My Second Death (9 page)

“I don’t even know why I’m doing this,” I say. “I just — ”

“No, I get what you’re saying,” he says. “After the last time, you’re careful. That makes sense. But it’ll be fine. Do you want to stop by and see the apartment? See your room?”

“No,” I say. “I live in a fucking garage. I’m not picky.”

He starts to laugh. It’s a soft sound like water gurgling down a drain.

I wait until he stops laughing. “When should I move in?”

“Whenever you want,” he says. He breathes in a couple times, easing the laughter out of his voice. But his words sound stretched, broadened, like he’s still smiling. “I have class pretty much every day. Just tell me when you’re moving in and I’ll skip. I can help you. I’m stronger than I look.”

“So am I,” I say. “But you probably guessed that from my macho swearing. I think I’m going to move later this week. I’m busy tomorrow.”

“Oh,” he says. “Wow.” And he starts laughing again. I have no idea what I said that was funny this time. “This is pretty sudden. Kind of strange.”

I don’t say anything.

He says, “Strange in a good way. I’m pretty happy about this, Mickey. I think this is going to be fun.”

Fun. Jesus. I hang up the phone.

I am surprised to find that my shirt feels damp, that sweat sticks my hair to the back of my neck. My pulse feels steady but my body is producing adrenaline as if some atavistic part of my brain is already feeling the chill breath of some terrible fate.

After a few seconds, when I feel less flushed and sick, I get up and go inside.

My mother is in the kitchen with her laptop open, probably sharing recipes online or whatever she and her cyber ladyfriends do.

“I’m moving out,” I say.

Her head jerks up. She pushes the lid of her laptop closed and just sits there at the island. Then she says, “Oh — oh.” She smiles. “That’s really — that’s surprising. But, but it’s good. I’m really proud of you.”

I look at her.

If Jack the Ripper had lived in a garage instead of overcrowded London, if he had run eight miles a day in the rain and sleet and snow of northern Ohio, if he had gone for weeks at a time without interacting with another human being, no history book in the world would print his name.

I wonder if my mother has any idea what I am risking. She should, but then she works so hard to construct her mental fairytales about me, playing like I am a slightly difficult but fundamentally normal daughter.

I haven’t killed a man since I was ten, but my last roommate exited the apartment we shared with a gash in her thigh, blood gushing between her clenched fingers as the paramedics strapped her to a gurney. My ability to play the game is remarkable. I follow the rules, I strip away distractions, I live by the law with greater asceticism and fanaticism than Saint Anthony practiced in his Egyptian tomb. But as in any game I do lose forays from time to time, and with each loss the tension inside me grows. A slow erosion of willpower. The odds are good that I will end up in prison, my name splashed across CNN or, worse, indexed in the history books. I know my parents see what they want to see in me: a decade of calm, controlled behavior, an unpleasant but generally ordinary individual. They don’t know — I can’t let them know — that the best my parents can hope for me is that I die anonymous.

“Are you — are you
happy
? About this decision?” My mother is looking at me, a frown wrinkle between her eyebrows.

I don’t really understand what she means. The decision to move out or stay in my garage has nothing to do with happiness. But I suppose without the context of a cryptic Nietzsche quote, a corpse, and a mysterious hooded stranger with a walleye who keeps turning up, she has very little to work on in terms of deducing my motivation.

“Sure,” I say. “Definitely. Yes.”

The next Sunday I pack my books and clothes into cardboard boxes, duct-tape them shut, and load them into the passenger seat and capacious trunk of the Chevelle. The sky glows like a fire opal, cream lanced with sizzling gold and pink and blue. Frost sparkles over the slate roofs of houses.

For a second, I sit with my palms on the steering wheel, my boxes piled around me. Ready to drive away from my parents’ house.

My cell phone vibrates in my pocket. But I don’t pick it up. I know it’s Dave. I don’t know why, but he’s been weird about my decision to move out. At first he yelled and said that I had promised to move in with him whenever I was ready to move out. Which I never did, I’m sure of it. I don’t know why he was lying to me. He lies to everyone, but not to me. But then he called back and apologized and said he was just scared for my safety.

“It’s not a good place,” he’d said. “What about the neighborhood? It’s sketchy, is what it is.” He laughed and his voice got singsongy. “A cesspool of crime. Gang warfare. Genocide, even. Pedophilia. Incest. Mori
bund
ity.”

“That’s not a word.”

“I’m writing a poem. It’s about the word moribundity. Call the Oxford English Dictionary.”

“Jesus.”

“But I’m just — I just
care
about you. I care about my baby sister, all grown up and on her own but
still
. God. I mean what if something
bad
happens?”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Everything is going to be fine.”

The phone stops vibrating. I take a breath. And I put the car in gear. Say, not quite out loud, “Everything is going to be fine.”

But even I don’t believe that.

I drive through the city until I reach the glass and brick buildings of the university. Manicured sports fields and parking garages give way to cracked asphalt and pulpboard-windowed houses. Buicks with starred windshields hump the sidewalks and a kid with a basketball dives across the street in front of me. I have to step on the brakes hard.

When I pull up into the driveway by Aidan’s apartment, I look over my shoulder. In the light of day the condemned house’s roof sags in the center, concave with gravity. A house gravid with death. There are still no cop cars out front. I wonder why no one has reported the smell, but it’s cold enough that there aren’t many people just walking around outside. And you can’t smell it unless you’re inside the house.

I drag a basket of clothes out of the Chevelle and, balancing it on my hip, weave my way up to the unstained wooden staircase. One of the slats still has a pink width measurement inked into the grain. The stairs smell piney, raw, a lingering hint of sawdust and sap.

I pull the apartment key from my jacket pocket. Aidan stopped by to drop them off yesterday. I pretended I wasn’t home. He left them with my mother.

The door at the top of the steps opens on the kitchen. The kitchen floor is yellow and brown linoleum. The sink basin is streaked with white and yellow lime residue. There is a full-sized refrigerator and a small metal-legged table with two folding chairs. To the left is a twenty-something male’s version of a living room: flatscreen TV, hi-fi sound system, three racks of CDs and Blu-ray discs, and an aging mauve couch with yellow foam crumbling through the weave. On the far wall a large window framed by dirty white drapes looks down into the frost-rimed street below. A kid in a bright red insulated coat runs between parked cars, and a second kid with a hooded jacket rides by on a scooter. When I look left, I can see the taller brick buildings of the university and a fringe of bony tree branches and telephone wires. Straight ahead is the balding roof of the house in whose inner sanctum lies a half-skinned body.

I go down a narrow hallway opening off the living room. A door opens off the left and another off the right. The door on the right is half open. I push it in and see a large bed, rumpled sheets piled on top. The beige walls are covered with sketches and prints of faces, hands, clusters of fruit, city skylines.

I pull my head back and push in the second door. It opens on a bare room with a wooden floor, a window without curtains, a metal bed frame. Another door to the right. I push through it into a tiny bathroom with chipped green tiles.

There is a cat standing in the sink, licking water puddled around a soap dish.

I just stand there for a second and stare at the cat. I don’t know what to do with it, so, in case it’s Aidan’s and he doesn’t want it escaping, I just shut the bathroom door so it won’t escape.

Then I push my boxes into my bedroom and go back out into the kitchen. I look around for a trashcan and find one under the sink, two crumpled silver cans of Bud Light and a squashed carton of Chinese food leaking onto the bottom. I hunt around and find a bottle of Lysol spray. I spray down the sink and countertops and rub them with paper towels.

In the freezer I find a tissue-wrapped copper plate and a box of photographic negatives. In the silverware drawer are a box of matches, a set of paintbrushes, a can opener, and a corkscrew. I open the oven and there is a pizza box sitting on the middle rack. I pull it out. Dried, cold crusts and a round white plastic container of congealed garlic butter. Christ, he’s disgusting. But my brother Dave is a bit of a slob, too. At least Aidan doesn’t seem to be the sort who leaves his underwear lying around. I don’t understand how anyone can stand clutter. It feels — unnatural. Unhealthy. Like you’re shedding pieces of yourself in public.

I stuff the empty pizza box in the trash and pour half a bottle of vinegar in the stove, then dump in the remainder of a box of soda from one of the cupboards. White foam expands and crests.

After I strip-clean the kitchen I go back to the bedroom and climb over stacks of boxes. I open the bathroom door. The cat has brown and black tiger-striped fur and yellow-green eyes. It turns and looks up at me and its pink tongue curls around its thin pink nose. I hold out my hand. The cat thrusts its head up, arching into my palm. I pick the cat up. Its throat crackles, the vibrations translating into my ribcage and rattling my bones.

At my bedroom window I stand like Nero with the cat draped over my shoulder. The evening sun breaks through a shelf of clouds and catches the myriad cracks and smears on the pane and turns it to molten ore. A sheet of burning fire illuminating the grungy street. After standing at the window until I recognize the creeping muscular ache of obsession, I blink and turn away.

I sit cross-legged on my neatly-made bed with my laptop open in front of me. I have folded and hung all of my clothes and stacked my books on the shelves. When I shut the closet door, the bedroom is empty except for a bent reading lamp and the single bed. The windowpane fits crookedly in its wooden frame and consequently exhales cold air. I am huddled in a thick sweatshirt that says Alcatraz on the front. I think the sweatshirt used to be Dave’s.

I hear a noise through the bedroom wall, the apartment door opening. The jingle of keys. Double thuds as he kicks his shoes off.

It is quiet for a bit. Then I hear his footsteps in the hall. They pause in front of my door. And then retreat.

I figure he doesn’t know how to approach me, doesn’t want to startle the tiger in its cage. I should set the tone here. Establish the rules of conduct. I get up and go out into the living room.

He is on the couch, slouched so that his curved spine rests in the crack between the cushions, his neck propped up on a crushed pillow. His jeans are stained and there is a crumpled button-down shirt lying on the floor. The TV burbles quietly. He is cradling a can of beer on his bare stomach. The winter sun leaking through the window glitters like warped glass on his skin. He is thin but there are traces of muscle across his bare shoulders, his wasted-looking chest.

He turns his head when I come in.

“Hey, Mickey!” His smile stretches the skin under his eyes, pushes his eyebrows into flaring dark streaks. “I thought you were going to call before you moved in. But then I saw your car outside.”

“I parked in the back.” A narrow gravel alley beside the house leads to a communal lot between this house and a couple others, each also subdivided into apartments. Rather than paralleling on the street, I chose to park in back. The idea that I would worry about the safety of the neighborhood per se, as my brother fears, is patently ridiculous. But I do admit to some flutters of anxiety on the Chevelle’s account.

“Yeah. But it’s pretty recognizable, even for a junker.”

For a second I don’t know what he means. And then, thinking about the gravel lot out back, I understand and a blinding rage seizes me.

The lot, with its zoological array of rusting-out behemoths, looks like a cross-section of the death of the American auto industry. The Chevelle is the second oldest vehicle in the gravel lot, seconded only by a 1970 pea-green Buick station wagon so ugly it looks like a renegade prop from a low-budget Stephen King film.

After a long silence, I say, “It’s pretty recognizable.”

“Yeah.” He just keeps smiling, his eyes wrinkled to slits. I don’t know what he’s enjoying so much.

“It’s a matte-black restored 1970s muscle car,” I say. “So yes, it’s recog
niz
able. What are you, some kind of vehicular philistine?”

The smile falters at this. He scrunches his nose and rubs his forehead. “I guess I don’t know much about cars.”

“And you called it a junker.”

“I just meant — ”

“And put a fucking shirt on. I didn’t sign on for any randy Art Students Gone Wild experimental living project.”

He drops his hand and laughs. It’s a surprised and happy sound. “Geez,” he says. “Is this all about your car? I’ll never say anything bad about it ever again, cross my heart. And I’m sorry about the shirt.” He reaches for the shirt and shrugs into it, buttoning it halfway. “I got paint all over myself today.” The cat sidles around the corner of the hall and minces into the room. It twines through my legs, drapes its tail across my ankles.

Aidan notices and with the hand holding the beer motions to the cat. “I forgot to tell you about the cat. It’s not mine. My old roommate left it. We can chuck it out if you want.”

“I don’t mind it.”

He watches me. Then he turns his attention back to the TV, lifts the remote and turns up the volume. He takes a drink and when he lowers the beer a yellow liquid runs around the lid. I can smell it from the hallway, a pungent, bready smell.

“Your brother said you didn’t like animals.”

“I like them okay.”

“So it’s just people.”

I nod.

He grins again. His eyebrows tilt upward at the edges when he smiles, an odd muscular contraction that makes his face demonic. “It’s okay,” he says. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

I don’t know what he means.

But I’m not here just to play happy roommates.

“That house across the street,” I say.

He takes another sip and glances up. Drinking could be a delaying mechanism, but he looks barely interested. “Which one?”

“That house with the yellow tape. The condemned house.”

“Oh, yeah?” He grins. “I think it’s a
crack
house.”

I don’t say anything.

He frowns. “It’s okay,” he says. “I mean, since I’ve been here there hasn’t been much crime. I think it was, you know, condemned a while ago.”

“Oh good,” I say. “For a minute there I was concerned for my safety.” He’s not taking any bait at all. Fine. I can play that game, too. “I’m going to the store now. To get food. Do you need me to get you anything?”

He waves the beer at me. “Nah, I’m good. Thanks.”

“I’m going to try here,” I say. I am almost surprised to hear myself say it. “I’ll pay my rent on time. I’m responsible that way, with numbers and schedules and stuff. I like cleaning, I like the smell of bleach and all, so I’ll clean the kitchen, but you’re going to have to keep your own shit picked up at least. And I don’t go shopping unless I have to, so don’t expect me to play housewife and buy you food or make you meals and don’t expect me to talk to you all the time or whatever.”

“No,” he says.

“And if you have parties I’ll lock myself in my room and open the window but if they stink up the place I might throw stuff at them and start screaming cuss words or something.”

His mouth twitches but he doesn’t say anything, just watches me.

“I’m not some nutjob who’s never lived on her own. You don’t have to worry about, you know, anything weird like that. I have zero social skills but I won’t
do
anything.”

He still doesn’t say anything.

“I didn’t kill my last roommate.”

The laugh-light flickers out in his eyes. He straightens up. “I know. You didn’t mean to hurt — ”

“The only guy I ever killed — ”

“I
know
.” He looks at me. He’s not smiling. “I won’t ever do that sort of thing. Okay? I’m not like that. Your bedroom is yours. I won’t go in it. I don’t cut myself and I certainly don’t mo
lest
people. Promise.”

I shrug. “Okay. That’s okay, then.”

He nods. “Got it. And you don’t touch my stuff. The film in the freezer stays in the freezer. And don’t eat my food, but you can drink the beer if you want. And you can clean the kitchen and living room but don’t go in my room, okay?”

“I hate beer.”

“Do you smoke?”

I shake my head.

“Because I sometimes smoke.”

“That’s okay. I like that smell better than what you smell like now.”

He looks at me and then smiles again. “We’ll be okay,” he says.

I don’t know how to respond. If Aidan is my corpse artist he is too subtle to let me read it in his face. And anyhow I am terrible at reading faces.

At night, after the apartment falls into silence and Aidan’s husky breathing comes from the bedroom across from mine, I slide my feet into my sneakers and go out, holding my palm against the kitchen door’s latch to silence the click as the door closes.

This time, instead of my cell phone or the tiny flashlight on my keychain, I am holding a real flashlight, a slim penlight that I found in the toolshed behind the garden at my parents’ house.

It’s dark but the downtown heart of the city is not quiet or dark. There is no hush of wind through pine needles, no creak of telephone wires like in my parents’ suburban paradise. A pinkish smog hangs over the skyline. Voices, distant music, and ambulance sirens pitch and fall like a tidal pool.