The Least of My Scars

by Stephen Graham Jones

  Evidently two men were just standing on the sidewalk of my building. They were talking on a cell phone, taking orders. Keeping close enough to the brick that, from my window, they wouldn’t even be there at all.

  And now one of them was looking up, to the idea of me, and the other was clapping the cell phone shut, nodding, and now they’re extracting this long suitcase from their trunk, not opening it outdoors for her to see what it is they’re bringing upstairs with them.

  I’m supposed to be careful. To watch out.

  From his crooked place under the table, by the wall, I can hear Kid Hoodie breathing through the nostril he has that isn’t folded over, pinched shut.

  It’s raspy and strained.

  I walk along the edge of the rug to the window, look out from high up on the left side.

  I can see in as far as the curb below me, no deeper.

  A fire hydrant, a stoop with a metal railing. What used to be a place where a tree was but’s just a grate now.

  Across from me, the old man with his telescope pretends to be looking into one of the windows on the second or third floor.

  I pull my curtain shut, sit down in the corner, listen to Kid Hoodie’s rasp. Watch the front door. Only pull my squash off the burner when I think the smoke alarm’s going to go off again.

  It’s not even self-preservation when I do it, either.

  I think it’s just that I don’t want that skater punk to get in trouble again. Sometimes I’m a stranger even to myself.

  That’s good, though. Keep them guessing.

  I shrug it off, that thanks the skater punk’s not ever going to give me, just cook another batch of out-of-season squash, chew it more times than it needs chewing, swallow the paste down. The next mouthful is slower, though. Of course. Nobody can see, but I nod, smile. Take another heaping bite.

  Dashboard Mary.

  She wasn’t calling because she cared about me, or to get on my good side, or to make up for past wrongs. She was calling because she doesn’t want Singer cutting in front of her. She’s worked too long to lose me now.

  I lift a forkful of yellow up to the window, commend her.

  We’re more alike than she thinks.

  Without meaning to—who would, right?—I dip my head a couple of times while sitting in my chair in the sun, then snap it back up.

  The second time, I see what’s happening.

  To make it better, I guide the wet-dry vac back to its place, throw a jacket over the table Kid Hoodie’s under, a blanket over the base of the coat rack. Angle the curtains just so.

  There. Yeah.

  It’s a month ago, now.

  Nothing different from right before Kid Hoodie knocked on my door.

  This is where it all starts.

  I nod, lower myself back to the chair slowly. This is how you settle into the past. At least the body part of you. The room around that body. It takes hours to get my head there.

  But finally.

  I wasn’t in the game, I know that, and I wasn’t next door petting Riley, and I had my pants on and zipped. The wet-dry vac was in the back room, its cord stapled to the wall. Maybe it was straining against it, sure—you have to assume it always is—but I wasn’t even looking down the mouth of the hall for it.

  What I was doing was staring. Straight ahead. Into that slant of light coming in through the window.

  It was peaceful. Had been two hours maybe since I’d last moved. Time had gotten all sludgy around me. I was still in the moment, but the moment I was in, it was hours long.

  And then—yeah.

  That’s it.

  I’d just eaten three artichokes slimy with butter.

  It was too much for one sitting, but it was on purpose too.

  That’s why I was so still.

  I’d eaten the artichokes sitting right in the chair, which is bad form if you live alone, no ritual, nothing to separate this action out from the rest, and then I’d just set the plate on the side table. Later it would be crusty, but that would be later. And worth it.

  And the artichokes. Juicy flowers from another planet. What cactus looks like on Mars. The perfect choice for what I was doing.

  Before I’d stopped moving, I’d placed the fingertips of one hand over my stomach, my other fingertips lower down, spread across my gut like spider legs.

  The plan was to get in touch with my digestion once and for all.

  It was a yoga thing, but it really came from watching worms as a kid, I think. I used to be pretty sure that they were just these long writhy stomachs, that all they did, the only sensations they could know, was the dirt they ate, passing through them.

  I had been so jealous.

  To have just one sensation, a single purpose?

  Then you’d never have to choose what to do. Never have to decide if what you were feeling was good or bad or what. It just would be the way it was, end of story.

  Some of my early experimenting with girls was along these lines.

  But I wasn’t thinking of that then, a month ago.

  I was being a worm, being the worm. Every fiber, every pore.

  On purpose, even, I’d barely even chewed the artichoke. The idea was that the nerve endings on my insides, they probably didn’t know to be sensitive. So if the artichoke still had sharp edges, I’d be able to feel it better along its switchback route.

  Not chewing, though, yeah.

  My jaws don’t butterfly open like a snakes, sorry.

  That’s why all the butter.

  Still though, my eyes had watered each time I swallowed.

  But it was all going to be worth it.

  I was going to be different this time. I was going—sitting there in my chair, the sun warming me, my scrubbed fingertips making me twice as aware of what I was doing, it was going to make me different. Better. Not a man who thinks like a worm, but a worm moving among men. With a single purpose.

  It’s where I’d been going my whole life.

  But then, only two hours into it, the artichokes just gathering at the bottom mouth of my stomach, the butter already churning below, greasing the chute, my arm and hand numb, every bit of my awareness gathered in my fingertips, the door had knocked.

  I don’t even think I heard it that first time.

  Going through it a second time now, though, I have no choice—and I’ve got time, aren’t even scheduled to say anything about pizza until the next knock—no choice but to backtrace Kid Hoodie. Before he was Kid Hoodie.

  Jason Pease.

  It all starts on a ferry for him.

  He’s standing there at the railing, thinking how the film on top of the water, how what if it ever dried into a crust, would there be different kinds of fish then, would the mice with the most webbed feet learn to run across it, the cats splashing through behind them, but he doesn’t get to finish.

  Someone’s watching him, her hair swishing behind her.

  A woman with a billowy shirt. Clacky boots. Dinner plate sunglasses.

  She doesn’t tell him about me at first either.

  At first she just traces her collarbone for some reason, already has a newspaper cocked under her arm. It’s an invitation. Jason Pease takes it, asks if she’s read his article today.

  Of course she has—but, that’s yours? Really?

  After that it’s just the usual: drinks, lunch, dinner, all spread across the week. He shows her his desk at work, she shows him her bed.

  The whole time, though, she’s carrying something inside her.

  Not the rumor of me, up here above the city, a myth, a legend, a story-in-the-making for the right journalist, but an empty, calloused place somewhere on her, probably covered by clothes or make-up or the way she laughs.

  It’s the scar from whoever I took away from her. Her reason for giving herself to this Jason Pease with his stupid music and his cigarette breath and his slouchy way of walking into a room. What she has now is this little crater of skin where she used to be connected to somebody.

  I want to p
lace my mouth there.

  It’s on her side, I’d guess. Right above her hips, and to the back a little.

  With my mouth there, I could look up into her eyes. She could stroke my hair down, the marble in the bottle on her wrist winking.

  But then Jason Pease is knocking for the second time. About to become Kid Hoodie.

  The base of my scalp by my neck trembles, and I hear myself answering already: You order pizza?

  My voice, too, it’s the recording. Tinny and distant, coming from the feet of the coat rack.

  I rise, touch the same five things on the way to the door, being careful they’re not the easy things, and Kid Hoodie’s there with his clay face, his plastic caster feet.

  “She sent me,” he says.

  I nod, tell him I know, and step aside.

  He rolls in, his head already ducked between his shoulder blades because he knows what’s coming.

  “You’ll need this,” he tells me, palming his phone over, “and these,” unhooking the ear buds, dragging them from his hood.

  He’s crying a little too, I think. Dirty grey tears rolling down his face, making my carpet dingy like ash.

  “Tell me about the boat again,” he says, and I do: growing up, I remember how this one kid’s mom cried and cried because she thought her son was on a ferry that went down, but then I told her he hadn’t been, and she hugged me so hard my feet came off the ground. I cried a little too.

  But it’s a lie.

  Her son was on that ferry.

  Only, instead of sinking—here I’m looking out the window instead of into Kid Hoodie’s hood, and he’s looking out the window with me, following—this beautiful woman approached him on the deck where neither of them were supposed to be standing, and bared her side for him, a sore there that wasn’t even oozing anymore, had dried up. But still, he fell into it, drowned, and she just pulled her shirt back down, clacked back to stand by the exit door.

  Kid Hoodie nods when I’m done like he agrees, that that’s probably the way it went, and then tries to rake my pinky with his, so that maybe they’ll catch together, be locked.

  I don’t let that happen, though.

  I step back, bury the dirty little axe high up in his neck.

  His head folds forward onto his chest, and I see that his spine, wiggling there, it’s the worm, but by the time I reach for it it’s already back down into his body.

  This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, either.

  Not at all.

  What I feel like, sitting in the chair, the sun hours gone, my robot sleeves back on but not working right, is that the game is real, but I don’t understand it.

  The television networks did band together, hire their pedophile.

  But it wasn’t so I could help them with their programming.

  Down in my presidential bomb shelter under the city, in my glass apartment suspended by cable, I’m the star of their show.

  Every day people are glued to their screens, watching me go through my daily business, watching me think I’m—

  I’m . . .

  I don’t know.

  They watch me think I’m not in a hospital, and they laugh.

  They watch the ghosts in the other rooms of the Chessire Arms, and they laugh with them.

  They watch the actor pretending to be Singer, straightening his crime boss suit in the other room, and they gasp and clap at the introduction, by popular demand, of a love interest.

  I shake my head no, please.

  Dashboard Mary.

  I close my eyes, shake my head, bury my face in my hands and, like when Kid Hoodie came that first time, I don’t hear the phone when it rings under the blanket.

  By the time I get there, it’s another voice mail.

  Her.

  “Knock-knock,” she whispers.

  The audience gasps with pleasure.

  To make sure I’m all the way back to where I’m supposed to be, I eat three more artichokes. But first I make myself wait for them to cook.

  They taste like candle wax and salt. I swallow them as whole as I can, so that they cut my throat coming back up, make me think of giant dry asparagus heads pointed the wrong direction.

  I grind them in all three disposals then flush them once, wait for the tank to fill, and do it four more times again.

  I’m here.

  Shaky, but if somebody knocks, I’ll know it this time. If anybody’s standing behind me, I’ll know that too.

  Because I’m careful—her boyfriend already risked it all, and lost, just to get my voice on tape—I dump my last half loaf of sourdough bread from the soft plastic bag, unwrap it from its crinkly shell. The crinkly bag goes around the phone, for static. When that’s not good enough, I pack the microphone part with a fingernail of leftover clay I have to get wet, but that won’t work. She won’t be able to hear me at all. With an old phone, I could plug every other hole if I wanted.

  But you make do with what you have.

  I dig the clay out with a toothpick, extract Kid Hoodie from his crooked place under the table.

  “Your neck must be killing you,” I say to him, and can’t help smiling.

  He won’t even look at me.

  “Nothing personal,” I tell him, and lean forward, bite as much of his grey right eyebrow off as I can.

  At first I gag from the crumbly taste, have to bury my chin deep in my chest to keep the heaves down. But I’ve had worse things in my mouth. And I don’t even have to swallow this, just have to pack it all around, like the ceramic in a catalytic converter.

  I say it out loud, her name, Dashboard Mary, and just with the clay and my artichoked throat, I already sound different enough. Add the crackle of the sourdough wrap, and I’m nobody, I’m everybody. Not tomorrow’s headline.

  I don’t even need to put the wet-dry vac sleeves on to push the callback button, either.

  “I’m calling her,” I say to the old man with the telescope. To show him, I lower the phone from my mouth, point at it with my other hand. He doesn’t nod or look away or pretend to be doing something else, and for an instant the bottom drops out of my stomach: what if—what if he’s like my downstairs family? A mannequin in a wheelchair, the telescope propped there beside him.

  A scarecrow.

  For me.

  The whole building posed just for me, for me to think I’m in the real part of town.

  Of course there aren’t any cars on the street. It’s not because of parking, but because mannequins don’t have anywhere to go.

  But there’d have to be somebody real over there.

  Another—no, not another Vegetable Ghost. Probably my Vegetable Ghost, before I snuffed him. His whole job was me. Drop off supplies, check. Pick up corpse drum, check. Take anxiety meds, check. Go next door, move mannequin arms and change curtains for five hours, check.

  I should have been watching out my window for the past two days already. Seeing if anything’s changing, or if the building’s just become a painting, one I could probably walk behind, see the blank canvas of if I wanted.

  Shit.

  No.

  I shake my head about it, that this is—that it wouldn’t be a good money decision, for Singer to rent out a whole building. Or, to own it, and not rent it out. To have all the lights on timers, the timers plugged into sockets that are hot, the meter just rolling and rolling.

  But it all comes back to that dog you drag into the alley because it bit your kid on the face.

  What wouldn’t you do?

  The kneejerk thing’s just to have some fun with the dog for a few hours. But after those few hours are gone, and you’re shoulder deep in shit and blood and whatever else you brought to the table, still, your kid’s face isn’t any less fucked up, right?

  At which point you start backing up to that alley again. That dog. Wishing you’d made it last longer, maybe. Not let your anger get the better of you.

  I smile to myself, tears hot in the corner of my eyes.

  What you’d wish is that you’d
been nice to that dog, maybe. Led it back to your place, then, I don’t know. Held bites of stew meat out to it every other day or so, then jolted the shit out of it every third time it reached out for that bite, at least until it learns. Then change it to every fourth time.

  Or shave it bare, grease it up, stake it out in the sun. See if a dog can get skin cancer.

  Or—or lock it up. Never give it any contact with its own kind again. Just traipse cardboard cut-outs of other dogs past it sometimes, so that it starts sniffing them, rubbing their throats with the top of its head. Finally testing them with its teeth, then ripping them apart. Every single one that you trot up.

  And then, at the end of it, you open the door of its kennel, so that it can go free.

  Only, all over the lawn, you’ve staked down these real dogs. But the dog that bit your kid, it can’t tell the difference anymore. Thinks the whole world’s cardboard. Is afraid to leave.

  You’d have to really have loved your kid to go to all that trouble, I mean.

  Or your yoga instructor.

  I shut my eyes tight, pray for the old man across the way to move, and into that darkness Mary says it again, right into my head: “Knock-knock?”

  I don’t know how long she’s been on.

  I gravel my voice up, try to keep the sob out of it, and say my part back to her: “Who’s there?”

  “Police,” she says.

  “Police who?” I say back weaker but cringing, unable not to finish the damn joke I’ve been waiting on for so long.

  “Pu-lease give my husband back,” she says.

  We don’t laugh.

  The tear at the edge of my eye rolls down, and I wipe it away.

  I shake my head no, no. That I’m not twelve years old here. And that I’m not Singer’s dog.

  I crinkle the plastic, try to stand but the little phone’s still plugged in.

  Kid Hoodie snickers, looks away.

  I scoot forward, kick my chair at him.

  On the line there’s just silence. Listening. Waiting.

  “He the pizza boy or the flower kid?” I finally manage. “Your husband.”

  Again, silence.

  She’s crying too, I think.

  Probably has a picture of him right there.