Little Deaths

by John F. D. Taff

  All that is left of these places now are their sagging brick husks and the smell of their decay—dusty and moldy with the generic, loamy odor that all things offer up when they finally return to the earth.

  But these were all old and accepted parts of William’s world by this time. In the two years of walking back and forth to work, he’d seen all of these, noticed them in their turn as some piece or part of their structures caught his eye. He’d had time to study those things that held his attention, until they drifted again to the background, allowing some other detail or structure to come forward.

  But now all is background to him, and he rarely devotes any time these days to thinking about his surroundings.

  So, he walks, humming to himself, enjoying the coolness of the air, the shade cast onto his face by his hat.

  When he smells it: a scent.

  A new scent.

  Not the death dust of the buildings, collapsing like shriveled lungs.

  Not the chemicals of the ancient factories, still wheezing out their toxins.

  Not the jungle aroma of the weeds tangled in the overgrown lots.

  No, this is new. At once flowery and bitter, sweet and burning. He inhales, and it leaves his nostrils and throat feeling raw, abraded.

  And it is disturbingly, elusively familiar.

  He turns completely around, slowly. But there is nothing new here, nothing that could be giving off this increasingly intoxicating scent.

  Here is the baby carriage factory, empty and heartbreakingly austere. Across the street, the low, ramshackle remains of the stables for the St. Louis Municipal Police Mounted Patrol, abandoned for nearly a century, still exuding the aroma of dry hay and moist droppings. Further up a bicycle repair shop and the collapsed remains of a fur exchange, whatever that was.

  William sniffs the air again deeply, half expecting the smell to have vanished. But, instead, it has grown stronger.

  Hints of juniper make him think of gin and tonics taken on his patio, complete with their final acid twist of lemon. But the scent also evokes hyacinth and honeysuckle, and even—briefly, lightly—tea roses.

  William has never, in his two years of walking this route, never smelled anything even remotely like this.

  But that’s not true, he dimly knows, not entirely…

  Something vague and shadowed lurches in the lizard part of his brain that processes smell. It fires synapses meant to bring forth memories. But there is a gulf here, a span, an abyss that cannot be bridged. So William’s brain twitches with the smell, but cannot identify it, cannot place it in its rightful context.

  He breathes it in again, a heady, pleasurable lungful. His eyes roll up into his head like the wheels of a slot machine, slowing to reveal their cherries, lemons, or bars.

  What is it? he wonders. Then, tripping on its heels, I have to know.

  He readjusts his brim with a quick, defiant snap, then lifts his nose into the air, turning and drawing deep breaths in through his nostrils as if he were a champion bloodhound.

  It seems stronger behind him, to his right.

  He turns, walks back past the boarded and graffitied windows of the Applewaite & Sons Trucking Co. He smells rot and old wood, oil and the phantom vapors of ancient gasoline, and, as everywhere, the flat, soupy tang of urine.

  But above it all, rising like an aching high note over a bass choir is the scent: sweet and hinting of foliage and flowers. Cartoonlike, it reaches tenuous, smoky fingers out to him, fairly pulls him along.

  A dark, narrow alley runs between the Applewaite & Sons building and its neighbor, Mugler Publishing & Printing. The alley’s uneven surface is strewn with broken bottles, an old tire, a rickety stack of warped wood pallets, and the ubiquitous single shoe.

  William pauses, momentarily brought to his senses by the instinctive alarm the alley sets off in his urban brain. At its end there is a wedge, a sliver of brilliant light, where the sun shines through to the ground again. To get to that light, though, he must pass through a space that is dark and dank, restrictive, with many potential hiding spots.

  But the scent is insistent, overpowering his sharper senses.

  He breathes deeply, coating his lungs in it, and steps into the alley.

  It is like stepping into another world, another time.

  The smells here are stronger, deeper. There is a womblike thickness to the air; liquid and organic with undertones that speak of grit and decay.

  William steps forward cautiously, the scent lulling him, urging him on by degrees.

  He nears the alley’s exit. The wedge of sunlight has become a panel, narrow and tall, that rises above him. It reveals the space between the rear of the buildings, with the gaping, toothless mouths of their dark loading bays. Doors dot the brick structures here and there, some wooden and warped like badly set bones, others metal and rusting like oozing sores.

  He puts a foot forward, out of the dark and into the light of this industrial courtyard, when he hears it… them.

  Sounds.

  Voices, muffled and constrained.

  He freezes, dark, rainbow-sheened water soaking into his loafers

  The voices are not speaking.

  What he hears are not words, not conversation.

  But there is a definite sense of command and protest, of compulsion and repulsion.

  Of desire and fear.

  He hugs the edge of the rusted and sagging remains of a fire escape, peers slowly around the corner of the building.

  The elusive, ephemeral scent that has led him here takes on a forceful physical presence; it goes from ghost to revenant with shocking rapidity, striding from the shadows, the dappled sunlight and striking not just his nose, but his entire body.

  William recoils from this blow. But his eyes do not close, nor do his nostrils stop bringing the scent inside of him; he takes it in gulps as if it, and not the air it is carried on, is what his lungs, his body, his mind craves.

  It is flowers now, the scent: strongly, assertively floral. But there are so many colors to it, so many tones. Sharp lime and pine. A crisp, astringent soapiness. And underneath, barely perceptible but pervasive, a sweet reek of rot.

  Still, he takes it in as his eyes take in movement in the mottled shadows. A figure, tall, heavy, masculine, looms over another, smaller, thin, feminine.

  Their heads incline toward one another, their lips almost touching.

  The man is all shade and outline. The woman, wearing a tight, bone-colored dress, reveals him beside her more as an absence, something missing. One of her hands, long, tapered nails painted eggplant, is flat against his chest. The other is not visible. One of his hands is cupping her chin, lifting her face to his.

  Shaking his own head dully, William realizes what he’s stumbled onto. Lovers or whatever passes for lovers in this rundown, scabrous neighborhood. A village Romeo and Juliet meeting in the ruins for sex. If he stays, William knows that afterward, in addition to the crude sex, he’s likely to see an exchange of money or drugs… or both.

  Slinking back around the corner of the building, he frowns, the power of the scent broken. It was only cheap perfume, after all, something to cover the other less pleasant odors of her addictions—the unwashed body of her customer, the meth-rotted teeth, dirty hair that reeks of sour sweat and cigarette smoke.

  He takes a deep breath and exhales sharply. How could he have found the odor pleasurable, much less intoxicating? The scent is oily, cloying. It seems to ooze on the air, cover his skin in a sticky layer of scum. He feels it at the back of his throat now, coagulated there like blood.

  He turns to head back down the alley, disgusted and disappointed.

  A gurgle, liquid and strained.

  He stops moving.

  The blood within him stops, too—hesitates.

  Suddenly, he is horribly sure that what he has just seen is not a prelude to sex…

  Slowly, he advances to the corner again, edges around it.

  The hand that William had thought rested lightly o
n the man’s chest now looks stiff and clenched, its muscles taut with the effort to repel.

  The hand that William had thought lifted her chin delicately now grasps her neck, squeezes tightly.

  Another bubble of air escapes her lips.

  The man’s other hand appears now, arcing over his head like a dark wing unfurling.

  A shiny talon at the tip of that wing descends powerfully.

  Raises. Lowers.

  Again.

  Again.

  Something that sounds like drops of rain patters to the ground, pools in the shadows at their feet.

  Then, the man, the shadow, the shape turns toward William, fixes him with his eyes.

  Instead of recoiling, reeling from the man’s glare, William freezes.

  The man’s eyes glow from beneath the brim of his hat. They are hot, laval, and they roil in their orbits like balls of incandescent gas.

  Hat…?

  William notices, for the first time, the hat worn by the shadow.

  Unconscious of what he’s doing, his hand moves to the brim of his own hat, strokes it as if to reassure himself that it still sits atop his head.

  The shadow smiles at him, his fiery orange eyes flashing, his teeth a white and even arc within the dark of his face.

  He turns, fades away, and is gone, lost within the denseness of the worn buildings.

  William remains still for a time. The shape of the woman is abstract against the relentless pattern of the cobblestones. She is all curves and spirals and glistening pools of red and cream. She is a painting now; he has reduced her to a kind of art.

  He takes a single, tentative step forward, stops.

  Two things come to him immediately, like sudden electric bolts.

  There is the smell of blood: metallic, and as intimate as the change in his pocket. It floats on the air, recrimination and guilt, and it envelops him in a cloud.

  Then there is the scent again, above, below, inside him.

  It is bitter now, like old limes: sharp and too sweet, with a powdery tang like the taste of aspirin crushed between dry teeth.

  And it is him, he realizes.

  Me. My scent.

  But William wears no cologne.

  What he smelled today, noticed for the first time, is not the city around him, not the scent of its life and decay. Rather it is the scent of him: his shampoo, his soap, his shaving cream.

  More, it the essential smell of him, his skin, his sweat, the whiskers that push up from beneath, and the blood that pulses through him. It is the smell of his failures and successes, his faith and fear, his affectations and the true self that lies quivering at his center.

  It floats from him, wicked from his pores, surrounds him in an aura of his own making.

  Another realization sweeps through him, impatient, yet seemingly content to wait for these first two to have their effect.

  It is his scent, too.

  His knees give, and he falls forward like a penitent, vomits onto the cold, slick ground.

  His head bows forward until he feels the cool grit of the cobblestones pressing his forehead.

  That’s why it was so strong here… so overpowering.

  I never smelled it before, but he wore it like a cape, like the shadows he shrouded himself in.

  He wore it as if he knew it.

  And he smiled at me because he recognized it.

  Recognized me.

  Weakly, he pulls himself to his feet, absently wipes his mouth.

  He backs away from the woman’s body, down the alley, back onto the street.

  It is raining now, lightly, and it is as if a gauzy curtain has been draped over the city, softening its rougher features.

  The sights, smells are familiar once again, but he draws none of them in any longer.

  His own smell fills his nostrils now, plugging them against all else.

  With a hesitant look in the direction he’d set out in this morning, toward his office, he turns back to his home, sets out through the rain that way instead.

  When he arrives, he enters, locks the door behind him, goes to his closet.

  On the patio in his backyard, within the 10-foot walls with their iron spikes, he burns all of his hats one by one, watching their dark smoke drift up into the misty, impersonal grey of the sky and fade, fade, fade…

  CHILD OF DIRT

  A child?

  But how?

  His wife had never slept with another man, he knew that, took it as an article of faith.

  Primarily because he trusted her, loved her still.

  But also because—and he didn’t want to be cruel, not even here, in his secret heart—he knew that there would be few other men who’d want her.

  She was plain and obese, not a hand you can bluff your way out of. Her hair was lank and brown, not the sparkling brown of the models on TV commercials for shampoo, just brown. The color of… well, other brown things. Her eyes were too close together, too deeply set; like raisins pressed into a cookie-dough face by a fumbling child.

  But he loved her—perhaps not deeply and madly, but honestly and truly, nonetheless. Things had never been wildly romantic between them, but they’d been good. She adored him, and cold is the person who can’t be swayed by another’s adoration.

  Hers was a gentle, uncomplicated soul, and the thought that her lavish affections were falling into an increasingly bottomless well, never to be acknowledged, never to be returned in kind, would have horrified her, perhaps even killed that small part of her that his love clung to so dearly.

  Until her announcement…

  * * *

  She awoke one morning, earlier, bouncier than usual.

  She’d awakened him, a rarity since she usually worked nights, and he found himself being kissed lasciviously.

  “Hey, whoa! Slow down, slow down!” he yelped, amused, aroused, confused.

  “That’s not what you wanted last night,” she said, kissing him deeply, in a way that she hadn’t kissed him in ages, that he hadn’t allowed himself to be kissed in ages.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, her face so close that she breathed in his question.

  “Last night, you were… incredible! I mean, at first I was tired, but well… wow!”

  She shot a hand under the covers that at first lingered, then became provocative. Just as he was about to let her continue, she pulled free, patted his chest.

  “Now, I think you deserve a nice breakfast before you go to work.”

  He lay there as she left the room, trying to figure out exactly what had happened, then threw the covers back. As he turned to roll out of bed, he noticed the sheets on her side were soiled, dark splotches on the butter yellow cotton.

  He drew a finger across one. It smelled of earth, and stagnant, brackish water, and he frowned, wiped his finger on the already soiled sheet.

  * * *

  After breakfast, he started upstairs to grab his suit coat. He went to the staircase, his hand on the newel post, when he saw something on the runner: an indistinct, dark smear. It went all the way to the top, a meandering line that marred the clean beige carpet. He wiped a hand across it, came away with a smudge of dry mud. His eyes drifted from the hallway to the family room.

  He followed the trail to the sliding glass doors that opened onto the deck. He pressed his nose to the glass, saw the mud cross the deck, disappear down the half dozen or so steps that led to their backyard. His gaze wandered to where the property dropped off, behind a thin screen of birches and scraggly forsythias, to a storm drain behind the house.

  And he saw—thought he saw—branches between two of the forsythias that looked broken, pushed inward… as if someone… something had…

  * * *

  A few weeks later, he woke early, the sun barely over the horizon and the sky deepest, darkest blue. Light seeped from beneath the bathroom door. As he closed his eyes, he heard the door open, heard the scuff of it against the carpet. Vaguely, he waited for her weight to settle on the bed.

>   “Honey? You need to wake up and hear this. Honey?”

  “Mmmm, okay,” he groaned, rolling over.

  She stood silhouetted in the doorway still in her sleep clothes, a tattered Ramones t-shirt from a concert years earlier.

  She was holding something, a little white plastic stick she twirled in her right hand.

  “I’m pregnant,” she cried; then she cried literally, tears spilling down her plump cheeks, onto Joey Ramone’s faded face.

  She leapt into bed, the box springs groaning. She covered his face with sloppy, tearsmeared kisses. She blurted words at him at a dizzying speed, and he was unable to sort them out. “… baby… parents will be freaked! … the room… doctor… vitamins… names… girl… boy…”

  Without lifting his head from her shoulders, he muttered, “Were we trying?”

  “You can get pregnant even if you’re not trying,” she said, then kissed his earlobe as if forgiving his question.

  “But we haven’t… ummm… even… I mean, when’s the last time we even made love?”

  She pulled from him, looked at him carefully.

  “Remember, a few weeks ago, after I got home from the late shift?” she asked, wiping tears on the corner of her t-shirt. “You came into the shower with me?”

  While they did do various exciting and pleasurable things, he was sure—absolutely sure—that nothing they had done could possibly have resulted in a pregnancy.

  But he simply nodded, kissed her.

  Her chubby face lit up in a way that didn’t just tug at his heart, but tore at it.

  “Our baby,” she said, the tears coming again. “Our baby.”