It was almost touching, the way in which the old man persisted with violence when his blows no longer carried weight. The pain he had inflicted when Max had been very young had been savage and severe. He could no longer do it, yet he still tried. It spoke for his strong will and enduring instinct for cruelty. You had to admire a trait so stubborn, Max thought, smiling to himself.
A knock sounded sudden and loud against the door. Both men glanced towards the sound. Then Max grabbed the hand that had hit him and pierced it with the syringe point deep between two of the knuckles, in the soft flesh there. He depressed the plunger.
August gasped.
Max whispered, ‘Do exactly as I have asked you to. Say you gave her the gift basket. It will help her get accustomed to the new apartment, to the neighbourhood. It will make her feel comfortable and at home. Do this, Grandfather. Do it for your grandson. Do it out of the love you know you have deep down for me. And do it for her.’
The drug was already working. August looked more relaxed, almost blissful. Gently, he grazed Max’s face with the back of his hand.
‘I’m all you’ve got.’
‘God help me, you are.’
Another knock rapped loudly at the door.
Very quietly, August said, ‘This building is mine. Everything inside of it is mine. Everything, Max. You understand that, don’t you?’
Where his grandfather was concerned there was a time to stand up for yourself and a time to back down and Max knew the difference between those moments very well. He smiled sweetly and murmured, ‘Yes, of course I do.’
Apparently satisfied by this admission, August opened the door to Juliet as Max shrank back into the shadows of the cluttered room. He stood very still and listened.
August said, ‘There you are.’
Juliet said, ‘It’s overwhelmingly thoughtful, the gift …’
Max crept further back, confident that his grandfather was simply smoothing out things with Juliet according to the agreed script. He did not think he would be heard or his presence in the room sensed and he knew that he would not be seen. He had a talent for concealment and observation and knew how to exploit them.
Max had ensured that he would be at the gallery opening that night simply by following Juliet. Showered and groomed, he changed into clothing that he calculated would give him the right quality of urbane acceptability and stylishness. He wanted to delight her with how aptly he could fit in to a situation where his very presence would surprise her.
He wanted the surprise to be a pleasant one, of course. So he spent some time studying the party, learning the lexicon and choreography of this glittering social ritual before committing himself to a confrontation with his prey.
He watched her talking to the friend he had learned was called Sydney. Sydney was a doctor too, and heavily pregnant, which made her conspicuous amongst the crowd the event had drawn. Max was somewhat mystified by the appeal of the event itself. Abstract and performance art left him cold. Most of the artefacts assembled there were crude and childish, but he wasn’t that bothered. The crowd was a useful tool in enabling him to time his moment with Juliet perfectly.
Right next to him, a guy cuddled up with his girlfriend and said, ‘Sometimes I think all I ever do is work. Twenty-four-seven. So, I decided. I wanted to stop, come out, feel Brooklyn. You know?’
To Max’s ears and mind, the words sounded authentic, the sentiment spontaneous and true. It was something he could borrow and use. Juliet would be convinced. She might even be charmed.
She looked a bit lost to him. She toyed with some tit-bit on a cocktail stick and then dumped it uneaten in a trash can. Some guy approached her, feeding her an obvious line and she laughed it off and retreated away from him, shirking eye contact. She held out her hand when a waiter came by with a tray of champagne flutes, but she hesitated and withdrew the hand without taking one. It was clear she wasn’t enjoying herself.
She still hadn’t seen him. She did not become aware of him until the moment he approached out of her line of sight and then deliberately bumped into her in a manner contrived to seem wholly accidental.
‘Watch it,’ she said. Then she looked up at him. She seemed genuinely surprised and happy to see him. She asked him what he was doing there.
Smiling easily Max looked around and gestured expansively and said, ‘Sometimes I feel like all I ever do is work. Twenty-four-seven. I decided I wanted to stop, come out, feel Brooklyn, you know …’
She did know. He could tell by the look on her face. It was what people called empathetic. It was not pitying or guarded; she understood him. They were the same; he was normal. He felt that this was going very well.
It continued to go well on the walk home. Max found that he could speak to Juliet very naturally if he just followed her conversational leads. So long as he paid attention to what she said and particularly to her tone of voice, he could reply in kind. The tone of voice was important because some of what she said was meant ironically. This was particularly true when she talked about her job and domestic situation. The tone told you that she was making fun of herself and the way to react was with a knowing smile and a nod, rather than to take her words at face value. He quickly discovered that with Juliet you could comment by not commenting at all, which suited him.
Things continued to go better than Max could have hoped right up to the moment of their failed kiss outside her apartment door. He recoiled when she tried to kiss him on the mouth.
It was not that he did not want to kiss her. Quite the opposite. But he had never kissed or been touched by a woman in his life and he had succumbed to nerves when the moment arrived. He had not expected it, had not had time to prepare for it. The spontaneity of the moment took him completely by surprise.
She said, ‘I’m sorry. God, I’m an idiot.’
He said, ‘No. Don’t be sorry.’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘it’s a bad idea.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ Max said. He felt that he was digging a hole for himself with his words and that everything he uttered made it deeper. The confidence he had felt walking her back from the exhibition opening had disappeared into the hole.
‘I’m confused,’ Juliet said, ‘out of practice. I’m reading the wrong signals.’ She laughed, opened her door and vanished inside her apartment.
Twenty
HE HAD BLOWN it. Max stood in the gloom of the hallway outside her apartment door and closed his eyes in anger and frustration. His nails dug through his jacket sleeves into the flesh of his forearms in savage self-reproach. He could play at being normal but he had felt a million miles from normal in his crass failure to cope with a kiss. He wanted that kiss so badly. He craved her affection, her body, her tender soul. He had to have all of her, but to get her, he would have to do better than this.
He opened the door to his own apartment and then entered the passages. He wanted to have her, but in the meantime, in the passages, he could observe her. He had designed them himself, a secret catacomb empire running between the spaces in which people lived their lives and the supporting walls of the building. He had constructed and concealed them, with their myriad hidden entrances and discreet galleries of strategically placed and disguised peepholes with painstaking care.
Here he could observe Juliet. He could scrutinise her as she went about her private life with complete unself-consciousness. He would study her and enjoy the sensation of simply watching.
Soon there would be better and more satisfying things between him and Juliet Devereau, but for now he wanted to watch. It was what he’d always done, crouched in the dark passageways to observe people’s most intimate rituals. It was how he’d grown up.
Some of the passages were no more than crawlspaces. But that was a technical detail. It was a secret window on a forbidden world; it was his refuge and his domain and the precious secret he kept to himself. It was also the key, Max thought, to his power over other people. It gave him an edge of which the people he chose to watch
were completely unaware.
Max knew every stray cable, every cord and section of electrical wiring, every inch of plaster and lattice and the nature and destination of every pipe that thrummed as he scurried, sure-footed, to where he wanted to go. He could navigate his way by feel and by the sound of the domestic lives being enacted beyond the walls behind which he silently encroached.
It would be fair to say he had enjoyed his happiest and most complete moments watching from behind the apparent blindness of the walls between which he roamed.
Now, as he headed in the direction of Juliet’s apartment, August’s earlier admonishment was still ringing like a dull ache in his skull. He was not strange or a coward or in any way perverse. He was what his unfortunate childhood had made him. He was incomplete, but he was certain he’d found the person who could change all that. With Juliet beside him, he could emerge finally out of this strange solitary world.
He reached the place he was looking for. He groped in the narrow confinement of the passage, pulling out a wooden chair he placed carefully on the floor and sat on. He was facing a pillowed section of wall insulation. He reached out and removed a plug of it, revealing a large peephole that looked on to Juliet’s living room. He peered through it, carefully, watchfully, his breathing shallow and a thrill coursing through him that he could barely suppress.
There was no movement, no occupant. The lights were on, but there was no one there. He stood and moved along the passage and pulled the stuffing from another peephole. This one gave him a view of the kitchen. And this time there was something for him to see as Juliet passed by the kitchen door, turning out the light as she went. He looked back and saw that the living-room light had also gone out.
Further up the passage, a warm glow of illumination suffused a small area against the wall. It was the bathroom peephole and Max assumed the glow was provided by candlelight; it had that waxy suggestion of yellow heat. He approached it feeling breathless by what he was likely to see, water churning through the thrumming pipes filling the tub with her chosen balance of hot and cold.
Max imagined that she would take her bath as hot as her skin could endure it. She ran very hard when she ran and the way to ease the aching muscles in those long and luscious calves and thighs of hers was to immerse herself in heat. Sweat would break out in tiny droplets on her unblemished skin. He stood still in the silent dark, his body taut with expectation, his breathing fast, hissing through his nose in rapid puffs. In just a moment, he would see it.
The view he had of her bathroom from the passage was from behind the two-way mirror on her bathroom wall. To Max, it was like a cinema screen. Except that this showing was exclusive, private and the movie enacted for his entertainment and gratification alone. No one but him would ever enjoy this particular show. Juliet was the star. Her performance would be unselfconscious, because she would never know she was giving it. On balance, Max thought the scenario just about perfect.
A film of condensation covered the mirror. He was right; the water in the tub would be very hot. He put his fingers silently against the cool glass and stroked its smooth surface contemplatively. He moved his face closer to it, inches from it, as though doing so could broach the opaque secrecy of the steam on the other side.
Suddenly the view was swept clear. Juliet was standing there, in front of him, inches from him, still clothed, oblivious to his presence, carrying a glass of wine that she put down carefully on the edge of the tub.
She walked out of the bathroom. Streaks of water slid down the mirror. They left small vertical trails on the glass. His breathing got faster. He could barely control it. It would not be audible to her, but he could hear his own heart hammering in his chest and he felt light-headed with excitement.
She came back into the bathroom naked and slid into the tub, the water lapping deliciously around her, sighing with heat and relaxation and unseen by him now, cloaked by night and shadow.
The frustration of that moment nearly made him groan out loud. He couldn’t stand it. He wanted to share the moment. He wanted to be with this naked woman, to share the intimacy of her company. She would not see or even sense him. He could steal into her presence without her ever knowing.
Max moved swiftly through the passages until he came to a small door disguised in the panelling of an old, unused wine closet in Juliet’s kitchen. He sighed in satisfaction. Just being close to her, hearing her movements, letting the scent of her waft over him made his body hum with arousal. Silently he stole down the corridor. He was in her bedroom when he heard her wine glass smash. He was shocked. He hadn’t made any noise at all, but something had spooked her. She must have sensed she was not alone and had got out of the bathtub; he could hear water dripping from her naked body as it splashed softly onto the wooden floor.
He was behind her bedroom door when she entered, went to the window and flung wide the curtains, exposing the room to the night light outside. He was frozen, immobile and silent.
She said out loud, ‘Jesus Christ, Juliet. Calm the fuck down.’
She walked out, back to the bathroom to deal with the mess of spilled wine and broken glass he supposed; back to dry her dripping body and her wet hair. It was his moment to slip away, enough time to retreat unseen to the kitchen and his secret exit.
But he didn’t take it. He felt unsatisfied. There was more that could be enjoyed without compromising himself and being discovered. Although he was risk averse by nature, he was too excited to retreat, so instead he came from behind the door, and swiftly moved towards Juliet’s bed, and slid silently under it.
She was still dripping from the bath when she came back in. Her feet and lower legs came into view. He lay still, feeling the weight of her settle above him on her mattress, seeing a single drop of water explode in front of his face as it dripped from a frond of her hair, hearing her exhale as she relaxed and prepared to let sleep claim her.
Under the bed, Max aligned himself with Juliet’s recumbent body and waited until her breathing became deep and regular. Then he reached up with his hand, feeling the solid weight of her against his fingertips. Her mattress moved slightly as she breathed, the springs sighing subtly with each expansion and contraction of her chest. Pulsating with excitement he forced himself to lie still, breathing with her, until he was certain she was asleep. And then his free hand reached for his erection, rubbing in time with her breathing, biting his lip to stop himself groaning aloud, until his pace increased and became frantic as he sought relief from his almost painful arousal.
Eventually, Max slithered out from under Juliet’s bed. He could smell the scented soap on her skin, the apple blossom fragrance of the shampoo she had used on her hair. Under those distractions her own odour lay; warm and subtle and deliciously feminine. He looked at her from above where she slept and he breathed in the breath she exhaled, studying her face for a long moment before departing her room. She did not waken.
He could smell too his semen, puddled in a damp patch, drying on the belly of his T-shirt, the taint of it, a stinking reminder of what he had done. It followed him like a sour reproach when he entered the passages through the secret doorway beyond her kitchen wine store and made his way back through the labyrinth to his own apartment.
There, he passed through a door fitted to the back of his closet. He emerged with practised nimbleness; no one to see his re-entry into the world of normality. He stripped and threw his dirty clothing into his laundry bin. He showered, scrubbing hard with a bristle brush, feeling soiled within, stained indelibly by what he had done, the temptations he had surrendered to.
He made himself a cup of coffee. She drank wine, but Max thought intoxication might unleash urges worse than the ones that drove and alarmed him in equal part even when sober. He should sleep, but his emotions were in turmoil; an image of Juliet, water dripping down her naked breasts, tormented him. August was right, he was an abomination, what he had done could never be construed as conventional behaviour. Nothing, not even the fact that she had led him
on, teased him with her nakedness, could justify or excuse his later actions. But, surely, as long as Juliet never discovered it, he could carry on as normal, and he would never take such a risk, or treat her with such disrespect again. She deserved more from him.
He stood up decisively. It was time to take action, to make sure that he stopped himself behaving like that again. He fetched his toolbox from the utility room, went to his closet and nailed shut the secret door that gave on to his warren-world of hidden voyeuristic opportunity.
When this was done, he lay on his bed – single, in narrow contrast to hers – and looked at the shadows on the ceiling turned to capering demons by the shifting light of the night city through the window. They are my demons, he thought, before sleep finally claimed him.
They were his demons and he had no control over them at all.
Twenty-one
MAX REALLY HAD seen his parents die. He had told Juliet the truth about that.
For his sixth birthday, Max’s parents bought him a toy theatre. It was made of wood and colourfully painted, and the players on the stage were puppets manipulated from above. He loved staging their performances, creating little lives, personalities and dramas for them. His puppets had become his friends. But it had not been enough.
It did not compete with the fascination he had for the secret study of real people. You could not, of course, manipulate those that you observed. But you could predict their actions and when your prediction was proven to be correct, there was a thrill of accomplishment to be had. It wasn’t so bad, when they surprised you. When they confounded your expectations, it taught you something more about them. And it helped to eliminate the possibility of their surprising you again.
It did not come as a surprise when his father shot his mother, but it was a shock. In his bedroom, he had heard the arguments between them at night, but had not known what was wrong between the two of them. He would not discover that until the eve of his thirteenth birthday when August, maudlin and drunk on whisky and grief for his murdered daughter, told him about his mother’s infidelity.
The Resident Page 12