Fickle

by Peter Manus

  Me: (forging ahead, no use for amateurish bull) And you know, my brother may not be the type to talk to cops, not with his life experience, but he’ll talk to me. I’ll know what happened to him as soon as he’s able to communicate. You can count on it. And if I decide to go to the police, well, I’ve gotten rather close, very close, just lately, with one of the cops investigating Stephen Pearle’s death.

  M.H.: (considering my face more than the news) Not sure what you’re telling me. You’ve started dating a cop and it’s getting serious. Is that what we’re talking about?

  Me: No. That’s not it. But there’s a cop I’m friendly with. And I trust him.

  M.H.: That’s dangerous, trusting a cop.

  Me: Trustworthy or not, they’re over worrying that I might have pushed Stephen Pearle. They’ve got it straight now.

  M.H.: (wonderfully innocent and “interested”) Do they?

  Me: Yes, they do. Someone stepped up behind him, someone who was tailing him; the man stepped out from behind a post and shoved Pearle just as Pearle was about to speak to me. Some psychopath pushed an innocent man in front of a train.

  While I say this I’m studying him for any sort of reaction—to my references to my blog, the police, the theory that makes him Mr. Suicide’s killer. He reacts to nothing in any way that indicates a personal interest. When I stop talking he pauses to drink, then smiles his sexy smile.

  M.H.: That’s good news, then, right? I mean, getting the cops off your case.

  Me: Good for me. Not so good for the psycho.

  M.H.: (chuckles) He’ll handle it, if he’s psycho enough.

  Me: Possibly. He certainly handled Slenderbuns.

  M.H.: (tilts his head inquisitively, still smiling. His eyes glitter as he studies me. There’s no tricking an admission out of him, and I resolve to stop trying.)

  Me: That boy from the jewelry shop, the one who got shot, point-blank, while walking toward me in the gay club.

  M.H.: (nods thoughtfully) You tell it to your cop friend that way, you’ll make him start to wonder all over again whether you did it yourself. You being in point-blank range and all.

  Me: The Colonel and the Peacock (I use their real names, of course) were shot as well. The papers claimed carbon monoxide poisoning but it wasn’t that way. Four deaths, so different from one another, so seemingly unconnected, except for being violent and desperate…

  M.H.: (studying me thoughtfully, his brow beginning to crease) Except for being connected with you in some way or other. Is that what you’re worrying about?

  Me: Did you grab your painting off the wall when you were out in Concord last? The portrait you did of the Peacock?

  M.H.: (for the first time, I see a flash of something other than curiosity in his eyes. He’s finally ready to admit something.) I did take it, matter of fact. She didn’t like the way I’d framed it. That’s why she had me out there, the night I noticed you in that diner. I told you that, didn’t I? She wanted me to see the room where she’d hung it, so I could rethink the frame.

  Me: And the next night? The second time you “happened” to spot me in the diner?

  M.H.: (smiles briefly) She wanted me to see it again.

  Me: (raising my eyebrows at this admission) Oh?

  M.H.: Ah-ah-ah, not like you’re thinking. Matter of fact, the lady had run off somewhere by the time I got up to Concord, so I just picked up the frame samples I’d left. Housekeeper had them. (He shrugs.) Rich clients. You get used to it.

  Me: (remembering the way the Peacock had flitted out that night. There was no way she’d miss out on a second “conversation” with the M.H., not after she’d set it up herself—unless, just as I’d speculated, she’d begun getting some vibe from him, unless she was afraid, even after she’d successfully pawned him off on another rich squib to stroke his psycho ego for him…) Did you hear about the old woman from the train station? The old scag who spit at us?

  M.H.: (his forehead creases, then he smiles) Man, you’re jumpin’ all over the place tonight.

  Me: I think she’s dead. I really do. I think you think so, too.

  M.H.: (deadpan, as if he’s sick of playing the innocent boy pal and wants to joke along with me) Price you pay for spitting at my girl.

  Me: (fear piercing my chest at this “confession”) Harsh price.

  M.H.: Harsh world.

  Me: Harsh for some.

  M.H.: Like you?

  Me: Yes, as a matter of fact, it’s been a harsh world for me. Maybe it has for you, too.

  M.H.: (puts his beer bottle down) I think you’re telling me to go.

  Me: (dropping an involuntary glance down his body, then up again) Am I?

  M.H.: (smiling slowly, then gesturing with his chin) That’s a’right, you can look. Look and see, because you’re right if you’re wondering if I’m hot for you. Right now, I’m a locomotive on steam.

  Me: (I meet his eye for a while, holding myself steady but the tremble of my breathing is audible.) Full frontal. (I say it simply, my tone not quite accusatory.)

  M.H.: (quietly) If you say so, ma’am.

  He strips, right there where he stands, with no gimmick, no jazz, no ceremony—he strips like a man about to dive off a cliff. Then, naked, he walks toward me. I’m kind of in shock, seeing him like that, and I do nothing. And he walks right into me, fitting his body against mine, noses, lips, tongues, arms, legs, hips, top to bottom pressed together. He doesn’t stop—just keeps walking, pushing against me, so that my rolling chair swings out of our way and I’m shoved back ungracefully against my laptop keyboard with him half on top of me.

  I gasp for air, scramble to grip at him to keep from falling, surprised as he grabs the front of my sweatpants with a fist and yanks them out of his way—I hear something tear around back and the sweats fall to rest somewhere around my knees, then slide slowly down to the floor. My panties he just rips aside like paper—I’m soaking, I realize only when he strokes me, using two fingers to test my pliancy. Immediately after the touch of his fingers disappears he shoves himself in without pause. He’s immensely engorged; I feel like he’s mauling me—it’s like a fist ramming me, and for the first time in my life I know what it means to “see stars”—yeah, stars…as in this vague spatter of jittery, blue-white electrical points leaving ghost tracks before my eyes. I open my mouth to scream, but I have no voice whatsoever, and just grip him round the neck the way you’d grip a man who was drowning you—half clutching, half caressing, somehow hoping against hope that the compassion expressed in simply holding another person close would somehow induce him to stop what he’s doing. To stop drowning me.

  He takes a while—I think it’s a longish while, but I’m numb, so how do I know? I watch the ceiling light—two bare bulbs stuck into a clumsy plaster mold that looks vaguely like a fancy pair of lips—Man Ray lips, except white and with two yellow-bright gobs of spit hanging out from between them—the sight of it jerks before my eyes with his rhythm, along with my head, which lolls and then snaps forward, gently, again and again. Then I feel him tighten up, first groping with his hands at my shoulders and back, then finally gripping my buttocks hard, one cheek squashed in each of his hands, and he bucks against me, silently, for the however many seconds it takes. After that he lies against me for a little while, mouth open, breathing into my face, his tense body easing back, engine ticking down, little by little. I watch his closed eyelids, trembling against his eyeballs.

  I am aware of being relieved that I can breathe again. When he’s finally pulsed his way down to something approaching normal, he lifts himself off me, making a harsh gasping noise like when someone comes up from being underwater. The corner of my laptop is digging into the small of my back, but I don’t move until he backs off a step, at which point I fall, my knees giving way so that I sit down hard, like an oversized doll, in my desk chair. He doesn’t seem to notice and stands there close to me as he finishes breathing down, his face lifted to the ceiling, his throat jerking as he swallows. Then he lowers his fa
ce, glancing at me with an almost shy half smile, his hair plastered in streaks against his forehead. His eyes flick off mine and he strokes my cheek for a moment, then turns and walks off in his stealthy, casual, totally naked way. I hear the creak of my bathroom door, although he doesn’t shut it.

  I sit listening to the rattle and drum of the shower, realizing that I’ve rarely had the opportunity to hear it like this; usually it isn’t running unless I’m in it. This reminds me of dickel, the last man who’d stayed in my place long enough to shower, and I find myself wondering, randomly, if dickel’s ever raped a woman—he seems like the type who might not get it when a woman tells him to back off. Somehow I find something resembling comfort in this thought—not comfort itself, because I’m a little numb still even to be looking for that—but something vaguely like it.

  I look down at myself, then pull my sweatpants off completely and let them drop to the floor. My T-shirt is long—it says Algonkian Writers’ Workshop across the chest in cracked lettering, and I often wear it as a substitute for a nightie. I move around in my chair to check the computer. Nothing seems amiss—there’s an ad campaign somewhere in there that’s pure gold, but I’m just not up to figuring it out right now.

  I blog. Not sure I should send this out, but I need to blog it.

  Later: I go into the bedroom. He is lying on my bed, still naked, facing the other way. He sleeps like the dead, without snoring, without moving, without seeming to breathe—I know because I watch him for some time. I follow with my eye as the lights from a passing car trickle through the rattan shades to slither down the curve of his body, over his downy shoulders and his muscular back. His sinewy legs are surprisingly hairy, all the way up, like he’s some sort of half-man, half-creature—a satyr.

  I consider getting a knife from the kitchen and jamming it into his back, hard and deep, but the moment passes. I lie down next to him, stealing onto the bed like a naughty dog. He’s damp from the shower and his skin smells wet. I position myself with my back toward his, curl up my legs. It could be that I doze for a while, but I can’t say for sure.

  Later, I hear him rise from the bed, all in one movement, very suddenly, as if he’s heard some silent signal. I hear him rustle around, thrusting his legs into his pants, scratching his fingers through his hair—the sounds of a man preparing to leave. I pretend to sleep—or maybe I’m not pretending anything, maybe I just don’t feel like moving or opening my eyes, maybe lying immobile is something I do a lot, so I can quietly adjust from the disorderly horror of my dreams to the very different but equally surreal landscape of my life. I feel the gentle depression as he leans a fist on the bed, then the feel of his fingers, moving my hair aside. Then comes the brush of his lips—he comes in from behind and catches only the edge of my lips. My face flinches involuntarily, and I push it into my pillow as if disturbed in my sleep. I don’t hear him after that.

  Once he’s gone, I creep around, looking for a sign of his presence. The chain is off the door, but that’s something I could have left that way myself and so isn’t satisfying. Finally, as I step out of the shower, I notice the wet towel hanging over the knob of the bathroom door. It’s a dark blue towel, ratty with a clot of unraveled threads dragging on the floor. Although I recognize it, it occurs to me that I don’t know where it came from—I don’t have any towels that match it. I don’t touch it except to run my fingers gently down one of its folds just before I leave the bathroom. It’s very wet, still, the water in it so chilly that it occurs to me that he must take his showers in cold water only. How very strange.

  I leave the towel where it is, over the knob.

  GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT

  fickel @ February 8 04:47 am

  It’s hard, I know, to think of what to say. What to think. I need to sleep for a couple of minutes, anyway. Talk to you later.

  34

  February 8 @ 11:52 pm

  >BREAK<

  This morning I’m early again, hollow-eyed, my hair and clothes not quite lying on me as they should. But bright and early, yes, that I am, scuffing up the street at 6:50 a.m. so as not to get my ass fired on top of everything else. This time it is not a metallic grey deathbox on wheels but a seafoam-green Mustang at the curb. Instead of swinging the passenger door open from inside, he gets out of the driver’s side and watches me over the hood. Instead of ignoring him, I stop and turn, face his direction, there on the cold, silent sidewalk.

  Me: Hi. (It’s less a pleasantry than an acknowledgment. My voice is uncontrolled, almost shrill—an early morning voice that tells of a bad, bad night.)

  Burly-Bear: Buy you a coffee? (His voice, too, is rough—it dawns on me that he’s kind of a mess. I like that idea, I have to admit.)

  Me: (moving forward and getting in the passenger side of his car) A coffee it is, Sancho.

  He drives against the stuffed-in traffic, which sends me into an odd, dreamy space—my life, totally against the tide. Somewhere in the Fens, we pull over along a winding reedy urban parkland, a bit of a no-man’s land in the city’s landscape. Burly-Bear exits the car without a word and I watch him walk down a ways to one of those trucks, the kind made of quilted silver metal. I get out of the car and lean against it, holding my coat wrapped around me.

  Burly-Bear points with his head and carries the two cups across the dead grass to a bench that faces the park. I join him, crunching across the frosty lawn without enthusiasm, and take one of the coffees. Its heat hurts my fingers, even through gloves, but I don’t relieve them. We sit, staring across the thatchy reeds at the naked weeping willows. Quite honestly, I could sit all day there, freezing my ass blue. Burly-Bear, however, has other ideas. He extends a hand toward me. I glance down and see the old photo, creased, rather blurry, between two of his fingers.

  Me: Where’d you get it?

  Burly-Bear: Who is the guy?

  Me: (I raise my eyes and study the side of Burly-Bear’s face for a long time. He doesn’t turn his face and so eventually I take the photo from between his fingers and hold it up. It’s of a man, maybe late twenties, with dark hair and a trim beard. He’s smiling and his teeth look terrific, although one of the front ones might have been chipped. He’s wearing some sort of beat winter sweater and appears to be outside, maybe by a back door of a worn, shingled building. He gives off a sense of having been at some strenuous outdoors activity, like chopping wood. I snort a humorless laugh and fork the thing back over to Burly-Bear.) I have no idea.

  Burly-Bear: (not taking the picture) Look again. Give it a minute.

  Me: (I look again.) He looks dated. The hair is kind of feathered over the ears in that 1980s way. 1990s if he’s out in the sticks and so hasn’t caught up yet. The clothes, the background, all that could be, well, anywhere cold and drab. (Eventually I shake my head.) He’s no one.

  Burly-Bear: (still not taking the photo back) No one’s no one.

  Me: (tamping down a sudden impatience) He’s no one to me.

  Burly-Bear: Does the name Steven de Carreau mean anything?

  Me: No. (I say it too quickly. Then I shrug.) I mean, my mother’s maiden name was de Carreau. But so was every other canuck’s between Whistler and Saint George. “Der Crow” was how we said it. Classy lot, weren’t we?

  Burly-Bear: (nodding at my funny but not smiling) Your mother had a brother who lived with you for a while when you was a kid, right?

  Me: Did she? (I cock my head and frown.) Maybe, now that you mention it. I haven’t thought about the old days in forever. He was a lot younger than she was, the way I remember it, but maybe that’s just because she always seemed old. His name was…(I shake my head) I can’t pull it up, but it wasn’t Steven. It was, like, Jacques or Yves. My mother spoke more French than English around the house.

  Burly-Bear: What’s Stephen in French?

  Me: (affecting a breezy French accent) Stefon, n’est-ce pas? Avez-vous obtenu ceci d’elle? (This last is in reference to the photo. I pass it to him, or I try to. He doesn’t take it until it’s clear that I�
��d just as soon let it flutter off into the underbrush as hold onto it.)

  Burly-Bear: It’s your mother’s, but I’ll return it if you’d rather I did it.

  Me: Hmm, that means you went back to talk to her after you dropped me off last night.

  Burly-Bear: I did that, yes.

  Me: Drove right back out into that snowstorm.

  Burly-Bear: It was snowing, yes.

  Me: Well. There’s ambition for you.

  Burly-Bear: (playing it dead straight) I do what I can.

  Me: (angry but doing a good job at not showing it) I guess you needed to try out your theory on someone else when it got nowhere with me.

  Burly-Bear: My theory?

  Me: Sure, you remember: the one in which Dad molested me and then took himself out with a passing Erie-Lackawanna after Mom confronted him with the fact on the platform one night.

  Burly-Bear: (adjusting himself on the bench. I’m wearing a long coat, while he’s got on some sort of winter jacket that’s clipped at the waist. I hope his unprotected ass is good and cold.) How long did your uncle stay with you, would you say?

  Me: (I sigh angrily.) I don’t know. (When he doesn’t answer, I sigh again, this time resignedly, and squeeze my eyes closed.) One month? Six months? You have to understand; I was a rather fanciful child living in a world that was a little too grubby to really focus on. If some relative of my parents slept on our couch for a period of time it wouldn’t have meant much to me. Grownups weren’t important to me. Time wasn’t important. All I cared about was the escape I got through reading. I suppose that’s why I work in books now.

  Burly-Bear: And your brother.

  Me: My brother wasn’t a reader.

  Burly-Bear: No? What was he, then? How did he cope?

  Me: (I pause, lips pressed together angrily, waiting for my sudden anger to tick down. When it does, I speak.) When my brother was young he was diagnosed with an enlarged heart. When he learned about the risk this presented, he immediately went off and swam across a local canal. When he survived that, he grew…addicted to risk.