Cartilage and Skin

by Michael James Rizza

  I spent so much time in one particular bookstore that I started to suspect that the staff of high school students—who put more energy into flirting with one another than into making sure the tables were clean—began to regard me as a serious writer. I overheard a squat, happy girl say, “J. C. is in his corner again.”

  Keeping my head down, I pretended to disregard the comment. I was curious how I’d acquired the nickname and when had they started calling me J. C. It seemed to be an implicit compliment; whether they regarded me as inspired and prophetic as Jesus Christ or perhaps as deranged and solipsistic as a false messiah, the students nonetheless saw that I possessed a glimmer of poetic lucidity—sacred or insane. From then on, every time I visited the counter for a free refill, I gave a slight smile to the girl or to whomever else was working. I felt a bit lofty. Despite never really talking to anyone, I felt a connection to the staff. I was friendly. One day when I got up to use the bathroom, I asked the squat girl if she could watch my books and my coat at the table.

  “No problem,” she said. Her round head swiveled forward as she nodded.

  As I headed toward the restroom, I heard her whisper to her co-worker. They both giggled. Of course, it was at my expense, but they were just silly girls. I remained patronly.

  Standing before the urinal, I began to think about Claudia Jones. I had fallen into the habit of knocking on her door at least once a day. I would slip her mail under, knock, and call out in a pleasant, neighborly voice, “Claudia, your mail’s in.” It had been several weeks since I’d opened her door and scanned the dark contents of her home. In that time, I had also received a short message on my answering machine; the gallery owner wanted to inform me that Celeste Wilcox lived “some distance away” and only came to the city about once a month. However, she was “represented,” and Mr. Tartles had passed my request along. I suspected that Mr. Tartles was dismissing me with a lie, which was a nice courtesy, given that he could have kept me waiting indefinitely. Feeling somewhat defeated at least put me in the mood to generate one or two of my poems.

  On my return from the bathroom, I heard the girls giggle again. I became a little self-conscious, and once seated at the table, I slyly checked my zipper. I then inspected my shoes to make sure no toilet paper was attached to my heel.

  Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, a young boy with a scrappy goatee worked the counter. He seemed to derive a peculiar joy whenever someone ordered a latte; it excited him, at least by all appearances, to froth milk and listen to the machine whir. Many teenagers had this kind of innocuous, giddy quirk when they were among their peers and away from the haven of their home. I supposed it substituted for an actual personality, at a time when the character of the boy was still undefined. Whenever milk needed to be frothed or coffee beans needed to be ground, the boy’s co-workers would happily call him over for the task—and his ego was thus shaped around this artificial eccentricity. Also, he would remove his apron with great theatrics and flare, toss it beneath the counter, and announce that he needed to make “a head call.” It was his signature gesture for going to the bathroom. During one of these performances, the squat, giggly girl mockingly said, “Have fun, J. C.”

  He pretended to be offended, and she giggled.

  Later, as I walked home in the gloom of a cold twilight, I found myself replaying in my mind the little scene in the bookstore. Initially, I’d disregarded it, thinking that the girl must have called everyone J.C.—but this idea didn’t feel right because I was J. C. A slow, lingering snowfall throughout the day had polluted the sidewalks and streets with gray slush. I tried to walk in the footsteps of other people. I was hurrying home because I felt the coffee straining my bladder to the bursting point. Every store I passed along the way was closed. If a public restroom didn’t appear shortly, or if the internal pressure didn’t subside, I was prepared to huddle up to a building, find some sort of crevice or enclosure, and relieve myself. At least, the gray slush would conceal the evidence. I cursed myself for drinking too much coffee. How and where I eventually resolved the small problem of my bladder isn’t as important as the sudden realization it disclosed to me: The nickname J. C. had nothing to do with divine inspiration or the lucidity of the mad. It somehow referred to going to the bathroom. All my coffee drinking had me running to the men’s room an inordinate number of times, and apparently the young staff had noticed. My mystique of being a serious writer evaporated under this new image of myself: I was the strange man who peed a lot. By the time I arrived home and mounted the stairs of my apartment building, I was convinced that I’d correctly guessed what the initials stood for: John Crapper, the erroneously famed inventor of the toilet.

  All these thoughts, however, abruptly fled my mind the instant I discovered in my mailbox the long-awaited response from Morris the sister. Excitedly, I opened the letter in the hallway. She understood the “miscommunication” regarding the date on which we had arranged to meet each other in the coffee shop. Her point, however, was that she didn’t see why any of that was necessary. I’d written her several letters, and in none of them did I enclose a check for her brother. She didn’t understand why we needed any other interchange beyond a monetary one. Despite her evident, though polite, dismissal of me, the quiet inclusion of her email address seemed very suggestive to me.

  The moment I entered my apartment, I booted up my computer, signed onto the Internet, and responded to the woman. I began by saying how much I appreciated having her as an intermediary. I indicated my sincere affection for Morris the man as well as my bewilderment over how this rift arose between us silly boys. We were both obstinate and proud, and left to our own devices, neither of us would ever take a step toward reconciliation. I needed to meet her in the same coffee shop as before, but no mistakes this time. I set the date for the third Tuesday in December and signed the email “your devoted friend.”

  I began to fear that if I were going to make progress with Morris the sister, I would have to pay back her brother. I needed to be tactful; I would have to feel her out, and only if I received a clear indication of hope, would I then give up the money. If I dangled the money to lure her near me, then I might have to pay up, in order to “close the deal,” as Stephen would say. My prospects seemed dim, but I knew that I ought to explore them.

  Throughout the evening, I periodically, though fruitlessly, checked my email for her reply.

  VIII

  In bed, reading the paperback novel that I’d been regularly carrying around in the pocket of my overcoat, I was struck by a sudden realization: The letter from Teresa Morris had made me so anxious that I’d rushed into my apartment without sorting out the mail that belonged to Claudia Jones. Using the pink slip with fred’s number on it as a bookmark, I closed the novel and got out of bed. In my slippers and with my blue robe cinched about my waist, I first went into the kitchen, and not finding the mail on the table or counter, I then shuffled into the living room, which was dimly lit, blue, and chilly. According to the small VCR clock, it was just past midnight. The mail sat on the corner of my computer desk. I clicked on the desk lamp, so I could read. A flyer for replacement windows—a $75 coupon and a picture of an extremely happy woman standing in front of glinting windows—was the only mail addressed to Claudia Jones. I doubted that my neighbor needed new windows and, given that she rented, even had the right to change one. Yet I carried the flyer out of my apartment and down the hallway. In front of Claudia’s apartment, I squatted with my knees together, like a woman in an evening gown, and slipped her mail under the door. My senses were attuned to something both mildly enticing and foreboding. Perhaps because I had stood there before—as an odd disheveled man at a strange hour and with no apparent intent, trying to peer into the peephole—I felt more accustomed to the situation. The lights overhead filled the hallway with a pale, shadowless stillness. I was cold and at least partly aware that the most sensible thing was to go quietly back to my bedroom and curl up beneath my blanket. Instead, I lightly tapped on the door. I imagi
ned that I was possibly on the cusp of some great, romantic intrigue, displaying the passion of a chivalric hero, and not simply violating the rules of etiquette and normalcy.

  “Claudia,” I whispered, as though gently rousing her from sleep. “Claudia.”

  I tapped again, feeling a faint, tremulous connection between myself and the unknown woman beyond the door. I sensed that the show that was being played out on the surface of our daily lives—comprised of my warm entreaties and her continual coquettish refusals—now exposed itself as a façade, blown softly away; and our true passions, which we’d both tacitly understood from the beginning, were finally being embraced, with no more game playing.

  “Claudia,” I whispered.

  What would I do, I thought, if trying the handle, I found that it turned and that the door, moving inward, opened without impediment, so that I was at last standing upon the threshold of her dark apartment, which except for a different arrangement of furniture, replicated mine, room for room and wall for wall? As the thrill of this prospect took hold of me, I gently seized the door handle, but it didn’t turn.

  I stood outside her door for a long time, feeling the mild ebbing, the cozy somnambulism, and the haze of my swooning soul. I whispered her name: “Claudia.”

  Finally forlorn, I turned to leave. Yet, as I headed back toward my room, having taken no more than three or four steps, I was stopped by a sound behind me. I looked back to see Claudia Jones emerge from her apartment. The woman wore beige sweatpants, hiked up high and stretched over her bloated stomach; a thin white tee-shirt loose at the collar, as though she habitually pulled on it; and a long flannel shirt, which would have been more effective in concealing her bulk had it been buttoned up. Her face was weathered, and her mouth partly open, as though her bottom lip had been anesthetized. To my dismay, here stood the woman from the alley, but now only worse, because she was up close.

  “Why don’t you leave me alone?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She inspected me with slow, dull eyes, yet I sensed that beneath the drooping stupidity lived something that calculated and devoured.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “Fuck it all, yes.” She took a step forward. Her tongue poked itself out briefly, like the head of a turtle. “Don’t apologize to me. I’m not interested. So, you’re a fan of mine. Is that it?”

  She looked at me, waiting for an answer, but I didn’t know what to say. My prepared excuse came out.

  “I just thought it would be nice to say hi.”

  She nodded her head.

  “Because we’re neighbors,” I added.

  “So, how’s your little friend?” Her tone seemed insinuating. The fading traces of my warm and softly pattering feelings, which had moved me only a moment earlier, lead me to imagine that her words were suggestively sexual.

  “My little friend?” I asked.

  “Is he still sick?”

  “No,” I said. “He’s never been sick.”

  She looked at me, and the ensuing silence seemed to indicate that she was measuring me in her mind.

  “You’re crazy through and through,” she said at last.

  “Maybe.”

  She scratched her chest with one of her long red fingernails.

  “You’re stealing my mail,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Of course, you are.”

  “No,” I repeated. I’d never really regarded it as stealing because her mail had been as neglected as trash and I’d been under the impression that she was no smarter than a cow.

  “Another crazy fan. Fuck it all. One is enough.” Her tongue poked out of her mouth. She tilted her head, and her eyes, still focused on me, appeared to be settling sleepily in their sockets.

  “Are you jerking off to my mail?” she asked.

  “No,” I blurted. “I didn’t even mean to take it.”

  She inspected me with disbelief.

  “Keep it all,” she said. “Have fun. But he’s more crazy than you. He loves me.”

  “McTeal?”

  “Jerk off all you want. I’m not interested. But watch out for him. It’s like you’re stealing his love letters to me. At first, he didn’t know, but now he does.”

  “I burned them,” I exclaimed.

  She continued to scratch her chest. Ignoring my assertion, she turned toward her open door, as if I were too absurd to warrant further conversation. I sensed that as soon as she shut herself back in her apartment, she would never allow herself to be drawn out by me again.

  “I’m not a fan,” I said quickly, desperately, not even certain what this meant.

  “Well, he is,” she said. Then, as if to herself, she added, “But I don’t think he’d hurt me.”

  With that, she disappeared, leaving me standing alone in the hallway and listening to her bolt her door and slide the little chain in the slot. But I didn’t hear her walk away. She most likely stationed herself at the peephole, to make sure I left.

  “Claudia,” I said, but I knew she wouldn’t respond.

  Her departing comment disturbed me. Did she mean that, unlike McTeal, I was someone whom she feared might hurt her? If this were the case, I had no idea how to proceed with my seduction. Of course, by now, I was less attracted to her than I was to a mound of peat moss. Even so, by some peculiar spark of the brain, the momentum of my first intention still carried me forward. Rather than relinquish all I’d invested in her, I was absurdly curious how to salvage the refuse. I continued to stand in the hallway and to listen for her footsteps retreating into her shadowy home, as she undoubtedly waited to hear me move away, my lingering presence causing her additional fear. When I started back toward my apartment, crossed the threshold, and turned around to lock my door, I considered another possible meaning of her words. Maybe they were a warning. Although her crazy fan might not hurt her, this didn’t preclude him from hurting me. As I stood in the dark, looking at the tiny blue glow of the VCR clock, I began to realize the dimensions of my terrible situation. Somewhere in the city, a freaky man not only obsessed over my bovine neighbor but also believed that I had intercepted his pictures, “his love letters,” as she called them. From his perspective, I was a wild absurdity, something unexpected, a random annoyance that appeared one day out of a cloudy gray sky. How would he react if he realized, though incorrectly, that all this time I’d been masturbating to pictures of him; or worse yet, what would he think if he’d ever learned the truth? For reasons unfathomable to him, I’d shredded his professions of love, held each burning sliver with salad tongs, and then rinsed the ashes into the sewer. I dreaded the possible conclusions he might concoct in his malformed brain. Perhaps he would see me as a contender for Claudia’s love, and now, with all the strange weapons that lunacy could devise, the time for battle was at hand.

  I desperately reasoned that I was deluding myself, and I happily welcomed my original interpretation of Claudia’s words: She was afraid of me. This was a pleasant idea compared to the threatening alternative. But what if, I thought with new alarm, McTeal took it upon himself to defend the helpless damsel from her deranged, onanistic neighbor?

  No matter how I played the situation in my mind, I found myself in the losing position. A monster was at large.

  IX

  The following morning I woke up early. Unrested and with a headache, I took a long, cold shower, which failed to revive me. A sense of dread pervaded my bones. Undoubtedly, from then on, I was going to avoid Claudia Jones, even if I had to climb over a pile of mail every time I came in and out of my apartment building, even if she lost a hundred and forty-four pounds and personally sought me out for a casual, sweaty tryst. I couldn’t shrug off the urgency of my situation. I needed to respond to the threat of McTeal, but it was difficult to imagine what I could do, save run away.

  It snowed again, piling up on my window ledge, clinging to the roughly parged wall opposite me, and coating the floor of the alley. The tracks of a small animal, perhaps a cat or a sewer
rat, made several circuitous routes that all vanished or began at a window-well to the basement across the way. Claudia Jones’s milkcrate was an indistinguishable shape beneath the white blanket. Not long ago, my neighbor had been a regular feature of the scene, along with the boy, whose countenance became increasingly vague to me. Normally, I had a precise memory, but after my recent bout of languor and lethargy, my mind felt as though it had been steeping a long time in milky water. The alley seemed vacant and desolate. It made me dimly remorseful because at one point—when I’d first moved into my apartment, back when Claudia Jones hummed carols and the boy ran my errands—the alley had been my primary access to a larger world. But these were stupid, idle memories. I didn’t really understand what I was feeling. Perhaps my home had simply lost the freshness of its original appeal; the more accustomed I became to my surroundings, the drabber they appeared.