Hide Your Eyes

by Alison Gaylin

  “Jake?”

  “You’ll meet him. He waits up for me—hates it when I’m late.”

  I knew it. “Is Jake your . . . roommate?”

  “You could say that. I’m going to warn you now, he’s huge. It’s going to be hard, but try not to stare at him. He’s very sensitive.”

  I winced.

  We got up to the twelfth floor, and I followed Krull to the end of the long hallway. He opened the door slowly, whispered, “Jake,” before he turned on the light. I sincerely hoped the big guy wasn’t the jealous type. Of course, from my own experience, the word sensitive usually indicated that. Yale had gone out with more than one sensitive man who couldn’t look at En or Roland or even me without spitting. I sighed heavily, remembering how the night before, I’d taken off all my clothes and propositioned a guy who, as it now seemed to be turning out, was a chubby chaser with a jealous boyfriend.

  “Jake . . .” Krull whispered again. “Oh, there you are, sweetheart.”

  There was a light switch right next to the door, and when I flicked it on, I saw Krull on his knees, scratching the ears of the largest gray and black tabby I’d ever seen.

  They both looked up at me. Krull smiled broadly. The cat narrowed his big yellow eyes. “Sam, meet Jake,” Krull said. I burst out laughing, and Krull’s enormous, sensitive cat raced out of the room before I could apologize, belly swaying beneath him like a hammock.

  When Krull told me he didn’t have a lot of furniture, he hadn’t been exaggerating. His living room was nearly as sparse as the building’s lobby. There was nothing on the walls, nothing covering the parquet floor, nothing on top of the squat piece of office furniture he was using as a coffee table. The TV and VCR were perched uneasily atop black plastic crates against the wall, as was the stereo system. His CDs filled one cardboard box, his books another.

  The couch did look comfortable, though, and the view out of the one, east-facing window was stunning. I walked up to it, stared out at the starless sky, the bright cars whizzing up FDR Drive with the East River below, yellow and red lights from the Queensboro Bridge and Roosevelt Island churning on its black surface.

  It made me remember the Pacific Ocean at night and how, as a kid, I’d lay in bed listening to it in our Santa Monica apartment, realizing how close it was, how strong. I’d always think, if the ocean wanted to, it could swallow us whole, and it would scare me from sleeping.

  I could hear Krull in the kitchen, pouring dry cat food into a bowl. “So did you just move here or what?”

  “Not really.”

  “You just like the Spartan look?”

  Krull came out of the kitchen. “It was sort of imposed on me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sighed. “My last girlfriend asked me if she could redecorate the place. I said sure, why not? So she got rid of a bunch of my furniture and posters, stocked it full of nice stuff—antiques, oil paintings. You wouldn’t recognize the apartment. Of course Jake was a little confused . . .”

  “Did you get robbed?”

  “Sort of,” he said. “It hadn’t been working out between us for a long time. About six months ago, I said maybe we should think about separating for a while. She said, ‘Fine, no problem.’ The next day, while I was at work, she moved out and took all the stuff. I’d paid for a lot of it too.”

  “And you haven’t redecorated since.”

  “She left me that couch, the bed, my service revolver and Jake. I don’t need much more than that. The only thing I really miss is my Iron Maiden poster. Had it since high school. Can I get you a beer or anything?”

  I looked into his black eyes. “She didn’t try to get custody of Jake?”

  Krull smiled. “No. She hated Jake.”

  When I looked at my watch and saw it was well past two in the morning, I wanted to cover my wrist so Krull wouldn’t notice the time. We had been sitting on his living room floor for more than an hour, nursing a couple of beers, listening to AC/DC, playing gin with a deck of cards he’d produced from a drawer in the so-called coffee table, and I’d felt relaxed for the first time since Valentine’s Day.

  Jake was sound asleep in my lap; he felt like some sort of fur-covered, vibrating boulder. I found him extremely therapeutic. If someone could market a synthetic version of Jake, they’d have quite a successful cottage industry. He beat the hell out of healing magnets.

  Krull had been winning steadily for at least ten hands and I’d never particularly liked AC/DC, but still the whole situation was comforting. There was safety here—not only in Krull’s warm, gigantic cat, but in his sparse bachelor’s apartment, in his heavy metal record collection, in his deck of Bicycle playing cards, in his soft, dark eyes. Maybe he was a good-luck charm.

  “Gin,” Krull said as the lead singer shrieked “Honey! What’ll you do for mo-ney?” out of the speakers and Jake dug a set of claws into my knee.

  Krull collapsed onto his back and threw an arm over his face. I expected him to say something like, You ready to turn in? or Big day tomorrow. But he didn’t. What he said was, “You suck at gin.”

  “I know,” I said. “You want to play again?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh . . . Well, how about blackjack?”

  “Look, I know you’re scared. I’ll stay here with you for as long as you like. I just don’t feel like playing cards anymore.”

  I looked at him. “It’s that obvious?”

  “You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t scared.”

  What kind of a cop says things like that? Carefully, so as not to disturb Jake, I adjusted myself until I was lying next to him. My eyes were tired and sandy, but I kept them open and watched the white ceiling as I listened to the first lines of “You Shook Me All Night Long.”

  “What exactly are American thighs anyway?”

  Krull’s words slurred together dreamily. “In high school, three of my buddies and I formed an AC/DC tribute band called Hell’s Bells. I played lead guitar.”

  I pictured the detective fifteen years younger and in skin-tight jeans, his wavy brown hair delinquent length, strutting across a stage, then leaning into a guitar solo as groupies pelted him with their bras. “Were you good?”

  “I sucked worse than you suck at gin. We thought it would be a good way to meet girls and make money doing something we loved. But the problem was most girls hated AC/DC and we weren’t good enough to make any money, so we basically just played in my garage and irritated everybody within earshot. Of course, it did piss off my father, which was the most important thing, anyway.”

  “Was your father a cop?”

  “Hardly. He was—is—a research scientist at Columbia Presbyterian. He hates that I’m a cop. I think he’d be prouder of me if I were still in the AC/DC tribute band.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “She died when I was twelve. Cancer. Which is sort of ironic because my father does cancer research.”

  “That must have been hard for you.”

  “It was . . . strange. Like somebody punching you in the face for no reason. You’re just kind of standing there, going, ‘What the hell?’ ”

  “Like she disappeared into thin air.” Turned around with the camera on and got a shot of an empty swing.

  Krull looked at me.

  “Wasn’t it like that?” She’d disappeared into thin air, poor little girl.

  “We were all in her hospital room, my dad, my little brother and me,” he said. “She was intubated, and I remember how the machine made her chest go up and down, like waves. It was so dependable, I figured it could keep her alive forever. Then my brother said he had to go to the bathroom, and my dad went with him. And all of a sudden I got this weird feeling . . . like I should be looking up at her instead of down. When they came back, I pointed to her body and I said, ‘She’s not in there anymore.’ My dad looked at the monitors and told me I was right.”

  I rolled over on my side so I was facing him. Jake grunted and plodded over to the couch.
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br />   “She didn’t disappear,” he said. “I saw her go.”

  “John, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you become a cop?”

  “Because I wanted to help people.”

  “Can you help me?”

  He smiled his sad, warm smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Beneath my skin, some powerful, nameless emotion flexed itself and expanded until I felt like crying. Tears even began to well up in my eyes, but before they could spill out I leaned forward, just a few inches, and kissed him.

  Krull’s body was big and dense and solid, and when he was on top of me I felt protected from the world. That hadn’t happened to me before. I’d always felt vulnerable during sex, like I was being dangled at the edge of a steep cliff by the hands of someone I didn’t trust.

  I wanted to tell him how good it felt, the weight of him. But I never liked to talk during sex and he wasn’t saying anything either, which relieved me because I’d laughed more than once at guys who had tried to provide commentary when we were fucking.

  In fact, neither one of us had said a word since the kiss. We’d just fallen into each other on the living room floor as the last song on the AC/DC CD—“Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution”—came to an end. Jake may have walked by, I wasn’t sure. But otherwise there was nothing in the room. Nothing but the sounds of breathing and movement and clothes coming off.

  I ran my hands down the length of his smooth back, and let them rest at the love handles, thinking how reassuringly human and sexy it was that he had love handles—not like Nate, whose waist felt like a professionally wrapped gift, all tight and impersonal.

  That was the last real thought I had, because as he moved up inside me, my head went as empty as the walls of his apartment.

  At some point, I opened my eyes and watched his face. It looked so good up close—not bloated or babyish or wide angle, like faces up close usually did. Beautiful.

  An electric sensation shot up my spinal column and I cried out, I actually screamed, before the motion sped up and he groaned and shuddered and finally collapsed on top of me.

  I thought, That’s the second time he’s made me scream.

  “I hope no one called the cops,” he said, and we both started to laugh.

  We made love once more in his bed. I fell asleep feeling like someone who’d eaten a gourmet meal after subsisting on drive-through for years.

  When I woke up the next morning with Jake sniffing my face and dull sunlight trickling through the one bedroom window, it took me several seconds to remember where I was, until I saw Krull’s dark hair on the pillow next to mine. His clock radio went off as if on cue. Then he mumbled something that sounded like “branch” and hit the snooze button.

  It was six-thirty. I knew I had to get up, put my clothes on, call in sick at Sunny Side, but I didn’t want to move. I felt vaguely depressed that Krull’s arms hadn’t been around me when I’d awakened. We’d fallen asleep curled into each other’s bodies. Exactly when had he rolled over and turned his back?

  I watched Jake climb onto Krull’s pillow, then pat him dully but persistently on the back of the head. “Stupid cat.” The detective definitely wasn’t a morning person.

  He stretched, rolled over onto his back and, to my surprise, smiled. He grabbed my hand and placed it flat across his forehead. “You’ve sapped me for the day,” he said. “I’m no good.”

  I didn’t reply, just leaned over and kissed him on the mouth.

  “Well, maybe I’m good for one thing.” He pushed Jake to the floor and pulled me on top of him.

  Seconds later, the clock radio went off again. I felt him freeze beneath me and I groaned. “Hit the button.”

  But Krull didn’t move.

  I would’ve reached over and turned the radio off myself, if the news announcer hadn’t been reporting the discovery of another child’s body. This time it was an eight-year-old girl who had been found in a footlocker left alongside a row of garbage cans just a few blocks from my apartment. Like Sarah Grace Flannigan, she had been strangled. No mention was made of her eyes.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, as Krull pulled on his worn khakis.

  “You were keyed up. I didn’t think it would do you any good to hear we’d found another kid.”

  “Another strangled kid. With . . . something done to the eyes.”

  “Yes.” He buttoned up a white shirt, selected a burgundy tie with wide, mustard-colored stripes. “I was planning on telling you eventually.”

  “Sure you were.”

  “I figured, after we’d had a beer, relaxed a little . . . But, um . . . you know, other things took precedence. I didn’t think you were going to seduce me.”

  I felt an awful burn in my chest—a hard question, needing to be asked.

  “What?” said Krull.

  “He killed the girl in the footlocker because of me, didn’t he? If he hadn’t seen me at the river—”

  “No,” Krull said. “He killed Graham two years ago, and then for some reason he started again with Sarah Flannigan. The same thing that made him kill Sarah—that was what made him kill the footlocker girl. Not you.” His words were quick and defensive. And they had the sound of having been said—or thought—before.

  Krull unlocked his bedstand drawer, pulled out a gun and a shoulder holster and put them on. After he’d covered it all up with a polyester maroon sport coat, he turned around and faced me. “You know how to use a gun?” he said.

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m going to show you later. Don’t leave. There’s coffee in the kitchen and food. I’ll be back really soon. I just have to pick up a car and check a few things out.” From the blazer he’d worn the previous night, Krull removed the e-mail I’d given him and jammed it into a briefcase.

  “Can’t I do anything? Can’t I come with you?”

  “Just try and relax. Spend some time with Jake. Watch TV.”

  “But not the news, right?”

  “The press always gets things wrong. That’s why I let Art deal with them. He’s got a better sense of humor about it than I do.”

  He paused for a moment and smiled at me. “You know, you look really good in my bed.” His eyes glittered and I wanted to say: Please don’t go. Just stay here and I’ll stay here and neither one of us will ever leave and Jake will be happy and I’ll be happy and I’ll never steal your furniture I promise.

  But I didn’t. I just winked at him. “Someday I’m going to help you pick out some new clothes,” I said.

  Jake’s bowl was empty, so I found his dry food in one of the kitchen cupboards and filled it up. As soon as the cat heard the faint creak of the cupboard door, he came clambering into the room, his paws thudding on the wood floors. Jake’s step was unusually heavy, even for an animal of his size. If Elmira had been Krull’s downstairs neighbor, she would have already sued both him and the cat.

  Jake buried his head in his bowl, tearing at his dry food enthusiastically like a dog, without looking up. “You do like your breakfast, don’t you, big guy?” I freshened up his water bowl and placed it next to him. “Don’t forget to breathe, okay?”

  I watched him polish off the contents of his food bowl, then lap at his water noisily. He was a weird cat. There was nothing even remotely feline about him.

  I wandered back into Krull’s bedroom. Being alone in here wasn’t so bad. I had an urge to open up his closet, bury my face in all of his awful suits.

  I was wearing the top sheet, which I’d wrapped around my naked body like a toga. I figured I should put my clothes back on and make the bed—at least it would be something to do. I didn’t feel like listening to the TV or the radio, didn’t want any contact with the world outside. Contact with the bed, on the other hand, I could handle.

  Just after I unfastened the toga and let it drop to the floor, the phone rang. I smiled. Krull had probably just arrived at work, and his timing was impeccable. “Hi.”

 
A voice floated back—a thin whisper, barely audible. “Samantha.”

  “John? Why are you whispering?”

  “It isn’t John.” A small, bitter laugh, with no tone behind it, just air.

  I gritted my teeth and said nothing.

  “Schoolteacher Samantha . . . They’re best when they’re little.”

  “Who the fuck is this?” Of course I knew who it was. By now I knew.

  “More little corpses. Then little you.” The whisper was toneless, genderless, but strong, like an icy wind.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Have you ever touched a corpse’s skin? It’s cold and stiff. Perfect.”

  “I said—”

  “Soon you’ll feel like that. Touch your face.”

  I let the receiver drop back into the cradle, put my clothes on fast, then pulled Krull’s blanket around me. Suddenly, my whole body felt deeply, painfully cold.

  When Krull showed up about half an hour later, I hadn’t moved from the floor. I heard his voice in the kitchen. “Where are you, the bedroom?” But I couldn’t answer.

  The minute he walked in, and asked, “What’s wrong?” I jumped up and threw my arms around him.

  “What happened?”

  I took a deep breath and told him about the phone call.

  “Right after I left?” he asked.

  “About ten minutes. I thought it was you, so I picked it up.”

  “Did anyone call after that?”

  “No . . . No one. I’ve been . . . sitting on the floor.”

  He picked up the phone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “I’m going to dial star sixty-nine. He was probably calling from a blocked cell or a pay phone nearby, since he seemed to know you were alone. But who knows? It’s worth a shot.”

  I watched him tap in the digits, watched him listen as the recorded voice listed the origin of the last received call. Slowly, his face went white.

  “What is it?” I asked.