“I don’t know. When I woke up last night—after Stacy said I passed out from seeing my mother messed up—I guess they were in my head then… but I didn’t really think about them then. They were in the back of my mind. It wasn’t until I was alone in the hospital, waiting for news on my mother, that they really started to come. I almost threw up on the emergency room floor. I had to run to the bathroom. I felt sick…”
“Lie down on the couch,” she told him now. And then, smiling in a way she hoped would calm him, “An Indian guru taught me an acupressure technique once. Let me try it on you.”
He shrugged after a moment’s thought. “I guess it can’t hurt.” He lay down prone on the couch; she squatted over him and began to knead his tense shoulder muscles.
“God,” he whispered, “your hands do feel good.”
“You’re pretty tense: no wonder you couldn’t sleep.”
“Yeah,” he said weakly. …Within two minutes, he was snoring. Vera rose and stared at him. Her stomach felt unsettled again. She had to get out of the building—perhaps go outside and wait for Stacy. She went and got her stuff from the bedroom—just her purse. When she got back to the apartment last night, she had dumped the melted ice cream from her bag. Luckily, the spill had been confined to the plastic bag the store had packed it in, but her handbag nonetheless had a sickly sweet scent.
In the kitchen, she took a banana and orange from the fruit basket, and then left. When she got outside, she used her purse as a doorstop, and sat down on the stoop. There was a huge oak tree near the curb, so she had some shade. It was actually quite peaceful. The neighborhood looked different during the day. A few Hasidic Jews were heading back from Saturday prayers; the usual New York City pedestrian traffic was meandering past. She began to eat the orange as she sat there. Her mind raced with thoughts of the boyfriend. He was clearly on the verge of a mental breakdown. Whatever Stacy had told him the last time he came back to life had obviously not done the trick—
“How much, baby?”
She looked up from her thoughts to see a man in his mid- to late-fifties. He was dressed in an aquamarine linen suit, replete with matching bowler hat. He looked like a reject from the seventies—he even had a pimp cane with a crystal head. She looked at him with sudden fascination: “How much for what?”
“You know—a grind.” He had a big, stupid grin on his face.
She cringed when she finally understood his proposal: “…You think I’m a prostitute?” She looked down at her skirt, suddenly wondering if it was too short; she instinctively clamped her knees shut—
“You’re just the kind of ’ho I like, too!” he said enthusiastically, overlooking the shocked expression on Vera’s face. “I hate those young, perfect-looking bitches,” he went on. “Give me some old school, bump and grind, brick house pussy any day!”
Vera was so stunned that she could not say anything for a few moments. The old school player was still salivating over her. Yet, something about him was inherently ridiculous, and she suddenly laughed, more amused by the audacity of his proposition than offended—
“Let me introduce myself,” he said, giving her what was supposed to be a seductive wink: “Rique Johnson at your service, baby. And when I say service, I mean service.”
She found herself chuckling: it was too ridiculous. “Look,” she began, “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but I’m not a prostitute, ’ho or whatever other term you want to use. Besides,” she said with another chuckle, “I’d exhaust your bank account if you tried to get any of this, old-timer.”
“Damn, baby,” he said breathlessly, “I won’t mind going broke over you at all!”
She laughed and shook her head.
“How much for just a taste then?” he said diplomatically.
“Still too much for you, Oldschool.”
“Give me something to work with, baby!” he pleaded. “What are we talking, twenty dollars?”
“Twenty dollars! You’ve gotta come better than that!”
“Okay, okay,” he said quickly, fidgeting with anticipation. “How about fifty dollars then?” he ventured.
“Fifty dollars!” she screamed, beginning to feel outraged. “Not even close.”
“Fifty dollars ain’t good enough for a taste?” he said in bewilderment.
“I ain’t no goddamn value meal! If you want a cheap dinner you’d better go to McDonalds and order from the kids’ menu!”
“Okay, okay,” he said with increasing fidgetiness, “—how about a sniff then?”
“A sniff of what!”
“Yo’ panties, baby.”
“For fifty dollars? My panties cost more than that!” she lied about her Wal-Mart drawers. (Actually, she remembered that she was wearing the lacy underwear Stacy had gotten for her, and had no idea what they cost. Still, the idea of fifty dollars was outrageous!)
“Okay, okay,” the old school player said, desperate to salvage something. “How about a look then?”
“A look at what?”
“Yo’ panties, baby.”
She frowned. “You’re gonna pay me fifty dollars to look at my panties?”
“Yeah, baby,” he said with a grin, glad that she seemed to be showing some sign of considering his proposal. And then, to press home his point, “It’s all I got, baby. Help me out!” His pleading expression made her laugh again.
“Where’s the money?” she asked suspiciously.
He took it out of his pocket, his hand shaking. “Here it is, baby. Just a look—that’s all I’m asking.”
“You’d pay fifty dollars just to look at my panties? You men sure are stupid,” she said with a laugh.
“It’s the devil in us,” he lamented. “It’s God’s revenge for our evil ways. In the Garden of Eden we could see all the pussy we wanted. Pussy wasn’t even covered back then. Everything was out in the open—free. All you had to do was look over and you could see pussy. But once God threw us out of Paradise, pussy started to be covered, and we had to start paying for it.”
The man’s story showed a great deal of earnest contemplation, and, on some sick level, she was impressed. He still had a pleading expression on his face, and for a moment she felt sorry for him—but there was no way she was letting that moron see what was under her dress! That was when something occurred to her, and she had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from laughing out.
“Okay, Oldschool,” she said, snatching the money. She looked up and down the block to see if anyone was coming (some people were at the far end of the block), then she stood up. In a deft motion, she reached under her dress and pulled down her panties. She stepped out of them effortlessly, dangled them in front of Oldschool’s mesmerized eyes for a second, before she retreated to the doorway, pushed the door open, kicked her purse into the hallway, and slammed the door in the old man’s stunned face. When she was alone in the hallway, she laughed out loud, but she almost immediately felt foolish, and sorry for the old fool. She really did not need his money. When she opened the door again, he was still standing there with a mesmerized gleam in his eyes. She handed him the money and then slammed the door in his face again. She realized that she was still holding the panties in her hand: she put them on again.
Now that she was alone in the hallway, she felt melancholy. She suddenly remembered Stacy’s boyfriend. The same queasy feeling came over her, so that she again had an urge to flee from the building. However, she could not go back outside, lest Oldschool was still lurking around, like some kind of lovesick puppy. The entire incident seemed even more stupid in retrospect, and she groaned. What if he had been some kind of lunatic rapist, and had forced her into the hallway? She sighed. She began walking up the stairs slowly.
That was when the thing happened. One moment, she was in the stairwell; the next moment, she was somewhere else. Wherever she was, there was too much light. She squinted to block out the glare, and then she saw it: a huge, bloody hand reaching out for her through the blinding light. The life she had lived ju
st seconds before was now irrelevant; the thoughts that had been coursing through her mind when she started up the staircase now ceased to matter. The bloody hand was a man’s hand—a hand gnarled by labor and hardship—but it seemed impossibly huge, like a bear’s. The fingernails were packed with filth and gore; and as the hand reached out for her, her nostrils filled with a stench that she immediately understood to be death. She wanted to run, but she was frozen in place, possessed by some pure form of terror. The hand grew bigger. She could smell her own panic-induced sweat—and then the hand had her, so that the stench and reality of death flared up in her mind, blocking out everything else—
Everything went black; and then, she was back in the stairwell again. She almost passed out from the transition alone, but she managed to grasp the handrail. She stood there trembling. For a moment, she was possessed by all the terror of that vision or flashback or whatever it had been. She was panting and lightheaded. When her legs began to quiver, she sat down heavily on the stairs, still trying to catch her breath and make sense of things. Some time passed—maybe thirty seconds or five minutes. Her mind no longer seemed able to gauge things accurately. She only came back to her senses when she heard the building door open. When she looked up, she saw that it was Stacy. Vera felt relieved, but her face still wore a dazed, disillusioned expression.
Stacy frowned when she saw her. “What are you doing sitting out here?” Stacy said as she walked up to Vera. She stood above her, frowning deeper. “Are you okay?”
Vera did not know where to begin. “…Just now, I saw something.”
“Huh?”
“I had a vision…of a hand. A bloody hand.”
Stacy was looking at her confusedly, and Vera realized that none of her babble would make sense. She groaned in frustration.
“What’s wrong?” Stacy asked.
“I don’t know…I was walking up the stairs…” She faltered, realizing that she did not have the words to express what she had experienced. That was when she remembered the boyfriend. His mental breakdown seemed easier to explain, and she looked up at Stacy anxiously now, saying, “Your boyfriend’s beginning to remember things.”
“Things like what?”
“All the times you’ve killed him.”
Stacy’s eyes grew wider, but then she frowned: “How do you know?”
“I was just talking to him. He said that when he was alone in the hospital he started to remember it all. It’s driving him crazy. He’s on the verge of a total breakdown.”
“It can’t be that bad,” Stacy said dismissively.
“I know a mental meltdown when I see it,” Vera said with emphasis. “What did you tell him after he came back to life the last time?”
Stacy pursed her lips as she tried to recall: “Actually, I didn’t really get a chance to tell him anything. The cops were lurking about, remember, asking questions. I managed to get away from the police just as he was coming back to life. I told him that his mother was in the hospital. I made him put on a clean shirt, and then we ran off.”
Vera shook her head disapprovingly: “He’s remembering everything, and his mind can’t take it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything you told him—all the cover stories you made up after every time you killed him—everything’s unraveling. He’s remembering everything—like the first time you killed him in the woods…everything. He’s a nervous wreck.”
Stacy stood there thinking about it for a while, and then she shrugged. “Well,” she began, “there’s only one way to fix that.”
Vera looked at her uneasily: “You mean, you’re going to kill him again?”
“Of course, what else is there to do?”
“Goddamn,” she protested, “doesn’t it get to you?”
“Killing him?”
“Yes—it’s obviously hurting him: scrambling his brain.”
Stacy snickered. “‘Scrambling his brain’? Is that a clinical term, Dr. Vera?”
“You know what I mean,” Vera said, annoyed. “Killing him over and over again has the potential to do serious harm.”
“Don’t go overboard,” Stacy went on in the same dismissive way. “He’s only remembering because I didn’t tell him a likely story when he came back to life the last time. I’ll just be more thorough when I do it again…. Or would you like to kill him this time?”
“Me?” Vera practically shouted. “Of course not!”
Stacy stared at her for a while, and then she smiled. “Okay, then we’ll do it your way.”
“…What way is that?” Vera said, suddenly lost.
“You’re a psychologist, and you don’t want to kill him. I’ll let you use your therapies on him.”
Before Vera could say anything, Stacy walked past her, and up to the apartment. Vera’s mind sputtered along for a moment. The honest side of her knew that what was going on with the boyfriend was beyond whatever meager skills she had as a therapist; at the same time, every psychologist wanted a challenge. The great psychologists were those who took on hopeless cases, and she could not help thinking that this was her chance to reach her potential. The entire Dr. Vera phenomenon had made her lazy. She knew that. Most of the last few years had been an exercise in boredom and laziness. She had to get out of that rut, and the boyfriend’s pending breakdown was her chance to test herself. Maybe there was a kind of self-aggrandizing delusion wrapped in that entire course of thought, but she felt suddenly enlivened by the prospect of the adventure ahead. She got up and continued walking up the stairs. She tried to think of a therapy that could help the boyfriend. She knew that she would have to do some research. She also knew that the boyfriend’s pending breakdown would not allow her that courtesy.
Stacy had left the apartment door open for her. When Vera entered the doorway, Stacy was walking up to her, looking confused.
“Did my boyfriend leave?”
“No, I left him sleeping on the couch.”
They both looked toward the couch, which was bare. Vera frowned and stepped into the living room, where the television was still playing.
“You checked the bedroom?” Vera asked Stacy.
“Yeah—I just did. He’s not in the apartment.”
They both seemed to notice the open window at that moment. Stacy walked over to it, and Vera followed. There was a fire escape beyond the window, which led down to an alley.
“Why would he leave through the window?” Vera said uneasily.
Stacy shrugged. She turned from the window and looked around the room as if some clue to her boyfriend’s disappearance would be in it. That was when she noticed the story on the news. There was a report of a deranged man running down the street with a pair of panties on his head. He had just caused an accident at the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge. Traffic was backed up, and the anchorwoman was warning drivers away from the area.
“Oh, oh,” Stacy said then.
“What?” Vera glanced at the screen, where there was a helicopter view of the backed up traffic.
“It’s him,” Stacy whispered.
“Your boyfriend?”
Stacy nodded ominously: “He’s acting out the Pussyman story.”
“He’s what?”
“Come on,” Stacy said, moving quickly to the door, “—I know where he’s going.”
They ran out of the apartment and down the stairs. Once they were outside the building, they jogged a block and a half before Vera called to Stacy—
“Wait, I can’t run that fast!” She was winded; she wished that she had left her huge handbag in the house. Stacy slowed to a brisk walk, while Vera tried to catch her breath. They were nearing the station for the elevated train.
“Are you sure you know where he’s going?” Vera asked when she could speak without passing out.
“I’m positive.”
They were walking up the stairs to the station now. They could hear the train approaching. Stacy looked back at her, as to tell her to hurry up. They began to run again. To V
era’s annoyance, Stacy’s breathing was even, whereas she was practically having an asthma attack.
About five seconds after they made it to the station platform, the train arrived. Vera scrambled into the train, after Stacy. The train was not exactly packed, but most of the seats were taken. Stacy and Vera stood by the door. Vera was still wheezing. A woman with a squealing toddler had also just boarded the train. The child was throwing a tantrum. The toddler kept slapping the woman’s hand, trying to get her to put him down. The woman seemed somehow indifferent to the fuss; and the child, who grew enraged by the fact that he could not remove her hands from his person, now attempted to kick his mother as well. The woman held him firmly, but at arm’s length; and now, seeing that he could neither remove her hands nor kick her, the fidgety kid began to weep bitterly at the injustice of it all. This lasted about seven seconds, before his body went limp from some kind of emotional exhaustion. At that, his mother held him to her body and patted his back. In turn, the toddler nestled into her breasts and seemed to go to sleep. Vera, Stacy and the other passengers in the car had all stared at the scene; but seeing that it had come to a conclusion, they now went on about their business.
For whatever reason, Vera smiled at the ingenious psychological powers of mothers. She looked over at Stacy, expecting a smile to be on her face as well, but Stacy was staring out of the window meditatively, looking at the passing buildings. There was a pained expression in her eyes. Vera remembered the boyfriend; it occurred to her that Stacy was probably thinking about him. She began:
“You really love your boyfriend, don’t you?”
Stacy looked over at her abruptly. She frowned when the question registered in her mind. She went back to staring out of the window; there was a sardonic expression on her face as she said, “Didn’t you already ask me that stupid question?”
Vera chuckled. “You didn’t really answer me the last time.”
“Of course I did. I told you that I needed him. Need is stronger and more honest than love.”
“How is that?”
“When you say ‘I love you’ to someone, you’re making a contract—a trade. You say ‘I love you’ and you wait for the other person to say, ‘I love you, too.’ You say those words in order to elicit something that may not be there. When you say ‘I love you’ you’re forcing someone’s hand: binding them to a contract. …But when you need someone, love and declarations are irrelevant. For instance, you can need someone you hate. Look at that mother and child,” she said, gesturing to the pair that had been the center of the ruckus a few seconds before. “That child hated his mother a few seconds ago, when he was screaming. It was need, not love that caused him to stop screaming. The child needs his mother, but the mother only loves her child. As he grows older, and more dishonest, he’ll begin to love her too.”
How to Kill Your Boyfriend (in 10 Easy Steps) Page 11