The Serenity Murders

by Mehmet Murat Somer

  Today’s meeting was at Gül Tamay’s apartment in Emirgan. It was one of those deceptive apartments that, seen from the outside, makes you think it must have a view of the sea, whereas the truth is, it doesn’t have a view at all. It was Bahadır, the man who had been haunting my dreams, who opened the door for me. He seemed even better looking now in the daylight. He had pink shiny lips that looked as if they had just been sucked. He looked me up and down straightaway, and smiled.

  “Welcome. Please, come in,” he said.

  His sexy Adam’s apple moved up and down as he spoke.

  And his voice, which I hadn’t been able to hear very well in the noise of the club, was awfully sexy too. Now, why had I gone and developed a crush when the guy was Gül’s boyfriend and I had just started fasting? And what about this newly found coyness of mine, the kind more befitting a young girl? Doing my best to keep up a cool appearance, I stuck my hand out, and, as soon as we had shaken, quickly pulled it back.

  “You know, there’s an old actress named Audrey Hepburn, you look just like her.”

  I was undone, arrested, melting away. It was my favorite compliment. I even forgave him for calling Audrey an old actress. By some amazing feat of self-control, I managed to stay on my feet and not collapse into his arms. And then in I sailed, walking on air.

  Gül was interviewing our patient in the back room in preparation for the session. Permanent fixtures of the group, the quiet Cavit Ates‚ and the tarot-reading expert Andelip Turhan, had already arrived.

  With hands joined on his stomach and eyes squinted, Cavit Ates‚ sat there smiling like a Buddha who had already reached Nirvana. He greeted me from where he sat, bowing his head. The smile on his face remained serene.

  I was surprised when I first heard the unusual name Andelip, which is another word for nightingale in Turkish, but it grew on me fairly quickly. As for the incessantly twittering Andelip Turhan herself, if you asked me, she had more than a few screws loose. She was a fairly short, plump brunette who constantly flipped her curly hair from side to side whenever she was in motion. As for her clothing, she wore absolutely, positively anything and everything, wrapping herself in layers of odd clothes, just like an onion, and adorning herself with an assortment of outrageous jewelry. When I first met her she was wearing a lace petticoat over her clothes and had puckered the cuffs of her pajama-like baggy trousers using massive curtain tiebacks.

  “She does it on purpose,” Gül had said, after noticing the look on my face. “She thinks people will take her more seriously as a fortune-teller if she looks like a freak.”

  And today she had decorated her curly hair with what appeared to be a white bonnet, but which upon closer inspection was revealed to be a pair of cotton men’s briefs. That’s right, underwear. Andelip had pulled the undies over her head like a bonnet, leaving her hair to stick out of the leg holes. The waistband came all the way down to her forehead, and read “Calvin Klein” upside down. Of course, she noticed where I was looking.

  Wearing her sweetest smile, “I bought it online,” she said, in that chirping voice of hers. “They belonged to Kevin Spacey. He wore them for at least a day. I paid a fortune for them in an auction. I’d simply die if I didn’t parade them around a bit.”

  She chuckled, her entire body jiggling.

  I knew of Web sites that claimed to be selling celebrity clothes and underwear. Once, I too had bid in an auction, for the Colt magazine model John Pruitt’s original stained boxer shorts, but then had come to my senses upon Ponpon’s warning and withdrew from the bidding. “They’re probably fake, ayolcuğum,” she had said. “If people are stupid enough to buy them, I’ll start manufacturing celebrity boxers and bras myself.” Although I could hardly stomach being classified as stupid, by Ponpon, no less, I acquiesced; she was right.

  I wondered what Andelip would think, what she’d say if I told her all of that.

  She had already turned around to share the details of the briefs with Bahadır.

  “They even had his scent on them when they first arrived. A masculine body odor, mixed with a little perfume. They arrived in a firmly closed plastic bag. But then the scent vanished. As you’ve probably guessed already, I absolutely adore Kevin Spacey. My heart skips a beat whenever I see him. I don’t even know anymore how many times I’ve seen American Beauty. I’ve read my tarot cards a million times, but alas, he isn’t in my destiny. Oh, well. I’ll just have to make do with his briefs.”

  As she said that last line, she stroked the briefs as if Kevin Spacey were in them.

  I didn’t tell them about Sermet’s death. I highly doubted any of them knew him anyway. Besides, I didn’t want them to panic.

  Our patient was a twenty-six-year-old woman who worked at a bank. She had been suffering from MS for four years. During her MS attacks, she experienced excruciating pain, which she could no longer bear to live with. She had contacted Gül upon recommendation.

  We chatted as we sipped the tea that Bahadır had brewed and served. I like men who do housework. But I didn’t approve of the way Bahadır had settled in and become a member of the household in such a short time. It was too soon for him to be assuming the role of the host.

  We had almost finished our tea when the feng shui and crystal healing expert Vildan Karaca arrived. As usual, she was late and anxious. She shook hands with one person as she spoke to the next, left her bag in one corner of the room and her jacket on a chair in another. Then she went over and started rummaging through her bag, only to return without having taken anything out. In no time at all she had successfully demonstrated her tremendous talent for spreading her anxiety like a contagious disease. She claimed that the balance of energy wasn’t right and asked everyone to stand up, and then she changed all of our places. She sat me and Bahadır down on the same couch, side by side. So our energy had been deemed balanced and compatible by a professional. I could have gotten carried away with this idea and ended up God only knows where, but, alas…

  The seat-swapping exercise did nothing to alleviate her pointless anxiety. To the contrary, she’d only succeeded in infecting the rest of us. “I’ll calm down now…Calm down…” she repeated, pulling out a huge pink quartz globe from her bag and closing her eyes as she held it tightly in her hands. Under the influence of the pink quartz we all slowly calmed down. Or it felt good to believe that we did. Whatever comes to pass ultimately happens thanks to belief, to faith. Whatever we believe will make us feel better, does.

  Our healing session lasted approximately forty-five minutes. We saw our patient off and then began to chat.

  Vildan, the feng shui expert, started the conversation by saying she had seen me on TV. They all confessed one by one that they had watched me too.

  “Sweetie,” said Vildan, “as long as you’ve started going on TV shows, why don’t you join Buket’s program as well? She mentioned it the other day. She wants to invite the tantra practitioner Hakan Akıncı and me. I’d rather be on the show with you than with that sex-crazed pervert. We’d have a much better conversation. The man won’t stop going on about tantra and he sees sex as the purpose of everything.”

  “How delightful…” Andelip sighed.

  Vildan, considering the remark nothing short of impertinence, responded, “Ayol, I’ve been there, done that…It takes hours.”

  “Even better!” said Andelip, ogling. “What more could one possibly want?”

  “It’s not at all like you think, darling. The male doesn’t ejaculate. And in the meantime, you end up contorting yourself into a million and one acrobatic positions. Your back, your hips, your shoulders…The next day you’re stiff all over.”

  “Yes, but sweetie, that’s all perfectly fine with me…And if it makes you stiff, perhaps that’s because you’re too out of practice…”

  “Yeah, right! Ayol, believe me, it’s nothing like wearing a man’s undies on your head and prancing around with ‘I’m horny’ written all over your forehead. I’ve tried it, I know, and I’m telling you, it’s un
pleasant. But you won’t believe me!”

  The invitation I had just received to the new TV program got lost in the muddle of Andelip and Vildan’s quarrel. She’d call me if she was really serious about it. And I’d think about it. I’d been on television once, and look what had happened; I didn’t want to even begin imagining what would happen if I were to go on again.

  Gül, unable to suppress her curiosity, intervened. “Vildan, do you mean to say you slept with that disgusting Hakan Akıncı?”

  No one could possibly argue that Hakan Akıncı was good-looking, or even charismatic. The man was simply ugly and sullen.

  “Yes,” said Vildan nonchalantly. “To get some practice…”

  “Might your discontent be due to the man himself?” suggested Gül, with sincere curiosity. “Because tantra is actually quite nice.”

  Cavit Ateş, whom I’d forgotten even existed, emitted a few strange noises to express his agreement.

  What? Gül and Cavit had done tantra too? Okay, I could understand Gül. She was an attractive woman, a presentable woman, but Cavit! Cavit, who looked like the Buddha! Was I the only innocent in this fold?

  “I’ve never tried it,” I said naïvely.

  “No need to,” burst out Vildan, “You must,” insisted Gül simultaneously. I looked at one and then the other.

  As Gül reached out to hold Bahadır’s hand, “My personal opinion,” she said coyly.

  So the two of them…Tantra…By the look of the lad’s proud posture, the answer was clearly yes.

  7.

  On my way back home, I received a message on my cell phone. It was one of those pay-as-you-go numbers. I opened the message, hoping that it was one of the spruce but penniless men I’d given my number to, asking to be called back so he didn’t run out of credits.

  “I know where you are and who you’re with,” it read. That was it!

  I immediately called back the number that had appeared on the screen. It rang, but of course there was no answer. So my psycho had gotten hold of my secret number! Considering his accomplishments so far, I could tell that he was a force to be reckoned with. And clearly he wasn’t bluffing.

  So he was following me around. I had never developed the paranoid habit of checking to see if I was being followed or not. So even if he had followed me, I wouldn’t have noticed. I turned around and looked behind me involuntarily. We were inching forward in tight traffic. He could have been in any one of the surrounding cars. Heat rushed to my face. “What’s the matter, sir? You all right?” asked the driver, who was dressed in casual apparel, as he watched me in the rearview mirror.

  “Yes, I’m fine, fine!” I blurted, in an utterly unconvincing voice.

  The state of inner peace and tranquillity at which I had arrived during the Reiki session was no more. And the evening traffic was terrible. We were moving at a snail’s pace.

  I needed to concentrate on something else. I needed to think of other things and shake off the suffocating feeling of panic that was engulfing me. The easiest way to do that would be to count Audrey Hepburn films like I always did. Who she costarred with, what she wore in each one, and so on and so forth. The first film to come to mind was the last one I wanted to be thinking about at that moment: Wait Until Dark. In it, Audrey played a blind woman, and there’s this psycho killer who is after her. The psycho killer breaks into her home and poor blind Audrey has to try and save herself. Alan Arkin played the psycho killer. It was particularly annoying that, from among Audrey’s corpus of films, the majority of which I had watched dozens of times, I should first recall this particular, dark movie, which I had seen only twice. It was one of Audrey’s later films, a low-budget B movie. Sure, by then her youth may have faded a bit, but she was still as charming as ever, and she was perfectly convincing as a blind woman. The only problem was, she spent the whole film wearing the exact same clothes. Plus the film was nerve-racking. A house with a psycho killer in it!

  It was already getting dark. I thought of how early it got dark this time of the year. I didn’t feel like going home and posing like Audrey Hepburn in an empty house, filled with fearful emotions evoked by the thought of Wait Until Dark. I felt dreadfully awful, and awfully anxious.

  From what he had said, I deduced that my psycho’s intention was not to kill me (if it had been that he would have done so already!), but to let himself be caught by me. Which meant there was no need to be afraid. But then again, Mr. Psycho was no longer abiding by the one-person-per-week rule that he himself had set. His already malfunctioning mind could go completely haywire, and he might decide to bury me too. If it meant fighting, I could handle him any day. I could hardly withstand poison or bullets, though. But then, who could? If he wanted to, he could lie in ambush and shoot me, or come into the club like any stranger and slip whatever he wanted into my drink; if he really wanted to, he could even use explosives to wipe me and a whole load of the girls out at once. What could I do to stop him? Cüneyt at the door was just there for display. All he was good for was to stop obvious troublemakers and resolve minor conflicts that arose inside. If someone were to bring in poison or explosives, no one would notice.

  Though the fact that the killer had declared he wasn’t going to kill me did make me feel better, it failed to dispel my uneasiness at the thought of going home alone. I had a sneaking suspicion. And my instincts are sometimes very strong. And that day’s Reiki practice must have made them stronger.

  No, I didn’t want to go home.

  I could go back to Ponpon’s. Her cheerfulness would do me good. Or it might be too much and simply do me in. I crossed that one out.

  I could go to İpekten if she was at home. She’d gossip about absolutely everyone. Even the thought of it exhausted me. I crossed that option out too.

  I could have made the visit to Selçuk and Ayla that I had been postponing for a long time now, but it was too early to visit them. Neither Selçuk nor Ayla would be back from work yet. I knew Selçuk worked until late. This option was automatically eliminated too.

  I could have treated myself to a delicious slice of cake in one of the cafés of one of these five-star hotels. That would mean adding to my body weight. None of the people I had slept with objected to a slightly buxom figure, but I didn’t believe it suited me in the least. Whenever I put on even half a pound, I instantly started dieting and devoting myself to gymnastics. My current lethargic state, though, had caused me to neglect gymnastics recently. And so the idea of treating myself to a piece of cake was duly banished from my mind. I had stored enough fat at noon with Ponpon’s börek anyway. Another option crossed out!

  Traffic had begun to flow, and so we were swiftly approaching my home. I’d better make up my mind, and I’d better do it fast.

  Wasn’t I going to go home eventually anyway? There was nowhere to run. After all, it was my home. With this in mind, I began concentrating on my options if I went home.

  I could call Hasan and ask him to come over. Two were better than one. I liked this idea. But Hasan’s phone was switched off. How many times had I told him not to switch it off during the day? I’d have to get on his case about it that evening.

  I called the taxi stand, my one last hope. If Hüseyin was there, I’d ask him to come over. He loved to be of use at times like this, to “play detective,” as he put it. He probably thought he was some kind of Rambo or something.

  Hüseyin was at the stand. Without going into the details I told him that I needed him and that he should wait for me outside my apartment. God knows what he’d envisage, what unlikely scenarios, what sexual connotations he’d conjure up as he stood there waiting outside the door, all puffed up like a turkey. As for how he’d explain things to the guys at the stand, whether he’d cringe with embarrassment or happily play the “uncle” to my “aunt,” who knew?

  My taxi driver was all ears. Clearly he was doing his best to make sense of what I was saying. I smiled coldly into the rearview mirror. He knew how to take a hint. He quickly looked away.

 
; Hüseyin had pulled his car up in front of the apartment building like I had told him to and was waiting for me there. He was a bit hurt to see me stepping out of a cab that he wasn’t driving. Did he expect me to walk back or something?

  “We would’ve come and picked you up, all you had to do was call,” he said.

  “Don’t go acting all jealous on me, ayol. And don’t be silly, of course I’m going to take other cabs when I’m out. It’s not like you’re my private driver!”

  “Right, because you know we’d never stoop to that level,” he said cheekily. “Look, you told us to get over here, okay? And so we marched straight over, no questions asked.”