by Ed Kurtz
Ami closed the card as fast as she could, right before the card could exclaim that she belonged to it, that it was wrong, or that it could not live without her. Someone in an adjoining cubicle shushed her. A few heads popped up from the gray sea of cubes that crowded the floor.
Ami thought, What the hell?
She held the card under the glare of the lamp on her desk and cracked it just wide enough to read the interior but not set the song off again. It said: It’s lonely in this tree without you. Under that, in the same pencil with which her name was written on the envelope, the sender had written, I’m sorry.
There was no name, but it did not need one. Ami knew perfectly well who had sent it.
“So, what do you think?”
Startled, Ami flipped around to find a very bedraggled looking Leon standing just outside of her cube, a crooked smile on his unshaven face. His hair was greasy and unkempt, his clothes wrinkled. He looked like he’d slept in an alley.
Ami preemptively opened her mouth, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I look awful, I know,” Leon apologized. “I feel awful. I spent the night in a car. My head is…it’s killing me.”
“Leon…”
“And I’m a jerk. Hoo boy, am I ever a jerk. It’s this…this thing. Something is happening to me, Ami. I didn’t know how to tell you—how to show you. I really screwed up.”
“All those people…”
“I know. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wish…I wish I could take it back.”
He bent forward slightly and grimaced, squeezing his eyes shut and touching his fingertips to his forehead.
“Are you okay?” Ami asked him.
“No, it’s just, you know, this headache.”
“Oh.”
“When I do it—I mean, what I do, when I do it—the pain goes away. For a while. Then it comes back. I don’t know what to do.”
Ami started to flip a ballpoint pen between her fingers, a nervous gesture of which she was not particularly aware.
“Listen,” he went on, “maybe we can have lunch again today? Same place? Or anyplace, really. Just nothing too spicy…”
“I really don’t think that’s such a good idea, Leon…”
“My stomach gets pretty upset on the spicy stuff,” Leon continued, unperturbed by her declination. “But anything else—sandwiches, pizza, whatever.”
“I said no,” she reiterated sternly.
Taken aback, Leon pinched his brow.
“I said I was sorry,” he said in a low tone.
“I get that. I accept it. But I’m still not going to have lunch with you.”
Leon narrowed his eyes to slits and stood silent for a moment, increasing Ami’s anxiety.
“You’re afraid,” he said at length.
Ami swallowed and nodded her head.
“That’s part of it, yes. What I saw…I mean, what you did—I can’t deal with that, Leon. I don’t understand it, and I’m not so sure I want to. I’m just being honest with you.”
“Honest,” Leon repeated mindlessly. His left eye started to twitch a little.
“I like you,” Ami continued, “I really do. I always have, in fact. But…”
“I thought we were friends,” he interjected sullenly.
“We are…”
“Friends forgive, Ami. When one of them…fucking apologizes…friends forgive.”
Leon spat the curse word with vitriol, stunning Ami into wide-eyed silence.
“I’ve never been very good with people,” he said, hanging his head. “I mean, I suppose I’m a shy guy, you know? Shy guys don’t win. Guys like me don’t. You want to hear something funny?”
He stepped closer to Ami and bent over, thrusting his face close to hers.
“I’m a virgin,” he whispered.
“I…I don’t care about that,” Ami weakly protested.
“Well, you ought to,” Leon growled, bringing his angry eyes back up to her face. “It’s people like you who’ve made me like this. Like this! A loser, Ami!”
Leon was shouting now, and several people stood up in the cubicles to see what was going on. Ami saw the concerned and confused faces, hoping someone would come to her assistance. She was more nervous now than ever. Leon trembled with rage. His twitching eye closed.
“But I’m not a loser anymore—oh, no. Up until a week ago I let everyone crap on me, but not anymore, Ami. Not anymore! I can do whatever the hell I want, and I don’t need you. I don’t need your bullshit and I DON’T NEED YOU!”
His chest heaved with gasping breaths, his one open eye bulging and welling up with fluid. Ami scooted her chair back and grabbed the edge of her desk.
“Leon,” she whimpered. “Leon, please…”
“Shut up!” Leon shrieked, his voice cracking. “Just shut the fuck up!”
“Weissmann!” a deep voice shouted.
A heavy, balding man in a short sleeve shirt and green necktie was barreling down the walkway, his arms pumping at his sides and his face compressed into a sweaty pink mask of determination. Ami breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of him—Cliff Arnold, head of legal and an altogether formidable man. She considered herself rescued.
“Weissmann, what’s this all about?” Cliff demanded to know.
Leon hunched his shoulders and smiled. He turned to face Cliff, a mountain of a man compared to him, and pointed a bony forefinger in the larger man’s face.
“Stay out of this, Cliff,” he seethed.
Cliff’s face went blank and without hesitating a moment, he turned and walked back down the walkway. He passed Lisa’s cube on his way; she was standing there, staring at Leon and Ami, astonished. Leon made eye contact with her and chuckled.
“Lisa,” he said. “Come over here.”
Ami took in a sharp breath and said, “Don’t.”
Uncertainly, Lisa moved out from her cube and sauntered over to where Leon stood. Ami waved her hand desperately and shook her head.
“Lisa, go away,” she pleaded. “Get out of here.”
The normally talkative woman quietly regarded them both: the man who ordered her to come and the woman who told her to go. She lowered her brow over her dull, vacant eyes and blinked.
“I’m calling the police, Leon.”
That was Rodrigo, the accountant in the cube next to Ami’s. He held the receiver in his hand, the cord spiraling back to the cradle on his desk. Leon flashed a savage snarl at him and yelled, “GO HOME!”
Rodrigo dropped the phone and made a beeline for the bank of elevators. Leon returned his attention to the women.
“Lisa, we’re going,” he said like he was talking to a child.
He started down the walkway and Lisa trotted after him. Ami leapt up and seized her by the arm. Lisa struggled to break from Ami’s grasp.
Leon sprinted back and clamped his hand down hard on Ami’s shoulder. He stared deeply into her eyes and said, “Don’t make me do it to you, Ami. Anyone but you.”
She paused momentarily, struggling with her own conscience. Then she let go. Leon snorted and snapped his fingers in Lisa’s face.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Together they disappeared around the corner. A second later, Ami heard the ding of the elevator and the swoosh of its doors opening up. Lisa made a mewing sound as the doors clattered shut again. Ami collapsed into her chair as a torrent of tears flowed down her cheeks.
20
The room cost forty dollars for the hour according to the faded sign on the bulletproof glass encasing the attendant, just above the stern warning that checkout time is 10 am and that means 10 am. Leon did not pay it. He did not have to—he didn’t have to do anything anymore.
After the glossy-eyed attendant passed the key through the slot, Leon took it and his companion around to the heavy steel door marked entrance. The red plastic heart attached to the key indicated room 109. It was at the far end of the hall, right next to a chortling air unit in a frosted glass window.
He unlocked the door and opened it, and he was immediately assaulted by the worst reek of heavy cigarette funk he’d suffered since he left his father’s house. He jerked a thumb at the dark, odorous room and said, “After you.”
Lisa obliged, stepping slowly and deliberately inside. Leon followed, flipping the light switch on his way. A large, tasseled lampshade—yellow from nicotine—blinked on. The bulb underneath was blood red. Leon smirked and let out a quiet grunt.
“Just like in the movies,” he said.
Lisa looked to him and smiled. She had not said a word since they left the office. Instead, she mostly just smiled dumbly and waited for Leon to tell her what to do. Noting this, he instructed her to sit down on the bed, which she did while he shut the door and threw the bolt.
“Tell me something,” he said, not really looking at her. “What do you think of me?”
“You’re nice,” Lisa said.
“Nice.”
Leon wandered over to a ratty green felt chair by the shuttered windows and sat down. He noticed the nails in the chipped wood of the sill—there was no opening it to escape the stale funk.
“You think I’m good looking?” he asked.
Lisa lazily shook her head and answered, “No.”
“Just nice.”
“You’re nice,” she said.
“No wonder I’ve always finished last,” Leon said with a chuckle. “Well, no more of that for me. Go ahead. Take your clothes off.”
Lisa obeyed.
* * *
It was sloppy and awkward and lasted less than five minutes from the moment he lay down on top of her to the moment he shuddered and grunted and rolled over on the dull red bedspread. His breathing was heavy and his stomach muscles ached. Lisa lay still, staring up at the dusty ceiling, her face a blank slate—a mannequin. She still wore her pink ankle socks and a thin gold necklace that pooled like a coiled snake in the hollow of her clavicle. Her breath was shallow and even.
“Was it good for you?” Leon asked with a grin on his face.
Lisa said, “Not really.”
“Hmn.”
He spread out on his back, stretching his limbs and sucking in a breath that tasted like an ashtray. He wondered how many men had brought women to this room for this specific purpose over the years. The place was older than him, he knew. He guessed there must have been thousands of illicit screws in that room alone since the first one soiled the bed. Hundreds of thousands, maybe. And a great many of them had to have been the man’s first time. Leon drew a line in the air with his index finger, chalking up another one for the victory of the room.
Out in the hall, just outside the door, someone fell into a hacking cough that culminated with the person spitting, probably on the floor. This was the world east of the interstate, Leon knew. Even just across from the lake, on the other side of the wood, he knew there were ramshackle hovels worse than Dane Honeycutt’s, crumbling housing projects and more package stores than groceries. The bad part of town. The part where the people who lived there languished while the people from the west side stopped in occasionally for drugs and sex. For such a comparatively small town, it certainly had a sizeable ghetto. Leon had never given it much thought before.
The cougher in the hall kept at it, so Leon said to Lisa, “Turn on the radio, would you?”
She reached over and turned the knob, and the ancient plastic box came to life, spouting a crackly tune about sailing. As the song went on, Leon realized that Lisa was wiggling her right foot to the melody. He lifted one eyebrow and watched her for a minute.
“Do you like this song?”
Lisa nodded, and the nodding turned into part of her little dance. Leon lifted the other eyebrow.
“Who sings it?” he asked.
“Christopher Cross.”
“Do you know the words?”
Without missing a beat, Lisa fell effortlessly into the lyrics, singing along in a soft voice. Leon listened to her sing for a short while, until the song ended and a spate of ads cut in, and then sat up against the wall.
“You’re not, you know, under my control, are you?”
She wrinkled her brow and glanced over at him.
“Control? What do you mean?”
“Do you remember leaving work?”
“Leaving…? Oh hell, are we supposed to be at work?”
“Jesus,” Leon said, pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. “Jesus Christ.”
“Leon,” Lisa said, turning over and lifting herself up. “I’m a little confused here. What’s going on?”
“We had sex.”
“I know we had sex. But what about before that? I mean, before we came here?”
“God, there are degrees, aren’t there?” he said to himself.
“You want to let me in on whatever the hell you’re talking about?”
“Depends on the person, on what they want, on how much they want or don’t want it…”
He slid off the edge of the bed and started pacing the room, keeping his hand to his face all the while. He felt like a sinus headache was coming on, though he knew better. He’d lost control, and with the loss of a subject the pain came back bit by bit.
“I’m serious, Leon,” Lisa said curtly. “I honestly can’t remember what I did before we were in the car together.”
“But the sex, Lisa—the sex! That was okay, wasn’t it? I mean, that was your choice. You wanted that, right?”
“Well you sure as shit didn’t rape me, if that’s what you mean.”
“And you’re not a vegetable, either! Jesus!”
“Goddamnit, Leon! What the hell is going on?”
“I controlled you, but only a little. Only enough to induce you to leave work. Everything else was entirely up to you, because you agreed with what I wanted. Like the less someone would want what I’d have them do, the more damage it does. And vice versa—like you, Lisa. I can’t force somebody to do what they’d do all on their own. I can’t make a fat guy eat a sundae he was already planning on eating. It’s only control if I change their behavior…”
“Do you always get this manic when you fuck?”
“Don’t know,” Leon said off-handedly. “First time.”
“Oh, great,” Lisa moaned.
“But it was your choice. I mean, you were okay with it, weren’t you?”
“Why do you keep saying that? What did you think this was?”
Leon laughed and rubbed his forehead.
“How do you think you got here? You don’t even remember.”
“I already said that…”
“I made you come here. Or at least I made you leave the office. After that, I don’t know. But the others—Ron and Andy, and dad! Fucking headcases, Lisa. I mean burned out, like comatose. Sure, I kept at them, but I must have really turned them around. They wanted to go north and I forced them back south. But you, you were going south all along, weren’t you?”
“I gotta be honest with you, Leon…you’re starting to freak me out.”
“All you needed was a little push,” he continued. “Not the huge shove I had to give all the others. It was the shove that put them over the edge, that turned them into…I don’t know, zombies, I guess. I never shoved you. How do you feel?”
“Like I’m talking to a psychopath.”
“No, I mean in your head. Do you feel all right? Normal?”
Lisa shrugged her shoulders.
“Normal enough.”
“Incredible,” Leon said.
“Well, considering the circumstances…”
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
Lisa laughed. “Was I supposed to?”
Leon paused, then raised his hand and said, “Hold on a second.”
He scampered for the door, unlocked the bolt and scurried out into the hall completely naked. Lisa drew the bedspread up over her to conceal her own nakedness and gawked at the open door. She could still hear the man hacking up his lungs, and then there were
footsteps padding up from the distance. The next thing she knew, Leon came bounding back into the room with a strange woman on his heels. Judging by her mode of attire, Lisa assumed her to be a working girl.
“Leon, what the fuck?” Lisa shouted. “I’m naked, here!”
“Never mind that,” he said with a dismissive hand gesture. “Check this out.”
Abruptly he seized the woman by her shoulders and yanked her forward, to the foot of the bed. The woman did not protest. Lisa could not help but notice the vacancy in her unfocused eyes.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Leon asked her.
“Jaclyn,” she said. “Jaclyn Foreman.”
She scrunched up her brow for a moment and then added, “I tell everyone it’s Susie, but it’s not.”
“Jaclyn,” Leon said. “Good.”
“No way, Leon,” Lisa said sharply. “You can do whatever you want with her, but count me out.”
He winced, thinking back to the orgy on the green and what a colossal misstep that had been. No, Leon had no intention of repeating that gargantuan error. Nothing sexual, nothing like that. But he needed something to make his point, something that would clearly demonstrate his power to Lisa.
“Jump up and down,” he offered lamely.
Naturally, Jaclyn did as she was told and bounced rapidly on the balls of her feet as though it was the most normal thing in the world. Lisa watched the prostitute jump, watched her breasts pop out of her halter-top in all their rose-tattooed glory, and frowned.
“What’s this shit?” she asked.
“Didn’t you see? I made her do that.”
“So?”
“So? So I just told a total stranger to jump up and down, and she fucking did it without a thought.”
“The Amazing Leon, ladies and gentlemen,” Lisa chided.
“It’s not a joke, damn it—stop that, now.” He touched Jaclyn’s shoulder and she stopped jumping. “I can control people, Lisa. I really can. I controlled you. I made you leave work.”
“So you’ve said.”
