Nicotine

by Nell Zink

  Rob is too weakened to scream. He can barely breathe. The chair leg does not perforate his abdominal wall, instead sliding along it as he turns. At waist level next to his torso, it tugs the skin of his front down to meet the skin of his back. It looks as though it might punch a hole.

  Matt kneels and bounces. It’s as though he were righteously killing a vicious animal with no feelings, but it’s Rob.

  Finally Jazz, on her knees in front of her bookshelf, finds the handgun on the floor where it fell down last time she hid it behind the books. “Matt,” she says to get his attention. “Matt.”

  He looks up and sees her. She is not cowering anymore. She is naked and barefoot, just like Rob. He has never seen her naked. This realization really, really, seriously pisses him off.

  He stands up, kicks Rob once in the ribs, and moves toward her. She wiggles the gun to make him notice it.

  Tony, standing behind Matt with the wine bottle, also notices the gun. Jazz gives him this look like maybe he’s in her way, and he turns and runs down the stairs. Matt follows him. Jazz, too. A breathless scuffling and running down the slippery wooden staircase ensues, with no shots fired. Past Anka, now barricaded in her room (because Tony screamed, “She’s got a gun!”) on hold with 911, and down to the second floor where Sorry stands in the hallway with her hand on her doorknob, unsure what to do. Tony pushes her inside her room, joins her, and locks the double doors on them both.

  With no one left in front of him, Matt turns to face Jazz.

  He knows that look. He saw it earlier, when she was about to jump. Except now she is pointing a gun at his nose.

  “Let’s get out of here and fuck,” he says. “I want you every day for the rest of my life. Marry me.”

  She takes a step toward him, closing her eyes instinctively to protect them from the spray of meat and bone.

  He sees two alternatives. He can turn and run down the stairs while she is free to take aim at his back. Or he can test the obvious assumption that the door next to him opens on a space with at least one window to the roof of the porch.

  He pushes open the door opposite Sorry’s and ducks into the bucket monster’s room.

  Jazz is close behind him. He misses his chance to close the door. She stands in the doorway. He turns and crouches the way he did before he punched Rob. He believes he is going to charge her and knock her down. He believes she will not pull the trigger.

  She picks a low bucket on an outside row and fires. The bullet scars the rubber and digs a small hole in the plaster.

  He looks down and palpates the front of his body. He seems uncertain.

  She steps into the hallway and closes the door. She lowers the gun.

  Shut inside the room with Matt, the monster sways. The ricochet has set it in motion. One bucket is weakened, no longer symmetrical. The monster cannot return to its stable condition.

  He approaches to grasp the top board and stop it from moving. In response, its opposite end sways toward him. It sways away. The second board from the bottom slides a quarter-inch on a waxy film of fermented excrement, and two buckets near the top wobble and slosh. The monster undulates. It shimmies. It bounces against the wall. The stalemate between architecture and the force of gravity is over.

  The monster blocks access to the windows, and Tony (because he has the strongest hands; Sorry grabs him around the waist to add traction) is holding the room’s only door shut from the other side. Matt kicks at the latch before seeing that it opens inward. He pulls on the slick glass doorknob until his fingernails hurt. He kicks the door’s solid chestnut panels hard, but he cannot break them.

  With the suggestion of a circular, backhanded motion, with the grace of a sower strewing grain, the wall of buckets throws itself down.

  Matt slips and falls. He howls as though being eviscerated. On his knees in years-old shit and piss, he tries to use his phone. He can’t see the screen. The indescribable substance fills the room to a depth of one inch and creeps under the door into the hallway. Under Matt it finds gaps in the floorboards and seeps to a new dark spot on the kitchen ceiling. A broad, viscous droplet forms above the kitchen table like a stalactite.

  Matt stops making noise. It is worrisome. What is he doing in there?

  He is facing the window, expecting to be shot at any moment, wondering how to get past the heap of buckets in leather-soled shoes on a floor like a sheet of ice. He is sticky with indescribable filth, and the dirtiest part of him is his hands. There’s a hair or an eyelash or something in his eye and nothing he can do about it. He is freaking out, but without moving, because he doesn’t want to slip and fall again.

  Anka creeps down the stairs and whispers, “Did he get hit?”

  “Not even close,” Jazz says.

  “Rob looks bad.”

  “You should all leave. Just get out.”

  Anka runs back up the stairs.

  Sorry, Tony, and Jazz notice the substance that is beginning to ooze from the room. Sorry lets go of Tony, and he lets go of the doorknob. Jazz says to the door, “Matt! I’m ready!”

  Sorry and Tony hasten up to where Rob is lying on the roof, half inside Jazz’s room. The pool of blood under him is only about two feet in diameter—maybe a pint and a half? “I’m okay,” he insists. Anka is applying direct pressure with a towel to the ragged wound in his side. The towel is very red. Her phone lies faceup beside her, the line to 911 no longer open. (When they finally answered, she was distracted.)

  “Let’s all go to the hospital with Rob,” Sorry suggests. She picks up a pillow from the bed, pulls off the pillowcase, and starts stuffing it with random clothing and the contents of Jazz’s desk and dresser drawers: money, electronics, ID.

  Anka comprehends. “Do mine, too,” she says. She stares down at Rob. Both of them are colorless. “Do everybody’s. Come on, Rob. Let’s get out of here.”

  Sorry packs fast—maybe four minutes. In Rob’s room she grabs his wallet and the clothes on the chair. She owns a military surplus duffel bag, and so does Tony, both full of linens, and she empties them to run from room to room, stuffing in recently worn clothes, valuables from bedside tables, and random paper from in and on top of desks.

  Anka gives up on ambulances, because she and Tony are able to get Rob down the stairs. Rob’s vehicle will be faster. By the time they reach the minivan, Sorry is in the driver’s seat, feeling very anxious, yet happy Matt didn’t park them in. The Audi stands in the street at an odd angle, two feet from the curb.

  Jazz occasionally taps the door with the barrel of the gun to make sure Matt knows she hasn’t budged. She is stationary, but shivering.

  Only after everyone has left the house does she dash down the stairs. Quietly she closes the broken front door. The minivan is idling, waiting for her. She swings herself in through the side door, slides it shut behind her, and says, “Fuck!” Sorry revs the engine and honks the horn twice as she lurches into reverse—a friendly beep-beep—to signal their departure. The response is a howl of anguish like nothing they have ever heard.

  Sitting on the bench seat, Jazz turns to look at Rob, who is lying in the cargo space, wrapped in a blanket he uses to protect the carpeting from muddy bikes. “The landlord’s going to trash the house,” she says.

  “So call the police,” he replies.

  They know they might never set foot in Nicotine again.

  MATT SLINKS OUT OF THE monster’s room. A flood of the substance follows him and flows down the stairs. He finds the shower in the corner of the kitchen. He strips and stands under it, holding his car keys and credit cards in his hands. He soaps up over and over, and scrubs over and over, with special attention to nooks and crannies such as the ears. He vomits into the toilet and drain several times each. He keeps going after the hot water is gone. When he emerges, the substance is dripping from the kitchen ceiling and two inches deep on the hallway floor. He locates a plastic bucket and a salad bowl and wades to the porch. He walks naked to his car.

  Beep! it says, unlocking its
doors to his command. He imagines trashing the house, destroying, stealing—but the stairs are coated with the substance. He imagines trying to climb them. The substance is so greasy. Of all its horrors, grease is most salient. Surprising how greasy. Slippery and sticky at the same time, like pork or ice cream, substances he may never touch again.

  No one sees him. The neighborhood has gone back to sleep. There is no sound but a dog barking somewhere.

  He drives home shuddering. Sometimes he pulls over against the median to vomit—a dangerous maneuver, but he is lucid and sober and burning with hate, and that makes him invisible to the police. An all-white man in an all-black car, like a grub in a rotten pecan.

  WHEN ROB IS DONE CIRCULATING through the ER, it is dawn. Sparrows chirp in the Japanese maples and juniper ground cover around the hospital. Trucks deliver perishables.

  Sorry stands outside with the orderlies, smoking. Anka dozes on a row of chairs by the reception desk with her head on Tony’s lap. Jazz holds Rob’s hand as he emerges from an examination room with a prescription for antibiotics, a thick bandage around his middle, and a fresh tetanus shot still stinging under an adhesive bandage. She leads him to the row of chairs. Tony wakes Anka and she sits up.

  “What now?” Jazz says.

  “We hit the road,” Rob says. “Far away. Gas up the van and go.”

  “You sound scared,” Anka says, “but you are currently holding the hand of the only person I ever saw hold a gun on anybody, so I have no option but to conclude that you’re insane.”

  “She saved my life.”

  Jazz squeezes his hand.

  Tony says, “Obviously you want to lay low if that fucker’s after you. But in my opinion there’s no need to leave Jersey. May I offer a beneficial suggestion? I personally happen to be dating the one person in the world who hates Matt more than you do, and she lives in a defensible compound.”

  “My solution is nonviolence,” Rob says.

  “Her estate in Morristown has a commanding view to the four points of the compass,” Tony continues. “Big trees, no underbrush, and the perimeter is fenced and gated. High, narrow windows, and a half-basement with slot ventilation. It’s like a fucking crusader castle. We should drive there now and establish our war room.”

  “Stop it, Tony. You’re not funny,” Jazz says.

  “I think it’s funny,” Anka says. “But I’m moving into Susannah’s room at DJD. I’m sure she’s never coming back. Her parents would kill her.”

  “I’m serious, though,” Tony says.

  “So move to Morristown!” Jazz says. “The landlord has nothing against you. It sounds like a great house.”

  Sorry returns from her cigarette break outdoors. She hugs Rob gingerly and asks, “What’s our strategy?”

  “Tony’s moving in with Amalia, and Anka’s going to DJD. Me and Jazz are driving as far as we can get the hell away from here, and you, I don’t know.”

  “What about Penny?”

  “Penny,” he says. “Penny is Matt’s half-sister, and right now, anything to do with that motherfucker—pardon the expression—”

  “Penny is Penny.”

  “She lives at Tranquility. None of this affects her at all.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” Jazz volunteers.

  “That is so not your job,” Anka says.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Rob says.

  “And what about me?” Sorry says. “I’m not going back to Nicotine. We need to squat a new house.”

  Rob sighs. “In Greater New York in 2016? That’s why I was thinking maybe Detroit.”

  “I heard about a house that’s empty,” Anka says. “It just needs some rehab in the kitchen.”

  “It needs to burn down,” Sorry says. “They will never find anyone to clean it up, ever. I don’t care what country you ran away from, I don’t care what you’ve been through, you are not going to take that job. Nobody is that desperate. You’d need soldiers or prisoners, or slaves. Controlled burn. It’s the only way.”

  “But not our job,” Rob says. “I can make a living anywhere there’s bikes. I just need to pick up my tools.”

  “I second the motion,” Jazz says.

  Cautiously, he stands upright. He wobbles on his feet.

  “First stop Morristown,” Tony announces. “So we can reconnoiter.”

  “Not with me,” Rob says. “No way. That’s your gig. And it’s my van. We’re going to Nicotine to get my tools.”

  “Drop me off at DJD,” Anka says.

  “Can I have your gun?” Tony asks Jazz. “I presume you don’t have a concealed weapons permit, but I can use it legally to defend a home.”

  “And shoot Matt with the same bullets they’re going to find in the wall at Nicotine. Whatever. Buy your own damn gun. They’re cheap.”

  “Amalia probably already has an arsenal in the basement,” Rob says.

  ANKA SQUATS SUSANNAH’S ROOM AT DJD.

  That is, someone answers the front door and lets her in, and rather than applying for house membership through the usual channels, she goes up to Susannah’s room, puts on one of Susannah’s flannel nightgowns, crawls between Susannah’s Liberty of London sheets, and passes out.

  “DETROIT,” AMALIA TELLS TONY, “WILL be very hot this time of year. They should go to Colorado. Snowbird areas. Vail, Crested Butte. All of those are empty now.”

  She sits at an antique dining table made of kauri wood, drinking coffee from a stoneware cup with matching saucer. A plate of Fig Newtons occupies the center of the table, under the halogen light fixture.

  Tony fidgets in the kitchen. He glances frequently at the closed-circuit TV that shows the front gate—a small, fuzzy CRT, like an old baby monitor. The tonic water is flat, so he mixes vodka with orange soda.

  “I don’t know what they’re doing and I don’t care,” he says, returning to the table. “I’m thrilled to be here with you. It’s like fate.” He sits down and pulls over a coaster for his dripping old-fashioned glass.

  “We’ll see how long it lasts.” Amalia sighs. “This is not my house.”

  “Huh? Whose house is it?”

  “It belongs to my husband, Norm.”

  “The dead guy. So it belongs to the estate. Aren’t you the sole heir? Or at least the executor?” Amalia looks away. “The person carrying out his last will and testament—is that you?”

  “That process will start when it starts. I haven’t yet told everyone. Not the authorities.”

  Tony flashes a grin. “Are you still depositing his Social Security check?”

  Amalia smiles, a bit hesitantly, not sure she should be smiling.

  “A government pension, maybe? Lifetime annuities? Is the body still in the house, or did you bury it in the yard?”

  All at once, she trusts him. His expectations are so terrifically low. Surely he will not sit in judgment on anything short of violence or other genuine evils. She says, “Stop it, Tony! It’s not funny! When he died, I went through all the papers and the safe-deposit box at the bank, and I don’t find any kind of will. And what else is not there? No adoption papers. No life insurance. Only his name on the title to the house. Legally, I am nothing. I bought this house partly myself! I gave all my paychecks to Norm, always. But we were never father and daughter. I know that now.”

  “Ooh,” Tony says. “That sounds hairy.”

  “Yes.” She nods.

  “I mean seriously hairy, like one of those thirty-pound hairballs they find in cows. Wasn’t he your husband?”

  “I came to this country with no identity. First I was his child, afterward the mother of his child. We were married in the eyes of God.”

  “I understand,” Tony says. Then he adds, “What I mean is, I don’t understand. But it’s so lawless that as a card-carrying libertarian, I’m absolutely blown away.”

  She snorts. “I told Penny and the boys that New Jersey is a community property state, and they bought it. Everybody but Matt. But you know who the
courts will appoint as executor of the estate? Matt! I was so in love with him, you know? But now I know he will take everything from me, if I get death certificates for Norm.”

  “That guy is a bad seed.”

  “Oh my god, yes. His father was an angel, his mother was an angel. Why is he so bad?”

  “His father was no angel, and I bet his mother wasn’t either. If you turn out to be an angel, I’m going to be very disappointed.”

  Soon they are making out in her bed.

  PENNY RIDES HER BICYCLE FROM Tranquility to Nicotine. She sees from a hundred yards away that the front door is open. Drawing closer, she sees that the downstairs windows are broken. She smells a pestilential smell.

  She leans her bike on a shrub and climbs up to look over the porch railing at a safe distance from the front door.

  A plastic bucket and salad bowl stand in the substance on the welcome mat. Round prints betray that someone used them to walk through it—one foot in each, presumably holding the rim of the bowl and the handle of the bucket. The trail of prints leads to the kitchen door. The house is silent. She feels sure it is empty. She recognizes the work of the monster. She calls out, “Hello!” to be sure. No answer.

  She calls Rob on the phone. “Where are you?” she says.

  “Pennsylvania Turnpike. Long story. I’m with Sorry and Jazz.”

  “Hi, Penny!” Sorry calls out.

  “Where are you going?”

  Silence. “Portland? We don’t really know. We had to get out of town in a hurry. Did you hear what happened?”

  “Fuck, no! Nobody tells me anything. You’re in Pennsylvania? You didn’t even say good-bye?”

  “Don’t get upset. You think you have a right to be upset? You know who tried to murder me? Your fucking brother.”

  “Why?”

  “Why,” Rob says. “I guess that’s what anybody would ask.”

  “To get the house? It’s trashed, so it’s kind of a Pyrrhic victory.”

  “Why are you asking why? As if anything could justify what he did!”

  “I was just wondering.”