Giving Up (15 page)

technically
happen, but they won't, at least not to him, so when he's walking with a stranger who he doesn't trust and may even be trying to con him out of four hundred dollars, he never suspects that the man has something much worse in mind, though it's completely feasible that the stranger's attempt to rip him off was only the first move in a more elaborate and sinister plot. The trick was to get James thinking that the
worst possible scenario
was that the stranger was lying to him about getting his car towed, when what the stranger might actually have been doing was sizing James up, figuring out whether he was a suitable victim or not. While James was distracted by the issue of four hundred dollars the stranger was thinking about how he was going to follow him back to his apartment and then torture and kill him and his wife. ‘That's crazy,' James thinks as he stands completely still against the wall. And besides, that sort of thing doesn't happen nearly as much as we think it does. It's only because it's so gruesome and terrifying that we end up reading about this sort of thing. The proportion of people who die from being tortured by a total stranger is so tiny that you're probably more likely to get hit by a falling piano. We read about a couple who, while hiking across a foreign country, is slaughtered in their tent, the wife gang-raped and the husband brutally disfigured, and we think to ourselves, ‘Good God! How awful. . . .' Then we read about someone who came from obscurity and became so rich and famous that they changed the shape of the world we live in, and we think to ourselves. ‘Jesus Christ. That's amazing!' But we never think as we're reading about these horrible crimes that something similar might be in store for us. We never think, ‘I suppose it's only a matter of time before my wife and I are murdered in the most extreme and unspeakable way.' But plenty of people say to themselves, ‘Well, it's only a matter of time before I'm so rich and famous that I won't even be recognizable to myself.' The belief that if he kept going down to the basement (even if while he was down there he never got any work done, and on the rare occasion that he did occupy himself it was to undo the work of preceding weeks and months) and just put enough time in, regardless of his deficiencies of natural ability or acquired skill, he would eventually finish his life's work and create something of lasting value, somehow existed side by side with the belief that as long as he never did anything out of the ordinary he didn't have to worry about being one of those people you read or hear about and say to yourself, ‘That's awful.' Except that, in the first case, he didn't actually believe that he had enough talent and skill to accomplish his goal, and that even if he had
all the time in the world
there was no way he'd ever complete his life's work, and despite all of this, he
still
has faith that somehow he will pull off something extraordinary and literally one of a kind, the sort of thing that only happens once every couple of centuries. Whereas, in the second case, he knows that even though it is statistically rare for someone to be tortured and killed, or to win the lottery, it is nevertheless something that happens all the time, and that these sorts of things (unlike creating or accomplishing a work of lasting value) are completely random and by definition can happen to anyone – it doesn't matter if you are normal because
that is who these things happen to
, someone has to be terrorized and killed, someone has to win the jackpot, these things have happened before, they will happen again, and they will continue to happen as long as there are people around to be tortured and killed, and even if you try to lower the odds by staying home or avoiding public transit, etc., it's still entirely possible that you will be tortured and killed in your own home. Even though it should have, it never crossed his mind (until now) that he might not have been dealing with a con man at all (at least not in the popular sense of the term), that he may in fact be a cold-blooded murderer, and that he was only pretending to con him out of four hundred dollars in order to keep him off balance and size him up. In the same way that someone who dies suddenly one night from a brain aneurysm comes home from work thinking they've got a stress headache, takes a couple Tylenol and goes to sleep, oblivious to what's coming (even though in hindsight it should have been obvious that instead of suffering from an ordinary headache they were dying from an extraordinary and statistically rare, but in another sense altogether ordinary brain aneurysm, and if they had only recognized what was really happening they may have gotten to the hospital in time to save their life, but instead condemned themselves to death by taking Tylenol and going to sleep) – in the same way, James did everything possible to make himself the ideal murder candidate. When the stranger first hailed him in the street James should have looked the other way and kept walking, and when the stranger started talking to him he should have pretended that he couldn't hear him. If he'd only indicated that he wasn't open to being approached or spoken to by a stranger – that, like most people, he was hostile to this sort of encounter – then the stranger would've decided that to try to open him up and gain his trust and then follow him home to murder him and his wife would be much too difficult, if not impossible. James could have said, ‘No thanks,' or ‘Not interested,' or even ‘Go fuck yourself,' or he could have shook his head ‘no' and kept on walking. His first reaction is always to say ‘no,' to turn things down, to deny. If a friend asks him out for a drink, or invites Mary and him over for dinner, he has to fight the initial reflex of making up an excuse. An opportunity at work comes up and he has to force himself to apply, and if they ever did offer him a promotion he'd probably pass on it. All of this is a way of saying ‘no' to life, of shutting things down so he's only doing the bare minimum, this way nothing can touch him, and because he has to devote so much of his life to his life's work, this saying ‘no' to life is a way of making sure he'll have the time and energy to accomplish his goal. But every once in a while he is overcome with a desire to say ‘yes' to life, and this, he thinks, is why he'd been open to the approach of a stranger, even though everything about the way that he was approached told James that the stranger wanted something and that he might be dangerous, or at least annoying. Because he is always turning things down or shutting them out he can sometimes become suddenly desperate to say ‘yes' to life, and for life to say ‘yes' back. This is what made him reckless, and it was why he was willing to hear what the stranger had to say. ‘Maybe he really needs my help?' he had thought. This was how he ended up distracted by what he considered to be the problem of these sorts of encounters, which was whether to believe what the stranger was telling him, and not by the possibility that the con man might be a serious threat to his life, and not just the metaphorical life that James wanted to say ‘yes' to. If he hadn't been so preoccupied with his own response then he may have had a completely different take on the encounter, he may have noticed something about the way the stranger was acting that would've indicated that he was actually a violent murderer, but instead he interpreted everything the stranger did or said only in the context of whether he was telling the truth about the money order. He had been in despair over whether the stranger was a con man when he should have been in despair over whether the stranger was a homicidal maniac, and even though these forms of despair were in some ways equal, the second form was much much worse, and he felt ashamed for only experiencing it once the doorbell started ringing. When he looks over at Mary he sees that her eyes are wide and he wonders if the reason she looks so apprehensive and frightened is because she can somehow sense what he's thinking. ‘Who could it be?' she says, but before he can think of something to say she asks, ‘Do you think it's the cops?' This question stuns him, because initially he sees it as confirmation that she knows everything that happened with the con man. Her fear that the police were at the door is similar to his fear that the con man followed him home, and so even though it is completely insane for him to think it, there is a moment when he feels like Mary is
reading his mind
. But then he realizes that she's talking about the cat incident. ‘I know it's completely insane,' she whispers, ‘but just when the doorbell rang I had a vision that it was the police here about the cat.' And just as she says this, the doorbell rings again. They stare at each other with the same bulging eyes and for a moment they stand there, hardly breathing. James is having a mild panic attack as he desperately tries to convince himself that he wasn't followed, while Mary, although certain that she is being completely irrational, is convinced that somehow
everybody knows what happened
, and that whoever it is on the other side of the door has come to tell her that they saw what she did. She mouths the words ‘what do we do?' and James holds his finger to his lips, shushing her when she hasn't even made a sound. He motions for her to follow him into the kitchen and then pulls her up next to him where he is standing in front of the sink. They stare at the light from the hallway that is reaching across the kitchen floor, waiting to see if a shadow will pass over it and start to stretch across the threshold, as if the person (or persons) on the other side of the door might let themselves in and make their way towards them. The doorbell rings again and James flinches and grabs hold of Mary's arm, obviously afraid that she'll lose her nerve and decide to answer the door. He pulls her closer to him and shuffles along the counter so that eventually they are huddled in the space between the wall and the fridge. Mary pulls free and shoots him a look to let him know that he has nothing to worry about, that she is just as determined as he is to wait out this doorbell onslaught, no matter how long it takes. Despite how terrified he is that the stranger has come for them and that in a few moments they might be murdered in the same gruesome fashion that often captures the popular imagination and makes the rounds with all the major news media, he is moved by their silent pact and the way that they are hiding like a couple of fugitives waiting for the secret police to pass them by, or like a couple of kids who wander too far from home and get stuck in a storm, forced to wait it out, clutching each other and shuddering in the corner of an abandoned barn or under the wind-lashed branches of a massive tree. All of a sudden he wants to tell her about the stranger but the doorbell sounds again. Immediately the giddiness they were feeling is swept away and they stare intensely at each other, and wait for the echo of the chime to fade. While Mary is still terrified, a creeping sense of annoyance starts to come over her. ‘If it was the police,' she thinks, ‘they would've knocked by now, or something.' Whoever is at the door, however insistent they are being, they're also being polite, allowing for a long interval before pressing the doorbell each time. They clearly know we're home,' she thinks, ‘or they think we're home – why else would they keep ringing? – but they're still being respectful about how late it is.' The doorbell sounds reticent, as if the person ringing it isn't sure of the address, or of what they are going to say if someone answers the door. Mary's annoyance turns to anger as she thinks about this shy, polite person ringing their doorbell at midnight on a Thursday. ‘What the fuck do they want?' she says to herself. ‘Can't they tell that even if we're home, we're not going to answer the door?' She no longer thinks that the person at the front door has anything to do with the cat incident. ‘It's just some drunk idiot,' she thinks, ‘who got lost and thinks they're at their friend's place, or their girlfriend's.' It occasionally happens in their neighborhood. There's a university nearby, so sometimes one of the drunk students will get confused, knocking on the doors of apartments that they mistakenly believe to be those of their friends, or friends of friends, or their boyfriends, or maybe someone they met earlier in the evening who played a mean trick and gave them a bogus address. ‘I can't fucking believe these kids,' she thinks, and then, all at once she decides to answer the door and confront the drunk student or students who were ringing their doorbell in the middle of the night. As she turns towards the hallway, James grabs her so fiercely that she is overcome with fear all over again. He looks at her with total panic in his eyes and she wonders if he knows something she doesn't. ‘What is it?' she mouths silently, but he holds his finger to his lips and shoots her a look as if she's been shouting at the top of her voice. They hold this position – Mary staring at James questioningly while he looks back with a crazed and panicked look in his eyes – but after what must've been at least five minutes of complete silence it is obvious that whoever has been ringing the doorbell has stopped. Mary asks, sarcastically, if it's safe to talk, but James holds up his hand to silence her and then disappears down the hallway. He comes back and nods and tells her it's safe and she rolls her eyes and then asks him if he's going to tell her what's going on. ‘What do you mean?' he says. ‘You were being paranoid too. Just as much as me.' ‘Yeah, but I know why I'm freaked out. I just bounced a cat off our kitchen table, that then ran out of our apartment, probably with its brains leaking out of its nose,' she is whisper-yelling (more yell than whisper), ‘so I know why I'm freaking out, and even though it doesn't make any sense, and is probably only 'cause I feel guilty, I thought that maybe it was someone who saw the cat come though our window. Oh, God,' she gasps and grabs James's hand. ‘What if it was the owner?' It is suddenly so clear to her that she is literally amazed that it wasn't the first thing she thought of. Obviously the cat escaped, or maybe it's just that he never stays out for long or strays very far from his home, so the owner is going around the neighborhood looking for it. Why else would somebody be ringing people's doorbells in the middle of the night? ‘We should have answered the door,' she says. ‘Why didn't we answer the door?' she looks at James with suspicion. ‘What is going on?' ‘Nothing,' James says. ‘Nothing is going on. I was just thinking about what you said about it being the owner, which, no offense, is even more unlikely than the cops coming to our door. Even if it wasn't a stray, and chances are that it was, then it's not like the owner is going around ringing people's doorbells after the cat's only been gone for a short while. In fact,' he says, ‘chances are they don't even know it's missing. If there even is an owner, that is.' But he can tell that he's not being very convincing, and even if he were, Mary was past the point of being convinced. Besides, he would feel so much better if he just told her about the stranger. He is always keeping things from her, holding back, hiding and dissembling, and it would be such an enormous relief to just let go, like one of those movie villains who is hanging on for