“So . . . you wouldn’t mind if I brought guys back here?” That certainly took the fun out of it. His intention?
“Nah. If I got tired of it I’d just get another apartment.”
“Here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like in this building or . . . somewhere else?”
“Well, somewhere in Dayton. I want to stay close by.”
Again, his confusing obsession with this blighted city. She wanted to ask him about it again but knew he wouldn’t give her any straight answers. She knew it had to be something, though. She considered shifting her goal from trying to get him to show some emotion to getting him to leave this city. What would it take?
“Aren’t you worried someone is going to come looking for you? Staying in one place so long?”
“Not really. I told you. I have a sort of immunity.”
“Immunity from what.”
“I don’t know. The world, I guess.”
“But eventually you’re going to kill the wrong person. Someone is going to come looking for you.”
“Would have happened by now. It’s experiential knowledge.”
“Sometimes I worry about it. Seems too much like poking a sleeping bear.”
“Then leave.”
She waited for a long time before finally saying, “Maybe I will.”
Something flickered across his eyes and then that fixed, almost cheerful look was again on his face.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Before it gets too cold, we should go for a night out on the town. Tonight. We’ve never really done that. I mean, there are things to do around here.”
She thought about it. It seemed terrible but she appreciated the sentiment behind the idea. If she agreed to it, she thought there had to be something she could get out of it.
“Okay,” she said. “But if you get tonight, then I get today.”
He looked trapped or wounded or something. She almost expected him to shout ‘No!’ and run for the door. Instead his look turned to one of suspicion.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well, first of all, I think we’ve both put on some weight. Maybe we should go get an exercise bike or something. You still have the truck, don’t you?”
“That’s it?”
“And, I don’t know, can we just talk? Will you listen to me?”
His face pinched up and she felt like he was really close to sighing. She was surprised when he said, “Okay.”
They went to a cafeteria on the corner across the street and had bagels and coffee. Erica was briefly appalled that Walt had a wad of human meat wrapped in a Ziploc bag in his pocket that he added to the bagel. She tried to find important things to talk about and decided she didn’t really want to talk about them or couldn’t think of anything really important so she talked to him mainly about things she’d read in Glamor Face: what kind of makeup she’d considered getting, a certain clothing style she was contemplating trying, some of the clever quizzes she thought were so completely universal. The only thing he seemed vaguely interested in was weirdstream. She tried to describe it to him but the more she tried to make it make sense, the less it did. After brunch they got into the truck and drove out to the suburbs. They went to a place specializing in pools, games, and exercise equipment and stole a stationery bike. Walt said he needed to go to Home Depot while they were out this way and she acquiesced, even though it was supposed to be her day. He grabbed a grill, a hacksaw, a lot of duct tape, and three large tarps. Then they went to the Halloween store and picked out some masks. Walt stole an elephant mask and Erica stole a dog mask. Walt seemed excited by this and stopped at a pet store on the way home where he took a collar, chain, and large cage. He didn’t expressly say what he had in mind but, for the first time in a few months, had succeeded in making her wet. They went home and used most of their new acquisitions. Except for the stuff from Home Depot. That went into the baby’s room with the freezers.
Date Night
Walt finally let her out of the cage to go take a much needed shower. She stayed in the shower for a very long time, letting the steam clear the last few thoughts from her head that the marathon sex bout hadn’t. Although, she guessed there really wasn’t a lot of sex. It was mostly, what did they call it? Role playing? Maybe. Except it felt more real than that. Once she had showered and shaved everything that needed shaving she spent about an hour picking out clothes and applying makeup. Finally ready, she went back out into the apartment to find Walt sitting at the table, still naked and smeared, eating what looked like a human hand.
She’d had her day, done what she’d wanted to do, and didn’t really mind blowing off the rest of the evening.
“I guess we’re not going anywhere,” she said.
“What makes you say that?” Walt wiped his greasy lips with the back of his hand.
She gestured at him.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“You’re not even wearing clothes.” Not to mention that he smelled really bad, even from where she stood.
“I don’t really need them.”
“You should probably put something on.”
“Fine.” He dropped the hand on the table. He hadn’t even bothered with a plate.
He disappeared into the bedroom and came out wearing the old lady satin warm-up suit. The one she distinctly remembered leaving in a dressing room at the mall. Smiling, he strolled toward her in a riot of sound. She rolled her eyes. It didn’t even fit him. The zippered top bared his midriff while the pants cut off at mid-calf.
“You’re going out like that?”
He threw out his arms, a look of utter resignation flashing across his face. “I can go out like this or I can go out naked. Special nights require special clothes . . . or no clothes.”
“Fine.”
She thought he would ultimately be too embarrassed to leave the apartment in the ridiculous get up. She realized she’d never seen him in anything other than the blue jeans and white t-shirt. Maybe that had something to do with his unnoticeability. Maybe since he’d decided to wear something people were almost sure to notice – and probably laugh at – it meant they would have an evening on the non-violent side. She thought she would appreciate that.
“So what do you have on the agenda?” she asked.
“It’s all a surprise.”
He grabbed his keys and she followed him out of the apartment. He said he needed to go to his friend’s house. She said she was hungry. He drove them through the drive-thru of Arby’s, the truck so enormous it towered over the pick-up window. Despite this monstrosity looming in plain view, they never handed the food out the window. Erica had to climb out of the truck and go inside and get it. Walt didn’t eat anything. He dismantled his giant roast beef sandwich and spread the slices in a single layer on the dashboard. Then they went to his friend Ben’s. There was still a bit of daylight. Ben lived in what seemed to be a rougher section of town. Erica still wasn’t incredibly familiar with Dayton and didn’t really hope to ever be. Nearly every other house seemed to be either a burned out husk or had all of the windows boarded up. Ben and a number of friends were in the back yard, which was more dirt than grass and surrounded by a privacy fence that was slouching inward. Four men were gathered around a girl who didn’t look much older than fourteen. She had a tube in her mouth that was attached to a funnel and one of the guys was pouring a brightly colored can of malt liquor into it. Once the can was empty, the girl tired to stand up, couldn’t, and ended up lying on her stomach in the yard. The guy pouring the bottle turned out to be Ben. He had a haircut that was clearly self-administered, bad skin, and broken crooked teeth. But he looked really happy and seemed really friendly. He and Walt had a conversation Erica only half-listened to and the snippets she did catch were in that weird gibberish. She thought if she could actually bring herself to focus on it, she might be able to figure out what they were saying, but she was mostly too busy scanning the yard in the dying October light. It had bee
n warm, a bit of Indian summer, but that would probably change once the sun disappeared from the sky. She hoped they didn’t plan on staying around too long. An overweight man probably not long out of his teens was feeling up the girl who’d passed out in the yard. The people standing around in the yard looked as rough as the neighborhood itself. Rap music blared from speakers, probably in the house, and she didn’t know why she hadn’t noticed it before. The singer, who sounded black, was rapping about having tea with his grandmother and the dangers of trading stocks. Walt told her he was ready to go but she had to hit the bong first. She thought this meant he wanted to smoke pot and she said sure. Then she was on the ground and Walt had that tube in her mouth and Ben smiled down at her while he shoved his hand between her legs and Walt stood over top of her pouring an enormous can of Steel Reserve into the red funnel. She managed to keep it all down but felt immediately drunk and woozily followed Walt to the truck, listening to several men talk about various parts of her body and how much they’d like to either fuck her or have her suck their cocks. Once in the cab of the truck, it wasn’t just drunkenness she felt. Now dark, the streetlights shot out like laser beams and all the colored lights in the distance blurred together and time moved both very fast and very slow at the same time – almost like she was two different people. Walt seemed to glow and laugh and laugh and laugh and she thought maybe he was one of the glowing men and wondered why he would try to shatter people who were just like him but this steered her into an area that seemed too heavy and philosophical and all she really wanted to do was drink and have a good time. Walt seemed to be able to read her mind because he pulled the truck up to a strip club and they went inside and Erica heard the strangest music she’d ever heard and all of the dancers – both men and women – looked like they had Down’s Syndrome but money was raining down on them and the music was so grating it felt like she had a migraine but it was a slender sliver of pain amidst so much pleasure that she didn’t completely care and soon they were back out in Walt’s truck driving around dark country roads, the windows cracked, the fantastic smells of the season rolling into the truck and she was reminded of a number of nights like this from her teenage years and for the first time all evening Erica noticed the moon was huge and full and glowing and somewhere toward dawn they were running around the streets of downtown Dayton and Walt said he hadn’t planned on hurting anyone tonight but wanted to “let off the magic” and dragged a homeless black guy into an alley where he beat him in the face with a chain. Erica had no idea where he got the chain. It was gruesome and horrible and Erica was wet and told Walt she wanted him to take her back home, lock her in the dog cage, and fuck her from the outside.
Birds chirping outside the apartment, they lay in bed. Erica thought she would get sick and pass out but she felt pretty awake.
And just after thinking that, she fell asleep.
Bonding
Erica awoke to Walt poking her in the face. He stood beside the bed and looked really excited.
“Want to go hunting with me?”
She didn’t want to go hunting with him but also did not really want to spend another day bumming around the apartment, alone. She supposed she could go shopping but that could wait. It would always be there. Whether Walt wanted to acknowledge it or not, she felt like something important had happened last night. Important events promoted change. Going on his hunt with him would be a change for her, at least. And a change for him too, since he wasn’t used to having her along. If anything, it could reinforce her view of him as a powerful man and provide him with a chance to show off. What he had become to her, with the possible exception of last night, was something like a big impotent baby who she saw at feeding time, gorging on the only thing he wanted to eat and then going to sleep. Getting fatter and fatter. She knew it was probably wrong but she equated fatness with a sort of infantile weakness. She had gone the opposite direction, losing nearly twenty pounds, most of it burned away by fear, stress, and anxiety probably. The bike had really been more for him than her.
“I guess,” she said.
“All right. I need to eat breakfast first.”
She got up, got dressed, made coffee, and took it out to the balcony to smoke until it was time to go.
They climbed up into the cab of his enormous, gleaming black truck. She thought it was new but wasn’t entirely sure. This was probably the fourth such truck he had acquired since they’d come here. The interior was spotless and still had that new car smell. Dayton’s streets were pretty wide so the truck didn’t seem as enormous as she thought it would.
“Going anywhere particular?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I usually just drive for a few hours in one direction or the other, get out and do the job, and then come back.”
“You’ve been doing this every day?”
“What else would I do?”
“You act like you don’t have a choice.”
“I know I have a choice. This is what I want to do. When it stops being what I want to do, I’ll stop doing it, and then do the next thing I want to do.”
“What do you think that will be?”
“It’s hard to say. One time, for like a year, I was really into rape.”
“Now you just rape corpses.”
“That’s not rape. Are you going to start this shit again? I thought you got it all out of your system.”
She pulled a cigarette from her pack and lit it.
Walt looked over at her. “No smoking.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I haven’t smoked in quite a while. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed. And I definitely don’t want the truck to smell like smoke.”
“I think you’ll be okay this one time.” She was pretty sure she’d smoked in it last night. She couldn’t remember. It was possible this wasn’t even the same truck.
He slammed on the brakes, the truck coming to rest in the gravel at the shoulder of the road.
“Either you can throw the cigarette out or you can get out.”
Part of her really wanted to get out. To just get out and start walking, anywhere. She tossed the cigarette and said, “Jesus.”
He pulled back onto the road and she rolled the window up.
“Leave it down for a bit,” he said. “Gotta let that smoke air out.”
She rolled the window all the way down. It was really cold. She felt her nipples press against the thin fabric of her t-shirt and thought she probably should have brought a sweater with her. It would be cold once the sun was gone. She didn’t know if they would be outside a lot or not.
Walt put his hand on her chest, palming her breasts. “I like the way the cold makes your nipples stand out. Want to?”
She looked at the crotch of his jeans and noticed his erection. She put her hand on it and he was again pulling off the side of the road and his hands were on her and he was inside her but it felt like something was lacking. It felt mechanical and she knew that him coming was the goal and the only real thing he had in mind. She was close but didn’t have an orgasm and then she thought about the next time she went to the bar. Thought about inviting every guy there back to the apartment. Thought about letting them all fuck her while Walt watched. Thought about looking at him and saying, “This is how real men do it.”
They were back on the road and she didn’t realize she was crying until Walt said, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she answered.
After a little more than an hour, they crossed the Indiana state line. About another hour later Walt pulled into a Walmart parking lot in a small farm town, one of the abundant small towns she had seen since meeting Walt.
“What now?” she asked, trying to sound enthused.
“We wait.”
“For what?”
“The right one.”
She had wondered how this process worked. Lately, she had assumed he had been scouting high schools or something, the girls had gotten so young. She stepped out of the truck to smoke. She le
ft the window down so she could talk to him through it but he rolled it up once she was outside and made a flapping gesture with his hand like, even if it came from outside, he just couldn’t take the smoke.
She tossed her cigarette butt onto the asphalt and got back in the truck. The radio was tuned to some right wing talk station and Walt scanned everyone going into and coming out of the massive store. The man on the radio said he wouldn’t be happy until everyone without a criminal record owned a gun. She didn’t know if she agreed with this or not. She wondered if a gun would protect anyone against someone like Walt. She doubted it. Maybe if someone kept a gun in her hand at all times. The man on the radio said he’d considered getting a third arm installed just so he could keep a gun in it at all times. Erica thought maybe that would be weirdstream. Someone called in and said he’d had a bayonet installed in his forehead last week. Erica was about ready to give up on the world around her and take a nap when Walt leaned forward and narrowed his eyes.
Must have found him one, Erica thought.
A girl who couldn’t have been older than nineteen crossed the parking lot toward them. She wore a sweater, black leggings, a loose skirt hanging down to her knees, and a pair of stupid knee-high boots. She unlocked the door to her Chevy Cobalt, opened it, and tossed her large purse into the passenger seat. Before stopping to really think about what was going to happen to this girl, Erica kind of envied her. It seemed like just . . . being. Just being a normal person or whatever came easily to most people and probably came easily to this girl. Maybe it had for Erica when she was little. She doubted there was one single thing that triggered her derailment. She couldn’t even specifically pinpoint how she had derailed. Maybe it was Granny getting sick. Maybe it was having to stay in that lonesome little house and take care of her. But people performed altruistic acts like that all the time. Not everyone emerged feeling like she had to do something above and beyond the norm. Erica didn’t even think she felt that way. She simply went along. Walt had been in the right place at the right time. He was probably there to kill her but . . . but he’d seen something in her. That was what she thought that day and that’s what she was almost sure of now. He had seen the emptiness. Their twin emptinesses had mingled. For her, being empty felt like a problem. That is she felt like she was aware of the emptiness and would find some way to fill it if she knew how. She didn’t think Walt was aware of his emptiness. Or, if he was, it certainly didn’t bother him at all. And if he tried to fill that emptiness by doing the things he did, she didn’t see how that did anything but make the chasm even deeper.
Sociopaths In Love Page 13