The Inside Out Man

by Fred Strydom

  He went down instantly. The pot cracked, spilling soil all over Howard’s legs as if his burial had already begun. Blood oozed out the back of his head, running into the world like a living thing escaping a doomed vessel.

  Just then, his left leg moved, the knee bent in an attempt to lift himself up. His right hand extended with a shiver, streaking blood across the floor. The sound he made—low, guttural moaning punctuated with a high-pitched squeal—signalled confusion and profound, instinctual fear.

  I wouldn’t leave him like that.

  Of course, if I wanted to, I could have (there was no way he’d last more than a few minutes), but that would be wrong. I hadn’t intended for him to suffer. All I’d wanted was to stop him dead in his tracks. To protect myself from the mistake he was about to make.

  So, as Howard tried to crawl away, his brain damaged and his blood draining from his skull, I dropped the pot on his head once more, smashing that thing to pieces, and silencing him for good.

  It was only after Howard was a corpse lying prostrate on the floor that I remembered his two guests, both of whom could still have been in the house. I peeked through the downstairs doors, called upstairs, but there was no sign of anyone. I went off to the shed for a spade. On my way back, I imagined opening the front door and finding Howard’s body gone, his blood mopped up, the pot shards cleared, and the soil swept away.

  I pushed open the door.

  He was there, all right, all twisted and limp, face down in his own fluids. I stepped over him, then went to open the library doors that led outside. I came back, grabbed Howard by the ankles, and dragged him through the library, leaving a wide, snaking line of red on the wooden boards, before I eventually deposited him on the steps outside. A wheelbarrow stood near the vegetable garden. I went over and wheeled it back across the lawn.

  Howard lay propped against a step, his head slumped like a drunk’s. I lifted him under his arms in a kind of embrace, and then dumped him in his rusty chariot. His arms and legs, draped over the sides, flopped about as we trundled past the pool, over the slanting lawn, towards the trees farther below. The lawn thinned to dirt, which was strewn with dead leaves as I entered the woods. Between the trees, out of sight of both the house and the perimeter fence, I rested the wheelbarrow and pulled out the spade. The crows had their own opinion on the proceedings, cawing from on high, fluttering their wings, and moulting fine black feathers like snow in hell. I found a clearing where the dirt seemed fairly soft, and got digging.

  Leonard’s game, whatever it may have been, was over. Christ. I could barely comprehend how quickly things had unravelled, how I’d got myself there at all. I ran through the events, taking one final shot at figuring it all out.

  I took myself back to Leonard at the bar, replayed his words, re-examined his intentions. What had he really wanted from me? What had been the point of it all? He could have got anyone to do the job, be there to yell at from behind his locked door. I mean, even Carl could have done it. Leonard had clearly trusted the man, more than he could ever have trusted me. So: why me? What special characteristic convinced him I’d be the man for the job?

  And Howard—goddamned Howard—why hadn’t Leonard mentioned him, told me he’d be arriving? Because Howard, like me (and unlike Jolene), seemed not to be aware of too much. It was almost as if …

  As I jabbed the dirt with the spade, something else occurred to me. Christ. More than just to shove food through a door, Leonard had brought me (specifically me) to the house for one—and only one—important reason: to be the person at the door when his son turned up.

  That was it, surely?

  It was never about Leonard at all, in fact. He was on his way out, with no plan to exit that room. No. From the get-go I’d been prepped as a pawn in a plan set up for his son—for Howard—part of a father’s ploy to test allegiance, to provide one final assurance that the kid he’d raised was deserving of his inheritance.

  In some deranged, Leonard-style way, it added up. He’d been scoping me out for months before finally inviting me to the house. Of course he had. It was no coincidence that Howard and I were both pianists, both from fractured homes. I’d been invited to role-play ownership of Leonard’s estate and possessions, but just as I’d begun to settle in, his son and putative heir, Mr. Part Two, had arrived. The result was competition between a contender raised by his father, and one who’d remained with his abandoned mother. One provided with prospects and opportunities, and one left to trawl the streets on his own. Leonard had squared us off against each other with the aim of answering one final question for himself: which version of his son was the more deserving?

  A bit of an insane proposition—but one that was right in line with Leonard’s level of nuts. After all, wasn’t that also the reason Jolene had been persuaded to be with me? Another of Leonard’s tests—a means of making me confront the unsettled shit that for years and years had been stirring in my head: not just a bungling lover, but also a lonely single mother and her abandoned son.

  Maybe.

  Maybe all of it.

  I couldn’t say.

  Regardless, here I was, knee-deep in dirt, securing a piece of prime subterranean property for Mr. Fry Jr.—

  Oh, my God, what are you doing?

  My head twisted to face the familiar voice.

  Jolene stood immobile between the trees—ten, fifteen metres away—eyes wide, mouth agape. I had no idea how long she’d been there, or how she’d got onto the property at all. Had Howard left the gate open after letting his two female friends out? My thoughts raced, and I tried to assess the scene from her point of view: Howard in the wheelbarrow. The hole I was standing in. The spade in my hand. The blood on my shirt.

  Jolene. What are you … how did you—

  As if a generator suddenly kicked in after a power outage, Jolene’s world seemed to snap alive.

  It wasn’t quite a scream. Not at first.

  More of a moan. A wail.

  One step back, and another, and then she turned, tripped, and scrabbled up the slope, scooping the leaves from under her. Her legs buried in the leafy mush, she launched herself up and out. Holding on to my spade, I leapt out of the hole. She was running now, and I was running after her. She erupted from the woods into the open, flapping her arms as she crossed the lawn and passed the pool. I dropped the spade and called out her name, again and again and again—but she didn’t so much as glance at me. She didn’t slow down, as she surrendered to a high, uncontrolled screaming. But the sound was lost to the countryside. There was no one to hear her. No one but me, and the birds, and the eternally indifferent dead.

  She rounded the side of the house, and, breathless and spent, opened her car door. By the time I got to her, she’d rolled up the windows and locked herself in. She stared ahead, her face flushed with tears. The car growled to life, and I pummelled the window as it backed away. As she switched to first, the tyres spat gravel, and she was gone. I tried to give chase, but eventually stopped. Then, with my hands on my knees, I watched as her car shrank in the distance.

  She’d seen it all. There was nothing left to hide, to drag, to bury. She’d head straight for the police station. I could see her bursting in there. Blubbering. Incoherent. Petrified. Eventually, she’d get it all out—what she’d seen and heard and how she’d had to escape a madman waving a spade in the air. She’d lead them back here. Maybe there’d be one police car. Maybe two. Or an entire squad, sirens whooping, guns ready—depending on how dangerous and deranged she made me out to be.

  But was I? Was I really dangerous?

  Given what Jolene now knew, there was every possibility that I wasn’t the dangerous one at all. Because in an hour’s time, or two, or three—however long it took for the sirens to arrive, for Krymeer’s many doors to be kicked down, its rooms to be emptied of their secrets—Jolene would be the dangerous one.

  62.

  I turned on the shower and stepped inside the cubicle. I stood under the pelting water and let my mind go fre
e. Everything and everyone vaporised in the steam. No Leonard. No Howard. No Jolene. Just me, and the wetness, until it all came crashing down.

  I turned around under the stream of water, lathering and scrubbing the dead skin, from my back to the soles of my feet. I finished by washing my hair with tea-tree shampoo, then I stepped out, towelled myself. From a cabinet above the basin I took a tube of moisturising self-tanner. A bottle of two-week toner. Rejuvenating eye gel. I examined my profile in the mirror, then brushed my teeth (best done before eating, to prevent acidic erosion) and flossed. I gargled with some bright-blue mouthwash for exactly thirty seconds, then spat. I turned, entered the walk-in closet, and picked up a bottle of Emporio Armani deodorant. I went with Shu Uemura pomade, perfect for a single right-to-left comb-through.

  Clothes-wise, I had the full picture in my head, and followed through, item by item. Third rack from the wall: the Givenchy Contrast cutaway collar button-cuff shirt. Two rails across: the notched-lapel wool-and-silk-blend jacket. For the bottoms, the straight-leg silk-blend trousers. A reversible leather belt. Tod’s Gommino leather driving shoes. The Hublot Classic Fusion wristwatch. I buttoned my cuffs as I stood before the full-length mirror. Then I turned at an angle, and took another look at the man in the mirror, that stranger in a foreign place.

  A copy of a copy of a copy.

  Next, I went downstairs, past Howard’s blood puddle in the hallway, and climbed into the Mustang. I started up, pressed the remote, waited for the door to open, and slid out. The house was in the rear-view mirror as I cruised through the gate. And then I hit the road. Eyes forward, I headed for the highway.

  I drove into the burnt-out sun.

  I drove towards the city.

  VI.

  Thud, thud

  63.

  Coming back to the city after a long period of time is like running into a secretive and sophisticated woman you once made laugh at a party, but who pretends not to know you the next day. It felt as if I hadn’t been along those streets in years. Everything was just the way I’d left it, but also different in some way, as if each bench and lamp post had been substituted with a plastic prop.

  Nobody seemed to be out and about. It hit me then that I had no idea what night of the week it was. I didn’t even know the month. I’d clearly lost more than I knew, out there in the countryside—more than I’d bargained for. The truth was, I regretted having ever said yes to any of it, for having thought it could be so simple. After all, Leonard himself hadn’t thought it such a simple thing to leave his inheritance to his son. No. He’d needed to turn the entire process into a test, to pit Howard and me against each other and have one of us come out on top. And that’s what had happened, right? I’d come out tops and Howard had come out bottom (of the goddamned woods), which, according to Leonard’s logic, meant I’d won it all for myself. The house. The estate. The money.

  Of course, I wasn’t naive enough to think the police would see it that way, but the next big Q was whether or not Jolene had gone to the cops at all. There was still a chance she hadn’t. Maybe she’d be afraid of what that might mean for her. It would lead to a comprehensive investigation, surely, not only into the man with his wheelbarrow-o’-death, but into the entire orbiting subplot, which included Jolene herself. So, was she willing to hand it all over? To sit at the station hour upon hour as the befuddled officers listened to her explain how Leonard had paid her to deceive me, to mess with my head, as they exchanged shifty glances, trying to make sense of it all?

  Time would tell.

  Either way, my return to the city hadn’t been an attempt at escape. I knew they’d find me there if they searched for me. Rather, what I wanted to know was what it’d feel like just to see it again, in all its decrepit splendour. I needed to know if I still belonged there, if the new clothes and car made me feel any different about it—about myself, in it. All I wanted at that very moment, entering the city, was to drive through it—to process and absorb each paper bag blowing in the wind and each aimless drunk and each flashing neon sign pointing to the end of the line.

  My hands turned the wheel in the direction of the Crack Radisson. I don’t know why. In minutes, I was outside my apartment block with its cramped flats above the Korean Mart and the dingy barber and the half-empty hardware store.

  I parked the car outside and took the rattling elevator to the top. I’d never realised how strongly it smelt of sweat and copper and old linoleum in there. On the second floor, the doors creaked open and I stepped into the corridor. Door after familiar door stood along the walls. The only open door was the one alongside my flat—belonging to Professor Paedophile. A paramedic was standing just outside, having a cigarette. He shot me a glance, as if I were about to tell him off for puffing indoors, but then he looked away and blew a smoke ring.

  Everything okay? I asked.

  He didn’t say anything, didn’t make eye contact. Just studied my outfit, apparently making his own judgements. Then a balding man came out, followed by a short woman pushing a gurney.

  I asked what had happened.

  “Heart attack,” she said. “The whole thing lasted no longer than a few seconds. The best way to go.”

  The man asked, “Did you know him?”

  I told them I’d met him a couple times, that I was a neighbour—but I could tell they struggled to reconcile my fancy get-up with my less-than-humble abode. Then the man pulled back the sheet for me to have a look.

  But it wasn’t him.

  It wasn’t the old professor who’d beaten my door down about the mystic numbers that had supposedly come from the radio. This was someone else. Also in his late seventies or early eighties, but unfamiliar to me. My only thought was that Prof. Paedo had moved on, and some other geriatric on his last few ticks had moved in, but it seemed an odd possibility.

  I stepped back as the paramedics manoeuvred the corpse into the corridor, and squeezed into the elevator. They’d forgotten to lock the door behind them, and I entered the dead man’s apartment. It was exactly how I remembered it, the numbers scrawled on the walls, the brown couch, the filthy bin. It didn’t look like anyone else had moved in at all. The more I wandered about, the less sense it seemed to make. I went to the window and looked out. It was an almost identical view to my own in the room next door, just at a minimally different angle.

  I left the flat and took the elevator down. Outside, the cold hit me. I needed a drink—something to realign the mind. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I hurried along the pavement. The moon over the tall buildings seemed bigger than it had in the countryside. Bigger, but malnourished.

  A bouncer outside a pool hall slid aside to let me in. There were around fifteen, twenty pool tables, each blotted out by smoke. Every table was taken, and I navigated between jutting cues and arses, towards the bar. I pulled up a stool and ordered a whiskey and ginger ale. Without a word, the barman went to get my drink.

  I perused the scene. Bland nineties rock music blasted from the speakers, but I could still hear the clack of cues and balls and the drunken guffawing of what looked to be mostly rowdy varsity students and dopey, bearded punks. When I turned around again, my drink was in front me. I paid and took my first cold sip.

  Coby.

  She was sitting across from me, on the other side of the bar, watching a television screen in the top left-hand corner of the hall. Teenagers on tiny BMXs ramping up absurdly tall half-pipes and doing twists and turns in the air. Coby sat sucking on a cider, her eyes fixed to the screen.

  “Hey,” I said, as I walked over. She seemed not to hear me, so I said it again, louder. “Hey, you.”

  “Yes?”

  I waited, gave her a moment to acknowledge me, but seconds chugged by and nothing appeared to click.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  She looked me over, clearly unimpressed.

  “Look, if this is a pick-up line, forget it. Oh, and I don’t need you to buy me a drink, either, I’ve got one.”

  Throwing her head back, she dr
ank from her bottle as if to prove the point. Her long, slender throat undulated as she swallowed. She banged the drink down on the counter, just hard enough to show what she could do with a fist to the nose, to the throat, to the groin. Then her eyes swivelled back to the television.

  “How’s your sister?” I asked her. I didn’t know what else to say. All I felt I could do was push on.

  She turned to me and said, “What?”

  “Your sister. The doctor.”

  She laughed, as if in disbelief of my persistence.

  “Sister? That’s a new one,” she said. “Look, man, I don’t have a sister. But I’ll play along. You tell me where you think you know me from, and I’ll decide how far this goes.”

  “Ten To Twelve.”

  She made a half-turn on her stool. “I do work at Ten To Twelve.” Her head inclined to one side, she gave me a second, protracted look. “I do know you. You’re the piano guy. You play … uh, jazz, right? You’ve gigged there a few times, haven’t you? Whiskey and ginger ale. That’s your drink, right? How’re you doing, man?”

  Hesitating, I said, “I’m fine.”

  “This is more than you’ve ever spoken to me at the bar, you’re usually so quiet, just sitting there with your drink, not talking to anyone. I don’t even think we’ve met. I’m Toni.”

  She stuck a hand out for me to shake.

  “Sorry, what did you say your name was?”

  “Toni.”

  “What about Coby?”

  “Who’s Coby?”

  “You are.”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Nope.”

  “You’re … not Coby?”

  “Sorry, pal.”

  “You’ve got a sister who just graduated?”

  “This isn’t clicking with you, is it?”

  “Your cat … ”

  “My cat? Ha, definitely not. I’m allergic.” She sucked at her cider. “Hey, you all right? You don’t look so well.”