When a Psychopath Falls in Love

by Herbert Gold

  Kasdan sipped with slow concentration. He slept more easily if he helped the day decelerate, but it was a trade-off. Often he awakened exactly at the moment when his dreams were getting interesting. Before a person breaks familiar routines, does something drastic, such as a first murder, it was helpful to rest the spirit with reminders of consoling patterns: a brew at Katie’s Meddle of Honor, a review of Fabulous Frank’s fabulous inflatable biceps, the pitter-patter of pony hooves in the back garden or the room which doubled as the Tenderloin’s only corral. When patrons opened the door to enter the bar, the draft brought fresh hay smells to mingle with aromas of hops and ale. Besides paying for her surgery, Katie had built a decent business with her discharge pay and pension, not pissing it away on drugs, women, and hunky power vehicles, like so many veterans.

  The door to the Meddle of Honor banged open, startling even Frank. A gust of wind threw rain the length of a person onto the floor. When Petal entered, she didn’t pause like a woman unsure of her welcome. She paused like a woman whose mind was made up, no matter what anyone else wanted. She knew her way. As soon as she saw Kasdan at his table, she came hurrying toward him, shaking wetness off her hair. Frank recognized the body language of No thanks, not yet, maybe I’ll order later; the body language of We got business right now.

  She had come in regularly at this hour to look for Kasdan. Just because he drank his beer on many evenings didn’t mean he couldn’t also skip many evenings. Having habits didn’t mean that Kasdan was a creature of habit. But it happened that at this hour, tonight, when the weather kept many regulars away, she found him.

  Kasdan stood as she reached the table. She sat and, impatiently, with a flat hand, gestured for him to sit. No flirting tonight, that was the business. Her business was to settle matters. Kasdan had no idea what matters Petal needed to settle; he had come in with his own plans for the evening – to do nothing, nothing, and then very little – and was not looking to accomplish anything else.

  It was too soon to say she was pregnant by Dan Kasdan. And she wasn’t drinking tonight. And she wasn’t hiding the blue freckles at the crook of her arm. Registering her expression, it was only honestly apprehensive of him to be thinking it might be nicer if they met tomorrow or the day after.

  “What is it?”

  “He told me, ‘Go deep. Go real deep.’”

  “Who? Go deep what?” Kasdan asked.

  “I’m shy, it’s my problem, so I got to be a good actor. He said, ‘Play like you’re a call girl.’”

  “You’re not. Who said what?”

  “Not yet, I guess. He said to put a leak in your boat.”

  Exasperated, Kasdan repeated: “Who? What kind of stuff you using? Are you tweaking? Act like you’re clean and tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m clean,” Petal said.

  Katie hurried past on her way to figure out what was wrong with the purple neon martini sign. It was sputtering and blinking. Annoying fucking rain – wasn’t this supposed to be Sunny California, orange blossoms and fun on the beach? – always did that to the tubing. Katie nodded to Mister Court Translator and his girlfriend; a free dose of charm, on the house, could come later. First she needed to tend to her non-sundrenched, non-beachfront property.

  Petal was gripping the table with both hands. Her hair had been pasted down by the rain. “I don’t know him, see, not very much, but he gave me a hundred. I had to tell you what I told you. A hundred for then, plus a hundred later, he said, when I put a leak…”

  “A leak in my boat, okay – what?”

  “… but I don’t think lying is right unless you have to. I don’t have to, I got principles, I can sell my ass...” She stopped. “But I never met any D’Wayne. I don’t even know any D’Waynes. He just wanted me to tell you the story – funny, right?”

  It wasn’t all that funny. She gazed close to Kasdan’s face, a habitual early-warning winsomeness which, this evening, in advance of whatever oncoming action was in store, he did not like. A soft baby-girl voice followed. He didn’t like that part of it, either. He wondered if she was imagining that the rain on her face was tears and she was living up to tears that were not tears. She whispered, “Do you miss my goo?”

  “Pardon?”

  “My wet, my juice?” She gave up the baby-girl whisper. “I don’t want you to take me seriously... Cowboy.”

  It was like a punch in the belly. It was a punch below the belly. She intended it. Cowboy.

  Kasdan thanked her and was on his way. Just as he reached the street, the purple martini glass shorted out, sparked and went dark, and neon tubes splintered onto the wet pavement and Katie was run­ning after him, calling, “You okay?” Glass crunched like wet snow underfoot, although snow never happened around here. Things that couldn’t happen were happening.

  “You okay, Mister Court Translator?”

  “Fine, fine, no problema.”

  – 15 –

  A hawk circled above the gulls, gracefully tracking its prey, estimat­ing its best opportunity, unconcerned about whether these were really only just pigeons below, or, if gulls, why they flew over land and not water with its fresh salt sea products. First, the hawk followed from on high, floating, gliding, spreading its wings wide – a falcon? No, a red tail, it was a red-tailed hawk – and then it seemed to hover unmoving for a moment before it plunged toward a tasty what­ever, gull or pigeon, and carried it off squawking to a nest where eager bald babies would squabble over the feathers.

  A hawk is a hawk, Kasdan thought, a wide-winged red-tailed distraction, a legitimate predator; and a Kasdan is a man whose mind is at last made up.

  “You got these nice pink cheeks all at once,” Ferd said. “What’s the matter, you feeling good? You gettin’ some? I can always tell.”

  “Congratulations on your insight,” Kasdan said. “All kinds of things’ll do that – high blood pressure, say.”

  “So kudos on getting the blood plus the jism in circulation, pal.”

  Welcome to Ferd’s shining condo with its shining down payment, welcome to lifestyle decor, to chrome and deep orange carpeting in materials especially manufactured for quality hassle-free care, wel­come to the finalizing of serious business arrangements, Welcome, at last, to getting to the point by means of evading, testing, recon­noitering all aspects of the point. Due to sensitivity and discretion, Ferd started to extend two fingers but stopped short of pinching Dan’s praiseworthy pink cheeks. He realized that matters had turned delicate. Their friendship was under stress. The shortest distance to his goal was a dotted line floating in space like silent San Francisco house flies, darting and playing, mating with quick midair collisions. But unlike San Francisco house flies, Ferd Conway buzzed at his play.

  “It’s no fun toting up a lot of cash if you can’t share it with some­body, and I don’t include the government as a somebody, Cowboy. I’m sharing with you because you’re a professional performing a pro­fessional service – you deserve is what I mean – but also because, well…” Downcast shy eyes. “… frankly, sharing is in my nature. Not always, but sometimes, like now. With someone I feel close to. I’m just a human being, right?”

  “Granted.”

  “Right. After all. Do you have to use a term of legal art when I bring up our friendship? Are you so uptight? You might as well say ‘Stipulated.’”

  “Objection sustained, Ferd.”

  “Okay, like my clients say, ‘Yo! Ah respeck you, man.’ That’s not racist, it’s more like realist.” His pale eyelashes fluttered. Kasdan wondered if now he would take it all back. “Course, some of them are Latino, so they say, ‘Yo, tu bueno hombre’ – go ahead, correct my Hispanish, you’re the expert.”

  He was testing. He needed to see if covetousness conquered all because, face it, a few distractions had come up (Amanda, Petal) which could turn Kasdan away from their foundation in good feelings and the deal. Ferd placed his trust in a large spirit, one which under­stood where his true interests lay.

  Fe
rd’s hair shone in the light, the effect of a recent crème rinse. Although Kasdan’s expertise didn’t extend to such questions, he had occasionally watched television and therefore guessed: Clairol. Maybe so, maybe not; the low-level fluorescent gleam off Ferd’s hair, especially the new hair, might look good in a station break adver­tisement. Here it reflected a low-level fluorescent gleam against the pale pink of scalp. Along with mood swings, Ferd was subject to hair plantings, coiffeur designs, and home treatment in the never-ending quest to be up-to-the-minute.

  No saintly yearning for peace and forgiveness was active in Dan Kasdan. He crooned to himself a song of vengeance, an anthem of spite; his entire body was keeping time and his cheeks were surely pink, just as Ferd had observed. He couldn’t have wanted all his life to carry out his plan for Ferd Conway because he hadn’t known him all his life. No wonder he had passed the years in a becalmed state. Nothing had occupied the space for hatred in his heart.

  There was also the new space for Amanda and her way of holding her arms around herself, as if she were cold, and for Sergei, thrashing and bruised Sergei Mose. Love was a distraction which had suddenly come his way. He wasn’t yet certain of the consequences; such was the nature of the thing. His late greed for lots of cash, tax-free, as Ferd promised, excluded sharing with its provider. He had found reasons for not sharing. The pleasures of hatred filled his heart with eagerness. It was crowded in there.

  How interesting it seemed to Kasdan to become the proprietor of confused passions at his time in life. These novelties tended to make him somewhat emotional.

  But care and calm were in order. Ferd was watching intently, tuning in to his own thoughts and how they might tune into Dan’s. “Probably you don’t want to hear any confessions of weakness, they call it fallibility, you and me both know that word, Dan, but here I go anyway.”

  “Right. Again.”

  “Yeah, okay, bear with me. I fully realize, without saying it, we got some issues – you do, anyway – and some a my behavior needs explana­tion.”

  “Explain then, Ferd.”

  “I’m not saying justification. Some things are hard to understand. But let me hope with all my heart, I can build here an explanation…”

  He paused. He put one hand over the other, and then the other hand over the first one. He was building the explanation in the air. The motion was like kids choosing up sides, but just one doing all the work and doing it on an invisible baseball bat. Kasdan nodded. Ferd took this to mean, Go ahead, and in fact it did.

  “Before I accepted myself, self-esteem-wise, I gotta tell you, ’cause I tended toward scrawny as a kid, then middle-age-related pot plus scrawny, not the greatest combo – before that – I tried exercise, Dan. Pushups hurt my back, that’s all it did for me. So I got these weights from a client couldn’t take them with him to the federal pen, and he also deeded me, so to speak, his whole shelf of bottles, the muscle medicine, the no-boobs-hanging-there medicine, takes care of your body image issues, they call them steroids now…”

  “Did then, too.”

  “Called them? Okay. I wasn’t cognizant with the medical term.” Ferd paused to acknowledge past vocabulary deficits, also for the next thought and breath. “I’m telling you all this because they say confes­sion is good for the soul and sometimes gets you a lighter sentence.” He curled his fingers toward Kasdan, beckoning, come here, come on, laugh with me.

  “And?” Kasdan asked. No laugh. They were now in a conversation, a regular dialogue, two old friends communicating, one explaining, apologizing without actually apologizing, explaining hard. Kasdan had duties, too. His job was to help. Ferd nodded gratefully because at least Dan had contributed this And?

  “And the result was... You know what the result was from this medicine they started to call steroids?”

  “I give up. What?”

  “Pimples! Pimples on my back!” Ferd twisted his shirt collar.

  “Don’t show me,” Kasdan said.

  “Plus couldn’t get it up jacking off, pardon the expression. You don’t want to see?”

  Kasdan hoped his set lips clearly stated, No, don’t get funny.

  “I just mean the pimples, buddy. They’re gone now, but I scratched so much I got these bumps. And those stinky biceps, triceps, quadrosepts, they just went away with no goodbye – they dwindled, Dan! Like someone stuck a pin in them! I tell you all this in confidence because I never tell anyone. As if I have anyone but you to tell.”

  Kasdan lowered his eyes. Ferd looked away. Guy talk was difficult.

  “I think God,” Ferd said reverently, “really wants me to be lean. Plus maybe this little pot, which there is no remedy for – just have faith that what will be really is. I shrug it off.” He shrugged to illustrate the point. “So accepting myself, I’m now fully self-esteemed – you notice?”

  “It has come to my attention,” Kasdan said.

  Ferd was on a roll. “Okay, the business. You’ll head off to glamor­ous Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where the sun shines all year round, and hope the hurricane doesn’t blow the cash up your nose – you don’t do blow, another reason for my self-esteem for you. There’s hardly any paperwork, just a minimum. You’ll talk to a lawyer, a notaire they call him, but he’s higher on the scale of command than any notary public in fucking San Francisco. You sign a few forms. You can read French, can’t you?”

  “Yes. It’s close to Spanish.”

  “That’s my boy.”

  Kasdan was thinking: Amanda deserves more, Sergei deserves better; a more better deal is what I owe them. No one will miss Ferd.

  “So do you have any questions?”

  “Yeah. Exactly what am I going to do?”

  Ferd extended his arms, smiled benignly, welcoming the confusion of another. “You’re going to have to go through all the ticket hassles, pack for the tropics, ask around if you need malaria pills, but you know what? You only have to do some of that. I’ve arranged for the tickets myself, a deal with a travel agent, legitimate tickets. Making it easy for you, Dan…”

  Ferd was all heart.

  “… because I like you, not to speak of to everybody’s advantage.”

  The process of easing Kasdan into their business, a procedure of testing and urging which made it even more appealing, filled Ferd’s hours with figuring how Dan could really get into it. If it were too easy, what would be the fun? It wasn’t merely business; it was like love. Now was the time for Ferd to reveal his soul to his buddy Dan in more of its depths. “You know, I still talk to my mom every day. I got yelled at by my dad, but now I get to yell back. That’s because they’re dead, you know?”

  Kasdan knew. Sometimes he too dreamt conversations with his parents. Ferd was promising that he was of that breed, the ones who remember. Ferd dabbed unnecessarily at his eyes. “Do you yell back at your dad? Do you call him Pop, like I do?”

  In fact, Dan had not shouted at his dead father in years now. The memory tended to fade. Learning that he was himself a father, then in a jiffy a grandfather, filled the places formerly occupied by his dead mother and father.

  In the alley next to this steel and glass spaceship landed south of Market in a newly developed, newly depressed district – once ware­houses and muffler, tailpipe, and body shops, then promoted by high tech enterprise into credit-rich real estate, then demoted by the revenge of dot.com into a terrain of FOR LEASE FOR RENT FOR SALE FOR ANYTHING PLEASE MAKE BEST OFFER – the traditional alley weeds had quickly colonized with their seeds, roots and sun-seeking leaves. Ailanthus sent its green shoots skyward. Heliotropic pinchweed and screw-you grass poked out of new cracks in third-mortgage construction materials, doing the work of vegetable vultures, burrowing into hastily laid plaster. Advance parties of rats had discovered a field of opportunity. Too bad Ferd would miss so much of the interesting history of the future.

  “Welcome once more to my humble condo,” he said.

  Kasdan’s attention was wandering, a habit Ferd frequently noted and deplored. Well, perhaps he
had things on his mind. Ferd hated to interrupt dreams of what? Ultimate prosperity? Probably. “Like to peek under the furniture, see where I bought it? Copenhagen Life­style, man, where Danish modern is always in good taste.” He squinted shrewdly. It was difficult to radiate trust and confidence while simultaneously glowing with suspicion. Ferd’s dearest friend Dan had something unexpected in mind for him. Other people talked when they were nervous, talked a lot; Ferd talked a lot also when he was not nervous, but on certain occasions he could fall heavily silent and watchful. This was one of those occasions. Dan didn’t peek under the couch to see the labels, Cost Plus Do Not Remove or All Natural Fibers or Made by Shaker Craftsman in Hokaido. Still, Ferd felt that something here was unknown.

  Something was up. Kasdan was already experiencing future nostalgia for the good old days when Ferd had been alive, thriving, his eyes with their pale lashes glinting with expectation. Kasdan would have shared feelings of human warmth with his colleague, but unfortunately that was out of the question. It was inappropriate to deepen bonds with the victim on his last day. Still, Ferd had brought value and focus into Kasdan’s life. Gratitude can’t always be expressed.

  A spider was clambering in its symmetrical skeleton structure at the window. Look again: the spider was outside, clinging to the window, blowing slightly in currents of air. Although the building was new, conforming to earthquake and termite specifications, it had no defense against spider webs. Mind my own business, Kasdan was thinking, not that of the rodent, ailanthus and arachnid worlds. If the web tore and fell in the wind, the spider, toting her eggs in her sac, would still be at the center of things, her eggs intact.