The Next

by Rafe Haze

  My eyes were streaming with tears. As I wiped them away, Marzoli remained hovered above me, bathing my soul like warm sunlight on a frosty morning. My laughter stumbled its way to a slow halt.

  “Normally,” he said, “I’d tell uptight, depressed sons-of-bitches like you all you really need is a month of Outward Bound in Australia. Snakes and starvation and shit. But you…god almighty…you needed that.”

  His full lips glistened. I felt mine pulling towards them like a tidal wave toward a pink shore. He lowered his head just an inch toward mine.

  Then another inch…

  A cold breeze suddenly gushed through the window, and the curtains whipped like a flag. His eyes became sterner. The heaviness of a new moment rolled over him. He reversed the slow fall of his lips toward mine, distancing himself an inch.

  What suddenly repelled him? Was it me? Was it my body? Come back! Let the fucking wind blow!

  Marzoli pushed himself upright with a strong thrust and walked to the window. He closed it with a clunk. He peered out the crack in the curtain to the courtyard.

  It had been the perfect moment to kiss. The perfect one. Why did he stop?

  “It won’t be long,” he said quietly, “before a real, sanctioned investigation into Ruben’s murder begins. That girl won’t stay away from the popo for long. If they don’t assign me, they’ll discover how much protocol I’ve disregarded. I already entered a victim’s apartment without even knowing he was a victim. I contaminated a crime scene of a murder. Possibly two. This is not good. I’m in trouble. We…if you’ll help me…and I have no expectation you will…we must get more than evidence the Layworths killed Ruben. We must uncover Ruben’s body in that apartment. Catch them red handed. Go for broke. Otherwise…”

  He let out air like a deflating balloon. On the other side of that word otherwise was a whole world of struggle to move up in the world from his scrappy childhood: years of night school after twelve-hour work days, years of racial slurs by his asshole white peers, and a whole slough of abandonment crap he’d struggled to rise above his whole life. All the shit he sympathized with Nathan about. All flushed down the toilet if we didn’t take action.

  I heard his words, but I couldn’t shake this feeling that his redirect from kissing me to these ominous suppositions had something...everything…to do with me. Against me. I lay on that couch, looking at this beautiful, intelligent man, feeling like I’d just been politely rejected. An invisible boot on my rear urging me gently but firmly toward the exit door. I’d been asked to abandon a delicate, rare, and precious voyage I’d hardly set sail on.

  Worst of all, I did not understand why.

  He turned toward me briefly, but wouldn’t make eye contact.

  “Remember that letter we found in the garbage?” he began.

  “Layworth has a meeting with the Tea Party Fundamentalist Coalition in Salt Lake City on Thursday.”

  “I think it’s a safe bet he’s got until Wednesday afternoon before the kids come home from school to get rid of Ruben. Didn’t it seem like that angry phone call we watched him make was about scheduling the removal of the body?”

  At that moment, I couldn’t get myself to care a fuck.

  I’d been mistaken about his motivation to get into my apartment these last couple of days. I’d talked myself into thinking he was merely working this sucker for information via a manipulated undercurrent of sexual attraction. Yet in spite of my crap, he wanted more from me, and this attraction had been drawing him farther inside my lair since the first second he knocked on my door days ago. It was all the more wrenching to learn that, when push came to shove, I was not what he really wanted. Or I was not what he’d ever let himself really want. What the fuck else could I conclude? Why else would he have pushed away from me?

  I could feel that morbid, deflating feeling once again creep from the grimy apartment walls, across the lumpy, shadowy floor, through my bare feet, and up my legs toward my core.

  But there was a new twist on this invasion. I now had in my possession a new way of battling it. This time…this time it was not I who backed off. This time it had been Marzoli. Instinctively, I realized helping his investigation into the deaths of Nathan and Ruben was the only way to break Marzoli’s resistance to me.

  “How do you plan on uncovering the body?” I asked.

  “By getting into that damn apartment.”

  “But Layworth never leaves.”

  “Then I’ll get invited in.”

  “Into his bedroom?”

  He paused, thinking, cogs clicking their teeth into grooves. His eyes darted to the floor, to the window, then paused up at the ceiling. Finally he stared directly at me and responded to my last question with pulse-elevating conviction.

  “Yes.”

  I looked up at him blankly, then realized what the fucker was intending to do.

  He’d get invited over the way Ruben had gotten invited over. The way Nathan had gotten invited over. By being the next to put on a show for Mr. Perfect and then the next to be hailed to traverse the courtyard.

  In bullet points, it made sense. He’d not be breaking any law by uncovering a body if he were invited to enter the apartment. Marzoli had the kind of irresistible physique that could start a war. I had no doubt he had abs whose definition could be seen all the way from Staten Island. Layworth hadn’t gotten his rocks off in days, and was obviously pent up like a loaded cum cannon. There was no one in a better position to light that fuse than Marzoli.

  But all the same…holy shit!

  Marzoli gathered one of many piles of clothing on the floor in his arms and said, “We’ve got about five hours before the kids come home from school. Time to do the laundry.”

  Although I adored his infuriating, leap-frogging logic, the connection between those kids and my laundry was beyond me.

  “You start with that pile of shit on your piano,” he ordered.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “We’re opening the curtain all the way. I’m not about to be seen as a slob, you slob,” he winked with a grin and added, “Do as Miss Hannigan tells you.”

  In spite of my apprehension, I laughed.

  After all, what the fuck kind of Puerto Rican Sicilian makes an Annie reference?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Four busy, sweaty hours later I was standing in a brand-spanking new crib.

  On the way back from dropping four large trash bags full of laundry to Rosalinda at the laundromat, Marzoli picked up a bottle of wood polish. The spotless shiny piano reflected the gleaming mopped floor, the neatly placed books on the dusted bookshelves, and the litter-free desk. Every square inch of the kitchen counter was completely visible, the dishes having been washed, dried, and placed in the cupboards. The mounds of yellowed music scores were sorted in orderly fashion in drawers. No less than eight trash bags of refuse and recycling had been hauled down to the curb as I Windexed the smudges of grime and mold off the walls as best I could.

  We had to open the window again to cool the room, ripe and muggy from the heat of our bodies. The more we’d worked, the damper his polo shirt had become, sealing tighter and tighter to his form. Who knew hard work could make someone look even hotter? The more he labored, the more I realized his efforts were fueled by far more than setting the stage for his upcoming performance. Far more than an anal retentive need to cleanse his environment. His subtle glances in my direction as he tied trash bags, hoisted piles of books, and scraped hardened soda off the counter were accompanied by warm looks and toothy dimpled grins. He was magnanimously cleaning for my own well-being, and in turn, he was deriving joy from my reactions to his generosity. We were in some marvelous feedback loop of rowdy, sweaty labor and buoyant glee.

  And then it was done.

  The apartment was as immaculate as it was possible to get in four hours. Every surface was as smooth and unwrinkled as the crisp shirt Marzoli had worn when I first laid on eyes on him. My eyes reddened with tears of disbelief. As much as Richard Dreyfus’s slim
y mashed potato mound of my apartment had once been an extension of my slimy disheveled emotional state, my brain seemed to relish this new, gleaming, orderly landscape. It sparkled, it was orderly, and it smelled like lemon and clean linen. It felt healthy, and it was mine. I took a large, full breath and released it. I was still imprisoned in a six-hundred fifty square foot box, but feeling freer than I had in a long time.

  If I gained nothing else from Marzoli than this, I was damned grateful.

  Marzoli handed me a soft fresh white towel and directed me to take a shower. God. To start clean. To wash into the drain the anger, the regret, the confusion, the hostility, and the repression. As the water poured over me, I kept my ears open for the squeak of the bathroom door. For the rush of cool air that would indicate Marzoli was joining me.

  The door did not open.

  When I emerged from the bathroom dressed in clean clothes, Marzoli turned to me, polishing the silver framed photo of Johanna and me.

  “Do you want this front and center on your desk or back on the shelf?”

  I knew if Johanna walked in the room right now, she’d look around and smile with approval. I knew she’d view this environmental improvement as a definitive step closer to my commitment to a marble kitchen-island future with her. When Johanna returned to ask for my thumbs up or thumbs down on that future, I knew which direction my thumb would go.

  “In the trash.”

  Marzoli shook his head. “If you were ready to throw it away, you would have.”

  He placed the photo on the shelf between two other gleaming, polished, framed photos that had not been placed there previously. I suddenly recognized the children pictured in them. My heart squeezed tight.

  “What did you…where did you…” I stuttered.

  “I found them buried in your closet in a box. Mom and Dad?”

  The pair of photos we’d not shot with rifles stared back at me like visitors from another world. I froze in a catatonic onslaught of mixed emotions. I closed my eyes as the previous euphoria was suddenly punctured by terror…

  Paul and I held the axes above our shoulders, poised to strike as a hot, heavy cloud of smoke engulfed us.

  I shook my head vigorously.

  No! I will not let this memory victimize me!

  “Tell me.” I heard Marzoli speak to me firmly.

  “Tell you what?” I retorted.

  We shouted at the top of our lungs. “Now, Mom? Now?”

  For the first time, Marzoli’s voice rang with true anger. “Tell me where you just went!”

  He was loud. Too loud.

  “Keep your voice down!” I whispered firmly.

  We immediately bolted to the window to see if Marzoli’s outburst had attracted any attention. It had not. We’d previously decided Marzoli would begin his performance the moment Layworth began to stir. The man did not stir, asleep undisturbed on his bed in a silk bathrobe, his laptop on his chest.

  “I fear,” I said quietly, “the kids will return from school before Layworth wakes up.”

  Marzoli remained stern.

  “Then tell me this,” he said. “What do you fear will happen if you let me in on it?”

  “You don’t understand,” I retorted. “Cleaning my apartment is the easy part.”

  “Try me.”

  I was backed into a tight corner. My stomach was knotting.

  “My past has nothing to do with the investigation. Isn’t that what you’re here for? Isn’t that the sole reason?”

  “Yes,” he said under his breath, betraying the bullshit of his reply.

  “Marzoli, what do you want from me?”

  He picked up the pictures of my parents and thrust them at me vehemently. “If you don’t start with the fucking truth, then I want more than you’re willing to give.”

  I was right. The instant he heard me mutter Grandfather during one of my attacks, the bees buzzing in his hive would never settle down until he figured out why. Ignoring a mystery as troubling as mine was simply not in his goddamn iron-fisted Puerto Rican Sicilian constitution.

  I felt flattered but helpless as fuck.

  “I don’t know what happened to you that you’re trying to kill,” he said, “but it’s obviously fighting back. It already tried to give you frostbite on the fire escape. What’s your plan? To wait until it finds the right moment to finish you off for good?”

  “You’re being hyperbolic.”

  “I just hauled eight bags of shit down to the sidewalk.”

  “Lots of people…”

  He sharply interrupted whatever pathetic crap I was about to dribble. “Go the corner store and get me a turkey on rye. I’m starving.”

  I turned away from him. The bitch knew how to hit his target.

  Point fucking taken.

  “I don’t even know how to…”

  “What?” he asked adamantly.

  “…how to access whatever the hell you want accessed!” I blurted, not precisely positive why I was so fucking furious. “I can’t even get a grip on when I get hijacked as it is!”

  Marzoli calmed his voice for my sake. “Tell me a story.”

  “What?”

  “The Brothers Save Jessie.”

  How the hell did he remember that phone conversation?

  “I haven’t read it yet.”

  “Why did the title surprise you?”

  “Because…”

  The blond boy stood over the body, looking at me ferociously.

  “…because Jessie was killed. We didn’t save him.”

  “Who’s Jessie?”

  “When we were kids….”

  “Who’s we?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to put into words all that was coming back to me.

  “My brother and I witnessed…we saw…Jessie stabbed beneath the tree. I saw…my brother behind the body…in the brush…I saw…”

  The grass crackled in flames.

  “What else?” he prodded gently.

  “Run, Paul!” I yelled, and the blond boy turned his head just in time to see Paul disappear in a whisper in the tall yellow grass.

  “What’s Paul running from?” Marzoli demanded.

  The brush sixty feet away swayed just slightly indicating that Paul had already run too far to be caught. I scrambled to my feet, but the knife wound in my rib caused me to stumble. The blond boy caught my foot and dragged me across the dry rough ground, scraping my chin. I stretched my arms in front of me, but only succeeded in grasping and uprooting clumps of grass.

  Suddenly I was pinned underneath him. The look of anger on his face was so vicious, I turned my head to the left, staring into the open eyes of Jessie, wide with the pain and horror he felt as he died. Stone still. Inches from my nose.

  I felt the blond boy’s hard-on pressing into my groin. As he dug his pelvis into mine, I felt a sickness start at my groin and press its way up to my bellybutton. My stomach started lurching. Anything and everything I had consumed that morning was forcing its way up my throat—the tofu, the sprouts, the avocado, the pumpernickel bread, the sour grass, and the blackberries. I choked for air twice, then gushed green and cream-colored vomit right into the Blond Boy’s mean mug.

  Bullseye.

  Screaming in disgust, he backed off me. He tripped over Jessie’s body and stumbled toward the tree, wiping chunky slime from his eyes. I righted myself as best I could and hightailed it toward Paul in the bushes. The stab wound seared my side. My armpit was gouged raw where the branch had slammed into it. But none of that impeded my dash toward the shaded stream where I knew Paul would be hiding.

  When I balanced on the log to cross the stream, I heard a soft voice from beneath it. “Is he following?”

  I glanced behind. I was not being pursued.

  “No.”

  Paul emerged from the shadow beneath the log. Just like in one of our Adventure books, he’d submerged himself in a pool of water beneath a bridge.

  Together, we climbed the hill back to King’s Rock, where we’d first
spotted Jessie and the blond boy. We were breathing hard. We collapsed on our rock, grateful for our cool shadowed sanctuary. We only had a moment of respite before the blond boy came into view.

  He dragged Jessie into the glen, propping the body against the tree Paul and I had been perched in. He pulled tufts of long dry grass from the earth and piled it around the body. He used his foot to rake oily eucalyptus leaves into mounds between Jessie’s legs.

  What was he up to?

  I heard Paul gasp before I saw it.

  The blond boy withdrew his silver lighter.

  God no!

  He lit a piece of grass and dropped it on the leaves between Jessie’s legs. The oil on the eucalyptus leaves fueled the tiny flame like paint thinner. Within the space of a minute, Jessie’s jeans were on fire, and soon after that his body was engulfed in flames so thick we couldn’t see it anymore.

  I understood precisely what that dolt thought he had to do to protect himself. The witnesses to the murder had escaped, so the evidence had to disappear. By the time I’d finished concluding this, the trunk of the tree was engulfed in fire. And by the time we saw the Blond Boy dash off down a path and vanish, orange and red fingers of flame licked the top of the tree. The surrounding trees began to catch fire, and within seven minutes the dry landscape in front of us billowed thick with black smoke, engulfing the entire glen.

  Paul and I had inadvertently stumbled into being the catalyst for a fire in our park during one of California’s hottest summers.

  The warm smoky wind began to whip in a different direction.

  “Look!”

  Paul pointed to a peninsula of tall yellow grass burning with flames, extending like a rapid flow of lava toward the nearest street…our neighborhood…our house.

  We slid down the hill like skilled snow-boarders, hydro-graveling our tennis shoes in the long grooves of the water runoff channels, and then hopping to a new channel to continue our descent. We hit the bottom of the hill and sprinted through the deer paths toward the fire road carved out of the hill for emergency vehicles decades ago, bypassing the road and shortcutting us to the back of our house.