by Jeff Crook
I tried to calculate where Adam would be at that moment if he took off after the last phone call. If he left Endo’s apartment, he’d drive up Airways to East Parkway and then east on Summer. It was almost a straight shot. He’d be here any minute. If he was coming. I had to believe he was coming.
Endo crossed his legs, took his hand from my breast and rested it on his knee. “I wanted to meet a nice girl just like you, maybe even get married,” he sighed melodramatically and hummed a few bars of “Going to the Chapel.” “Michi said he would support us. He said he would buy us a house anywhere we wanted. I think he was just trying to get rid of me. Then one Friday afternoon I saw the woman of my dreams at the Save-a-Lot. I followed her home. I couldn’t figure her out, you know? All my life I’ve been attracted to men no matter what I did or thought, and then suddenly this girl comes along, this magical, beautiful girl, long red hair and a face like an angel. She had me properly confounded. About six o’clock she comes out of her apartment all dressed up for a night on the town and gets in her car and I follow her to the Blue Monkey and go inside and I can’t believe this beautiful girl could be alone on a Friday night standing at a bar all by herself and nobody talking to her, so I know she is my miracle girl. I talk to her. She smiles at me. She touches my hand and I buy her a drink, she buys me a drink and then we move to a booth and before you know it we’re kissing. Me, kissing a girl! She tasted like a lollipop. She was touching me but she wouldn’t let me touch her because she said she was shy, so I say let’s go somewhere private. I take her to my favorite spot out at Elmwood Cemetery. It’s this secluded hole among the cedars and the graves, back away from the main road, hardly anybody knows it’s there but I used to go when I was a kid to beat off. We’re sitting there on a headstone kissing and she goes down on me for a little while, then she bends over this gravestone and she says, I’m saving myself for when I get married but you can do me and next thing I know she’s laying over the headstone like she’s broken or something and I’m holding a piece of a cedar branch as big as your wrist with her hair all in it. So I give her a good rogering with that stick, the dirty slut…”
“You’re talking about Patsy Concorde,” I said.
“Patrick! He hadn’t had the fucking operation yet!” Endo screamed. His face wasn’t the same, it was like a mask of rage that he put on when I wasn’t looking. “Bitch tried to trick me. When I pulled down his panties and that thing flopped out I just lost it. I don’t know. I don’t know. She was so beautiful, I would have waited, I would have gone to the operation with her and shared all that if she had only just told me the truth instead of playing all shy and shit like she’s some innocent little virgin cunt.”
“So you killed her,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say. I don’t know why I said it. He pissed me off.
But he laughed. Threw back his head and laughed the fakest, coldest laugh I’d ever heard. “Killed her? Hell no, I didn’t kill her. She was already dead. She never was alive, never real. She was an actor on the stage of life, for life is theater, honey. None of this is real. I’m not real. You’re not real. He’s not real. They’re not real. I am he is you are we is she are he and we are all together. Nothing we do means anything, all that matters is how well we play our scenes. Tomorrow they’ll play the same scenes again with different actors. So I didn’t kill anyone. I merely followed the script. All the world’s indeed a stage and we are merely players.…” He paused, frowning and confused. “No, that’s not it. The meter is all wrong. I’ve got it mixed up. Line!”
Someone knocked on the door. Endo clapped his hand over my mouth before I could scream. I tried to drive a knee into his stomach, but I couldn’t get enough leverage to make it hurt. I tried to bite his hand. He forced my legs down and grabbed something off the floor. “Don’t get your panties in a wad,” he whispered as he crammed a pair past my teeth, gagging me. “This is all part of the show. I hope you like it.”
He put his knee on my tit and crushed me into the bed while he pulled on his gloves, then his hood. Somebody was really hammering on the door. Endo leaned his full weight onto me until the black spots started to close around. I heard a distant crack, like a stick breaking, and felt something give in my chest. Then he left me in the bed with the springs bouncing up and down, hardly able to breathe at all.
The door exploded in the next room. I rolled off the bed, landed on my shoulder and felt my broken rib grind against itself. I sat up, trying to twist out of the bra binding my arms. I choked on the panties in my mouth, almost vomited and fought it back down. I knew if I vomited into my gag I would drown. Adam’s head appeared around the side of the doorframe, scoping the room. I tried to scream but I think the noise only made him more careless. He entered at a crouch, pistol held low in both hands. Endo drifted in silently behind him with the baseball bat. He smacked Adam once across the broadest part of his back. Adam let out a surprised wuff of air, staggered and dropped to one knee. His gun popped off, punching a hole through a pane of glass above my head. Then Endo hit him on the crown of the head so hard the bat broke at the logo. Dots of Adam’s blood stung my face. He lurched to his feet, spun and landed on his back with his legs already running, the heels of his black department-issue brogans hammering the floor like a drum line, his whole body convulsing. It seemed to go on forever. His gun came spinning out and slid under the bed so fast I heard it hit the wall.
Finally, he lay still, breathing shallow, his eyes swimming in his face, then one big breath, taking it all in, and then out and no more. I watched him die, helpless. My knight in shining armor. His eyes tight shut, like he didn’t want to see it coming.
Endo stood in the doorway, hugging himself and holding the broken bat handle to his chest. He pulled off his hood and dropped it on the floor, dragged the sleeve of his black pajamas across his mouth, leaving behind a white swipe of bare skin like a clown’s smile on his face. “This fell sergeant is strict in his arrest,” he whispered. “Yet who would have thought he had such blood in him!”
I said something, I don’t know what. The panties in my mouth swallowed my words. It didn’t matter anyway. I couldn’t hurt him with words or make him stop or even give him a moment’s pause. There was nothing human in him to appeal to. A shrill and eerie whistle blew through the bullet hole in the window, like a teapot coming to boil, and a fine mist of rain drifted into the room. The air grew bitter cold. The storm, so long in coming, arrived all at once. The rafters shook with thunder, the window rattled in its frame. The candle on the floor flickered and blew out.
“What’s done cannot be undone,” Endo said as he closed and locked the bedroom door.
43
HE WALKED SLOWLY AROUND ADAM’S body. “I wish I had brought my video camera,” he said. The storm was really churning outside now, the rain slashing against the window, misting the floor through the bullet hole. I lay over on my side to ease my ribs and wait for death.
Endo unbuckled Adam’s belt, unzipped his pants and pulled them down to his ankles, then flipped his body over. I turned my head and looked under the bed so I wouldn’t have to watch. It was too dark under the bed to see Adam’s gun, not that I could have reached it with my hands tied. I was glad for the noise of the storm. I fixated on the most mundane thing in the world—my empty suitcases. I imagined them full of clothes. When this is done I’ll go on a trip. Where will I go? Someplace warm, where the sun shines all day. It’s so cold in Memphis in November.
Endo knelt beside me. “Are you crying?” he asked. He pulled the panties from my mouth, then held an open beer to my lips and I drank, thankful. He sat me up and leaned me against the bed, but I kept my eyes averted. He sat on the floor beside me with the candle, bag of white powder, spoon and needle. He was naked, his pale flesh green in the traffic light, his face black. He lit the candle and set it on the floor. “I have something here I know you’ll like. This ain’t no Nixon. This is the real goma, honey. This is red rum straight off the boat from Karachi, courtesy of the Taliban and the Goddamn
CIA. I know a guy who brings it up the Mississippi River by barge.”
He shook a fat deck of powder into the spoon and added a slosh of beer, then set it over the flame to cook. He leaned back, his shoulder resting against mine, like we were two old junkies sitting in an alley by a fire in a trash can. “I want you to understand I take no pleasure in killing you.”
“Why not?” I tasted blood in my mouth. “Did it give you pleasure to kill Adam and James?
“They served their purposes. Everybody does. You have your purpose. He had his. They had theirs. Me? I’m an actor, but do you know how many lead roles there are for Japanese men? I tried to stage a production of Ran, which is King Lear set in medieval Japan, but I couldn’t get backing for it, not even from my grandfather. Do you know why? They said there weren’t enough Japanese actors in Memphis to fill out the cast. It’s fucking theater! Use your fucking imagination! The actors don’t have to be Japanese, just like you don’t have to be a fucking moor to play Othello. Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it. Do you know who said that?”
I didn’t answer. What was the point? Everything he said was scripted. His head was full of quotes, non sequiturs, nightmares and murder. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the side of the bed.
“Bertolt Brecht.”
“Never heard of him.”
“No, I didn’t think you had. Otherwise you would have known I was doing Brecht’s Edward the Second, not Marlowe’s.”
“What?” I opened my eyes and looked at him.
He twisted his comic mask into a sick smile and nodded. “My staging of Edward the Second was Brecht’s version. I didn’t expect anyone to realize that. Who is dark, let him stay dark, who is unclean, let him stay unclean. Praise deficiency, praise cruelty, praise the darkness! But I didn’t want to correct you in front of your friends.” He laughed and elbowed my broken rib. “Know what I mean?” I sucked air and sat up straight, feeling the bone push into my lung.
When I could breathe again, I asked, “Why are you doing this?”
“For the art of it, more than anything else.”
“This isn’t art, Wayne. Nobody but you will appreciate it.”
“I’m the artist, honey. I’m the only one I have to please. But I also like the novelty of this. In Thespis’s time, there was only one actor on the stage, plus the chorus. Aeschylus added a second actor and Sophocles a third. Phrynichus was the first to include female roles, but all the parts, male and female, god and demon, were played by men. Even in Shakespeare’s time, all the parts were played by men. That’s as it should be and the only way I’ve ever worked, until tonight.”
“What about Ashley St. Michael?” I countered.
“What about her?”
“You killed her.”
“No, that was James.” He picked up the syringe and drew a full load into its chamber, then nudged the hot spoon off the candle flame, scorching a knuckle in the process.
“Bullshit,” I said.
He winced and sucked his burned finger. “No, seriously. I’ve known them ever since they bought Martha Ritter’s house. Ever heard of her? She was Cole Ritter’s mother. I used to play at her house when I was kid, back behind the garage. It was a great place to hide things.” He giggled again, tee hee. “Cole sold the house to James and Ashley after his mother died. I bet James didn’t tell you that. Anyway, because Ashley was a society photographer and my grandfather was Memphis society, James and I saw each other about once a month and one thing led to another, as they sometimes do.”
“You’re telling me you and James were lovers.”
“He is so good-looking!” he cackled. “I did things for James his wife wouldn’t do. I told him things about myself I had never told anybody. I confessed all the terrible things I had done when I was young and confused. Then he got in trouble and needed money, so he asked me to break into his house and steal his wife’s cameras so he could file an insurance claim. He told me where to find the spare key in the flower box and everything. But when I got there, she was dead on the floor. He had a camera set up in the closet to take my picture with her body, but I saw the camera and took the memory card. That ruined it for him because he couldn’t collect her life insurance until I was convicted. But like an idiot, I had told him of my plan to stage Richard the Third at the Playhouse. So he was waiting for me there and took my picture with the Duke of Clarence. He’s been blackmailing me ever since. Well, not anymore,” he finished with a soft laugh.
Endo scooted until he was sitting in front of me, stark naked with his black clown face, holding the syringe like a dart he was about to throw for triple points. I turned my head so I wouldn’t have to look at him. I looked at James lying on my bed with his mouth open and his eyes half closed like he was waiting for something amazing to happen. I couldn’t believe I had been so wrong about him. I refused to believe it.
Endo continued, “Why do you think I tried to go straight? Why do you think I waited two years to do Edward the Second? When I found out the other day that James was trying to sell his dead wife’s cameras, I put this production together to get back at him. I’m sorry I had to use you, but I needed somebody close to him. You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. This is the final act of the play. He won’t blackmail me now.”
I laughed, even though it hurt like Christ on the cross. Endo was lying again, of course. James was innocent. Endo fabricated the whole story. Truth was totally meaningless to him. But I wasn’t ready to give up yet.
“James had no idea those photos were in the camera until tonight. If he was blackmailing you, he’d never have sold me the camera with the pictures still in it.”
Endo laughed at me, that fake, falsetto cackle, sounding more like Michi than ever. “OK. You got me. But it makes a good story, doesn’t it? That’s what’s important, a nice dramatic twist at the end. How am I doing, by the way? Convincing performance? Do you fear for your life?”
“Not really,” I said. Not anymore, anyway. He was going to kill me. Nothing would change that. I wasn’t about to make it easy for him.
“Good. I hope you’re enjoying every moment of this. This is real theater, what theater should have always been. You probably think we’re performing a tragedy, but this is Comedy with a capital C. If this were tragedy, some fault or flaw, some hubris would have led me to this point, but I’ve done nothing wrong. I grew up in the most ridiculous of circumstances. It’s really quite funny.”
He laughed harder and wiped his eyes with the heel of his palms, leaving two, upward-slanted teardrop eyes in his black face, completing his comedic mask. I saw nothing funny about it.
“My father was ruined in business and committed seppuku. My mother tried to follow him by holding me in her arms and jumping in front of a bullet train at Arihata Station. But the bullet hit her and missed me. Why? you ask.”
I hadn’t asked. I didn’t care, but he was going to tell me anyway. It was part of the script he had written for himself. “Why did my mother follow an ancient Japanese tradition no longer kept by even the most traditional of Japanese women, especially since she was only half Japanese and could pass for white? What’s more, why did I survive? If you can answer that, I defy you to believe in a just God. There is no such animal. So after mama killed herself, they mailed me off to America like a cheap plastic blow-up doll to be raised by my dear, demented old grandfather, Michi Mori, who hated me. He tried to give me away to anyone who feigned the slightest bit of interest in me, as though I were no more important to him than a stray cat who wandered through an open door into his kitchen. The happiest moment in my life was the day you took me away from him. I thought you’d come to save me. So why did you let them send me back?”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“It’s a little late for sorry, don’t you think, Jacqueline? You knew what kind of monster Michi was. How could you send me back to him?”
“The charges against your grandfather wer
e dropped,” I said. Social Services returned custody of Endo to Michi. They never consulted with me about it. “I couldn’t stop them.” I hadn’t even tried. What did I care about Endo? My life fell apart after that case, the department was riding my ass and I was using hard. Endo had been the last thing on my mind.
“I could have given you all the evidence you needed to put Michi away forever, but no one would listen to me!” he shouted, and rammed his fist into the floor. “I have photographs of the boys who were funneled through Michi’s house, traded or bought and sold for the personal use of senators, CEOs, Arab sheiks and mobsters, all kinds of famous people. Some of those boys even ended up in the White House. They’d kidnap kids from all over and bring them to Michi’s house until buyers could be found. My grandfather used me like a steer. He’d send me down there to talk to the boys, calm them down and pretend everything would be ok as soon as we could find their parents. Then a white van would pull up, they’d take a few boizu to the airport and load them on a private plane and you’d never see them again.”
I looked at him. In the red of the traffic light outside the window all I could see was the comedic smile painted on his face, but he wasn’t smiling. It was the face of the Gacy clown hanging on the wall of his apartment. His dead black eyes glimmered with tears. “Are you serious, Endo?” I asked.
