The Killing Type (22 page)

“Think about it while I go to the
bathroom.”

And with that she is gone and I relax.
I slouch back into my chair, the wine making the world and me feel
very, very good, and I close my eyes and tilt my head back to shut
out the present and the past and to concentrate on the future. Time
passing, flowing, floating, all in silence, but—

A sound.

Of course, she is wearing very little
when she emerges from the bathroom, and I do feel sorry that she
has to clear her throat as if in some bad joke in order to get my
attention.

“Oh,” I say, my eloquence perfect and
perfectly absent.

Gentle reader, I will spare you the
details of our impromptu tryst. The mechanics were handled with
panache on both sides, if I may say so, there were expressions of
attraction and “like,” and no love was allowed to sully what turned
out to be a terrific evening. I am not sure what led the girl to
such boldness, perhaps merely the red wine loosening up
inhibitions, perhaps a native tendency which I, careful observer
though I may be, did not notice in her. I have had few lovers but
they have all demonstrated and nurtured a sexual generosity. Tony
was the same. Still, as always, it is the rawness of the
après-amour, lying there staring at nothing more inspiring than a
ceiling that could use a coat of paint, it is that intimacy which
overwhelms me, leaves me literally, illiterately,
speechless.

“I hate the cliché,” she says, “but do
you have a cigarette?”

“Really?”

“Yes, afraid so.”
“I’m sorry I don’t, but I think my landlady keeps a pack down on
that little table in the foyer, for some reason. Stay put and I’ll
go filch one.”

I get up, happy for the diversion, and
throw on the tattered bathrobe that I should not be wearing in the
presence of others. I creak down the stairs to the foyer: the pack
is nearly full, and I take five of them.

“You’re an angel,” Tony says when I
proffer my loot. I get matches from the kitchen and light up the
one she already has in her mouth when I return to the bed. She
takes a long drag and exhales noisily.

“Have you always smoked?”

“Well, not always, of course. I
started when I was in junior high, and have given it up probably
four or five times. Actually, I’ve been good lately: it’s only big
meals and, well, other pleasures that seem to activate the desire.”
She smiles.

I am beginning to regret some of my
actions. I remember occasions when I have slighted this woman,
acted (and been) indifferent, and of course suspected her of
committing crimes. In the course of a life of teaching and
research, a life spent among other people, if you are attentive at
all you develop an intuitive sense of the value and intentions of
those you fraternize with. I evidently misread Tony, though I
hasten to add, first, that I did not spend much time with her in
total, and, second, that I am not meaning to imply that the woman
has suddenly fallen in love with me, that a single act of physical
intimacy indicates a solidity of character precluding the ability
to kill people.

“Where are you?” I hear, and realize
that I have been in a daze while she has finished her first and lit
her second cigarette. There are dots of grey ash on my sheet, which
she brushes off, smiling sheepishly. “Oops.”

I raise my eyebrows, and then make a
move toward her but hold back for some reason. I feel a rush of not
quite sympathy, but some kind of tender human emotion to which I am
unaccustomed and which I am having some difficulty describing. Tony
is as secure and as carefree as I can imagine it is possible for
any person to be while naked and attempting to get the attention of
another person who is only seemingly reluctant to return to
bed.

“Hey, come over here and keep me
company!” she says with unnecessary insistence. I settle myself in
beside her and she makes tiny animal noises, snuggles her face into
the side of my neck. I flinch at the attention, at what my febrile
mind misinterprets as a threat of some kind.

“Listen,” she says, “I like you. I,
well—help me out here a little.”

“I,” I say, but then it all just fades
to nothing.

“Yes, come on, you can do it, you can
say it!” She’s practically shouting by the end of it, and I know
that she’s not mocking me, however—I have a sudden urge to be alone
but I am not sure how to manage the suggestion and the logistics of
that in my present circumstance. This—“Listen, honey, it’s been a
heck of a time, but perhaps it’s time you moved along out of
here”—would work but its effectiveness is tempered somewhat by its
outrageous inappropriateness.

“I think I get the idea,” she
says.

“Pardon?”

“Well, maybe I should be going.” The
woman’s prescience is astounding.

“Please, no, you are most welcome to
stay,” I protest a little weakly.

“It’s cool,” she says. “Just lie back
here with me while I finish this cigarette.”

I oblige, crawling awkwardly and
shamefully up beside her and then lying down. She looks over at me
just after taking a luxurious inhale, and her face is slightly
distorted so that it seems like she is about to say something to
me. Instead she just smiles, warmly I think, and resumes looking up
at the ceiling, the smoke leaving her mouth in what sounds as much
like a sigh as an exhalation. It continues in silence like that
until eventually, in a sequence which I am not sure lasts a minute
or a half-hour, she gets up, dresses, says something to me that I
do not quite discern, and then kisses me and leaves.

And.

I sink back into that still-warm bed
and wonder what I have to do now.

Chapter 23

It is a few days later. I am
generally an extremely well-organized person, certainly in my
daily, prosaic life and as far as possible in the larger things as
well. I believe that I deal effectively with the shocks and
surprises that happen to any active person, that I don’t
simply
fall into
things: I plan, I consider, I react with common sense and
intelligent judgment (which are not always the same
thing).

Allow me to speak clearly: having a
sexual encounter with Tony or with anyone else is not something
that I wanted or planned. I do not revel as some do in the
entanglements that inevitably ensue from sexual liaisons,
especially temporary ones. I believe that I have enough life and
literary experience to be able to survive—perhaps even flourish—in
a long-term romantic relationship, but even then there is something
about the loss of individuality that does not sit very well with my
personality. And when the encounter is implicitly recognized by all
participants to be based in nothing more than physical
satisfaction, then I am supremely uncomfortable.

And angry, though it is an anger
without just cause and certainly without a just object. I am not,
as the kids say, “mad at Tony,” for anything. I believe that she
and I are perhaps in similar situations: she had planned nothing, I
had planned nothing. Any anger I have is mostly directed toward
myself and my own temporary physical weakness.

The phone rings and I am in the
position of the jilting or awkward lover, the rage of youth
preventing me from thinking straight. It is all rather
embarrassing. I confirm from the call display that it is Tony, but
I cannot bring myself to answer. Any of the possible scenarios
would be unbearable. She wants to reconnect. She wants to
apologize. She is calling to chat as if nothing at all has
happened. She wants to confess to murder. Moved by the intensity of
the intimacy with me, she wants to establish a long-term romantic
relationship in which—

But this is all rather crazy. I dim
the lights in the room and pick the sparest, the hardest chair to
sit on. There is pure silence outside, the kind I like, the kind I
revel in, the kind in which I do my best work and thinking. Tony’s
face, the echo of her voice, the mishmashed letters of her name all
swirl around in my head as time flows on inexorably. Minutes go by,
fifteen, almost an hour, and finally everything does seem to
settle. There is the rush of a certain kind of clarity, not
confidence per se, but a sureness, a faith in my tendency and my
decision.

I’ve already killed nine people with a
certain degree of planning and deliberateness, and this one will be
no exception.

Chapter 24

It’s the brightest of bright sunny
winter mornings when I awaken at precisely 10:27 am. I have things
to do, but I loll in bed watching the light as it moves across the
various objects in my room, as if it is having trouble making up
its mind. There are shouts outside on the street that I can’t quite
place, and then a loud thud in the hallway outside my door that I
hope is not the landlady falling again. I listen for the telltale
sounds of a woman who shouldn’t be walking unaided in the first
place attempting to right herself from a hard floor. Nothing.
Good.

10:46 and I smile at the 19
minutes of my life that I have—what,
wasted
? That seems much too harsh. As
I set out on this new phase, I have to make a pact with myself to
be a little less rigid, not criticize and analyze everything to the
exact letter. This will be a day of purity, of ascetic bliss, a day
to quietly look forward to the dramatic changes I am about to put
myself through, to pack up my mind before I pack up my belongings.
This time passed under all-cotton sheets, off-white and striped in
blue, this is the only kind of quiet luxury I will indulge in
today. I will neither eat nor drink to excess. I may take a brisk
walk, may stay in and read something that has nothing to do with
murder, may loll in the tub in those bubbles that smell like
clean.

I have often had trouble with
transitions in the past, not only in adjusting to them and
accepting the new situation, but also in simply making it across
that bridge. This time, however, I am feeling that I could
accomplish the move with some expedition (and fewer puns).There is
something about the contrast in the before and after states (oh,
dear) that ironically will make it easier this time. When I was
pushed out of Toronto U. and moved here in the first place, for
example, or any of the times before that when I have moved from one
college to another—all those have been cases where I was leaving a
job, however undesirable sometimes, and headed for another job,
more desirable generally but still a daily commitment of some sort.
This time it is the bliss of a kind of retirement, but nearly
twenty years before that usually happens and so with me of sound
enough body and mind to be able to enjoy myself.

I sit on the edge of my bed, hands
clenching the mattress beside each leg, and look down at the
scruffy T-shirt I am wearing, the ghost of a greasy stain still
haunting the front in spite of my repeated efforts to efface it. I
am joyous that this does not bother me in the least. I do
eventually heave myself from sitting to standing and head to the
bathroom to perform the usual rituals, though I skip the shaving.
What a gorgeous luxury this seems, and I realize that my
appreciation for anything today will be keener than it likely
deserves.

It’s raining outside and though I
notice this with my first step onto the battered, gum-blackened
sidewalk in front of the house, I do not go back to equip myself
against the wet. I’m wearing good sturdy shoes and a dark green
lined overcoat which at least affords me protection against the
cold, and with my hands in my pockets and my head slightly bowed I
am quite comfortably refreshed out here. I walk with two topics
coursing through my head, one my overall plan for the future (as
grand as that sounds), and the other a kind of rehearsal, much more
immediate and of shorter duration than the grand plan.

First, the future. I persist in
feeling giddy about it, even though on paper my prospects do not
look rosy. I have nearly run out of my meagre funds from my
retirement package from Toronto University, and I don’t have any
other job to go to. Even if there is a faculty position out there
just tailored for an academic of my credentials, the competition is
always fierce for such plums, and in any case the hiring process
itself generally takes months. I get tired just thinking about the
whole thing: finding a posting, applying, waiting for an
acknowledgement, hoping for an interview, and on and on. I probably
won’t even put myself through that horror. Instead, I imagine doing
something much more simple, and I try not to romanticize any of the
uglier realities. I do not envisage myself waiting on tables or
opening a small bookstore or otherwise trolling through
interpersonal tedium in a fruitless quest for redemption (and
money). No, not that, not that at all. I imagine something with the
body, working construction perhaps (I have a cousin somewhere in
Alberta who’s part of a union), or maybe even learning a trade
which demands some modicum of intellectual effort. Plumber.
Electrician. Something like that. Comfortably ensconced as I have
generally been in the ivory tower of academe, I’ve never
investigated whether perhaps the government would be willing to
subsidize the training costs of an impoverished but otherwise
respectable citizen. In any case, I am perversely
optimistic.

As for the more immediate present
...