“It’s the piss,” Beth whispered, “someone reported it as blood. It happens sometimes. Poor old guy.”
Beth escorted Fazzo to the car. She turned and nodded towards Paul; he took the signal. He went over to the back staircase. The door was open. He walked inside--the carpeting was damp and stank of mildew. A junkie sat six steps up, skinny to the bone, leaning against the peeling wallpaper, muttering some junkie incantation. Paul stepped around him. The hallway above was narrow, its paint all but stripped off by time. The smell of curry--someone was cooking, and it permeated the hall. When he got to 265, he knocked. The door was already ajar, and his fist opened it on the first knock.
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There was a light somewhere to the back of the apartment. Paul called out to see if anyone was there. He gagged when he inhaled the fetid air.
All he could see were shadows and shapes, as if the old guy’s furniture had been swathed in dropcloths. He felt along the wall for the light switch. When he found it, he turned on the light. It was a twentyfive watt bulb which fizzled to life from the center of the living room ceiling. Its light barely illuminated the ceiling itself. The chairs and couch in the room were covered with old newspapers, some of them damp from urine. The old man hadn’t even bothered to make it to the bathroom anymore. There was human excrement behind the couch. Empty whiskey bottles along the floor in front of the television set.
Paul didn’t notice the strong stink once he’d stayed in the apartment for a few minutes.
Beth arrived at that point. “I got him cuffed, not that he needs it. He fell asleep as soon as I sat him down in the car. Jesus!” She covered her mouth and nose. “I thought he’d been living on the street.” Her eyes widened as she took in the other sights.
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“Look at this,” Paul pointed to the windowsill, shining his flashlight across it.
It was black with dead flies, two or three layers thick.
He continued on to the kitchen. “Should I open the fridge, you think?”
“Sure,” Beth said. “Looks like Fazzo the Fabulous is going to end up in state hospital for awhile. What the hell?” She picked something up off a shelf and held it up. “Paul, look at this.”
In her hands, what looked like a wig with long, thin hair. “You think Fazzo steps out on Saturday night in pearls and pumps?”
Paul shook his head, and turned back to the refrigerator. He opened the door, slowly. A blue light within it came on. The refrigerator was stacked three trays high with old meat--clotted steaks, green hamburger, what looked like a roast with a fine coating of mold on it. “Shit,” he said, noticing the flies that were dead and stuck against the wet film that glazed the shinier cuts of meat. “This guy’s lost it. He’s not just a drunk. He needs serious help.”
Beth walked into the bathroom, and started laughing. 73
“What’s up?” he asked, moving around the boxes in the kitchen. Paul glanced to the open door.
The bathroom light was bright.
“It’s clean in here. It’s so clean you can eat off it. It must be the one room he never goes in.” Beth leaned through the open doorway and gestured for Paul to come around the corner. “This is amazing.”
Paul almost tripped over a long-dead plant as he made it over to where she stood.
The bathroom mirror was sparkling, as was the toilet, the pink tiles. Blue and pink guest soap were laid out in fake seashells on either side of the brass spigots of the faucet.
Written in lipstick on the mirror: a phone number.
For a second, he thought he saw something small and green skitter across the shiny tiles and dive behind the shower curtain. A lizard?
Paul went to pull the shower curtain aside, and that’s when he found the woman’s torso.
2
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Paul washed his face six times that night, back at the sheriff’s office. He wished he hadn’t found it, he wished it had been Beth, or some other cop, someone who could take that kind of thing. It was the sort of image he had only seen in forensics textbooks, never in living color, never that muddy rainbow effect, never all the snake-like turns and twists...he had to put it out of his mind. He did not want to think about what was left of the woman in the tub.
He had not seen her face, and he was glad. She wasn’t entirely human to him without a face.
Her name was Shirley. Fazzo the Fabulous told him. “Shirley Chastain. She was from the Clearwater District. She ran a dry cleaners with her mother. I thought she was a nice sort of girl right up until I cut her. I dug deep in her. She had a gut like a wet velvet curtain, thick, but smooth, smooth, smooth. She had a funny laugh. A tinkly bell kind of laugh.” He had sobered up and was sitting in county jail. Paul stood outside his cell with the county coroner, who took notes as Fazzo spoke.
“She had excellent taste in shoes, but no real sense of style. Her skin was like sponge cake.”
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“You eat her skin?” The coroner asked.
Fazzo laughed. “Hell, no. I’m not some damn Jeffrey Dahmer wannabe. I mean it felt like sponge cake. The way sponge cake used to be, like foam, like perfect foam when you pull it apart.” He kneaded the air with his fingers. “I’m not a freakin’ cannibal.”
Paul asked, “You were a clown or something? Back in your circus days, I mean?”
“No, sir. I wasn’t anything like that. I was the world’s greatest magician. Even Harry Blackstone told me, when I was a kid, he said,
‘Fazzo, you’re gonna be the biggest, you got what it takes.’ Didn’t mean shit, but my oh my it sure did feel good to hear it from him.”
“I guess you must’ve been something,” Paul said.
Fazzo glanced from the coroner to Paul. “Why you here, kid?
You busted me. What are you gawking for?”
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “You kind of remind me of my dad I guess.” It was a joke; Paul glanced at the coroner, and then back at Fazzo. Last time Paul saw his dad, his dad’s face was split open from the impact of the crash.
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“Shit,” the old guy dismissed this with a wave. “I know all about your old man, kid. It’s like tattoos on your body. Everybody’s story is on their body. Dad and Mom in car wreck, but you were driving. Little sister, too, thrown out of the car. I see it all, kid. You got a secret don’t you? That’s right, I can see it plain as day. You shouldnta never gone in 265, cause you’re the type it wants. You’re here because you got caught.”
“I got caught?”
“You went in 265 and you got caught. I pass it to you, kid. You get the door-prize.”
“You’re some sick puppy,” Paul said, turning away.
Fazzo shouted after him, “Don’t ever go back there, kid. You can always get caught and get away. Just like a fish on the hook. Just don’t fight it. That always reels’em in!” Paul glanced back at Fazzo. The old man’s eyes became slivers. “It’s magic, kid. Real magic. Not the kind on stage or the kind in storybooks, but the real kind. It costs life sometimes to make magic. You’re already caught, though. Don’t go 77
back there. Next time, it’s you.” Then Fazzo closed his eyes, and began humming to himself as if to block out some other noise.
It sickened Paul further, thinking what a waste of a life. What a waste of a damned life, not just the dead woman, but this old clown. Paul said, “Why’d you do it?”
Fazzo stopped his humming. He pointed his finger at Paul and said, “I was like you, kid. I didn’t believe in anything. That’s why it gets you. You believe in something, it can’t get you. You don’t believe, and it knows you got an empty space in your heart just waiting to be filled. You believe in heaven, kid?”
Paul remained silent.
“It’s gonna get you, then, kid. You got to believe in heaven if you want to get out of 265.”
Then, Fazzo told his story. Paul would’ve left, but Fazzo had a way of talking that hooked you. Paul leaned against the wall, thinking he’d take off any minute, but he listened.
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3
I was famous, kid, sure, back before you were born, and I toured with the Seven Stars of Atlantis Circus, doing some sideshow shit like sword-swallowing and fire-eating before I got the brilliant idea to start bringing up pretty girls to saw in half or make disappear. This was way back when, kid, and there wasn’t a lot of entertainment in town’s with names like Wolf Creek or Cedar Bend or Silk Hope. The Seven Stars was the best they got, and I turned my act into a showcase. I was hot, kid. I blew in like a nor’easter and blew up like a firecracker. Imagine these hands--these hands--as I directed the greatest magic show in the tri-state area, the illusions, kid, the tricks of the trade, the boxes with trapdoors that opened below the stage, the nights of shooting stars as I exploded one girl-filled cage after another--they turned into white doves flying out across the stunned faces of children and middle-aged women and old men who had lost their dreams but found them inside the tent. Found them in my magic show! It was colossal, stupendous, magnificent! I gave them a night of fucking heaven, kid. We turned a 79
dog into a great woolly mammoth, we turned a horse into a unicorn, we turned a heron into a boy and then into a lizard, all within twenty minutes, and then when it was all done, the boy became rabbit and I handed it to some thrilled little girl in the audience to take home for a pet or for supper.
Once, traveling during a rainy spring, the whole troupe got caught in mud, and I used my knowledge of traps and springs to get us all out of there--and was rewarded with becoming the Master of Ceremonies. It was practically religious, kid, and I was the high priest!
But the problem was, at least for me, that I believed in none of it. I could not swallow my own lies. The magic was a fake. I knew where the animals were hid away to be sprung up, and the little boy, bounced down into a pile of sawdust while a snowy egret took his place, or an iguana popped up wearing a shirt just like the one the boy had on. The boy could take it, he was good. Best assistant I ever had. The woman, too, she was great--saw her in half and she screamed like she was giving birth right on the table--not a beauty except in the legs. She had legs that didn’t stop at the ass but went right on up to her chin. 80
When she got hit by the bus in Memphis, everything changed for me, and I didn’t want to do the act again. Joey wanted to keep going, but I told him we were finished. I loved that kid. So, we quit the act, and I went to do a little entertaining in clubs, mostly strip joints. Tell a couple jokes, do a few tricks with feather fans--voila! Naked girls appear from behind my cape! It was not the grandeur of the carnival, but it paid the rent, and Joey had a roof over his head and we both had food in our mouths.
One month I was a little late on the rent, and we got thrown out. That’s when I came here, and we got the little place on Swan Street. Well, we didn’t get it, it got us.
But it got you, too, didn’t it, kid? It wasn’t just you walking in to 265, it was that you been preparing your whole life for 265. That other cop, she lives in another world already, 265 couldn’t grab her. But it could grab you, and it did, huh.
I knew as soon as I saw you under the streetlamp.
I recognized you from before.
You remember before?
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Hey, you want to know why I killed that woman? You really want to know?
Watch both my hands when I tell you. Remember, I’m a born prestidigitator.
Here’s why: sometimes, you get caught in the doorway.
Sometimes, when the door comes down, someone doesn’t get all the way out.
You want to find the other half of her body?
It’s in 265.
Only no one’s gonna find it but you, kid.
You’re a member of the club.
4
Paul was off-shift at 2, and went to grab a beer at the Salty Dog minutes before it closed. Jacko and Ronny got there ahead of him and bought the first round.
“Shit,” Paul said, “it was like he sawed her in two.”
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“He saw her in two? What’s that mean?” Jacko asked. He was already drunk.
“No, he sawed her in two. He was a magician. A real loser,” Paul shook his head, shivering. “You should’ve seen it.”
Jacko turned to Ronny, winking. “He saw her sawed and we should’ve seen it.”
“Cut it out. It was...unimaginable.”
Ronny tipped his glass. “Here’s to you, Paulie boy. You got your first glimpse of the real world. It ain’t pretty.”
Jacko guzzled his beer, coughing when he came up for air. “Yeah, I remember my first torso. Man, it was hacked bad.”
“I thought nothing like that happened around here,” Paul said. “I thought this was a quiet town.”
Jacko laughed, slapping him on the back. “It doesn’t happen much, kid. But it always happens once. You got to see hell just to know how good the rest of this bullshit is.”
Paul took a sip of beer. It tasted sour. He set the mug down. “He called it heaven.” But was that really what Fazzo the Fabulous had said?
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Heaven? Or had he said you had to believe in heaven for 265 to not touch you?
Jacko said, “Christ, forget about it Paulie. Hey, how’s that little Marie?”
Paul inhaled the smoke of the bar, like he needed something more inside him than the thought of 265. “She’s okay.”
5
When he got home to their little place on Grove, with the front porch light on, he saw her silhouette in the front window. He unlocked the front door, noticing that the stone step had gotten scummy from damp and moss. The early morning was strung with humid mist, the kind that got under skin, the kind that permeated apartments and houses and alleys. Humid like an emotion. Inside, only the bathroom light was on. He walked in, glancing at her, sitting in the living room.
“Marie,” he said.
“I couldn’t get the t.v. to work,” her voice was humid. 84
“Sorry, kid,” he said, trying not to show exhaustion. “I’ll get it fixed tomorrow. You should be asleep.”
“I should be,” she said.
“Well, try and get some,” he whispered. He went into the darkened living room, careful not to trip over the books she always left on the rug, or the Coke bottles, or the newspapers open to the comics pages. As he knelt beside her, he touched the top of her head. “How was Mrs. Jackson?”
“Oh, she was something,” Marie said, and Paul was always amazed at her acerbic way of saying things. But it was nearly three a.m. on a Friday. No school tomorrow. Nothing for Marie but a vast day of nothing to do.
“How’s the pain?”
She didn’t answer.
Paul kissed his little sister on the forehead. “Well I need to go to bed. You should too.”
Marie pulled away, turning her chair back towards the window. “I hate what you did to me,” she whispered.
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She said this more than he cared to remember.
“I hate it, too,” he said. Trying not to remember why she could say it in the first place. “You keep your oxygen on all day?”
She may have nodded, he couldn’t tell in the dim light.
“I hate what I did to myself,” she whispered, but he wasn’t sure. She may have said, “I hate what I do to myself.” Or, “I hate what I want to do to myself.” It was late. He’d had a couple of beers. She had whispered.
The three possibilities of what she had said played like a broken record through his mind every now and then, and in the next few days-staying up late, staring at the ceiling, hearing the hum of the machine that helped keep his beautiful twenty year old sister alive, he was sure she’d said the last thing.
I hate what I want to do to myself.
6
Clean up crew had been through, photographers had been through, the apartment was cordoned off, but not picked over much--with a full confession from Fazzo there wasn’t much need of serious evidence. 86
Paul stood in the doorway, nodding to one of the detectives in a silent hello.<
br />
He glanced around the apartment--it was trashed. Just a crazy old drunk’s shit-hole.
The bathroom light seeped like pink liquid from under the door.
He didn’t go in.
He didn’t want to.
He wanted to not think about the torso or the magician or even the lizard he’d seen scuttle into the bathtub.
But it was all he thought about for the next six months.
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On his nights off, he’d sit in the living room with Marie and watch television. Marie loved television, and besides her reading, it was the only thing that got her out of herself. “I saw a great movie last night,”
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