Glass House

by Chris Wiltz

  Sherree took off her clothes and went to the bathroom to run a bath. The bathroom was so small she had to close the door to get into the tub. She put a couple of drops of baby oil under the tap and lay back to feel the warm water slowly cover her body. Lucilla, who hadn't really gone back to sleep, hopped out of bed as soon as she heard the water running, picked up two of her dolls, and went into the lighted bedroom, where she crawled up on her mother's big bed to play.

  Outside, Lyle, B.T., and three other uniformed policemen stalked the building, their weapons carried low at their sides. Two covered the back door while Lyle, B.T., and the other one took the front. B.T. kicked the door in. Wood splintered with a sharp crack. They rushed into the apartment and as the third man went through the kitchen to open the back door, Lyle and B.T. went into the hallway. They stopped in front of the bathroom.

  Sherree was sunk deep in the tub, up to her earlobes. Her eyes were closed and she hummed softly to herself, feeling the hum vibrate her body against the water as she let the running tap tickle her toes. Inside this warm sensual envelope, the crack of the door splintering was a muffled but intrusive sound. Sherree sat up and turned off the water. She heard the rustle of movement outside the bathroom. She stood up in the tub and pulled the string on the overhead light to turn it off. In the bedroom down the hallway her daughter let out a nearly inaudible cry and slipped silently from the bed to crawl under it.

  Sherree reached over from the tub and slowly swung the door open. In the light from the bedroom down the hall, she saw Lyle and B.T. framed in the doorway, their guns pointed at her, and her hands automatically went up over her breasts, cupping them protectively just as the nylon net cutouts in her white satin body suit once had. As she opened her mouth to scream, Lucilla crawled over the lamp cord and snagged it on her foot, causing the lamp to topple from the night table.

  Lyle heard the crash, the apartment went pitch, B.T. hit the floor yelling, and Lyle opened fire. He sprayed the empty bedroom doorways, the walls, the bathroom, moving his weapon from side to side, covering the entire space. When he finished, the only sound penetrating the ear-splitting silence was the water lapping at the sides of the tub and the whimpering of the child under the bed.

  26

  During the night that Sherree was shot, the wind rose and brought with it a bone-chilling dampness. The old homeless man who had slept for a time in Bobby's empty apartment house wandered over to Convent Street to a liquor store, where he spent his last money on a bottle of cheap red wine. He needed something to keep him warm. All he had was the thin flannel shirt he wore over a threadbare, holey undershirt. He couldn't remember what had happened to his blanket; in all his moving about he'd lost it.

  The man in the liquor store gave him a pack of matches and a couple of day-old newspapers. He went back out on the street to scrounge along the sidewalk for a few cigarette butts. He walked in the direction of the Solar Club, his head bent to search, stopping when the cold got to him to take a sip of wine and carefully screw the top back on the bottle. He didn't want to drink too much before he found someplace warm to settle in for the night.

  He was close enough that he could hear the music from the Solar Club, muffled until the door opened and there was a blast of brass, guitar, and drums as a young couple came out, laughing and huddling closely together once they felt the sting of the damp icy wind. As they came up even with him he said, “Can you spare a cigarette, brother?” He said it low, as if he expected to be ignored.

  But the man stopped, the girl fitted under one arm, and reached inside his jacket. He took a pack from his shirt pocket and expertly shook it so two cigarettes popped up in the opening. “Yeah, sure,” he said, “have a couple.”

  He took them quickly and squirreled them away in his own pocket, muttering his thanks, already moving down the street. He was anxious now to find a place where no one would bother him, where he could drink his wine until he was drunk and go to sleep.

  He walked, having no particular destination, but retracing ground he'd walked many times before, until he saw an alleyway that seemed familiar, the kind of narrow, sheltered space he liked, between two dark houses. He went deep into it. He spread one of the newspapers on the concrete and folded the other one, stuffing the inside of his shirt with some of the sections. The rest he used to cover his legs. He propped himself against one of the cinder-block pillars and took a long pull at the bottle. His body was shaking with cold and he didn't want to smoke until he'd warmed up a bit.

  After a while he realized he wasn't warming up. The dampness had seeped into him and he was so cold he could hardly feel the effect of the wine even though he'd drunk better than half the bottle. He thought the wind must be coming right down the alley. He had a brief memory of being on a train track once, the wind coming down on him like a locomotive, but he forgot it instantly. He folded the newspapers and pulled them along with him as he crawled under the house.

  He didn't like to sleep under houses, didn't like that he couldn't see what was under there with him. He fumbled for the matches and lit one, looking all around, up and down, his hands so cold he smelled his fingers burn before he felt them. He let the match drop and lit another. Above him he thought he'd seen a hole. The match flared; there it was, a good-size rent in the flooring. He stood up into it, pushing back a piece of cardboard someone had covered the hole with. He looked around and thought he remembered climbing through this hole before, and that he remembered this house. He put his wine and his newspapers up on the good part of the floor and hoisted himself through. He found his place along the inside wall of the dining room, spreading the newspapers again, drinking again, this time feeling warm enough to light one of the cigarettes. He finished the wine before he finished the smoke and lay down on the mat of paper to take the last few puffs. He was warm and drunk and sleepy now. He reached over to put the cigarette into the empty bottle, thinking he was glad he'd saved the other one for tomorrow. He thought he slipped the still-glowing cigarette end into the bottle but he missed. It landed on the mat of newspaper. He pushed the bottle away from him, closed his eyes, and was out. The newspaper caught fire and the flames quickly spread to a can of paint thinner. He woke up long enough to think he was burning in hell, and then he was gone, along with most of Bobby's apartment house.

  Burgess walked. He walked head bent, shoulders rounded against the cold, hands jammed into the pockets of an old sweat suit jacket. He walked Convent Street dressed in his old clothes, and he looked ordinary.

  It was as much habit as it was any instinct for self-preservation that got Burgess out of the Convent early that cold and overcast morning. He was going to work, this time to Bobby's apartment house, so he could move Janine, and now Lucilla too, as quickly as possible. He had left them asleep, finally, mercifully asleep after a long and traumatic night.

  He walked because he couldn't stand to hear the muffler on the pickup truck anymore. It seemed to shout, “Here I am! Look at me!” in a way the Cadillac never did. Oh but the Cadillac had, he just wasn't remembering, couldn't remember much in the aftershock from the horror of the night before. If he could have listened just then, listened hard, he would have heard the Cadillac whisper, “Here I am; come find me.”

  He walked until the morning cold had numbed the outside of his body as much as the violent night had numbed the inside, until it was time to go to the apartment house, work off the numbness. He walked right up to it before he saw it; he smelled it first, the burned wood, ashes still floating in the air. And when he saw it, his legs went weak. So weak he had to sit on the fender of a car parked in front of the next-door house, its candied paint job covered with ash, but he didn't notice that. He tried to think but he couldn't think, his shock compounded by yet another plan gone awry. He sat for a long time, he didn't know how long, staring at the ruined building, until a tough young dude came out of the house next door and told Burgess to get the hell off his car.

  Silently he complied, head bent, shoulders rounded once again as his f
eet moved him in response to a command he didn't know he had given, back to the Convent. Instinct took him past Janine's building, to the other side of the yard so he could see what was going on at Sherree's from a distance. He didn't see any more cop cars. There was no one around; it was quiet, abnormally quiet.

  He skirted the edge of the garden, no thought for it now. His eyes were drawn, his whole body was drawn to the scene of Sherree's death. Her murder: he didn't know why it had happened yet, but he was sure it was no accident. Habit, once again, made him cautious. He walked slowly in front of the buildings opposite, watching, and when he saw that the door to Sherree's was open, he backed into the shadowed space between two buildings so he was out of sight. He didn't see the children at first, and when some sound or movement made him aware of them, it caused him to jump. They were behind him, deep into the space between the two buildings, sitting in a tight circle, talking softly to each other. He tried not to let them draw his attention from Sherree's, but he couldn't help it. He watched their furtive movements, a head bobbing every now and again, their voices too low for him to hear what they were saying. He thought they must be playing sex games, doctor, something like that, but now that he was looking closely he could see they were all boys. They probably had their pants unzipped, looking at each others’ dicks, comparing size and color; maybe somebody was jacking off. As he watched, one of the boys looked up, his head jerking around. He had the startled look of a child caught playing an innocent game that was nonetheless all about losing innocence.

  The boy smiled, tentatively at first, then grinning as the others tore their eyes away from the inner circle. One of them started to bolt, squatted back down for an instant, and decided to bolt after all. There was a second or two of indecision, then they all took off, running in several directions, leaving behind something that had been at the center of their tight circle.

  Burgess went to see what it was. He looked down into the ghost of their circle, as if looking into a kaleidoscope, and saw a design of little plastic baggies filled with grass and powder and rocks. In the shadows of the buildings he had to kneel and pick up the baggies to see that the grass was pickings from the new lawn, the powder was cornstarch, maybe baby powder, the rocks light-colored pebbles. Beside them were scraps of paper with amounts of money written on them.

  He closed his eyes. When he opened them he thought he could see his whole life in that ghostly circle, a tight, claustrophobic life with few choices: deal drugs or be poor. And whatever the choice, live with fear and die young, younger than the people who lived outside this world of danger and violence. The choice he'd made, he hadn't expected to live to be thirty. But he had, and now he wanted to keep on living, he'd developed a taste for it, it seemed, but if he was going to keep on living, then he was going to have to run, run for his life.

  He walked back between the buildings out into the yard, passing from the shadows into the bright sun, which was burning away the overcast, taking the edge off the cold. The door to Sherree's apartment yawned wide, inviting him. He went cautiously at first, thinking there still might be cops around, detectives wearing street clothes, watching and waiting, but the warmth of the sun made him brave and he tossed caution into the clear blue sky and went to the open door.

  Dexter sat on the couch in the front room, his head thrown back, his leather duds covering him like an overgrown husk, too big for the shrunken body inside them. Burgess thought he was asleep but the moment his foot touched the threshold, Dexter's head snapped upright and his glassy eyes shone on Burgess, perhaps not seeing him clearly as he stood against the rectangle of bright sunlight. Burgess could see that Dexter had been crying, wet streaks running in shiny lines off the sides of his face.

  “Dexter,” he said, to let Dexter know who he was, to let Dexter know he was sorry, trying to say everything in a word because all other words eluded him.

  Dexter stared at him, he thought without recognition still. But then he blurted, “What you still doin round here, man?”

  The alarm in Dexter's voice raised the hair on the back of Burgess’ head, but he went on in, noticing the splintered door, the cushions of a chair on the floor, a few things strewn around, the drawers to a table left open. He moved the chair and sat away from the door. If he didn't look at the door, if he didn't know a search was the cause of the disarray, then he might find it hard to believe anything out of the ordinary had happened in this apartment, for he could see no signs of violence and death from where he sat. All he could see were the scuffs of a lot of foot traffic into the hallway. But he could smell death, or he imagined he could, a prickly sensation up his nostrils. He held his breath, not wanting to let it in. Dexter moved and his leather clothes creaked, and Burgess breathed and smelled the leather.

  “What you doin sittin around here like this, Dexter?”

  “I'm sittin here with that door wide open ‘cause I'm waitin for em,” Dexter said. “They'll be back, you know they will. An I don’ want em come huntin me down again, ‘cause it was me they was after, not Sherree.” His head fell back on the couch and he screwed up his eyes, but the tears escaped anyway, running back into his hair. “They can come get me now,” he said, his voice tight, tear-choked.

  “Case of mistaken identity, Dexter.”

  Dexter lifted his head and two tears dropped off his cheekbones, landing with little thuds on the front of his jacket. “I know that. It was you they was after but they don’ know that yet. They fucked up when they killed Sherree, so they got to come back. An when they do, Burgess, I'm gon do it again.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know, tell em. The same way. I did about the hat.” And while he was admitting his weakness, he wanted to tell Burgess he'd lied about Burgess’ mother and the Cadillac, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd lied to Sherree about the Cadillac too, and he could hear that sharp tongue of hers clearly inside his head, lashing out, saying one of the last things she'd ever said to him: “That Burgess think he the fuckin pope and so do you.”

  He said, rather defiantly, “I'm gon do what I got to do and say what I got to say ‘cause I'm more afraid of them than I am of you.”

  Burgess felt the weight of those words. He didn't care what Dexter told the police; he didn't expect Dexter would ever have to tell them anything, but if he did, Burgess wouldn't blame him for it. Dexter had never tried to be anything other than what he was. He didn't talk big and let the fear screw into his insides like a worm—long, endless, screwing in. It was laughable, afraid as he was, keeping his control by making other people afraid. And here was Dexter, admitting he was afraid too. Burgess said, “I didn’ know you was afraid of me, Dexter.”

  Dexter lifted one hand weakly, no more energy than that to protest. “I'm afraid of them,” he said.

  Yeah, me too, Burgess wanted to say, but even now he couldn't let Dexter see how spineless he was. “It's okay,” he said stupidly. “It don’ matter what you tell em.” But he knew if Dexter ever talked, it wouldn't matter if he forgave him, Dexter would never forgive himself. Or, consider this, something worse: Dexter might not believe he would ever forgive him, he might only become more afraid, figuring Burgess would use it against him one day. Even if Burgess didn't, he might hang the fear over himself, a deadly game of waiting for retaliation that would eventually turn his fear into hate.

  Dexter seemed to have a small burst of energy. He looked at Burgess with a wild glint in his eye. “But we did it, didn’ we, Burgess? We turn the Convent round.” And then his energy flagged. “But I guess they always be a Ferdie lookin to prove hisself, ain they, Burgess?”

  Burgess wanted to laugh. Ferdie, as if Ferdie was to blame. Dexter was blind in his loyalty. He refused to see it was Burgess’ own weakness, his inability not to run, his inability not to accept the inevitable. He couldn't stand and fight and wait for it. He was a coward, but Dexter would never see that. He felt great affection for Dexter at that moment as well as a ridiculous desire to make Dexter promise he would stay in the Conven
t, that he would do the standing and fighting and waiting. But Dexter was waiting in his own way already, and admitting he was weak.

  Burgess stood up. “I'll be leavin soon, Dexter. I guess this is good-bye.” He walked over and put his hand out.

  Dexter took Burgess’ hand, then he pulled himself up and threw his arms around Burgess. He said, “You get as far ‘way from this place as you can get. Don’ never come back.”

  “I won't,” Burgess said, Dexter's leather jacket cold under his hands.

  He walked out into the sunshine, into a day too bright and too perfect, hostile in its perfection. He wished for the gloom, the overcast, the better for running and hiding.

  It was as if his dreams were coming true, the bad dreams, the dreams of being pursued. Standing there in the Convent yard, he had a moment of panic, and he could feel those hands clutching him from behind. And for a moment he had that wish that it was all over with, a wish for relief from the fear, a death wish.

  And in the next moment he felt a sudden urge to run, to find a safe place, for it not to be over with yet, not to get caught, to keep death as far away as he could. He wanted to do what he'd gotten used to doing when he needed to feel safe, what had become his habit. He wanted to force his feet to walk slowly and deliberately out of the Convent, and then go as fast as he could to Thea's house.

  That's what he wanted to do, but what he needed to do, while everything was still quiet in the Convent, was talk to Janine.

  27

  She was still sleeping, her body curled protectively around Sherree's little girl. Burgess put his hand on her shoulder, lightly at first then with a bit more pressure, as if to hold her down. He was afraid he would startle her and she would jump or cry out and Lucilla would wake too. But only her eyes opened, wide and alert, and she got up, hardly moving the bed at all, and followed him into the living room.