by Will Carver
He truly was an idiot. The kind of idiot that seemed to make a breakthrough in therapy, agreed to attend his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting before going to a bar to drink away his sorrows, then going home and smashing up his own kitchen and throwing away the pregnancy test because he thought it was a box of his wife’s tampons.
And, because he was the type of idiot who would make a breakthrough with his mental health and throw it all away the next minute, he was also the type of guy that would slide his back down the kitchen cupboard, sitting next to the now-broken microwave he threw against the tiled floor, swig another beer, then text more abuse to the wife he claimed he didn’t want to hurt.
FOURTEEN
You ruined my life, Gail. You fucking ruined it all. I wish I’d never met you. I hope you fucking die.
Gail did not need this. She had done nothing wrong. What she needed was to change her number or get a new phone. One of those pay-as-you-go things. She’d seen them in cop shows. The criminals used them then threw them away. Burners. That’s what they called them.
She needed a burner.
Sure, she could have blocked him, deleted all the messages, but that wasn’t final enough. There was no cleansing. The Beresford was her fresh start. She needed to be rid of her old life.
It would have been easy to look up the nearest phone shop, but she decided to ask Mrs May. She was pleased to be away from her situation but she didn’t really want to be alone; she craved human interaction. Something real and unthreatening.
‘Oh, dear. I’m sorry. I can use my computer for listing the rooms, but that’s the extent of my technological skills.’ Mrs May seemed genuinely dismayed. ‘I’m sure there is somewhere in town. There are probably lots of places. I don’t venture out of the house much.’ She laughed uncomfortably. ‘You could maybe ask Blair. Introduce yourself while you’re up there. Or Abe if that’s no good.’
Gail was worried about meeting Blair but didn’t know why. Mrs May was nothing but complimentary and apparently Abe was smitten. She traipsed up the stairs and knocked meekly on Blair’s front door.
Nothing. Of course.
Gail tried a more authoritative knock. Four, in fact, and a rasp to end with.
She’d not been there a day and already she knew that tenants would often leave without a word. She’d heard about the famous artist who had lived in her flat. And it already seemed to her that this Blair woman had run off but nobody wanted to admit it yet.
Poor Abe.
That’s what Gail thought. Abe wasn’t like her husband. Nobody, not even his so-called friends would be saying, ‘Poor Castle.’ He was a monster. But Abe didn’t seem that way. Still, the Blair girl must have left for a reason.
Gail hit Abe’s front door with a little more confidence.
He spoke through a very small gap between the door and its frame, but he was friendly looking and courteous.
‘There are a few places not that far from here, actually. If you can give me a few minutes, I’ll just freshen up and I can show you.’
‘Okay. That would be great. Thank you. I can wait over there by the books.’ She pointed.
‘Mrs May likes to call it the library. But, yes, I won’t be long. And if you drink coffee, I know a couple of really good places near the phone store, if you fancy it?’
Gail was immediately concerned about her baby. She knew that there were certain things she wasn’t supposed to consume while pregnant. Alcohol, obviously. She had heard something about cheese, but then the French would eat cheese and drink wine while pregnant and they weren’t a nation of three-legged hunchbacks or anything.
‘Of course.’ Coffee was okay but not too much. She was going to order decaf. Just to be safe.
Safe. Just like good old Abe Schwartz.
He shut the door.
Gail waited by the books.
All that was needed now was for Mrs May to come out of her apartment at the right time to catch them both before they left and things were repeating themselves almost exactly.
FIFTEEN
Take a lamb shank. A little oil in a hot saucepan. Sear the outside of the meat on all sides. Brown it off. This gives it great colour but it also seals in all the juices. Now you make your stock. Onions or shallots with garlic. Carrots and celery. Mirepoix, they call it. Get some herbs in there and season. Some tomato paste, too. Add water until the meat is covered in liquid and the top of the bone is poking out of the broth.
Leave it on a low heat for a couple of hours.
It will probably be ready before then but the extra fifteen minutes is what you need to get the effect you are looking for. You want it to sit upright on your plate, perhaps on a bed of mash with some vegetables. But it is all about that meat.
You want to be able to touch it with a fork and have it separate from the bone entirely. You want to be able to do this with ease because you know how tender the flesh is after being cooked for a long period of time on a low heat. You want it to fall away and leave the bone clean.
That’s how you want to eat your lamb shanks.
And that is how Abe wants Blair’s flesh to come away.
If she sits in the lye solution for long enough, Abe should be able to take a gloved hand, grab the end of a humerus and watch as a bicep slides off cleanly into the water. Or he could grip her ankle and admire the way her calf slips away.
He was sad that her breasts were gone but pleased that he had more bones to burn.
Then the new girl knocked on his door and interrupted him.
He agreed to help her. Straight away. And it was as natural to him as strangling Sythe or melting his neighbours.
Abe was a nice guy.
The nicest murderer you could ever meet.
He met Gail over by the books. She was reading the back of some tattered classic.
‘You know, I really should read more. I’ve always wanted to.’
Abe tilted his head to the side to read the title of the book. ‘Well, don’t start with that one, otherwise you’ll never get going.’
‘Oh, really? That bad?’
‘It’s okay, it’s just one of those books you can only love once you love reading. I think there are better gateways.’
Abe could talk about books all day, but Mrs May appeared, like a meerkat popping up from a hole in the ground. Abe looked around to see whether he could spot anywhere that might be concealing a camera. How did she always know?
‘So you enlisted Abe, did you?’ The old lady asked Gail through the side of her mouth.
‘Yes. I tried upstairs but there was no answer.’
‘Oh, so I’m your last resort, am I? Your back-up.’ Abe said it jokingly but he found himself hurt by this.
‘Of course not. I just wanted to introduce myself to her.’
‘No answer? I’m starting to get worried about her.’ Mrs May looked straight at Abe. ‘I didn’t have her down as a defector.’
‘I think you’re probably jumping the gun a bit there.’ Abe tried to sound comforting. ‘I’m going into town to help Gail sort her phone, and I’m sure Blair will show her lovely face soon enough.’ He was keeping it light, knowing that her cheeks and lips had already separated from her skull.
‘I’m sure you’re right. Good luck getting the phone sorted.’ She walked back to her apartment slowly, without the usual kick to her step.
‘Shall we?’ Abe opened the front door, presenting his hand for Gail to lead the way out.
Things went almost exactly as they had with Blair. Abe showed her the swanky coffee place and the grubby one. And somewhere in between they got her a new phone at a good deal. She opted to change her number completely so that she wouldn’t have to receive abuse or death threats or messages of life regrets. She was worried that he might try to kill himself and she didn’t want that on her conscience. Better to bury her head in the sand. She could contact the few friends she had left and give them her new details – the ones whose husbands weren’t Castle’s drinking buddies.
Abe
and Gail had covered a lot of ground. She had ordered decaf coffee to protect her poppyseed, and he had recommended some books that she might enjoy. He’d said that his family was rather traditional in their views, and she had explained that her husband had not been the same person since returning from the war.
Good old Abe had found himself angered by the information, that a man could attack a woman, unprovoked. Gail wasn’t like Blair. She wouldn’t belittle him. He could see that. He liked her. He didn’t like her husband. That guy sounded like a monster.
Like before, Mrs May was pruning when the pair returned. Abe told himself that he was being paranoid, that history often had a way of repeating itself. The old woman was always tending to her flowers. So, the fact that she was doing it now, just as she had done it when he had come back to The Beresford that first time with Blair, it was coincidence; it had a high probability. If he went out at the same time tomorrow and came back on his own, Mrs May would be outside with those secateurs he had used to cut off Sythe’s fingers and toes. Which reminded him, there were bones ready to burn.
‘Look, I’m sure you’ve got a lot to do, and you need to transfer your information from one phone to the other, but when you’re done, come out into the garden, I’m lighting a fire – just something I like to do – and you could throw your old phone onto it. Might be cathartic, you know? Get rid of all those horrible messages that you don’t want to read. I don’t know. Just an idea.’
Abe looked shy. It was endearing to Gail. A couple of days ago, she had watched a man contemplate stamping his boot down on her skull, and today, she had a different man, a kind man, a thoughtful man, offering a way to erase the abuse that had been thrown her way after the incident.
‘That sounds like a perfect bloody idea, Abe. Thank you.’
A genuine smile that made Abe want to get rid of Blair as quickly as possible so that he could move on.
He was done with grieving.
‘Well, I have been known to have them. You come out whenever you’re ready. I have a few things to finish up and then I’ll head out. It probably won’t be hot for another half-hour or so.’
They parted ways. Gail went to sort out her burner phone. Abe went to put some of Blair’s bones in a pillowcase. And Mrs May marched back into her apartment, stripped off her clothes, shut the curtains, poured a wine and said another prayer for poor old Abe Schwartz.
She wanted him to leave.
She wanted him to make that decision for himself.
SIXTEEN
The women of The Beresford, the ones who were still alive, both had requests, desires, things that they desperately wanted. And they were asking for them. Begging. Praying.
In different directions.
Gail had moved the few numbers she thought that she might use in the future to her new phone. She was on her knees at the side of the only piece of furniture she owned at the time – her bed. (Formerly Sythe’s.)
She didn’t want her husband to kill himself because she had left. He’d sent seventeen more messages to her since she last looked. She could tell he was drunk – they were putrid. Straight from the mouth of Satan, it seemed.
One moment he loved her, he was sorry.
Next she was a whore, a sorry sack of shit.
Gail looked up to the ceiling and asked a god, any god, for forgiveness. Like anyone with self-esteem so low from years of being beaten down and held back, from all the lack of encouragement, from being told she was nothing for so long that she built her own daily mantra that told her she was worthless, she was apologising.
She was weak for leaving. Maybe she didn’t try hard enough. She should have pushed harder for him to talk about that war. She should have gone softer on him when he didn’t want to speak about it. She could have been a better wife.
After all the apologising for being a sorry sack of shit whore, she eventually got around to what she was there for, to implore the Lord to intervene somehow into her husband’s thoughts and stop him from going to the darkest of places. She wanted him to suffer and struggle and own his mistakes. She just didn’t want him to kill himself.
Perhaps she thought more of herself than she realised. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to take that gesture. She asked God for Castle to weep and howl and realise, maybe even change. But she was never going back.
Amen.
She picked up her old phone. Three more messages. Something spiteful about her mother and sister. She skimmed over them and hit reply:
The first time you hit me was too much. I should have left then. Get some help, you sorry excuse for a man. I’m not coming back. I hope you find some peace when you fucking die. Don’t message me again.
She hit send and turned off her phone forever.
Mrs May was in the dark, on her feet. She was not looking towards the heavens. She knew that Gail’s God had stopped listening a long time ago. You can’t explain away the injustice and famine and greed and rape and war and sickness with a Lord working in ‘mysterious ways’. It’s a cop-out. Blind faith.
That was not for Mrs May. She put out what she wanted to get back. And when she put it out there, she meant it. She was passionate. She screamed out her vitriol if that is what she was feeling towards somebody, and she tensed her body rigid and wept when she felt compassion.
That day, with Gail on her knees in the flat above, Mrs May lit her candle, rang her bell, drank her wine and paced in circles as she begged.
She begged for Abe to find his way. She could see how lost he was.
She begged for him to leave The Beresford. It was time for him to move on. Abe had been there long enough. Longer than anybody else. He had grown. He had changed. Now he needed to get out. But he had to come up with that idea by himself.
Or maybe with a little help from Mrs May.
The old lady knew that she had to have conviction in these rituals. She had to believe wholeheartedly in her plight. She tried. She gave it everything. She was sweating and tense and emotional by the end. She gave out everything that she could. But she knew without a doubt that Blair was gone and was never coming back. There would be more broken parents knocking on the front door of The Beresford in weeks.
And she could see that Abe, for all his talk of connection and love, had moved on to the new girl, Gail. If he didn’t get out now, she was going to be next on his list.
SEVENTEEN
There was an undeniable connection, that part was true. Abe and Blair had been seeing so much of one another that any onlooker would be forgiven for thinking they were a couple. They looked content and comfortable, they were interested in what the other person had to say.
The coffee mornings had progressed to lunches and Abe had even attempted to join her for a run that one time. But it was the last. He could drag a dead body into a bathtub but running around the block was too much. That’s why he didn’t want to get bogged down with burying his victims, he’d never get through it.
Lunches had turned into cinema trips. Blockbusters with buckets of popcorn and French art-house productions at the independent houses where you could sit on a sofa and drink wine while you read the subtitles. Eventually he had been brave enough to rest his arm alongside Blair’s so that they were touching throughout the film. She hadn’t pulled away. She wanted the contact, too.
Then came drinks. Nights out at a bar with alcohol. Abe had no friends, and Blair knew nobody in the area, so they were always out as a two. Their attention was devoted entirely to the other person. No distractions.
They could joke about and laugh and be silly because the gin alleviated many inhibitions. They would hold hands and dance about. They were getting closer.
Then there were dinners and walks – because running was now out of the question – and movies in Blair’s apartment. They would sit in the communal library and read in silence. They had hugged, playfully, and been caught in the odd embrace where a kiss should have happened to evaporate that last bit of sexual tension.
Blair was inexperienced. She came fro
m a Christian community where the citizens mated for life, whether they were happy or not. There hadn’t been a serious boyfriend, even at university. She was no prude. She knew how to get herself off, but she was less sure about how to get somebody else off. Abe needed to take the lead on this one. His sexual experience was limited, three girls in college. None of them were a one-night stand, he’d had to chip away at them gradually, afraid to take a chance because the thought of rejection was crippling.
So, with Blair in front of him, that amazing woman, that beautiful, intelligent, kind and interested woman, he could have seized the opportunity – on more than one occasion. And he had not seized once.
He masturbated over thoughts of them together once a day, sometimes twice. There was a picture of her on his phone that he’d taken as she was heading out for a run, and he would zoom in on her form from behind before beating himself off vigorously.
But he couldn’t lean in for the kiss.
What if she pulled away?
It would all be over. The coffees and lunches and drinks and bottles of Malbec while watching her VHS copy of L’Appartement for the fifth time.
Someone had to do it.
Someone had to take the plunge.
Abe and Blair very rarely spent their time in Abe’s apartment. It wasn’t as light as Blair’s place. It wasn’t decorated. It wasn’t pretty. There were very few candles or cushions or pictures, apart from the giant triptych that Sythe had painted before he died.