterated whatever trace he could that he had been there.
All the while he was doing it, he found something nagging at him, but he wasn’t sure what. Only when he was close to leaving and was cleaning the blood off the boom mic in the kitchen did he realize what it was.
He went back into the room, held himself still. Little had changed, and yet with Mr. Mason dead the tone of the room was subtly different. He could hear it. Maybe he was the only one who could hear it, but he could. It was, he was almost certain, better.
And so, standing there in his bloody socks, he turned on the recorder. It would be the thing that made the movie, he felt. The awful weight of that silence, the way it smelled of blood. It would be not only good enough but perfect, and only he would know why it was so.
He stood there, perfectly still, holding the mic. Even after the reel had run out, he remained there, motionless, listening.
Shirts and Skins
1.
On their first date, a so-called blind one, Megan took Gregory by the hand and he let her. She led him into a space afflicted with mood lighting and for a moment he thought it must be a bar, a remarkably empty one, but no, it was not a bar but an art gallery. Or, rather, the cloakroom of a gallery, with a row of hooks on the left wall of the narrow room. On those hooks were a series of what he thought were sweaters but which, as his eyes adjusted, he realized were shirts. So, maybe not a cloakroom after all. She was tugging at his hand, pulling him forward, and then he was there, glimpsing beside the row of hanging shirts a small, unobtrusive card glued to the wall. He bent down, squinted. Shirts, read the card.
But she was already heading through the doorway and what, blind date or no, could he do but follow? So he followed, out of that room and into the next. The same narrow room, the same series of hooks, nothing hanging from them this time. And there, just there, just beyond, another unobtrusive card. No Shirts, it read.
Correct, he thought, ludicrously.
There she went, heels clopping. Why had she worn heels? It was a blind date but they had agreed to a casual date, during daylight hours. Didn’t casual preclude heels? Was she the kind of girl who would wear heels on a casual date or was she on a different sort of date than he was?
He followed. Same room, same row of hooks, a few shirts scattered on them. With dread, he moved toward the small white card. Some Shirts, it read.
What the fuck? he wondered.
She had circled back and caught hold of his hand, and now tugged him forward, through a door at the far end of the room, one with a metal bar in the middle of it. She pushed down the metal bar and an alarm went off, screeching, and he stopped, but no, she dragged him through. And then they were out in an alley behind the gallery, blinking in the sunlight. A man was sprawled there, in a mound of trash. He was wearing a coat, zipped closed despite the heat, and a pair of mismatched sneakers, although he had no pants. His flaccid penis curved sleepily to one side. Shirt or no shirt? Gregory wondered about him. With the coat, he couldn’t tell.
He looked for a white card. He turned to her, confused. “Is this part of the exhibit?” he asked.
He was surprised when Megan became happy, inordinately so. “Right,” she said, her face lighting up in a broad smile, “exactly!”
2.
A week later they had moved in together. Gregory couldn’t help but feel that their relationship had been established on a misunderstanding. He still couldn’t figure out what had happened at the gallery exactly, nor behind it, nor why the sequence as a whole had led to him having what could only be described as profound difficulty asserting his own personality and desires when he was with her. It was as if their relationship, having gotten off on a particular foot, had lopped off the other one—the more independent, healthier foot—and so now he had to hop. Not just the foot, he sometimes thought, but the whole leg. When he was with her, there was less of him and what was there she was somehow in charge of.
She was older than him as it turned out, though she had lied about her age when they had first met, and, indeed, continued to lie about it. But he had glimpsed her proper age, the year anyway, on her driver’s license when she had been buying liquor at the grocery store. Her age wasn’t, he told himself, a problem in and of itself except to the degree that she felt entitled to control the relationship. For it was she who decided where they would go, what they would have for dinner, how they would spend their day. When they had decided to move in together it had been, in fact, she who had decided
they would move in together. And he, even though a part of his mind was screaming the whole time at him to run, had simply gone along with it.
Have I always been like this? he wondered. Passive? That, as much as anything, was what worried him. But no, he didn’t think so. He’d had relationships in the past. They had, admittedly, all been bad—or at least had all ended badly. But he’d been able to assert himself, to make his will known. For instance, in those other relationships he hadn’t, as he now did in this relationship, taken up running because she ran every morning and simply took it for granted he would too. He hadn’t been, as he was now, willing to sit for two or even three hours at a stretch watching marathons of a formulaic and unbearable dramedy, about a perky New Yorker who moves to Alabama, on a channel inexplicably called “the cw.” The whole time he had felt himself going crazy inside. What is this relationship doing to me? he wondered. What will be left of me once it’s done?
“You’re the best,” she said during the commercial break, leaning over and stroking his cheek in a way that made him want to flinch. “You’re my favorite boyfriend ever.” A part of him tried to smile weakly back at her. It hardly mattered; the commercial had ended and her eyes were already glued to the screen.
3.
On their six-month anniversary, over a dinner that she had chosen the recipes for but insisted he make, she brought up the art show again. Now that he’d lived with her as long as he had, he had an even harder time understanding why she’d taken him to it. It didn’t fit, at least to his mind, with the other sorts of things she liked. They hadn’t gone to a gallery together since.
“Wasn’t it wild?” she was saying. “I mean: Shirts?”
“Umm,” he said.
“And that guy, in the back, his junk all out?”
“I,” said Gregory, and straightened. “Was he an actor? Was he part of the show?”
She laughed, in a loud, boisterous way that he had rapidly come to think of as forced. “Right, exactly,” she said.
Right? Exactly? What does that even mean? A dull rage began to rise in him. He seemed liked such a nice, normal guy, he imagined the neighbors saying. But then he snapped. He lifted his wine glass and drained it. When he reached for the bottle, she playfully batted his hand away.
“Slow down, cowboy,” she said, and smiled glubbily. It was like being smiled at by a mudskipper.
He was not a cowboy. Why would she call him that? When she got up to powder her nose, he poured himself another glass, filled it almost to the brim. By the time she was back at the table, he had managed to drain it.
It was that, probably; the wine. And drinking it so fast. Before he knew it, he was talking, parts of himself coming out that she had until then kept battened in. “I didn’t like it,” he said.
She snorted. “You cooked it,” she said. “It’s your own fault.”
“No,” he said, “not that. The art show.”
For just a moment he saw the naked hurt in her face, though it was quickly gone, submerged beneath a more practiced expression.
“You loved it,” she accused.
“I hated it,” he claimed. “I really hated it.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said, her lip curling.
“But I—”
“You’ve had too much to drink, and now you’re saying things you don’t mean.”
“But—”
“You’re being mean,” she said. “And on our anniversary too.”
He stared at her, confused. No, he knew, he was being honest, much more so than he’d been through the rest of the relationship. Was he? Or maybe she was right—she was always right, in the end. Maybe—
“I want to break up,” he managed, while he could still speak his mind.
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“You heard me,” she said. “No.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, voice faltering. “I don’t want to? Or that I can’t break up with you?”
“Both,” she said.
In the morning, he awakened, head throbbing, and stumbled downstairs, where she was already sitting at the table, sipping her coffee. He sat down beside her, ready to be scolded, but she pretended like nothing had happened. Instead, she proceeded to recount a glowing version of their six-month anniversary the night before that bore, he knew, no resemblance to what had actually happened. This scared him much worse than her anger would have. She had already started to shape the event, make it what she wanted it to be, kill what it actually had been.
Just as she had shaped him, and would continue to do so, he knew, until they reached the point where there would be nothing left of him at all.
“Your turn to cook breakfast,” she said.
It was always his turn to cook breakfast. And always, he knew, would be.
4.
It was like looking at his life through a smaller and smaller window. Like he was watching it but helpless to control anything. In the end, he couldn’t help but think, it would be like she was having a relationship with some version of herself as he tapped his finger on a tiny but thick pane of soundproof glass, calling out silently for help.
He needed friends; friends would help. But he didn’t have any. As a couple they had friends, true, but these were really her friends—she hadn’t found his suitable. It was as if she had carefully and systematically trimmed away everything that he was connected to except for her.
But why couldn’t he be honest with her? Wasn’t that his fault? And now it had gone on so long that it was impossible for him to end it. How could he end it? Just say, “Megan, I’ve been unhappy since the moment I met you,” and then walk out? What did that say about him, the fact that he’d allowed not only days but months—and now years—to go by without revealing to her his real feelings?
No, he couldn’t bring himself to do it—and even if he did, she’d just say no and go on pretending that they were still in a relationship, as if nothing had actually happened.
She was older. Maybe she would die first. Maybe he’d even get a few years to himself, eventually, three or four decades from now.
5.
During the fourth year of their relationship, she let him know that they were engaged and lifted her hand to show him the ring she had taken the liberty of buying on his behalf (“I have the receipt here; you can pay me back in installments if need be”).
“We’ll get married in the spring,” she said. “I’ve always wanted a spring wedding.”
But I don’t want to be married to you at all, Gregory thought, although he said nothing.
A day later she arrived at the apartment with a huge stack of bridal magazines, and demanded he sit with her as she went through them one by one. He dutifully did. He even tried to make comments, until she made it clear that it was not his job to make comments. His job was merely to sit and listen, not to react.
Kill me now, he thought, as he had thought many times over the last four years.
“Oh, and look!” she said, finishing one magazine and lifting it away to reveal a blue flyer between it and the magazine below it. She passed it to him. A name he didn’t recognize, dates, a location.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s our artist,” she said, and squeezed his hand. “The one you took me to on our first date. He’s back in town—new show. We’re going!”
All the way to the gallery she babbled on. It’s the same artist! It’s like renewing our relationship! Is it the same show? he wanted to know—or didn’t want to know exactly, but felt he had to say something. But no, of course it wasn’t the same show, she told him—how could it be? Don’t be an idiot. But it would be even better! Just as their relationship had matured and become even better.
He felt a growing sense of dread. She held his hand, dragged him along.
And then they were there, going through the door. She had been right: it wasn’t the same show as before, not exactly, though it was close enough. That same initial dark, narrow room. A series of hooks with
dim shapes on them—a little higher on the wall. He thought: Shirts. But no, as his eyes adjusted, he realized that they weren’t shirts after all—the shapes were wrong and they were too long. He reached out and touched one and found it soft and dry to the touch. Leather. Where was the card? There it was. Skins, it read.
He turned back to the hooks with a sort of wonder. It was like a series of men had peeled off their skins and then hung them up. Where were—but she was giggling, pulling him forward and out.
Another narrow room, without hooks this time, only a series of statues of men, complete except for the fact that they had been flayed. No Skins, read the card. Or maybe not statues after all. Were they real, the bodies preserved somehow? He wanted to think they were, although he didn’t know why. Megan was still laughing and giggling and now had taken him by the hand again and was tugging him on. It was like she was not seeing what he was seeing, like she was in a completely different exhibit altogether. Or as if she had already decided what the experience was going to be and was enjoying that instead of what was actually there.
Her heels clattered against the floor as she walked. A third room, just as narrow. A sequence: hook with skin, body, hook with skin, body, hook with skin. Skin tingling, he moved toward the small white card. Some Skins.
Yes, he thought, exactly.
She was gesturing back to him, moving toward a door at the far end of the room, one with a metal bar in the middle of it. Fire exit, he thought.
“Come on,” she said.
“Right behind you,” he said, and when he took a few steps toward her, she pushed at the bar and opened the door. An alarm went off. Light poured in and then she was through. As soon as she was, he pulled the door shut from the inside. He was alone.
He heard the sound of her trying to open the door. A moment later she began to pound on it, calling his name. Slowly he backed away from the door and faced the skins, the bodies. He reached out.
She would find him eventually. He knew that, sure, he wasn’t fool enough to think he was free. But for a moment at least he could pretend, could enjoy the glorious feeling of crouching alone beneath someone else’s skin. Maybe it would give him something to look back on. Maybe it would give him enough to sustain him through at least one or two of the long and bitter years to come.
Song for the Unraveling of the World Page 8
