When Watched

by Leopoldine Core

  “I can smell every truck driver who ever showered here!” Susan hollered from the bathroom.

  Henry was in bed, mindlessly thumbing through his notebook. Susan walked toward him with her brown button-down sweater hanging half off her body, the unclothed arm outstretched. She squatted next to the bed. “Feel this right here,” she said, prodding her upper arm. “Is that a lump?”

  “Hold on. I’m in the depths of a sentence,” Henry said, jotting something down.

  Susan waited with her arm out.

  Finally Henry put his pen down and pressed the area gently. “I don’t feel anything,” he said.

  She returned her exploring fingers to the arm. “I don’t feel it now either.”

  Henry stared at her, at first with annoyance but then softly, with love. “I know you so well,” he said.

  “Maybe you do.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I’m flirting with you.”

  “Oh,” he said with a broad, intimate smile.

  Susan changed into a long oatmeal-colored nightgown, then fetched a yellow legal pad from her bag. She crawled into bed and the two wrote in silence for a bit. Then she put her pen down and plunked her head onto his shoulder. “It’s important to feel for lumps, you know,” she said, peering down at his notebook.

  “Yes,” he said. “But don’t worry so much.”

  “Why not?” Susan sat upright, staring. “Health is precarious.” She waited for him to return her gaze. “There are so many little things that can ruin your perfect life.”

  Henry hummed.

  Susan read his four-line poem. “I like it,” she said, almost immediately. “I wrote one too.” She handed him her pad. The poem was called “At Night” and featured a couple found dead in their car. The bodies were described with frank indifference, like they were apples. “It was written from the perspective of Satan,” Susan explained. “That’s why it’s mundane,” she said. “Because he doesn’t care when people die.”

  “Well he likes it.” Henry grinned.

  “No.” Susan shook her head. “He’s indifferent. He hardly notices.” She exhaled. “That’s what evil is.” Susan reached over and pointed to the third line. “How do you feel about that comma there?”

  “I’d get rid of it. But I’m a pervert.”

  Susan laughed. “You get such a devilish smile on your face when you say something clever.”

  “I know. It’s a smile I enjoy submitting to,” Henry said, removing his glasses. He sank his head down onto the pillow with a great sigh.

  “I’m not tired at all,” Susan said.

  “I am,” Henry said. He looked at her a moment, eyes slivered. “Most of what we do together is sleep. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Hilarious.”

  “No, it’s very intimate,” he said seriously. “We enter our dreams together.”

  “Well,” she said, “not really together.”

  “Right. We enter them privately. But our bodies are together. Think of movie theaters,” he said, gripping her arm excitedly. “Isn’t that funny? Movies imitate dreams and that’s why we like them.”

  “You’re right.” Susan put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, knowing full well that she wouldn’t sleep. She didn’t even feel like trying.

  Henry started to snore and she opened her eyes, then sat up with a small prick of terror. Snow was dashing by the window, heaping up on the sill. She looked down at Henry, who was sleeping in his usual way, like a frog on a slide in a laboratory. “Look,” she said loudly, giving him a shove.

  “What?” he said, drunk with sleep.

  “It’s snowing.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “We can’t go on like this.”

  “What?”

  “We can’t drive the whole way there. I’m too afraid.”

  Henry sat up and turned on the light. “So what do you suggest we do?” he said nastily.

  “A former student of mine lives in Minneapolis. Do you remember Amy?”

  Henry only stared, his eyes flat with rage.

  “I could get us as far as Minneapolis. I’m sure Amy will know someone who we can pay to drive the car.”

  “Who we can pay?” Henry raged. “So we can sit in the back like children?”

  “No. We’ll take a plane,” she said cautiously.

  “Oh will we?” he said with a scary smile. “So you’ve got it all planned out then?”

  “I think it’s best,” Susan said, careful not to look at him.

  Henry went quiet, his teeth clenched together. He hated Susan’s grim authority, how it slowed everything down. She sat with her mouth drawn into a taut black line and looked eerily like one of the dominating nuns from his Catholic high school. Sister Fish, he thought, unable to remember her real name, only that it rhymed with fish. She was an awful, relentless woman with the speckled face of a trout.

  He wished in that moment that he were a truly bad person, bad enough to desert his wife. To drive off on his own, speeding the whole way to Missoula. “You are unbelievable!” he shouted and Susan jerked, her green eyes bugged. It gave Henry pause. “I know you’re scared,” he continued with downcast eyes, plunging back into a softer fury. “But we’ll get there, I promise. If you let me drive, for Christ’s sake.”

  “It’s not safe!” Susan burst into tears. “We don’t even have snow tires.” She shook her head. “I won’t do it.”

  Henry said nothing, which was his way—despite insurmountable rage—of agreeing to her plan. “Good night,” he said with unmasked contempt, then switched off the lamp. But for the first time in ages, Henry couldn’t sleep. He groaned and sighed, writing speeches in his mind.

  “Don’t move so much!” Susan said.

  “Pity I’m alive.”

  “Oh shut up.”

  “One day you’ll wake up with a corpse.”

  “Shut up!”

  “It’s a horrible event I won’t be present for,” he laughed.

  “I can’t believe you.”

  “It’s a fact that men die first.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Fine,” Henry grinned.

  Susan stewed awhile, arms folded over her chest. “You write these beautiful poems,” she said abruptly, twisting the word “beautiful” with scorn. “But you’re a sicko. If people only knew . . .” She glared at the dark mound beside her, the stomach rising and falling with even breaths. He was asleep.

  • • •

  In the morning Susan groggily called Amy, who was delighted to hear from her, then aghast when Susan described the accident.

  “I’m okay,” Susan assured her, to Henry’s disgust.

  Amy said she probably knew someone who needed the money. And within the hour, she called back to confirm that a friend of hers—a guy named Luke—had agreed to drive the van.

  Henry heard the words “five hundred dollars” spoken and winced. But he remained dangerously quiet, mechanically packing his toiletries.

  “Milwaukee,” Susan called out a few minutes later.

  “Milwaukee what?” Henry asked.

  “I found two tickets from there to Missoula. It’s a little out of our way . . . but cheap.”

  “Fine,” Henry replied, zipping his bag.

  In the car they were silent for over an hour, while Susan drove slowly, her face marked dimly with terror. The snow had melted but the weather application on her phone promised more. And after several coffees, her mouth had grown helplessly mobile, sealing itself tightly and then falling open, only to be bitten a second later.

  Henry faced the side window, though he didn’t register any of the drab shapes flitting past. He had sunk into one long poem and the words sounded off in his brain of their own accord. It wasn’t pleasant. The words felt rancid inside him. Not a single one seemed worth writing
down and besides, he didn’t want to move his hand. If he reached for his pen, he thought he might make a fist and shatter the window instead.

  • • •

  By dusk Susan was exhausted. Her eyes traveled continually to the road’s edge, where the concave earth looked bottomless, like one long hole leading to outer space. The steering wheel also seemed to have changed. It felt bigger in her hands, chubbier somehow. And it was breathing.

  “I’m hungry,” she said loudly, straining to keep her hands from flying off the wheel. She didn’t actually feel the urge to eat but feared her starvation was awakening the snakes of her subconscious, giving them power.

  She pulled into a gas station and wearily exited the car, shaking out her hands as she walked to the bathroom: a concrete room of humming fluorescence with a urine-spattered toilet seat.

  Susan was spooked by her reflection in the mirror. She looked positively gaunt, with a gray-green hue around her eyes. “God,” she said aloud, staring at the wizened little face. How could that be me? The more she stared, the more the white light seemed to penetrate her skin, spotlighting her skull. I’m all bone, she thought, moving her face in the mirror until her flesh reappeared. It was a relief but a minor one that teetered quickly back to self-hate.

  “I look wrinkly and crazy,” she declared upon reentering the car, a packaged cherry Danish in hand. “Like a kind of vegetable that has no name.”

  Henry smiled with a sniff. They had apparently finessed their fight down to a small war that now allowed for conversation, if only out of lonesomeness. And he was glad. “You’re out of your mind,” he said. “But I love looking atcha.”

  Susan smiled weakly, with gratitude. It was a smile that could have collapsed into a sob if she wasn’t careful. She was so tired.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, touching her arm.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m a little kittenish.”

  Henry smiled. “That’s exactly what you are.”

  “There was a man by the register holding an umbrella,” Susan said. “I thought it was a rifle.”

  “Oh honey.” He touched her shoulder. “You’re exhausted.”

  Susan struggled to free the cherry Danish from its veil of plastic. Henry watched a moment. Then he opened it for her.

  She took a bite and wrinkled her nose. “This is disgusting,” she said and continued to eat it. When the pastry was half gone, she stuck it back in the plastic and set it down on her lap. “Eating is a mistake,” she declared. “I think starvation is the better choice.”

  “There are hospitals full of women who feel that way.”

  Susan laughed feebly. She watched as he finished the Danish.

  • • •

  Luke lived in St. Paul. They arranged to meet at his apartment, then he would drive them to the bus that would get them to the plane that would deliver them at long last to Missoula.

  Henry frowned when Luke appeared at the door. He looked like a teenager, though as it turned out he was twenty-three. And handsome in a way that made Susan smile like a maniac. He had a jaw of dark stubble and soft-looking brown hair that he raked his fingers through compulsively. It occurred to Susan that he might have taken speed to cut through the harrowing boredom that lay ahead. She stared at him and realized that he reminded her a bit of Henry as a younger man.

  She actually saw copies of Henry’s younger self everywhere, always, glowing on street corners and in coffee shops. He must see me too, she thought. All young and pretty, blooming from the body of some graduate student, some waitress.

  Henry rode up front with Luke, eyeing his driving while detailing the van’s various quirks. The conversation quickly veered, by Luke’s initiation, to the possibility of him crashing the car.

  “I’m a really good driver,” Luke said, now looking even younger than he had ten minutes before. “I’m sure everything’ll go smoothly,” he pledged. “But say I hit some ice or something. Will I be held responsible for—”

  “No, no, no,” Susan chimed from the backseat, to Henry’s horror. But he said nothing.

  “If something happened to the car it would be our loss,” Susan said.

  “Well,” Henry interjected. “It would actually be my brother’s loss. It’s his car,” he said with a steely glance in her direction.

  “Regardless,” Susan snapped. “We wouldn’t hold you responsible.”

  “Well don’t worry,” Luke said, “I don’t think anything like that’s gonna happen.”

  “Of course not. You’ll be absolutely fine,” Susan cooed. “We would’ve been fine but we’re just so traumatized by what happened.”

  “Totally.” Luke nodded. “I get it.” He touched his hair, blinking rapidly.

  At the bus station Susan wrote him a check and he snatched it from her hand. It was stunning but somehow didn’t feel rude, more a side effect of the manic energy that he so clearly contained. Susan was now certain he had rocketed himself into the night with a drug of some sort. His facial movements were quick, his pupils like a couple of bouncy little balls whapping around in a dark closet.

  She read over his directions. “This all looks good,” she said, patting his shoulder. “We’ll see you there.” They waved goodbye and Luke smiled like a demon in a school photo, then walked rapidly to the van.

  • • •

  The bus station was filthy and severe looking, with people of all ages huddled in groups, some sitting alone on their luggage.

  “That guy was on something,” Henry growled.

  “We’re better off, believe me,” Susan said. “He won’t fall asleep.”

  Henry didn’t want to think about the hopped-up kid in his brother’s van. It was too awful. And too ridiculous. He felt a little numb, looking around. “Waiting for a bus is like being the poor,” he said.

  “Come on. It’s interesting.”

  “I can’t sit with these people.”

  “You can and you will,” Susan said sharply.

  They parked their bags and sat on them.

  “It’s almost more depressing to see the ones with a little beauty,” Henry mused, looking around.

  “What ones?”

  “That girl.” He pointed. “The one in the purple coat.”

  “You think she’s pretty?”

  “I do.”

  “She’s not that pretty.”

  “She’s too pretty to be here. I wonder if she knows she has a choice.” Henry sighed, staring at the girl, who had her head on the shoulder of a boy. “She could go to Manhattan,” he said. “She could be a cocktail waitress.”

  “What a dream come true.”

  “Isn’t that what pretty girls do while they’re figuring things out?”

  Susan laughed. “I suppose.” Just then a tall man with a black backpack and round wire-rimmed glasses caught her eye. He stood near the wall, clearly alone. She forced herself to look away.

  It was this same man who sat behind them on the bus, in the very last row, and promptly began talking to himself. The bus pulled away from the station and Susan stared up at the dark sky. The moon was yellow and half-hidden by clouds, peeking out like a sore eye.

  At first unintelligible, the man’s continued muttering soon grew loud and clear. “Don’t you ever wanna blast someone?” he said and Susan stiffened. Then he went quiet, presumably to take in the response of his imagined comrade. Then he laughed.

  Susan held her breath, listening as the man’s speech slid back into muttered gibberish. She wondered how he had succeeded in so many things. Like acquiring clothes that fit him and prescription lenses. Or knowing the bus schedule and buying a ticket. These were the sorts of simple tasks that she herself sometimes struggled with. She knew that if she ever went crazy, she would function in no way. Her life would be over.

  Henry seized her arm, startling her.

  “Jesus!
” she said.

  “We have to move,” he whispered.

  So they carried their bags to the first free pair of seats, which was more toward the middle of the bus.

  “That was so scary,” Susan said in a low voice.

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t think it was bothering you till you grabbed me. You were so quiet.”

  “I was listening to him. I wanted to hear exactly what he was saying.” Henry blinked reflectively. “He said something about a sword.”

  “He did?”

  “That’s when I grabbed you.”

  “God. It must be like a radio station in your head.”

  “Right.” Henry sniffed. “I immediately thought of that guy who murdered the kid on the bus.”

  Susan stared into Henry’s face, dark with flashes of streetlight rushing over it. “What guy who murdered the kid on the bus?”

  “It was like two years ago. The guy decapitated this kid on a Greyhound bus. You remember.”

  “No. I do not remember.”

  “Well I don’t want to scare you.”

  “You’re already scaring me!”

  “Forget it.”

  They sat quietly a moment. Henry closed his eyes. Susan sat up and looked nervously behind her chair. But it was too dark to see if the man was walking toward them with a sword. “Al-right,” she whispered as she sat back down, irked by the curiosity Henry had planted. “So how did he cut off the head?”

  Henry roused with a sniff. “What?”

  “How did he cut off the head?” she repeated, a bit loudly.

  “Oh. He had some sort of butcher knife I think. And he just attacked this very young kid out of nowhere. He said a voice in his head told him to.”

  “God.”

  “Everyone got off the bus and they locked the doors somehow with him in there.” Henry rubbed his eyes. “And he just ran up and down the aisle carrying the head.”

  “Okay, enough.”

  “You asked.”

  Susan looked up at the yellow moon. She put her hand to her heart, feeling its speed.

  • • •

  At just past midnight they arrived in Milwaukee and took a cab to the airport. At a tiny table, Henry ate a dry turkey sandwich, sulkily examining it between bites. “I’m so starved for seasoning,” he said.