The Next

by Rafe Haze

  I could not imagine Palmer to be a troublemaker with his fists balled and his lip bloodied.

  Therefore…

  Since Palmer would volunteer no more, I pursued no more.

  “I just wanted a garden,” he mumbled meekly. He laughed at himself again. “But the dead men had families, and the families had questions about why they weren’t informed three months sooner that their husbands and sons were missing. Graves got lucky—the misinformation was blamed on a clerical error. But all the same we were let go. The three of us were discharged. Honorably, but…eh…quietly.”

  Palmer seemed lost in his thoughts, which gave me an opportunity to add to the ingredients of Grandfather and Graves’ interactions the idea that Grandfather owed Graves his life. Ultimately, it made little difference if Grandfather liked, trusted, or enjoyed Graves as a person; he was beholden to him. Grandfather owed his very heartbeat to his superior, who lived in the trailer right next to his.

  I heard Palmer swig the last of his drink and concluded, “So, have you got your answer?”

  “Was it worth it? Conspiring with Graves and my Grandfather?”

  “The Mark 4’s were never dropped.”

  In spite of his chuckle, it was the most wry his tone had yet been.

  Unmooring himself from the threshold of the door, the Old Black Man with the White Mustache approached the Little Old Man, raised his right hand and put it briefly on the Little Old Man’s right shoulder. He held it there and smiled briefly. The salutation wasn’t particularly joyful, nor was it routine. The brief motion carried a sadness and finality, sounding the final bar of a long cadence of transactions over the years. Perhaps all their lives. I was hesitant to even use the word friendship. Regard…certainly regard for each other over the years for merely being alive. For merely being familiar with the minute participation in each other’s lives decade after decade. For all the years of brief transactions that added up to some unspoken but significant value, climaxing in the resting of the black man’s hand on the Little Old Man’s thin shoulder, and the Little Old Man allowing the contact to remain for two seconds longer than necessary.

  My throat tightened. I was witnessing the bittersweet goodbye between two men who barely knew each other yet had sustained their relationship longer than anyone I’d known. I knew I’d built no such connection with anyone in my life. Not one single person. Not even Marzoli would return my call. Who would rest his hand on my shoulder if I said goodbye for the last time? Who regarded me?

  Johanna needed my junk to get pregnant. Rebecca needed my next song to sell. New York Fucking City needed me to sell songs to pay taxes. But the Black Man with the White Mustache needed almost nothing from the Little Old Man aside from chump change taken from a Chock Full o’ Nuts can once a month. Yet still he regarded him.

  This…this…was this the connection Grandfather had with Graves. Distant, respectful, enduring, and somehow necessary for their survival. A link on which to anchor their lives.

  The Old Black Man with the white mustache departed, closing the door behind him gently. For the last time.

  “What happened to Graves?” I asked.

  There was a long silence.

  “W’dya mean?”

  I didn’t understand why that was a complicated question. Did he wind up in jail? Have a heart attack? Was he run over fixing his tire on Highway 50? What did Palmer mean w’dya mean?

  My lack of response seemed to deepen Palmer’s concern.

  “Son, d’ya not know what happened?”

  “Am I supposed to?”

  Palmer remained quiet. This was exasperating. I’d had enough cryptic conversation with one Puerto Rican Sicilian let alone this hick from asscrack California.

  Suddenly it dawned on me why Palmer’s hesitancy was completely substantiated. What memory lodged in my brain could I not drum up? What had I buried?

  I stuttered, “I…can’t…there’s nothing…I can’t remember…anything…”

  “Huh.”

  That was his only response. No deep launching into the exploration of psychosis. No forthcoming volunteering of information. Just a brief, trailer park “huh.”

  Fan-fucking-tastic.

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “I’m thinkin’…eh…you forgettin’ might be good.”

  “I’m not thinkin’ that.”

  “Son…” he began with a tone of resolution, taking a swig of what sounded like the entire drink he’d poured and placing it on the table. “I wish I could I forget too.”

  All at once it occurred to me that Palmer had participated in whatever needed to be forgotten. That my request for him to expound was asking him to account for his own guilt, or neglect, or shame. That a trailer park edging a man-made pond in a pocket of the foothills of the Sierra Mountains would provide its inhabitants with little to nothing to do but think and brood. There’d be little but evening frog croaking and cricket stridulation to draw you away from lugubrious thoughts and hand wringing regret. My request for him to refresh those nightmares was an unfair knife-twisting and would naturally encounter resistance, even from a warm, tolerant soul like Palmer. If anyone could relate to obsessive thoughts imprisoned in isolation, I could.

  “Son,” he began, “I want to ask you something…”

  I knew he was evading the question, but I chomped down on my impulses.

  “You…eh…never asked me how your brother died. D’ya wanna know?”

  I closed my eyes, hesitating. “I don’t know.”

  Palmer’s message to me was very clear. If my psyche could barely handle the image of my brother’s death, it’d be overloaded by the image of whatever the fuck happened to Graves…and perhaps others involved. He was asking me to trust him on this. He was asking me to trust that his understanding of what I should and should not know was more innately wise.

  Bullshit! Since when was less information better for someone ultimately than more information? I live in fucking New York City! Too much is never enough!

  But then…

  What was my resistance to obtaining the details of Paul’s last days?

  Certainly I was beyond the denial stage that any concrete fact would crack.

  Right?

  In the pause I began to conjure up the myriad methods in which a person ends himself—rope, pills, blade, impact, poison. Wouldn’t isolating one nightmarish image of Paul offing himself condemn me to obsessively recreating the event in my gloomy cave? Was suicide an attempt at freedom or punishment of those left behind? Was freedom so entirely necessary? Was punishment so entirely necessary? Had I been a more present and attentive older brother, would I have been able to offer him a key to a different kind of freedom? Give a man a life sentence in a cell and a photo of a beach and a cup of sand and you’ve set up a recipe for a downward spiral of obsession and madness. The details of Paul’s last breaths would send me into a freefall to which there’d be only one kind of landing.

  Palmer continued, “I don’t suppose knowing would change the fact. So…”

  He trailed off to a silence that needed no bookending.

  If we had anything in common, it was being comfortable with silence between two people.

  I appreciated Palmer’s pragmatism. When we lived with Grandfather, I’d developed an impression the folks in his world had simplified reactions to complicated problems. Like a fruit syrup reduction—evaporate the whole complex mess over a hot flame until you’re left with something less voluminous and far more palatable. Swallow it with a chaser of whiskey and you’re good to go. No brooding. No psychosis. No prolonging. What a silly complicated freak he must think me to be! And yet, I respected his respect for whatever the fuck process I had to go through. And he was patient. And he was compassionate. And he called this forty-year-old child son.

  “It’s late over there,” I offered. “I appreciate…”

  “Eh…anytime.”

  He hesitantly said goodnight, and we hung up. I did not know when I’d talk to him next. I
did not know if I’d ever talk to him again.

  A low rumble of an approaching ancient sixteen-wheeler began to crescendo down our block. Its inappropriate rough roar bounced off our shadowed courtyard walls and into the dim apartments.

  Mrs. Perfect held the tumbler of bourbon against her cheek and slid the thick cool smooth glass down her skin to her neck, staring into the drain of the sink. She placed the tumbler in the sink and turned toward the living room where she lay down on the couch, pulling a thick copper-colored quilt over her. Was she avoiding her husband? Or merely the bedroom?

  The broad-shouldered man emerged from the Princess’s bathroom after having thoroughly inspected her medicine cabinet for an inordinately long time. So long, in fact, that the Princess had begun to pace and wring her hands. She froze apprehensively as he approached her. He paused before the Princess, and, rather than bending forward for at least a peck on her cheek, he put his hand out. He made no attempt to go for second base. Didn’t appear to even be a ballgame anymore. The Princess regarded the officious salutation and cupped the top ridge of his hand gently. She bravely maintained a warm smile through the brief up-and-downs. Whatever he discovered in her medicine cabinet put a double bar on tonight’s date, with no da capo. The gentleman departed. She closed the door. Her eyes watered and her face reddened as she collapsed onto her bed, wrinkling the white quilt in her delicate, white, clenched fists.

  The Little Old Man remained sitting on his maroon sheet at the edge of his bed in front of the painting propped up against the television. His expression was tense, emotional, and focused. A profound aura surrounded him, leaking its glow onto the hedges and patio cement towards the rest of us.

  The ancient sixteen-wheeler shifted gears with harsh metallic scrapes and slowed to halt somewhere toward the end of the block. The low, echoing, rough rumble died a slow diminuendo to silence, finally leaving our courtyard in peace.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mr. Layworth emerged from the walk-in closet holding a measuring tape, retracting more than seven feet of its yellow length with a snap. He jotted some measurement on a piece of paper, then dialed a number he read off his laptop screen. He began a conversation with the listener about the measurements.

  His body language exuded impatience and irritation. Clearly he was being required to repeat himself and clarify his requests. Apparently the person to whom he was speaking couldn’t give a shit about whatever the King needed, and the King really needed this person to give a shit.

  Rich, educated, white folks have the carpet rolled out for them in almost every aspect of life, so they inevitably lose their aptitude for adapting to landscapes in which the natives could give a flying fuck about their needs and their entitlements. Plumbers. Union card bearing Comcast technicians. Chilangos from Mexico City. Puerto Rican nail salon girls. Airport security screeners. And added to that list, it seemed, was whomever Mr. Layworth was presently talking to. Therefore, I could only assume the King was addressing the kind of lowly nincompoop blue-collar peasant he’d ordinarily ask his subordinates to interact with. Conclusion: if the King himself was undertaking this task, it was urgent but not work-related. I could not for the life of me conclude any more that, or narrow down what it was.

  Regardless, it was delicious to see the King get his gilded panties in a wad over this conversation. He showed his escalating irritation in the reddening of his cheeks and forehead and the clenching of his fist. His need was strong enough that he opted to remain as vocally cool as possible; otherwise he’d hit the resolute brick wall of a dial tone.

  What did he so desperately need done with these measurements?

  There’d been the usual activity from the Layworth’s one would expect on a Monday morning as they ushered the children out the door to school with all the contained tranquility of expelling two Tasmanian devils from the New York Public Library. In the midst of the bowls of Cheerios, the brushing of little teeth with little glittery Disney toothbrushes, and tying of little shoelaces on little bling-bling high-tops, the cleaner arrived with her placid smile of barely buried Dominican disdain that I knew meant: “Get your spoilt bratty offspring out of my way so I can scrub your gigantic Manhattan apartment in peace.”

  In her haste to get the hell out of their apartment, Mrs. Layworth simply rubbed her armpits with deodorant, splashed water on her face, spritzed some perfume on her neck, threw on a loose black silk dress, grabbed her heavy navy pea coat and leather tote bag, and dashed out the door to work without even a farewell peck to her husband.

  The cleaning lady first attacked the kitchen, then moved on to the living room, and tackled the children’s bedrooms. I watched her listlessly gather clothing to be washed then Windex all the white and espresso brown surfaces. I watched her wrestle the vacuum cleaner up and down the stairs. She spit on a spot on a mirror in the entry hall and wiped it clean with the sleeve of her shirt. Then she moved towards the master bedroom.

  Footsteps…

  I heard soft footsteps above me.

  What the hell!?

  Only two people had keys to Ruben’s apartment that I was aware of, and one of them was in the pocket of a body hidden in the apartment across the courtyard.

  Unless he was alive!

  I dialed Marzoli’s phone number.

  I could hear it ring above me faintly through the ceiling.

  On one hand, I was relieved my hypothesis of Ruben’s murder remained intact. On the other hand, I felt guilty for hoping Ruben remained dead to keep my hypothesis intact. But more importantly…

  The Puerto Rican Sicilian asshole was ignoring my call!

  It’s one thing for Marzoli to get angry at me, it’s another thing for him to remain angry. And it’s one thing for him to remain angry with me across town, but how dare he remain angry right above my ceiling?

  I ended the call and resisted the urge to shatter my cell phone against the wall. What exactly had I done to Marzoli to piss him off so much? If he was motivated to investigate Ruben’s murder enough to use me for my apartment’s location across from a suspect, what the fuck did he care if I suggested bitchily for him to use the apartment above me? Why would he be emotionally invested in my apartment? I didn’t understand, nor would I as long as the nitwit ignored my fucking phone calls.

  I heard his footsteps move across the wood floor to the window and settle.

  He was on top of me, spying on Mr. Layworth just as I was.

  When Mr. Layworth finally ended talking to whoever had frustrated him so entirely, he crumpled the piece of paper with the measurements and threw it with anger into the wicker garbage basket next to the bed. He removed his silk maroon pajama top in preparation for a shower, revealing his firm, hairy chest and the muscularity of his shoulders and arms. His red nipples peeked out from underneath a swirling mat of dark hair. My mouth moistened. Allowing myself to hanker for man-hunk was still so novel I couldn’t help digging the corner of my desk underneath under my balls and squeezing my thighs together. The hard wood wedged into my crack. I pressed my body weight down onto it.

  Yes, he was a murderer. Yes, I was an opportunist.

  I wondered if Marzoli above me had a similar visceral reaction to spying on the same rippled piece of meat across the courtyard.

  Or was it just me?

  Layworth dropped his matching pajama bottoms sloppily to the floor, revealing his tight briefs, hugging his tightly bundled buttocks and package atop his solid, hairy, thighs. As I ogled the fucker, it occurred to me that the mofo hadn’t been to the gym since my curtains opened a couple of days ago. His was a body that obviously required pumping for at least an hour every day in order to maintain its size, tone, and definition. To refrain from the gym for this many days on the weekend required quite a distraction, like, for instance, six feet of rigor mortis. Or something.

  Why were they waiting to remove the body? More importantly, how does an ordinary married couple in the heart of New York City remove a body inconspicuously at all? No couple with children woul
d voluntarily keep a dead body in their flat for longer than necessary. Waiting until Monday had to indicate something about the method of the removal of the body. But what? Is that why Marzoli had returned? To find out the answer to that question?

  Layworth removed his briefs as he disappeared into the bathroom.

  The cleaning lady entered the master bedroom, hauling the obnoxiously heavy vacuum cleaner. Steam was coming out of the bathroom window as she began to vacuum the floor. After covering all four corners, she used the hose to hoover underneath the bed. The hose pushed something from under the bed into view. She bent down and picked up a pair of Nike sneakers.

  I bet the gym was where Layworth released any and all of his non-hetero urges. I imagined the stir he caused by entering the steam room with his pumped, hairy, tanned, imposing massiveness and allowing his towel to fall loosely to his side as he took his place next to some salivating Chelsea queen. The hardening, the gripping, the jacking, the coming, the cleanup, the covering, the exit to the shower. Where else would a closeted family man in Manhattan find his man-on-man mauling? Aside from the intern he harasses and then loses his job over? Aside from the neighbor he invites over and slaughters?

  Mr. Layworth must be restlessly pent up having not been to the gym and, even more maddening, not gotten off since his last thwarted attempt with Ruben several nights ago.

  The cleaner approached the walk-in closet with the sneakers.

  As she placed her hand on the knob and opened it slightly, Mr. Layworth quickly darted out of the bathroom, covering his dripping man meat with a large white fluffy towel. In rather pathetic Spanglish sign-language, he indicated she should not bother with the closet. He closed the closet door firmly. The cleaning lady acquiesced in confusion and began rolling up the vacuum’s electric cord. Although she was slightly irritated, I watched her secretly eye the hairy, dripping, towel-wrapped piece of hot Bod-B-Q back into the bathroom. She shook her head, and crossed her heart in rapid Catholic penance before exiting out the bedroom.