by Jack Douglas
She couldn’t believe what she saw.
#
In the bedroom Craig placed the last Xanax beneath his tongue and savored its acrid taste. He had been eating the tranquilizers like candy, popping them without even thinking about it, and now there weren’t any left. Though the pills hadn’t helped him much in the sleep department, they sure as hell had calmed his nerves. Now that they were gone, he wondered how he would handle whatever came next.
The bedroom was getting warmer and warmer. He had tried the thermostat but it had no effect. He was out of his clothes now, dressed only in light blue boxers. Still beneath his head the pillow was damp with sweat.
(“Get the fuck over here! I’ve got the blow dryer!”)
He was up to nineteen thousand words and he busied his mind with that, dictating notes and ideas into the microcassette recorder now glued to his left hand. Letters from Lisbon was shaping up to be everything he had dreamed and more.
But how much longer could he work like this? He’d heard of the starving artist, but this was ridiculous. Without food, without water, without sleep. Without a place to shit. He wasn’t even a quarter into the book and already his body was shutting down. He needed some air conditioning, a working toilet, something to eat and drink.
He heard Amy in the living room, moving some things around. What was she up to? Why couldn’t she just come in here and lie down? She always had to be doing something. And that something might now include going through his things. Nosy-ass bitch.
He tried to rise but found he didn’t have the strength. His head fell back to the pillow and stayed there. His fingers went limp and the microcassette recorder dropped from his hand and onto the bed. His toes curled, his eyelids fluttered. His body started to shake.
(It’s an aneurism.)
The room was spinning and his ear was pulsing, the sweat pouring down his face. He tried to scream but as though in a dream not a sound would leave his mouth. Suddenly, his jaw shut like a steel trap and his teeth sunk into his tongue. He felt his mouth fill with blood, warm and salty. It disgusted him that it reminded him he was hungry, that it almost seemed like a beverage to his famished palate. Still, he swallowed it down, finding comfort in the mere act of swallowing something, revolting as it was.
And then from beneath him he felt a set of hands or paws scratching and clawing their way out of the mattress, raking his neck and back.
The phone started ringing.
Against the bedroom door Craig could hear a distant but insistent tapping, against the wall a constant rapping, while fado music came from all around. Then the lamp flickered and the dresser and armoire drawers began opening and closing on their own. The room itself began to shake.
Half-conscious and without warning, Craig vomited onto his chest, and defecated in the bed. He twisted his neck and arched his back, choking on the stench.
Then it all stopped. The lamp bulb burst with a pop. And everything in the room went as black as space.
#
In the living room Amy was into the wine, sucking at it straight from the bottle. Fast-forwarding through the second tape. She was breathing heavily, her cheeks tinged an angry red.
On the black and white screen was Craig’s Battery Park apartment. Craig’s Battery Park bedroom, Craig’s Battery Park bed. And on the bed was Craig. Craig and some red-headed slut he called Kerry, naked as jay birds and doing the deed.
She had scanned the entire six hours of the first tape and half of the second and so far it was all the same. All that changed were the women and the positions, and sometimes the number of sluts on the bed. Several times there were two women and once there were three. Doing things Amy couldn’t believe.
The tapes were made before she had met him—she could tell by the sheets. She had raised the volume and there was talk of the law, of his practice, so they pre-dated her but not by long. Regardless of when they were recorded, they still made Amy feel even more ill.
Yet she couldn’t shut the screen off, couldn’t even turn from it. She had to see each tape through to the end. So she watched him get sucked, watched him fuck, watched him drink and do drugs with women she had never seen before and would never see again.
All the while she kept swigging the wine, the thick red port sliding down her chin. Still, the alcohol that poured down her throat and into her empty stomach was more than enough to do the trick.
Within ten minutes she was drunk. Within twenty she was sick.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hours later Craig lay on his back on the bare mattress in the pitch black bedroom with Amy snoring at his side. The fado traveled softly through the wall. He couldn’t see the clock but he guessed it was around midnight. Amy had been sleeping for about the past half hour.
He had woken in the dark about two hours ago covered in his own vomit, lying in his own feces. He dry-heaved, nearly vomited again from the stench. He moved from the bed, careful not to make more of a mess, and headed for the bathroom before he remembered they had no water.
He began to panic, almost to cry, the pulse pounding in his ear, the vomit dripping down his stomach, excrement sliding down his thighs. He moved toward the lamp, felt along the dresser for its base and came away with sharp stabbing pains in his left palm. With his right hand he picked out the tiny pieces of glass, what was left of the bulb.
He stepped into the bathroom and turned on the light. Pulled a towel off the rack and wiped himself down, retching all the while. He left the bathroom door open, the light on, and went back into the bedroom to retrieve his Purell. It took twenty-two minutes and the rest of the bottle, but by the time he was finished he felt relatively fresh. Almost clean, even. He rolled the soiled sheets into a ball and tossed them into the shower along with his boxers. Then he moved back into the bedroom and shut the door against the smell.
It was then that Amy stepped in, head down, face pointed toward the floor. In the glow of the light from the living room he saw that she, too, was naked. Naked…and drunk. She reeked of port wine and stumbled as she moved toward him, slurring words he had never heard from her mouth before. “I need to get fucked,” she said, reaching for him, staggering still toward him. “I want your fucking cock .”
She faltered, almost fell, and Craig extended his arms to catch Her. When he did she clutched him with surprising strength and threw him effortlessly onto the bed, onto the bare mattress with its lingering scent of shit. She climbed atop him and forced her tongue into his mouth, probing with an unprecedented hunger. She straddled him and sucked at his tongue and bit hard on his upper lip. He screamed and tried to maneuver out from under her, but she pinned down his arms and her hundred and twelve pounds atop his pelvis seemed like at least double that.
“Fuck me, fuck me,” she breathed, spittle landing on his face, in his eyes, stinging them, as he tried to push her off. And then his cock somehow swelled, somehow hardened. Somehow it found its way inside her and Amy took him, rode him, cursed him, dug her nails into his chest until he bled.
It occurred to him now as he lay next to her in the darkness that he had been raped. Violated in a way he had never fathomed. He was incensed, but even more than that he was befuddled. Even drunk Amy had never acted anything like that.
Once she had come she turned right over and fell asleep, without a kiss, without a “goodnight,” without so much of a mention of the stench or a question as to what had happened to the sheets. For that he was grateful, though he dreaded explaining come morning. He was sickened and embarrassed by what he had done.
He had obviously overdosed on the Xanax, put himself into too deep a sleep. The tranquilizers coupled with consecutive days of exhaustion had simply proved too much for his body to handle. The defecation was to be expected, considering he had now gone two days without a Vicodin and was officially in withdrawal. It may have triggered the vomiting, too.
Craig closed his eyes. Listened to the fado. Beneath the soothing sound of the haunting music he heard a whisper. He turned over, rested his
hand on Amy’s naked arm and listened.
“Deixe-me empaz,” she murmured. “Nome toque.”
It was no surprise that Amy was speaking in her sleep, no surprise that she was speaking in what, to him, sounded like gibberish. What bothered Craig was her voice. It sounded somehow rougher, older even. Like the voice of someone who had been smoking for decades.
He shook her gently. “Amy?” he said.
She didn’t stir. “Chamo-me Fatima,” she whispered. “De onde é que voce é?”
He shook her a little harder. “Sweetheart, wake up.”
“Desculpa,” she spoke more urgently. “No falo inglês. Socorro, por favor. Ajude-me!”
Craig began to panic. Something about her voice, about her tone wasn’t quite right. He had been listening to her talk in her sleep for three long years and she had never sounded like this. Never sounded worried or scared.
He shook her again. “Wake up, baby,” he said, propping himself on his elbows. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?”
“Chieira mal,” she muttered. “Temos insectos, ratos. Temos baratas.” Craig breathed heavily, inhaled the stench from the bathroom and gagged. He sat up in the bed. In the darkness he listened to her whisper, her voice barely audible over the fado still seeping through the bedroom wall. He tugged at her arm, turned her over so that her open eyes were facing his. The light from the living room was just enough so that he could see her lips moving.
“No consigo dormir,” she said. “O quarto é muito quente, muito barulhento. O quarto é muito sujo.”
Craig finally recognized some of the words. The room, she was saying, was too hot, too noisy, too dirty. She couldn’t sleep. But she was asleep. Asleep and speaking a language she didn’t know.
On his knees atop the bare mattress, hovering over Amy, he buried his fingers in his sweat-drenched hair and held back a scream.
(“Get the fuck over here! I’ve got the blow dryer!”)
In his ear the pulse that started three days ago on the plane intensified, beat like a steel drum inside his head.
(It’s a tumor.)
He didn’t know what to do, whether to yell at her, to slap her, to push her off the bed and onto the floor. Was it dangerous to wake her? Was she delusional or dying? Was she hallucinating? Was he hallucinating? What was happening to them in this fucking flat?
(Or an aneurism.)
He leapt off the bed and moved quickly toward the bathroom. He swung open the door and held his breath against the stench. Flipped on the light and went back into the bedroom, leaving the door open just enough for some light to spill in.
(With an aneurism you go like that!)
He dropped to his knees in front of the bed and stared at Amy, at her paper-pale winter face and drying lips, at her swollen nose and puffy eyes. He shook her again.
“Lava louça no funciona,” she was whispering. “Lavatórios, chuveiro no funciona. No ha agua. No ha agua!”
Under the panic, he felt a surge of regret for bringing her to Lisbon. As the sweat dripped into his eyes, he experienced a sharp pang of guilt. He had been selfish, narcissistic even, yanking Amy out of her element and dragging her across the Atlantic to Europe. But then he wouldn’t have had to do that had she stayed with him in Hawaii. If she hadn’t left him they would be in Honolulu still, in that beautiful Waikiki condo overlooking the tropical Pacific. This wasn’t his fault, it was hers. And more than hers, it was her mother’s. That old meddling bitch was responsible for all this, not him.
Her mother had been the one who ripped Amy away from him. Her mother had been the one who stole her from paradise and brought her back to that living hell. That was why they were here in Portugal. Her fucking mother. She might as well have sabotaged their pipes, wiped out their phone and Internet, and interred them inside this bloody flat herself.
He turned his head sideways and felt his ear lobes get hot and he tried to calm himself down. But there were no more Xanax, no more Vicodin, no water, no food, no nothing in this sorry excuse for a home. He listened to her whispering. Three fucking years with hardly a word and now she wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
“...nopossoabrir a porta. Nopossoabrir a janela. No posso abrir a porta. No posso abrir a janela. No posso abrir a porta...”
He couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t listen to another goddamn word. He stood up and started pacing the length of the bedroom, screaming at the top of his lungs and drowning out her whispers, drowning out the fado, cursing her, cursing her mother, cursing the next door neighbor, cursing Amaro Dias Silva and his associate, cursing himself.
Still she didn’t wake, didn’t stop her whispering, which had morphed now into an urgent whisper-scream. “Pare com isso! Chega! Vouchamar a policia!”
He squatted on his haunches in front of her and reached for her throat. He squeezed it, gently at first, then harder, then moved his hands up toward her mouth.
“No! No!” she whispered, her eyes fixed to a spot just above his head. “Fumo! Fumo!”
He covered her lips to stop her from speaking but they kept moving beneath his hand.
“Fogo! Fogo! FOGO!”
He squeezed her cheeks with all his might and yelled again at the top of his lungs. “Amy! Wake up! Wake up! Wake the fuck up!”
The whispering suddenly ceased and so did the fado. The room fell silent and Amy’s eyes rolled back in her head. Her lids fluttered and she seemed to come awake just then.
“Amy, can you hear me? Please tell me you can hear me?” he begged.
In the bleak light her eyes fell on him but her gaze remained utterly blank, devoid of all recognition. Her dry lips parted and she seemed to be trying to speak.
He reached out and pulled her naked body to him. He rubbed her back and felt her heat. Her skin burned hot.
“It’ll be okay,” he said, rocking her gently. “Everything will be all right. “He could hear her whimpering in his ear, crying softly. “You’re fine, Amy. Just fine. You were just whispering in your sleep.”
Her muscles immediately tightened and she shivered in his arms. She pushed herself back from him and looked squarely into his eyes with that same blank stare. When she spoke, her voice was hers but it sounded low and distant as a voice might sound in a dream.
“The dead don’t whisper,” she said flatly. “They scream.”
Thirty-six hours have passed since the tremors, and Xavier’s mother hasn’t come home. He remains in the flat alone, watching out the window as fires rage across the city of Lisbon.
Xavier is scared. He is trapped in the flat and no one has come to check on him. With all the destruction the city has suffered, it is no wonder. He isn’t even sure whether potential rescuers can gain access to his building. Most of the surrounding structures have been reduced to rubble. Those that still stand are engulfed in flames.
There is no water in the flat, and Xavier is parched. His throat is dry and his mouth feels as though it is filled with cotton. Briefly he cries. But then he turns back to his drawings.
Xavier draws what he has seen, what he has felt. He draws a picture of himself in the flat with pieces of ceiling falling down all around him, with walls that shake and a door that has twisted grotesquely in its frame. He draws what he has seen outside his window—buildings in mid- collapse, flames that reach up for the sky, smoke thick and black enough to choke an entire city.
Xavier writes his thoughts on the back of these drawings as best he can. Yesterday he expressed worry, today he expresses fear. He hopes he will no longer have to draw pictures tomorrow. He hopes his mother will come home and take him away from here.
What is keeping her? If only she had come home the night before the quake. She would know what to do, she would get them out of here. What was so interesting about these men that kept her away all night? What did they provide that Xavier couldn’t?
Xavier’s mother never speaks about her men. Well, only the one— Xavier’s father. She speaks of him all the time, calls him a bastard. And when Xavier misbehaves, his m
other calls him a bastard, too. Says he is just like his no-good father. “Cut from the same cloth” is the phrase she sometimes uses.
She often reminds Xavier that he was an “accident.” This, Xavier doesn’t quite understand. An accident? Like the time he knocked over that jar of cookies in the kitchen? An accident, like the time he peed in his pants?
As he draws, Xavier’s stomach grumbles and he tells it to shut up. Tells his stomach there is nothing he can do about his hunger; they will both have to wait. Xavier’s mother will be home soon. She will bring food.
Chapter Twenty-Two
He stood by the window in the early morning light, watching steam rise up from the grate in the alley. He scratched at his face. It had been three days since he shaved and the coarse growth was itching, irritating his skin. He was parched. His lips were dry and cracking and felt alien against his tongue. His head ached. From the top of his eyes to the base of his neck was just one great length of pain. He ran his fingers through his shaggy damp hair and wiped away some of the sweat with his sleeve. The flat was getting hotter and hotter and it was becoming more and more difficult to breathe.
But at least he was writing. In fact, he had written nearly seven thousand words last night, which meant that nearly a third of the book was completed. One third of the book in just three days was unprecedented; that much typically took him a month.
Amy was still asleep in the bedroom and he didn’t want to wake her. But he did want to pound against the front door with his fists and scream at the top of his lungs. Someone other than their next door neighbor had to live on their floor and he was sure that at the crack of dawn someone would hear him and come to their aid. Time was quickly slipping away. This would be their second day without water, their third without food.
And Amy, it seemed, was losing her mind. Any way he looked at it, she had sexually assaulted him last night. And she had been speaking in Portuguese. In her sleep. She had been speaking about the dead.