they say the owl was a baker's daughter: four existential noirs, Page 3

They motioned that I should walk with them, the first officer keeping one hand on one of my arms, the second officer moving sideways in front of me. They walked me to the corridor with my accuser’s apartment.

  -The thing is, we’ve got a complaint against you from one of the tenants of the building.

  I kept saying I was sorry I was sorry I was sorry, that I should just get home.

  But they weren’t listening.

  The second officer walked down the corridor, knocked on my accuser’s door. It opened immediately, the fat slop standing there in lousy pajamas.

  I sank into myself. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I tried to think about getting the gun off of the officer, but couldn’t even bring myself to look down at it, fearing a shift of my eyes would be enough to set the situation off.

  They walked me to the elevator, talking the entire time, walked me through the lobby, asked for my identification, asked me to explain a few things, asked me if I needed a taxi home to which I said No and then they asked me if the address on my identification was correct, suggesting maybe I should catch a cab there.

  -You can’t afford a cab, tonight?

  I glanced up and down the sidewalk, nodding like an imbecile.

  -A cab, I finally got out. Sure. Yes, I’ll take a cab home.

  I apologized again while the officer made me sign my name to something, told me that I shouldn’t come back, that the man in the building didn’t want to be bothered.

  ***

  The heater on in the taxi sighed a kind of hush over the dim of the radio and my head lolled against the window, my body screwed, doubled over at a peculiar slump. I wondered why the driver kept the radio that low, if he could even hear it.

  It seemed far too soon that I was let off in front of my own apartment building. And it seemed there were too many people on the sidewalk, too many things happening.

  My head was soggy with alcohol.

  For a little while, I loitered near the entrance door, trying to get it right in my head where I was, what had been going on. The idea that I’d been sent home, ordered home, batted away like some bug gnawed at me. I disliked the sound of it. Sent. Shooed. But I couldn’t shake that it’s exactly what had happened.

  Did he want me in my apartment, in particular? Or did he just want me away? Did he just want to reinforce that he’d meant what he’d said, three days, early afternoon, early afternoon?

  I walked to the corner unit on the ground floor, found my key, opened the door slowly, cautiously, then felt an idiot, stepped in with as much arrogance, bravado, sense of home as I could manage.

  When the door shut, I felt unseen, closed off, no place. I removed most of my clothing, drank three glasses of water, listened to the sound of my refrigerator and the hiss of nothing else.

  For five minutes, sitting on the sofa, I was perfectly calm, relaxed, probably could’ve drifted off to sleep if the telephone hadn’t rung. I felt drained. Impossible to stand. My eyes widened and unfocused, pointed in the direction of the wall, the telephone ring sounding, sounding, sounding, sounding, sounding. Stopped. My voice on the machine, a beep, then a hush, nothing, a click, a beep, the silence of the room which had a grip now nauseating and perverse.

  There were eleven messages on my machine, all in the time since I’d last seen my accuser.

  No words. No message more than two seconds long of nothing.

  I knew it was him, but I played with thinking it could’ve been any number of other things. Telemarketers suddenly had my number. Someone had a wrong number, kept misdialing, getting my machine, more and more insistent to themselves that they were dialing correctly, that the girl or whoever it was they were after had gotten a friend to leave my answering machine message as a joke, a trick, some way of confusing them.

  ***

  In another hour, I was drenched in misery, trying to convince myself to sleep.

  The telephone had gone off three more times and I’d not had the courage to lift up the receiver once. Not even when the telephone wasn’t ringing, just to vent, just to blather aggression, threats, profanities at an empty line. I was too afraid that the moment I took the receiver up it would connect me to my accuser, like he’d been calling in just that instant, no time even for the ring to sound. I sat hissing whispers at my knees, the tops of my feet, tired long past exhaustion.

  Why these calls? To be sure I’d gotten home?

  That made no sense.

  To torture me, keep me awake?

  I’d already been broken, his little scratching stray, mewling outside his apartment door, ready to do anything, so why would he send me home just to needle me remotely?

  I was suddenly animate, agitated but brimming with more positive emotion.

  I’d called his bluff. It laid itself all out in front of me. He hadn’t called the police as some bizarre progression to get me to go along with whatever his game was, he didn’t need me to be in my apartment, he’d just gotten afraid.

  I clapped my hands, swimming through half formed thoughts to the kitchen where I drank from cupped hands at the faucet, then over to the bookshelf, reaching behind the second highest shelf for my bag of marijuana, two joints already rolled and waiting.

  He’d called the police to get rid of me, plain and simple. He didn’t want me outside his apartment, because he really had no control of me.

  These calls?

  Keeping tabs, but not for any reason other than he was worried that I’d doubled back, that I’d not been so scared after all, that I was on to him. He wanted me to break, take up the receiver, scream, illustrate how beaten I was, or else he wanted me to just pick up the receiver and slam it down in frustration, just to know I was here.

  The marijuana stung and I coughed, refusing to get myself a drink of water, taking three more quick drags even through the wheezing.

  I needed to sleep, to get calm and soft, needed to sleep so that I didn’t become too weak to think.

  He was just some slob, somebody who woke up one day to realize how he was less than his own filth, less than some dog’s shit. And then had stumbled on to me, thought to use me to vent his loathing, puff himself up with something other than his own lard, his waste, his pointlessness.

  I started on my second joint, laid cuddled to myself, mostly naked, on my sofa, the television going, some programme I’d recorded a few weeks ago and already had seen. I giggled and then pretended to giggle more than I was.

  ***

  Showering, trying to arouse myself but unable to, blaming the marijuana though marijuana usually had the opposite affect on me, I felt my thinking crumple, reduce to cinders that let off rank stabs.

  No.

  I didn’t want to think anymore, hated how I’d not fallen asleep and it was now practically daylight.

  No. No.

  I halfway toweled off, smacking myself as hard as I could in the face, mocking myself for always pulling back on the blow, called myself a cartoon, a make believe.

  Had I really believed I’d gotten the upper hand? Was I letting myself deteriorate this quickly? Letting myself detonate?

  I laughed, spit on the face of my reflection in the fogged bathroom glass. It was pathetic, but I was letting myself drain out the bottoms of my feet, dissolve, lose any sense of meaning, of preservation.

  -How did you get the upper hand? I asked, sarcastic, making chicken juts of my neck, walking the apartment in oblongs. How? Tell me how you managed it. Idiot. Explain the line of thinking to me.

  My eyes fell on the remainder of the last joint and I snarled, then rolled my eyes at myself, chiding, using the most insulting tones I could find in my head, told myself it was too late to lament little mistakes like smoking a joint, so I might as well finish it down.

  Had I really convinced myself I’d gotten out of his clutches by doing nothing, by my pounding on his door for twenty seconds and throwing up on his stairs, waiting around l
ike a starving mutt while he had a casual night with a friend and then went in to bed?

  Christ, I hadn’t done anything and was so desperate I was starting to think I’d already escaped.

  Why would I do that? So that when the trap sprung it could be sudden, it could be out from nothing, I’d not have to tense in anticipation, sick and heavier with every letter of every thought I groaned out?

  I started going through the kitchen drawers, pulling out anything sharp, knives, a potato peeler, prongs for corn on the cob, thumb tacks. I made a big pile before walking away from the lot, not even understanding what I’d been doing.

  Did I want a weapon? Was I looking for the implement of assassination I’d utilize to get out of this?

  I began to think I’d lost my mind already. I began to think about Gavin, dead dead dead dead dead dead Gavin. Began to talk to him, imaginary, to tell him there was no reason I’d needed to kill him but the conversation didn’t go that far.

  I didn’t care about Gavin. He was supposed to be gone.

  Or Claudia.

  What did she even look like, now? In the weeks I’d watched her, how many hair colors had she had?

  ***

  At some point, finally, I’d passed out on the floor by the television, my legs straddling tight one of the couch pillows, my head on my bundled up shirt.

  I woke, still quite high, not feeling rested, feeling panicked. I dressed clumsily and slow, breathing only out of my nose, breaths that whistled no matter if I snorted hard to clear whatever it might have been clogging my nostrils.

  I left my apartment at half past ten, the sun outside cold and tender, it hurt to walk in, smelled like snow but not a shiver of cloud showed.

  Purchasing coffee from a gas station, I made up my mind not to bother with calling out of my work shift. Things would either end badly, or I would get through and the hassle of trying to weasel back into my lousy job wouldn’t seem so bad. I needed other work, anyway.

  -I needed I needed, I muttered, downed my coffee in uncomfortable heaps, threw the cup away into a trash can by a crosswalk.

  It occurred to me I was thinking to walk back to his apartment, but I’d forgotten where it was. My head was nothing, I couldn’t think, the marijuana had a better hold on me than I’d thought.

  I couldn’t have forgotten. I’d made it a point to note where the place had been. Cross streets. Everything.

  Hadn’t I?

  I sat to a bench, a creaking, fake smile yawning across my face, and I tried to keep the feeling of tumbling inertia from distracting me.

  I’d been out. He’d been at the train station. Some movie theatre. We’d walked. Walked. I went into the bar. Had it been so quickly after the bar? No. Blocks and blocks. I could only picture the lobby, the stairs, the stale of the carpet in the corridor.

  I started to feel on the verge of tears, walking again, walking in the direction of the bar.

  It hadn’t been so far from there.

  I saw a clock in the window of a bank. Nearly noon. He’d be at work. He didn’t have the liberty I had, had a life waiting to be maintained, lived in. I had a husk waiting to crumple, could do anything at all, everything bringing the same consequence.

  Then, like there had never been confusion, like I’d remembered the name of some actor in a film that had slipped my mind briefly, I remembered exactly where he lived. I laughed, not hiding it, clapped my hands, looked at someone who happened to glance at my display, gave them a silly affirmative gesture, then waved them away though they were no longer looking.

  ***

  Having a fourth cigarette, looking at the flat of his building, I tried another attempt at rationalizing everything. With a little bit of distance from all that had happened, with the buffer of having been alone in my apartment, all of the events of the previous evening seemed more condensed. It was just something that had happened.

  What had happened?

  A man knew I’d killed Gavin. He decided to turn me in. But, before, he wanted something from me. He said that he didn’t, nothing specific, no blackmail, so maybe it was just torturing me that he wanted. Kicks. Self satisfaction.

  I’d given him too much credit, I thought, treated him like an apparition, treated him with reverence, as though he lived magically when it made as much sense that he just didn’t know what to do with me. He’d thought he had a nice little plan, but it overwhelmed him. He’d taken his chance, but had been afraid of confronting me. Coward. He’d copped out at the end, telephoned the police to scare me off. Christ, he’d probably telephoned me all those times wanting to call the whole thing off.

  I should just take a trip out of town a week, two weeks, wait and see.

  Except I couldn’t do that.

  No.

  I still was a mess.

  What was I thinking? Coward? Called me to say it was over? Then why not leave a message?

  And he’d let me follow him home.

  Why?

  He could’ve called the police from anyplace, any time. He was enormous, could’ve struck me down, rushed me, could’ve done anything.

  He was insane. Was inhuman.

  I shook my face and jogged up the stairs, slowed, got my breath back a bit, jogged up and was soon at the corridor end.

  I was the coward.

  -You can’t hide, I said to myself.

  I knew I was writhing, death agonies, wanted anything rather than to look at his bloated face on the plump glut of his neck fat, but I had to. Otherwise, this would just go on forever.

  Insane.

  No one tells someone they’re going to turn them over to the authorities and then calls it off over the telephone, calls and calls and leaves no message.

  I moved past the mat outside the old man’s door, steadied myself, gave a polite knock.

  Almost right away, five seconds perhaps, the door opened, a woman, middle aged, dressed for taking a day off stood in front of me.

  -I’m sorry I said, blinked, looked at the corridor.

  I was in front of the correct door. I felt nauseous.

  -I’m sorry, I repeated. I think I might have been given the wrong address.

  I fumbled that I was supposed to meet a man, quite plump, made a gesture of a rotund gut with my arms in front of me, snapped my fingers and said the word Mister a few times, like I was searching my memory.

  -What address are you looking for?

  I pretended not to register this. I didn’t even know the address of this building. I recalled the number on the door front, though, so just said Ten Eighty-eight.

  -They said it was apartment ten eighty-eight, right in this building.

  I glanced back at the old man’s mat, gauging the space from it to where I was, certain this was the door. The woman kept apologizing, supposed it might be a neighbor, but couldn’t think of who fit the description I’d given.

  ***

  I’d become accustomed so quickly to waiting in the stairwell, like a childhood bedroom or some bench I’d sit on everyday for months, smoking cigarettes after lunch.

  I wanted the woman to leave before I knocked on the old man’s door, but didn’t know why.

  Was I nervous she might leave while I was talking to him, see me, get involved, tell the old man I’d been bothering her as well, pretending to look for some fat man?

  But the old man definitely knew the fat man, so it was stupid.

  It was all stupid.

  The woman obviously knew him, as well. Or else he had a key to her apartment, unknown to her.

  I could call the police, have them back me up that the fat guy had been in there the previous night, had called them.

  And prove what? To what end?

  Added to which, the police would be upset to find me back, bothering people, wouldn’t humour me calling women in apartments crazy, conspirators in some game of threatening to turn me in
for some murder I’d committed.

  I knocked on the old man’s door, but no one answered.

  Dejected, frowning and numb, ears buzzing with a rattle like coins spun underwater, I walked down a few blocks, sat in a fast food restaurant, ordered something after five minutes just to avoid being bothered by any of the people who seemed to be paying no attention to me.

  The old man maybe had a key to her apartment?

  He was a neighbor, it made sense.

  So, the fat guy had asked could he borrow it to hide out for the night? Had gotten spooked I was still following him but didn’t want to just stay in the old guy’s room? Or what else? He used to be involved with her, still had a key, happened to know the old man and to throw me off the trail, had visited with him then ducked in to the woman’s apartment? But why would he call the police? How would he know she wouldn’t be back? Where had she been?

  It was senseless. I felt I was trying to reason with the rules to a card game invented by a six-year-old.

  Was it all just to screw with me, still?

  After all, I was the only one treating it as though there was some outcome other than the one stated at the beginning. I only felt any of this was unreasonable because I wanted it explained, I wanted to be allowed out of it by promising something. It was pointless to even confess myself, turn myself in if that was what this cretin wanted. If I did what he was going to do, either way, I’d be no better off.

  I finally stood up to go use the toilet, but only after honestly considering just wetting my pants, just sitting there, slumped over, urinating, staying put until it dried.

  ***

  So I rode on the metro, read from a newspaper someone had left folded, jammed between the seat and the window, kept my eyes solid to the text, the photos, the cartoons, especially when the compartment got nearly full, people sitting all around me.

  What was irritating me the most was how I couldn’t shake one certain thought. If I left, even if I was never caught, that would be it. Taking it as granted that the man could give evidence against me, that he went ahead with it, that I left town and somehow evaded the police, evaded them forever, that was all there would ever be for me. My name was gone, my money, any chance of ever reemerging as myself. I would be an identified murderer, a fugitive.