by A F Carter
He’s tickled about something. “This’ll blow your mind. Gre-
co’s working theory for the past month is that your father
and O’Neill were lovers in prison. And why not? Both men
were serving long sentences, both had committed sex crimes
in the past and they definitely knew each other while they
were incarcerated. So, according to Greco, it was O’Neill
who needed to destroy DNA evidence.”
Bobby stops for a moment, but I find myself with noth-
ing to say. “If it sounds stupid, that’s because it is. So what?
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We don’t have enough hard evidence to convict O’Neill at
trial. Or even to secure an indictment. But O’Neill’s dead, so there won’t be a trial. He’s guilty because we say he is. In the cop business, we call this exceptional clearance. As in excep-tionally good for the bosses.” Bobby leans forward to gently touch the back of my hand. “Hey, you wanna hear a cop’s
definition of a perfect murder?”
“Sure.”
“A perfect murder is any murder you get away with.”
Bobby raises his glass, waits until I join him, then says, without a trace of irony: “Here’s to perfect murders and perfect victims.”
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CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
MARTHA
It’s nine o’clock and Bobby’s seated on our loveseat. He’s
sitting next to Marshal, who’s brought his bong and a bud
of hydroponic weed. I’ve indulged, which I rarely do. Just as well. We’re watching an incredibly stupid movie, Dumb and Dumber. Sober, I’d be long gone. But now we’re laughing our heads off, me and the boys. There’s an open box of pastries
lying on the seat of the wooden chair we’re using for a coffee table. An empty bottle of low-end Korbel champagne sits in
the sink, awaiting a quick rinse. I’m at our little table, sorting laundry. Ours and Bobby’s.
I should be pissed because it’s bad enough that I have to
clean up after my sisters. True, Bobby’s paying for much of
the food we eat. True, he bought the champagne and the
pastries. Tough shit. We need to reach an understanding of
just who and what he is to us. Because now that I’ve had a
chance to think it over, he’s become a mystery once again.
Did Bobby protect us? Or was he, like his partner, merely
unable to establish probable cause for an arrest?
Eleni won’t care, Kirk either. But Serena, who continues
to embrace the good in all of us, will surely want resolution.
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Likewise Victoria, despite having taken him to bed. Victo-
ria is eternally wary, eternally pessimistic. Our sky is always falling. And there’s real danger in embracing a lifestyle we can never afford on our own.
We’re watching the scene where Jim Carrey is ripped off
by an old lady on a motorized cart. I’m now seeing each
scene as self-contained. Scene following scene like railroad cars with no bumpers between them. Story of our lives,
right?
Or maybe not. For the last five hours I’ve been return-
ing to Bobby’s speech, which I’m sure was carefully calcu-
lated. A matter of a cop’s instinct never to show his whole
hand. How convenient, Serena being at home when Greco
knocked on the door. Totally ignorant Serena, who could
tell him nothing. And me, in that hotel exactly when I was
needed. Because the cop was right. Tina could remember
to bring the knife and the Temazepam. And, yes, she could
drive that knife into his heart with all the force at her command. But the aftermath belonged to me. And it’s only
through blind luck that I found a cleaning cart standing in
the hall. That I was able, no matter how repulsed, to cleanse my dead father’s flesh. I remember fighting an urge to vomit as I gathered the sheets and my daddy’s semen-stained under-wear. As I dumped both, along with the knife, in an indus-
trial dumpster half full of construction debris. I climbed into that dumpster, dug down almost to the bottom, buried the
evidence in something too slimy to think about. And when I
finally got home, I stood in the shower until my skin began
to peel away.
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There’s Victoria, too, at the review board hearing.
Appropriately dressed Victoria with her always-appropriate
demeaner. How convenient. And how convenient her vis-
its to the many agencies when we first applied for benefits.
And wasn’t it demure Victoria who kept our first appoint-
ment with Halberstam? Wasn’t it Victoria who sat for those
job interviews? Saying all the right things? Smiling in all the right places?
Bobby’s outside, asleep on the couch. I’m lying in bed, listening to the bass line from some moronic rap tune. Courtesy
of a giant SUV double-parked across the street. Bum, bum, bum, pause. Bum, bum, bum, pause. Over and over again.
Loud enough to vibrate the hairs on the back of my neck.
Just now, I’m hoping for a drive-by.
I’m wearing my usual bedtime gear, boxer shorts and
a sleeveless white T-shirt. I raise my knees and stare for a moment at my thighs. They’re Eleni’s thighs, Serena’s thighs, even Kirk’s thighs. I find myself asking a series of questions asked by every therapist unfortunate enough to have us for a patient. Where do I go when I’m not in control of our body?
Who am I when I live in a realm called oblivion? Where was
I before I came back?
Most of all, who or what chooses?
I walk into the bathroom, stand before the mirror and
stare into my own eyes. Trying, maybe, to see into my brain.
No, that’s wrong. To see into our brain, like our thighs, our teeth, our fucking toenails. But somewhere behind
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my eyes, somewhere in that brain, a collection of neurons
decides our moment-to-moment fate.
The other options? Possession by a demon from the spirit
world? Space aliens from the dark side of the moon?
Tucked into some dark corner of our brain and surrounded
by the billions of neurons that control every bodily function, those few neurons aren’t about to wave hello. But it occurs
to me as I raise my fingers to trace the lines of my face, that maybe they aren’t unthinking. Maybe they can detect ongo-ing threats. Maybe, like children, they know when to stop
fooling around, to get serious, to survive. Maybe they argue among themselves before they reach a decision. Maybe they
debate when to make a change, who to put in charge, the
whys and wherefores of the particular abyss at our feet.
If I’m not real, how can I want so much to simply live?
If I pinch myself, do I hurt, do we hurt, or does only Car-
olyn Grand hurt? Then I fart and instantly feel my sisters
surround me. Kirk, Eleni, Serena, Victoria holding a nose
she doesn’t have. Somehow, I expect them to comfort me.
Instead they’re laughing.
Kirk’s telling me about an after-hours bar where
desperate housewives pursue the perverted desires they’ve
h
eld at bay throughout their lives. Eleni’s more direct. She’s already spoken to Bobby. If I want, he’ll find a woman,
bring her home and spend the night at his own apartment.
Serena’s humming a tuneless tune that could only have been
composed in the Far East. She strokes my hair, a touch I both can and can’t feel. Victoria’s demanding that I suck it up the 273
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way Serena sucked it up when Greco came calling. Even
Bobby chimes in. From his bed on the couch, he begins to
snore.
I walk up to our single bedroom window, pull back the
curtain and stare at the Escalade parked across the street.
At the greedy hands reaching through its windows. Then
I’m laughing, roaring, holding my sides, maybe for the first time in the half-life that defines my existence. Every therapist, the good and the bad, wanted to heal us, to remake us
in their image. And now I’m thinking that at least it won’t
hurt. When the remake finally happens. One day I’ll leave
the body, believing myself secure, and never return. But at
least it won’t hurt.
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