The Next

by Rafe Haze

  “I’m hanging up now. You and Johanna should come over sometime.”

  “I despise you, and I’m fucking men now.”

  “Good. I hope they’re paying you for it. You need the money. Why don’t you write some country songs for a change?”

  What sucks about cell phones is you can’t slam the receiver down. I tapped the “end” button.

  There was blood smeared all over my phone now.

  I had no Band-Aids so I ran my hand under hot water. When I stopped the water, the bright red continued to ooze from the slivered skin. I could blot it with a paper towel. I could try to get the blood to clot. Or…

  I saw movement under a plate. A baby roach emerged and crawled to the end of a serrated knife blade.

  Could I not just continue to bleed? Bleed until there was nothing more to come out? Could I not speed up the bloodletting? To end the gnawing self-pity? To end the self-hatred because I was one hundred percent aware I was indulging in gnawing self-pity? To stop the sabotage of random, menacing, purposeless attacks of a clawing, angry memory? To stop the anxiety that derives from never knowing why, when, and how I would be attacked? To stop the miserable pining for a life I wasn’t even sure I wanted? To stop pining for the people that would give me the life I wasn’t even sure I wanted?

  Just to stop.

  My phone beeped.

  I’d received a text.

  Please…Marzoli…please…

  Even a “fuck you” from him would give my emotions something to chew on. Something to look forward to resolving. Something to look forward to not resolving.

  But, no. Just an announcement from Verizon that my bill was ready to be viewed online. Apparently, the money I’d given Mrs. Abraham succeeded in paying only the previous months’ overdue bills, but not the most recent.

  Lovely.

  Life was lovely.

  American fucking Idol. Seventh or eighth fucking runner up. Fuck.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I felt a cold hand on my arm. I was being silently and subtlety jostled awake. I slit opened my eyes. Paul stared past me to the other side of the room with fear. I turned over to follow his line of sight. The room was as dark and as hot as fresh asphalt. The front door was open, but only by a centimeter. The moonlight gleamed like the edge of long silver sword in the crack of the door. I immediately felt the cold pierce of fear Paul was feeling. The door had been completely closed when we got into bed.

  We stared for a full minute, frozen in position. Then, ever so slightly, the sliver of moonlight got an inch wider. Then stopped. Whatever was pushing it open was deliberately and strategically nearing us with the prowess of a hunting panther.

  Paul muffled his mouth with the pillow.

  Then we saw it.

  The Eye.

  The shadowed black socket, prying through the inch-wide sliver of moonlight into our privacy…

  “Go away!” I screamed aloud and sat up in a sweat.

  It was four in the morning. I could not tell if I had screamed aloud or only in my dream. I ripped off my damp shirt and walked to the window for some cool air. I took a deep breath. The air was moist and frigid, like it needed to dump a load of snow before the sun came up.

  The night was actively bridging the calm Sunday evening to a hectic Monday morning. At first glance little motion appeared in the courtyard, but looking closer I could see those in the courtyard resistant to the crossing, those unaware, and those who’d already traversed.

  The Princess was just getting home. She was wearing a costly-looking silver-blue dress with embroidered black birds flaring out glamorously below her hips. Her long mane was conditioned to a smooth shine. She was turned toward the door, finishing the last of a conversation with a dark-haired, broad-shouldered gentleman in a dark blue suit with an expensive sheen. The gentleman was insisting on another kiss. Possibly more. Although the door was open, the Princess used the solidity of it to reinforce to the gentleman that he would not gain any further access to her magical kingdom.

  He asked her a question, to which she nodded her head and opened the door wider. He walked past her bed to the bathroom. Ahh. What lady would decline a gentleman’s last minute request to jet a piss before being sent out into the winter to hail a cab at four in the morning?

  The gentleman switched on the bathroom light and closed the door. Although windowed bathrooms are rather rare in New York City, the Princess and the Perfects’ building privileged its tenants with tiny two-foot by three-foot windows in its bathrooms. I could see the Princess’ sink and beveled mirrored medicine cabinet.

  After taking a leak, the broad-shouldered man zipped up and washed his hands. Then, boldly, he opened the medicine cabinet and began reading the labels on all the curious-looking pill bottles. The bastard was doing what any male driven to get humpalumpa’d with a practical stranger on a first date would do: check to see what ails the owner of the cavity he wants to penetrate. Herpes? HIV? Bacterial meningitis? Antidepressants? Anti-psychotic pills? The pill? What dangers lie within the vessel of the luminous L’Oreal hair and the fluid Grace Kelly frock?

  The light flashed on in the apartment to the left.

  Schlongzilla entered his apartment, threw his ribbed red and army green beanie cap onto his bed, and placed his collapsible massage table in the corner against the wall. Like a theater curtain, he lifted his thin draping Hugo Boss sweater over his head. Lights spotlighted a dark rippled abdomen, deep striations on either side of the spine, and shoulders the size of coconuts stretching from one side of the stage to the other. He was so perfectly crafted, he deserved to be slivered into thin cold cuts, plated on a silver tray, and passed out with crudités to every woman in Manhattan needing a little black Brazilian protein.

  He peeled his furry gunmetal grey sweats down to his ankles, no underwear in sight. The knob at the end of his thick, fleshy rope swung like Tarzan down to his knee and picked up Jane at the bottom. It was half-chubbed and flushed with red as if he’d just gotten off only recently. Of course. That was a far more believable explanation than a legitimate massage scheduled at four in the morning. Sweat pants, after all, was a hustler’s ideal uniform—the perfect blend of comfort, rugged masculinity, feminine softness, affordability, subtle but clear delineation of the product, accessibility, and, most importantly, machine-washable. Who am I to judge the serpentine son-of-a-bitch? If I had an anaconda for a pet, I’d cash in on every single inch too.

  To his right, on the other side of the brick wall, Mrs. Perfect spirited into view at the kitchen sink. Soft light filtered through the hanging copper pots and pooled around the marble island like an enchanted glen in a shadowed wood. But the lady who stood at the sink was anything but a Disney ingénue. She poured a bottle of bourbon into a diamond beveled crystal tumbler, pressing the knotted belt of her silk peach bathrobe against the sink to keep her body steady and upright. Heavy darkened bags puffed out under her eye sockets. Her hair was stringy and Medusaed in all directions like she’d just been attacked by a wet, oily, electrical storm. Her lips were pursed tightly as if her lips were stapled shut, but her jaws strained to expel a scream. Mrs. Perfect downed the tumbler of bourbon in one gulp. Fill ’er up.

  There was a subtle change of the courtyard lighting, as if someone had taken a flash with a very dim cameral bulb. But it wasn’t a camera at all. I lifted the pillow blocking the bottom right portion of my view. Far below Mrs. Perfect, at ground level and to the right, the Little Old Man had switched off his television. His set was decades old, miraculously still functional, with color tubes that fluctuated with sudden bursts of light when switched on or off or when changing the channel. With great effort, the Little Old Man slowly pushed his body upright, propping himself up with his thin arms. He stared off with agitation into the black screen, then let his eyes drift up to the ceiling corner, then to the kitchenette, then across to the window. What was he registering? Or searching for? Or was he merely restless at four in the morning?

  Old men tend to sleep less
, true, but I’d never seen his eyes as aware and alert as they were now. It could be due to the fact that his little plastic baggie was empty. He could not, therefore, drift asleep in a pot-haze dreamscape. That might account for his anxiousness; his body’s immediate sludginess at enforced detoxification. Or was something else making him restless? The only alteration in his life, from what I observed, was the last visit from the Old Black Man with the White Moustache. Could that be it? What did he give him all his money for?

  He let his eyes drift up the buildings across the courtyard. Although he was staring into a void, for I doubted his eyesight could’ve been clear enough to traverse the courtyard, his gaze settled in the direction of my living room. I saw with even greater clarity how troubled his mind was. How his emotions sabotaged his peace. His eyes revealed how badly he was losing some battle…

  Graves...Graves…fuck…

  His anguished, dark eyes stared through the window into our trailer living room at least three times a week that summer. Perhaps more. I grew weary of sleepless nights, wondering when that old man’s gaunt face would appear in the bottom corner of the window, his laser-focused, tortured eyes staring at Paul and me. So I found it easier to pretend it wasn’t happening just to get some sleep. But even with that tactic, when I’d have my face buried in the pillow, I’d suddenly feel the hot pressure of his eyes on my skin. Like a molten branding rod nearing my hide inch by inch in silence. My heart would start pounding. I’d turn over and inevitably Graves would be eyeing me. I’d muffle a scream with the sheet. After several weeks, I’d charitably stopped waking Paul up when the horror would appear at the window.

  I wanted more than anything to close the curtain, but that was the only one Grandfather kept open…pointedly. I couldn’t defy him, even if I didn’t understand why. I’d defied Grandfather before and found his punishment worse than any smack across the face that Dad would have lovingly administered. Infinitely more punishing. But why that curtain? The only one facing Graves’ living room and kitchen? The one curtain in which every single time Graves washed the dishes or poured himself a glass of water, he’d have to look into our kitchen and living room?

  Why?

  I found my hand reaching for my iPhone and fishing through the call log.

  I selected Palmer’s number.

  After five rings, a soft tired voice answered, “Hello?”

  “Who is Graves?”

  “Uhh…What d’ya mean?”

  “Who was Graves to my Grandfather?”

  When he hesitated, I knew he was not only registering my identity, but also my motivation behind that question.

  He asked, “D’ya know what time it is?”

  I looked at the clock. It was one in the morning in Placerville, California. I guess that’s late for the Trailer Park set.

  “I can call back,” I said.

  “It’s gotta be eatin’ at you if you’re up at this hour thinkin’ about whatever it is. Let me…umm…hold on.”

  His receiver clicked as he placed on the nightstand. I heard the hollow thudding of footsteps on the carpet of a thin trailer floor.

  Thum. Thum. Thum.

  I heard him unscrewing a bottle and pouring something into a glass. It sounded like it was only a couple ounces of whatever it was. Whiskey? If a conversation with me prompted the consumption of hard liquor, there was a lot more to the narrative surrounding Palmer, Graves, and Grandfather than I anticipated. Not happy rosy stuff.

  He trod back toward the receiver.

  Thum. Thum. Thum.

  From out of nowhere, Grandfather approached the bedroom down the hall.

  Thum. Thum. Thum.

  Our faces turned white.

  Along with our bodies, our proclivity to get into mischief had also been transplanted to the bumfuck boonies of the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. We’d snuck into grandfather’s bedroom while he was fixing the carburetor on the Firebird in his gravel driveway.

  Grandfather seemed to be obsessed with Firebirds. He had three in his driveway and had given two to my father. They were neither stylish nor easy to maintain, but light blue, maroon, silver, black, and white Firebirds seemed inextricably linked to every family event and filled every family garage.

  Paul and I came to understand that the gravel on the driveway was placed there for very specific purposes. It prevented the mud from forming after a rain, sludging up the driveway and making it too slick for the Firebird’s tires to get traction. It soaked up the leaks from the ever-dripping gas-guzzlers. But most importantly, the crunching sound on the gravel warned my grandfather when anyone was approaching his front door, either by foot or by vehicle.

  Paul and I figured that the crunching my Grandfather made as he circled the engine with his tools served perfectly as a bell around his neck, and thus it would be the best time to explore this strange new trailer.

  The closet was locked as always. Were the rifles the only things he had locked up in there? We’d never know unless we looked for ourselves. The keys were draped on Grandfather’s belt buckle, but he had to have a spare key. Somewhere…

  Since the bedroom had no lock, we entered. We saw an unadorned, beige set of wooden drawers on the wall opposite the bed. The top drawer contained eight pressed and folded white undershirts. The light yellowing under the armpits indicated he’d not purchased new shirts in a long time, and these lasted miraculously through the years by attentive care and judicious use.

  The drawers underneath each contained meticulously folded or rolled up sets of identical clothing: white generic underwear, black calf-high socks, navy blue cardigans, and black knit sweaters.

  No key.

  We opened the plain wooden wardrobe bureau on the opposite wall next to the door. Grandfather’s daily uniform of short sleeve button-down shirts with pockets and conservative khaki pants hung with obsessive neatness on wire hangers. Ten of each in the exact same colors and styles spaced exactly one inch from each other on the bar.

  To the very right hung an old army green uniform. Though it was crisp and scrubbed clean, the sleeves remained slightly blackened from mud, and, for all we knew, worse. Curious golden metal emblems were pinned above the jacket pocket, their detail shining. I pressed my fingers against their shine as if the gold would somehow rub off onto my skin. I ran my hand down the wool and imagined my grandfather as a young, muscular, toned man filling it out proudly, before he cemented that rigid facial expression he would wear for the rest of his life.

  On the floor of the bureau was one pair of oxfords, one pair of loafers, and one pair of rubber calf-high boots. We put our hands in the three pairs of shoes and burrowed to the toes.

  During Dad’s state-mandated attempt to quit drinking after he’d parked his twilight blue Firebird at the bottom of Mr. and Mrs. Morrow’s swimming pool next door after a sudden realization he’d been driving for the last half mile on the neglected fire road above our houses, we found two small silver flasks of whiskey buried in Dad’s Oxfords. Thinking we’d encountered perhaps the only time ever to pull one over on Dad without repercussions, Paul and I replaced the whiskey in the flasks with apple vinegar and re-hid them in the shoes.

  As it turned out there were repercussions. He blamed Mom.

  That evening after a particularly wall-rattling argument, Dad tightly triple-knotted Mom’s long hair around the radiator pipes in the bedroom. It was a cold winter, and she had no scissors within arm’s reach. Dad calmly closed the door and shooed us downstairs to play in our room. But no Trucker-Ten-To-Rubber-Duckie di-cast metal hotrod could engage us. Above us we could hear Mom’s screams, tearing her hair out lock by lock before her scalp scalded any more. To drown out the sounds we read our favorite passages from Valley of Adventure to each other for the twentieth time as loudly and as deliberately as we could. If we couldn’t help Mom, we at least could give her the gift of pretending we weren’t aware of her torture.

  Inadvertently Paul and I had initiated the final act of a battle we’d never known could ever end,
for when Mom’s hair grew back she would balance the terror of that night by forcing us to witness an epic act of justice.

  However, no such secret could be found in Grandfather’s loafers.

  Then Paul noticed the nightstand next to the bed. He jabbed me with his elbow. We opened the small drawer under the lip of the top. Beneath the white handkerchief, we found a handgun, black and gleaming, square-barreled and riveted with minimal stylization.

  Paul picked it up and examined it, felt the cool metal, felt the weightiness, felt the power, and then handed it to me. Although we were energetic game-playing kids, we’d been raised in an environment too explosive to behave recklessly. We did not point it at each other. We did not wrap our fingers around the trigger and tempt fate by only slightly pressing against it. We simply examined it, wide-eyed and cautious, engaging our imaginations.

  We imagined what it’d be like to wake up in the middle of the night and sense the presence of an intruder, then reach into the drawer and whip it into the face of the night. Although our education with rifles thus far had been stimulating, the immediacy of a handgun elicited an entirely different kind of excitement. Rifles were for hunting, requiring planning, forethought, relaxation, measured muscular bracing, and patience. Handguns were for defense, and they implied urgency, danger, and, of course, the death of humans. We felt its acute potential for harm, fear, and empowerment. We felt its strength.

  Thum. Thum. Thum.

  How had we not heard the crunching of the gravel cease and the screen door open? Had Grandfather snuck in on purpose? Had he suspected and anticipated all along that the minute he turned his back, we’d try to sneak into his bedroom or closet?

  We had no place and no time to hide. We were fucking dead meat and about to be pounded tender.

  Paul looked at me with that same look of helplessness he’d given me when we were stuck in the tree above Jessie and the Blonde Boy, expecting my cue to act. But I had nothing to cue him to do. I tossed the gun back into the drawer and closed it. The plunk of the metal on wood and the scraping of the wood drawer reverberated around the room and down the hall.