The Next (23 page)

Holy shit! Was Marzoli reacting to the same thing I was reacting to?

My heart was pounding as I responded with my thumbs:
Yes.

Two seconds later he texted:
We need to get into that closet.

Fuck texting.

I dialed Marzoli’s number.

He answered. “That’s unfair.”

Even over the phone the timbre of his voice was rumbling and powerful.

“What’s unfair?” I asked.

“
I
need to get into that closet.
You
don’t need to do anything if you don’t want.”

As I ought to have expected, he hop-stepped right to the business at hand rather than acknowledge that we’d separated moodily only yesterday. Tonally, at the very least, I expected an undercurrent of hostility, but to my surprise he sounded kind of sheepish. As if it was he who had misbehaved and felt a need to apologize. I did not know how to react to this reversal.

“How do you intend to get into their apartment?” I asked.

“Get proof of Ruben’s murder to get a warrant.”

“Did you find any?”

With the low tone of irritation he responded, “Not yet,”

“Nothing in their trash?”

“No.”

“I did.”

“Bullshit. What?”

I had the power again, and the asshole in me relished it.

“Why are you upstairs?” I asked.

He paused. “I got the impression yesterday you wanted to be alone.”

“I’m using up minutes talking to you.”

“Do you want me to come downstairs?”

Yes, you goddamn Puerto Rican Sicilian! Yes! Yes! Yes!

I responded cautiously, “Do you want to?”

Marzoli paused, and it frustrated me to hell I couldn’t see his face to understand the meaning of his pause.

Finally, he responded. “Ruben is out of toilet paper.”

Fucker.

We hung up. I looked around at my six hundred fifty square-foot bomb fallout.

How do you tidy up Nagasaki?

It occurred to me I’d not had the impulse to tidy up any aspect of my life let alone my apartment until this moment. Was this stubborn shithead heading down to my front door really the thing to instigate my first authentic impetus to aspire to better?

I heard Minnie’s yapping followed by knocking on my door.

I placed my hand on the knob.

Here goes nothing…

Here goes everything…

Marzoli appeared in jeans, white sneakers, and a faded dark blue polo. Why did the casualness of his attire skyrocket his sex appeal so entirely? Was it the accessibility that every day wear suggests? God wearing Gap? Royalty on a Roman holiday?

Upon closer inspection, I realized nothing was casual about his casualness. His jeans were low cut and sized perfectly to frame the bulge of his package and distinctly outline each meaty lobe of his ass. The denim was purposefully distressed to highlight the wide thickness of his thighs. His polo shirt was tucked in so anyone could see how plank-hard he was from navel to nipple. His shirt was just twenty sizes smaller than the average Midwestern male would purchase at The Gap in order to Saran Wrap his pecs, shoulders, and mountainous rear deltoids.

“I took the day off work,” he announced with a cocky smile, not budging from his spot outside my door.

I was immediately confused. He was without a doubt costumed to be fetishized by any man or woman with a pulse. If he took the day off with intention of spying on the Layworths, whom did he intend to be viewed by, aside from me? Who did he need drooling over him?

The answer slammed into me like a semi.

He was dressed to impress…me!

At this point he needed nothing from me I hadn’t given him. My apartment wasn’t even essential to him. I was the only one he’d be seeing today. Perhaps not tonight, but definitely today. Would a straight man put that much effort in his appearance just for a buddy he hardly knew?

My heart felt like it was having minute seizures.

Jesus Christ on a goddamn stick! What if I’m wrong? What if he’s still trying to seduce me into revealing some piece of information he thinks I’m withholding? But what in hell does he think I know?

I opened the door all the way.

Yappity yap yap.

A figure appeared on the landing behind Marzoli.

A Korean girl about eighteen years old paused and looked down at a piece of paper. She had on a florescent flamingo pink dress with a wide white plastic belt. She carried a violin case.

She looked at us and called out precociously, “Isn’t this the fourth floor?”

“The next up,” Marzoli said.

She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow in disgust at her imperfect navigation of our brownstone. She went up the stairs, and Marzoli and I paused as we listened to her rap on Ruben’s door impatiently. She waited. She rapped again. She waited. She tried to open the door by turning the knob several quick times, but failed. She rapped a final irritated time on the door before returning down the stairs.

Minnie continued her yapping from behind Mrs. Abraham’s door. I could hear Mrs. Abraham’s faint reproach to Minnie for making such a fuss.

The girl paused on the landing, whipped out her piece of paper again, and pruned up her face. Her anxiety over an interrupted schedule erupted as she asked in rapid rat-a-tat-tat, “Do you know Ruben in Four R? He’s supposed to be rehearsing with me now. He’s never late. He wasn’t at class today. Did anything happen to him? Is he okay? He’s not answering his phone.”

Marzoli answered with a couldn’t-care-less, “Dunno.”

“Okay. Hmmm…Okay.”

The patent leather white shoes stepped quickly down the rest of the stairs, the black wavy hair rounding the corner in neurotic whips.

Minnie’s yapping stopped.

I said, “The lock downstairs must still be broken.”

Marzoli turned back to me. His face was tense.

“It won’t be long now,” he began.

“What do you mean?”

“What evidence did you find in the garbage?” he demanded.

I retrieved the glasses from my desk and held them out for him.

Marzoli remained right outside the door rather than following me inside.

Am I going to have to yank him in?

When I presented the glasses, he noticed the towel wrapped around my hand and the spots where the blood soaked through.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

He unwrapped the towel. The slices where my index and thumb met were particularly deep. He examined the remaining stray shards still stuck to the rim of the glasses.

“How did you cut yourself so deeply with these?”

I couldn’t respond. I was too embarrassed to tell him yet again that a psychotic attack of memories caused my hand to clench too tightly.

“It’s nothing,” I insisted.

For the first time since I’d met him, Marzoli revealed an intense impatience.

“You’re going to have to let me in on some of your damage if we’ve any chance of…”

He stopped himself. At first I’d no idea where he was going with that thought. What the fuck would he hesitate stating to me? Chance of…chance of…

Of what? Of being with me? Really? No fucking way.

“Chance of what?” I challenged.

He held his mouth open, trying to form words…but which words? He was losing that cool control over himself. I was enjoying this.

“You’ve got demons,” he finally stated, “I’d like to see them.”

“You’ve already been inside,” I responded, gesturing toward the lumpy lair behind me.

Johanna’s therapist told her we all revert to our fourteen-year-old instincts when it comes to love. We learn to subvert them and modify our behavior, but the instincts remain pubescent in their raw state no matter how old we get. If I wasn’t feeling love, then why did I feel capricious and kind of bitchy and totally hormonal?

“Why do you want to see them?” I pivoted.

“To help.”

“Why?”

“Christ, you’re an asshole.”

It wasn’t pretty, but that was as close a statement that he wanted more from me as I’d gotten thus far.

He attempted to enter my apartment by pushing past me. I didn’t move, blocking the door. He stood half a foot away from me, breathing on my neck. He held his proximity, initiating a game of chicken I felt neither of us really wanted to win.

My pulse galloped.

“You’re not wearing your cologne,” I said.

“I noticed how the scent seemed to paralyze you. Twice.”

Naturally, the fucker’s impeccable grey cells would recall those occurrences with precision now. I could barely breathe. My cock started intruding into the narrow gap between our bodies. His skin’s heat microwaved mine. My eyes started blurring so I closed them.

“I would ask why you reacted that strongly to it,” he continued in a soft low rumble, “except I know you’re too much of a mule to tell me.”

I couldn’t respond. Yes, a mule.

“You’re positive these are Ruben’s glasses?” He leaped to another subject after concluding his assumption to be correct. His brain’s unpredictability made my dick extend another half inch.

“Yes.”

“They’re not enough to get a warrant.”

“Why not?”

“They’ve been broken by you, covered with your blood, and removed from the officer’s custody without my knowledge.”

“You mean, I snatched your junk,” I muttered.

“Sort of tampered with the evidence,” he said in a hot breath.

Suddenly I felt my penis contact something inches closer to my body than I’d anticipated. Was his schlong extending toward mine as well? I glanced down. His crotch was definitely pushing through the denim towards me.

Fuck!

I bit my lower lip, feeling my neck moisten under his breath.

“But to you and me, the glasses confirm enough,” I croaked.

I could feel the tip of my head gush a spasm of precum, moistening my pole and making it even more sensitive than it already was. I bit my bottom lip. This being so goddamn close and yet half a foot apart was adrenalizing my muscle volcanically.

He exhaled long and low against my bristling neck hairs.

“So skip the warrant,” I continued, pretending not to notice our heads were divided by just thin layers of fabric.

He leaned his pelvis a centimeter closer to mine. I held firm. The pressure increased. My dick involuntarily jolted.

He pressed on. “I’m considering the risks.”

“If you find a body,” I shuttered, “they’d overlook some house rules you sort of bypassed.”

“But if we don’t,” he said, his voice dripping and heavy but tinged with tension, “I’m fucked.”

All I could do to keep upright was to focus on a small brown mole on the side of Marzoli’s neck. I wondered how salty it would taste if I tongued it.

“But we will,” I said. “We know Ruben’s body is in the closet.”

Suddenly a high-pitched voice interrupted us. “What body? Ruben’s body? What happened to him? Is he dead? What do you mean he’s in the closet?”

The high-strung Korean girl had returned. Marzoli and I had been so engrossed in our game of chicken, we’d failed to hear or see the white patent leather shoes traipse back up the stairs to my door. We hadn’t even heard Minnie yapping to warn us.

Marzoli and I backed up several feet from her flamingo pink intrusion, trying to look as normal as possible. Marzoli revealed that his brain was grappling with his embarrassment by the way his eyes darted to the right, to the left, up, and down. Anywhere but to me.

“What’s your name?” he finally said, and I realized by the question he was biding his time, having failed to settle on a course of action.

“MinHee.”

“Did you say Minnie?” I asked, astounded at the coincidence.

“MinHee. Close enough,” she said. “You’re Ruben’s neighbor. The angry one. Ruben told me about you. He tells me everything. He didn’t even want to move into this building except his neighbors on Park Avenue hated classical music ’cause they’re losers. And now he’s not answering his phone. And now he’s missing. And now you’re talking about a body. What happened to Ruben? I’m going to the popo.”

Did this little Korean girl just say popo? As in police? What Juilliard violin major actually uses the word popo?

“He’s barely been missing for two days, and you’re not family. The police won’t listen to you,” Marzoli explained patiently.

“You know Ruben’s been missing?” she asked. “You know for sure?”

“Ruben’s missing?” Mrs. Abraham croaked from down the hall, sticking her head out of her door, yappity-yap-yap in arms. “What happened to him?”

She waddled down the hall toward us.

Marzoli rolled his eyes as the Kind Little Old Jew and Yappity-Yap-Yap joined the gathering of the Neurotic Flamingo Pink Korean Girl, the Depressed Housebound Sludge, and the Puerto Rican Sicilian Gift from God at my entryway. I decided to give the bullhorn over to Marzoli entirely. His career was on the line as he was losing his handle on the situation.