Low Life (15 page)

She wrapped her arms around his neck.

He had forgotten all about Kate Wilhelm.

‘Hi,’ he said.

He shut the door behind him and put his back against it. Kate stood only a couple of feet away. He could smell soap on her skin and lotion and perfume. Her eyes had been
painted black, her lips red.

She dragged a finger across the scar on his face.

‘It really is sexy,’ she said.

‘Thank – thank you.’

Kate laughed.

‘You seem a little tense.’

She stepped to him until he could feel her breath on his neck, warm and wet.

She ran her hand down his chest. It made his skin tingle. This felt like a dream. The entire day did – it felt unreal and wrong and like a dream. But he knew it wasn’t.

Kate ran the flat of her palm over the front of Simon’s pants. He heard a small gasp escape his own throat and felt his heartbeat thumping in his chest.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You seem really tense down here.’

Simon shoved Kate’s skirt up around her waist and pulled down her panties, hearing them tear as he did. There was nothing intimate about what followed. He pushed her down
on the bed, licked his fingers and rubbed them over her mound, which was smooth and recently waxed or shaved. The scent was strong and erotic. He grabbed his penis at the base and put himself
inside her. She spasmed tight around him. He thrust as deep as he could, getting out everything he had in him, getting out all the frustration and fear and turmoil he was feeling inside. He ran the
palms of his hands over her breasts, unbuttoned her blouse and reached inside. Her nipples were hard and she groaned. He pinched them. She reached up and scratched at his chest. He put a thumb into
her mouth and she sucked on it. She grabbed his hips and pulled him even deeper into her, again and again and again.

In three minutes it was over.

Afterwards Simon put his pants back on. He felt guilty about what had happened. He felt guilty about everything. A constant cloud of guilt hung over him.

He sat on the couch, Kate beside him, and played with his Zippo lighter, lighting it and snuffing the flame repeatedly.

‘How long have we known each other?’

‘What?’

‘How long have we known each other?’ he asked again.

‘Since last spring.’

Simon nodded.

‘What’s bothering you?’ Kate asked.

‘My conscience.’

Kate smiled, licked her lips.

‘Simon,’ she said, ‘nobody has a clear conscience – except maybe sociopaths. Everybody’s done something they’d rather not have done.’

He nodded. But then he found himself very bothered by what she had just said. For a long moment he couldn’t figure out what it was. He replayed the sentence in his head and examined each
word – something wasn’t right about what she had said – and then, after a minute, he knew.

‘Why did you just call me Simon?’

‘I didn’t.’ She got to her feet. ‘Anyway, I should get out of here before your wife comes home. That’s a kind of awkwardness I’d rather not
experience.’

She looked down at herself, smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt, and headed for the door.

Before she reached it – her arm outstretched, extended toward the knob – Simon got to his feet and cut her off, blocking her path.

‘You did. You called me Simon. I heard you. What do you know?’

Kate’s eyes went scared.

‘This isn’t funny.’

‘I’m not laughing. What do you know?’

‘Jeremy, please.’

‘Does the phrase “walk the mile” mean anything to you?’

She took a step back.

‘My God, you are crazy.’

‘Who said I’m crazy?’

‘Just let me go.’

Simon grabbed a handful of Kate’s hair and pulled her toward him.

‘You’re in on it, aren’t you?
Aren’t
you?’

Kate pried his hand away from her hair, the fear suddenly gone from her eyes, replaced by anger, and once she was free of his grip she pulled back and slapped him hard across the face.

‘What the hell is the matter with you?’

Simon touched his fingers to his cheek and felt the skin rising in a welt and he felt moisture at the corner of his mouth. When he looked at his fingers he saw blood on them. He wiped the blood
off onto his pants.

‘Someone is trying to ruin me. I think it might be Zurasky and I think you’re in on it. It’s not gonna work.’

‘I don’t know who Zurasky is.’

‘A lie.’

‘Jeremy, I—’

‘It’s not gonna work.’

‘I think it is working, Jeremy. You’re acting crazy. You’re not acting like yourself at all.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘What?’

‘I’m not acting like myself. First you call me by another name and then you suggest – what?’

‘I don’t know—’

‘What is this?’

‘What is what?’

‘Who’s doing this to me?’

‘Would you please just let me go? I don’t – I don’t—’

The fear had returned. Tears were welling in her eyes. It was Simon’s day for making people’s eyes well with tears.

‘You don’t
what
?’

‘I just want to go. You need help and I don’t know what to do and I just want to go.’

‘You called me Simon.’ But as time passed he was becoming less and less sure of that. Perhaps he had misheard. Hadn’t he thought for a moment that Professor Ullman had
threatened to rip out his heart? Hadn’t he misheard that? He thought so – unless Professor Ullman was in on it too.

‘I didn’t, Jeremy. I don’t even know anyone
named
Simon. Can I please just go?’

He licked his lips, wiped at the corners of his mouth. After a moment he stepped aside.

He followed her outside, and as she walked across the street to her yellow 1967 Chevy Nova he padded barefoot down the steps and watched her. His hands were in his pockets. The
night air was cool and the thin sliver of the crescent moon hung like a fish-hook in the sky. Simon wondered what God was fishing for. If there was a God.

If God existed, and if He paid any attention, He was surely laughing at those who would drop to their knees and pray for the sick and the injured and the poor whom He had sickened and hurt and
dropped into squalor to begin with. Laughing and dangling that fish-hook moon, making sure He caught anyone who thought they might escape and throwing them back down to Earth to face what they had
coming.

Maybe Jesus had gotten away, floated into the heavens, but nobody else would. And Simon suspected Jesus’s ascent was just a story that people told themselves anyway, a story passed down
through the generations that made it possible for people to live with the world they saw around them: at least escape was possible. But Simon knew something about spheres. And even if you managed
to get off this planet, even if you found a way to get up and away from this low life, to float toward the heavens, there was that fish-hook moon there to catch you before you’d made a full
escape.

He tongued the inside of his mouth, plucked one of the hairs out, and watched Kate get into her car.

The engine sputtered to life and the headlights shot yellow beams out into the street. Then the driver’s side window rolled down and Kate turned to look at him.

‘One thing before I go.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You might want to ask yourself why you can’t remember anything that happened during the month of May last year.’

She then put the car into gear and drove away before Simon could respond.

He stood in the bathroom. The light was off, but enough splashed in from the master bedroom for him to see clearly his reflection in the mirror. He tongued the inside of his
cheek and looked at himself. He touched his cheek where Kate had slapped him. The welt had already gone down. He ran his finger down the scar on his cheek.

What was he missing? There was something big and obvious that he wasn’t seeing, and if he could just make himself see it, all of this would make some kind of sense. What was he missing? He
had to figure it out. This was turning him into a monster. Everywhere he looked he saw conspiracy; in every face someone conspiring against him. Every voice he heard was someone whispering about
him. Every siren was a cop coming to collect him.

But that didn’t make sense. Everyone couldn’t be plotting against him.

Kate had mentioned last May and she was right. It was blank. How could she know that? What did she know about last May that he didn’t? What had been erased from his mind? What happened
last May?

It had been in April – seventeen or so months ago – that he had last seen Zurasky. Was there a connection there, a reason that after the blank month he had stopped seeing his
psychiatrist? Had Zurasky done something to him in that blank space?

What was he missing?

He had only wanted to know why Shackleford broke into his apartment, why Shackleford had wanted him dead, and instead he was tangled up in something that grew more and more confusing. He felt
like a man trying to untie a knot whose every movement only tangled things further.

What was he missing?

Goddamn it – what the fuck was he missing?

‘Figure it out, you stupid fuck!’

He punched his reflection and glass shattered around him, breaking him into hundreds of sharp pieces. Shards fell into the basin and onto the tile floor. The noise of the glass falling was
incredibly loud in his ears – and then it was over and there was only silence.

He lay in bed looking up at the ceiling. It was smooth and white. The only light in the room came in through the window from the fish-hook moon.

His right hand stung and blood oozed from a network of slices in his flesh like veins of color in a marble surface. It poured onto the white comforter and spread there, blooming like a flower,
as the fabric absorbed it.

Then a sound came from the living room, the sound of a key sliding into a lock, a lock tumbling, a door opening. A brief cool breeze blew through the house. The door was closed, the deadbolt
twisted, the breeze stilled. Simon listened, waiting to hear who it was. He thought he knew. He was waiting for their call: It’s the police. We have a warrant for the arrest of—

‘Jeremy?’

It was Samantha. Of course. The police wouldn’t have a key. Her footsteps thudded across the hardwood floor, nearing him and growing louder.

The door was pushed open, squeaked open, brushed across the carpet, making a sound like leaves in a breeze, and a silhouette stood in the doorway, like a backlit gunman in an old Western movie
who’s just shoved through the batwings.

‘Jeremy?’

‘I’m in bed.’

Simon sat up, putting his back against the headboard.

‘Do you mind if I turn on the light?’

‘Go ahead. How was the rest of the night?’

‘It was good. Too much talking. That Marlene Biskind turned out to be very nice. We exchanged information. I think we’re gonna have coffee tomorrow.’

The overhead light clicked on.

Samantha kicked off her shoes.

‘It was fun,’ she said, ‘but I’m glad it’s over. Are you feeling better?’

She looked at him for the first time since coming into the room. Her face blanched. Her mouth hung open and then snapped shut.

‘Oh my God.’

‘Is something the matter?’

‘Your hand.’

Simon lifted his hand up in front of his eyes and looked at it. It was gloved in blood, and the blood was running down his arm, tickling the thousands of blondish hairs beneath the sleeve of his
shirt, which was stained red.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I hurt myself.’

‘How?’

‘Broke the medicine cabinet. It was – ’ he closed his eyes to think and then opened them again – ‘it was confusing me.’

He sat on the edge of the bathtub. He was wearing slacks and a white shirt. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. Samantha sat on the bathtub beside him, carefully picking
shards of mirror from his flesh. Once she got the largest pieces out, she picked the tiny slivers from his hand with tweezers, and then wiped the blood away with cotton balls.

A shiver jerked through Simon’s body.

‘Hold still.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Are you cold?’

Simon nodded. ‘So your show went well?’

‘I told you it did. We sold out. I wasn’t expecting that at all.’ She went silent and continued wiping at his hand for a moment. Finally: ‘I want you to see Dr Zurasky
tomorrow.’

‘He’s not that kind of doctor. He can’t do anything for my hand.’

‘It’s not your hand I’m worried about.’

‘I don’t trust him.’

Samantha wrapped gauze around Simon’s hand. The bottom layers turned red with blood as more of it oozed from beneath his flesh. She continued wrapping his hand until the gauze was thick
enough that the blood didn’t soak through it.

‘I know that, Jeremy,’ she said. ‘You never trust anyone when you get like this. But you need to see him.’

She taped the gauze into place.

‘I’m not going to see him. Not as a patient, anyway.’

‘What does that mean?’

Simon shook his head but said nothing else.

‘You need to see
someone.’

‘How can I see someone when I don’t know who can be trusted?’

Samantha let go of Simon’s hand. She sat staring for a moment, her eyes glazed over and far away. Her chin trembled. Then her body collapsed into itself as she let go of her posture
– her shoulders drooping, her chin nearly resting on her chest – and she breathed out heavily through her nostrils. Then she looked up at Simon. The emotion was gone from her eyes. Her
mouth was tight. She swallowed.

‘I don’t know if I can keep doing this, Jeremy,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep pretending you’re still the man I married. You’ve changed. I’m tired of
picking up the pieces. I’m tired of
having
to pick up the pieces. I’m just – I’m fucking tired.’

After Samantha fell asleep Simon crawled out of bed and slipped back into his clothes, overcoat included. He picked it up from the back of the couch, where Kate had tossed it
after pulling it off him, and put it on as he walked toward the door. He stepped out of the front door and into the night. He packed his cigarettes, slapping the packet against the back of his
hand, opened it, put it to his mouth, pinched a filter between his teeth, and pulled the box away. He lighted his cigarette. He inhaled deeply and walked out to the sidewalk. The street was quiet,
the world asleep all around him.