Twisted City

by Jason Starr

  Like a wrestler escaping the three-count, I raised my legs off the floor, brought them down, then raised them again swiftly. The action was enough to catapult Rebecca and her slight frame off my chest, and my hands did the rest. Grabbing her hips, I continued her momentum and she flipped over my head. I heard her bang against the hallway wall, but I didn’t wait to see if she was okay. I rolled onto my side and got onto my knees, then turned to face her head-on. Sure enough, she was coming after me again, her hands spread open like claws, closing in on my face. This time I was ready, lowering my head and grabbing her by the waist. It wasn’t hard to force her onto the floor and pin her down. She was still shrieking, spitting at me, acting like a mental patient, and I just wanted the noise to end. My hands moved off her shoulders to around her neck and I started squeezing. The sudden silence was a big relief, and I was barely aware of the shade of blue her face was turning. If I just squeezed a little harder . . .

  I let go just in time. Rebecca was coughing, trying to catch her breath, and I backed away, trying not to believe that I’d almost strangled her.

  I became aware of someone banging on the front door. Then I heard Carmen, the old Italian woman from next door, saying, “Will you stop with all the noise in there? You two are fighting and screaming all the time, I can’t even hear my television. Hello? Hello?” She continued to bang on the door.

  Rebecca was still coughing, rubbing her neck where my hands had been. I looked down at my hands, which were still curled into the shape of her throat.

  “I know you’re in there,” Carmen said. “Open this door right this instant!”

  “Shut the hell up!” I screamed, and then I stood up and marched into the bedroom. I went into one of the closets Rebecca had taken over, grabbed a big armful of her clothes, and stormed back through the hallway. Rebecca, still kneeling on the floor, saw me pass, but didn’t say anything.

  I opened the front door and saw Carmen standing there. She was a squat, hunched-over old biddy with a big bun of black hair.

  “I hope that wasn’t me you were speaking to that way,” she said. “There’s so much screaming coming from your apartment every day I can’t hear what the people on TV are saying.”

  “I’m sorry, all right?” I said.

  “This better stop right now or I’m gonna call the police,” she said.

  I sidestepped around her and went toward the vestibule and then outside. From the top of the stoop, I tossed Rebecca’s clothes toward the sidewalk. Carmen was gone from in front of my apartment, but Rebecca was still in the hallway, trying to grab my leg as I went back toward the bedroom.

  “I’m so sorry, David,” she said. “Please forgive me. You have to forgive me.”

  Ignoring her, I grabbed more of her clothes from the bedroom closet, then went by her again.

  “Don’t do this to me, David,” Rebecca said. “I’m warning you.”

  I dumped the clothes onto the sidewalk, then returned to the apartment. This time Rebecca clung to my legs as I attempted to pass.

  “Please don’t leave me,” she said desperately. “I can’t lose you again—I can’t go through that again.”

  She was making no sense. I decided I just needed to get away from her as soon as possible.

  I wriggled free, then said, “If you’re not out of here by the time I get back, I’m tossing the rest of your shit onto the street.”

  I grabbed a jacket and left the apartment. The annoying homeless guy who always panhandled to the curbside diners on Amsterdam and Columbus by singing “What a Wonderful World” had started collecting Rebecca’s dresses. I walked right by him and headed down the block.

  I didn’t have a destination, but when I approached Dublin House, a bar on Seventy-ninth and Broadway, I decided to go in. It was a dark, dank, narrow bar that Barbara and I had gone to a few times. I sat on a stool near the front and ordered a Bud. The bottle arrived, and when I put my hand around it I remembered how I’d had my hands around Rebecca’s neck. With a gulp of beer I tried to wipe that image from my mind, and then I saw myself holding Ricky in a headlock, ramming his head against the steel door. I told myself that none of it was my fault, that in both situations I’d acted in self-defense, but I wasn’t sure I believed it.

  I took another swig of beer, then looked down the bar and saw Barbara. She was with a guy, laughing at something he was saying. I looked closer and realized the woman looked nothing like Barbara. She had the same wavy brown hair, but her nose had a bump on it that Barbara’s didn’t, and Barbara had been much better-looking.

  The woman was looking at me, and I shifted my attention straight ahead, not wanting her to think I’d been staring. I took another sip of beer, then took out my wallet and slid out the picture of Barbara. I stared at the picture, drinking my beer, remembering when it was taken—on the night of her junior prom. She blew off all the parties and her friends to stay at home with me, and we spent the whole night just hanging out, listening to music and laughing.

  “Why do you still have that?” she asked.

  We were at her apartment on Eighty-fourth Street, watching some TV movie, when I took out the picture and showed it to her.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Rip it up.”

  “No way,” I said, keeping it away as she reached for it.

  Thinking about Barbara made my eyes start to tear. I put the beer bottle down with too much force, and it slid out of my hand and smashed behind the bar. The bartender came over and offered me another.

  “It’s okay,” I said, suddenly feeling very hot. “It was almost empty anyway.”

  I left a dollar tip and exited the bar quickly. As I wandered onto Broadway I decided that it was stupid to leave Rebecca in the apartment alone. She was probably so pissed off at me for dumping her clothes on the street that she’d started tossing out my stuff in revenge. I jogged toward Eighty-first Street, and then, as I imagined all of my personal things on the street, being rummaged through by that homeless guy, I started to run.

  Approaching my building I was relieved to see that the homeless guy wasn’t there and that Rebecca hadn’t tossed out any of my things; only a few of her tops and dresses were strewn on the sidewalk.

  I entered my apartment, expecting to encounter Rebecca either crying hysterically, begging for my forgiveness, or attacking me again, but none of this happened. The apartment looked pretty much the same as when I’d left. I glanced down the hallway, seeing that the bathroom door was shut, and then I went into the kitchen. Scavenging in the fridge and freezer, I found a couple of pieces of hardened, week-or-so-old pita bread and a half a box of frozen soy chicken wings. I cooked the wings and warmed the pita on the George Foreman Grill, and about five minutes later I was eating a very shitty dinner.

  I cleaned up the kitchen, then went down the hallway, passing the still-closed bathroom door, and went into the bedroom. I changed into sweats, deciding that if Rebecca started acting psycho again, I’d just ignore her until she settled down. I definitely wasn’t going to let her drag me into another fight.

  Rebecca was still in the bathroom when I headed back along the hallway into the living room. With nothing else to do, I logged on to the Internet. I checked my e-mail—just a spam message from a porn site featuring horny coed sluts—and my 401(k) account, which seemed to lose value no matter how I allocated my money. Then I surfed the Web for a while, reading news stories on Yahoo! I had to pee badly, and I got up and saw that Rebecca was still in the bathroom. I decided that she was staying in there on purpose, to punish me for dumping her clothes on the street.

  I knocked on the door. She didn’t answer, so I knocked again, three times. She still didn’t answer.

  “Come on, come out,” I said. “I have to use the bathroom.”

  Nothing. Listening closely, I heard water running; it sounded like it was coming from the faucet in the bathtub. I pictured Rebecca relaxing, a Zen-like smile on her face, enjoying my discomfort.

  “I’m serious,” I said
. “Open up.”

  There was still no sound except for the steadily running water. Getting really pissed off, I was about to say something else when I noticed some water leaking out under the bathroom door. I was confused for a few seconds; then the panic set in. I don’t know exactly what I did next, but I remember screaming and banging on the door, then ramming against it with my shoulder. I’m not sure how long it took for the door to open, but I’ll never forget the sight of Rebecca’s naked body bobbing in the overflowing bathwater.

  10

  I DIALED 911 and explained to the operator that there had been a suicide. The operator took my address, and then she asked me how the victim had killed herself. I said I had no idea but that her body was still in the bathtub.

  Since I’d discovered the body I’d been surprisingly calm, and I remained calm as I sat on the armchair in the living room, waiting for the police and EMS workers to arrive. Of course, I was upset that Rebecca was dead, but I was in shock and didn’t have any real emotion about it yet.

  A few minutes after I made the 911 call, the buzzer rang. Without bothering to find out who it was I pressed the door button on the intercom. Leaning out into the hallway, I saw two cops—a squat white guy with a walrus mustache and a tall, younger black guy—approaching my apartment. I had a moment of panic, remembering leaving Ricky’s body against the garbage can. I told myself that this had nothing to do with Ricky, but I still didn’t feel comfortable having cops in my apartment.

  “She’s dead,” I said, and I stood to the side and let the cops pass.

  “Where is she?” the walrus cop asked.

  “Bathroom,” I said. “First door on the left.”

  As the cops approached the bathroom I realized I hadn’t shut the water off in the tub. I noticed that more water had flowed into the hallway.

  The walrus cop glanced into the bathroom, then started talking into his radio, describing the scene in an official, monotone voice. The other cop, wearing rubber gloves, went into the bathroom, and, a few seconds later, I heard the water shut off.

  The buzzer rang again and I let the two EMS workers into the apartment. They were carrying a stretcher. I returned to the living room and sat in the chair, waiting, as the men did whatever they were doing in the bathroom.

  After a couple of minutes, the walrus cop came into the living room. His name tag read Robert Fitch.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “Mr. . . .?”

  “Miller. David Miller.”

  Fitch took out a small pad and wrote down my name. I just wanted him out of my apartment as fast as possible.

  “We’re very sorry about your loss,” he said, trying his best to sound sympathetic.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Do you have a mop?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I went into the tall kitchen cabinet and gave him the mop. He took it into the bathroom, then returned to talk to me in the kitchen.

  “So was she your wife?” he asked, getting ready to write in his pad again.

  “No,” I said.

  He looked up, waiting for me to elaborate.

  “She was my girlfriend, I guess,” I said.

  “You guess?”

  “She was my girlfriend,” I said, more definitively.

  “What was her name?”

  “Rebecca. Rebecca Daniels.”

  He wrote this down.

  “Did she live here?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Does she have family?”

  Rebecca had told me that she hadn’t talked to her mother, or any other close family members, in years.

  “Her mother lives in Texas,” I said.

  “Will you contact her?”

  “Yes.”

  He jotted something in the pad. “When did you discover the body?”

  “Right before I called nine-one-one. I saw the water coming out under the bathroom door, so I knew something was wrong. I broke down the door and saw her there. Then I went and called for help.”

  “Did you touch the body or anything else in the room?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, wondering why he was asking me this. Did he consider this a possible criminal investigation? “I mean, I don’t think I . . . No—definitely no.”

  The buzzer rang and I went to answer it. When I opened the front door Carmen was standing there with the young bearded guy who’d recently moved into the apartment across the hall.

  “What’s going on?” Carmen said, trying to see into the apartment.

  “Nothing,” I said. I didn’t want Carmen to tell the police about how Rebecca and I had been fighting earlier, but I didn’t see any way to avoid it.

  “What do you mean, nothing?” she said. “There’re police cars and an ambulance out there.”

  “Was somebody hurt?” the bearded guy asked. He spoke in an uppity, pretentious way; he was probably a self-important grad student or a college professor.

  A squat, dark-but-graying middle-aged guy, wearing a black sport jacket, came up behind the bearded guy.

  “Do you live at this address?” the man asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Detective Romero.” He flashed a badge. “Can I come in?”

  “Yes, please, of course,” I said. I was trying not to act nervous. Then I thought, Why shouldn’t I be acting nervous? After all, my girlfriend had just killed herself.

  As Romero entered the apartment, Carmen said, “Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  Romero was looking back, and there was no way I couldn’t answer.

  “My girlfriend committed suicide,” I said.

  “Oh my God,” Carmen said, looking truly horrified. “But she was okay just an hour ago, when you two were fighting.”

  Romero suddenly seemed interested.

  “It happened when I was gone,” I said to Carmen. “Remember, you saw me leaving before. When I came back Rebecca had locked herself in the bathroom.”

  “All I know is you were throwing her clothes out on the street,” Carmen said. She turned to Romero and said, “You can go look—some of her things are still out there. You should hear them fighting all the time. It’s like I’m living in a flophouse.”

  “Excuse me,” Romero said to Carmen, and he continued into the apartment ahead of me. I glared at Carmen as I shut the door.

  Romero went over to Fitch and got an update on the situation. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just stood there, waiting in the living room.

  I watched Romero and Fitch go toward the bathroom. They spoke with the black officer, who was standing in the hallway, and then Romero went into the bathroom by himself.

  Romero stayed in the bathroom for what seemed like a long time. It might’ve been ten minutes, but that still seemed like a long time to view the body of a suicide victim.

  The buzzer rang again. When I opened the door a young Asian guy with a camera around his neck was standing next to a red-haired guy with a beard.

  “Police photographer,” the Asian guy said.

  “Medical examiner,” the red-haired guy said.

  I directed the men toward the bathroom, trying to stay calm. I didn’t know why a crime-scene photographer and a medical examiner had been called to the scene of a suicide.

  Several more minutes passed, and then Romero exited the bathroom. He exchanged some more words with the officers, then approached me.

  “Mr. Miller, I want to give you my condolences,” he said. “It must’ve been pretty rough, finding her in there.”

  “It was.”

  “Can we sit down?” he said. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I sat on the couch and Romero sat across from me in the chair. I’d thought he was older when he arrived, but now I could tell that the gray in his hair was premature, and he looked like he was about my age, maybe younger.

  “So do you have any idea why she would kill herself?” Romero asked. He had taken out a pad.


  “No, not really.”

  “You have no idea at all?”

  Figuring that, thanks to Carmen, he was going to ask me about the fight Rebecca and I had had, I decided to beat him to the punch.

  “I mean there’d been some tension between us lately,” I said, “but I don’t think she’d kill herself over it.”

  “Yeah, the old lady was saying, you two were having some kind of fight?”

  “It wasn’t a fight,” I said. “We were in the process of breaking up.”

  “Is that why you tossed her clothes out on the street?”

  “I really don’t see what this has to do with anything,” I said. “Like I said, we were breaking up. I admit it wasn’t the most cordial breakup in the world. Maybe that was why she killed herself—that was your question, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, that was my question,” Romero said, looking down as he wrote in the pad.

  “I don’t get this,” I said. “Isn’t it obvious she OD’d?”

  “Why is that obvious?”

  I looked beyond Romero as I saw the EMS workers carrying Rebecca’s body, covered by a white sheet. Everyone left the apartment except Fitch and Romero.

  “We mopped up a little for you in there,” Fitch said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “The body will be taken to Bellevue for the autopsy.” Fitch handed me a card. “You can call this number for any information you might need.” Then Fitch turned to Romero and said, “Should we stick around, Tony?”

  “Yeah,” Romero said, “I’ll be done in a few.”

  Fitch left, and Romero and I were alone. I felt uncomfortable, suddenly remembering the pictures Kenny had taken.

  “Are you okay?” Romero asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Fine.”

  He squinted at my face. “How’d you get that?”

  “I fell the other day,” I said, touching my lower lip, “leaving a bank.”

  “It looks like teeth marks.”