The Eulogist

by Liz McKinney Johnson

  Gavin raises his gun higher, following Lily’s voice. Howard steps forward. He’s wearing a full-length camel trench coat. If I was a betting man, I’d bet cashmere. Dressed to kill, as usual. His arms are down at his side, but I can see he is also holding a gun. The only hints that this evening has involved more than a jaunt to the theater are the unkempt nature of his hair and his shirt collar hanging open.

  "Charlie?" Howard asks, slowly approaching me. "Where’s Charlie? Who else is here with us?"

  Gavin’s eyes sweep the hallway, but his gun remains aimed up at Lily.

  "I’m Charlie."

  "No, you’re Albert."

  "I made him up."

  "Who?" Howard reaches up with his free hand to smooth his hair, but instead it pushes up, wilder than before, like a rooster’s comb.

  "Albert. I made up Albert."

  "Why would you do that?"

  It’s a valid question, and really, the crux of why I’m here right now. Here, in a half finished hallway, chatting with two people holding guns. I actually can’t believe I’m still alive and breathing let alone chatting. Maybe if we keep chatting, it will delay or even defer the inevitable. But the question hovers. And when someone with a gun asks you a question, it is not polite to keep him waiting for the answer.

  "It’s my hobby," I say, hoping to sound casual. As if my hobby might be cooking or fly tying, like a normal person. A normal person you wouldn’t want to shoot.

  "Making up people is your hobby?"

  "Giving eulogies is my hobby . . . at funerals . . . for people I don’t know."

  I open my mouth to continue justifying the whole idea, but it always sounds so stupid when I try to explain it to someone. So, I stop.

  "That’s it. That’s why,"

  Howard stares at me. Blankly at first, and then he smiles. A dry, thin-lipped smile that reminds me of cracked wood.

  "Wait. That whole story was made up? There was no book? You made all that up?"

  Howard laughs. A raspy, coughing sound that splinters his wooden smile. "You didn’t even know Michael?"

  "I didn’t then, but I do now. I know about everything now."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  Howard’s smile vanishes and he raises his gun. His hand is steady, his eyes are so cold, so penetrating, they drill into my skull, making two symmetrical holes directly above the bridge of my nose. I don’t dare reach up to touch my forehead to feel if they’re really there, to see if there’s air escaping. I don’t dare move, but I can keep talking.

  "I know what Michael knew," I say, speaking directly into the gun, not caring anymore, daring him to shut me up for good. "Your original test patients suffered an unfortunate side effect. That is if you can classify murderous sociopathic behavior as a side effect. I know and Lily knows and other people are going to know."

  Without another word, Howard squeezes the trigger and the wall behind me explodes. I cover my head.

  "Howard! No!" Lily shrieks from the stairway. "Oh my god."

  "Shut up, Lily," Howard says, turning to look at her for the first time, waving the gun from her to me and back again, gesturing with it like a laser pointer. "I didn’t kill him. I just wanted him to stop talking."

  "Why’d you do it Howard, why did you kill Michael?" Lily asks, backing up the stairs. "Isn’t your job finding ways to cure people? Aren’t you supposed to protect life?"

  Howard laughs again and, pointing the gun up at her, making a small circle with the barrel as if tracing the outline of her face, caressing the shape.

  "Where did you get that sugar-coated version of reality, Mrs. Rudolph?" he asks, sweetly. "You really should stop reading your own press releases. I did what I had to do to save myself and my company. I did what anyone would have done."

  "Murder?" I shout. "Anyone would have resorted to murder?" I drop my arms to emphasize the insanity of this explanation. They’ve been up over my head for so long, I’ve lost the feeling in my fingers. They begin to tingle back to life as the blood returns. "You can’t possibly believe that—"

  "Gavin," Howard interrupts. "He’s talking again."

  Gavin swings his arm around and fires. A bullet ricochets off the stairs. I stop talking. Lily drops to her knees. She is still holding the file box in one hand.

  "As I was saying," Howard continues, his tone as calm and informational as it was the day he gave us the tour of Nesler, "Michael stopped believing in what we’d created. He thought there was something wrong with the drug. But you want to know the only thing wrong? Michael loved those crazy old people. That’s where the real problem lay."

  "Tell me what happened," Lily pleads from her position on the stairway. "Tell me exactly what happened."

  Howard moves closer to the stairs and places one Italian loafer on the bottom step.

  "Did you know love is based almost entirely on trust? If you have any trust, you can be fooled."

  Howard is looking directly at Lily. His eyes, his whole face really, is composed, serene. A tranquil businessman with a small revolver and a bland expression—it’s more terrifying than a raving lunatic coming after you with an ax.

  "You can be fooled into believing anything," Howard continues. "Michael wanted to believe we were going to fix things. That’s why he came out to the airport to meet us that afternoon. We were going to figure out how to fix things before the media got hold of the story. We were going to make it all better and save his precious patients."

  "But how? How did you do it?" Lily’s voice is barely audible.

  "With a little something in his coffee. Not exactly innovative, I realize, but highly effective. No nasty after-taste, no annoying residue in the blood stream, no reason to suspect anything other than a tragic accident."

  Lily’s head falls forward. She must be crying, but she doesn’t look up. I’m so sorry, Lily. You don’t deserve any of this. You should be at a country club somewhere playing tennis, getting your nails done, complaining about how hard it is to find good help. Please look at me. Look at me one last time, see me for the fool I am. Just look at me.

  Everybody look at me! I turn back to Howard and yell.

  "This isn’t going to look like an accident!"

  I want Howard’s attention. Stop focusing on her, you asshole. I’m the one who dredged up this corpse from the river. I’m the one who figured it out. It’s me you want.

  "If you take us out, Howard, it’s going to look like exactly what it is—cold-blooded murder."

  "Actually, I was thinking murder-suicide," says Howard, quietly, in direct contrast to my screaming. He finally turns to look at me and smiles. "Unrequited love, extreme jealousy, an ill-fated affair gone horribly wrong. There are any number of people who’ve observed you and Lily together, Albert."

  "Charlie."

  "I don’t much care who you are." The conciliatory tone is gone. The veneer of consummate professionalism is warping and pulling away from the core. The rotten, evil core. He spits his words at me. "I only know it won’t be hard to come up with a story to explain the heartbreaking consequences of your actions."

  "No one will believe you," Lily says, standing bolt upright again. "Charlie, catch."

  She hurls the file box towards me, and in the same moment bends down and begins pushing and throwing everything off the stairs. Torches, hose reels and buckets of tools smash to the cement. Anything she can get her hands on goes flying. Not everything makes it all the way down. A drill hits the railing, shattering its plastic handle. A box of nails busts open and rains steel needles as it spins end over end. I reach up and miss the file box as it sails over my head.

  Howard and Gavin freeze, watching the unexpected commotion with shocked expressions, as if not quite sure where to direct their attention or their weapons. I drop and lunge for the file box, crawling to where it’s slid to a stop behind a pillar. I lift up my prize and turn around to show Lily. She’s run to the very top of the stairs now, directly behind a welding cart. A large green oxygen tank and smaller r
ed acetylene tank are strapped together on the front of the dolly. Her arms flex.

  "Lily! Not that. Don’t push that!"

  There are gun shots. And screaming, lots of screaming. Are we all screaming? The cart rolls off the top step. It balances for a moment, but only a moment. And in that moment, I see Lily turn to look at me and I freeze the action. She’s shouting something, but her words are frozen too. It won’t hold. The instant is gone. I watch the wheels of the cart catch the corners of the steps, bouncing the heavy tanks like bottles of soda. The strap gives way and both tanks pitch forward, tumbling down the stairs. The regulator valve snaps off the oxygen first and above the crashing of steel on cement I hear the gas escape. The red tank hits the stairs. One step and its valve is gone. Second step and everything is gone. A single crashing boom reverberates and the explosion rips open in fury. Flames sweep out in all directions, reaching for anything, everything. Something slams against the side of my neck and tears through the flesh of my cheek. As I’m thrown backwards, I see Lily jump up. Too high. She’s jumping too high. No one can jump that high.

  "Lily!"

  My face is burning. Fluorescent lights detonate over my head. Fire. Everywhere. Chewing its way through the piles of lumber, leaping over walls, licking up insulation . . . and people. Fire craves people. I grab the box and run. Run away.

  I’m not sure which way is out. The building is a maze. All I can do is run away from the heat. I bump into walls in the dark. Doors are locked. Windows shatter in the distance. Maybe the sound is only in my head. Maybe I’m ten years old again and the fireman will come to get me. I clutch the box to my chest and run. My escape route intersects with another hallway. The smoke is less dense here, or it could only seem that way. Smoke is what kills you; that’s what they say. And they always know. They always know what to tell you. Keep running. Just keep running. I should try to find Lily. I should stay and wait for her. But she's not coming. No one's coming. So I run. Out of the flames. Out.

  A door comes into view through the smoke at the end of the hall. A heavy door with a bright red crash bar and a yellow caution sign: "Do not open. Alarm will sound." I barrel through it into the parking lot. The promised alarm shrieks, a tenor scream over the bass notes of the continued explosions. Keep running. Just keep running. Hugging the box. Across the empty parking lot. Into the street. Under a stand of fir trees marking the entrance of someone’s driveway. There are houses all along this side of the street facing the construction site. Lights begin to snap on. People come out, pulling their robes over nightgowns and boxers.

  Only then do I turn. I turn around and look back at the building. A building on fire never looks like it does in the cartoons, with neat little blooms of red and orange leaping out each window. It’s haphazard and disorganized, like some great, hulking monster trying to shake free of the swarming flames and smoke. The black, spiraling, billowing smoke.

  Sirens peal in the distance. The cool air stings the side of my face. I reach up to touch it and recoil from the feel of a wet, sticky substance where my skin should be. The file box sits at my feet, perhaps the only thing from the building that remains whole and unchanged. I drop to the ground next to it under the trees. Fire engines scream into view. There’s a crowd now. The TV crews can’t be far behind. I watch the fire writhing under the assault of the water hoses, not willing to release the building, not ready to return to the depths of hell.

  Lily’s in there. Lily’s in there with Howard and Gavin and I’m out here with a plastic box of files. How did it come to this? An ambulance pulls up next to the fire trucks. No one’s left, boys. Turn off your lights. Don’t bother.

  The tears are sudden and unfamiliar. I don't know how to stop them or why I should even try. I picture Lily’s face. I conjure her up and invite her to sit next to me under the trees. It’s safe here under the trees. No one can see us. We’ll just sit and watch the building burn, you and I. And, I’ll tell you more about who I really am. Do you remember I told you I loved you? Can you answer me now? Can you hear me? I'm so sorry.

  The crowd pushes closer to the fence, angling for a better view. A woman wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe and enormous slippers in the shape of a laughing pig stops in front of my hiding place. I can only see her from the knees down, so the piggy slippers are particularly impressive. She’s holding a little girl’s hand. The little girl is in yellow pajamas and her slippers have giant plastic puppy heads on them. She’s rubbing her eyes, and I imagine her pink, fluffy Mommy has drug her out of a deep sleep to see the spectacle happening right across the street. As they stand there, the little girl turns and sees me. She doesn’t yell or jump or even tug at Fluffy Mommy to let her know. She doesn’t seem to think it’s odd that there’s a strange, sad man sitting under the trees. She squats down just a little to get a better look at me, and waves. I wave back. Then Fluffy Mommy yanks her arm and their piggy and puppy slippers scuff off down the sidewalk.

  I crawl out from the under the trees and start walking in the opposite direction. Nobody else notices the sobbing, disheveled man with the bleeding face carrying a box down the sidewalk. He doesn’t really exist.

  Don’t worry, Lily. I’ll finish things myself. I’ll take it from here.

  TWENTY SIX

  I surprise myself, remembering how to hotwire a car. One of the bio-kids in a foster family I lived with as a teen was a late-stage juvenile delinquent. I acquired quite a few handy skills from him. Besides hotwiring, I can pick a simple lock, roll a joint with one hand and juggle. Of course, juggling is legal, but it’s also weird. The media circus around the lab explosion is so raucous no one gives me a second glance when I cruise past in Lily’s Mercedes.

  Back at the condo, it’s peaceful inside, nothing out of place, nothing to indicate a tragedy. Just quiet rooms waiting for someone to come home. I stand in the bathroom. My face looks worse than I’d imagined from the pain. There’s a slash of raw skin about four inches long snaking down the side of my right cheek, like the trail of a blow torch.

  It will take the police a while to figure out who was inside the lab, but I really shouldn’t waste any time. I peel off my shirt. It reeks of smoke. I ball it up and throw it at my reflection in the mirror, hitting myself in the nose. It leaves a black smoke smudge as it slides down the mirror. Smoke and mirrors. I laugh at my own joke. But that’s all it used to be. Just a distraction, a hobby. Everything but real. I yank open the medicine cabinet and rifle for something to clean and cover my wound.

  I wonder if trauma victims normally want to take a shower. Maybe that’s part of the shock. Once I snap to and realize just how much shit has hit the fan, I probably won’t be able to function at all. They’ll find me in about a week or so, sitting in a chair by the window like Norman Bates, rocking back and forth and stinking to high heaven.

  The water feels like ten thousand needles stitching across my face. I tell myself it’s good for me, it will help scour out the wound. I also scream like a little girl every time I duck under the shower head.

  Clean, dressed and bandaged, I stand in the living room looking at the file box sitting on the polished oak coffee table. I reach down and flip open its battered top. Names stare up at me from the folder tabs, as if wondering what took me so long to get here. "Welcome to our world," they say. "Stay awhile. Have a cookie."

  I pull a few from the box and open them on my lap.

  Avery DeLong. There’s a letter on fancy stationery. An embossed and foiled logo reads: Livery Hills Jewelers. Seems Mr. DeLong ordered a very expensive watch, but the watch had gone missing shortly after he’d come in to accept delivery and order engraving. The store was respectfully wondering if Mr. DeLong had inadvertently taken the watch at some point in the transaction as it had disappeared from the engraver’s service box on the counter. The letter mentioned numerous unanswered phone messages. There’s a handwritten note at the bottom of the page. The impeccable penmanship must be Howard’s: Watch returned with personal explanation of patient’s new medication and
interaction with an OTC decongestant. Store will not press charges. No dosage adjustment, observation required.

  Jonah Klein. Well, well . . . Hugh’s father. A piece of notebook paper with a phone message taped to the top lays on a thick stack of more formal-looking reports. The message is from Hugh to Howard, and says simply, "fourth fire." Underneath, there’s a list of four dates and four places. I’m guessing here, but I’d say the senior Mr. Klein was setting fires, and based on the addresses listed, I’d say he had very good taste in property values. Dosage checked and augmented. Relocate to Grace Fountains, locked ward. Removal an option. Son paid in full. Paid in full? Good ol’ Hugh, not afraid to make a few bucks off his old man.

  Myrtle Harris. The first paper in her folder is typed, a police report of some sort. Andy Harris, 78, found dead in the bottom on his fishing boat on Blue Lake. Apparent heart attack. A note was clipped to the report in the same precise writing. Relocated to Bloomington. Removal scheduled for month five.

  I guess Howard was keeping his promise to Michel in the strictest sense of the word. He was taking care of the problem. Step out of line a little and they’ll smooth it over with a medical excuse. Step out of line a lot and you get a new address. Step over the line completely, and you get "removed" from the situation. Problem over.

  I stuff the folders back in the box. My briefcase with the lab results and insurance reports is still on the couch where I tossed it. I pull out a pad of paper, scribble the access route to Michael’s computer notes and shove that in the box as well. I force the lid closed and shake my head at how much evidence is trapped inside. All the ducks are ready to be put into their rows.

  The clock in the kitchen is inching toward a decent hour when my neighbors will wake up, flip on the news and spill coffee down the front of their nightshirts at the pictures of the smoldering remains of the lab and the news that bodies have been found inside. I’d best be going.

  I dash off another note, this one to Dennis.