theMystery.doc

by Matt McIntosh

  I woke. And she was pulling up her skirt. She looked at me. But I could not see her face. Was she who I thought she was? If I had my spectacles at the side of the bed, I could have reached for them, put them on and seen her face. But who would she have been then? When I woke, when she was pulling up her skirt, when I saw her, instead of a face, I saw a pink-colored blur. I heard a voice and I recognized the voice. It said, “I’m super late, so I’m gonna drive. OK?” And then ran down the back stairs, out the door, to the car, started it up, drove away. But was that really her at all? Or was it just a fragment memory? Or was it just a lapsing dream? I’m reaching for something I can never quite grasp. And when I wake it’s pulled always further away, until I’m left with nothing. All alone. This is what life is like. You are born, and then you die. And in the meantime you lose one thing after another. We say that there is only now. But now is gone as soon as it has come. And there is no future, because it hasn’t happened yet. And there is no past, because it has disappeared. So where are we, really? I started with an idea long ago. And by now the idea has taken control. Everything is falling away. All

  the paint. All the poorly applied paint. All the time more leaves me. All the time I become new. All the paint. Poorly applied. And so the question becomes what am I to do…finally.

  Create words in which to hide?

  Can he who does such things escape?

  From the one who’s coming after us for something that I did, or have yet to do but am known to do in time?

  Can he break a covenant and still go free?

  Create a world to keep my love inside?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Mystery. The dead cat. The neighbor lady. Brute. The corgi. Call me Corky. Eva’s yellow hair once was dark. The Dna Charmers. Gerald and his peanuts. A body buried in a Bed Bath & BEYOND bag. MOM. Pop. The Gang. The name of the dwarf with the pierced penis was Louie. He was not a real dwarf, just a very short man. There was a spryness to him of a sort you might find among leprechauns, or circus performers. He walked down the basement steps with a big smile on his face. It was pretty dark. The only light came from a little window above my head.

  “How’s tricks?” he said.

  “Not bad.”

  “I’m Louie,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Sorry about Bear One. He loses his temper pretty easy.”

  “No problemo,” I said. “I completely understand.”

  Bear One was the one who had crushed my jaw. I described him earlier as looking like a grizzly. Apparently I wasn’t the first to come up with that metaphor.

  “Face hurt?” Louie asked.

  “A bit. Not too bad. Nothing to complain about. The fact is I get hit all the time, so a sock to the jaw like that doesn’t really faze me. I mean it doesn’t even cross my mind to call the police if that’s what you guys are worried about. I hate the pigs, you know what I mean? Hate them with a passion.”

  He just smiled.

  “Say, Louie,” I said. “I just remembered I’ve got an appointment to be at. What do you say you untie me and let me be on my way?”

  “Sorry, chief. No can do.”

  “You’ve probably heard that I’m a writer,” I said.

  “Maybe. I don’t read much,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m a pretty successful writer, actually,” I said. “I’ve got a lot of dough. Listen, Louie. You get me out of here I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “You don’t have any dough.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Crap.”

  Louie never stopped smiling.

  “What else do you know about me?” I asked.

  “I know you’re in big trouble.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know that too.”

  “I know you’re working on some big book. Some big story that’s gonna make sense of life and why we’re here and answer all the mysteries of the universe. At least that’s what you told that little girl.” Smile. “But a guy tells a girl a lot of things to get in her pants, don’t he?”

  “Now, wait a minute, Louie,” I said. “Let’s be fair. I really don’t think that’s the story here.”

  “Well, a story’s all about how you interpret it, ain’t it?”

  He had me there.

  “Can you do something about these ropes, Louie? It’s cutting off my circulation.”

  “You’d rather I rolled you over so you can lay on your face?”

  “No, I’d rather not lay on my face. But I’d rather not lay on my hands either.”

  “Split the difference?”

  Louie rolled me onto my side.

  “Better?”

  “Well, it’s still not the ideal.”

  He had pulled up an old chair and was now sitting next to the bed, his bare legs and feet resting on the mattress pretty close to my face.

  “Nice and cool down here,” he said.

  “Isn’t it? Say, that’s an interesting piercing,” I said. “Did it hurt getting that done?”

  “Did it hurt having a metal bar shot through my pecker? What do you think?”

  “I think it probably did. Why’d you do it?”

  His smile disappeared momentarily while he thought about it.

  “I guess to have something I’m known for.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “So now you’re the guy with the pierced penis.”

  He smiled.

  “You guys seem to be one big happy family, huh?”

  “Yep,” he said. “We’d die for each other.”

  “Would you? That’s good. It must be neat to really connect with people like that.”

  He smiled.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever really connected with people like that, you know? Boy, I’d love to be a part of a gang. Actually, what I’d really like is to be a part of this gang. You think maybe you guys would let me be a member?”

  Smiling Louie said, “I very much doubt it, boss.”

  “Really? How come?”

  “No reason.” He pulled a joint out of thin air and lit it. “Smoke?”

  “Sure.”

  He leaned forward and let me pull off the spliff. I thanked him and blew out.

  “Not everybody is convinced you’re who you say you are,” he said.

  “Who I say I am! But I haven’t said I’m anyone!”

  “There’s a theory going around,” said Louie, taking a hit, “that maybe you’re a cop. Or a spook.”

  “A cop or a—” I laughed. “Oh, man! That’s hilarious! Boy, if you knew me—” I laughed some more. “Oh, that’s rich! If you knew me you’d know how crazy that sounds! That is funny! That is really funny, Louie! Although I hope that no one actually thinks that.” He put the joint back in my mouth. “(Thanks.) I mean bad things can happen, Louie, based on a simple misunderstanding. I’m sure you’ve read your Shakespeare.”

  “I don’t know about Shakespeare.”

  “Well, you’re a wise man because Shakespeare is seriously overrated. In our culture it seems like we need to have one example in every category to represent the ideal, so that everyone will feel they’re speaking the same language. We have Shakespeare. He represents literature. Even if you haven’t read a word of it you know what someone means when they say Shakespeare. We have the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa represents art—fine art in general. Although the truth is, Louie, Shakespeare was a hack and the Mona Lisa is a piece of shit!”

  “I like the Mona Lisa.”

  “I do too. No, it’s not that the Mona Lisa is a piece of shit—I was only exaggerating for effect. It’s that there are one or two paintings out there that are even better than the Mona Lisa, if you can imagine it. I wonder who decides what art lasts and what art is ignored, what art becomes
the cliché for greatness, and what becomes forgotten, lost forever down the well of time. Who’s responsible, I wonder.”

  “The public?”

  “No, good guess, Louie, but never the public. The message is always directed to the public, not from the public. I really think there’s a conspiracy going on. I think there is a secret, well-funded, and very powerful group at the top of the pyramid scheme we call civilization that decides all these things, that in a sense makes social reality reality—because social reality has nothing to do with what actually is, only what is agreed to be. I wonder if I talked about this to Candice’s English class. It would probably have made for an interesting discussion. Too often writers go into a high school English class and tell the students that they can be great writers if only they’ll apply themselves and practice. Well, I would have told them that, yes, you can be a writer but the only way you’ll be recognized as a great one is if the secret organization that runs the world decides you’ll be recognized as a great one. It actually has very little to do with practicing. This is really good weed, by the way.”

  “Yeah. MOM grows it.” He stopped smiling. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I give you my word I’m no cop. Who’s saying I’m a cop, incidentally?”

  “Afraid I can’t share that information.”

  “Well, can you share the reasons why I’m suspected of being a cop?”

  He smiled. “No.”

  “Doesn’t a man have the right to know the charges brought against him?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, man,” I said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I think I’m gonna start yawning again.”

  Footsteps on the staircase. Candice’s voice.

  “Louie, MOM wants you.”

  Louie left. Candice replaced him on the chair.

  She had her arms crossed tightly over her tank top.

  “It’s cold down here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “Bear One? No, just a minor mauling.”

  “I don’t know why he did that. I think he just doesn’t like to see me cry.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “So you’re an agent,” Candice said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “You’re an agent.”

  “Like a literary agent?”

  “No like an enemy agent.”

  “What? No, I’m not. Why would you say that?”

  “Because you’re an enemy agent.”

  “No, Candice, I am very much not an enemy agent! Why do you keep saying that?”

  “You’re infiltrating us.”

  “Oh, god.”

  I started to yawn. Up, up, up…then

  down too soon. “Candice, I think what you have is a lot of people getting paranoid on their dope. I should know. I’m starting to get pretty paranoid, myself. But in my case I think I have a right to be paranoid because out of the blue I find myself hogtied on a rusty bed in the basement of some abandoned farmhouse by a bunch of drug-addled bikers who it seems have decided that I’m an enemy agent. Enemy agent? Enemy of what? What does that even mean? I’m not an enemy agent, I’m not an allied agent, I’m not any kind of agent. Don’t you see how crazy that sounds?”

  “It all makes sense now,” she said. “I was so stupid.”

  “No, you weren’t stupid, Candice. Don’t say that. You weren’t stupid. You’re just high right now, and it’s a hot day, and you’re stressed out about going off to college and everything seems sort of confused right now. It’s totally normal, but it doesn’t mean I’m an agent. I’m just a simple writer living a simple life in Spokane, Washington. End of story. Now, before this all gets even weirder I really think you should untie me and let me slip through that window.”

  “What were you doing out there on the highway?”

  “You saw for yourself, I was walking back home. I’d been visiting my neighbor Vel in the looney bin. Her cat Olive died and I thought I should be the one to give her the news. Vel and I had been quite close before she went insane and chased me with a hose. Now, I didn’t have access to a car so Charles, my drain snaker, drove me out in his Drain Charmers van. But he couldn’t give me a ride back because he had to go fix a pipe under a Motel 6.”

  “Why didn’t you kiss me back?”

  After I’d lugged the red suitcase from Candice’s car to the upstairs bedroom, she’d closed and locked the door and when I’d turned around after throwing the suitcase on the bed, she was in her bra, and then kissing me all over my face, telling me I was acting weird and like I’d lost my mind. My first reaction, of course—and who could blame me—was to let it happen—I didn’t kiss her back—but I let her kiss me—I let her kiss me, I let her do whatever she wanted for a little while, because though it all happened fast I think I knew in my head that while I wouldn’t let it go too far, at the same time I could let things happen and then stop them afterward and still be able to claim that I hadn’t done anything. And so I had let her kiss me, she kissed me all over my face, and on my neck, she took my hands and wrapped my arms around her, put my hands on her ass, then moved hers around to my front and unbuttoned my fly, while saying things like “Weren’t you even gonna come see me before I left?” and “I waited all night but you never called, you old fucker.” She kicked off her shorts and I let myself be pushed down onto the bed next to that suitcase, I felt her mouth and her breath, smelled her sweat, she undid her bra, pulled my shirt up, she was getting into it, really into it, when all at once she seemed to realize I hadn’t done the first thing to reciprocate, and she stopped. She pulled her head back to get a good look at me, and got this expression like I had stabbed her in the womb. The next thing I know she’s yelling her head off like I wouldn’t have thought a girl that size could yell, screaming and picking up all the little abandoned things that had once made this room somebody’s home—‌ten-cent porcelain figurines, a vase with the remains of long-dead flowers dried out all around it, pictures of people and roses in metal frames—she let it all fly in my direction, and I leapt around trying to get out of the way, telling her to relax, but she kept going. Yelling and cursing and crying—scarlet from her face to her ankles—naked except for white cotton undershorts. I tried to make a break for the door but around this time the knob was turned from the outside, the door shook, a fist pounded, but the bolt had been drawn—I ducked as a Statue of Liberty snowglobe went flying over my head—at that moment the door burst open, the jamb shattered, entered a bear (Bear One), wood exploding from his thick shoulder, his face was redder than hers, he was on me quick, his giant paw went back and came forth to send me into:

  BLACK.

  “I should have. I should have kissed you back,” I said.

  “But you didn’t,” she said. “Because you never actually loved me. You just used me.”

  “Used you? No, Candice, no.”

  “Yes, Daniel, yes. I never would have believed it in a million years, but I’m positive now. I was a sucker. I was a fool. I fell for you, I believed what you said. I believed you loved me too. I feel so stupid.”

  She dabbed at her eyes with my handkerchief.

  “Candice,” I said, yawning. “You’ve got to believe me, honey. I don’t know anything about enemy agents. I swear. I’m just writing a book. That’s all.”

  “Yeah, right.” She snorted.

  “I think you and your friends have been smoking too much pot, that’s what’s going on. You’re all getting caught up in group paranoia and spinning up these conspiracy theories and thinking there are enemy agents out there trying to do god knows what—and what am I accused of anyway? Interrupting a barbecue? Candice, there are no enemy agents. Think about it. Just think for yourself for a minute. You
’re a smart girl. You have a 4.0 average. You don’t get a 4.0 by just going with the crowd and agreeing with whatever popular opinion is winning the day—you get a 4.0 by thinking for yourself! Now, come on. Do you really think I’m an enemy agent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dear god,” I said with a sigh. “OK, look, Candice. I’m gonna level with you now, OK? Can I level with you?”

  Candice lit a cigarette.

  “The truth is, sweetheart, this has been a very confusing day from the time I woke up. You see, Candice, I don’t have any memory. I know it probably sounds hard to believe, but I can’t remember a thing.” I yawned again. “My mind’s a perfect blank.”

  “Oh, I get it. You have amnesia.”

  She blew her smoke out all over me.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so!” she said. “I mean, that explains everything! You didn’t kiss me back because you didn’t remember that we knew each other. And so you didn’t remember we were lovers. Because you didn’t remember fucking me in my bedroom while my parents were at work. And in the music room at my school when you’d come to pick me up. And in that seedy motel on the highway. And where else? Oh, yeah. In my mother’s car at Liberty park. And because you didn’t remember any of that you didn’t remember all the promises you made me, or how you told me you were almost done with your book and how you were going to sell it for a lot of money, and as soon as you did how you were gonna leave your wife, and how we were going to run off together and live on the beach in Mexico, drinking margaritas and laying in the sand—or is it lying in the sand—”

  “Candice—”

  “—and every other bullshit thing you said! Like about loving me, and needing me, and wanting to be with me! You just forgot about all that! How convenient! You woke up this morning with amnesia! Why didn’t you just say so in the first place? It seems like it would have been a good way to open up the conversation. Keeping it a secret until now makes it sound like you’re—well, to be perfectly honest, Daniel—like you’re just making up another bullshit story to save your skin.” She flicked her ash on the floor. “You think I’m a fuckin’ idiot.”