by Bassoff, Jon
She looked up and studied my face, her beady eyes narrowing to slits.
“I know who you are,” she said. “You’re that artist fellow. That’s right. Keep to yourself real good, don’t you? Well, well. The artist. Alive and well.”
At first I was taken off guard. Then I looked down at the jacket I was wearing, the yellow Baracuta. I shook my head. “No. I’m not the artist. I just moved into this apartment recently. This Max Leider fellow—the artist—must have been the tenant before me. He left behind all of his stuff, all of his paintings. I’m only wearing his clothes because my own clothes had become far too ragged.” Then I grinned. “Although I do like this jacket, don’t you?”
The woman studied me with those marble eyes but didn’t respond.
“I’m still cleaning out the apartment—you should have seen it when I first moved in. A complete disaster. I am keeping some of his paintings, though. Yellow windows. Maybe they’ll be worth something someday. When he dies…”
I was going to keep talking but then I noticed that she was crying again, streaks of saltwater clinging to her cheeks. I bent down and squeezed her shoulder. “It’s okay,” I said. “Please. Why don’t you come into my apartment? I’ll get you some tea. You can see Leider’s strange artwork. The yellow windows. And you can tell me about your son…”
I could tell she was surprised by the kindness after dealing with all that hatred. She nodded her head almost imperceptibly and the corners of her mouth twitched. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
I helped her to her feet, and arm in arm we walked toward my apartment. We were almost inside when the door adjacent to mine opened and the old woman with the fly swatter reappeared. She slapped at nothing in the air, then shook her head in dismay and said, “We’re all corpses in waiting. Just rotting, rotting, rotting…”
* * *
Inside my apartment, the woman stood and stared at the paintings, dabbing at her eyes with her knuckle. “You weren’t kidding,” she said. “Yellow windows.”
“I think they’re of the apartment across the street. And if you look closely, you can see a woman. She’s always in a different place. Sometimes she’s right behind the window. Sometimes she’s farther back.”
The woman moved forward to study the paintings. She went from one to the next one, eyes narrowed, forehead creased. I stood behind her staring at one of the paintings where the woman was most visible, all dressed up in that white gown, tobacco-brown hair falling messily below her shoulders, eyes a lovely shade of blue.
“I don’t see her,” she said. “In any of them.”
“I didn’t either. Not at first. But if you stare long enough, you’ll see. It’s almost an optical illusion.”
She kept staring but then shook her head. “I’ve never been able to see those kind of things.”
“It’s okay. Just a trick of the brain is all it is. Can I get you something to drink? I don’t have much. Tea? Water?”
“Some…some water would be nice,” she said. “Just a glass of water.”
“Of course,” I said, then led her to the folding chair and guided her down. She started sobbing again. I handed her a box of tissues and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I don’t think I caught your name.”
“Suzanne,” she said. “Suzanne Flowers.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Flowers. My name is…Charles Pierce. Now you just take it easy. I’ll be right back with your water. Do you want something to eat? I don’t have much, but I could certainly—”
“You’re very kind. But, no. Just water, please.”
I went to the kitchen and poured her a glass. As I opened the cabinet, I caught a glimpse of my reflection and my stomach tightened. I thought of Ethel in the tunnels and wondered if she was okay or if the mayor had done her in by now. Someday I’d go back, someday I’d rescue her. Because she needed rescuing. We all need rescuing.
Back in the living room, and Ms. Flowers had her vanity mirror out and was fixing her makeup and hair. When she noticed I was there, she snapped it shut and stared down at her gnarled fingers, nails jagged and dirty.
I handed her the glass of water and she quickly swallowed it down, some of it spilling onto her shirt. I leaned against the wall and watched her, and suddenly I felt sad, as if I’d lost something very dear to me…
“Your son,” I said. “What’s his name?”
She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut. “Anthony,” she said. My body tensed. I shook my head, felt my legs becoming rubbery. Anthony. The name on Leider’s letters. I know you. You’re a dead man.
I cleared my throat. “And he—Anthony—is just…gone?”
She looked as if she was going to cry again, but she didn’t. “That’s right. Nearly two weeks now.”
I rubbed my hands together, chaffing the skin. “Maybe he went on vacation. People do that from time to time. Just want to get away. Maybe didn’t tell anybody.”
She quickly shook her head. “No. That’s impossible. He still lives with me, you see. He’s a good boy. He would have told me. He goes to work every day and comes home each night. But one day he never came.”
“Did…did you tell the cops?”
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She stared at the pack for a long time before putting it back in her pocket. “Sure I went to the cops,” she said. “They checked the morgues. Asked around at work. And when nothing came up, they told me that he’d probably just skipped town and there wasn’t nothing they could do about it. Not a single phone call from him. He’s my son! He’s a good boy! Don’t listen to what that devil down the hall was saying. Don’t you think if he skipped town, he’d give me a call at least?”
“Yeah. I’d think so. It’s strange. Was he…was he in a relationship? I only ask because—”
“No. At least not that I know of. Of course, he didn’t tell me everything.” And now she reached into her other pocket and pulled out a crumpled photograph. “I’ve got a picture of him. Taken not too long ago. Do you want to take a look?”
I hesitated because photos of the dead frightened me. Still, I reached out and grabbed the photograph from her, then I studied it. He was a good-looking kid, leaning against a brick building. Dark hair, slicked straight back. Mischievous grin. Looked to be twenty-four or twenty-five.
I shook my head and handed her back the photograph. “Handsome. Never seen him before. But I’ll keep my eyes out for him.” I should have told her about Leider’s letters. I should have. But a strange part of me felt the urge to protect him. I wore his jacket. We had the same eyes. “Listen, ma’am, I don’t know your son, but I hope you find him. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be.”
Suzanne Flowers stared at the photo, biting her lower lip, and dabbing away more tears from her marble eyes. “Oh, you have no idea. The world is a sad place.”
* * *
That night I sat in Max Leider’s apartment, wearing his jacket, studying his strange paintings, and drinking his bourbon. I tried sleeping, but every time I closed my eyes I was disturbed by some turmoil in the hallway or in my brain. I gave up. Instead I sat up in bed, with the lights out, staring out the window at the apartment across the street. Most of the blinds were closed or the windows were darkened. The rain continued falling and it relaxed me. I fell asleep, but it was a restless sleep filled with dreams of death and despair.
At some point, wanting to escape my own nightmares, I forced my eyes open. My gaze returned to the building across the street, and now I saw a woman standing in front of a window, and she wore a long black dress and a black veil, and I knew it was the woman from Leider’s paintings.
CHAPTER 7
She was only there for a moment, so it is difficult to know how I was so certain that the woman in the window and the woman in the paintings were one and the same, but I can only tell you that I had never been more certain of anything in my life. If I had been compelled to slit my own throat if I were wrong, I would have gladly sharpened
the blade on a honing rod. It was she, it was she, and I wondered how Leider had become so obsessed with her, gotten to the point where he was only painting a single yellow window with her blurred somewhere behind it.
Going on midnight, and the rain was changing to snow. I left my apartment and walked through the hallway, and I was sure that these people never slept. Doors creaked open and shadowed eyes peered through cracks. And olden whispers (from behind the doors or behind my skull?): “We’ll need to keep an eye on him, won’t we? He’s a trickster floating unseen, and if it becomes necessary, we’ll have to fill his pockets with stones and drown him in the East River… He won’t make a fool of us; not this time.”
Down the staircase, and the graffiti had multiplied, nearly covering the walls. I pushed open the door, and outside the snow was falling, the streets nearly empty. The street lamps glowed dully, turning the fog yellow. Off in the distance, the sound of a siren crying.
I zipped up my Baracuta jacket, stuffed my hands in my pockets, and hurried across the street to the apartment in question. The building was eight stories high with fire escapes zigzagging up and down the brick veneer. Dozens of trash bags were piled on the sidewalk for the morning pickup. A cold wind blew and I shivered. And from behind me, an old black lady appeared, pushing a shopping cart filled with cans and scrap metal and clothes and duffel bags. She wore a stocking cap and her mouth was drooped in a toothless frown. She rummaged through the trash bags, finding more cans, more scrap metal, no food at all. She mumbled a curse and said to nobody in particular, “It’s a shame these days. No kindness at all. A real shame.” Then, smacking her mouth, she pushed her shopping cart through the snow, and I was alone, staring at the window.
I knew which one was hers. Fourth floor, second window from the left. But now it was darkened. Had she gone to sleep? Did she figure she was being watched? Was she watching me? I gazed at the window, wondering if she was wondering about me. I thought about hitting her buzzer, seeing if she’d invite me in, but I decided it was too late and she might get the wrong idea. Instead, I just stood on the street corner, staring at the window, wondering who she was, this Claire Browning, wondering how long she would remain in mourning…
And then I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I spun around and came face-to-face with a man leaning on a thin black cane. He had pockmarked skin, a flattened nose, and mismatched eyes—one green, one brown. He wore a burnt orange leather jacket and smelled of gin and mothballs.
“Are we looking at the same window?” the man said, and his voice was surprisingly strong and clear.
I was taken aback and panicked a little. “What? No. I just, that is, I—”
“It’s my wife,” the strange man said, “Her name is Grace. She wears a pearl necklace and keeps her hair in a bun.”
“No,” I said. “I need to go. I’m sorry that—”
“I left her. Didn’t tell her a thing. Just went to work one morning and never came home. Instead I withdrew money from the bank, leaving enough for her to live on, and rented out an apartment across the street.”
“I don’t have time for this,” I said, but still I listened.
“I knew that she tended to leave the curtains open because, as she told me, she didn’t want to be separated from the real world. And so I was able to watch her. Day after day after day. And in this way I could see if she cried for me. I could see if she longed for me. I could see if she remained true. I could see if she loved me.” He paused and smiled sadly. “I’ve been watching her for twenty-one years now.”
The guy was crazy, and I could feel my head spinning. “You…you’ve been watching her for twenty-one years?”
“A little over.”
“And all the while she probably mourns for you.”
He shook his head and stared dreamily at the apartment. “Once I saw her in the park. That must have been three years ago now. We walked right past each other. Our eyes met. A few moments later, we both turned around, but then she spun back and continued walking. She didn’t recognize me, I suppose. Although she must have thought I resembled her husband…”
“It’s cruel,” I said. “It shows that you never loved her.”
“She stayed true. All these years. She stayed true.”
“So what. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“So tonight I’ll go back. I’ll walk into the apartment and sit on the couch like I used to do. She’ll make us tea and we’ll talk about little trivialities just like the old times. But now these trivialities will matter. Now I’ll understand what we mean to each other. This time I’ll do it right. How many times does a fellow get a second chance to live his life again? This time I’ll love her. I swear to God I will.”
And now the vagrant fell to his knees and began softly sobbing, and I couldn’t decide whether to comfort him or wound him. I did neither, instead turning away and hurrying down the street, worried that my own past might also reappear unexpectedly…
* * *
Alone and lonely, I scurried through the streets and the avenues, gazing into the empty Laundromats and diners and bars and convenience stores. The snow kept falling and the moon and stars were vanished in an apocalyptic pink sky.
I walked for a long time, and now the streetscape changed and it was all late-night burger joints and grind-house movie theaters and sex shops and quarter peep shows. Junkies huddled beneath pornographic marquees and shivering ladies hiked up their skirts and paced the gutters, business as usual.
An older black woman with a blonde wig and six-inch stilettos grinned through thick lips and asked me if I was looking for some fun. I hesitated for a moment, then quickly shook my head. She asked me if I was sure, and I just kept walking. Six bucks for a movie at the Victory Theater, so I bought a ticket to an old B-horror movie called The Wizard of Gore and took a seat in the back row, slouching so that my head was barely above the top of my seat. Ninety minutes I watched as Montag the Magnificent mutilated and disemboweled female volunteers, and by the time it was finished, my eyeballs were burning and my skin was itching.
Back outside, and the avenue was filled with men with wispy mustaches and oversized glasses and trench coats. I needed to go back to the apartment, I knew I needed to go back to the apartment, but I suddenly had the irrational fear that Anthony Flowers was in my bathtub, soaking in his own blood, and I visualized his mother sitting on the commode, rubbing a rosary, praying and wailing. Instead I blew on my hands and shuffled through the wetted pavement toward the whores because I was lonely, only because I was lonely.
The black woman was still there and she licked her thick lips. I walked past her and leaned against a light post, shoulders hunched and hands buried in pockets. Another whore, this one approaching obesity with a hiked-up skirt and fishnet stockings, approached me and said, “Well look at who’s here? Do you want a date tonight?”
I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Maybe.”
“Maybe always means yes. What’s your name today?”
I thought for a second before saying, “Montag.”
She let out a high-pitched laugh for no real reason and then said, “Well, Montag, how about a sweetheart deal? Thirty straight in; sixty up the ass.”
“Yeah,” I said, “sure,” and then followed her to a sin-drenched hotel about four blocks away.
The inside of the hotel was dark and dirty and smelled of alcohol and dead mice. The front desk was covered by glass, and the fat man with a toupee and a nervous twitch didn’t look up when I asked for a room, just said, “Sixteen dollars. One hour.” I slid him a twenty and waited for change, but he just raised a newspaper over his face and it wasn’t a battle I wanted to fight.
The stairs were wooden and rotting in some places. I thought they might break, so I held on to the handrail. The fat whore looked back at me and laughed as we walked up three flights of stairs until we were on the fourth floor. I could hear bits of loud conversation coming from one of the rooms. Then I heard shouting and the sound of glass breaking.
Room 413, and she walked in first and I followed her. The room was filled with the odor of incense, but I could also smell the stale sex in the air. The fat whore asked me if I wanted any music. I said that it really didn’t matter but that if she wanted music, she could put it on. She took out a CD and placed it in the player. It was Tammy Wynette, which didn’t fit the mood, not one bit. She asked me what I wanted to do, and I shook my head and said it didn’t matter. Laughing, she said, “Okay, darling,” then began to sway slowly as she took off her top. Her giant welt-covered breasts blended into the rolls of fat on her stomach. She kept her tight skirt on. Then she sat next to me on the bed and kicked her shoes off. Without saying anything, she turned toward me and began to carefully unbutton my pants. I flinched because her hands were cold. She got down on the ground and tugged on my pant legs. I lifted up my rear and pushed my pants to my ankles. Then she moved her face toward mine and began to kiss my lips while touching my legs with her cold hands. I could smell the stench of old cigarettes on her breath. Her hands began moving methodically up and down on my skin and her tongue rubbed against mine. The music in the background was too loud, Tammy singing about standing by her man.
After a while her hands began to slow down, and she stopped kissing me. She took her hands away from my legs and moved them to my groin area. Then she said, “Whenever you’re ready, darling.”
For some reason, something in her tone of voice made me angry. I must not have been thinking very rationally because I pushed her away. She was taken by surprise and lost her balance and fell off the bed. I got down on the floor next to her and grabbed her throat. She used her hands to try to push me away. Then I removed my right hand from her throat and hit her squarely in the face. I felt our bodies merge as my fist met her skin. Her head slammed against the floor. For a brief moment I felt very happy, like a giant weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Then quickly I felt ashamed. I looked down at the whore. She was lying on the floor, holding her head. Her cheekbone was red. That was where I had hit her. Realizing the strange act that I had just committed, I quickly moved to help her up. When I stuck my hand out, she put her arms over her head like she expected me to hit her again. But that wasn’t my intention and I told her so in the most soothing voice I could manage.