by Owen Thomas
“Are you in trouble? Where are you? Are you hurt?”
“Phoenix. I’m in Phoenix. I’m not hurt.”
“Are you in some trouble?”
“Yes. I’ve been arrested.”
“Arrested? What is it? Is it drugs, is it…”
“No. I’ll explain when you get here. Can you come? Can you come now?”
“Well…” he thought about the question for only a split second. “Yes. Yes, yes. Of course. Of course I’m coming. How do I find you?”
“Do you have a pen?”
Hollis rummaged through a drawer and found a pen. He looked for a notepad, but there was nothing to write on.
“Hold on, hold on, I need to get something to …”
“Oh Hollis, thank you. I’m so sorry…”
“Hold on…” He pulled the Columbus phone book out of the cabinet, opened it and tore a quarter-page square out of the middle. “Okay, go ahead.”
She gave him the phone number and the name of the Sergeant he was supposed to contact. As she spoke he could hear calm returning to her voice, could feel his voice beating back the panic in her heart. He could hear her words bursting with gratitude; he could imagine her eyes clearing with the certainty that he would make everything okay. Whatever was wrong, he would fix it as only he could.
He hung up the telephone. He stood naked and smiling in the kitchen, four-string guitar slung over his backside, staring at the ragged square of phonebook page between his fingers with a single word beating in his mind, over and over and over, sounding off in unison with the drumbeat in his chest.
Beth! Beth! Beth!
CHAPTER 49 – David
It is like I have been dropped into freezing seawater. I am immobilized in cold, liquid shock. I see. I perceive. I register. I cannot move. I cannot speak. I feel my heart exploding, trying to get out, but it too is imprisoned. I sink to the bottom of the moment, an eternity of seconds spiraling up for the surface.
Brittany Kline is in my living room.
She is like a dead bird that has dropped through my ceiling, landing face down on my floor, each wing bent unnaturally backwards and held suspended above the spine by the higher planes of my coffee table on one side and my couch on the other. It is a grotesque parody of flight.
Her left cheek is flat on the floor and I can only see the right side of her face through a tangle of hair. My hand is still frozen to the lamp and I can only stare at her, scouring her with my eyes, silently praying to a god I have neglected for any sign of respiration. In my head there is a fifty-car pileup. All is flashing hot color and wailing sound and flame. But all I can do is to look at this one-half of her innocent face and feel the icy fingers of truth: I have finally found her and she is dead on my own carpet.
Some remaining infrastructure of fish tank collapses in the hall behind me. The sound is loud and jarring enough to send me to the surface, gasping for air. I let go of the lamp and jolt forward, pushing apart the couch and the table. Her arms flop to the floor in dead thudding sounds, first one, then the other.
I bend and put my ear to her mouth. The only breathing I can hear is my own which is suddenly loud and desperate and full of mumbled noise and words over which I have no control. Please. Please. Please. I bury two fingers into the mass of hair, pressing them into the flesh of her neck. I try to listen with my fingers. The only thing they hear is the bass drum of their own pulse.
I push the table further away for more room. In my head I am scrambling to remember what to do, what not to do, how many breaths, how many compressions, feet up, drop and roll, smell for gas, feel for breaks, don’t move the body, cover with a blanket, no water on a grease fire, sweep the airway, feel the door, inflate by pulling sharply on the cord. It is all like a loud screaming wind and none of it sticks.
With both hands, I carefully lift the shoulder that is closest to me. I roll her over onto her back. She is wearing a white t-shirt beneath a black hoodie, both of which are twisted up her torso to reveal a bare midriff. She is wearing jeans and simple tennis shoes. As her body comes to rest again, her head lolls away gently into the table leg. There is blood in her yellow hair. On her forehead. Around the curvature of bone that defines the socket of her left eye. There is a trickle across her temple to her ear. The carpet is wet beneath my fingers. I look. Red. The corner of the table glistens.
The stink of the fish water mixes with the metal taste of blood at the back of my throat and I feel I am going to be sick. I am up and staggering over her, headed for the kitchen sink across carpet sopping in a soup of decaying exotic excrement and fish meal. I make it only as far as mid-kitchen before it is Leoni’s Ristoranti all over again. I straddle the trail of puke and lean into the sink in time for the second wave. I hit the water full blast and let it run, panting, trying to think. I splash water in my face.
Think. Goddamnit! Think! An ambulance. I need an ambulance. Do I need an ambulance even if she’s dead? The cops will be here in two seconds. Is that what I want? She’s not dead. What if she is? She’s not. What if she is? So assume she’s dead and you don’t call an ambulance. Are you going to hide the body? Cut it into pieces and bury it in the garden? Great idea Dave. Great plan. You moron. Pick up the fucking phone and call the police. Report everything. Maybe I should call my lawyer first. Lumin? Limkin? What’s his name? What’s his number? Where did I put his card? Maybe he’s in the book. Time is wasting! Call a fucking ambulance! Pick up the phone and dial! The phone!
The cordless phone on the counter next to me picks that particular moment to trill, scaring me so bad that I recoil sideways and sharply up into the overhanging cabinet. There is a blunt, stabbing pain on the top of my head. It feels like I have been shot with a nail gun. My hands are instantly tending to the damage, trying to push the pain back into my head, as if the pain was an inactive substance we carry around in our bodies that only hurts in the process of escaping. I pull a hand away. It’s red with blood. Hers or mine?
The phone sends out the second ring and I yell at it. Shut the fuck up!
I apply a clean wrist to the pain. Red. Mine. Shit. The phone rings. Shut the…
“Hello?”
“David. This is dad.” I turn off the water. I feel a trickle on my scalp.
…
“David.”
“Dad. Hi. Yeah. Hi, dad. Uh…”
“How’s it going?”
“Oh…fine…fine.”
“I got a call today and, well I need to talk to you….”
“A call? A phone call?”
I turn, and it’s as though in that twisting movement I have stretched the power cord to my heart too far, pulling it out of the wall socket. For it stops beating. The dead girl on my carpet is trying to sit up. Our eyes lock. Brittany Kline does not actually look anything like Sissy Spacek from Carrie, but that is the rough, visceral translation that makes it through the chaos and pain and stench to Cognition Central. She moans.
“Yes, a phone call…”
“Oh… uh… oh… hey… dad? This is kind of a really, really bad time. Can I catch up with you later?”
“Oh. Sure, sure. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I didn’t realize it was so late already. Don’t call me back tonight. Call me tomorrow though, okay? We need to talk.”
“Uh. Tomorrow. Yeah.”
“Tell Mae I said...”
I hang up on him and drop the phone on the counter. It glances off the edge and breaks into pieces on the kitchen floor. My head is screaming. I grab a paper towel and apply pressure. Brittany is across the room doing the same to her own wound. Her hand is streaked in red. I rip the entire roll out of the holder and make my way back her direction, forgetting about the trail of lasagna redux.
She looks at me warily, obviously trying hard to focus through the wooziness and pain. I move slowly, one hand on my head the other holding out a roll of paper towels. Stupidly, I pantomime my good intentions as though we do not share a common language. She blinks. I take this as understanding. I kneel and hand h
er a square of new and improved two-ply, extra strength. She folds it and presses it to her head, closing her eyes, and propping herself up against the couch.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No. No. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine. Just let me sit a minute. Ouch. Fuck that hurts. Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Cussing.”
“Oh. Hey, cuss away. I thought I killed you. I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No! Can I just … can we just wait a few minutes and see if it stops? I’m fine. Or I will be anyway. If I can just sit here a few minutes.”
She peels away the paper towel and hands it to me, red and wet in the center but not as bad as I expected. I give her another. I sit in front of her, legs crossed, watching her bleed into a paper towel. She hands it to me. I give her another.
“I think it’s slowing down.”
“You really should be in a hospital. You could have a concussion.”
“No. I’m fine.” Her eyes are still closed. She repositions her head against the arm of the couch and crosses her outstretched legs at the ankles. “You didn’t have to tackle me, Mr. Johns. I would have stopped.”
“Brittany…”
“All you had to say was stop. Or halt.”
“Halt?”
“Or freeze.”
“You broke into my home! It was dark! I had no idea who you were.”
“Still. Next time give a girl a chance to surrender.” She opens one eye and her lips curl just enough to show that she is fucking with me. Then a look of confusion. “Why are you… What are you doing?”
“Oh,” I look at the bloody towel and point behind me. “Damn... cabinet. Once a month at least. I think they’re built for short people.”
“Gotta love that. We need someone to take a picture. God, what is that smell?”
“My hallway is a fish tank. That’s the smell. You smashed into my fish tank. Brittany, what the hell are you doing here? Where have you been? People are looking for you. You do know that, right? The police? Your mom?”
“Are they all dead?”
“Dead? No, they’re… Who?”
“The fish.”
“The fish? The fish? I… I don’t know. Shit. My fish.”
I stand and step over her and step around the couch. My head is like a jackhammer parade. The carpet squishes beneath me. I turn on the lights. The carnage is more than I can fully register. Panes of broken glass streaked with grime, rocks, Ferris wheel, treasure chest. Muck. Water. An open canister of soaking fish flakes. I look for fish. None at first, and then here and there. The aerator is humming into the carpet. I yank the cord out of the wall and I go the kitchen for a salad bowl and a spoon. One corner of the shattered tank is still intact, propped up against the closet. I transfer the remaining water to the salad bowl and begin spooning in all the fish I can find, which is all but two. Of those, fifty percent are dead and the others don’t look so good.
There’s a blue backpack in the middle of the hall; the thudding obstruction that sent me sideways. There is a scroll unfurling into a narrow wooden neck that disappears into the zippered opening in the canvas. The fingerboard and tuning pegs are face down in the slop. I lift the bag up by the shoulder strap and let it drip, finding the last two fish. Both Angelfish. Fishes swimming with the angels.
“Well?” she asks when I return. She hasn’t moved.
“Not good. Maybe some of them will make it. How’s your head?”
“Terrific. How’s your table?”
“What’s in here?”
She opens an eye to see me pressing on my head with one hand and holding the backpack in the other.
“None of your business.”
“I think it is my business, Brittany. You can either tell me what the fuck is going on or I can call the police.”
“Now who’s cussing?”
“Fine.” I turn and head for the kitchen.
“Okay. Wait. Okay.”
I return to the couch and sit. Backpack between my feet.
“It was never my intention to break in. I had to pee.”
“You had to pee.”
“Yes.”
“Why were you here, Brittany?”
“I needed to talk to you. I needed your help. I waited and waited and you never came home. I thought you’d be here. Man, where the hell were you?”
“I have a life, you know.”
“Whatever. I waited and kept waiting and then I had to go pee so bad I couldn’t stand it any more. So this whole time that I’m waiting I’m sitting right next to your front window, which was totally open. I mean you’re practically asking for it Mr. Johns.”
“Thanks for the concern. So you broke in.”
“I just took the screen out. It’s totally easy. It comes right out. I was really careful. I didn’t break anything. And I came in and peed.”
“In my bedroom?”
“No. In the bathroom. I went in the bedroom later.”
“To do what, Brittany?”
“To look for what I came here to ask you about.”
“The drugs.”
“Well… yeah. They weren’t mine.”
“Whose were they?”
“Can’t say.”
“DJ’s.” I say it like I know what the hell I’m talking about.
She looks at me suddenly but recovers.
“No. Not really.”
“Whose then?”
“I can’t say.”
I stand.
“Richie. Okay? Richie. That’s all I know. I’ve never met him.”
“I’m listening.”
“We need them back. Bad. Or money to replace them.”
“So DJ sent you over to break into my home and steal them back.”
“…”
“Brittany.”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think I still have them?”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“It wasn’t yours!”
“What, you think I used them?”
“Yeah. You mean you didn’t?”
“No.”
“Then who? Shepp?”
“Shepp?”
“Then who?”
“Brittany, I don’t know what rock you’ve been living under since we last saw each other, but let me bring you up to speed. The police think the drugs were mine; that I was supplying you; or that I was stealing them from you…”
“You did.”
“No.”
“Yes, you did, Mr. Johns.”
“Shut the fuck up, Brittany. Just … just sit there and be quiet a minute. They think I have hurt you. Understand? They think you are missing because of me. They think you and I were … you know, having sex. I have been kicked out of a job. I will probably lose my license to teach and will never teach again. I have been charged with felony drug possession. My life is all but ruined because you dropped off the face of the world and your mom and your uncle and the Columbus Police Department and the District Attorney’s office and maybe even my own lawyer think that I’m somehow responsible! Now I want some goddamned answers!”
Her face is like chiseled stone. She looks away at my vacant television. There is a slight tremor in her shoulder.
“Hey…” I say sharply, not wanting to lose her attention. But she does not respond. When she looks back, her lower lip is trembling and the tears are dissolving the dried blood caked around her eye before streaming pink down the pale of her cheek. A bubble of snot forms at her nose. Christ. She’s just a kid. Somebody’s child. Somebody’s little girl. She’s in way over her head.
“Hey, hey, now. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled. I’m sorry I cussed. Here.” I find the paper towels and blot her face. I wipe her nose and she lets me. She smiles a little. “I’m just upset. And worried. I’m worried about me and I’m worried about you, Brittany. Tell me. Just tell me what’s happening. Can you do that?�
�
She sniffs and nods.
“Okay. Why did you come here?”
“I came to ask you for the stuff you took from me. I need to get it back to…”
“To DJ.”
She nods.
“So he can get it back to Richie.”
She nods.
“Because Richie is upset?”
She nods.
“DJ owes Richie?”
She nods.
“How much?”
“A lot.”
“You had to think there was some possibility I wouldn’t have the drugs.”
She nodded. “DJ bet you’d already used all of it. That’s what he told Richie.”
“Richie knows about me?”
She nods.
“Knows my name.”
Nod.
“Knows where I live.”
Nod.
“Great.”
“DJ told him we could get it back.”
“And so you came here to steal it back.”
“To ask you for it.”
“To ask me for it. And if I didn’t have it any more?”
“To ask you for a loan.”
“A loan? Of cash?”
She nods.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“We’d pay you back.” She is earnest and wide-eyed and sweet, like she is asking her dad to buy her the bicycle in the store window.
“Yeah, right.”
“We would!” She points to the backpack. “That’s why I brought the violin. It’s worth a lot. It’s old. My dad gave it to me. It used to be his mother’s. She was really good. She used to be in the New York Philharmonic.”
“You were going to leave me a violin as collateral.”
There is confusion in her eyes.
“Collateral. Uh, security. To hold onto in trade until I’m paid back. Insurance.”
She nods.
“And pay me back how?”
She shrugs. “DJ can get money.”
“Well, apparently not. How much?”
“Three thousand.”
I laugh. The sound is alien and wrong amid the blood and the smell.
“You think I have three thousand dollars laying around?”
“You could go to the bank.”
“I’m a pubic school teacher, Brittany. What world do you live in? Have you taken a good look at his place? Have you seen my car? Hey, speaking of which… do you know what the hell happened to my car?”
