by Bassoff, Jon
I pushed open my door and stepped into the hallway, and the doctor was on his hands and knees, his stethoscope pressed against the floor. He looked up at me with eyes filmed over by cataracts and said, “It’s terrible stuff they’re doing down below. I’m wondering about punishment.” I paid him no mind and walked quickly through the hallways before staggering into the stairwell and taking the steps three or four at a time.
Outside, the sun was a pale disc in a tundra sky. Suzanne Flowers remained on the ground rocking back and forth and now a crowd surrounded her, all of them swaying in the wind like low-hanging branches of a skeleton tree. A mass of incongruous and miserable faces were peering down at a distended corpse that had been pulled from a basement filled with torn mattresses, rotted newspapers, splintered chairs, and various discarded knickknacks and oddments. His skin had blistered, hair, nails and teeth peeling off. His face resembled a gruesome Halloween mask with eyes bulging from their sockets and tongue swelling and protruding from his mouth. I covered my mouth and swallowed back the vomit that was rising from my esophagus.
I could hear the sound of a siren, but something wasn’t right, as if everything was in slow motion. I pushed my way through the crowd and grabbed Suzanne’s shoulder and she didn’t respond, so I squeezed it harder, and now she looked up, but she was a dead woman, eyes empty and gone. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” Her mouth trembled slightly, but no words came, and death doesn’t come in good faith, he tiptoes across deserted alleys and climbs up metal fire escapes, peering into blackened windows, trying to find the most vulnerable, and then he flays from the shoulder blade down, tearing out organs and burying them in the dirt, all the while grinning thinly, mouth filled with razors.
And now I turned around and saw all of the faces. A man, gaunt, narrow, pale; a woman, obese, mascara drenching her lashes, left eye bloodshot; a skinny black girl with pigtails and a burn mark on her forehead; an old woman holding a cat; an older man holding another cat. Out of nowhere they’d come, and soon they’d be gone, once the corpse was bagged and the blood was washed and the tears were dried. But now they were exhilarated, feeding on the misery of others.
“Murder,” one of them whispered. “See how his neck is slit like a sinister grin? His angel couldn’t protect him. Must have been sipping moonshine in the Catch-22 Bar, down on Seventh Avenue. And where is the killer now? A lunatic by the looks of it. And still on the loose. Hold your children tight, people, because something tells me the killing ain’t done. Something tells me the lunatic will be back with a jagged blade and a bloodstained shovel. So this is the way it’s going to be? Fear in every apartment? Terror in every eye?”
Ambulances and police cars and news cameras, but somehow Suzanne had vanished, and then an officer approached me and asked me questions that I couldn’t answer, so I slipped away too, and when I looked up at the apartment across the street, on the fourth floor, I saw Claire Browning leaning out of the yellow window, her face still hidden by a black veil.
CHAPTER 10
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey!” And then I started running across the street, pushing through the medics and policemen and firemen and hateful bystanders. She heard me—Claire Browning heard me!—and her head tilted toward my gesticulations. “I’d just like to talk to you. Please. I’d like to talk to you.”
But the woman quickly ducked back inside and jammed the window shut. Just like that she was gone, and the wind whipped cold. A lustful cry from the crowd, and I glanced over my shoulder and watched as they placed Anthony Flowers in a body bag. Destination to the undiscovered country, a journey from which he would never return.
I stood at the door of her apartment building, steam puffing from my lips. If I could speak to her for only a moment! If I could lift up her veil and see her face, use my thumbs to wipe the tears from her eyes. She was in mourning. Was it for Anthony? Had they loved each other, kissed in the rain?
I glanced at all the entry buttons. Fourth floor. Edwards. Johnson. Browning.
A deep breath for courage and then I pressed the button next to her name and listened to the tinny buzz. Once, twice, three times, I tried, but each time there was no answer. I should have turned and walked away, but I needed to see her, needed to hear her voice, to tell her that perhaps she could save me, so I began pressing other buttons, starting on the fourth floor and moving downward. Voices responded, saying, “Who is it? Who’s there? What do you want?” And me, mumbling an excuse: “A delivery. Just need a signature.” No luck, no luck, no luck, and then…a sucker born at the right time. As the buzz sounded from the metal box, I grabbed the door and pulled it open and stepped inside. Everything was quiet, as if I were underwater.
Things I noticed: Her apartment building was nicer than mine. No graffiti. No rats scurrying in the walls. No wigged women with crooked lipstick offering services for subway fare. Just silence. I took the stairs, two at a time. Second floor, third floor, fourth floor. I stepped into the hallway and my shoulders were heaving. My feet felt like they were sinking into the linoleum and the walls seemed to be moving. Finally I came to the corner apartment and stood in front of her door. She was inside, that much I knew. If she wanted to leave, I would be standing there.
I placed my ear against the door but couldn’t hear anything. Still I remained, listening, for several minutes. Nothing.
I moved across the hall and slumped down against the wall. I could still feel the walls trembling. I pulled my knees toward my chest and waited…for what? My head slumped and I closed my eyes, but I didn’t sleep.
Another door opened, and my body tensed. A man stepped into the hallway, holding a Chihuahua. I recognized him. He’d been one of the strangers I’d watched through the windows.
He wore those Coke-bottle glasses and looked at me sitting on the floor and asked if I was okay, asked if I needed help with anything.
“No,” I said. “No help. I’m just tired. I’m just…”
“You shouldn’t be sitting on the floor like that. You’ll scare people. Especially her. She doesn’t need any more frights, I don’t think. Another could be the end of her, I’m afraid.”
And then he petted his dog’s little head and walked toward the stairwell.
“Excuse me!” I shouted and he turned around. “Who is she? What can you tell me about her?”
But he only shook his head. “I’ve never talked to her. Not one single time. She stays in her apartment. Agoraphobia possibly. That’s the way people are.”
His dog growled, and he shushed it and disappeared down the staircase.
* * *
I waited in that hallway for hour after hour, and the man with the dog returned and left and returned again. At some point another apartment door opened and a woman appeared wearing a leather jacket and a stocking hat, and we made eye contact very briefly and I saw that her temple was swollen (courtesy of a stranger or a boyfriend?) and she quickly ducked her head and vanished down the stairwell. And then I saw a little girl squeezing a doll to her chest, its plastic face smooshed into itself. She stopped and stared at me, a little smile snaking onto her filthy face, before disappearing in the shadows of the apartment.
And then music. It was coming from Claire’s apartment. I rose to my feet and moved closer and closer to the door, my eyes rolling back into my skull. Sibelius, and it was a symphony of death.
A little courage, or perhaps desperation, and I finally raised my hand to knock on the door. Just as Leider had become fascinated with Claire, the woman behind the yellow window, I could also feel the anxiety of obsession becoming more and more powerful. I didn’t know her voice. I didn’t know her face. But I knew her suffering. And I knew she needed to be saved. Just like Ethel. Just like everybody.
Three solid knocks. The music stopped, but there were no other sounds from inside. I held my breath, suddenly frightened of what I might lose if I loved her, if she loved me.
And now it seemed as if my senses were suddenly heightened. I heard the soft pitter-pat of her footsteps, despite h
er cashmere socks, despite the oriental rugs. And not only that. I could smell the wafts of yesterday’s meals from floors below, could feel the shivering touch of the dead upon my spine, could taste the metallic blood of a murder not yet committed.
And then I could hear her breathing. She was standing right in front of the door, perhaps staring through the peephole.
“Hello?” I said, head bowed, face hidden. “Could you open the door? I’d just like to talk to you for a minute. Only for a minute.”
No answer, but still I could hear her breath. I leaned my head against the door, savoring the knowledge that her skin was just inches from mine. “I don’t want to scare you,” I said. “I just want to talk to you. I live in the apartment across the way. I’ve seen you in the window from time to time. I feel like I know you. It sounds so strange. It shouldn’t. I only want to talk to you.”
Words were spilling from my mouth, and it seemed like somebody else was doing the talking.
“Did you know Anthony Flowers?” I asked. “Is that why you wear the black veil? Is that why I saw you lean out the window when his body was discovered?”
And now she finally spoke, but it was only a serpent’s hiss: “Who are you? What do you want?”
I slid my hand along the wall, as if it were the small of her back. “As I say, I live in the building across the street. Our windows are facing each other. Sometimes, when I’m dreaming, I take to staring out the window. Although I’ve never seen your face, I know you’re beautiful. If you’d only open the door, I could explain…”
But the door didn’t open and she didn’t say anything else.
“I’m a painter,” I said, and now I was pretending, but everybody is someone else, their thoughts and words and passions borrowed and mimicked. “Max Leider is my name. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? Perhaps you’ve seen my work in the galleries? I’ve painted your yellow window, your ghostly silhouette. But I long to paint your portrait. If only you would let me. Please.”
A long pause. Had she pulled back the veil? Was she going to open the door and allow me entrance?
No.
“Go away,” she said. “Just go away. I’ll call the cops if I have to. I want to be left alone. Go away.”
“I mean you no harm. I could paint you. It’ll be lovely. I could paint you.”
“I’ll call the cops!”
I could feel the tears welling in my eyes. I certainly didn’t mean to scare the poor girl—I only wanted to paint her. Because in my paintings (no, that’s wrong, Leider’s paintings) you couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see her eyes.
“I’m going,” I said, voice unsteady. “I’m sorry if I frightened you. And I’m sorry about Anthony. I’m sure he meant something to you. I’m sure.”
But there were no more answers from behind the door. And so I walked toward the staircase, and the woman with the swollen temple appeared, covering her face, and I wondered if she were running from her man or returning to him. My money was on the return because we can’t stop ourselves from doing the same things over and over and over again.
* * *
Outside, the streets were strangely empty. The body was gone, the cops and paramedics had left, and the bystanders were in search of the next accident or suicide or murder. And what about poor Suzanne Flowers? There can’t be a greater pain than losing a son or daughter. Tears of guilt and regret would be staining the poor woman’s face. I only hoped that she wouldn’t dig into those pills, wouldn’t wash them down with booze.
I made my way back to my apartment. On the way up the stairs, I thought I heard the dying super shouting, “There he is! The lowlife scum bucket!” so I shielded my face with my hands and sprinted up the steps. Once on the sixth floor, I jammed open my door and stood in the living room, and it seemed as if Claire were staring at me from behind all of those yellow windows.
And then, from the bedroom, I heard the phone ring. Strange. I hadn’t yet called the phone company. Had they neglected to cancel the old line? Slowly, I walked into the bedroom and stared at the black phone on the nightstand. It rang loudly ten, maybe fifteen times before finally stopping. I let out a long breath, wiped the sweat from my brow. And then it started ringing again. I placed my hand on the receiver and kept it there for another two rings. Then I picked it up and placed it to my ear.
And the voice on the other end: “Hello? Hello? This is Max Leider. I used to live there. I think you know me.”
CHAPTER 11
My mind had a hard time catching up to the words. Max Leider? The artist? I stared down at my jacket, his jacket, and felt a twinge of guilt. Why was he calling me? What did he want? His voice sounded strange—blurry and full of reverberations—yet I had the strange sensation that he was in the apartment somewhere, that he was scurrying across the floor with the spiders.
“Are you there?” he asked. “I can hear you breathing. Well, no matter. Yes, I know that you know me. You’ve studied my paintings. Riffled through my drawers. Read my personal letters. Even wore my clothes. But here’s something to ponder. Perhaps I know you just as well as you know me. Perhaps, at this very moment, I am wearing your jacket, just like you’re wearing mine. Perhaps, at this very moment, I’m studying your paintings, Mr. No Name.”
And now I tried responding, but my tongue had become swollen, and all I could produce were wounded syllables, a freak show mute. Max Leider seemed to have put some spell on me, and I feared he would keep whispering in my ear until I went mad.
“You feel my presence in this shabby apartment, I know you do. You sense my shadow stretching from the hardwood floors and bending upon the peeling walls. You hear my voice whispering in the air ducts. You smell my stink in the sheets and blankets. And when you stare at those paintings, you see the same things that I do, you feel the same pain, the same desire. Oh, how many hours, how much blood, sweat, and misery I poured into those canvases. Have you ever seen anything like them? Excuse my vanity, but I am convinced that one day they will be worth at least a small something—although it is true that I’ll be dead and buried, maggots digesting my organs. Listen to me. I think what makes them so unique are those hidden images that only a lucky few can see. Or maybe, only a lucky one! Isn’t that something? Perhaps I need you as badly as you need me. While everybody else only sees the yellow windows, you see the woman behind the curtain. Ah, the woman! So lovely, isn’t she? Even now, after trading in her virginal white for death black. Should we talk about her? Ms. Claire Browning. Are you as madly in love with her as I was?”
I felt my stomach tighten and shook my head no. A strange guttural noise came out of my throat, but as soon as Leider continued speaking, my voice vanished.
“Let me tell you some things, Mr. No Name. Are you listening? What you should know is that I’ve done some terrible things, things that will damn me to the furnaces of hell, but they were all done in the pursuit of beauty. They were all done in the pursuit of Claire Browning. With each moment she intoxicated me. With each moment she destroyed me. I watched her from a distance, but I loved her with my whole soul. And I can’t say I’m sorry for what I’ve done because there is no free will. I was held hostage by fate.
“Here’s the truth. It wasn’t her that I was painting initially. It was the whores and the pimps and the cripples and the maimed. They were the people who interested me. That’s why I rented this shit-hole apartment in this shit-hole neighborhood. That’s why I gave my money to the dying landlord with the enormous mole. So I could create my masterpiece of despair. So the world could see the melancholic rage of the city streets and they would call me a genius. I understand the irony, wanting so badly to be loved by a world that I hate…
“You see, Mr. No Name, I’m a self-taught painter. I didn’t attend some expensive art school. I didn’t have a mentor standing behind me guiding my brushstrokes. I figured it out on my own. By studying the masters. By painting until my fingers bled. Maybe I never will become a world-renown artist. Maybe my paintings will never hang in the Louvre. But keep
in mind, Van Gogh never sold a painting, not a single one, in his lifetime. Genius isn’t always recognized.”
And now he stopped talking for a few moments, and I could hear him breathing or perhaps sobbing. When he spoke again, his voice was somber.
“Yes, it was that fat whore I was painting. She dressed like the rest of them with the hiked-up skirt and fishnet stockings and ruby-red lipstick. Her hair was long and black and curly, and I was sure it was a wig (probably purchased from the bitch on the bottom floor of the apartment). I felt sorry for the whore, because the men ignored her, and still she walked the streets and smoked her cigarettes and leaned against the lamppost, the gold light spreading into a diamond, her enormous legs twitching as if she were preparing for a great escape. For weeks I worked on this painting, each night, each day. I even went so far as to solicit the bitch, to understand her better, to remember her skin, to remember her cruelty. I called myself Phantom, but she knew better, she knew my real name…
“And I had almost completed the painting (I just needed to adjust her eyes—I could never get them quite right, not exactly), when I saw her. Claire. I didn’t know her name at the time, of course (that would only happen when I later transformed into a private detective for a few days), but I placed my brushes on the easel and sat on my chair and watched. Why? Because there is so much vileness in this world, and so little beauty, and she was beautiful. No, she was beyond beautiful. She was godlike. Even though I couldn’t see the details of her face, the way she stood in the frame of that yellow window—her root beer hair flowing below her shoulders, her gown swaying in the evening breeze—transfixed me, and I knew that she would be the one that I painted, that I would abandon the grotesqueness of the fat whore, and embrace the beauty of the woman in the window.