by Will Carver
Twenty-five minutes later, there was a knock at the door, which Sythe answered.
‘Is it you?’ The man was angry.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You. Is it you that is having a fucking bonfire in the middle of the day?’ The middle-aged barrel of a man took a step closer, and Sythe, instinctively, took a step back.
Abe was reading and could hear the commotion.
‘Do NOT try to come in here, sir.’
The barrel wasn’t listening.
‘I’m trying to eat my lunch in peace and I’ve got smoke coming into my house. I can’t even keep my windows open in this weather because someone in this house is always burning their goddamned rubbish.’ He poked a finger towards Sythe’s face on the beat of the last four syllables.
‘Get your finger out of my face.’
‘Get your smoke out of my house.’
Abe stopped reading so he could concentrate on the argument.
‘I’m sorry but who are you?’ Sythe looked disgusted at the sight of the man trying to barge his way over the threshold of The Beresford.
‘I’m a neighbour. I live directly behind your garden.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘What?’ His anger gave way to confusion.
‘What do you do … for a living?’ Such condescension in his voice.
‘What has that got to do with anything?’ The anger was rising again.
‘Because I am an artist. I have a process. And part of that process is editing out the works that are not fit for consumption. In simple terms, I burn the shit. I rip it apart and I set fire to it. Erasing it forever and cleansing myself of it.’
‘Well, you need to be more considerate about when you do it.’ The overweight neighbour seemed to think he was in a negotiation with a rational human being.
Mrs May’s music seemed to get louder.
Abe came out of his flat, a hardback book in his right hand, and perched himself against the wall a little closer to the action. He didn’t know why. Morbid curiosity. Perhaps he was hoping the man from over the fence would punch Sythe on the nose. That would be funny.
‘You’re wrong. You wouldn’t understand. You probably sell insurance or something. The only thing I have to consider is my work. If I need to purge at midday or midnight, that is when I will do it.’ His face was so punchable.
But the complainer was so taken back by the self-importance, it took him a moment to compose himself.
‘Take this as a friendly warning: the next time smoke pours over that fence and into my house, it will be the last thing you ever fucking burn and the first thing I ever stick up your arse.’ And, with that, the barrel turned and rolled back home.
Abe had to stop himself from laughing. Mrs May was still in her flat with the flute blaring.
Sythe shut the door.
‘Everything alright?’ Abe asked, suddenly finding himself out on the open landing between the downstairs flats.
‘Mind your own business, Abe.’ Lost somewhere in the moment, a little of Aidan Gallagher’s accent found its way out.
Abe exhaled in disbelief. ‘Jesus, I was only asking.’
Sythe’s venom had a new target. He paced over to Abe Schwartz and stood close to his face, just as the neighbour had done so threateningly a few moments before.
‘What’s it got to do with you, eh? What do you even do all day around here? You’re always reading some book or another?’ It was as though he’d forgotten he was Sythe at all. Abe was hearing some Irish impersonator.
‘Why are you so—?’
There wasn’t time to think of the correct word before Sythe or Aidan or whoever he was pushed Abe in the shoulder.
‘What the—?’ Again, Abe was stuck.
‘You’re always skulking around, not doing anything. What are you, a spy for old Mrs May?’ He pushed Abe again.
‘Mrs May? What has she got to do with anything?’
Then Sythe slapped Abe around the face. Hard. It may have been residual anger from his last conversation or some kind of pent-up frustration over his artistic failings. Perhaps it was that Sythe was a dick. And he was bigger than Abe, so he thought he could push him around a bit. Sythe had thrust himself, somehow, onto this art scene and he had nobody around him to reel him in, to keep him grounded, like his family did back home in Ireland.
Maybe he thought he was invincible and could get away with anything.
He provoked Abe once more, slapping him with the inside of his bloodied hand. What he didn’t expect was for Abe to lose himself so completely.
The hardback book came straight up, almost sending Sythe’s nose through his skull. His eyes watered and he hurled some obscenities, but Abe was not himself. Soon, they were on the floor. Abe straddled the artist’s chest. He hit the book into Sythe’s face a few more times and pushed downwards with all his force so that both thumbs pressed either side of Sythe’s poisonous windpipe.
There was kicking and gargling and a bloodied nose and the woodwind instrumental from the corner apartment.
Then stillness. And realisation.
The first kill is always the best.
The next time the smoke crept over the fence, it would be Abe attempting to dry out the bones of the man he had just strangled to death.
ELEVEN
‘Jesus Christ!’ Blair held a hand to her heart.
‘I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to scare you.’
Mrs May raised a gloved hand towards her new tenant in apology for sneaking up on her. Blair had two boxes left to drag inside her new home. She wanted to get some books on the shelf, drink a large glass of wine and masturbate with the bedroom door wide open. It wasn’t the most refined of plans but it was what she wanted to do on her first night of freedom.
‘Where did Abe go? He stopped helping you?’
‘It’s okay, Mrs May, I asked him to leave me be. I haven’t even seen all the rooms myself. He helped get the heavy things upstairs. I’m more than capable of taking things inside myself.’ And she smiled that wholesome country-girl smile of hers.
‘Well, if you’re sure. I was going to give him a piece of my mind.’
‘No, no. Please don’t do that. He seems very kind and gracious. The kind of neighbour anyone would want. Really.’
Then Blair found herself in a too-long conversation with Mrs May about nothing. She was too polite to leave the old woman out in the hall but also didn’t want to invite her in. All the time hoping she would go away so that Blair’s freedom plans could be realised. The wine was on the side in the kitchen. Calling her.
‘It’s been a long day. I’m going to get these last couple of boxes in and probably turn in for the night. We can catch up again tomorrow.’
In Blair’s mind, this was courteous. She was making future plans for discussion but she was busy right now. That’s how they’d see it back home – what used to be home. But she was in the city now. And the look on Mrs May’s face made Blair feel as though she had been too abrupt and had insulted the woman who provided her shelter (for a more than fair price).
But she couldn’t hesitate. That would draw attention to her possible mistake. Blair had to ride it out. She edged into her new place, the last two boxes stacked on one another in her arms, an elderly lady in gardening gloves staring at her. Wordless.
‘Goodnight Mrs May,’ she tried.
Nothing.
Blair set the boxes down in the hallway, letting the door close behind her, and waited to hear feet shuffling back downstairs.
She waited some more.
Was Mrs May still waiting out there? Blair was too uncomfortable to look through the peephole. Instead, she bolted the door and pulled the chain across before honing in on the wine.
Her first glass went so quickly, she stopped thinking about the creepy landlady and managed to unpack one box of books. She drank the next large glass in the bath. Washing away her past and the scent of mediocrity.
The bathroom was at the end of the long corridor
that stretched from the front door to the back of the apartment. It was the same as Abe’s place, Mrs May’s and the artist formerly known as Sythe’s studio. Wet footprints marked the black-and-white tiles of the hallway floor where Blair had not dried herself off fully.
With the towel wrapped around her, she poured another glass in the kitchen then laid herself down on her new bed, opened the front of the towel and placed her hand between her legs.
She wasn’t worried about the noise but she had closed the door.
She wasn’t quite ready.
She would wake up tomorrow and make new plans.
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
It should be simple.
What music do you like?
Well, definitely not Coldplay, I can’t stand them. Their first album was great but they’re awful after that. And no ABBA. In fact, nothing of that ilk from around that era. Or from that part of the world. Everything in the charts is so manufactured and insipid now, too, I prefer to drive in silence these days, rather than have the radio playing.
You want to put a film on?
Not sci-fi. I’m not in the mood for that, at all. And I’m sick of all the romantic comedies coming out of Hollywood at the moment. It’s the same old shit. Even the people in them look almost identical.
Hey, kids, what do you fancy for dinner tonight?
Not stir-fry. We hate stir-fry. And not that horrible pasta sauce you did the other week, either. And definitely not soup again.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I don’t want to work in an office.
Where do you want to work?
Not a big corporate. But not a start-up, either.
So, a reputable and established independent company?
Not in the city.
Saying what you don’t want, what you don’t like, what you don’t agree with, is so much easier than the opposite. Deciding what you do want, the things that interest you, and standing for something, requires belief.
Belief in yourself.
Belief in something higher.
Not committing to something that you want – no matter how small – does not protect you from never attaining it. It prevents you from ever starting. Leaving you to walk through this thing you call life like it’s purgatory. It is your waiting room for death.
Start small.
Keep it simple.
Have a go or go to hell.
Can you say one thing that you do want?
We want to belong.
TWELVE
Abe often went out into the back garden at night, to smoke weed. The same spot where Sythe burned his awful paintings.
It was funny how the neighbour over the fence had never complained about that.
He liked his new neighbour but she really had arrived at the exact wrong time. He imagined that they could be friends. She was warm and funny. She apparently enjoyed reading, and they both seemed to have an aversion to organised religion. Marriages were built on less than that.
But he couldn’t focus on new friendships right now. Not while the world’s most overrated abstract expressionist corpse was starting to stink up his bathroom. He needed some time to think. And smoke. And be outside of the fear for a moment.
It was cold but Abe didn’t care. The line of sweat running down his back had been widening with every trip up the stairs, carrying a new box.
He was panicking. Did the body already smell? He’d seen enough crime shows to know that bodies start to kick out fluids and odours fairly quickly. And what about Mrs May? Luckily, she hardly saw Sythe, and it was obvious that she wasn’t particularly fond of him. If he wasn’t around for the next week, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. But she must have keys to all the apartments. She owns The Beresford. It’s her business, her livelihood. She can’t have tenants camping out and not paying their rent. What if she goes into Abe’s room to drop off some mail? Very innocent and helpful of her, of course, but she’d be hit by the scent of death. And curiosity would take her further inside the depravity.
Then what? Kill Mrs May? Murder Blair, just to tie up all the loose ends?
This wasn’t him.
This wasn’t Abe Schwartz.
He did not want to go on a killing spree. He just wanted people to leave him alone.
Abe drew in a couple of lungs of smoke, shut his eyes for a moment and held it there before releasing it into the air. A few seconds of calm. He was all alone. He always had been. He liked it that way. Look what happened when you got involved with other people.
A light turned on in the house behind the garden and somebody opened the window. Abe ducked down behind the fence, stubbed out his joint and held his breath. A few seconds later, he heard the window squeak closed and let out his breath.
The Beresford looked huge from his position, looming over him, rounding its back. The red bricks had turned grey and it looked somehow haunted now. The decking was uncomfortable to sit on but Abe stayed, surveying the area.
There was a clear separation between the upper and lower sections of The Beresford. The third floor, when not in use by some company for an end-of-quarter presentation and kick-off party, acted like a dark tourniquet that kept the upstairs levels from touching the section where Abe lived.
A different sound came from the higher floors. It felt edgy to Abe. Things were probably happening on those floors that he didn’t want to know about. He enjoyed being out the back but, at night especially, it felt like those shadowy floors above were pressing downwards and that empty corporate space on level three was the only thing stopping him from being crushed.
Mrs May took such care of the garden. Flowers everywhere. Vegetables growing in raised beds. She had been out the front of the building earlier while Abe had been helping Blair, and he had thought she was just being nosey, trying to listen in. But he could tell that he had been wrong. Mrs May must have continued her pruning out the back of the house because there, resting on an oversized plant pot next to her roses, were her secateurs.
The old dear must have been distracted by something. She seemed a little senile and was probably always misplacing items.
The old Abe would have taken them back immediately for fear that Mrs May would start to worry.
The new Abe thought they’d be perfect for cutting off fingers and toes.
All he needed now was the drain cleaner.
THIRTEEN
Mr and Mrs Conroy soaked up the hospitality of their church group that night. Their friends were sensitive. They were caring. They were the way that all Christians believe themselves to be but many rarely are. The community was their church. Not the building they frequented.
Blair had hated it because she didn’t belong, not because there was anything evil or cultish or untoward. It was perfect. And, to her, there was no beauty in perfection.
No risk.
No passion.
No point.
Just how the Conroys wanted it to be. They went out for dinner with two other married-forever couples. They all had the soup starter. For main course, everybody ate meat apart from Mrs Conroy, who was vegetarian. It was the one thing that set her apart from the others at church and, as such, was the one thing Blair truly respected about her mother.
They shared two bottles of red wine between the six of them, which was more than enough to have them nudging at the barriers of propriety, but the extent of their rebellion was giggling too loudly at Mr Conroy’s jokes.
It was a pleasant evening where Blair’s parents got the opportunity to focus on themselves rather than the hole that had been left in their lives.
They each ordered a dessert. Mr Conroy took his usual affogato, which he had found to be the most wondrous concoction since seeing it in the movie adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley – his second favourite book after the Bible. His wife had once tried to make him one at home, but it just wasn’t the same as going out for dinner.
The men shook hands afterwards and kissed each other’s wives goodbye on the cheek. Th
ey smiled and walked home in different directions, talking about the joy of their evenings. Not a bad word was said about another person at that table.
And then the Conroys were home.
The house already seemed bigger. They imagined an echo that wasn’t there. The living room had too many seats and the upstairs had too many bedrooms. It was just them, now. A home built for three – with one guest bedroom, of course – was now occupied by only two.
‘Shall we have a nightcap?’ Mr Conroy suggested from, seemingly, nowhere.
‘Dear, don’t you think we had enough at dinner?’
‘It was lovely, darling, but we would usually come home to Blair and she is not here. Things are different, so I think it could be an idea to do something we wouldn’t usually do.’ He had already made his way over to the drinks cabinet and was crouching down to pull out a bottle of something.
‘Okay. I’ll take a thimble of sherry, if you must.’ She was playful.
‘Then I guess I’ll have a large whisky.’
Mr Conroy poured the drinks, they clinked glasses and paused. He was going to toast Blair but changed his mind. His wife wondered what he was going to say.
He kept it simple.
‘To two’.
They took a sip and kissed. Nothing amorous. It wasn’t going to lead anywhere just because they had the place to themselves. It was friendly understanding and cherished companionship. It was beauty in a moment. It was The Conroys.
And they turned out the lights and brushed their teeth and dressed in their night clothes and prayed and got in to bed, where they lay, back to back, looking out through separate walls and wondering what their only child was doing at that moment.
Blair’s father imagined her underneath a lamp, sitting on the sofa with a large glass of red wine and a book, her feet tucked beneath her. Just like she did at home. Her old home. He smiled to himself as though it were true. But he could hear his wife breathing.