He picked up her phone. Surprisingly, along with the crumbs lodged in the receiver, there was a dial tone. He ordered a pizza for her and a six-pack for himself. Then he left to see her landlord, in search of a kettle.
When he opened her door, he saw Rossoff standing at the bottom of the stairs. Rossoff lived on the ground floor, and their apartments were connected by this back entrance though he was never supposed to use it. He was a vet with a bum knee who smoked his days away, giving himself emphysema. From the top of the stairs, Paul could hear the whistle of his wet lungs.
“What are you doing here?” Paul asked.
Rossoff grinned. At six feet tall and about half as wide, he was the living proof of what happened to sumo wrestlers when they got too fat. “Just checking. Never know who’s coming and going with her. Like to keep safe.” He wore a full beard, much of which was tangled, all the way down to the open collar of his frayed polo shirt.
“You keep safe from inside your own door from now on,” Paul told him.
Rossoff nodded and smiled. Paul had seen this smile before. It was the smile some of his students used: Sure, I’ll do my homework, just as soon as you explain to all of us why you got soused for your own protest. A good deal can be conveyed within a shit-eating grin.
“I think she’s sick up there, got a case of hypothermia. You got a kettle I can use? I want to make some tea or something.”
Rossoff took a deep breath and that breath fought against him, churning. “She likes you, I can tell. Maybe she’s in love,” he coughed out.
“What?”
“Feel like something’s on its way. Can’t stop thinking about her. Bitch gets inside your head. Knows what you don’t want to see. Does the mill burn in your dreams, too?”
Paul stopped for a second, and wondered if he was hearing this right. Hadn’t Brutton and his wife dreamed the same thing? Surely this was only a coincidence. She was just a girl. A girl with wide eyes. A girl who knew things. But still, just a girl. “A kettle,” Paul said. “They have handles. You boil water in them.”
Rossoff shrugged. “She owes me four hundred, last two months.”
“That’s nice. You got a kettle?”
“I don’t got nothing.”
“I see your education did not place its emphasis on grammar.”
Rossoff’s mouth turned down in a look of contempt. “I need my money.”
They looked at each other for a while. “Fine,” Paul gave in. “You got a pen?” Rossoff produced a greasy Bic from his jean pocket and Paul took it while avoiding touching the man’s hand. He opened his wallet, where he kept a few extra checks, and wrote one out for two hundred. Rossoff grabbed it and the pen as soon as Paul scrawled his signature.
“Can I get that kettle now?” Paul asked.
“I told you, I don’t got one,” Rossoff said. He then winked at Paul, opened the door to his adjoining apartment, and left. A smell wafted through the hall as Rossoff shut his door. A smell of staleness, squalor, and human sweat. It was worse than the smell in Susan’s apartment and it made Paul think that there was something rotten at the core of this house. It rose and filled every room.
“Thanks, you’ve been a big help,” Paul called out while lightly kicking the door. “That’s what society’s all about, helping crazy people not die from hypothermia.”
With two hundred less dollars in his checking account and no kettle for his troubles, Paul started back up the stairs. He was winded when he reached the second floor, and he realized that, in addition to being miserably out of shape, he was also nearing sobriety. His head was beginning to pound. The unwelcome Jiminy Cricket in his head asked one question before he silenced it. What rational person drinks this much and still calls himself rational?
As he neared her door, he heard a buzzing sound. He stopped, leaned against the wall in the hallway, and listened. All he heard was buzzing, like a thousand voices speaking all at once. He waited, but the voices did not go away. His heart was beating fast, and he realized that for the first time in a long time, he was frightened. He snorted to himself; a grown man frightened of an eighty-pound anorexic who played her television too loud. The booze was making him soft in the head.
He opened her door, and the buzzing stopped. There was actually a shushing sound and it quieted. Out of the corner of his eye, he was sure that he saw movement coming from the mirrors. He was sure he saw a crowd of people. Angry people.
For a moment he understood, and he was too frightened to move. The rain. The dreams all the people in this town seemed to share. The corpse of the paper mill whose sulfuric air, on certain days, he could still smell. The way Susan Marley’s irises danced. These things added up. This place was haunted. Susan was haunted. This entire town was haunted, and the only person in this room that wanted saving was himself. If he had been sober, he would have run. But he stood for a few seconds too long, and his moment of clarity passed. In its place returned numbness, the cloudy filter of booze through which he viewed and lived his life.
Paul blinked, and the faces in the mirror were gone. His normal reflection replied to him. He winked at it. Waved at it. It waved right back. He decided he was just too damn drunk.
Just then the bell rang, and he remembered the pizza. Better yet, the beer.
He opened the door a crack. The drenched kid holding the box turned out to be a student in his class. “Hi, Mr. Martin.” The kid smiled from pimpled ear to ear.
“Hello, Craig. Long night with this rain, huh?”
The kid tried to peek behind the door, and Paul moved so that he was leaning against its opening.
“How’s everything,” he asked the boy, handing him a seven-dollar tip on a thirteen-dollar order.
“Good.” Craig bobbed his head, trying to get a glimpse past Paul’s shoulder.
“Okay. Good night, then.” Paul shut the door in the kid’s face.
When he turned around, Susan was standing right behind him. He jumped. “Jesus. Don’t creep up on people like that,” he said.
She grinned, looking less tragic than when he’d seen her in the bar, and more menacing. He remembered the buzzing sound, and the shelf in his stomach dropped a few inches.
“Come on,” he said, guiding her to the table. He pressed down on her shoulders so that she sat. Then he placed a slice of pizza in her hand, holding it up for her so that she would not plop it down into the cigarette ashes.
“Eat your pizza,” he told her.
She lifted the slice up to eye level and inspected it. He took it from her and fed her a bite. Red sauce slathered the corners of her mouth and cheeks like she’d just earned her wings. She took the slice and began to feed herself.
He looked for a napkin. None present. No paper towels. Toilet paper though, about five sheets left. He thought it might be rude to finish it all and left a square hanging off the brown roll until he remembered that social etiquette was not a pressing factor. He ripped off the last sheet, crinkled it together with the rest, returned to the main room, and handed them to her. “Use this,” he said.
She straightened the ball and laid it across her lap. “On your face, Susan.”
She held the paper in her hand, considered it, then patted it daintily over her lips.
“Crap,” he said. He opened a beer and looked out the window at the long pipe of the mill. Susan stood and brushed her lips against his neck. She smelled of cigarettes and, oddly, paper mill smoke. It came from deep within her lungs. The skin on her upper arms was drawn taut over her bones. She smiled at him because she thought he liked what he saw.
He touched her stomach, her ribs. Unlike his wife, she moved with his touch. He wanted to kiss her. Feel a warm, responsive body, next to his own. Instead, he literally shook himself, stepped back, and kicked over an empty can of soup in the process. The spoon inside it rattled as it hit the green shag carpet. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked. He knew this was a stupid question. He could have asked her this yesterday. He could have asked her this a year ago. Bu
t he’d never seen her this deranged until now.
“What’s with the mirrors? You really lost it now? You gone over the edge here?”
She grinned and lit a cigarette. It occurred to him that she was having a grand old time. Whooping it up. Watching him squirm was fun for her.
He wished he’d let the hick deal with her problems. Let the hick pay the mute’s rent, see how much he liked it. “How long you gonna go without talking? Mimes don’t make much money, you know. Or do you only talk when you’re alone? I’m a little lost here on the artistic statement.”
She blew a smoke ring.
“What should I do here, Susan? Should I call your mom? Should I call the men with the butterfly nets? I can’t let you starve to death.” She didn’t answer. Just like Cathy. A massive brick wall. Maybe a beer would add some levity, lighten the mood. Yes, a beer was in order.
After his third, he started to feel better. But not enough. “You got anything else to drink?” he asked.
She pointed at a cabinet in the kitchen. Inside was the bottle of Jack Daniel’s he had left there a year before. He opened it and took a slug, knowing that tomorrow he would be too hung over for work, knowing that he would lose his job, knowing that he didn’t even want a drink. He was drunk enough. But it would calm him down. Yes, another drink, and he’d feel much better.
After he sipped what amounted to about two highballs, the room didn’t look so bad. Just messy. And the mirrors, they were an artistic statement. She was commenting on the degradation of working-class life. She wanted to be a ballerina. Whatever. Who the hell cared.
He was no longer imagining what her life was like, waking up here every morning. How she probably got up and then realized that she had no plans for the day. But she’d get dressed, just like everyone else. She might forget the little things, like shoes and a coat, but she’d get dressed and go on with the rituals of living. She’d go to the store and buy a few packs of cigarettes, maybe wander around town. And then she’d get tired and go back to bed unless she brought some hick back with her because there was nothing left. Nothing to do. Nothing but four walls, six mirrors, and a can opener. Nothing. Back to this cell.
He wasn’t even thinking about how this room was what the inside of his wife’s mind had looked like for years. Cluttered with crap and closed within itself. (Was it Bedford that did this? Had Bedford done this to all of them?) Or how shitty it must be to have nobody to take care of you when you get sick. How incredibly shitty it is to be set adrift at eighteen with no place to go. What an exquisitely rare and unforgivable thing had been done to her. A thing that could never be fixed, no matter how bad he felt right now. Well, maybe he was thinking about these things. Maybe just a little bit. He took another swig.
“Shit,” he said. He buried his head in his hands. Nope. No better. Not feeling much better right now, thanks. She got up and pulled her dress over her head. It dropped to the floor, and he saw her naked body. She was so thin he caught his breath. Impossibly sharp bones jutted out against pale skin. The sight of her made him understand why he’d lost his faith in God.
She touched his cheek very gently. She caressed him. It was a painful kind of touch. It reminded him of the first time he had been with her. That feeling of being swallowed. The pleasure of your own downfall, knowing that it would be hard to fall any further. She was just a kid even now. Twenty-three years old.
She curled herself around him and he could feel her warmth, the beat of her pulse. She bent down and unbuckled his belt. He was horrified to discover that he was hard. In one of the mirrors, he could see the two of them. A lanky man with bloated cheeks and a naked woman who no longer looked like a woman. Maybe he did this to end that image. To change the story. To curl it into something of beauty. To affirm that he was still a man. Maybe he was just drunk. He kissed her cold lips. She returned that kiss. He did not like himself for thinking this but he knew it was true. It did not matter what they did. If what he was doing was wrong, it did not matter. He imagined that most of the men she brought here had thought the same thing.
He carried her to the bed. She was as light as dry bones. He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, and she took his hands away and moved them to the outsides of her thighs. It was a pantomime, he knew, of wanting him so badly that she could not wait for him to undress. It was just as false as his desire for her. Had they ever meant this for real?
He pushed down his pants and leaned over her, shoes still on, and she pulled him down. There was a mirror over her head. Though he knew he would not like what he would see, he couldn’t help but look at it. He did not see his own reflection. He saw Susan’s face. It was gaunt. Black wires weaved their way down her neck, and blood trickled along the side of her face, and he knew that if he made love to this woman, something very bad would happen.
He blinked and the image was gone. He saw only his own drunken face staring back at him. She pulled on him, placing him inside her in a way that made him feel disconnected from his own body. Violated, in some indefinable way. What they did after that could not have been characterized as making love. There was too little touching. She felt…cold. She felt dead.
He didn’t think that he would come. He did not even try. He found himself wishing, even during the act, that it would be over. That it could be taken back. He pulled back but she stopped him. She stroked him. He waited. He held her thin arms, felt the bones of her legs, and it excited him, the frailty of her. He came looking into her wild eyes.
When he finished, not even out of breath, he zipped his pants and stood. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to go. I’ll be back. I just have to go right now.”
She didn’t answer. Her head was bent, and he couldn’t see her face. Crying probably, over what he had done to her. He fought the urge to leave. He wanted to leave very badly. It was a rush of adrenaline. It was what every instinct tells you to do when your life is in danger. A trait only the higher species possesses: not exactly fight or flight, just guilt.
She raised her head and when she did, she was smiling. It was a happy smile. He had never seen her happy. It terrified him, and he knew, suddenly, that he’d been tricked. She stood and walked toward the door. He grabbed her torso as gently as he could and pulled her back, “You need to put some clothes on,” he whispered.
She sank her pearly whites into his arm. He howled and let her go. She left the apartment. Cradling his arm, he followed her. Thinking, because he could not help it, because he was a monumental shit, that Rossoff would see her and they would know. All of Bedford would know the dirty things Paul Martin did to sick women behind closed doors. She faced him, stark naked, at the top of the stairs. Her heels teetered over the edge and she smiled. Her face was flushed.
He heard the same buzzing sound he’d heard before, only now it seemed to be coming from Susan. Only now he thought he could hear his own voice in the din, too. What the hell was happening? Too drunk. Way too drunk.
Behind her, he saw a housefly. It buzzed around Susan as if attracted to her scent, then flew back over the steps that rose fifteen feet, way up in the air, and then it descended. He no longer heard it buzz. It went out the door or into Rossoff’s apartment. Or maybe its wing broke and it fell to its death. It was the fly that made Paul remember that though right now was very close to a dream, though, by rights, it should not have been happening, it was real. It was that fly that made him understand.
Susan lifted her hand. She waved. He tried to grab her arm. She jumped back, stepping into nothing but air. She tumbled down. It happened almost in slow motion. Smiling, she fell backward. When she first came into contact with the stairs, she hit the underside of her head, the swell of cranium where the spinal cord ends and the cerebral cortex begins. Then she tumbled, limbs splayed, until she hit the landing.
He ran down after her and checked her neck for a pulse but none was present. When he tried to lift her, her head rolled parallel to her shoulder. It reminded him of that ghost story about the girl with the black ribbon around he
r neck. Her husband unties it while she is sleeping and her head rolls off.
He walked back up the stairs. At first, he could not find the phone. He couldn’t remember where it was. And then he couldn’t remember whom to call. He started to dial his own number before he realized what a bad idea that was. And then he was going to call the hospital because maybe it wasn’t so bad, maybe she wasn’t really dead and they could fuse some things and put her together like Humpty Dumpty, except all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty back together again, and she really was dead. Humpty dead.
He replaced the phone on its receiver. He took a deep breath. That didn’t help. He looked at his shoes. They needed polish. Humpty needed polish. No, Humpty needed the police. He thought he was going to vomit. He sat down on the bed she had been lying on only a few minutes before, closed his eyes, and opened them again. He could not stop shaking. He noticed the way the room was kept: crap all over the floor, a layer of cigarette ash coating all the surfaces, the bottle of whiskey he should not have been drinking, and he knew he should have seen this coming.
HINDSIGHT
Thursday was a big day in Bedford.
Most had dreamed of senseless things that they could not remember in the morning. There were dark woods and smoldering paper mills and lost, pretty girls turned ugly.
That afternoon, so many little hands reached out the windows of the Bedford School to feel the rain that an observer might have thought that the building was about to set sail. At three o’clock, the younger ones climbed onto their buses, taking their seats in one of eight rows. Some of the younger children pressed their ears to the windows and let the motion of the bus tickle their skin. Some laughed and talked. Others watched the rain. Some were teased. Some did the teasing. Matthew O’Brian and his best friend huddled together, pondering whether Washington, D.C., was a city or a state.
The drops of rain were thick and cold. Arthritic fingers and toes, healed bones, and old war injuries ached throughout the town. School would be canceled in a few days. Stores would shut down. Basements would flood.
Keeper, The Page 8
