Poor Alan. Something in the way he had wordlessly lain in bed -- on his stomach and atop the sheets, feet hanging carelessly off the end of the mattress, his head socked deep inside the cheek of his pillow -- suggesting a pose of defeat rather than rest. And he was marked; he had been claimed by another mistress, the stench of its awful fragrance was on him still. This was certainly a shock as far as Alan was concerned. For a moment she wondered if this man was truly her husband, or some foul impostor.
She awoke just a few hours later to find Alan already missing, his side of the bed still stinking faintly. He was in Eugene's room. He was clutching their son pathetically, as if their roles had been reversed, he the baby, Eugene the adult. Susan didn't interrupt, she just watched her husband in the pre-dawn spoil.
Susan quietly returned to bed. After Alan left for work she donned her robe and began piecing together the strange events of his morning. She started with the bathroom, and, incredibly, found no trace of him -- his toothbrush remained alarmingly dry, his razor unsheathed, his gargle untouched, his deodorant forsaken. He had dressed, gone to Eugene (who was understandably fussy and out of sorts because of it), and then he went downstairs to the kitchen, leaving the bag of leftovers out on the counter. Every filet was accounted for.
Susan frowned.
Of all the unusual things she had witnessed today -- this one bothered her most of all.
*
Susan would visit Mr. Paul Zarella once a week. She'd ring the bell and eventually a hand would come out, curling around the edge of the door, revealing fingernails like paring knives. Next, Paul's spotted head would float through, blinking in the light. His hair was spare and limp, like a radiation-sick houseplant. White stubble flecked his chin, skewers that clung to morsels of food and fluff. Everything on him looked about to come off. She was afraid if he tripped she'd catch nothing but quarter-sized pieces.
She liked to pity these types, the poverty-stricken. For their hardship and squalor. At first she tried helping the women among them, but they were suspicious and untrusting. The men, well, they just grabbed at her and made remarks. But Mr. Zarella, she could tell he was different. First of all, he loved animals. He loved them limitlessly. His door was always open to the neighborhood's luckless pets. A man like that deserved her help. Susan found out where he lived (followed him there, from afar, actually) and the very next day she was delivering leftovers.
On her first visits Susan brought meatloaf -- it was her favorite dish at the time. She'd perfected, or was it ruined, a recipe that yielded a stew rather than a solid. Out of some seemingly innate sense of propriety the ingredients would frantically uncombine themselves, leaving a slurry of onion here, a couple of reanimated egg yolks there, everything run through with a vein of salt. Zarella, for his part, was always polite and always grateful. If he ever noticed that Susan's offerings were sometimes adorned with a beard of mold, he never mentioned it.
As for Zarella's home, Susan's glimpses of it were always brief, and, since he never invited her in, they were always from the doorstep. Over time she'd put together this general picture: there was a painting immediately to the left, tilted ten degrees too many and surely authored by some sort of convict or institutionalizee, of an impotent water mill tending to a stream of what could only be described as orange-colored entrail. There were bales of newspapers, photographs and other mulching junk on the floor. There were the tumbleweeds of dust that sometimes escaped and seemed thankful for it. And there was always, always the uncomfortable scent of neglect, all the un-'s: uncared, unaired, untended, uncleaned, unloved.
But even though Zarella's company was always poor and his presence always mediocre, Susan remained undeterred. She felt that this man, in his deepest pit of darkest bachelorhood, this man needed her, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
And of course, it saved her the guilt of having to throw away all that food.
*
The bag of leftovers was nearly as heavy as Eugene and just as fidgety. Carrying it and her child took constant attention, both seemingly determined to dive headfirst onto the sidewalk. Normally she would have left Eugene in the yard, but with rain imminent, she decided otherwise. She hadn't bothered, however, to take off his harness.
As she walked to Mr. Zarella's house, she thought about how Alan always made it sound like they lived miles from the crud. In reality the crud was technically only a couple of blocks away. Susan liked that about their neighborhood (murders aside, of course). She felt it was accurate, having the good and the bad so close together. It wasn't like in the suburbs, with their buffers of distance and boredom, their mindset of false complacency. And while she would gladly complain about the canal's dangers to Alan, privately, she didn't mind it.
She passed the iron works, the salvage yard, the soup kitchen. The doom, the destruction, the defeat. Then she turned on a street not far from the bridge. Zarella's was the only home on the block. At one point long ago there had been others, but they'd long since been condemned or razed. Rather unfortunately, the house had come to resemble its owner, suffering from an intense state of disrepair -- the paint bubbled like peeling sunburn and monstrous weeds, grossly thorned, curled from the foundation line. Everything was covered in a membrane of soot.
Susan rang the bell. Eugene pawed at the bag of leftovers. She rang again and waited. It was unusual for Mr. Zarella to not be answering. He was always home around this time, close to sundown.
She shifted Eugene and the food to one arm, then took hold of the doorknob. The door opened easily. She put her mouth to the opening, about to call Paul's name, when a carrion breeze crept from the house and kissed her on the lips, knocking her off balance.
That smell. Death. When it came, death wanted everyone to know it. Another boaster. Death was definitely a man. It was also inside this house.
She opened the door wider and tried again: "Mr. Zarella?"
Still no answer. She stepped inside, into a haze of lint and dust.
The hallway was crowded with garbage bags, each one near bursting. A fungus crept up the walls, reaching to the ceiling. Through the center of the hallway floor wandered a meager trail, leading to the living room from whence a halfhearted glow of milky outdoor light beckoned.
"Mr. Zarella?"
A clock was tapping away the seconds: pok, pok, pok. There were other sounds, strange frequencies and gasps that emanated from all the debris. Alive sounds. A thought briefly occurred to her: where were Mr. Zarella's pets?
Eugene looked at his mother. She thought he might be questioning the wisdom of this. But then again, who knew what sluggish things crept through that small brain of his.
Susan went deeper. She passed a stairway. It was completely impassable, clogged with debris: a humongous sputnik-style television without dials, parcels of frayed books, oil cans, hubcaps, drawers uprooted from an absent bureau. A cornucopia of junk, retched from the upstairs, tumbling to the ground floor like manna from the city dump.
It was easy to imagine things, to have visions, here in this place. Here in this dungeon passage. Things like Mr. Zarella, like him standing just inches behind her. Stopping when she stopped, moving when she moved. Half naked, his body decimated with bedsores, spiders in his hair, blowing rancid air on her neck. Reaching for her with a bloody grin.
Susan felt a tickling...
She spun around, ready to scream, ready to fight, ready to protect her son and her leftovers at any cost... But there was nothing. No gape-faced Zarella. No slack-jawed corpse. Just the flies, fat and feeble-minded, the size of bullets, careening into her hair. Just the puddles of brackish jelly seeping from all the garbage, bubbling with maggots. Just the view through the open door, a flat plane of pavement and cement, like the outside world was no more real than a photograph.
She should call somebody. Definitely. The paramedics. The police. Or better yet, Alan. Alan would know what to do.
But something... Why did she hesitate? What was it that urged her onward? Was it the sense that her
e, in this house, was death in flagrante, au naturale? This wasn't the death presented in funeral homes -- with candles, with a cherished dress, with makeup. No, somewhere here was the real article. Somewhere here lay Mr. Zarella, a gas-filled carcass with brownie eyes.
Or was it another thing? Like the feeling that, after everything she had done for him, pitying him, etc., didn't Mr. Zarella owe her? Susan's charity had to have earned her something, like a peek at this man in his most unguarded of moments. Maybe to poke at his body with her foot if it wasn't too far gone, too melted. Just for a second, just to be sure.
She would hurry. It would be quick.
Deeper in, the low morale of the living room began to reveal itself. A door at the back was open, leading to the yard. There was a bookcase along the rightmost wall and over to the left was an exhausted-looking shape, a dead elephant maybe, or a couch. So much shadow -- everything was reduced to depthless profiles. The clock was louder in here: POK, POK, POK. Was something moving out there? Out in the back yard? She could only make out shapes. Quick and scattered. A bird maybe, or trees being lady chased by the wind?
Things began to happen quickly.
Something grabbed her pant leg, the fabric pulling taught. Susan looked down -- her pants had snagged near the ankle on some kind of metal hook. At least she thought it was a hook. It wasn't a fingernail, was it? Flashing quicksilver, sticking from a limp hand, right? She yanked her foot forward, hard.
The tremors unbalanced something in the hills of garbage. A large box fell to the floor, dropping all of its soggy contents onto her sneakers, unleashing an angry, fly-shimmering cloud.
This time she screamed. She pulled frantically to break loose, her feet...her shoes in a pile of...something. Bones. Bones, the ends still capped in rotted meat and cartilage. And something else. Something that moved, crawled out, snarling and bulge-eyed, that scrabbled up her ankle, scratching her with claws like pins.
It was him.
Mr. Zarella.
His long, skeletal fingers encircled her leg. He was underneath the bones, his face emerging from them, leering up at her from the floor. With a surge Susan reared backward, the cuff of her pants finally tearing free. She slammed against the bookcase. Sheaves of papers began showering onto her, a radio tumbled out, just missing her head, landing on the floor with a punch. She opened her mouth to scream again but coughed on the air. The fetor was too huge.
She kicked. She kicked because she could still feel the old man's hand. Only now she was realizing it wasn't a hand at all. No, it wasn't Mr. Zarella, wasn't him. It was a rat, oh god, or a hissing opossum, its tail constricting around her calf.
And the rest of the hallway was starting to come awake now, becoming louder as the debris rearranged itself and more deeper lying creatures kicked their way to the surface. Small pairs of eyes began to alight from the laps of rotted heaps.
Again Susan tried to scream and again her lungs failed her. Was she imagining the arching spatter that painted the walls near the sofa? The carnival reds and blacks? Or old man Zarella, stumbling out from the kitchen, festering with mice and moths, roaring after her, shouting blood?
She ran toward the open back door, hugging Eugene tightly to her chest, a low moan building from inside her. Outside she collided with a chair and went staggering into the yard where she slipped and fell. Eugene began to wail, an ear-grinding cry. She found she couldn't breathe, she couldn't inhale, the corruption was here too, it was all around her. The grass was slick with it. She kept slipping and she began to feel the damp coming through her clothes where she'd touched the ground.
She frantically regained her feet. She saw the ring of black slop surrounding her, the metal stake at its center, as if the skin of the Earth had been punctured. She saw the ragged pieces of torn flesh, the shredded clothing, the gobs of hair.
She ran. Escaping through the falling fence. She dropped the leftovers, cradling Eugene in both arms now, arms that were unrecognizable to her, drenched with rot. She stumbled along the unsteady bank of the canal, in the direction of the bridge.
The things she imagined while she ran. The nightmares she had while awake. The rats pouring after her through the back door. And the very hallway itself following too, wriggling out into the waning light. Smashing through the broken remains of fence like a charging animal, right behind her. And Mr. Zarella. Mr. Paul Zarella. She imagined him also. Green skinned, with poison squeezing from his pores. He was at the head of the pack, a place of dubious honor, his face beaked and horrendous, carrying aloft her limp and dead chicken filets.
>> CHAPTER THIRTEEN <<
You had to look closely to even see her. Rose's skin was the same hue as the sheets and pillows, an institutional off-white. She was mostly an impression, an outline, a shape in retrograde. The ganglia of monitoring tubes and feeding needles looked to be inserted into the mattress, as if it were the true patient here. She wasn't conscious, too tranquil, but wasn't unconscious either, too tense. Drugged probably, squirted full of Haldol and penicillin. At least she seemed improved, the EKG monitor aside, which was yipping at a heavy metal clip, the cough aside, a great gonging thing, and the shakes, glitches, and tics aside. Or, if not improved, then at the least bathed.
"Rose. We're getting serious now," said Alan.
He sat rigidly in a bedside chair. He wasn't as comforted by the hospital as he'd hoped. Which was unfortunate because the place gleamed of cleanser and surgical steel. It vibrated with banished boo-boos, white and strict. They had penicillin by the barrels full, and blood in tidy plastic packages.
The philosophy of the place, the idea that treatment was contingent on submission, voluntary or otherwise, was in itself so pure. Because it wasn't medicine that got you healthy, it was the submitting. It was entrusting your life to those who knew better, giving yourself wholly to regulation and schedule. No guesswork whatsoever...
But this was little solace to him now. Now it only made things worse. Because to be here was to realize how far he'd come, how far he'd fallen. Yesterday's clothes may have come off, the shower may have been made, but still the stain had stayed. The stain had stayed. He was free of physical dirt, physical scud, but he'd been contaminated. It wasn't on him but in him, in his frame of mind, where it couldn't be washed.
It was The Problems, of course. Again and always. First, there was a new cadaver and no new leads. Second, Alan's God had become a vengeful one -- Bleecker had stopped with words, content now to let his eyes pile on the pressure. And those eyes were deadly, polished to a ferocious gleam. All night Bleecker had monitored Alan from the cockpit of his cruiser -- those two unblinking globes had been on him always, simmering in the dark. And today, Alan was early to work, the late shift hadn't even finished, but Bleecker was already there, waiting at Alan's desk, staring at him with hands folded, hair coifed. He'd known Alan was coming. He'd been watching him through the walls. And third, Joe. That guy. Womack had driven by Joe's apartment and saw the lights on. He rang and the place went dark. Womack got in the street and called Joe's name. There was no answer. Just a glimpse of Joe's pasty, pelican face disinterestedly sliding past the window. Alan didn't appreciate this. In fact, Alan had begun to evince a rather odd behavior as of late: every wayward stink, every grit-sounding cough and Alan was on his toes, trying to spot the source, looking for that familiar coat, that familiar slob. Yes, at this point, even Joe would be welcome. He could materialize in a cloud of farts, waving a toilet brush wand, and Alan would be grateful.
The problems, they loved this. They now grew unchecked, at an alarming rate. Alan had to stop counting them -- their total number was too frightening to behold, an incomputable mathematical monstrosity that broke calculus, disgustingly shanghaied it, along with any other fey arithmetic that got thrown its way.
Alan glanced outside, his own eyes feeling second hand, like garage sale jewelry. He felt like the darkening sky looked. Disgusted. Suffering. Reflected in the window was a desperate looking figure, his own, swaddled in a raincoat alt
hough it had yet to actually rain (wardrobe blue balls -- the clouds, they just weren't putting out). The cityscape beyond took on a tediously miniature appearance, resembling a poor man's train model -- foam balls for tree tops, bus benches made of matchsticks, and little army men pulling double duty as citizenry.
He'd intended to be at the hospital first thing in the morning, after the office. Rose, who he had now made a priority, was part of a broader appeal to the forces of TMP. Yes, if there was ever a time Alan needed a heavy dose of thoroughness, meticulousness, and precision, it was now. TMP would show him the way. TMP would make Rose talk. Because if her roommates were killing and eating people, then somewhere in that woman's dazed brain existed names, descriptions, hiding places. Things Alan needed.
He had called ahead to the hospital first. The doctor, a short-tempered woman with a chisel for a voice, promptly told him that he'd be wasting his time.
"Her fever's down but she's still delirious," she said.
"But it's absolutely important," said Alan.
Alan thought he could hear the woman examining her cuticles. "I'm aware of these things," she remarked. "But the patient needs rest. Does rhabdomyolysis mean anything to you? How about septic shock?"
"This is an extreme situation--"
"Tonic clonic seizures? Endocarditis? Bacteremia? Look. She won't understand a word you say to her. Call back later."
Dare Alan say, that was very un-TMP-like. Where was the old TMP spirit, that old pep squad hoorah?
Maybe he'd have better luck with Vincent. The previous evening a hastily organized tip hotline had been established with Vincent in charge of vetting any promising leads. But when Alan finally found the man, deep in the station's basement, he was frantically administering first aid to a female switchboard operator, catatonic from some kind of stress affliction, or combat disorder. Because what nobody could have predicted was that the tip line would unleash a monumental backlog of community-wide grudge, a majorly colossal outpouring of gripe. It was a free for all -- everyone was an accuser, everyone accused, seeking retribution for crimes past, present, future, and prehistoric, both real, imagined, and patent-pending. The telephone operators had been taking unbelievable phone call fire from every corner of the city. Nay, the Earth. The entire Earth had been calling in.
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