by David Wood
“What now?” she said.
Once they had reached the bedroom with the fork and knife, they tossed the utensils down onto the bed and stared. It was a four poster that seemed too heavy to move, especially in their weakened state.
They heaved and they hoed and inch by inch the four poster moved across the carpet, revealing deep indentations and stains. Once they had the space they needed they stared at the wall.
“Get the phrase book,” Amy suggested. “Let’s see what it says.”
Craig stood idle, staring down at the spot on the wall. Etched deep in the stucco were the words:
A maneira de viver é viajar
“I don’t need to,” he said, snatching the utensils from the bed. He handed the fork back to Amy. “It says ‘To travel is to live.’”
He didn’t explain. And she didn’t ask. They went right to work on the wall, stabbing at it like masked psychopaths in a slasher film.
And now she was bleeding, a deep dark red seeping through Craig’s tee shirt. She had stabbed herself in the hand.
“The bed,” he said. “If I can break off one of the posts I can use it as a hammer.” He lightly squeezed her hand. “Can you keep going, baby?” What choice did she have? She wanted to get married, to have children. To watch them grow up. To attend their graduations and their own weddings. To someday retire and to trav...Well, maybe not travel anymore.
“Of course.”
“Okay. See if you can find something to use in the kitchen.”
What had she done? Why hadn’t she just stayed with him in Hawaii?
Why had she been so stubborn about filing for bankruptcy? Craig was a lawyer; he knew what bankruptcy was all about. He had explained that it wouldn’t affect her life in the least, that the only change would be in her paying for everything with cash instead of credit. That in less than a decade she’d be fully restored and it would be as though it never happened.
Why was she so dumb?
Because she had listened to her mother. Her selfish petty fucking mother. An ugly old bag with a bull-dyke haircut who hasn’t been happy with herself a single day in her miserable life. This was who she was taking love advice from. Someone who wanted her nearby no matter what the price. Someone who didn’t hesitate to suggest that Amy leave her lover, yet who, in thirty-five years, couldn’t seem to leave her own husband. Why was she still with Amy’s father if she was so unhappy? Why all the talking and plotting behind his back without a single overt act? All the whispers and bad-mouthing. Amy had despised her father for so long and now she couldn’t quite understand why.
Because her mother had poisoned her against him. As sure as she had poisoned her against Craig. But were they really the bad guys? Two men who shrugged off convention but truly tried their best?
That fucking cunt, she thought.
And then she was in the kitchen, holding another knife. She glanced at it and started trembling. The reflection showed a set of dark deep set eyes, feminine but older. The knife fell with a clank onto the linoleum floor, just inches from her bare toes.
She squatted to pick it up and heard her knees pop again. Felt a sharp pain shoot through her legs.
She stood and stepped over to the oven, opened the oven door. Inside was as filthy as the rest of the flat. Burnt food residue and grime caked to the sides, giving off an awful smell. She closed it back up.
What could she use?
She opened the oven back up and pulled out the crud-covered rack. When she got back to the bedroom Craig was holding a bedpost.
His own hands and arms were scraped and red. “What—”
He smiled. “Don’t ask,” he said. “Are you okay?”
He put his left hand over his stomach. “I don’t think those cockroaches are agreeing with me, sweetie.” He winked at her. “But other than that I’m all right.”
She held the oven rack up for him to see.
“Excellent,” he said. “Now let’s tear this motherfucker down.”
Chapter 31
“Well,” he said, slamming the heavy wooden bedpost into the wall, “something tells me we’re not going to get our security deposit back.”
He turned and looked at her, could see the trace of a smile on her perfect face. Perfect even now, with a slightly swollen nose, dark rings beneath her eyes, cheeks as pale and hollow as a ghost’s. Still beautiful. Even as she stood with a grimy oven rack in her hands, sweating like a lumberjack in dirty, smelly nightclothes.
He lifted the post and drove it into the wall again. His hands and arms ached and he could feel splinters pierce deep into his flesh. He backed away and stared at their progress.
“Won’t be a first,” she said. “The wall we painted red in Battery Park? And we broke our lease in Waikiki, left our landlord high and dry?” She motioned with her chin toward the wall. “This seems about right.”
Sweat beaded on his bare chest and stomach. It poured like a warm acidic rain into his eyes. He drew a breath and struck the wall again.
Amy stabbed at the stucco with the oven rack. She used her faded red nightshirt to dab at her sweat. It was the one he had bought for her at Victoria’s Secret for their first Christmas together. It read the night is young.
“Ugh,” she groaned. “I smell like the Four train during rush hour.”
Craig winked at her. “You’ve smelled worse.” He swung the bed post again. A large chunk of stucco came loose and fell to the floor.
“I beg your pardon?”
He leaned in and examined the inside of the wall. He brushed some of the dust away and squinted. The dust stuck to his damp fingers and turned them white.
“Okay, maybe not worse. But not much better.”
He peered in at the wooden laths, the plaster squeezing through the gaps, locking the laths to the walls and ceiling.
He thought of his last summation before a civil jury of six in Kings County. “We the plaintiffs have presented our case,” he’d said, “built it brick by brick, lath by lath. All the defendant’s attorney has done is try to impede its construction, to knock it back down. When you head into the jury room to deliberate, I’d like you each to remember that it takes a master craftsman to put up a house. Any old fool can knock one down.”
“What do you mean, ‘not much better’?” she persisted. “When?”
He took a step back and raised the bedpost again. “Remember our third date? The one that lasted three days?”
“Yeah,” she said, as he drove the post into the wall. “But—”
“But nothing,” he said, his lips turned up in a semi-smile. “You didn’t shower the entire time you were at my apartment. I was beginning to wonder whether you ever showered.”
“Well, I never planned on staying that long.” He shrugged. “But you did.”
“I was uncomfortable. And I didn’t have any clean clothes to put on.”
“And you were sweating. The whole weekend.”
“Well, you had the damn heat at eighty-two. And you insisted we cover ourselves with that thick stifling gold comforter.”
“It was freezing,” he said. “I hate the cold; I can’t bear it. Besides, it doesn’t matter how little clothes you wear or how few blankets you cover yourself with, you always sweat in your sleep.”
She lifted the rack and took a swipe at the crumbling stucco. “So, I smelled, is that it?”
“Let’s put it this way: When I told Danny about you, I referred to you as Stinky.”
He laid the bedpost down and sat on the floor. She dropped the oven rack on the rug and slowly set herself down across from him, wincing as she did.
“Don’t worry, Stinky, you smell like a rose compared to what’s coming out of the bathroom.”
She swiveled her head. “Should I close the door?”
“Nah. We need the light. Just think about something that smells wonderful.”
She rubbed her temples and squeezed shut her eyes. “My favorite smell,” she came up with, “is when we drove up the North Shore on Oahu
with the top down on the Jeep and passed the pineapple fields. It smelled so delicious and sweet.”
“Really?” he said. “Definitely.”
He folded his legs underneath him and rested his chin on his chest. “What else did you love about Hawaii?”
She sighed. “Pretty much everything, Craig. The rainbows, the beach, the ocean. The mountains. The people.” She hesitated, then said solemnly, “The restaurants, the food.”
He cleared his throat, his voice still a strained and tired rasp. “Better than cockroaches?” he said, raising his left eyebrow as best he could. “Oahu had some big cockroaches, too.”
“What was the name of that Italian place in Waikiki? That was my favorite, I think.”
“Matteo’s, right. I could go for a nice fat loaf of taro bread,” he said. “Even some poi.”
Amy leaned back on the carpet, curled her feet behind her. “I know where you would take us if we could leave right now. That cheeseburger place on Kalakaua across from the beach.”
“I’ll never understand why you wouldn’t try one of those.”
“I don’t like burgers,” she said. “But, between you and me, I’d eat one right now.”
“I’d settle for a glass of ice water.”
With that, he rose to his feet. He lifted the bedpost and eyed the damaged wall. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Chapter 32
“Do you smell that?” he asked.
She stopped digging at the wall with her hands and stepped back. She smelled the combination of vomit and feces assaulting them from the bathroom along with their own pungent sweat. The temperature in the room had to be in triple digits by now-- a thick, sweltering heat that made the backbreaking work even more difficult. She could hardly breathe, let alone smell anything else.
“It smells like smoke,” he said, after getting no reply.
The room filled with silence. The fado had ceased hours ago and Amy had discovered that the quiet was as unnerving as the music. Maybe more so.
There was a large hole where wall had once been and a large section of wooden laths and plaster was exposed. She would need another tool to hammer away at the laths. The oven rack was fine for picking apart the stucco, but it wouldn’t fare very well against the boards.
“Keep digging,” she said. “I’m going to see if I can find something else.”
Out in the living room she plopped down on the couch. She was exhausted, didn’t think she could dig anymore. Didn’t think she could help break through the laths. She didn’t see how Craig was still standing. He had been so dependent on her for everything back in the States.
He’d needed her, sure as he needed oxygen. But did he love her? That had been another question altogether.
Her mother had said no. She’d said the very fact that Craig needed her for the simplest of daily tasks spoke volumes. That was neither love nor desire. On and on her mother went, going so far as to quote twentieth century German Marxist philosopher Erich Fromm: “Immature love says, ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says, ‘I need you because I love you.’”
But the more Amy thought about it now, the more she realized her mom had been wrong. And she hated her for pushing her so long in the wrong direction. Christ, Mom, Amy thought now, get a fucking life.
She got to her feet, willing away the pain. She headed over to the window to catch sight of the dog in the alley.
He wasn’t there.
Only the trash and the cobblestones and the building across the way, illuminated by a sky as gray as a day-old corpse. No movement whatsoever, no sign of life.
Behind her, the television clicked on.
Craig continued digging.
So she had loved the smell of pineapples as they drove past the fields up to the North Shore. She’d loved the rainbows, the beaches, the ocean, the mountains, the people, the restaurants, the food. She had loved Hawaii. Just not him—at least not enough to stay with him. At least not there on Oahu. Not with her mother folding her arms and tapping her foot back on the east coast. Could he blame her? What was there to love? A burned-out junkie lawyer who couldn’t sell a fucking novel to save his life? So Amy had listened to her mother. Who knows? Maybe her fucking mother was right. Certainly his own mother would have agreed with her, confirmed that her son was a waste of life. He shouldn’t have followed Amy home to Manhattan. He should have just stayed there on the island, tied weights to his legs, jumped into the Pacific and drowned himself. Now look at the fucking mess he had gotten Amy into. Trapped in a fucking flat thousands of miles from home.
His face itched, the course hairs on his cheeks and beneath his chin curling back toward his sensitive skin, tickling, teasing, irritating him. He pulled his hands from the wall but he couldn’t scratch. He looked down at them, covered in plaster and filth. He cringed. There was nothing he could do, no way to clean them. He stuck them back into the wall and attacked the stucco.
I got her into this mess, he thought. I’m gonna get her the fuck out.
She turned toward the television and squinted. A snowy image appeared in black and white. It was a pretty female talking-head on CNN. No, not CNN, but the BBC. She crept closer and double-checked the cord. The cord was still plugged into the wall.
She knelt in front of the screen and turned up the sound.
He shook a large chunk of the wall loose and set it down on the floor.
Maybe she had loved him all along. Or at least liked him a lot. Surely enough to go to Honolulu with him in the first place, to accept his marriage proposal. Enough to lay all her savings on the line and to rack up her credit in order to try to make things work. Maybe she did love him.
He had certainly thought so back when they were kayaking out to the Mokulua Islands. When they were driving up Tantalus to capture that stunning view of Diamond Head. He’d thought so when they swam to Goat Island and Chinaman’s Hat. All those times they’d tossed the frisbee in Ko Olina and sat sipping Kona coffee on their lanai.
Sure, she had loved him. But then why all of this? Why leave him behind in Hawaii? Why abandon him when he needed her most?
The pulse in his ear started up again. Then came the soft sound of fado through the ruined wall.
(It’s a tumor.)
And why in the hell had she fucked that bastardo downstairs?
(Or an aneurism.)
(With an aneurism you go like that!)
The woman on television spoke in a British accent.
“...Flight 1726 from Newark to Lisbon was carrying four-hundred and thirty-two passengers and twenty-seven crew members when it crashed into the Atlantic, killing everyone on board...”
Amy fell off her haunches and onto the floor. Her heart pounded. That is, if she still had a heart. She held her right hand against the left side of her chest and felt the rapid beating, like a fetus kicking in its mother’s womb.
The picture turned fuzzy but she could make out shots of flaming wreckage in the sea. Definitely the airline they’d flown, almost certainly their plane, though she could no longer recall their flight number. The anchor’s voice finally fell victim to static.
She pushed herself to her knees, winced from the inexplicable pain in her joints and got to her feet. Despite the fierce heat she had broken out in gooseflesh again. She tried to rub it away but it wouldn’t leave.
“What do I do?” she whispered.
The anchor’s voice suddenly rose above the static. It was a calm, smoky voice; distinctively British as before but now with a hint of menace.
“The dead don’t whisper,” the woman said evenly. “They scream.”
And she didn’t just fuck that prick downstairs, she was in love with him. She was going to run away with him. Flit off to the Azores and leave him in Lisbon to rot. To waste away alone in this very fucking flat, with its memories and its music and its constant goddamn loneliness.
But not anymore.
She hurried into the bedroom, found him standing stone still, staring at the wall.
“Craig,” she cried, “come here, quick. You have to see this.”
Slowly he turned to face her. His eyes were dark and his head was tilted to one side. “See what?”
“Oh my god,” she said, her chest heaving. “The TV. Craig, I think we’re dead.”
He laughed. It was a full-throated, hearty laugh, the kind she had only seen him use around Danny.
“That’s crazy talk! You’re out of your fucking mind. Batshit crazy. Maluco.” He threw his hands in the air, wiggling his fingers, mocking her. “You’re mad as a loon.”
She took a step backward, too frightened to cry. “I’m not crazy. I swear. It was on the television in the living room. Come see for yourself. They’re saying our plane went down.”
His mouth contorted into a depraved grin. “Guess that means we won’t have to go to your mother’s next Christmas.”
“Craig,” she yelled, “this is serious.”
The grin disappeared. “Oh, it’s serious all right. Serious as a heart attack. Or an aneurism. Do you realize, Amy, that with an aneurism...” He clicked his fingers. “With an aneurism you go like that!”
“What are you talking about?”
He hunched down and picked up the knife he’d been using earlier to scrape at the wall. “What I’m talking about, honeybunch, is this…” He turned the blade and held it over the palm of his right hand.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re not dead. The dead don’t bleed. Look.” He jammed the blade into his flesh and screamed.
Blood fell down his fingers and onto the stained carpet. He lifted his arm but continued to bleed, the crimson pouring down, forming a puddle at his feet.
She spun toward the dresser and pulled it open, tore out a set of spare sheets. She flung a pillowcase toward him and he quickly wrapped it around his hand, biting down on it with his teeth.
