Vanessa reached forward to get the wine bottle from the coffee table and refill our glasses. She then settled against me again.
As the silence ensued, I sensed it beginning to change, so it was no longer just silence—but something like peace. And for the first time in my adult life, I had a momentary glimmer of what it meant to be ordinary. For so many years, the burden of anxiety, relentless introspection, and disengagement from the world had governed my behavior and rendered me a social cripple. But now, next to Vanessa, I saw the possibility of ease and comfort. The question, of course, was could I ever light vanilla candles on my own or take a long bath or smoke a cigar on a summer night, without feeling self-conscious, as though I were being watched and judged, with the verdict always coming back the same: You are not permitted to enjoy simple pleasures because your solitude is your condemnation, and your own body is the source of your discomfort, and, thus, you are sentenced to loneliness and absurdity; until the day you die, your every attempt at satisfaction, never mind love, will only heap upon you further reasons for guilt and shame.
But now, Vanessa Somerset was quietly leaning against me, without any urgency, awkwardness, or compulsion to speak. Outside, the snow could smother all the parked cars in high drifts and bury my narrow street, and the night could extend itself hour by hour. Meanwhile, Vanessa wouldn’t care. She was a grown woman, comfortable with herself and responsible for her choices. Remembering her little Janis in the picture frame, I tried to imagine the trials and sorrows that Vanessa had endured. She was a strong, tender woman. Her divorce now presented itself in a new light, for the death of the child, let alone its infirmities, had surely strained the marriage. For both her and her husband, it must have been difficult to keep on loving in the wake of lost hopes and under the grim constraints of crippled life.
Sip by sip, we drank our wine, and now that my attention was no longer diverted by looking for signs of the investigation, I grew more conscious of the living creature beside me. The top of her head touched my neck, and her blonde hair gave off a faint trace of coconut. Her right arm was caught between our bodies; the fingertips of her trapped hand played gently, though almost immobile, upon my thigh. In her other hand, she held the wineglass near her chest. Her slender forearm, lightly downed, appeared out of the black sleeve; a blue vein forked upon the back of her hand and faded at the ridge of her knuckles. Below the hollow of her throat, where the low collar of her top bordered her flesh, was a thin white line, slightly sunken, in her skin, apparently an old scar.
“What’s this?” I asked, and I saw my hand rising above the swell of her breast and my index finger extending toward the mark.
Vanessa briefly rubbed the spot with her thumb.
“I was canoeing with my brother in a lake. When we came back to the dock, he got out first. He took both of the oars, and for a joke, he gave the canoe a shove. I remember his foot coming up and pushing the side of the canoe. I got scared. I don’t know why. I guess I thought it was a mean thing to do, because he was standing there and laughing when I started to drift away from the dock. So I jumped out.”
Vanessa rubbed her chest again.
“Or I fell out. The metal point of the canoe got me here.”
“Was it bad?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t sit with me on the school bus either,” she added, and it took me a moment to see the connection between her thoughts.
Vanessa pulled her legs up onto the couch, her bent knees hanging over the edge, the weight of her body resting more fully against me, and the fingers of her trapped hand now holding onto my thigh.
While her body appeared to shed every hint of tension and to dissolve itself further into comfort, I felt my muscles tighten, so I was sitting bolt upright and rigid, with my blood—heated by her soft proximity—starting to rush and pulse in my every extremity. Even though she must have noticed my excitement, she remained unfazed, as though she were already long acquainted with the wild palpitations of my heart.
After she finished her wine, she held the glass beneath her chin.
Looking down over her forehead, I could see her dark lashes flick once and then rest for a while. Yet, from my position above her, I wasn’t certain if her eyes were shut, although I imagined that I saw a thin glimmer of one of her pupils reflected in the inner lens of her glasses.
While we sat wordlessly together, each passing moment did nothing to ease my nerves. Rather than become accustomed to her touch, rather than let go of my mind and allow myself to enjoy the intimacy, I felt my body grow more knotted and hard, as though the tenderness of this woman was causing a mass of calcified nubs to sprout up under my skin. And the more conscious I became, the less likely seemed the possibility of yielding.
She stirred, as if just to take one deeper breath, and when she resettled, with a soft exhale—I was able to feel, through the fabric of my shirt, the emerald stud of her earring pressed against my shoulder.
At last, I broke away by reaching for the wine bottle and pouring the remainder into our glasses.
“We’ve kicked it,” she said somewhat dreamily.
“That’s the last bottle.”
“Perhaps that’s for the best.” A contented, happy tone played through her words, even when she straightened up and added, “I’ve got to pee.”
At the moment, little did I know that these would be the last words I’d ever hear from Vanessa Somerset.
She set her glass on the coffee table, pushed herself up from the couch, and ran her hands down her thighs to smooth out her gray slacks.
I gestured to the short hall that led to the bathroom, and then I watched her as she walked away. She wobbled a little, not so much as if she were intoxicated, but as if she hadn’t used her legs for a very long time. In the darkened archway, she placed her palm on the wall and glanced into my bedroom, pausing for an instant, before stepping into the bathroom. The light suddenly exposed the hall, but then the door shut.
When I stood up, I felt wobbly myself. Looking vaguely at the VCR clock that was three hours behind, I tried to calculate how many glasses of wine I’d drunk. I carried our refuse to the kitchen sink, once again noting all the minor details that were out of place, from the teapot and the chairs to the remote control. But regardless of what the investigators found and how they wanted to use it against me, nothing really mattered now.
I sat down again and waited for Vanessa to return. Leaning my head back against the couch, I closed my eyes and listened for noises: the bathroom faucet spraying water into the sink, the toilet flushing, Vanessa’s body rejecting food and alcohol in a gush of regurgitation. But I heard none of these sounds.
Gliding my tongue over my teeth, I found a tiny sprig of parsley that had once adorned the salmon. With the tip of my tongue, I worked the parsley free and swallowed it.
I remembered that maybe a present from my mother was waiting for me in my mailbox; I could’ve surely used the money.
My mind wandered for a moment back to Vanessa as her absence stretched itself out longer than I would have expected. But let the woman take her time, I concluded.
I then tried to remember some thought I had earlier in the day, sometime before or after I’d encountered the two old men in the gym locker room—but my memory wasn’t working well, and so I was left with only an inexplicable desire for potato pancakes, though I’d eaten them earlier in the day and I wasn’t hungry in the least.
I couldn’t hear Vanessa, but I suspected that she was sick. I didn’t want to be responsible for her, and I even started to regret spending so much time with her—unless, of course, she’d end up running away with me and, thus, make all my risky efforts and tender moments worthwhile. She was a beautiful woman who treated me like a man, but I wasn’t certain how to handle her.
With my eyes closed, I saw her in the aisle of her clothing store as she stepped one foot onto the little chair and reached into the rack of hanging garments, her body long and slender and clean.
Despite her dead child, her div
orce, and her fifteen-year moratorium, she remained cheerful and kind, believing that the brutish events of her own life were a general experience, and because no one was free from pain, everyone was entitled to be treated with patience. Unfortunately, I had trouble ascribing to Vanessa’s view of life, for most people tend to suffer their griefs by themselves, store up in their hearts a mound of private anguishes and petty gripes, and come to believe that they are alone in the world, with only their own thoughts and emotions to serve as faithful, lifelong companions. Convinced that they could never be truly known, that the complex weavings of their past experiences could never be adequately shared, and that the tiny associations that join one thought to the next in their minds could never be fully communicated—they find themselves ever disconnected, even to those they love the most. They go through life only partially revealed. Vanessa was being naïve. If heartache does anything, it grants people a special status in their own hearts, a personal perspective on reality that is shaped by a lifetime of scarring, with many of the wounds broadened and deepened by the imagination.
But maybe this was a point that Vanessa would’ve willingly conceded, and to which, all the same, she would have responded: Yes, be patient with people.
Eventually, I opened my eyes and got to my feet. A little groggy but still concerned, I shuffled myself around the couch and toward the darkened hall. The bathroom door was open, and the light inside was off. I briefly expected to find Vanessa sprawled out on the white, tiled floor. But even in the gloom, I could see that the room was empty. The floor mats were missing, which meant the investigators had taken more than just my computer. At that very moment, they were probably examining one of the light blue follicles under a microscope or else shaking my crumbs out of the mat. But none of this mattered.
My discovery of Vanessa’s absence was quick to awaken my mind. I abruptly turned around and looked back into the living room, thinking that she—or perhaps someone else—was now behind me. I took a cautious, creeping step to the edge of the hall, ventured my head out of the shadow, and scanned the room from left to right. Unless she was in the kitchen or crouched in some corner, she wasn’t there, although her coat was still draped over the chair.
Maybe, I thought, and as a new idea began to shape itself slowly in my mind, I found myself inching back the other way—but not to reexamine the barren bathroom floor or even the shower. Maybe, I thought again, but before the idea could expand any further, I saw its stark conclusion all at once. Vanessa Somerset lay face down, her body stretched to full length, upon my bed.
I stepped to the threshold, my every nerve piqued to attention, straining through the darkness and reaching the prone form of the woman, which didn’t seem to move, even though her breaths were steady and deep. One of her black boots rested against a leg of the bed, and while the other wasn’t anywhere in view, both heels of her black-stockinged feet pointed toward me. Her head, without the support of a pillow, was turned on its side, her face concealed by her hair. Her right arm clung close to her body, but the left stuck straight out across the mattress, the bedcovers pulled up around her fist, as though she’d been recently clawing at the bed.
“Vanessa,” I said, and finding her unresponsive, I said it several more times, the volume of my voice gradually rising from a whisper to the clear level of speech.
Fixed in the doorway, my body riveted by a mixture of alarm and bewilderment, I stood for several moments as my eyes, perhaps the only things in motion, probed the pale darkness.
At last, as if my words had just then reached Vanessa, she stirred, and with a sigh of deep comfort, she rolled onto her back, yanking half the bedcovers over top of herself, so nothing but a solitary hand remained exposed.
“Vanessa,” I said more loudly, hoping to penetrate her drunken slumber.
The mound, folded up in the covers, didn’t move. On the other side of the bed, the white sheet appeared smooth and undisturbed, as though the empty space was reserved for me.
But I remained paralyzed on the spot, even though I could have easily crawled into bed beside the woman, who might have expected, or even wanted, me to join her. She had kept her clothes on, so perhaps all she was looking for was a good night’s rest, and in her current condition, she lacked any reservation about sharing the bed.
However, I didn’t want to presume anything, so I retreated a step, thinking that I could sleep on the couch. In a gesture that I would like to believe was an act of courtesy, I took hold of the doorknob and carefully drew the door toward myself, without a single creak or squeal from the hinges. I left it slightly ajar, so that a person’s hand could hardly pass through the gap.
When I returned to the living room, my tension started to subside.
I looked down at the couch. On the bottom side of one of the cushions remained a dark-rimmed stain that no amount of scrubbing could fully remove. Remembering the boy again and all the horrors he’d suffered, I knew that the investigators wouldn’t cease until they’d satisfied their hunger for justice. The morning, I suspected, would bring them to my door, unless, of course, the bits and pieces of Claudia Jones—along with all the female flesh that was strewn across my virtual path on route to the gross woman, cached together in lurid heaps in the recesses of my computer—would instantly inflame the suspicions of the authorities and bring them pounding on my door at any moment, before the cock had a chance to crow.
I might have been imagining the worst, but then again, even if I could swear my innocence with relentless fervor and constancy, the law was in the hands of fallible men and women, who in their eagerness to settle a terrible crime might contort reason and pervert evidence in order to satisfy their outraged morality, at the expense of my name and freedom. I saw that a crisis was gathering itself around me, and if the woman in my bed wasn’t going to accompany me, then I was forced to leave her.
I would like to say that I simply slipped on my sports jacket and overcoat, knotted the strings of my shoes, and headed out into the wintry night—a fugitive at large but hopefully, in time, forgotten, a name blotted from the annals of humanity. I would like to say that the sleeping woman had a peaceful evening, and though mildly confused by my unexplained disappearance, she was able to resume her life and enjoy all the pleasures of friendship, fortune, and health. In fact, I would like to have never written a word, with no actions to vindicate and no conscience to relieve. But I have been honest thus far, and in the end, maybe none of this matters.
One last look around strengthened my impression that I was trespassing in another man’s home, and if its appearance revealed something of the nature of the man, then his existence was probably as stark, random, and drab as were his mismatched furnishings.
Buttoning my coat up to my chin, and wary of making any sound that would disturb the sleeping woman, I crossed the room toward my desk. The top drawer—which, despite living alone, I kept ritually locked—didn’t yield to my pull as I’d at first feared it would. I felt a moment of relief as I sought in my pocket for the small key on my keyring. Yet, after I opened the drawer, I dropped all of my keys inside, having no further need of them. Suddenly dazed and unthinking, I shut the drawer again. My dread was immediate because in addition to a few items I didn’t care about, the marble-covered notebook was missing; my thoughts in choppy verse had been discovered. The image of the black man’s bloated body pulled up before a large desk, a coffee mug near his meaty hand, and the notebook opened beneath a lamplight, made me cringe—not so much because I could see him angling me into the corners of some standard profile, fitting the pieces of me into his readymade portrait of a madman or pervert, but more so because I felt embarrassed, as though the blunt reality of his body and the humorless severity of his mind would brook no nonsense and deem my literary labors silly.
“Goodbye,” I whispered, barely above a breath, as I threw a final glance toward the short darkened hall that led to spoiled possibilities. “Goodbye.”
I lifted “Footprints” from the wall and found that it f
it best in one of the inner pockets of my overcoat. Clicking off the light, I entered the hall and pulled closed the locked door. I passed the gross woman’s apartment, where ages ago I’d stood pining in my dishevelment and discontent, but now I didn’t even raise my head. I had read her online journal, a mess of fragments and compound sentences, and I knew that she was a curt, disgruntled creature—whose father, before she was even born, had vanished in Europe or Canada to escape enlistment in a war he didn’t believe in and a family he didn’t want—and whose mother had wrecked herself on other men, the best of which couldn’t keep his dirty boots off the coffee table nor learn to shut the bathroom door. But these sparse details in her journal appeared as fleeting moments in an otherwise bawdy fantasy world, which her fans, one in particular, adored.
Before I made it to the end of the corridor, I realized I’d made a mistake: The key to my mailbox was now in my desk drawer, so if my mother had sent me money, it was irretrievable.
Wishing I had my hat, I stepped into the cold, and pausing for a moment on the landing, I heard the heavy door latch itself closed behind me. The snow hadn’t eased up at all. As I remembered something in the news, a report about the aged and the homeless freezing to death, I started down the steps. I had a long walk ahead of me, and I hoped that other people were as diligent as my landlord in shoveling the sidewalk.
And I wasn’t even thinking about W. McTeal, when I thought, No, it couldn’t be.
But a fresh set of footprints on the sidewalk ascended the stairs, loitered about the door, and since it was locked, came back down, pausing for an indeterminable moment to gaze up at the building, in the very spot where I presently stood.
No, I thought again as I peered up and down the length of the quiet street, as far as the darkness would permit me. But all was motionless beneath a layer of snow.
And looking down at my feet, I wasn’t even thinking about following the tracks because I was cold and I needed to move and I had no way of telling if my intuition was correct. But from the clear impressions in the snow, I was able to conjure up the waddling figure of the strange man—and the tracks, even though I had no intention of pursuing their course, turned sharply to the left and bid my eyes to follow them into the alley beside my building.
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