Cartilage and Skin

by Michael James Rizza

  Still holding the piece of handle, I walked toward the dining area. Newspapers were spread over a tabletop. McTeal must have recently built, repaired, or dismantled something because several hand tools remained on the table. The hammer had a smooth wooden handle, with two nails driven into the top of it and bent over to keep the head from coming off. I looked around to see what McTeal was working on, when I noticed the cat watching me from beneath the couch. I put the hammer down, picked up a pair of needle-nose pliers, and then returned that too. The cat, with only its fluffy orange head sticking out, continued to study me. Its eyes were two pieces of black glass set into a puff of fur. I didn’t know if I had spooked the animal to hide beneath the couch or if that was its normal refuge.

  Less than a minute, I told myself. I kept time in my head.

  As I started toward the two darkened doorways, I imagined that another living and cowering creature might also be present in the room, alert and tense and suspicious. Once again, I was seized by the sudden awareness that I had no idea what I was doing, and this knowledge seemed to come from outside of myself, as if I were watching a lanky man in a muddy green coat and a silly hat as he stepped cautiously across a span of carpet in a strange room, wielding a section of mop handle like a weapon, approaching the private rooms of a man he didn’t know. And before I began to comprehend my motive, let alone judge what kind of person I was, I found myself standing beside one of the doorways, first peeking around the edge of the doorframe, and then reaching my hand inside and sliding it up the cool wall. And before I even knew that I felt the light switch, an abrupt glare exposed the room; the tiled walls and floor glinted, white and blue. And even though I was looking at a completely vacant bathroom with nobody in the tub and nobody on the toilet, I hadn’t fully reckoned with the possibility of finding a person, not just with what I would do but also with how the person would react to me suddenly flipping on the light—and this was probably because I never really believed in the first place that anyone was in the apartment. No one could have been there, not because reason or evidence demanded that this was the case, but rather because I implicitly understood that McTeal was alone in the world, with no friends or relatives to give him furniture or to talk politely in his living room over a cup of coffee: He was too inept or twisted to have made any sustainable human connection. Still, I raised the cut handle as I approached the second doorway, which I already knew—before I even reached my hand into the gloom and turned on the light—was going to be an empty bedroom. The bed sat square and tight without a single crease in the covers, without a headboard, as though it belonged in a barracks or a hospital. The nightstands on either side of it were polished, clear, and seemingly unused. Just as in McTeal’s photographs, in his “love letters,” the wall above the bed was barren. In fact, all the walls were barren. I expected to find a tripod set up and directed toward the familiar scene; however, what I discovered was a coffee can on the edge of a dresser directly across from the foot of the bed. The only thing on the dresser was the can, upside down, as though the plastic lid served as a coaster protecting the wooden surface from scratches. Atop the can was perched a tiny gold-colored camera.

  Maybe two minutes now, I told myself.

  Although I didn’t think of it at the time, the ultimate thing—the thing that would have unnerved and baffled McTeal more than any note slipped under his door or posted on his refrigerator—would have been to take a picture, one which would have revealed myself not explicitly, such as a full body shot or a portrait of my grinning face, but rather tangentially, from an angle that would somehow simultaneously provoke his fear and his curiosity. He would realize that I figured him out and defeated him. No matter what the photograph depicted—a close-up of my head-wound, the brim of my hat, one glimmering cat eye, the hooked claw of his hammer—the image would’ve indicated far less than it would’ve suggested, provoking McTeal’s soggy mind to work out the details.

  Yet I wasn’t thinking any of this as I looked at the bare walls and the sparse furniture, which could have belonged to any man who hadn’t taken the time or the opportunity to live among his own things, in his own home, and thus leave an impression of himself or a trace of his personality. McTeal’s apartment wasn’t a pigpen of debauchery, a home for a loving family, or even a façade to mask his private perversion. It was simply devoid of character.

  Because I didn’t see a computer station, I suspected that either he had a portable laptop or else he visited libraries or computer labs at some college.

  Of course, I was overlooking the most obvious reason that the apartment appeared unused. Stooping down to peek under the bed, I wasn’t really thinking yet. Instead, I stood up and moved toward the closet, still holding the cut handle and still imagining that if I continued with my search, I would find something. But I never reached the closet or opened its door because I was feeling the object in my hand and dimly considering that it might be as old as the building itself, older than McTeal, when I realized that the handle didn’t belong to McTeal at all. He was just renting it because it came with the apartment. When the sliding glass door was shut, the handle fitted into the track, so the door couldn’t be opened from the outside. And yet I still didn’t fully comprehend the significance of the things I saw. Just as I was shutting off the light and exiting the bedroom, a part of me was beginning to surmise that McTeal was merely a tenant, which meant that he had as much connection to his home as I had to mine. Crossing the span of carpet again, moving swiftly now, I wanted to leave the handle where I’d found it and to get out of the apartment. At the moment, I wasn’t so much thinking it as I was sensing it, namely that McTeal was in transition. He was in the process of moving, and he was several steps ahead of me because he had already packed and taken away most of his things. His home wasn’t actually bare by design or neglect, but because he was clearing it out. I was squatting down to lean the handle back up against the glass door, feeling the cold air blow in, and wondering why McTeal was preparing to take flight, when all at once I arrived at the idea. McTeal was on the brink of action. I understood that he was moving, but I didn’t have the chance to ask the question: Why? What are you about to do, fruitcake?—when I heard an unmistakable sound behind me: The front door opened.

  Without looking around, I crouched down between the back of an easy chair and the sliding door. I hadn’t yet returned the handle, so it was still in my hand, being pressed into the carpet as I leaned my weight upon my palm. My hiding place was horrible; at any moment, McTeal could have casually walked around his apartment and discovered me. Afraid to move, I strained to hear the sound of his laundry bag being flung to the floor or the clear thumps of receding footsteps into the kitchen or bathroom. Yet all I could discern was the indistinct sound of McTeal shuffling his body across the carpet, as if he didn’t actually walk but rather spread himself out in several directions at once, like something heavy and gelatinous. At last, when the bulk of him seemed to settle in one indeterminable spot, I could hear the internal motions of his body, which weren’t quite breathing and not quite gurgling, but the sound of some viscous liquid being drawn up to the top of a hollow tube and then released back down, drawn and released. Then he was moving again. My muscles tightened in terror, and listening, I became conscious of the sound of my own breathing. Although I was afraid to risk peeking around the side of the chair, I noticed that McTeal was reflected in the black pane of the sliding glass door—not in distinct contours—but as some translucent and boundless form. He was close by, perhaps as near as the coffee table, and he was doing something, moving vaguely, almost shimmering, as his reflection, the dark pane, and even the shapes in the night beyond the glass, bled into one another. As I waited, my heart pulsing in my breast, my wound twitching and tender, I began to focus on a single idea, which kept repeating in my head, silently commanding McTeal as if by telepathy: Go to the bathroom; go to the bathroom; go to the bathroom. In response came the small grating rasp and the momentary hiss of a lighter being struck. The flame
was a brief orange gash in the dark reflection. McTeal grunted, and he coughed one time, almost like the cough of a small child. Instantly, I smelled the cigarette smoke, and before I had a chance to anticipate the next second, to prepare myself, McTeal emerged right beside me. His feet were in beige slippers; his thigh, naked and hairy, swelled upward to a pair of white underwear that was apparently at least a size too small; and a large tee-shirt draped over his firm, rotund stomach. He held the burning cigarette up to his mouth, stepped closer to the glass door, and looked out over the balcony and into the night. Suddenly, the door slid open, and the cold air rush in around McTeal. He drew on the cigarette and then extended his arm beyond the threshold to tap his ashes onto the snowy floor of the balcony. All he had to do was slightly turn his head and look down over his left shoulder, for I was only an arm’s length away. I didn’t even have a moment to consider how I would react if he saw me because all at once his body began to move: a slight involuntary motion, the contraction of his chest and the tightening of his throat, in that brief instant just before a cough—but it might as well have been the explosion of a pistol—because startled and terrified, I lunged at him, pushing him out onto the balcony, where he simultaneously coughed and stumbled against the railing. As he quickly gathered himself, wheeling back around, I pulled the door closed and dropped the handle into the track. No sooner, McTeal threw himself up against the glass door, his chest smacking hard against it, almost as if he were a bird in flight that didn’t see its passage was obstructed.

  Staggering back against the easy chair, I watched the bizarre and furious spectacle. Nothing in McTeal’s expression indicated that he was alarmed or afraid; he was simply angry. I could see the pocks in his face clearly now as his jaw appeared distended and his eyes turned to fierce slits behind his glasses.

  He hissed, “I’m going to kill you.”

  Without the door between us, I never would have been able to get this close, face-to-face, with the lunatic.

  He kept wrapping the butt of his palm savagely against the glass. The entire door shook, as if ready to explode.

  And he kept hissing, “I’m going to kill you.”

  But I already knew that, so there was nothing for me to do but to leave him on the balcony. There was no way I could safely release him. I backed away, keeping my eyes on him, as he stood framed against the dark night with the snow falling around him. His ferocious expression didn’t change or soften by the slightest degree, not even when he must have realized—in the instant I started to turn my head away—that I was going to run out the front door.

  PART FIVE: GOATS AND MONKEYS

  The exact details no longer mattered, for not only was the plotting out of certain points in my life an arbitrary and fantastic construction, but also no one point was definitively linked to any other point, for each was a cause ad infinitum and an effect ad infinitum, within a larger system of constant flux, a web of contingency, governed by attraction and repulsion, push and pull, a sad and pointless bumping together of parts. Of course, looking at my life in a grander, metaphysical—or perhaps macrophysical—context provided me another way of sighing and slouching over in resignation. From a more grounded perspective, I was tired and confused, and I didn’t want to bother with thinking any longer. More precisely, a naked old man—his arms covered by the dark purple splotches of long ago tattoos, his belly flabby and pasty—made a grunting noise as he reached down to towel off his inner thighs and scrotum, and while witnessing this horrible spectacle, I had no idea what I was doing or how I had managed to make the sort of choices that brought me to this particular circumstance. Another old man at least had the decency to wear a pair of thin, yellowing briefs.

  “We should’ve spent ten minutes in the sauna,” he said. “It loosens you good.”

  “Don’t blame me,” the naked one replied. “You do what you want to do.”

  “You got the appointment, not me.”

  “Drive yourself next time.”

  “Who’s stuffing the barrel now?”

  Although this question completely eluded me, both men laughed.

  “Crazy bastard,” the naked man said.

  His pale penis looked like a soggy, uncooked chicken neck drooping from a puff of gray hair.

  I turned away from the men. Unfortunately, before they had emerged from the showers and stationed their slow, wet bodies beside me, I had already committed myself to a locker by hanging up my muddy green coat and shelving my shoes. Since I’d been caught in the process of disrobing, I now stalled, poking around in my locker, searching my pockets, and delaying my nudity, but the men showed no sign of urgency. The one in the yellow briefs, which at one time had probably been white, sat down on the bench, uncapped a green can, and began to spray each of his feet in turn. The other man, still nude, bent over a duffle bag and rifled through an exorbitant arsenal of beauty supplies, before finally selecting his deodorant. He eventually revealed a pair of crisp, white underwear and a tee-shirt, but rather than put them on, he set the garments on the bench and began combing his hair.

  I soon realized, after inspecting all my pockets twice, that I had no choice but to strip out of my clothes.

  Thankfully, the men disregarded me. The one in the yellow briefs was explaining different cuts of beef, from chuck steaks to filet mignon, which evidently intrigued the naked man.

  Once all my clothes were stored in the locker and a towel was wrapped about my waist, I headed toward the showers. Even though my back was to the old men, I sensed a momentary pause in their conversation and imagined them simultaneously lifting their heads and eyeing me, as though I offered them a bit of droll amusement. My suspicion was confirmed the moment I passed through the swinging wooden door and stepped onto the cold tile floor: Both men chuckled.

  Of course, this could have been a reaction to my exaggerated poking around in my pockets or my silly display of painful modesty, but I felt the deeper sting of their ridicule. Despite the pale loose flesh that was draped over their deteriorated meat, packed with clumps of pudge, and held up by their brittle, rickety frames, like an overburdened coat-rack—I became fretfully conscious of my own body, as though my shrunken chest and slumped shoulders were innately humorous, even to old men.

  On my left were two doors, one glass and one wooden, that led to a steam room and a sauna. Across from them stretched a long counter with several sinks, where men customarily lathered, groomed, and preened themselves. The shower room was up ahead. Although I heard no water spewing from the showerheads, I averted my eyes in fear of seeing anyone.

  I silently cursed the old men, holding against them their freedom to come to the gym at eleven o’clock in the morning, on a weekday, when ordinary people were busy with life, as though the old men were slighting the rest of society and failing to respect their own decrepitude and inevitable fate. The old fools ought to have been in bed. What was additionally offensive was that the door had not even swung closed behind me before they’d begun to chuckle because they didn’t care whether or not I heard them. Instead of being enfeebled by their old age, stricken and humbled by a constant awareness of their tenuous mortality, they were emboldened. They no longer concerned themselves with civility, not simply because they’d lived long enough to stop worrying about what other people might think, but also because they no longer had any stake in society—similar to a pair of rutting high school boys, limited by the milky flush of testosterone over their spongy brains.

  But then I saw myself reflected in the mirror above the long counter. Although my body might have given the two men plenty of reasons to laugh, the true cause sat atop my head: I had forgotten to take off my hat.

  Continuing forward, I saw a series of hooks mounted to the tile wall near the entrance to the shower. The floor was wet, a small pool gathered about one of the drains. There were no stalls or partitions, just one common room with all the showerheads jutting out with a fierce, cold formality, such as in a hospital ward or a torture chamber.

  I placed my
hat upon one of the hooks, and turning my eyes to the floor, I removed the towel and hung it up also.

  Naked, I stepped across the threshold into the vacant communal shower. The tiled walls were the color of peach pulp, and the dark floor glinted like the raw side of a kiwi’s skin. I selected a spot in the corner, moving somewhat slowly and warily, as though I were afraid to make any noise—but the water exploded out of the showerhead, the sound amplified by the starkness of the room.

  I showered facing the wall. Even though I dispensed a long pink coil of shampoo into my palm and lathered myself all over, I felt as though I couldn’t get completely clean. A thin film of grime coated my skin. Perhaps some contaminant lurked in the public water—or perhaps it was just in my head. After all, a long time seemed to have passed since I’d last bathed, and in the interval, random forces had evidently conspired to defile me. By a volition other than my own, I had fallen on my back in a slushy street, been chased by dogs, sweated beneath my clothes, put vintage hand-me-downs over my clammy body, suffered through a police investigation, dined in disguise with Vanessa Somerset, followed a perverted creature back to its den, and escaped only by locking it out on a cold balcony. And then I had wandered the nighttime, all the while forsaken, miserable, and homeless. Despite finally having the opportunity to run away, I had continued to linger in the city. Rather than flee to a bus station and keep on traveling until I was safe from everything that threatened me, I had roamed the streets like some lost or abandoned pet, some slush-bellied mongrel. In an all-night diner, I had taken a long time eating a potato pancake. Afterwards, brandishing my identification card, I’d entered the college library, stowed myself inside a cubicle, and fallen asleep atop a musty book. Although I’d found some relief in my dreams and allowed myself to play in the garden of my memory—where I could nurture my private flowers and pluck my weeds—I wasn’t aware at the time, or perhaps I simply lacked the comfortable distance from which to speculate, how this gesture of mental retreat was merely the precursor to a more definitive action: my final escape.