The Next (13 page)

They divorced a month later, Mrs. Moody opting to be the one to move out.

Paul and I, in our guilt, gave Mr. Moody the only gift we had to give. We never spied on him again.

Irritated, Mrs. Layworth hastily threw her phone into her purse and dashed out the door without even a salutation to her husband. Mr. Layworth lay down on the bed and began to nap, laptop on his chest. It seemed to me that without their children, the Layworths were puttering along the same stormy forked road as the Moodys.

Unless, on the other hand, they were simply in foul moods due to exhaustion. Due to an exhausting night of…of…

A gust of snow funneled like a miniature tornado in the center of the courtyard momentarily.

All at once I realized what the bulge in the wall was.

The snow had been accumulating on the sill of Ruben’s open window, piling into his apartment, and then melting as it hit the warmth of the inside air. The snowmelt ran down to the floor, and then seeped through the floorboards to the corner of my ceiling. Then the wallboard sponged up the leakage and bulged.

His window was still open, and the snow had been falling for hours.

Ruben never returned to his apartment last night!

And Mrs. Abraham had confirmed he was not home today.

I threw
Show Me the Money
to the side and dialed Marzoli.

It rang three times, but I changed my mind and hung up quickly. Exactly why was I calling him anyway? More importantly, what exactly would I tell him? That I suspected…that Ruben…

…my heart began to quicken as I completed the thought…

…had been killed?

I had no proof. I saw no actual crime. I couldn’t even say Ruben was definitively not in his apartment. And if he wasn’t, I couldn’t attribute his absence to murder. For all I know, it could be attributed to Grindr.com or Manhunt.com or Meet-Me-at-the-Village-Cigar-Shop-at Seventh-and-Christopher.com.

All I had was a feeling. A tight gut-corseted feeling, yes, but my feelings these days were not doing me much credit. I could not call Marzoli without definite proof, otherwise he’d think I was a moron and he wouldn’t…he wouldn’t…

Wouldn’t what?

How badly did I want Marzoli in my apartment at all? How badly did I want to hear his challenging leap-frogging logic spoken in his deep authoritative timbre? How badly did I want to press my chest against his back and feel the vibration of that timbre enter me? How much more of whatever else he had did I really want entering me? More importantly, if I got even a fraction of any of that, would it derail Johanna’s return to my life?

And even more importantly, what in shit would I do if Marzoli came over and had zero impulse to return any of those inclinations to me? I wasn’t exactly the most covetable cow in the corral. More like a wet cold badger in a bad mood holed up in a muddy tunnel. If I’d made any progress at all since I’d been shackled in this cave, rejection from the prize bull might just make me lose my shit altogether.

My iPhone began to ring.

Marzoli’s number appeared.

Fuck! He was returning my call!

Everything in me wanted to answer. Everything. My head, my heart, my groin. But I couldn’t yet. I needed to make some decisions first. I needed to know what my actions were going to be, and if I could handle the repercussions.

I needed to see into Ruben’s window. I needed some proof that my suspicions about his murder were justified before I made a complete and utter ass of myself in front of the sergeant. I’d no idea what I’d see, but an open window in the snow had to imply something. At the very least, I could substantiate that Ruben was not in his apartment. Or substantiate that Ruben was in his apartment and unable or unwilling to respond to door knocks and broom whacks. At least if I had proof, I could have a conversation with Marzoli and not come across as an asinine conspiracy theorist, thereby eliminating even the remote chance of…

The ringing stopped.

None of the neighbors were looking toward my window.

I approached my window and placed my hand on the latch.

I can do this.

The jackhammer in my chest immediately powered up, threatening to break through my ribcage. I opened the window. My throat went dry. The cold brisk air hit my face, but did nothing to wick the beads of sweat that formed on my forehead and beneath my eyes. I stepped up onto the window sill and swung one leg over to the snow-packed, grated metal floor. My forehead began to pound.

I can do this!

I swung my other leg out and placed both feet onto the fire escape. I could feel my veins surging with too much blood like a scene from a Cronenberg flick. I launched my weight entirely onto the metallic fire escape.

Dizzy. Weak.

Fuck me!

I went one step up the fire escape. I looked up. My vision was blurry.

Was this really the first time outside my apartment since…since…Jesus…I couldn’t think…

I could make out that Ruben’s window was still open.

Encouraged, I took another step.

The cold air and snow was biting my skin like a swarm of angry horseflies. I wasn’t dressed appropriately for a hike in the winter. This ascent was only supposed to take a couple seconds.

Go, you loser! You goddam moron!

I took another two steps up. My breath was so labored I felt my lungs would expel themselves through my throat.

One more step.

Paul and I stepped up two steps to Grandfather’s trailer’s front door and knocked, but there was no answer.

I reached above me to grab the railing and pull myself up. I instantly felt dizzy and propped myself against the cold metal railing. I felt no equilibrium. I could barely determine what was horizontal, what was vertical, which way gravity was supposed to be pushing…or pulling…

The ground three floors below swelled and then distanced.

The television plummeted sixty-one stories from the Chrysler building’s angry eagle gargoyles and shattered on the pavement, splattering infinite shiny shards of glass and electronics horizontally in every direction…

All I could do to keep upright was grip the rail hard with my fist, straining, grasping…

Grandfather tightened his hand around mine with strength of a vice, slowly being screwed tighter and tighter, and I responded by gripping his as hard as I could, knuckles whitening, face reddening, breathing labored.

My eyesight was fading to a spotted white out. I tried to kick my foot up another step, but it was welded to the slotted metal floor. I tried to release my hand in order to pull myself higher, but it had frozen around the railing in unflinching stiffness…

We knocked on the trailer door again.

Grandfather’s trailer in Placerville was positioned next to a man-made lake. Colliding plates heaved granite ten thousand feet up from the sea while enduring glacial carvings for one hundred million years to create one of the most geologically and ecologically beautiful and serene areas in the world, but all the Sierra Mountain range had to offer wasn’t sufficient. Developers chose to dam up a creek to create a rectangularish pond in order to provide a centerpiece for a flattened, lawn-manicured, tree-leveled trailer park. Dead center of this body of water, a sprinkler stuck its head up and revolved like a perpetually angry machine gunner determined to fire until the slimy yellow and brown algae retreated to the edges.

The aluminum and glass door opened inward. The screen door blurred Grandfather’s face, and we had to back down the steps in order for him to open it. Grandfather said nothing. He did not smile. He did not frown. He maintained a stern expression that revealed not meanness, but an unwillingness to engage other facial muscles. He motioned inside with his hand.

Grandfather had white hair, thinning but still enough to comb back into youthful looking streaks that I’m sure thrilled a few septuagenarians. His face retained some of the handsome features that we’d seen in a photo on the mantle of some mentally challenged distant cousin we’d met only once years before. Although now the loose fleshiness of age and the redness of a lot of mountain sun had softened and hardened him into a different being. His body retained the proportions of a man who was once in exceptional shape, with broad shoulders, thin waist, and strong arms and legs. The joints at the knees and elbows reddened with mild arthritis, and his belly was firm but rounding outwards above his belt like the smooth curve of an archer’s bow.

Paul entered first, passing into the dark of the trailer. As Paul passed Grandfather, he looked at my brother with steady stern eyes. What was he searching for or trying to identify in Paul? I had no idea. He remained expressionless.

Then I entered.

The fragrance of cedar wood and nutmeg filled my nostrils.

He held out his hand. I was
fourteen
and had never shaken a man’s hand before, a testament to both my own shyness and my father’s neglect, but also to our isolation from interactions with any population. I weakly placed my hand on Grandfather’s hand and gripped it with hesitation. Apparently this wouldn’t do.

With his other hand, Grandfather grabbed me by the wrist and pulled my right hand away from his. Then, like a battering ram, he used his left hand to shove my right hand solidly into his right hand. Our thumbs brushed by each other and slammed together at the webbing. His fingers curled up and cradled my pinky ridge until it locked in a tight tongue and groove. Our palms suctioned together with a loud fleshy slap. Then Grandfather tightened his grip, solidly in control, looking me straight in the eye with commanding directness.

My breath shortened if not stopped. I was confused by the direction this man was indicating I should follow. Was the increasing pain he was inflicting punitive or instructive? I responded by tightening my own grip as hard as I could, knuckles whitening, face reddening, breath laboring When he felt the grip was tight enough, Grandfather lowered his head a centimeter in resolution, and jockeyed my hand up and down three times. He nodded at me with a look of inquisitiveness, possibly satisfaction, and I nodded in the affirmative. What I was affirming, I had no idea. And why me? Did Grandfather’s instinct tell him I was the strongest brother or the weakest? That I had to be propped up in status or diminished?

Grandfather pursed his lips a little and released my hand. To any other, this might have been a game. To Grandfather, as I later learned, it was an initiation. A test. One of a series of tests that would grow epically more intense, painful, and instructive.

He allowed me to pass into his lair.

The prefab trailer had no structural modifications: a living room, a kitchen, a hall, a tiny bathroom, a small walk-in closet, and a bedroom. The interior walls were white contrasted with that mocha brown wall siding with the fake wood grain. Grandfather lived in minimalist comfort…or discomfort. No mess. No signs of personal expression. No photos of relatives on the walls. No kitschy porcelain figures on the sill or magnets on the refrigerator door. No hanging mobiles tinkling in the sunlight. No avocado green butter caddies. The only items in the living room area were the couch that Paul and I would fold out for our bed, and one plank of knotted blonde pine resting on two small metal sawhorses to make a shelf. On the plank was a brown and silver Sony record player. Below the plank were neatly ordered records—all classical music. Specifically, all Mozart.

Paul and I placed our duffle bags next to the couch and stood at attention. Grandfather opened the refrigerator. It was full of neatly stacked bottles of water and nothing but bottles of water. What the hell were we going to eat?

I felt Paul was scanning the room with more scrutiny than I had, and then I realized what his little boy’s brain was looking for…

Where would he hide our Swiss Army knives?

Grandfather handed us each a bottle of water and motioned for us to sit. We sat. He leaned against the counter with his arms folded, staring at us, assessing. What was he thinking? He knew nothing about us, and we knew even less about him. If he wanted to know something, why didn’t he just ask? Or if he wanted to tell us the rules of the house, then why didn’t he just speak?

For minutes Paul stared resolutely ahead, still avoiding eye contact, making no expression of expectation nor acknowledging any hint of the heavy awkwardness. With a crack I ripped the plastic top off my bottle of water. I was so thirsty. The dry mountain sun was in complete contrast to the moist Pacific air. I swallowed large gulps of water, one after the other, until the bottle was empty. Grandfather raised his eyebrow. He opened the refrigerator door, withdrew another bottle of water, handed it to me, took my empty bottle of water, and placed it in the garbage beneath the sink.

He went over to the plank of wood. He crouched down at the record player and began to play Mozart—specifically, as I came to learn, the second movement of Mozart’s clarinet concerto. Since the record was already set to go, this was apparently part of some predetermined order of procedure. We heard him take a large breath, then release it. This was the first audible sound he’d made since we arrived.

Grandfather turned the rod at the side of the leveler blinds on each of the living room and kitchen’s four windows until we were almost completely in the dark. With the clarinet concerto twisting its melancholic melody, Grandfather walked away from us down the hall into the darkness. Paul looked at me with an unspoken question. I shrugged my shoulders. We heard the closet door open.