The Least of My Scars

by Stephen Graham Jones

“You’re right,” she says, her voice hardly cracking. “I’m not a nurse.”

  “Nurses wear white,” I tell her. “Not—”

  “Black, yeah,” she cuts in, getting better now too. “Ha ha. What should I call you?”

  I narrow my eyes, study the table.

  “Since we’re such good friends,” I say.

  “I’m Mary,” she says.

  “I know.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “Jack, then,” I finally pick from the air like a gnat. In some language it probably means chump.

  Again from her end: not much.

  “Something wrong?” I ask after a couple of breaths, holding the phone away from my face to look at it.

  “No,” she says, but it’s thready and weak. “Jack,” she repeats then, like a holy word, like she’s tasting it. “The one always pretending to be something he’s not, you mean?”

  “Come and knock on my door,” I tell her. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  She breathes a harsh little laugh out, it sounds like. Her pressure release valve. Then changes the phone to the other side of her head. Maybe taking her earring out like girls will. Or pulling her hair into a bun. Standing to walk from room to room.

  I stay in my place by the coat rack, my singed hair spread all over the floor in the bathroom.

  “What was his name?” I ask.

  “My husband.”

  “Your husband.”

  “You keep a list or something, I guess?”

  “Makes it easier for the cops.”

  She switches ears again. Maybe does a neat little flipturn at the counter to her kitchen, paces back down the hall to her bedroom.

  It’s because when she stands still, she can feel me looking at her. Into her.

  “You’re doing something to your voice,” she finally says.

  “I’m not stupid, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “I never thought you were.”

  “Said the pretty nurse.”

  She gives me that.

  “You could have done this without him,” I tell her. “Kid Hoodie. But thanks, I guess.”

  She stops walking, looks into the phone.

  “ . . . Kid who?”

  I rub my eyes, hate myself more than just a little. “Pease, Jason. The paper boy.”

  “Him. He doesn’t matter.”

  “Never did.”

  “Then you do save their names,” she says.

  I shrug, look around my baseboard. Study the floor in front of the front door but light never comes in there anymore. It’d be unfair, to be able to see shadow legs. Unfair, and I’d never be able to look away from it, would watch it instead of my shows, instead of eating, instead of anything.

  If you don’t know yourself, you don’t know shit.

  “He was a good man, my husband,” she says, quieter but more sure of herself. “A good cop.”

  I nod, should have guessed.

  Only a cop’s wife could have taken it this far.

  They’re really big into the parade funerals, I mean. Flag, guns, somebody getting the needle on the jumbo screen, all that shit.

  Her husband, though, I probably could have fit him into a cup when I was done with him.

  “A good father,” she adds, like that’s supposed to be the thing that breaks me.

  I shrug again, my eyes flat, dry now.

  She’s just another person at the door. Somebody else to play Trouble with. Or Sorry.

  No, not Sorry. Risk.

  “You’re name’s not Jack, either,” she says.

  “Why not?”

  “We almost named our daughter after him, you know? Jacqueline. Jackie.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You have to be part of the human race, I guess.”

  It’s another joke. We both laugh a bit.

  “One thing humans do, see, is name their kids after themselves. Like a gift.”

  I nod, get it, why she’d programmed that song in, why she can’t let my name be Jack: “His name was Jack.”

  “Almost matched his badge number,” she says, her mouth not so close to the phone anymore.

  “And you want me to what, here? Apologize? Honor his name after . . . well. After whatever?”

  “I didn’t have to tell you about those men coming up to your place.”

  “I don’t owe you anything, babe.”

  “Babe,” she spits back, with something like another laugh.

  “So his name was Jack,” I lead off. “I’m going to need more. I’m in kind of a high-volume business here, if you know what I mean.”

  Really, there’s only ever been one uniform, so I already know. But I burned his credentials over and over, finally ate them myself, because I was sure Singer was finally setting me up.

  It was early on, when I was always worried. Doing stupid shit left and right.

  But his name, it’s gone, dust.

  And I guess there could have been another cop or two, in plainclothes, but they didn’t have identification on them anyway. And, if they were undercover, trying to slouch their way into Singer’s trust, it would have been some dummied, dumbed-down identification. Screw it.

  “Maybe I could dig his personal effects up or something,” I add. “Give him back that way, at least. Been meaning to thin the collection down some anyway. My mom always said I was a packrat.”

  Does she consider it?

  No.

  “You already told me you’re not stupid,” she says.

  “I’m not even human, according to you.”

  “Widows have a limited perspective, I guess you could say.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So now you’ve got me on the phone. Aren’t you supposed to be messing with my mind or something? Big psychological campaign? Get me caught, make me kill myself, all that?”

  “You’re doing that just fine without me,” she says.

  I tighten my lips, stare into the carpet.

  She coughs a laugh through the line.

  Which one am I doing fine at, the getting caught or the killing myself?

  But she probably wants me to ask.

  Fuck her. Every last one of her.

  “He asked for you at the end,” I say through the plastic, through the clay, over my bloody throat and into the little phone. “For you and her both.”

  This finally makes her breathe hard.

  “One call,” she threatens. “One call—”

  “That you could have made last year,” I finish for her. “Instead of getting your boyfriend all, you know. Troubled.”

  “He wasn’t my—”

  “He didn’t matter, right. Just another delivery boy.”

  Silence, ungolden silence.

  “I can’t talk now,” she says from her place in the hall, I’m pretty sure. Slid down the wall so she’s sitting, her knees up by her face. A long curl wrapped around and around her index finger. Or the phone cord, if she’s on an old phone.

  “So what’d you end up naming her?” I say.

  She’s crying now. Way back in her throat where she doesn’t want to. I can hear it so clear, so wonderful.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she says back, and hangs up hard.

  Score one for the home team.

  I push the red button, walk from room to room nodding to myself.

  One call, she said, but she won’t.

  This is between her and me.

  I run every word of our talk through my head over and over, until I have to eat something. But the vegetables are all two days old now. Gone, as far as I’m concerned.

  Because I don’t want the bread to go fuzzy on the counter, I just eat it instead, piece by piece with mustard and pepper until I can’t hold anymore.

  There’s still two slices left at the end, the heel and the one sloping down to the heel.

  I put them on a saucer, carry them next door to Riley like a birthday cake, and the only reason I even start f
iddling with the badge around my neck is because she takes so long to chew. And then I stop fiddling.

  Riley tucks herself away from my stillness, the bread just a soggy lump in her mouth now.

  I pet her hair down, hum like she likes.

  The badge.

  The first four numbers of it are 5-2-2-4.

  On the little phone—I know because I’ve been studying it—those numbers can spell Jacg. Or Jach. Jaci.

  Almost Jack.

  She thinks I killed him.

  And now I know her daughter’s name too.

  The next morning I do everything in the lefthand apartment but open the door, look down the hall. The vegetables here are old too. I can’t trust them anymore.

  This doesn’t happen.

  I could starve this way.

  Finally I decide that the reason there’s not any dolly wheels rolling up the hall from the elevator is that I haven’t prepared the apartment enough.

  So I clean. And clean. The pee, the blood, the shit and gore and tears. Light the vanilla candles that have always been in the cabinet above the dishwasher.

  The smoke is thick like burning sugar, and so it won’t get in the hall, gum up the fire alarms, get an inspector up here to talk safety with the residents of the Chessire Arms, I roll up a wet towel longwise, stuff it against the crack under the door.

  That works for about ten minutes. Until I gag the first time.

  I pry the outside window up, let the apartment breathe.

  As for the candles, I remember that flames like oxygen, so I line them up on the sill. The idea is they’ll pull all the sweet air to them, and it’ll get sucked outside.

  Nobody’s ever thought of this, I’m pretty sure.

  I could have been anything, I mean.

  I guess I already am, though.

  And I don’t let the candles burn all the way down to their foil bases either, of course.

  Halfway through the job, the air clear enough that I can see the blood I missed in the pattern of the linoleum, it hits me again, that those candles have always been there.

  One by one I take them to the kitchen, smush them under the creaky rolling pin, to see what tracking devices or microphones they might have.

  Zero, it turns out, but you can never be too safe.

  The next thirty minutes involve wrapping my hands in dishtowels and rolling all the wax crumbles thinner and thinner, into a paste, then a film. Because the top layer of it was stupid with my fingerprints.

  Now, as thin as it is, it’s a trap. Anybody comes over, leans right there to read the small word I’ve written on the board (gotcha), I’ll know. And they’ll never find the rolling pin to make it like it was.

  Next, like clockwork, what I want to do is try the door to the hall. Because maybe the door won’t even open with the wet towel right there. And the Newest Vegetable Ghost, he’s probably been told specifically not to knock, right?

  Would I be able to hear the knob turning?

  The only way to tell would be to turn the knob.

  Instead I take the towel up, hang it off one of the pegs in the wall so it won’t stink the place up. Then I hang it off both pegs, so that it looks more like wings, but then I adjust it so it’s just a towel again. Because if it’s wings, that would put the face of that angel through the wall, looking at me next door with its never blinking eyes. Its gold-flecked pupils.

  No thanks.

  I do get as far as touching the knob once, my other four fingers resting on the molding beside it, in proper sequence front to back and over again, stopping at the knob like’s right, but it would be the worst luck to turn it, at least from the inside. Bad precedence.

  And the little phone, of course, it’s in my pocket. Just to be sure I’ll hear it ring, feel it, I don’t have underwear on today. Don’t need that extra layer between me and it. To squelch any extra rustle, I shaved all my pubic hair down too. It’ll grow back faster than my head hair. The moist dark is good for that.

  Still, none of that’s made the little phone ring yet. And I’ve been charging it every forty-five minutes. Just to be sure. Checking the call log, the ring settings, the volume.

  Nothing.

  But I can’t push that green button either.

  It’s her turn to call.

  Let her think we’re talking on her terms, that’s the ticket.

  That way when I pull the rug out from under her life she’ll have that much further to fall.

  Your husband, the reason you’ve been on my case for the past two years? I didn’t even do him.

  And, that girl you almost named after him, who did you end up naming her after? What’s it say on her headstone now? Anybody in your family ever go by Ryland, something like that? What’s that, you kind of slipped away there.

  A lesser person would be jacking off already, just thinking about this.

  Not me. You’ve got to save it for when it counts.

  And the lack of rubber wheels in the hall, that’s nothing. It just means that Singer’s still interviewing potential ghosts, trying to find that perfect balance between expendable and reliable.

  I can make it for a day or two without anything fresh. Food or otherwise.

  And if it’s punishment for letting the last Vegetable Ghost die, then fuck it.

  Never would have happened if there’d been somebody standing at my threshold instead.

  Not my fault.

  And I may not even need him right now anyway.

  Riley.

  It’s the secret word, the one that’ll bring somebody to my door.

  Knock-knock, I’ll say from my side.

  I know it’s you, she’ll say back.

  Knock-knock, I’ll insist, giving back what she gave me.

  From the hall, crying. The sides of fists hitting the opposite wall. A pistol as long as her arm in her purse, probably.

  It’s going to take more than that, babe.

  Who’s there? she’ll finally cough out.

  Jack, I’ll tell her, my mouth right to the crack of the door, the badge around my neck clinking against the paint.

  Let me see her, she’ll say.

  On the couch, propped up, Riley. In the Girl Scout uniform.

  Jack’s not here, I’ll say back, and then lower myself to the loose lip of the carpet on my side of the door. The carpet Dashboard Mary’s standing on, cut loose on each side of her, just half an inch thinner than the door, then ducking under to my side. Just enough force, a double hand, a hard push.

  From down the hall, if there’s a kid watching around the corner, stocking his nightmares, this is what it’ll look like: a woman flailing her arms suddenly up, juggling a huge pistol to her chest just in time for her back to slam into the ground.

  Her boots, though, they’re already in the maw of the door.

  And something has them, is pulling her through, to her destiny.

  Sleep well, kid.

  The first part of dressing Riley is getting the Girl Scout uniform out of the oven. I pretend it’s a safe I’m cracking, roll the controls left a few clicks, right a certain amount more, then all the way around twice.

  Bingo.

  I give Kid Hoodie a fake thumbs up.

  When he won’t even shrug back, I go directly to him, fling the table out of the way and then drag him up, carry him by the scalp over to the counter. Slam him neckdown onto it, so he sticks.

  I work the little phone up from my pocket, push the green button twice to dial Dashboard Mary and smush the phone into his clay ear.

  After today, he’s gone.

  One thing I don’t need around the place is some smartass, always judging me from whatever corner he’s in.

  “Tell her all about it,” I say to him, mushing the phone around.

  From somewhere in there, her voice, “Is that you?”

  “Jason,” I say, loud enough that maybe she hears.

  But maybe not.

  I leave the phone there, Kid Hoodie staring the other way, and go back to the oven, r
ip the door open.

  The Girl Scout uniform is right where I left it, folded back on itself just like it was in the brown box.

  If I put it to my nose, would I smell the Girl Scout, or Dashboard Mary?

  I try, just get artichoke aftertaste. From when I was cooking on the stovetop. The fumes must get trapped in here somehow.

  It doesn’t matter.

  Soon enough I’ll be able to take her by the shirt, pull her close, my face in her neck, and draw in all the scent I want. And it’ll be better then. More afraid. She’ll be breathing hard.

  My hand goes down to my pants again, my crotch, but no.

  Not yet.

  Instead I go back to the storage unit with Belinda. Those two days alone, to dispose of the evidence. Like the way some dads’ll make you smoke the whole pack of cigarettes if they even catch you with one.

  For most kids, I guess that works.

  But those two days, the between times, my guts roiling, so dark I couldn’t even see my fingers before my face, I went back to the breathing Belinda had been doing. So even, like a metronome. A pendulum. In, out, in out, deep now, exhale, swallow, swallow, all of it collecting in my head like the surf, pushing a line of foam closer and closer to me, to whisper up between my fingers and then slip away, the sand under me clean again.

  Yeah.

  Some of the people you escort out of the world, it’s just a job, something to occupy your afternoon. Others, though, others you learn a little something from. So it’s like they never die, really. At least not until you do. And in spite of what they wished with their last breaths, or said with their eyes right before their pupils went all fixed and dilated, focused on something I always thought was right behind me but never could turn fast enough to see.

  Thank you, I’m saying. Thank you, Belinda.

  Without you, none of this.

  Now, exhale, stretch.

  The Girl Scout uniform’s just that: some clothes. Nothing much at all. And Riley’ll like it anyway. It’ll make her feel pretty.

  I should say thank you to Dashboard Mary, when I see her.

  A guy forgets this kind of stuff—clothes, pretty shit.

  And girls, young ones, they need a woman around.

  It’s funny, that. ‘Around.’

  Something like that, yeah.

  I laugh a bit, everything’s going so right, and stand with the uniform. Take it by the shoulders and shake it unfolded, to see if it’s going to be big enough.