Entropy (27 page)

Suddenly, I the unmistakable crack of a gunshot jolted me from my thoughts. The bus started swerving under heavy breaking knocking me sideways into my seat. Once the bus had stopped, I pulled myself back onto my seat and looked up to see that one of the passengers had drawn a handgun and had the barrel pressed up against the face of another one of the passengers. Closing my eyes, I instinctively dropped my head and sighed. After a few moments, I looked up and stared straight in front of me at the windshield wipers moving against the glass, noticing how easily it displaced the obstructing water, only to have it return again moments later, resolute and persistent. It was as if God had symbolized frustration and failure itself right in front of me.

***

The leaves and branches on the trees separated in the wind, allowing fractions of decaying light to break through
.
Soon it would be dark and then no one would be able to clearly see us. The gunman had removed the lights inside the bus. Looking out, I could see armed men moving into position behind parked cars on the street. The road in either direction was blocked. People living in the houses within the vicinity of the crime scene would have either been evacuated, or told to remain inside with their doors locked.

When the first shot was fired, the gunman seemed authoritative and in control. However, after only an hour or so had passed, he appeared uneasy. This made me nervous because if the gunman's apprehension led to another shot being fired, there was no way the police would let him off of the bus alive. If a sniper could not take him out, the police would storm the bus. The risk of “collateral damage” would be preferred to the risk of the gunman shooting hostages one by one.

I looked out towards the police road block and saw a police officer directing a postal carrier to pull his vehicle back. The divorce papers Noemi's lawyer had drawn up would have to wait like everyone else. She would have returned by now. Perhaps she was taking out her key and entering our empty house right now? Would she even search around to see if I was there?

The gunman had been sitting towards the front of the bus. I wasn't sure if he could even hear what was going on around us. There was an earpiece tucked into his right ear and it looked as if he had his eyes fully closed. Suddenly he awkwardly lurched towards his coat, scattering some of his papers. After a seemingly desperate search, he found a small plastic bottle of prescription medication and I watched him struggle to open the bottle and retrieve a pill. Sweat dripped from his fingertips of his single hand. Once he placed a pill in his mouth, he visibly relaxed. I decided to take my chance, got up from my seat and walked slowly and deliberately towards the gunman. Raising his gun towards me he shouted at me to go back and sit down.

I did as I was told, for now.

Who was I?

William McCoy, arsonist, domestic terrorist, murderer. Currently listed as a most wanted man in the United States by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sought for questioning after the discovery of a woman's body in a field not more than four miles from the site of an arson-related blaze at a furniture warehouse. Current whereabouts unknown.

It started to rain more heavily as another storm approached. However, no thunder could be heard, there were only brief periods of electric discharge slicing through the dark gray skies. I sat in that damp field for over an hour before I contacted my handler and told him what had happened, and where he could find the woman. I looked over at her inert body and watched the blood seeping from the gunshot wound in her chest. The warm rain soothed my chemical burn which resembled the salmon color of Noemi's lips. I thought about her and what lie I would have to tell her to explain what had happened.

Through the sound of the falling rain, I could hear the consistent murmuring of the electrical stanchions and power lines around me. It sounded loud though, like the noise of a hummingbird with a pituitary disorder. I dropped my gun into the grass and looked around. What light there was around me reflected off of the blade she had carried. I had left it there where she dropped it.

I stood up and was slipping away back through the narrow arms of the uncaring trees, when I heard the first sirens approaching the scene of the fire. Making my way in the opposite direction to the fire, it was unnerving how quiet it was, trudging through the solemn foliage. It was still fairly early and the streets were relatively quiet. I stood waiting for the next bus to stop. There was no shelter and the rain was still falling. However I didn't care how long I would have to wait.

The handler I called had said I should come in. But I had wanted to run. I could still see remnants of smoke a couple of miles away, invading the atmosphere with its rich, artificial blackness. Fire-fighters and the A.T.F. would be dousing hotspots and searching for a cause. I had let her burn everything. I looked down at the burn mark on my hand and pulled my sleeve down to try and hide it. I didn't want to attract unnecessary attention. The direct blow I had taken to my side and kidney was getting worse. But all I wanted to do was go home.

***

It was the first time in months that I had been there, leaning against the doorframe, watching Noemi sleep. I didn't even expect her to be there waiting for me to come back. Asking her to wait was all that I ever seemed to ask her to do. There were no lights on. I stepped into our living room, expecting her to have moved things around, and to have made changes. But the fact that she hadn't rearranged any of our furniture, or replaced photographs, burdened me with a heavy sense of culpability. Noemi was a woman of exceptionable grace and balance, but I had violated that and betrayed her love and unquestioning trust.

Our bedroom window was slightly opened and rain had gathered on the sill. I wiped my hand across the water and brushed it against my shirt. I stared at the delicate bones in her ankle as it moved out from underneath the sheets. I should have woken her and nestled in beside her, and explained the unimpeachable truth of who I was. I had forgotten how beautiful she was! With pause, I reached out and gently brushed her leg with the back of my hand.

I closed the door to the bathroom behind me and switched on the light. Carefully, I stripped down and stood in front of the sink. With tired and sunken eyes I examined my body: the cauterized gashes; the deep, discolored bruise along my hip. The burn on my left hand and wrist was still raw despite the fact that it has taken me several days of constant bus travel to get back home.

I opened the medicine cabinet and reached in, displacing a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the process. The plastic container bounced and echoed off the porcelain. I grabbed the bottle and twisted open the cap. Holding my hand over the sink I poured the alcohol over my wound. The sensation across my skin was cold, raw and agonizing. I reached into the pocket of the jeans on the floor and pulled out matches. I ripped one off and struck it across the thin strip, that dark dividing line between success and disappointment. The sulfur odor invaded my senses. I held the match to my hand, and watched the pale blue flame suddenly roll up my palm and fingers as the alcohol on my skin caught alight. I wanted it to burn for all eternity, as an act of penance.

Sadly though, the alcohol burned too quickly. There would be a scar. I was already covered with them: scars caused by love, by lies, by passion, by guilt, by hate. I pulled back the shower door and turned on the water. It collapsed around me, ripping the grease and ash in steady streams from my legs and hands. More than that I wanted it to dissect me, to strip away all of the biology where I had given that woman access.

I should have been utterly disgusted by what I had done. In contrast, as I leaned up against the ceramic tile, I thought about that woman more than I was comfortable with. I thought of that night in the hotel room after we set the first fire, when I pressed my fingertips firmly into the soft spot of skin along her throat. I remembered how I leaned in and licked her windpipe. I should have strangled her, but I wanted it to happen, I had desired everything about her. Dangerous and luring, she pulled at the buttons of the shirt I wore, and tore at the seams with wanton, violent abandon. Her lips pressed softly, but rapidly against my chest. I wanted desperately to close my eyes and remember who I really was. I had the chance. But I didn't resist.

Instead, I noticed the indirect movement of her pelvis, the fullness of her lips against my deficient and weak flesh. She took my hand and maneuvered it between her thighs, and my fingertips penetrated her warm, moist insides. I held my breath as she pulled me closer. With heedless and perilous abandon, she and I suffocated one another's idealism that night. It wasn't just the circumstances involved, and the feeling of our bodies conjoined, colliding, as our perspiration soaked into the thin threads of the sheets. It wasn't just the firmness of her breasts or the hardness of the developed muscles across her abdomen. It was the hard, brutal verity that I wanted. And rather than feeling guilt afterwards, I was wanting more of her instability and more of the sweet taste of the dark area between her legs only hours after she had gone.

The hot water from the shower streamed across my back and shoulders. I knew there were imperfections there, imprints made by her rough nails from the cusp of my neck to the axis of my backside. The thought of what happened that night made my cock harden. I wanted absolution. Not McCoy or McDonnally, but I did. The door to the bathroom opened, and I knew it was Noemi coming in. Embarrassed at being aroused in this condition, I turned around and pushed deeper into the corner. I could hear her voice behind me as she stood outside against the door. I fought against asking her to leave.

“I called so many times looking for you. No one would tell me anything,” she said.

“We've been through this. No one will talk to you about where I am. They can't,” I said.

“All this time I thought you were never coming back. I thought you were dead,” she said.

“It would put me in danger if people knew who I was or where I was,” I insisted.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“No,” I said, looking over my shoulder, wounded briefly by her insinuations, even though I knew that I didn't possess the right to feel offended.

“Tell me what it is that you do exactly,” she said. “
Please.
”

“This isn't the time,” I said.

“When is it going to be? I don't ever want to put you in danger, but I'm in danger every time I sit here, worrying about you,” she said.

“I know. All I can say is that I'm sorry,” I said.

“I need you to say something else.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say anything to me. Say everything to me. I don't care what it is,” she pleaded.

“I love you. I love you so much that without you I would lose sight of who I really am. It's all I have the strength to say right now,” I said. When I responded she slid aside the door and embraced me. I didn't stop her. She was wearing an unassuming piece of lingerie. The water merged with the pale blue material and quickly soaked it. I could feel her breasts, as her body meshed with mine. When I winced she retreated, and noticed the burns and the utter degradation of my body.

“Oh my God! What happened to you?” she asked.

“It doesn't matter,” I said.

“I need to know,” she pleaded.

“It's okay,” I said, subdued.

“Look at you. It's
not
okay. Stop trying to keep me at a distance. Please tell me what happened,” she said, the water cascading along her curves. Despite being in that isolated, compartmentalized space, so close to one another's susceptibility and weaknesses, she and I were separated by the vastness of an ocean.

“I don't know what you do. Not really. I just know that I am trying to understand what keeps you away from me. I wake up in the morning, so fucking angry that I am unable talk to you about the simplest of things. It doesn't really matter what it is. You listen to me. No one else really ever has. I go out shopping to try find a dress that I could wear when I see you again, and I see people who we know and they always ask how you are or where you are. And I don't have any answers. So I lie. It makes me hate you so much for a quick, fleeting second, having to do that. It's not who I am. And then I come home to this pathetic, lonely silence that I am always immersed in.

I then stand in front of the mirror, sort through my clothes to find my sexiest bra, draw my hair to the side over my shoulder, and slide into the dress that I bought. It's the color that you said I looked so … what …
lissome
in? Yet all those things you said to me vanish as I wait for you to come up behind me, and take me away from all this detachment. Everything is so vacant here so I leave and go out to dinner all dressed up and alone. I sit outside because it's cool and calm. I look for you in the people on the street, even though I know you're not going to be there. The waiter feels sorry for me. I can see it in his eyes when he pours me a glass of red wine. I don't even care that he can probably see my breasts in that dress. I want him to touch me, to ask me to stand up, and to take me right there outside, in the peaceful breeze. The hard truth is that I want another man, any man, a stranger to fuck me so that I can just feel something, and not feel like I am wasting away. And that very thought makes me angry and hate myself because I don't want to think about us like that,” she said. “I miss you so much,” she admitted.

I turned around and ran my hands lightly through her hair. There was a sadness about her. Noemi watched the water cascade across my chest and fall to the floor. Her fingertips reached out hesitantly then drifted cautiously, hoping to rediscover me again. I couldn't hide the fact that I desperately wanted her to touch me. When she dropped to her knees and moved her lips over me, I sobbed.

***

The light rain still came through the window and dripped onto the floor. I was naked in our bedroom with Noemi slumped over my legs asleep. Her body scarcely rose when she breathed. Those were the things that made her beautiful: the passive, seemingly unimportant movements that she manufactured; the unintentional seductiveness in the way that her hair fell across her face. A little over an hour before we had made love. It was intense and vehement, our bodies reaching out and discovering each other all over again. Nevertheless, there was a sense of indifference in our passion.