Rubble and the Wreckage

by Rodd Clark

  His stomach was rumbling, and a nervous anxiety gripped his lungs like a vice. Christian knew how insane this moment was, understood how it made him look like some jealous queen confronting an adulterous mistress. And, he supposed, that was as accurate as assessment as one might imagine. But he had to do it! The courtyard was empty, the complex’s residents were all either at work or holed up inside. He was grateful no one was there to witness his fall from grace.

  Peering around a poorly landscaped hedge, Christian fixed his gaze at Gabriel’s door. There wasn’t anybody exiting, and the windows were closed with blinds drawn. What if Gabriel had brought Shea back to his place? What if he was fucking her at that very moment? Gabriel wasn’t the only one capable of murder, he thought. If there was a gun in his hands right then he understood how easily it would be to fire point blank at his betrayers.

  But it was his anger rising fits in his mind, and it wasn’t true. He knew if the two lovers were facing him he wouldn’t have the balls to shoot. For one, he didn’t want to kill Gabriel, not really. And if he faced Shea with a gun leveled at her small frame, he couldn’t fire; she may be a bitch, but she didn’t know about the man she’d bedded. The blame couldn’t be attributed to her if she hadn’t known she was trying to steal someone who didn’t belong to her.

  That was the crux of it. The idea was forming in Christian’s head, the words making perfect sense. Shea didn’t know the man she’d fucked, didn’t know he already had a lover, didn’t even know his real name . . . and certainly didn’t know he was a stone cold killer! He could help her by letting her know what she was getting into. He would be the bearer of that news and after learning that . . . how could she simply not walk away? Shea would gladly abandon all hope of a life with Gabriel in the face of what Christian would tell her about him.

  Reaching the door marked 180, he hesitated before knocking. He craned his neck and tried to listen to any sounds coming from her apartment. Half expecting moans and cries of her pleasure through the door, the same ones that once emanated from his bed, he felt the need to pause and consider his actions for a final time. He was close to running away, close to putting the lunacy behind him, but the robin’s egg-blue paint that was peeling from her door made him grab that reality and pull it into focus. It seemed like a tangible moment one could physically hold within one hand. It was some Sartre explanation of existentialistic crap, like he’d read in college. And it couldn’t have been any more real.

  He inhaled and held the air as he rapped at Shea’s door. He was still fighting whether to run away or hold his ground, but the decision was made for him when the door swung ajar and Shea stood there with that same fake smile plastered on her bitch face.

  “Hey, Shea,” Christian said with an equally sham grin. “Sorry to bother you. I missed Chris when I had to step out to make a call . . . when I came back he was gone. I was just wondering if he might be over here. I didn’t mean to bother you . . . it will only take a second.”

  There it was: the lie he would have to reveal later. But if it worked, what the hell.

  “No, Max, I came home when you two left. I thought you fellas would be out for a while, but no, I haven’t seen Chris. Maybe he went looking for you?”

  God she is dumb, he thought. “Well we decided not to do that thing we were gonna do, and I was thinking about coming over to invite you both out for a coffee. I could use a cup and wanted to get to know my best guy’s new girl.” The question in his mind was how dumb was she?

  “Well, he’s not here, but I got coffee. Why don’t you come in and I’ll make some, and you can call him from here.” Very dumb . . . he figured.

  He smiled as she opened the door, allowing him to enter. It was a dismal place, he thought, but she was an artist for sure. There were sketches and paintings scattered throughout. Now if she could only paint her door. Gabriel didn’t carry a cell; he said he’d never had anyone he wanted to talk to until now. The cunt didn’t know that, and it made him happy just knowing he shared an intimacy with Gabriel that she didn’t.

  “Well, aren’t you kind. I can see why Chris likes you so much.” With his words, she turned, and her eyes blazed back in a hopeful dreamy gaze.

  “He’s a honey that’s for sure, but we haven’t known each other long.” She tried to be sophisticated, to imply her reticence with her new relationship, but he knew she was lying. They’d only fucked once, that’s what Gabriel had screamed down the street. She was all smoke and pretense, and he was the one who knew the man best.

  “Chris told me you were a great little artist. I was hoping someday to see your work . . . you know, having talent is a gift. I myself don’t possess it, but I like when friends do.”

  Christian spent those moments guiding Shea through the motions. She was eager to show off some of her illustrations, and he was able to ingratiate himself into her world. Just a friend of a friend who might be a part of her circle one day. She busied herself with making a fresh pot of coffee while he fumbled through her sketches and took a seat on her couch. It was casual and conventional chitchat among friends, but all the while he was gauging her value under every counterfeit phrase and gushing at her abilities with pen and paintbrush.

  As she was pulling mugs from her cabinets, Christian was looking around the room with a cast-iron gaze. Had Gabriel fucked here in her living room? Had she offered him the same innocent ploy of coffee, all to get him entangled in her web? He made random remarks about the pad resting on his knees, asking about her preference for portraits over landscapes. It was all nonsense, but he was fixed on learning what he could, just as he was surveying the possible spot where Gabriel betrayed him first.

  “Has Chris seen all your work yet?” he asked sheepishly.

  “Actually, he hasn’t . . . he hasn’t even been over to my place yet,” Shea said, coming around the corner and carrying two steaming mugs. She had foolishly alerted to him that she didn’t know Gabriel as well as she pretended she did. But Christian was thankful that her tiny confession had shown he wasn’t sitting in the same apartment where the two had screwed earlier.

  “Well, I think he’s gonna like it,” he lied.

  After a few minutes of banal drivel, Christian decided to up the ante—he just didn’t know how to go about it. “You know, Shea . . .” be began after deciding his tact, “I don’t know you very well, and I’d like to call us friends, but I thought, being the kind of man I am, that I’d like to share some stuff with you.” He leaned closer in, trying to give her the comfort of speaking with a close confidante. “I really want your relationship with Chris to be all that it should be. He deserves the best, and I’m hoping that’s you.” He smiled over his coffee, eyes bright with compassion and empathy.

  “But I don’t want to see you hurt, so I thought I’d share something with you privately.” There was no turning back now, he thought. If he handled it poorly she would burst into tears and scream at him to leave her apartment, and it would be the ruination for his relationship with Gabriel.

  “Chris is not his real name . . . his name is Gabriel Lee Church. My name is Chris . . . actually Christian Maxwell. He leaned back and readied for the explosion. Instead, she only stared back confused, her pretty features frozen like a china doll’s. She had questions—firstly, being his motivation for saying those awful words. He decided not to let the truth lay there flat. He intended on giving some air to the embers; he needed it to become a blazing inferno. He was left with nothing but the road ahead, since there wasn’t a place left where he could retreat.

  “I met Gabriel Church because I wanted to write a book about his exploits. He is a confessed serial killer . . . but despite that, we have become friends.”

  He threw the truth out there like a discarded thing without value. He knew how difficult it was to hear the words because he’d fought that battle himself. He waited with baited anticipation for her reaction, expecting the worse. But Shea sat silent as stone, disbelieving what she was hearing because there was too much to consider.
>
  THE MAN in her home was lying; she just couldn’t understand why. He wanted something from her, but whatever it was she couldn’t see it.

  She sat too stunned to move, and she grew suddenly afraid. If he could say these things he might be dangerous, she thought. She had opened her door to someone who intended on harming her, but what did that have to do with Chris . . . or Gabriel, or whoever?

  “You no doubt think I’m lying to you . . . and why wouldn’t you? But I can prove all that I’m saying. I’m only telling you to protect you and prevent you from falling too deeply for someone who you can’t truly know or trust.”

  Her hands began to shake, and she tried to set her mug down on the table in front of her, but she only spilled it, sending coffee flying over the table and beginning a steady drip of black liquid onto her hardwood floors. She never moved to grab the mug, never instinctively raced for a towel to clean up. She was still stunned and intensely afraid of making any sudden movements while in this stranger’s company.

  It was impossible for her to imagine she had slept with a killer, not someone like Chris. She was still knotted to the idea this man was simply lying to her. But his eyes seemed to say otherwise. He seemed kind and imploring, there was genuineness to him regardless of his assaults on Chris’s character.

  “I can tell you, Shea, Gabriel has admitted to over forty murders from before we met. He is a dangerous man . . . there will be nothing good that could come from you staying with him. If you doubt me, you can ask him. I suspect he wouldn’t lie to you. But if possible, just leave my name out of it.”

  CHRISTIAN STOOD up and breezed into the kitchen. He found a tea towel hanging by the sink and raced back to clean up her mess. She wasn’t all that bad, he thought. He even felt sorry for her because he understood her state of confusion. They had shared a commonality between them. Both had had sex with a killer, both felt something inside for him, and no matter what those other fools will tell you . . . the truth doesn’t always set you free.

  His hands were trembling too as he wiped up the stain of coffee from the table and picked up her fallen mug. Her face hadn’t changed since he let the words out. It was building though . . . he could feel it. It was a sleeping giant with a risk of waking, and it threatened them with a cloud of apprehension. It broke quickly, as he knew it would, and Shea rose from the couch and headed to the door. She opened it wide with a fury, a distasteful expression growing on her face. Her smile gone now, and whatever it left behind was something Christian couldn’t quite distinguish. She never said the words outright, but he was intended to leave, and leave now!

  Wondering how much he’d fucked up, Christian stood up and walked out. There weren’t any words he could’ve offered that might calm her down or alleviate her fears. She was left to battle those emotions alone, and as that blue door slammed shut behind him, he felt pity for the girl for the first time since they met. And it was coming to him in waves.

  IT WOULD come much later for Shea, as she wrestled with what she’d been told. She did it alone in her dank little apartment, just as it should have been. Still, it only came after she flipped on a radio as something to break the void that had enveloped her room since her guest departed. It came to her like an unveiling that had been captured on film and was now playing back to her at quarter speed, and it only came after she heard the newscaster announcing on the radio that the investigation was continuing on one of Seattle’s recent, more gruesome murders, one which had tainted one the city’s finest National Parks after the body of Carl Whiting was discovered yesterday by an unsuspecting family on vacation.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  HE WASN’T GOING to apologize for grabbing a little strange when it was thrust before him, he reasoned. That would be considered an unnatural act. Gabe couldn’t even conceive of having to apologize, since he’d never had a lover. Oh sure, fucks, all casual and all briefly satisfying. But he’d never had anyone he considered a fixture, so he hadn’t ever had call to be faithful to anyone.

  Gabriel Church was like any man, driven by ego and phallus. He had always lived by the credo of: if it made your dick hard, it was fair game. With such a broad doctrine, one might have assumed he would have gotten into a vast array of sticky situations. If Chris and he had an opportunity of discussing that, even he would’ve understood. He could almost hear Chris laughing that sardonic laugh inside his head, asking with a twisted tone something like,

  “With that fucked up dogma, you should’ve had more men dropping to their knees at your feet whenever you stopped in to take a piss at a rest stop bathroom. Why haven’t you let your knob get slobbered on by more dudes then?”

  Gabe didn’t have an answer to that question. He’d been approached by both sexes in his lifetime, but women were easier, and even though he didn’t have a bit of shame in his body, allowing a man to give him head made him feel weak . . . as if he’d just given in to the pressure mounting in his balls before saying, “Well, bub, go for it!”

  The truth was he knew Chris was more upset that he’d fucked a woman than if it had been a guy. Women could be territorial and possessive, but in his limited experiences, he didn’t think men were that much different. As far as sex went, it was the flip side of the coin: each lover had their own special kink they enjoyed. But what made it different now was not the gender but the person. He cared for Christian Maxwell because there was a lot to admire. He was a strong man himself, but what he lacked as a person, Chris seemed to have in abundance.

  In their time together, he’d found himself wanting to make the younger man happy, and he struggled with trying to show his best sides to him. He had seen that furrowed look overtaking Chris whenever they had long conversations about the murders. It was pity mingled with horror . . . How could someone be such a vile human being? He’d worked harder than one might think to keep that look from creeping across his lover’s face.

  But Shea had been pivotal; he could see that now. It was too early in their friendship, and Chris felt betrayed by him fucking someone else, specifically a woman. He couldn’t pull back time and fix the screw-up, so he was left with trying to get someone to forgive him, and that was as alien a notion as those new feelings he was fighting. He felt something he couldn’t put his finger on, but he knew he’d never felt it before, not since trading diapers for short pants. He didn’t know quite what it was, and sadly, there was no one in his apartment he could trust to explain shame and humility to him.

  If there was ever going to be a book about his life, he knew it would have to say how much he’d changed since he stepped into Chris’s sphere of influence. How more than just his sex had been transformed. He was questioning things about himself in a new light, and he was measuring feelings he’d never known. He didn’t know where the hell this road would take him, but he felt sick in his gut that he might have lost Chris along the way. The fading light was dimming his living room like a dying candle. He was sitting at a rail back chair that had come with the apartment and was pulling on a bourbon bottle, drinking it straight. He hoped the alcohol would stamp out his festering mood, exchange one bad spirit for another, this one of 80-proof power. But it wasn’t helping much.

  His head was beginning to feel like it was stuffed with wet sponges. He couldn’t focus any train of thought for very long before he could see it being derailed. But still his mind was playing out possible scenarios of how he could win Chris back. He figured it was time to throw his body into bed and worry about it tomorrow.

  Before he could stumble into the bedroom, he heard a knock at his door. Instantly, he seized on the hope that it was Chris coming back to repair the damage Gabe had done. He was smiling as he lumbered to the door, because he could already see them lying in his bed asleep. It dawned on him that they’d never woken up on his side of town together. The image was adjusting in his head, of them lying naked in Gabe’s bed, as he flung the door open. He was surprised to find Shea standing there, and his disappointment was painfully illustrated when he craned his neck around
both ways to see if Chris had come with her.

  “We need to talk,” she said stoically.

  Gabe had been startled by her arrival, but he tried to regain his composure and appear her visit had been expected.

  “I want to ask you your name? You told me it was Chris Rumsfeld. Your buddy told me it was Gabriel . . . something or another. So what is it?”

  She was standing at his doorway immovable, arms crossed, and a resentful scowl half-illuminated by a lamppost in the courtyard that had just lit up from a timer. It took a minute before Gabe could piece together what she was saying; his eyelids were heavy and the bourbon was effectively stretching time out in a foggy cadence. Had she just called him Gabriel?

  Even tipsy, Gabe was connecting the wires in his mind. When she first started to speak, they may have appeared as delicate cobwebs, but they quickly converted to steel cable when he heard the phrase your buddy, mixed so closely with Gabriel. His big hand went to his jaw and rubbed at the stubble of his beard. He was momentarily lost, appearing like a man who’d just lurched out of bed and a long sleep. Still the words she had said had their own powerful impact. He decided to play on his drowsy look of confusion.