My Second Death (11 page)

I don’t think about this truth during my run.

After I finish the run and shower, I pad barefoot into my bedroom, rubbing my long wet hair in a towel. The windowpane flickers gold and crimson. It’s only when I go across the room and look out the window that I start to think about the truth. And the truth lunges at me and swallows me whole.

I tried this almost ten years ago. The living-on-my-own thing, I mean. It didn’t work out so well. I am thinking this while I sit with my elbows crooked around my knees looking out my bedroom window. The oil smears from myriad fingers pressed against the glass over the years collect light and fracture it like crystals. Red and blue and white and yellow, tiny Christmas lights dancing across the dark. The cop cars silenced the sirens a couple minutes ago but the ambulances are still there and blue uniforms move jerkily through the colored strobe lights. A silent, deadly disco dance.

The apartment door slams. Footsteps pound across the floorboards and my door bangs on its hinges. I look around.

Aidan is sucking in air hard, gripping the doorframe. He sags against the fulcrum of his fingers and the tips whiten. He leans his head back.

“I didn’t do it,” I say. I turn my head and look back out my window. My hair falls around my face and hangs over my bent arms and the twin humps of my pale knees.

“God,” he says when he gets his breath back.

“He didn’t have much to do with it either.”

Aidan comes inside the room. He is breathing hard.

I keep my eyes fixed on the glittering spectacle below. Billows of inky smoke from the wood frame house across the street. The stretcher has been shunted into the back of the ambulance. Along the street half-naked people wearing flimsy cotton pajamas or hastily thrown-on coats and boots stand ankle-deep in dirty snow, agog and salivating with curiosity.

A knot of cops is gathered around a clipboard. The pajama-clad voyeurs cluster around, heads nodding, shoulders hunched up around their ears in the cold. I guess the cops are collecting names, interviewing witnesses. One of the neighbors turns and points up at our apartment.

Shit.

Aidan says, “What — what happened?”

The sirens came. That’s what happened. I saw the reflected flares of firelight and smelled smoke when I got out of the shower. I went to the window and stood looking down at an inferno. Arson. An accelerated burn, oily tar-black smoke coiling into the air. Shattering glass. Cops came. Atonal screams as metal overheated, wood beams cracked.

My eyes dazzled. Flames licked hungrily at the night sky. The next thing I knew I was outside. Holding out my palms to the fire. Rags of flame against the dark canvas of the sky. People screaming, wailing. A girl in blue flannel pajama pants clutching a bottle, her pale hair flaring incendiary white. Gusts of flaming debris. Delicate moth wings of newspaper, veined red with flame, disintegrated suddenly into ash. Cordate shells of curled plaster. I stood in a melting puddle of pewter silt. The crackle and patter of falling rubble. The wooden house shrieked like a frail woman in the halcyon arms of a violent and insatiable god.

I say without turning my head, “A fire.”

“Yeah, I can see. There’s smoke everywhere, and debris and cops and — and why are you naked? Is that — is that ash in your hair? What’s — were you
down
there?”

When I stood at the window looking down at the fire, all I could imagine was the heat of the flames. A gold and vermillion bacchanal. I only wanted to get closer. I imagine it must have caused a stir. I didn’t notice at first. Until the cops came and someone tried to touch me. I remember the plasticky smell of the blanket the cop was trying to put around me. And I realized I was standing in a melting snowbank, naked, my skin flaring gold and crimson in the great light, my hair swirling in heated updrafts, a silvery dust of ash settling on my shoulders and upturned hands.

So I pushed away the blankets and the cops and went back across the street and upstairs to the apartment, and I shut and locked the door and went into my bedroom. I stood at the window while the fire hoses stanched the living flame. The reek of smoke drifting over the street.

They found the body. With their masks and breathing apparatus they climbed through charred timber and glinting shards of glass. Sullen flares of red and orange amid the wreckage. They came out with a stretcher carrying a zippered plastic bag over a lumpy shape the size of a small child or a charcoaled corpse, a body reduced to its concentrate.

“Why were you down there?” Aidan asks. “Why did you go down there without — um.” He stops talking.

Someone pounds at the apartment door.

Aidan turns his head and looks behind him.

My lips are dry and stick together. “That’ll be the cops.”

Aidan rubs his palms over his dark bristling scalp. “Oh, God. Okay. Are you going to talk to them? Mickey?”

“Because it was beautiful,” I say.

There is a silence. Another bang at the door and the muted sound of a strident voice.

“What? What was beautiful? The fire?”

I rest my forehead against my knees. Aidan’s feet echo on the floorboards. I hear the metal click of the lock turning. They come in with cold air and smells, smoke mostly, but other human odors too, like deodorant and Mexican food. The clatter of hard-soled shoes in the hallway outside my bedroom door.

“ — need to speak with her — some connection to what went down.”

Aidan says something about shock and the fire. The cop says he wants to know if I saw who started it. If I saw anyone run out of the house. If that is why I went running outside.

“I think she just went down to watch the fire,” Aidan says.

“She must’ve seen something or she knows something.” The cop lowers his voice. “She came running out like a — well, she just comes tearing out, you know, stark naked, and she runs up to the house and she’s standing there — ”

“Like a conductor,” I say, lifting my head. I can feel the grit caked in my sweaty skin. “Like Beethoven conducting his ninth symphony. Deaf enough to hear.”

“What?” One of the cops is a woman.

“I’m crazy,” I say. “Not guilty. You’re wasting your time.”

Aidan is behind the cops. He says, “She’s not crazy, exactly. But she’s, you know, telling the truth. She has some mental — ”

“Some mental
what
?” says one of the cops. “Problems? Like starting fires?”

“
No
,” Aidan says. “I mean — not like that.”

“And who are you?”

“The roommate,” Aidan says.

“Name?”

“Aidan,” he says. “Devorecek.”

“Spell that.”

“D-e-v — ”

The other cop says, “What sort of mental problems does your girlfriend have?”

“
Room
mate,” Aidan says. “We just live — it doesn’t matter. She’s not a pyro. It’s, like, emotional issues. Not criminal issues.”

“So why’d she run to the house? She connected to the body we found inside? Emotionally?”

“No, it’s not like that,” Aidan says. “Wait, what body? I thought that place was empty.”

The guy cop goes closer to Aidan. Aidan licks his lips nervously.

Strands of hair are glued to the sweat on my face. I comb them away with my fingertips.

I climb off the bed and stand up. The cops twist their heads around and stare at me. The male cop’s eyes shift and he backs up a step. But even the female cop is staring.

I hold my arms out, palms cupped up like when I stood in front of the flames. “Is this why you came up here? You want to see this side too? The back wasn’t enough?”

The female cop says, “All right, that’s not funny.” She turns to the male cop. “Wait outside.”

I walk up to her until I’m only inches away. I can smell her, a scent that’s half smoke, half perfume, a sweet, acrid stench. Saliva fills my mouth. I swallow hard, trying not to gag. I can feel the coldness in her uniform, the heat of her skin.

“Step back,” she says. Her hand goes to her hip. “Step
back
.”

“I thought you wanted this. You came
look
ing.” My breath stirs the fine hairs by her ear. “Can you see me well enough now?”

“Step back,” says the male cop. I look over at him. He has pulled his gun, a stubby weapon with an oddly shaped square barrel. A Taser. He holds it like a real gun, forefinger on the trigger, the other hand bracing the fist.

I wonder what it would feel like to be shot with that much voltage. If I would feel the pain as much as any normal person would. My heartbeat picks up. I move over to him. My skin is cold. His eyes struggle not to look down at me, to see my nipples hardened by the cold. “Step
away
,” he says.

“I don’t kill people.” I go close to him. The skin on his neck is leathery, the color of old bologna, moist and plucked-looking. “I don’t. I didn’t kill him. Okay? That wasn’t me.”

“Step back or I will restrain you,” he says. “Do you understand me?”

He’s talking loudly like he thinks I’m partially deaf in addition to being mentally deficient.

“I’m not stupid,” I say. “And I’m not an
arsonist
.”

“Leave her alone,” Aidan says.

The male cop looks at me and then he lowers his gun.

My heartbeat slows. The room is cold and gray, evening shadows creeping across the floorboards. The shattering gold light is gone now.

I take three steps back. “I didn’t start the fires.”

“Put some clothes on.”

“I didn’t.”

“Just tell us why you were down there.”

I lick my lips. My tongue is sticky. “To watch.” It comes out a whisper.

The cops look at me. And then the male cop says, “Well, that was pretty stupid. Wasn’t it.”

“I guess so.”

I wonder who hated him so much, the mutilated body in the house. Or who loved him. The knife peeling skin from its frame like a painter stripping a canvas.

They ask my name.

I look at the floor and hug my elbows against my ribs. The smell of the fluid on my hands. His hair on my knuckles as I brush it aside and touch — God, it’s gone. The corpse is burnt, shuttled away in a blue medical examiner’s van. My body feels weightless.

I hear Aidan telling them my name. My parents’ phone number. The male cop has already turned for the door.

The female cop says, “All right. We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.” Her voice lowers. “You may want to reconsider housing options, potential roommate situations. Can’t be that pricey around here.” She snaps her book shut. Aidan follows her out. I hear their voices in the hall and then the snick of the outer door.

He comes back, his footsteps slow. He comes in, leans his shoulder blades against the doorjamb, and puts his hands on his head again, his gesture of helplessness. He slides down the frame, legs splayed out, and says, “Oh, my
God
.”

I blink and lower my hands. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you
think
is wrong,” he says. “You just flashed half of Akron and I — I think I just talked two cops out of arresting you for murder and arson.”

And then he bursts out laughing. He starts laughing so hard he gets hiccups.

I laugh too. The sound startles me and then suddenly we’re both laughing. My stomach quivers and I feel sick and I can’t stop laughing.

I gulp and get quiet first.

I look at my roommate. He’s inside my room, sitting on my floor, cackling like a demented loon. I think this is the closest I’ve ever been to him. Close enough to see the dark prickle of beard on his jaw, the shadowed indentation on his upper lip. Underneath the delicate scent of turpentine his skin smells palely of Ivory soap. Turpentine is an accelerant. But he doesn’t smell like smoke. His skin smells clean.

He stops smiling. A delicate pink stains his cheekbones. “Geez, Mickey,” he says. “You could maybe get some clothes on sometime soon.”

I cross my arms over my breasts and frown at him. “Why? I thought you were gay.”

He opens his mouth. “You did?”

“You came over to the house with my brother. You said you
knew
him.”

“I do — I mean, I
just
know him. We just talked at that poetry reading and somehow my art came up and he wanted to see if I was any good. He came by the studio a couple days later and we got talking. He asked if he could see some of my older stuff, and it’s here at the apartment so I invited him over. That’s when he told me about you.”

I laugh.

He squints at me. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing. It’s just, he wanted to see your art?
He
was stalking you.”

“Come on, Mickey. That’s not stalking. Look, I knew what was going on, okay? I told him I wasn’t interested and he was cool. And anyway, what does it matter to you?”

“It matters because I thought you were — I thought that it wouldn’t matter to you. My being a girl.” I shrug. “Or being crazy. Or naked. But I guess it does.”

“No, no,” he says. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You deserved to know. But it doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t. You being a girl. That’s fine.” He laughs again but it sounds harsh, uncomfortable. He avoids my eyes and his are all shiny. “But the naked isn’t — I mean, I could be Elton John — okay?”

This is another thing I don’t understand: how crazy is sexy to some people. Most people who meet me randomly realize I’m likely to go off at the slightest provocation, cussing, throwing things, slamming doors. They call me a bitch and they avoid me. But sometimes my brother or someone will introduce me to a person and explain that I have mental problems. And then when I lose it and fuck up I see this look — this glassy-eyed look — the same look all the pajama-clad gawkers had, gazing at the fire. A ravenous, rapt look.

I turn around suddenly. My stomach is still trying to heave the turkey sandwich I ate earlier, from being so close to those cops. I recognize the feeling tingling behind my eyes, in my chest. I’m angry. Pissed off.
Furious
.

I yank open my closet, pull out a pair of jeans and step into them.

“I don’t start fires.” I grab a T-shirt and tug it over my head, pull it down. “I don’t randomly attack and kill people, like some out-of-control — I mean, some idiot starts a fire and burns an already-dead corpse and I’m the crazy one. Some stupid bitch cuts her legs for fucking
fun
, and
I’m
the crazy one.”

“Mickey, come on, I don’t think that, okay? If you mean your roommate, about the cutting thing, listen, I’m sorry about that and all, but it wasn’t really your fault. Dave told me about her and I know — ”