they say the owl was a baker's daughter: four existential noirs

by KUBOA

  I had my purchases pinned under an arm, almost set them down to read a magazine when the man, a bag twined around his wrist, approached from the end of the aisle, hand still covering his mouth.

  I narrowed my eyes around him, he seeming distracted by something back over his shoulder, but when he turned his head his eyes locked on mine, hardened, hand around his mouth.

  I turned my head down, started to shoulder past. As I did, now outright glaring at me, he moved his hand to the side, just for a second, like unlatching then relatching the bolt of a door, revealing a mouth with lips stitched shut, like curling in closed on themselves but plump, sore seeming. He jutted his features, like he would be barring teeth if it were possible.

  ***

  The weather had gotten worse in the ten minutes I’d been shopping, wind tightened to short fists thudding into each other, blabbering slosh falling like it was being poured out of low windows.

  Not wanting to stand in the shop’s vestibule, I quickly dashed to the awning of a building that had been a restaurant before going out of business two month prior, slapped my cigarettes in my palm, got one going, swallowed the first breath in along with a twist of phlegm and the thin saliva that slipped from the insides of my cheeks.

  It was no good, I could already feel my bowels loosening. Cigarettes, coffee, the cheap noodles I had to heat up, the microwaveable hamburgers, the peanut butter and saltless crackers—everything I had in the apartment I might ingest would be hideous with how I was feeling.

  I turned back in the direction of the shop, thinking to just get medicine that would put me to sleep, even if it had nothing to do with my particular condition. I wasn’t going to go to the doctor, it was nothing so bad, I’d be best off if I just dosed myself, disappeared.

  I made the jog back, paused to try to get my bearings, to read the hanging signs listing what was in each aisle, then moved in the direction of the rear corner, just having the feeling it was where medicine would be kept.

  I came up with a bottle of ibuprofen tablets and a bottle of liquid medicine for cold symptoms. A few paces toward the cashier, I noticed the liquid said Non-drowsy, retreated, took up several bottles, inspecting them all over, before settling on one. Approaching the cashier, I found I was chuckling, a little bit too loud, realizing I’d been looking for a bottle to actually say Drowsy on it.

  ***

  Thinking to get a drop on things, I was already working the plastic from the cap of the cold medicine bottle, was almost back under the awning when I noticed there was another person standing there, his back against the sooty door of the building front, reading from a film magazine curled open, held in one hand, the other hand clamping over his mouth as I neared.

  I didn’t slow my approach, but did grit my teeth, gave thought to making a dash for my apartment, but that would mean turning back in the direction I’d come from or else crossing the street, right there, then back in the direction of my apartment—either way it would be an obvious recoil.

  I came to a dawdle under the awning, plastic removed from bottle, thumb and forefinger toying with the cap. I ducked the bottle to my coat pocket, retrieving my cigarettes, getting one lit, bouncing on my toes. A few drags in, thinking I’d been there long enough to justify a move, I playacted a look up and down the way, realizing it didn’t matter which way I went, anymore, it would appear to the man I’d just used the awning for cover, hoping the weather would break, and now that I realized the weather wasn’t going to let up I was just going to let myself get soaked. I even thought about whispering a forlorn curse word or two to myself, for effect.

  In my little pantomime, I happened to catch the man’s eye. He tilted his chin as though indicating he wanted my attention, sort of made a tapping in my direction, a pecking with his nose. I gave a shaper look to him, but his eyes seemed soft, no hint of the earlier aggression. It occurred to me he might be asking for a cigarette, as illogical as it seemed to me, so I held the one I was smoking up, like communicating with a child, saw the rise of his shoulders as he chuckled, pecked his nose, seeming to focus on my shoulder.

  I looked down, suddenly jolting at the sight of a large insect, no idea which kind, batted at it like an imbecile, so shocked I’d no idea if I’d gotten rid of it. The man, magazine hand sort of waving in little arcs, tottered back and forth a bit, then brought his foot down dead onto the pavement, turned his torso all the way to the side with a twisting of his weight down onto the thing.

  ***

  The crawl of the insect was still all over me as I got across the street, stepped up onto the curb, getting out the cold medicine to have a slug of it, just to feel closer to rid of the whole night, closer to bleary, roiling sleep.

  I was soaked even from just the two minutes I’d been out of the awning, figured I could stand in the a hot shower while the medicine did its trick.

  I saw that the man was crossing the street, as well, casually, holding his magazine over head. I took another swallow of medicine, bottle back to my pocket, tightened up and got to my building door.

  The humid stale of the lobby was repulsive and mingled with the unsettling coating of the medicine down my throat, around my in my gut. I became queasy, lightheaded, set my bag on the ledge by the mailboxes, grabbed my thighs, massaging them, leaned forward, spitting the wet that had collected a mouthful, the floor soaking wet already, the damp just absorbing the saliva as soon as it struck.

  Not standing straight, I reached for my bag and moved toward the elevator, hitting the summon button.

  The man, hand clamped over his mouth, entered the lobby, shook his magazine, made an annoyed face with one eye hard shut, tossed the ruined thing in the general direction of the trash and then, shaking his sleeves of thick moisture, the thit-thit of this against the wall bullet hard, he approached, stood idle, coughing inside of his throat, giving three quick hisses of air out his nose, his eyes closing through the length of these sounds.

  ***

  I hit the button for the twelfth floor as soon as I entered, lumped to the back wall, the handrail at an odd height, digging into the base of my back. The man entered a moment after me, and he just turned, stood facing the closing door, clasping both hands politely behind his back, the doors not properly reflecting enough to show his mouth, he was just a smear of colour that didn’t quite seem to match what he wore, a blot under the vague shadows cast all over by the elevator lights.

  I glared at the twelve button, the square of it dull white-yellow, looked at the man’s hands and noticed that two of them, the little and ring fingers of his left hand, were bound together by an adhesive bandage.

  My stomach unsettled enough that I could hardly concentrate on the thought, I wondered if he was following me. There was no reason he would be, and so I swallowed a thick of phlegm, the taste of it stained of cigarette, looked at the side of his face as best as I could, at his balding scalp, the spotting to the skin at the base of his head, likely all over his shoulders, down his back.

  I’d never seen him before. I was certain of that.

  He had a sweet odour to him, feminine, or else the elevator did, every smell tucked under a general sponge of cold humidity.

  It could have been me who smelled nice, for all that mattered, my shirt taking in the smell of my deodorant, my sweating into it diffusing the scent.

  The man did not look like he smelled nice. The bandage over his fingers was white, but a definite tinge of dull grey to it, brown from use, unchanged for a few days.

  ***

  He stepped out through the door to the twelfth floor, very casually, and I made a point to linger a moment, see what he would do, rather expecting him to mill until he could see which way I went. But he turned in the direction of my apartment, not hesitation, and didn’t seem to notice at all that I, slowly, began down the corridor in the opposite direction.

  I wanted him to go into his apartment first. I needed him to. It was ridiculous, but I could not bear th
e thought of him knowing where I lived.

  I heard a key going into a door lock, so gave a casual turn, touching to the door I happened to have stopped in front of, fingers tentatively to the knob, saw the man open a door, not even a clipped look toward me, the door shut behind him.

  I swallowed heavily.

  It really seemed he’d gone into my apartment. I tried not to blink, not to lose sight, even for an instant, of the last spot I’d seen him in, could rather make out a difference to the air, there, while the sound of the door latching, bolting, chain to place clacked quite clear in the empty hall.

  Not my door.

  Still a good way off, I realized he’d gone into the door to the right of the enclosed bulb affixed to the wall, mine was the door to the left.

  I had to stop moving to tense against a violent urge to defecate, clenched my fists, grinding one into the side of my face. I made the last of the way to my door with face winced, involuntary little moans from my throat clenching.

  I fumbled for my key, dropping my bag to do so, rather kicking it into the apartment as I got the door open, gave a last look, my eyes a tongue over it, to the front of the door to apartment thirteen, the apartment I knew that man didn’t live in.

  ***

  Every time I sat down to the toilet, nothing would issue, it was as though I dried up somehow just when I knew I’d have relief. Then every time I stood, I could feel the writhe of things inside of me, the slup and pressure down of waste.

  Groaning, twisting my head at the end of my taut neck, I seriously gave consideration to defecating while standing in the shower, just letting myself empty.

  In a lull, seated almost sidewise over the bowl, my shoulder touching the edge of the sink counter, my feet splayed, toes of the left one touching the rise of the tub side, I really tried to remember about apartment thirteen.

  I felt absolutely certain that woman called Ginette lived there, that she lived right next to me. But it was possible she lived two doors down, perhaps, perhaps that she lived in apartment nine.

  No.

  It was next door. Thirteen. I’d said Hello, made that pointless little comment about the fresh paint that afternoon while she’d been leaving to do her laundry and I’d waited at my door to get a glimpse of her through the peephole, when she came back. She’d been wearing flimsy lounge clothes and I’d waited more than twenty minutes to see her, again through the door.

  Next door.

  No middle aged, decrepit bastard with his mouth stitched shut lived there. With his hand bandaged up from God knows what.

  A cut of cramp slipped around both sets of my ribs and I strained, again, leaning forward.

  Chin touching my knee, I whined that I had no idea who lived there, really. She could’ve moved out. They both could live there. He could be feeding her cat.

  In another brief respite, breathing heavy, I chuckled that he could be eating her cat, smiling when I realized he actually couldn’t be.

  My stomach knotted back up, salty tasting liquid, sour, filling my mouth. Because I didn’t want to swallow, I drooled onto the floor, onto the top of my shoe, feeling pale, light, heavy, empty and far too full all at once.

  ***

  I removed my pants when I stood to flush, still tight along my side, the rest of me feeling saggy, bulbous, like the skin of my lower back was hanging from me, a sack filled with wet grass.

  Hoping it might get the whole thing over with, I lit a cigarette, smoking it as I opened the refrigerator, taking out a bottle of water—water from the tap, the bottle already having been refilled dozens of times—and I stared at the clock on my oven while it changed to eleven forty-nine from eleven forty-eight, from eleven forty-nine to eleven fifty.

  The man had used a key to get in the door, I muttered, kind of pointedly, scoffing my lips at the imaginary self I was making the remark to. It’s getting on toward midnight and he just went to the drugstore.

  I shrugged, it dawning on me that I was actually still thinking about this, that I was earnestly unsettled.

  The man lived there. He lived with Ginette. I’d just never seen him. There are hundreds of people in the building I never see, have never seen once, people on my own floor and in fact I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen her.

  It was just that his mouth was stitched shut. And this made sense, it was nothing out of the ordinary to be put off by that. Or it was the mouth combined with the fact that the man had all but hissed at me, that the man walked around with his hand covering his mouth.

  Why not wear a mask?

  Maybe he did. Or a scarf. Maybe he’d just forgotten it, left in a hurry, didn’t want to bother about going back up the elevator.

  What had he purchased at the drug store?

  A magazine.

  What else? When he’d been at the counter, hadn’t he had a bag, already? When he hissed at me, hadn’t he had a bag?

  I shook my face, the sensation muddy, warm, longer than it should’ve been.

  ***

  I couldn’t find the bottle of cold medicine in my coat pocket. It wasn’t in the kitchen, the bathroom, I even crawled around on the floor a moment, laid there, cheek to the carpet, could have passed out. Then I figured the bottle must’ve been down in the lobby or on the floor of the elevator. I’d paid for it and even if I didn’t down it all right now, I’d want some later on, didn’t think I’d want to leave, again. I tugged on my pants, didn’t bother with shoes or socks, grabbed my keys from my coat and left the apartment.

  The hall light was oppressive, I felt I was on my way to the snack machine at some hotel, the way hotel corridor’s at night always seem forceful, trying to thumb your eyes shut, to dry you to empty sleep.

  I saw the bottle on the floor by the mailboxes, stuck my tongue out, wagging it triumphantly, treated myself to a mouthful, which I almost retched from, as the elevator doors closed me in and I felt the lift of the floor beneath me.

  Getting back to my door, my head began to vice, a rather sharp pain, so much so that I let my forehead tip against the my apartment door, massaged my neck, the top of my spine with both hands. While I did, my focus all a blur, I heard the sound of a door latch opening, a bolt undone.

  I turned to see the man with the stitched mouth backing out of Ginette’s apartment. I reached hand to pocket for my key, had it in the door, the knob turned, not hurrying, not wanting to seem I cared. I took a casual glance in the man’s direction, saw him with a laundry hamper he’d set down, looking at me.

  I turned my head away, pushed open my door, closed it shut behind me. I put my eye to the peephole and waited to see him pass.

  Inside of ten seconds, his image filled the opening. He paused, his face turning, looking curiously at the outside of my door, eyes twitching up once while he brought the back of the hand to the underside of the nose.

  Then, the sight of him moved away.

  ***

  I drifted in oblongs after another swallow of the medicine, one I didn’t even think about and vaguely regretted as I ran tap water into my cupped hands, swished it in my mouth, spat it.

  I looked at my movies stacked haphazard, mostly on the floor, leaned against the side of the television stand and the wall, knew there was nothing I’d want to watch.

  But I sat to the sofa, anyway, puffing my cheeks, tapping air out in pointless four or five note melodies, generally mumbling, letting my eyes close.

  It was twelve fifteen in the morning, now. Not so late. Not so late to be doing your girlfriend’s laundry.

  But Ginette couldn’t have been more than five years older than me and this guy, he was at least twenty years older than me, than her.

  It was peculiar. Because I’d seen the laundry, it was not his clothes.

  It’s one thing to be staying there, I said, not opening my eyes, feeling a pressure begin in my gut I hoped would subdue itself without incident, but it made no sense he’d be doin
g her laundry.

  I’d drifted asleep for a few minutes. It’d felt much longer. I got disoriented, whatever my conversation with myself had morphed into while unconscious lingering around me, but nothing I could focus on.

  I was pasty with the sweat of my illness and the medicine in me, the hissing warm of sleep through me, so got undressed, got a popsicle from the freezer, stood with the coolant making my skin tight, making it irritating to breathe in through my nose.

  I got a thermometer I was surprised to discover I still owned out of one of the kitchen drawers, sat on the counter with it under my tongue, wondering if what I’d eaten of the popsicle would ruin the reading.

  It was one hundred two degrees point something, something less than five.

  Dully, I heard the door to thirteen close, heard only the clack of the main lock a bump through the wall, though I was certain the bolt and chain and doorknob went, as well.

  ***

  There was no reason to think there’d be anyone in the corridor, but I kept my eye to the peephole awhile, tilting a bit this way, that way, seeing how far down I could see in either direction.

  I chuckled then turned my glance down, thinking to pick up one of my socks from where I’d tossed it after taking it off, but recoiled from the sight of a thick insect, moving along the carpet slowly, like it was teetering itself side to side with great effort, it’s legs to weak to lift it’s mass.

  I rubbed my hands all over myself.

  It was the same bug. I was sure of it.

  I growled, sneering at the wall in the general direction of the apartment thirteen, gave it an obscene gesture, then quickly reverted my gaze to the insect.

  -You’re supposed to be dead, I said, pointing, but not extending my arm, not even wanting to be that close to it.