The Light at the End (11 page)

“Okay, okay,” he said. “So you don’t know where he lives.” Stephen’s hysteria seemed to abate slightly, though he remained facedown. Joseph paused to light a cigarette, clear his mind, think of a more productive approach. The beer was catching up with him again, and he wanted to make the most of this situation before he passed out.

“Stephen, look,” he said, reverting to his more compassionate voice. “I’m sorry. But I’ve got a bad feeling about this Rudy guy… the way he acted on the subway was
not normal
, you know? And…”

Stephen mumbled something into his hands.

“What?” Joseph asked, leaning forward.

It took a moment for Stephen to pull his face up from the table. His eyes were red and puffy; a nearly transparent pool of mucus had slid from his nostrils to the ridge of his upper lip; strands of shimmering saliva were draped between the teeth of his upper and lower jaws as he opened his mouth to speak, making his thin face look like something out of a Bernie Wrightson illustration. The face itself was flushed and stained with tears. Joseph couldn’t help but feel the faint stirring of pity in his heart, looking at this guy.

“Yuh… you think th-that Rudy had… s-some-thing to do with the m-m-
murders
, don’t you?” It was almost an accusation. “You think he m-might have k-k-killed all those people!”

Joseph took a drag off his cigarette, saying nothing.

“Well, you’re wr-
wrong
!” Stephen straightened, gathering the presence of mind to wipe the snot from his nose, and made every attempt to steady his speech. “Rudy’s a little crazy, but he’s not
that
crazy. He wouldn’t do anything like that. He… he wouldn’t…”

“How well do you know him?”

Again, Joseph could see the internal struggle on Stephen’s face, could see fact locking horns with convenient fiction.
Nobody wants to put their ass on the line for anything
was the thought that came instantly to mind, remembering his rap with Ian on the day that he flattened the purse-snatcher. Then he pulled back to the present and waited for whatever answer the kid decided to present.

But Stephen had opted not to answer at all. “You’d have to understand Rudy,” he said. “Rudy’s a philosopher. He really thinks about the things going on in the world today. He’s got a certain way of looking at things…”

“Yeah?” Joseph, trying hard not to show his dark amusement, refilled his mug.

“If you understood what Rudy’s really like, you wouldn’t think… what you’re thinking.” The sentence ended in an oddly clipped manner, as though Stephen had intended to say something else entirely, then thought better of it.

“Well,” Joseph said, putting one elbow on the table and resting his chin on the fist at its end, “why don’t you just explain him to me, then?”

Stephen looked away for a moment. When his gaze returned to Joseph’s, there was something slightly different about it… a decisiveness, a willingness to talk… that hadn’t been there before: as though he wanted to convince not only Joseph, but himself as well, that what he was saying was true.

“Can I have some more beer?” he asked. Joseph nodded, a slight grin on his face. Stephen lifted the pitcher, emptied it into his mug, drained the mug in one long shot, then refilled it from the second pitcher. Joseph was tempted to applaud; instead, he sat back in his chair, crossed his massive arms, and waited for the story to begin.

*

Nihilism is the branch of philosophy that negates the existence of absolute truth, or any knowledge thereof; it denies the existence of any order or meaning in the universe; it mocks any religious, moral, or social system that would seek to impose such order or meaning, on the grounds that such an imposition is purely arbitrary, a mental construct designed by the people in power to hold the rest of humanity in thrall. Therefore, a nihilist believes in none of the things that lend a sense of order or meaning to the bulk of humanity: hope, charity, courage, faith, love, harmony, cooperation, caring.

Josalyn paused at this point in her manuscript, pulling her fingers away from the typewriter keys to wrest a Salem Light 100 from its pack and bring it to her lips with trembling fingers. The machine hummed quietly in front of her, patiently waiting for her to decide on the wording of the next paragraph.

She lit the match, brought the dancing flame to the tip of her cigarette, and inhaled. The flame went out in a burst of cool, mentholated smoke. She watched the cloud disperse into nothingness, as Rudy and his philosophical pals would have the entire universe do, and grinned fiercely at the thought.
What assholes
, she thought; but, of course, she couldn’t write that into her thesis.

Yes
, she continued, imagining the words in neat double-spaced type on her college professor’s desk.
Nihilists are angry, self-deluding assholes who would sooner deny all meaning than take responsibility for the condition of their world. If life is meaningless, they’re off the hook; they can do any goddamn thing they like and not be taken to task for it, because nothing means anything anyway, and what difference does it make in the gaping black pit of infinity? Just sit back, pick your scabs, and pass the buck.

She laughed aloud at the image. Maybe Dr. Mayhew would give her good grades for her courage and audacity, but she doubted it; the language was more extreme than she planned to use in any of her writings on the topic. Instead, she’d couch her observations in the same tidy, polite rhetoric that she’d used throughout her college career.

It was funny to think about how much she owed to Rudy, in regard to the paper. When she’d first started doing her research, she was dangerously close to defending nihilism as the proper response. Something inside of her… the bloodied baby Josalyn who refused to die, she supposed… still resisted the idea; but life at home and life in the newspapers had all but persuaded her to murder the child and abandon all hope.

Then she had met Rudy, and there was something so damned attractive about the way he packaged his anger that she forgot entirely about the paper for a while and just threw herself into
him
. Or he into her. Whatever.

That had lasted for about two months. By the end of that time, he had begun to get on her nerves. Such bottomless hatred she had never imagined, much less seen, in a human being. If she had wanted a living embodiment of the philosophy that intrigued her, then… God help her… she seemed to have found him.

Also by the end of that time, she had begun to write again. It pissed Rudy off. “What are you doing, fucking me or putting me under a microscope?” he’d shouted once, storming into her living room after finding several of his observations picked apart in her notebook.

She’d been speechless at that point. She hadn’t been thinking about it that way at all; he’d just happened to bring up some points that she thought were worth mentioning, if only for their immense questionability.

Thinking about it now, however, she realized that Rudy had been right. She
had
been studying him. And as it turned out, that was good: it was the
only
good thing she’d gotten out of their miserable two months together.

I wonder if he’s dead
, she thought, snubbing out the cigarette in a pile of its own ashes.
And if he is, I wonder where he went.

Soon… all too soon… she would know the answer.

Dorian gets all the gorgeous guys
, Claire complained to herself silently.
All she has to do is toss that peroxide mop of hers around, leave her blouse half-undone, and come on like Debbie Harry in heat. It’s all over.

She was standing alone near the jukebox at the St. Mark’s Bar & Grill… or as nearly alone as one can be in a room that has exceeded its 250-person capacity by at least thirty people. They were pressing against her from every side, a sea of faces that extended all the way to the front door; but not a single one within reach was nearly as cute as the one that her roommate had managed to wedge herself against.

That bitch. Some people have all the luck
, she continued, sullenly sucking on her Heineken with her eyes pointed in the direction of her shoes. Of course, she couldn’t actually see them; that would be asking a bit much, wouldn’t it? To be able to see all the way down to her feet?
Christ, I might as well be hanging out on the subway at rush hour, for all the fun I’m having.

The gorgeous guy that Dorian was wedged up against had the kind of dissipated, lean, vampish look that really turned Claire on. Pale-skinned, dark-eyed, redolent with a sense of mystery and danger that expressed itself in his cocky stance, the cryptic nastiness in the way his mouth curled upward as he smiled. She’d only gotten a brief glimpse of him, on her way back from the bar, but that was enough; she wished Dorian would keel over dead, so that
she
could get a shot at him.

But no. Dorian would take him home, that little slut, and hump his brains out. Claire could see it now. She’d wind up sleeping with the headphones on again, trying to screen out the wild moans and whimpers from the next room. It was enough to make her take up prostitution: at least Dorian wouldn’t be the
only
one shaking pictures off the wall ‘til 6:00 in the morning.

Oh, well
, she thought, draining the Heineken and turning her gaze toward the cracked plaster on the ceiling.
There’s always Danny. I could snag him in a second. Probably get a few free posters in the bargain.
It was a cruel thought, she admitted… she
liked
Danny… but there was no comparison. Paranormal connection or not, the guy still left a thing or two to be desired in the looks department; she’d take a stupid, meaningless night of continual banging with a guy as cute as Dorian’s latest in a second, given half a chance.

I mean
, she reasoned,
you only live once, right?

Right.

Claire decided to go for one more beer, one more peek at Romeo, before checking out some other scene. It wasn’t easy. She had to plow her way through half a dozen skinheads, twice as many trendies, and a gaggle of miscellaneous riffraff before she could even reach the point where she’d last spotted Dorian and the handsome hunk.

They were no longer there.

Figures
, she silently bitched. She cast her gaze around for as far as it could go, but there was no sign of them. Knowing Dorian, they were probably halfway into the sack already. “Goddam,” she mumbled, barely loud enough to be heard.

“Pardon?” said a voice from behind her. She turned to stare into the eyes of a pizza-faced preppie with moldy-looking teeth.

“Oh, fuck off,” she suggested to him, elbowing past on her way to the bar and another sorrow-drowning bottle.

Or maybe a dozen.

At the Blarney Stone, an hour had passed since Stephen and Joseph first sat down. A lot had gone down in that time, the least of which was another pitcher of beer. Now they sat, staring dully at each other like a pair of frogs in formaldehyde, wondering how to wrap things up.

Stephen’s discourse on the Gospel According To Rudy didn’t carry much weight in the final analysis; not nearly as much as Joseph’s description of the rotting woman on the Union Square steps. Every time Joseph closed his eyes, he saw her: the light green vapor that rose from her body as she lay, kicking and sagging into herself like a gouged inner tube, her flesh glossing over with mold and a thin layer of slime. While Ian had turned away, swallowing bile, Joseph had remained. He hung around while the crowd crept slowly up the stairs, gagging and fainting and shrieking anew at the sight and smell of her. He watched the police push the bystanders back. He watched them scrape her up.

The officer in charge, a young guy named Benzoni who was looking a little bit green around the gills himself, made Joseph agree that he wouldn’t say a word to the press. “No problem,” Joseph had said, and it wasn’t.

He wanted the thing that had killed that poor girl. He wanted that thing for himself.

Which was why, after darkness fell, he decided to stake out the subways. Which was why, when he saw Stephen calling that Rudy cat on the platform, he decided to follow behind. Which was why, after that bit with the handkerchief, he no longer had any doubts as to who or what he was after.

“I’m sorry, pal,” he said finally, pointing a drunken finger at Stephen. “But after what you saw, and after what I told you
I
saw, there shouldn’t be any question. Rudy’s the one.”

“No.” Stephen shook his head, eyes half-closed, expression blank. “No,” he repeated, banging his mug on the table. “I can’t accept it.”

“It’s true.”

“I don’t
care
… I mean, I don’t
know
!” His head was spinning, the world was spinning. He let go of the mug and gripped the edge of the table with both hands, as if that could make it stop. Too much beer, too much weird information.

Stephen had done his best to withhold as much information as possible. He had managed, for example, to leave out the fact that Rudy disappeared on the night of the multiple murders. It would only strengthen Joseph’s case: a case already so strong that it would have been undeniable if it weren’t so utterly preposterous.

In fact, he had found himself continually whitewashing everything that he’d said, and he wasn’t sure exactly why. There was no question that Rudy was acting peculiar as hell; there was no question that he had scared the piss out of Stephen, although the details had receded into a fear-and-alcohol-induced fog, at least for the time being.
And that thing with the bloody handkerchief… Christ!
he thought, playing it back in slow motion on the Betamax of his mind, while the room lurched suddenly, sickly, to the left and proceeded to turn and turn and…

“No,” he gasped again, knuckles turning white from the sheer effort of hanging on. He could feel his dinner come alive again in his stomach, trying to force its way back to the shrimp ‘n’ salad bar at Beefsteak Charlie’s. The thought of throwing up made him instantly sicker. He wobbled in his seat, cheeks bulging, and groaned.

Joseph didn’t see him. Joseph was busily writing something on a napkin, bent over the table. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, pausing to finish the line, still looking down. “If anything weird happens to convince you that I might be right, give me a call. Here’s my number… whoa.” He looked up to see Stephen, pale and sweaty, with one trembling hand over his mouth. “Hey, man. Are you alright?”

“No…” Stephen moaned through his fingers. He tried to get up and fell backwards into his chair, almost keeling over entirely.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Joseph got out of his seat quickly and moved to the other side of the table. He grabbed Stephen by the armpits and hoisted him up. The chair fell over with a crash. Everyone in the bar turned to see Joseph dragging Stephen to the bathroom as fast as he could.

“He pukes on the floor, you’re cleaning it up!” Rita yelled from somewhere behind them. Joseph responded by slamming open the door marked MEN with his shoulder, dropping Stephen to his knees in front of the toilet, and flicking on the light.

Immediately, the air filled with the sound of violent retching, the moist plunk of vomit against water echoing up from the toilet bowl. Joseph wavered in the doorway, staring stupidly for a moment, before leaving the room and closing the door behind him.

A brief flurry of one-man applause erupted from the booth in the back. Joseph turned a baleful eye toward the comedian, who stopped in mid-clap and turned quickly away. The only sound in the bar then poured faintly from the TV set: a Budweiser commercial, no less.

“This Bud’s for you,” sang the twangy C&W voice from the speaker as Joseph stomped back to his table, shaking his head at the absurdity. Rita came up behind him, also shaking her head, a repressed grin on her face.

“Where’d you find that guy?” she asked. “The Salvation Army?”

Joseph laughed sourly. “Oh, he’s a real champ, alright. Lied his ass off to me all night, and then…” He stopped himself.
I can’t tell her this.
“He’s just a jerk.”

“Tell me about it. Hey, you’re not gonna leave him here, are you?”

“Call him a cab or something. He’s got money. I paid for all the beer.”

Rita nodded, keeping her amusement to herself. “You’re done then,” she said finally.

“Yeah,” he answered. Then he remembered the napkin, still sitting on the table where he’d dropped it in his haste. “Almost,” he added, picking it up and turning back toward the bathroom.

“What, are we out of toilet paper?” she called after him. He ignored her, striding up to the door. Opening it. And looking inside.

Stephen appeared to be just about done. His body no longer shuddered or heaved. His arms were crossed over the toilet seat, his head resting upon them. He could have been asleep.

“You alright now?” Joseph asked.

“Yeah.” The voice was weak and breathy as it rang up from the toilet bowl. “I guess so.”

“Well, here,” Joseph said, sticking the napkin into Stephen’s back pocket. “My phone number. Give me a call when you wise up.”

Then he stepped out and closed the door behind him again, leaving Stephen to think about it. He wasn’t really angry… not nearly as angry as he could have been, considering the amount of garbage he’d had to listen to just to get one useful piece of information.

But he got it, and that was what counted. He got what he was looking for.

A name.

Rudy Pasko
. The words felt nasty on his tongue as he mouthed them.
Rudy Pasko
. He could almost taste the dust.

“You’re a real prince, you know it?” Rita yelled as he passed her on his way out the door. She pointed to the men’s room with mock indignation. “A real friend of the animals!”

“Thanks, Rita,” he called back, waving, “I’ll see ya later.”

“What, I’m supposed to be thrilled?” she countered. Then she smiled, making ready to wave in return.

But Joseph Hunter was already gone.