When a Psychopath Falls in Love

by Herbert Gold

  True, Kasdan sometimes wondered why Amanda chose the hus­band she chose. But wondering about love was someone else’s right. He was not an expert, inoculated against it until the time came when he found himself in love with his family. Amanda chose and loved; surely an excellent thing. A few years ago, Kasdan had gone to bed with a black court stenographer and she smelled good in the morning, despite the can of onion soup he left opened on the sink after a post-lovemaking snack. What was her name again? Some black name, Johanda, Jolamma, when Joanne would do well enough. But she was warm, she smelled good, she teased him about his living arrangements with the right kind of tolerant amusement in her eyes, and he shouldn’t have drifted away after a few weeks. Jocinda, that was it, Jocinda with the low sweet voice.

  Amanda and D’Wayne loved, married. Kasdan liked Jo-whatever and was left with no idea of what had become of her.

  He didn’t buzz himself in because Amanda’s apartment had a buzzer, but it didn’t work; it had a locked front entrance, but the lock had gone unrepaired for months now; it had an elevator to get to the third floor, but the elevator was usually stuck between floors. Walking upstairs was good for a person. Mr. Patel, the landlord, promoted its health benefits, the life-affirming smells of curry, the powers of meditation, and harmonious rapport with city building inspectors. Kasdan prepared cheerful greetings for his family. By the time he reached the third floor, he was imagining Sergei wriggling in his arms, burrowing into the heat and heartbeat. Sergei’s body understood about love, even if his limbs jerked without control when Amanda used a Q-tip to pluck boogers out of his nose. Someday things could be made better. Kasdan made and remade this promise to himself.

  The door to the apartment was ajar. Amanda was careless about such things and shouldn’t have been, especially with D’Wayne away at odd hours. The sign in front of the Yerba Buena Foundation on Pine said “No Walk-Ins,” not being an ordinary whorehouse, although it did accept walk-ins if they seemed like sincere johns, not nosy cops.

  Maybe D’Wayne had forgotten his key and Amanda left the door open for his return.

  Unlikely. He could always knock. He could always reach for the extra key hidden against the wall above the door jamb. He was not only wide; he was also tall.

  Kasdan heard the wet phlegmy snores of Sergei. It was careless of Amanda to leave the apartment door open while both she and Sergei napped. The door to the other bedroom was closed, but there were tussling sounds behind it. Kasdan asked, “Amanda?” And then, without thinking, without thinking enough, pushed the door open. The sounds of Dan Kasdan moving through the apartment hadn’t inter­rupted the tussling sounds. The sight of Dan Kasdan in the bedroom stopped the tussling.

  “Dad! What’re you doing here?”

  It wasn’t the relevant question.

  “Hey Cowboy, fancy meeting you so unexpected.”

  It wasn’t a relevant statement. Ferd was pulling the sheet between his legs, as if to dry or subdue or hide.

  Kasdan said nothing.

  “Dad, you got no business barging in here…”

  Ferd waited and Kasdan stood at the foot of the bed without moving. Ferd said, “Dan, I really like her.”

  The flesh of his flesh, the voice of his daughter: “Don’t blame anybody, Dad, he didn’t do anything, we’re just messing around…”

  “Don’t say that! Folks shouldn’t cast the first stone, Cowboy. I really like her. Mandy, I really like you.”

  “He’s good to me, Dad. He doesn’t need to bring me things. He’s good to me, have you heard of that?”

  Kasdan tried to understand the gleam in Ferd’s eyes. Maybe it was pride; his eyes were wet. Kasdan succeeded in not understanding.

  “So sometimes it happens, people get together. Good things mean don’t blame anyone and you take a shower afterwards, you know? And no harm done. Am I expressing myself? A little soap, shampoo, the conditioner, all gone just like that, am I right?” Ferd wanted to snap his finger to drive the point home, all gone, over, but he needed the hand for discretion. He held the sheet.

  Kasdan said nothing.

  “This don’t change anything, buddy? We’re kind of family, so to speak, am I right?”

  Kasdan said nothing.

  Amanda said, “God, now I have to explain. I hate this. Okay, so my whole life changed, Dad. I didn’t know what was gonna happen. You see how I started to sag? My boobs, my butt? Oh, God, Dad. I thought Sergei would be this perfect… Oh, God, my whole life changed.”

  “I like her just like she is,” Ferd said.

  Kasdan said nothing. Amanda may have repeated, Oh God, Oh God, and Ferd may have repeated, I really like her. Kasdan wasn’t certain.

  “You want to talk?” Ferd asked.

  Kasdan said nothing. Dust was stirring in the air, motes rising, one color for panic, one for confusion, then another and another, motes stained for his old failures to focus and his late decisions. Amoebas wriggled across his eyes; time and macular degeneration were stealing his vision. There was a roar in his ears, a silence behind it, a tumbling chaos. Ferd sat forward, bony shoulders hunched, irregular patches of hair on his chest partly hidden by the sheet. He was waiting. The tumble of noise and silence made Kasdan dizzy. He said nothing.

  As if it were winter and the thermostat had churned wildly, heat flooded through Kasdan’s body and clothes, his skin was on fire. He stood silent. The force of rage, boiling instinct, kept him fixed there, burning. Dan Kasdan, at an hour and in an address, San Francisco, 4:30 in the afternoon, remained wordless.

  On the chair near the bed lay pants with a belt hastily pulled half out of the loops. On the floor near the bed lay red shorts with the words Bill Blass or Tommy Hilfiger or Johnny Chan on the elastic. Kasdan’s eyesight seemed to be smoked over. It registered Ferd’s slack skinniness, loose male breasts. Kasdan wondered what women found to value in men; surely, they must look at them sometimes. If Kasdan had tried to speak, he would have found his voice hoarse and unmanageable. It didn’t occur to him to try to speak.

  Amanda was still staring at this stranger who happened to be her father: What are you going to do? Ferd Conway observed Dan Kasdan with great care, his own question hovering busily but silently in the close, cooked-mushroom smells, along with the swift and silent San Francisco house flies churning in the air: So, Cowboy, now what?

  Nothing, I’ll do nothing. I’ll do something at the right time.

  Amanda’s unblinking gaze of unanswered question. Ferd’s con­cerned frown. He was not sure of what emotion he should offer at a time like this.

  The inevitable was now even more likely. Kasdan brushed his forehead with his hand.

  “Hey, amigo.” Ferd could explain everything.

  “Dad, you don’t know what it’s like…”

  What what is like? His daughter was in bed with a very large insect, covered loosely with skin. What could it be like? Their souls meeting, was that the appeal? Their souls meeting in a marriage bed and making a smell liked overcooked mushrooms?

  “What you thinking, amigo? Bam? You thinking Bam?” Ferd cocked his fingers and made a shooting gesture, his other hand holding the sheet. It was annoying for him, Kasdan just standing there silently.

  “Dad...” Amanda began again, meaning, You don’t understand, you can’t, you don’t understand me, you can’t...

  Ferd let the sheet fall; why bother? He said, “Okay, I don’t expect you to be totally happy about this.”

  What Kasdan was presently considering was why those feet in their thin black socks were poking up at him from the end of the top sheet. He was trying to recall ancient history. Someone’s father had taken him to an Elks Club meeting when he was still in junior high school, now called middle school, and there had been a 16-millimeter film in black and white clattering in the projector and the story of a salesman delivering ice, eventually wearing nothing but black socks. The motel room in Newark or Cleveland or wherever they made the film must have had a dirty, probably cold floor. The actor kept his socks
on.

  Amanda’s father did not ask Ferd why he didn’t take off his socks. Ferd’s perturbed frown indicated he would have avoided this meeting if he had been offered a choice, but he knew how to deal with distressing meetings. He reached his hand out to cup Amanda’s shoulder. He preferred that she not have to make explanations to her father. For Amanda’s sake, he wanted this moment to end. It wasn’t the right time for Kasdan to ask Ferd about his socks.

  Ferd was tired. His buddy had created a stressful situation. His voice came in a resigned drone. Perhaps he didn’t even hope to convince. He was staring at Kasdan’s nose, not his eyes, in a best effort at sincerity. The voice was also the best he could do. He didn’t plead his case; he wasn’t really explaining.

  “I’ve never been married, see. I never had a kid. Now there’s just you and Amanda. She’s a beautiful person, Dan. This might be difficult for you, I understand that, but life is difficult for her, too. The kid, no money, the post-partum. If somebody doesn’t watch out, time is going to pass her by. It’s hard for her, amigo. I really like her.”

  Shut up. Kasdan didn’t say it aloud, but Ferd seemed to hear. He leaned against the headboard, pulling the sheet up to his chin. The two of them lay there, hardly moving.

  Nobody seemed to be thinking, What if the husband happens to come home unexpectedly? Husbands do unexpected things some­times, just like wives.

  And then there was another rush from Amanda, an avalanche of explanation, falling over itself with blame and panic: “Dad, he’s right, I got this post partum, you don’t know anything, I don’t suppose you ever had it, but I have this baby and this husband and this father just turned up on me, and I can’t just dump them all, maybe I could dump you but I want to give you a chance, and some girls get divorced or run out on their babies, so don’t get all social worker on me, like I’m some slut, I’m not a slut. I’m not going to do what you did, Dad, run out on my baby, are you listening? Ferd’s nice to me. He pays attention. Ferd’s my friend, like he’s your friend…”

  But Ferd doesn’t slide into bed with me.

  “… so since you didn’t do nothing for me growing up, how about you try to figure me out now, okay, Dad? Cut me some slack? Is that something appeals to you?”

  Amanda was holding the sheet tight against her body, propped up against crushed pillows, the two of them, Amanda and Ferd, in the bed of Amanda and D’Wayne with a cooked mushroom smell. Someone had better change the sheets.

  Kasdan was thinking: Quick! Don’t delay! Now’s the time!

  Kasdan was thinking: Change the sheets, change the sheets.

  Kasdan heard the rattle at the door before Amanda and Ferd did. He hurried out to greet his son-in-law.

  “Hey man, you up for a brew? Sergei asleep in there?”

  Kasdan put his hand on D’Wayne’s shoulder and steered him toward the kitchen and found his voice. He didn’t usually drink in the afternoon, made him sleepy, but it’s a hot day, dehydrates a person, and that Hetch Hetchy water – I read that someplace – might have chemicals from the runoff, so yeah, D’Wayne, let’s do a cold one. I could use a cold one. I could sure use a cold one.

  “On account of brew is the best kind of water,” D’Wayne said with his large happy thunder of a laugh which must have thrilled many a cute woman before it got around to thrilling Amanda. But what was past was past. He loved his son, he loved his wife, he meant to do his best to change their histories, his and hers, of no father and no proper family. He intended something different for his son who was Kasdan’s grandson. “I got the light ones, ain’t no good sense in them, I got the darks, I got this ale they call it biker brew, mikerbrew, some shit like that – micro? – extra foam mess up your face. So to what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Noise of their footsteps, noise of refrigerator opening, noise of Kasdan talking, raising his voice, and D’Wayne welcoming him and chuckling like a proper host, a proper son-in-law; chink of bottles against each other, a toast to family; scrape of chairs pulled to the kitchen table; no noise from Sergei Mose, who was still asleep, so no hurry...

  Again D’Wayne touched the neck of his bottle to the neck of Kasdan’s frosty ale, this time for good luck and appreciation. “Hey, fine, you know what I’m sayin?”

  “I do.”

  “So gimme another knock at that microshit, man.”

  Kasdan wondered if D’Wayne noticed how he raised his voice, scraped his chair, made every plausible clumsy noise he could think of.

  D’Wayne stretched out his legs, cracked his knuckles. “Time, man, say a big wet hello to my wife in there…”

  “She’s sleeping. You aren’t going to empty your bottle?”

  “What happenin, they turn on the gas and they sleepin away the day?”

  “It’s been hot. The weather’s changing, so…”

  Kasdan followed D’Wayne into the bedroom. Nothing else to be done. The window was open wide and the curtain was blowing. Amanda was lying there, blinking awake. Shoes, pants, and most of the cooked mushroom smell were gone. Kasdan ambled to the win­dow and shut it halfway. He could see where the alley weeds had been trampled.

  D’Wayne said, “Where’s he at, man?”

  Amanda seemed to jerk wide awake, then sank back into the pillow. “His crib, where you think? Man.”

  “We gotta get him a big boy bed any day soon now.”

  “Right... man.”

  D’Wayne gave his forehead a noisy slap. “Okay, I forgot, you my main dude, but you a mama don’t like to be call ‘Man’.” Leaned, grinned, kissed wet, kissed again, reared back. “Better now, fee-man?”

  He ducked out, in a hurry to proceed with further kisses, this time for Sergei, to whom he could say Man without reproach. No need to say goodbye. He would be back in a moment with his son.

  Someplace, probably in his two-colored Skylark, Ferd was pulling slivers out of his hands and feet after shimmying down the drainpipe, bracing himself against wooden slats. He must have ripped his skin on rusty nails and rotten siding. If he didn’t have a current tetanus inoculation, he would need protection against lockjaw. Kasdan did not want to be robbed of his plan by tetanus.

  Sergei woke in D’Wayne’s arms, making baby gurgles, and Kasdan took the child, cradling him, leaving D’Wayne and Amanda to finish greeting each other. As a man who had never been married, Kasdan didn’t know the procedures for a wife to say hello, hi there, what’s up, to a husband who returns home unexpectedly before the normal day’s work was done.

  – 17 –

  “Mama! Mama!”

  A shrill voice penetrated the morning sound surf crashing against the walls of the Caffe Roma, eddying back over tables, chairs, coffee, bagels, muffins of blueberry, bran, oats, or chocolate marble for those seeking a fast start on the day’s sugar. “Mama, I’m getting off this time, promise, Mama! New lawyer got us a plan!”

  Both Ferd and Dan, also Marta, who was working the espresso machine, knew the dude was not getting off and probably the mama knew it, too. The new lawyer’s plan was a miracle alibi pro tem to get the grieving mother off his case. She wore a headscarf; her tears were dropping down her cheeks, unblotted; bluish veins stood out on the son’s face; persuasion was hard for him. He was not persuading his mother. At variance with the high pitch of his appeal for confidence in the simple justice of his cause was the jail-made pentagram on his neck, intended to intimidate jurors and frighten judges in case simple justice did not suffice.

  After recent unfortunate stresses in their relationship, it was good for Ferd and Dan to meet again at everyone’s home away from home, the Caffe Roma, kitchen central of the legal system’s maxi-family – chiming and hissing breakfast equipment, small tables on which to balance shots of espresso and plates of quick fuel, a swarm of lawyers swapping brags and lies, perpetrators muttering exculpations, mothers, wives and girlfriends sullen or resigned or sobbing, jury draftees reading their morning San Francisco Chronicles until the hour of summons. If they made bail and their lawyers were okay wit
h it, Kasdan liked to meet his Pasquals or Jesuses here for get-acquainted discussions before their court appearances. He could explain that panic or surliness were not helpful with most judges.

  As usual, Ferd inspected the teeny-tiny Asian public defenders on their precarious heels, recently initiated into the profession, often not yet fully Americanized, taking tea instead of coffee for breakfast. “Lookit that one, amigo. She is one upward mobile from Nam. Before law school, I know her, graduated Phi Beta in Manicure School – still does pedicure for special friends. You got a slew a parking tickets? You got feet with pedi problems? I can arrange a package deal. Only for a friend would I do this.”

  Kasdan was having difficulty with his muffin. It wasn’t the abrasive bit of bran stuck in an overtaxed swallowing reflex. Previous matters clotted his throat. It was rage choking him; it was suppression of rage choking him; it was the problem of waiting until the right time to do what he needed to do that was making difficulties with his swallow­ing and his digestion. Complicating distractions had led to a frontal lobe headache. He lifted his bowl of coffee. His hand was steady. Good, good.

  Kasdan gave himself a vote of approval. In this case, one vote was a majority.