Monstrous Affections

by David Nickle

  “You got it,” said Trudy. She set the tray down on the countertop and peeled back the plastic. Mitchell took a little roll of prosciutto and melon and bit into it. It was salty and sweet, watery and oily. A nice-enough mix that he took two others.

  “So how was school?” Trudy leaned against the stove and crossed one ankle over the other. “You said it was a bad day.”

  Mitchell took a breath. He didn’t think they wanted to hear about anything like that because they weren’t his parents. But maybe that was just when Stefan was in the room. Mitchell chewed and swallowed another canapé.

  “It was a bad day. They made us go to an assembly. This . . . this guy from the school board talked to us for about an hour. Some girls were crying. Even though she’d already graduated. They were crying. Can you believe that? Right there in the assembly with everybody looking.”

  “What did he talk to you about?”

  “After that was History of Europe. I hate History of Europe and it sucked. And phys-ed. I don’t see why I have to take that when what I want to do is — ”

  Trudy cut in: “You don’t want to talk about that assembly, do you?”

  Mitchell put the third canapé in his mouth and sucked on it, pulling the cool sweet melon out from the prosciutto sheaf. More laughter came from the sunroom. Trudy pushed herself off from the stove and came closer to Mitchell. She leaned over and whispered into his ear: “So what do you think of Shelly? Think she’s pretty?”

  “I think you’re pretty.”

  Trudy seemed to freeze for an instant. Then she pulled back a bit, turned to her side and leaned on the island beside Mitchell. “She’s pretty, all right,” said Trudy. “Stef sure thinks so.”

  Mitchell took another couple of canapés but he didn’t eat them yet.

  “She’s a year or two older,” said Trudy. “Than me. And Stef. That should make a difference.”

  Mitchell thought about that. “O-older girls can be pretty,” he said and Trudy smirked. She put her hand on Mitchell’s shoulder, and sidled her hip closer to his. “Yeah,” she said, as her hand slid from the shoulder nearest her to the one farthest. “You would think that.”

  Mitchell swallowed. Trudy leaned her head to one side so it rested on Mitchell’s shoulder. He felt stray hairs tickling his face, like little electric sparks. Trudy’s hip was touching his own. “Oh, Mitch,” she said. “You are so fucked up.”

  “And that’s what she likes about you,” said Stefan.

  Trudy lifted her head to look around, but she didn’t move her hand or shift away. “Mitch and I were just talking about you.”

  Stefan came around the island. He was holding a glass of red wine and smiling maybe. “Me?” He set the wine glass on the counter beside Mitchell, and looked hard into Trudy’s eyes. “I’m flattered.”

  “You’re an asshole,” she said.

  “Why, I oughta,” he said, making a limp fist that opened like a flower when he let it drop to his side. Then he laughed. “How you doing, Mitch?”

  “Good.”

  “Really? Good.” He reached over and took Trudy’s hand off Mitchell’s shoulder. “You should save your energy, man.” Trudy raised her eyebrows at Stefan. “She on her way?” she said and Stefan nodded. “Just coming off the highway,” he said. “Like, two minutes ago.”

  “I’m going to go to the bathroom,” said Mitchell. Trudy and Stefan stopped and looked him up and down, then Stefan laughed. “I can see that,” said Trudy, smirking. “Go on,” said Stefan. “Use the one upstairs. It’s quieter.”

  Mitchell left them in the kitchen. He passed the dining room table where there were more canapés laid out and he took a cracker with some brie cheese on it. In the living room, the Media Centre was off the news. Now the screen was filled with a security camera picture from the basement garage, looking at the elevator they’d come up in. The bald man and the woman with paint on her toenails were sitting on the couch. Her feet were in his lap, and he was giving one of them a massage while she twisted the other this way and that at the ankle, like she was stretching it. They watched Mitchell pass by and climb up the spiral staircase to the second level, and didn’t take their eyes off him until he went into the main bath.

  Mitchell closed the door behind him as the lights flickered on. He lifted the toilet seat and unzipped his fly. He stood there for awhile like that, then zipped up and washed his hands. He caught himself in the mirror, leaning forward, his hands held together under the thin stream of warm water. His eyes were open wide, his mouth small and slack and round, like he was always saying “oh.” His dark hair was too long and fell over his forehead, which was still pimply. There were the beginnings of a beard growing on the chin, but you could still see the big pimple underneath the left side of his lower lip. Mitchell looked at his face and thought: what would I see if I saw me on the street? At school? He thought about that, and thought again: a sad boy. He made a smile, and looked, and thought: a happy boy. He brushed the hair aside from his forehead, and stood up straight, and kept smiling and he thought about that, but finally thought:

  Who knows?

  Mitchell found a hand towel and dried off, then went out. He heard the sound of another door closing downstairs. He stepped to the railing and looked down, as the rectangle of hall light narrowed and vanished on the first-floor tiling. The couple on the couch sat up, and from the kitchen, Stefan said: “Lesley!” and Trudy said: “How’d it go?”

  “Fucking nightmare.”

  Mitch looked down and saw the top of Lesley Woolfe’s head and her shoulders, as she made her way to the couch. She twisted her head on her neck so that Mitch could see her throat, wisps of dark hair mingling with body art that was emerging from the collar of a simple white blouse. With one arm, she flung an overcoat onto the chaise lounge by the downstairs powder room. “Fuck,” she said again, drawing the syllable out this time, “me.”

  She sounded sad, but what did Mitchell know?

  “Nothing went wrong, did it?” said Trudy.

  “Traffic,” said Lesley, “was the shits. Wouldn’t move faster than a slow walk south of Tenth Line. I was afraid it would wear off and she’d wake up at a red light.”

  “But it didn’t,” said Trudy. “She didn’t.”

  “Would I be here if it did?”

  Stefan came out of the kitchen with a tall glass of wine. Lesley took it and sipped at it. “The cameras?” she said.

  “All taken care of,” said Stefan.

  “And — ?”

  “Upstairs,” said Stefan. “Right above you.”

  Lesley started like something bit her, and looked around and then up. Her eyes were wide, then narrow. They weren’t smiling. “Hello,” she said after a few seconds. She held up her wine glass and tinkled it back and forth. “Want a sip?”

  “He doesn’t drink,” said Trudy.

  “I didn’t ask you,” said Lesley, not taking her eyes off Mitch. “Well, Mitch? How about it?”

  Mitchell moved to the spiral staircase and climbed down. He stood face-to-face with Lesley Woolfe. She stood five inches taller than he did and she still did not smile. But she offered him the wine glass, and he took it by the stem. He swirled the red liquid, looked at it, sniffed it like he’d seen rich men do on television. It smelled a bit rotten, but Mitchell sipped at it anyway. It tasted sharper than it smelled, but it wasn’t so bad. He took another sip, bigger this time.

  “Now,” she said, her eyes widening and her nostrils flaring, “we both die.” She paused for a heartbeat. “Poison,” she said. “Very painful.”

  Mitchell dropped the wine glass. It hit the side of a table then clinked on the tile floor, and somehow it didn’t break. Mitchell stepped back, staring at the wine spill spreading along the skinny grout lines, holding onto his chest, drawing a breath.

  Lesley finally smiled. Smiling, she threw her head back, so the dark geometries etched on her throat were in full view, and laughed, then twisted her head to the side and she smiled even more, and looked back at
Mitchell, and said:

  “Mmmm, look at him. So scared of dying.”

  “Why wouldn’t he be?” said Trudy. She looked at Mitchell. “She was kidding.”

  Mitchell had worked that out. About the same time that he worked out that he hated Lesley Woolfe. He bent down and picked up the wine glass, and looked around. The faces looking back at him might as well have been smooth skin, no eyes or mouths or noses, staring in blank, blind disapproval. Like mannequins.

  One of the mannequins came over with a roll of paper towels and bent to his feet, spreading them over the spill so the wine stain blossomed in fractal majesty over the bumps and divots. The mannequin turned its head and presented its blank face to Mitchell. Then it swiped up the paper towel and crumpled in its hand, and replaced it with a fresh one.

  “What’s going on with him?” said a mannequin from the living room.

  “I think,” said the voice of Stefan, “that he’s having an episode. Good fucking going, Les.”

  Another voice: “Is this, like — dangerous?”

  “Of course it’s dangerous,” said Lesley fucking Woolfe’s voice. “That’s why we chose him. Delectable Delilah. For Dangerous Mitchell. That’s the point.”

  Someone giggled. Someone else said, “Shut the fuck up,” and someone else said, in a whisper, “Will you fucking look at him?” and then the mannequins fell quiet.

  Mitchell took a breath and closed his eyes. This had happened before: often enough that he’d been to doctors for it. They had tried drugs and other therapies but mostly drugs, until Mitchell started gaining weight and breaking out and doctors started worrying about his penis maybe not developing properly. His mom finally went to a woman who taught transcendental meditation out of her basement, and Mitchell had learned a mantra, and at bad times he found that helped. So he started to say his mantra, which was a secret, and he said it again and again with his eyes closed until he thought he could open his eyes.

  Stefan looked back at him from a dining room chair that he’d pulled over. The rest of the mannequins — the people — were gone. But Stefan was there, arms folded over his skinny chest, hard to say whether he was smiling or not.

  “Where did everybody go?” asked Mitchell.

  “Lesley took them across the hall.”

  “Mr. Piccininni’s apartment.” Mitchell didn’t know Stefan had a key. “What for?”

  “A little show and tell,” said Stefan, “before the show. You doing okay now?”

  “What are they looking at?” said Mitchell.

  Stefan motioned over his shoulder to the Media Centre. Mitchell looked. It was a view from another security camera. But this one wasn’t in the lobby — it looked to be mounted on the ceiling of a bedroom filled with nice dark furniture and with the painting of a waterfall on one wall. There was a big double bed on the far side of the room, covered in a thick comforter. Something was moving under it, just a little bit. Mitchell stepped closer to get a look, but the picture was fuzzy and then someone stepped in front of it and he couldn’t see the bed. Then other people stepped around the bed: Shelly, the bald guy . . . Lesley Woolfe, her arms crossed and chin pressed down against her collarbone so it wrinkled and puckered . . . Trudy.

  Trudy stepped around between Lesley Woolfe and what looked like a dresser, then leaned over the bed. She looked at Lesley and said something, and Lesley shrugged, and Trudy reached over to the comforter, and lifted the edge of it, and with her other hand covered her mouth and her eyes went wide. But she smiled so whatever she saw must have been okay.

  “You’re welcome,” said Stefan.

  “Pardon?”

  Stefan leaned over to him. “Look at that grin. You know what’s coming, don’t you, pal?”

  Mitchell looked at Stefan, who was grinning broadly. “It was supposed to be a surprise. That’s what Lesley wanted to do. Just bring you in there, and voila! Leave you to your devices. But I know you, Mitch. You don’t like surprises. They make you squirrelly.”

  “Squirrelly.”

  Stefan wiggled his fingers by his ears. “You know. Buggy. Nutzoid.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’d have told you sooner,” he said. “But I figured it was better to wait until at least the police had talked to you. You know, just in case. You know the saying: ‘what you don’t know — ’”

  “‘ — can’t hurt you.’”

  Stefan pointed at Mitchell with his index finger, twisting at the wrist, and he winked. “Just lookin’ out for you, bro.”

  Mitchell pointed back at Stefan. “Back at you,” he said, and Stefan laughed.

  Stefan reached over the back of the sofa and picked up a remote, and turned the Media Centre off.

  “Just try to act surprised,” he said.

  “Okay.” Mitchell stepped around the sofa and sat down beside Stefan, who inched away but kept smiling.

  “You’re doing better now,” he said, “without the big group.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s part of it with you, isn’t it? Big groups.” Stefan shook his head. “Man, high school must just be hell for you.”

  “Yeah.” Mitchell looked into the empty wine glass, which he was still holding onto. “Just hell.”

  “That where you first met her?”

  “Her?”

  “Her. Delilah.”

  “Oh. No. Not high school.”

  “Grade school?”

  “Yeah. Grade Three. She was pretty and strong. She stuck up for me when these guys tried to beat me up.”

  Stefan let out a long, low whistle. “Grade Three. That’s pretty serious.”

  Mitchell shrugged, starting to feel impatient. He’d told Stefan about all this stuff weeks ago, in the chat room. “Where’d you meet?” he asked.

  “Me?”

  “You. You and Trudy. You meet in Grade Three?”

  Stefan grinned and slunk down on the sofa. “Oh no. Not Grade Three. Not my Trudy. We met through the news group. Started posting on the same topics, you know? Started IMing each other, built up, you know, a rapport. We actually saw each other face-to-face the first time Lesley called a meeting. After fucking AOL shut us down.”

  Mitchell held the wine glass up to his eye. The distortion at the base of the glass made the very narrow stem seem huge, a concentric storm of glassy circles. The middle, though, was perfectly clear. He could see the fabric of his jeans through it, made tiny by the four-inch lens the stem made. “She’s beautiful,” he said.

  Stefan nodded. “Trudy’s a hottie,” he said, staring at the blank Media Centre screen. “She’s also real compatible, you get what I mean. Not every woman knows what to do with a guy like me . . . But she can be a fucking cunt sometimes. Not like your Delilah.”

  “My Delilah.” Mitchell turned the wine glass onto its side. He examined the stem, looked through it. Everything was squashed down and stretched out: it made the living room unrecognizable.

  “My Dee-Lie-La,” said Stefan. “She’s sweet. So fuckin’ pure. Can’t fault your taste. Man, she was a sweetie. I can’t tell you how it was to hold her, to put my arms over her shoulder . . . the feel of that sweet butt, the way she went limp when I put the cloth over her face . . . Knowing, man, knowing she was for you.”

  “For me.”

  “I was sorry to let Lesley take her, but that was the deal, and she wasn’t for me. But you. In a few minutes — man, you’ll be able to live your every dream.”

  Mitchell held the glass in two hands, brought the stem closer to his eyes, so he could see the whole world. It looked like nothing he’d ever even dreamed. “She’s not a cunt,” he said softly.

  “What?” Stefan leaned forward. “What are you doing? You are so fucked up, Mitch. It’s what we like about you. I can’t tell you how long it took us to find a fucked-up kid like you.”

  Mitchell bent the stem. Except that it didn’t bend because it was glass; it snapped, right at the base. He turned to Stefan, who was right beside him, and lifted what was left of the glass and jamme
d the stem into the inner tear duct of his right eye, past there against something that was probably bone. Stefan shouted “Fuck!” and grabbed at him, but Stefan was a fair bit weaker than Mitchell Owens.

  A moment later, Mitchell wiped his hands on his jeans and pulled the TV remote out from underneath Stefan’s twitching thigh. He turned on the Media Centre.

  The bedroom was different now. The comforter had been pulled aside, and it was all twisted to the right of the bed. The bald man was sprawled across the under sheet. He was clutching his face and there looked to be blood coming out. He was rolling slowly back and forth. The bedside lamp had been knocked over — or maybe thrown — and beside it, Shelly was slumped, her neck at a funny angle. The blond fellow was on the other side of the bed, in the corner, his shoulders hunched and his head down. He was trembling. Mitchell looked at the remote, and pressed a couple of buttons, and he was looking at the parking garage elevator door, which was opening. Mrs. Lesley Woolfe was in there. Her eyes were wide and she looked like she was concentrating. When the door finished opening, she stuck her head out, looking to the left and the right, and then hurried off camera. He clicked again and again, but nowhere could he find any sign of Trudy.

  Mitchell looked up. Somebody was pounding on the door to the apartment: pounding and pounding and pounding. Pushing Stefan’s head aside, so he was lying on the sofa rather than sort of sitting up, Mitchell went to the door and looked through the peep-hole. “Oh,” he said. “You.”

  He opened the door, and Delilah Franken pushed through. “Oh thank God! Oh thank God!” she said and fell into the apartment, and Mitchell put his arms over her shoulders. She smelled awful, like she’d peed herself, and her streaky-blonde hair was matted, and he could see that there was blood on her shirt. “Call the police!” she said. “Call the police!”

  Mitchell helped her into the apartment. He steered her away from the sofa, but sat her down in the dining room and stepped away. She looked at him with wide eyes and a frown, like she was mad but not exactly.

  “Y-you,” she said. “Mitchell . . . Mitchell Owens? Your mom and my mom were friends. You remember me — right?”