The cold tile of the floor has been cleared of blood and vomit and bodies. She says she picked Cyndi’s body up and shoved it back in the closet and then cleaned the floor with water and paper towels from the restroom, and she might have also said Lysol, which I think I read somewhere used to be marketed as a douche, which is pretty much the worst thing I’ve ever heard. No, what’s actually worse is that there’s a body in my closet. Like, a literal skeleton in my closet, which I always thought was a dumb figure of speech, but, well, there you go. A body in my closet, and a roommate I barely know sitting across from me, just three feet away.
I look at her face.
The same dark freckles on dark skin, but her lids are narrowing while her mouth hangs slightly ajar. Words are dissolving just behind her teeth, words that never make it into the dry air between us. And just as I open my mouth to talk, she says, “Do you know Augustine’s Confessions?”
“What?”
“St. Augustine? There’s a famous line in his Confessions. You’ve probably heard it. It goes, God, make me good, but not yet, or something like that. I think Make me chaste and celibate, but not yet is probably the better translation.”
“I think I’ve heard the line,” I tell her.
She bites her tongue. Bites it too hard, winces in pain, continues. “Anyway,” she says, “that’s kind of how I feel right now, y’know? I think we both know what you’re supposed to do when you find a body.”
“You report it.”
“Yeah,” she sighs. She takes her glasses off and chews on one end, twisting the earpiece so it won’t ever fit her again. “The only thing about that, though,” she says, “is that if we call the cops to say Hey, we found a body in our closet, it just looks really bad for both of us.”
I glance toward the ceiling, an ugly mess of tiles with water stains at more than half of their corners, and I finally rest my head on my palm and my elbow on my knee and say, “I didn’t even know her.”
She says, “I know, neither did I. I found her on Facebook earlier, and I don’t even have any friends in common with her. But that doesn’t matter. We still have her body in our closet. It really doesn’t look good for either of us. I know I didn’t kill her, and you say you didn’t kill her, but who’s gonna believe us? You probably don’t even believe me.”
I can’t think of what to say to that.
“I mean,” she says, “I don’t think I believe you.
“Wait, what?”
“Well, here’s what I know,” she says. “We were together last night in my van. Then you left before I did, and yet somehow I got back here before you. I was asleep before you even came in. As far as I know, you could have been doing anything last night.”
“I—”
“Plus, I mean, you’ve been acting really strange lately. Dragging me all the way to the English building in the middle of the night, ranting about a dead body? I mean, you have to admit that’s—y’know—”
“Uh—”
But this proves I was telling the truth!
No, actually, I guess it doesn’t. It doesn’t really prove anything, except that she thinks I’m just as crazy as I think she is. I really want to say But you’re the one who lures people into her van with cigarettes to yell things about Jesus and aliens and Zen at them, but really, does that even hold a candle to imagining dead bodies in the middle of the night? Not really? I guess? Those things are a little hard to compare.
“What time did you get back here last night?” she says.
“Uh—” I’m trying to think, but all I can remember is that dream with Sara at the publisher. It replays over and over, no matter what I do, and somehow it’s different each time. “—I don’t remember.”
“Ballpark?”
“Um—what time did you get back?”
“Uh—I think it was one-ish. Something like that.”
“And I wasn’t—?”
“You weren’t here, no.”
“Weird.”
She sighs, stands up, shuffles toward the window. She’s looking down into the alley, at the dumpsters and rain puddles. “Do you even remember getting back?”
“I—it was late. I was tired—I—”
“So that’s a no, then. Yeah, cops would love that.” Breathes deep, sighs, leans hard on her elbow. It can’t possibly be comfortable, with the metal frame poking into it like that, but she stays there. She’s really trying hard to piece the night together. Maybe I should help.
“Did you lock the door?” I ask her.
“Huh?”
“When you got back last night—did you lock the door?”
“I—no. I figured you were right behind me, and I didn’t feel the need to keep you out. Did you lock it?”
“Um—”
She sighs and says, “Right. You don’t remember.” Runs a hand through her permed dreads. Sits on her desk, her calloused feet dangling. “You realize this looks really bad for you.”
“Or you.”
Laughs, joyless. “I know, I know. That’s why I was saying—well, y’know. I’m just not excited at all to go to the cops with this. Especially considering how cops tend to treat people with my particular shade of melanin.”
“I’m seeing your point here.” I’m busying myself by playing with the sheets on her bed, which hasn’t been made since the first day of school. There aren’t quite as many crumbs in it as you’d think.
“And you agree?”
“I mean—um—”
“Come on, Phelia. You can’t stay on the fence forever. It’s not an option here.”
“I know, I know, I’m just—I’m trying to think.”
“Did you lock the door when you left for my show?”
“I—I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I mean,” I tell her, “I guess I don’t think about it all that much. It’s something I do automatically every time I leave, so I never remember it consciously.”
She sighs, gets down, sits on the bed next to me, and tilts her head back, counting ceiling tiles. “It just doesn’t make any sense, though.”
“No argument here.”
“I mean, right? If neither of us knows her, there’s no motive.” She lies back, rubs her eyes. “And even if we had one, we’d both be idiots to stick the body in the closet.”
“So you think someone snuck in here and hid the body while we were sleeping?”
“Yeah, except that makes even less sense.”
“And it kinda freaks me out.”
“Yeah, no duh,” she says. “And again, I’d say Let’s call the cops, except the whole thing looks so deliberate. Like we were set up or something.”
And then I sigh and sit up, because we have to figure this out. My back is against the painted concrete wall, and it’s cold and it hurts, which is just what I need to keep myself awake and focused. “Well—maybe if we could figure out who killed her...”
“What do you mean?”
“I dunno, we could do some amateur detective work, or something. Is that such a terrible idea? Dig around, see what we find?”
She sits up. Leans against the wall, almost in the corner. “And while we’re playing your detective games, we—what? Just leave her in your closet? Let her rot and stink until she oozes out under the door?”
“Okay, eew.”
“Um, yeah, eew—that’s what dead bodies do, Phelia. They rot. They stink. And they give themselves away really fast. They don’t wait around for you to solve their murders. This isn’t an Agatha Christie novel.”
“Is that—?”
“Yeah, that was dig at your book collection.”
“Oh.” She’s got an entire shelf of Nicholas Sparks, but I’ll bring that up some other time.
“Anyway, I wouldn’t even know where to start with this. I’ve been Facebook-stalking her all day, and she’s boring. I can’t imagine who would want to murder her.”
“A rapist?”
“She’s fully clothed.”
“A...mu
gger?”
“She’s still got her wallet. And let me remind you that her throat has been torn out.”
“So...bears?”
She sighs. “Yeah, that sounds right. Yogi came down from Jellystone, stole her pic-a-nic basket, and dumped her in our closet.”
Okay, okay, point taken. “So...” I finally say, “I guess we’re dealing with whatever sort of sick bastard violently murders people for the hell of it, and then shoves the bodies into random closets while the occupants of the room sleep soundly.”
“...yeah.”
I jump up from the bed and twist the lock on the door to the room so hard that my hand aches.
“Look,” she says, “we just need to get rid of the body, however we can. Whatever’s going on here, we don’t want to get involved in it any more than we already are.”
“Okay, fine, Kate, you win. What do you suggest we do with it?”
She’s pacing. “I—I honestly hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“Oh.”
And we stand there, and she wrings her hands, and we stare at the floor. And the wind catches one of our windows and whistles like it sometimes does at night, and it rattles our closet doors.
And I finally say, “I have a thought.”
sun. jan. 16.
1:57 am.
still awake
Been working on this rhyme now for hours.
With each minute ticking by, the air sours.
Past that door, near my coat,
Is a girl with no throat,
And her scent is distinctly not like flowers.
Obviously, I’m not happy with that last line.
Of course when I started, my first line wasn’t Been working on this rhyme now for hours, because at that point I hadn’t been. I originally started with There once was a corpse in a closet, but that seemed a little too on-the-nose, and besides, it turns out that pretty much nothing rhymes with closet, anyway. I tried faucet for a while, but that wasn’t a real rhyme, and besides, I didn’t have much to say about faucets. I had an image in my head of a bunch of faucets squirting out blood, like something from a cheesy horror movie, but that was just macabre for the sake of macabre, and didn’t really have anything to do with my situation, since I haven’t actually run into any blood-squirting faucets.
(Nor do I plan to.)
So, anyway, after I tried thinking up rhymes for closet for way longer than I should have (posit? pause it? crawfish?), I realized that I’d been working on the stupid thing practically forever, and that’s how I ended up with that line about hours that I’m currently using. All I’ve really learned from the experience is that I was right all along, and those stupid seventh-graders didn’t know what they were talking about, not that they’d ever admit it, because of their stupid stupidness. Limericks are so damn hard, just like everything in life is so unfairly hard, and it’s a huge bait-and-switch and it’s not fair. Parents and teachers and everyone else tell you you’re special and you’re amazing and everything you do is great from the moment you’re born till you hit adulthood, and then it’s like Yeah, just kidding, you’re not actually amazing, have fun working three pointless jobs just so you can make rent this month. And then you realize that Oh, wait, I’m not really that great, I’m barely even adequate. And I can’t help but think that maybe—maybe—the people who actually aspire to greatness should have to work hard, but I’m not one of those people, I just want to be adequate. I’d be fine with adequacy, but even adequacy takes so much goddamn effort that it’s not even worth it.
Anyway.
Kate and I both changed into my hospital scrubs around midnight, and since then we’ve both just been sitting here. For hours. Me on my bed, and Kate on hers. And a lot of dorm rooms are little cubes designed to be conducive to hanging out and socializing, but this building is different, and our room is more like a long, skinny shoebox, where each half is a mirror image of the other. Our beds are staring each other down, with their heads against opposite walls and their feet almost touching opposite sides of the doorframe, and there’s nothing between us but a dozen feet of empty, sweaty air.
It’s almost two now, late Saturday night, or early Sunday morning, or something. The time of night (morning?) when the only real reason to be awake is that the bars won’t close for a few more minutes. But here we both are, not at the bars. Not quite awake, but a million miles away from sleep. The lights are still on, the crummy fluorescent lights that make purple things look green, but we still haven’t turned them off because we both know we won’t sleep anyway.
My left eye is twitching.
She’s sitting at her end of this private little tunnel, and I’m sitting at mine, and we just stare at each other because there’s nothing left to say. We talked for hours, agreed on a plan, signed a blood pact (not literally, but sort-of-literally), and now there’s nothing but silence in the air, because there’s nothing more to talk about. Just a plan that we made up only two hours ago, but it already feels so old and ancient, and it’s starting to sag in the middle, but what can we do except prop it up and try to make it work? It’s too late to think, and there’s nothing to do but wait for 2:30, when no one will be awake, we hope. Her eyes are red now, deep red, and they’ve grown another layer of red with each hour that’s gone by, like rings in a tree trunk, and I know because I haven’t looked away from her eyes this whole time. And I know mine are red too, because I felt each layer of red form, like the crusty skin you get on top of soup when you don’t stir it.
She has her laptop open in her lap like always, but she hasn’t even touched it in two hours, and I saw the screen go blank a while ago. I know because the light from the screen was shining reflected in her eyes, and then it disappeared. And when the screen went blank, her lips dried out and they cracked until I almost stood up and screamed Get some goddamn ChapStick, and the pores on her nose swelled up with black oil from the sweat that’s been beading on her face. Her nose is whistling and she’s tapping on her bedframe with a rhythm that keeps switching between a waltz and four-on-the-floor.
Then:
BONG BONG BONG BONG
It’s her phone and it’s ringing. Our red eyes snap open at loud, angry noise, and they meet, just half-cleared, and she jumps and I jump, and she’s swinging her head left-to-right, trying to find it, her phone, half-alert, like she just woke up out of a coma. I see it right there, it’s under her butt, folded up in the sheets and the blankets and crumbs, and I try to say Hey, it’s right there, but my mouth’s stuck together and dry. Then her hand slaps down onto it, a splash in the deep waves of sheets rolling under the lights, and she holds it up stupidly, trying to find an on/off switch. She punches it (somehow), and finally it turns off, but we’re sweating and cold, and I stare at her eyes like they’re headlights.
“What the hell was that?” Gasping. Get it together.
“My phone.”
“I know it was your phone. I mean, who’s calling at 2:30 in the morning? Why do you have the ringer turned up so high?”
“God, chill, Phelia. I just—I set an alarm. In case we fell asleep, or whatever.” She’s brushing a dread behind her ear.
“You were planning on falling asleep?”
“I was—I mean, just in case, y’know? Anyway, ssshhhh.” Puts her finger to her lips.
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? Now that your phone’s woken up the entire building?”
“Stop shouting!” She grabs my arm.
“God, fine, chill.” She’s locked on my eyes, hand clamped on my tricep.
It takes forever for her grip to relax. “No, you’re right,” she says. “I’m sorry, I just—I need to relax. I know. I’m sorry.” She’s whispering now, hot breath in my ear that mixes with the chills. It’s a simple plan. We take the body to the hospital, to Sara’s morgue. She says it takes forever for the bodies to get moved, anyway, so no one will notice one more. Then we stick it in one of her body coolers, which will keep it hidden and fresh while we try to figure
things out from there. Should be easy.
I shake my head, trying to clear it. “I just—why did you have it so loud? Turn it off.”
“I can’t turn alarms off.”
“What?”
“Even if you switch the ringer off, the alarms still—”
“Just make sure it doesn’t go off again. You have any more alarms set?”
“I—what? Of course not. It’s the middle of the night.”
“Uh, yeah, it’s the middle of the night.”
“What’s your point?”
Ugh. “Never mind. Let’s just get her out to your van.” It’s nice of her to volunteer her van for the cause, since my Escort wouldn’t fit the thing, and anyway, it’s still stranded over by the coffee shop.
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
I get the box of latex gloves from my desk, the one I took from the janitor’s closet two hours ago, and we each slip on a pair. I’ve always hated that powdery, clingy feeling.
“Okay,” she says, “let’s do it.”
I nod.
She nods.
I nod again.
“Well?” she says. “Go get her.”
“Why do I have to get her?”
“Because—because she’s in your closet.”
“But I didn’t put her in there!”
“Neither did I!”
“What? Yes you did!”
“Not the first time!”
“But that’s—!” I stop because I realize we’re almost shouting and I thought I heard something, and I probably actually did—it’s a big building, and there’s always somebody awake, which is another reason to whisper. “Look,” I say, “this is stupid. Neither one of us could carry her by herself, anyway, so let’s just both go over there and get her, together.”
“Yeah. Good plan.” We both shamble sideways toward the closet door, and then we stand there, staring at it, a thick panel of wood holding back a flood of stinking carrion. And—somehow—I ended up on the side with the doorknob.
Damn it.
“Well?” she whispers. “Open the door.”
“I—just gimme a second.” My hand’s on the knob, and it’s cold and it’s sweaty. I haven’t seen Cyndi since early morning. Up until this moment, I could pretend she wasn’t real, and I kind of want to go back to that.
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