wonder—i.e., whether I was seeing anything clearly, or whether I was losing my mind ... and so forth and so on ... an enervating and recursive self-analysis that got me nowhere except deeper into my own head, which was exactly the place I needed to escape from most. Everywhere I went I was aware of the impression I made: spacey, shifty, quick to startle, unnecessarily brusque. And knowing this about myself increased my sensitivity to people’s reactions, making me shiftier and brusquer still. I felt them staring at me, everyone staring at my eyes, bloodshot from cleaning fumes; at my hands, wrinkled and chapped and trembling. Staring at my wounded right cheek: an announcement that I was guilty, guilty, my very own mark of Cain. I began putting on a heavy layer of concealer first thing in the morning, in case someone came by. I wasn’t expecting anyone, but better safe than sorry. The makeup irritated the wounds, causing me to rub at them, reopening them ... leading me to feel self-conscious of how I looked ... leading me to hurry home to reapply more concealer before someone else could see me, suspect me, report me. Can one live like this? Unhinged by every interaction—tethered by the thinnest of threads, and that fraying—can one live like this and not go mad? I leapt from my bed at the first sign of dawn, fleeing indescribable dreams. SIX DAYS AFTER I RETURNED from killing two people and dumping their bodies in the New England woods, my doorbell rang. I went to the bathroom to check my face, added a little extra concealer, straightened my shirt out, and opened the front door on a smiling Detective Zitelli. Behind him stood another man, by his carriage and mien also a police officer. Pasty, with corkscrews of red hair and a button nose, he was prototypically Boston Irish, although his extreme height—he had at least three inches on me—suggested a Scandinavian grandparent. He fixed his gaze on me in the most unsettling way, his eyes lingering on the cakey spot on my right cheekbone. “Sorry to disturb you like this,” Zitelli said. From his coat pocket jutted a rolled-up manila envelope, ominously thick. “This is Detective Connearney. This an okay time?” I found my voice. “Uh, yes. Please. Come in.” They stood in the living room like two cops would. I offered them something to eat. Zitelli thwacked the envelope against his open palm. “Coffee would be killer.” Not having made the offer in earnest, I now had to explain that I did not own a coffee machine. Perhaps some tea instead? Zitelli waved no, thanks,
but Connearney said, “Sure,” still holding that stare on me, as though I owed him money. I told them to make themselves comfortable and walked from the room as slowly as I could. With slick hands I opened a kitchen cabinet and grabbed at a mug—knocking it to the floor, where it shattered. I knelt, hurriedly sweeping shards into my bare hand. A warrant. That’s what was in that envelope. The end of me spelled out on paper. Certainly, but there had to be more, much more, to make up that thickness. A series of statements, perhaps, taken from Charles Palatine and Dr. Cargill, attesting to my low moral worth, my avarice and superficiality. Or perhaps eyewitness accounts of every purchase made on December 28 and 29, from the hiking boots to the duvets to the pile of cigarette-ash-laced scrambled eggs at the Luncheonette Jean-Luc. Surveillance photos showing me white-knuckling up I-95, hunched and scooping leaves over her, touching matches to the smoking hem of his shirt. DNA reports on the skin underneath her fingernails, my skin, zested off during the struggle. In the living room the two policemen were talking. Talking about me, of course, speculating about how I would react when they moved to arrest me, planning to overwhelm me, should I resist. Who would hold my arms, who my legs. Who would read me my rights. Would they hog-tie me? Or would it be civilized, with light refreshments and witty banter before we all went down to central booking? I had made their job easy, hadn’t I, being so careless. I looked toward the service porch: I could slip out the side door. Take off running, run until I was free of this freezing-cold hell. I could start my life over again in a small town. I could go—maybe not home but someplace close enough, get a minimum-wage job and change my name. But where? And how? I didn’t belong to an underground network. I didn’t have “contacts.” Everything I had done until that moment had been improvisational, its substance and rationale drawn from movies. In real life it didn’t work that way. In real life the police found you. No doubt they had anticipated me, setting up a barricade at the end of the driveway.... I couldn’t go, not now. I would have to face them. But that, too, seemed equally inconceivable. These two men represented the first genuine human contact I’d had in more than a week, and knowing what I knew, I did not think I could contain myself in their presence. They were the Law. I felt my guilt tattooed across my face; it was
tattooed across my face. I needed concealer. I heard Zitelli laugh and choked on my own breath, startled by what seemed to me an abrupt spike in the ambient temperature. I was thinking that I must stop thinking. Must to act. The longer I weighed my options, the fewer options I had. The stovetop clock ticked unbelievably loudly, an inordinate amount of time passing; I had to get the water going. They were waiting; they would suspect me; nobody takes this long to make a cup of tea. I set the kettle on the stove and stood over it, imploring it to boil. “You know there’s a saying about that.” Connearney stood in the doorway, his head grazing the lintel. “So what are my options,” he said. I said, “Uhm.” He stepped past me, reaching for the ziggurat of tea boxes on the counter, plucking off the topmost. “ ‘Elderberry Explosion.”’ He looked at me, soliciting comment. “Fruity,” I said. He put down the box. “You don’t recognize me, do you.” I indicated that I did not. “How about a hint,” he said. “Ready? Here goes: it is not sufficient to do that which should be morally good that it conform to the law; it must be done for the sake of the law.” He smiled. “Any guesses?” Zitelli appeared. “Party’s been moved in here, I see.” I said, “Uh—” “Final answer?” Connearney asked. I shook my head. “Kant and the Enlightenment Ideal.” He pointed at me. “You were my TF.” To Zitelli: “He was my TF.” “What’s a TF?” Zitelli asked. “It’s what you people call a TA.” “We people?” “The great unwashed,” Connearney said. “This guy ... Seventeen years in law enforcement, I’ve never met a cockier bastard.” “Ha ha,” I said. “No bells ringing,” Connearney asked me. “Wh—uh. When—” “My first semester senior year. So that’s fall of oh-two.” “I. I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot of students over the years, and—” “No worries,” Zitelli said. “It’s not like he’s particularly memorable, giant redheaded Irishman with a tiny penis.” Connearney laughed. “Ha ha ha,” I said. “Was he a good teacher?” Zitelli asked. “Oh, yeah,” Connearney said. “He was great. The whole class was great. It’s sad what happened to Melitsky, you know?” “Yes,” I said. Then, sensing that more was expected: “You were a philosophy concentrator.” “Social studies.” “Isn’t that like where you look at maps?” Zitelli asked. “Not at Harvard.” “Well,” Zitelli said, “excuuuse me.” “Ha,” I said. “Ha ha.” Zitelli asked Connearney if I’d given him an A. “B-plus,” Connearney said. He smiled at me. The kettle screamed. Back in the living room, Zitelli offered me the manila envelope. For a moment I did not move, as though by refusing to accept it I could refute whatever its contents held in store for me. I took it and lifted the flap. Inside was a photocopy of Alma’s thesis. “I’ll have the original back to you soon as I can,” Zitelli said. “I thought you could use this in the meantime.” “... thank you.” “My pleasure. I apologize again for showing up like this. We were in the neighborhood, and I know how it’s going to sound, but I was wondering, if it’s not too great an inconvenience, maybe you could give my friend here a tour of the library. He’s into that kind of thing. Do you mind? Just for a few minutes.” “Right this way,” I said. I HAD GONE OVER every square inch at least a dozen times. I had no real reason to believe that the two men were there for anything other than to gawk. I strove—successfully, I think—to project ownerly insouciance. And yet I have never felt so terrified as I did during those twenty-five minutes. Oddly, what made the situation so nerve-wracking was also what enabled me to maintain a veneer of calm: the incongruit
y of two homicide detectives prancing around a room that had so recently served as a makeshift morgue was, in its own way, incredibly funny, and I kept having to swallow back the church giggles. “Jesus,” Connearney said, his big foot on the spot where Daciana’s head had lain. I stood near the globe, spinning it idly. “It’s a nice thing to have.” “No shit.” Zitelli looked at me as if to say You believe this guy? I smiled back, waiting for him to comment on the swapped carpet, the missing chairs— “What happened to your friend?” he said. The floor dropped out. Game over. Touring the library had been a pretext, after all; here came the axe. Your friend.
Ha ha ha. Connearney was still pretending to browse, but I knew that he’d tackle me if I tried to bolt. It would happen here and it would happen now and I could do nothing but relent. “Friend,” I said. “You know.” Zitelli laid his index finger across his upper lip. Silence. I said, “My girlfriend asked me to move him. He creeps her out.” “What are we talking about?” Connearney asked. “Nietzsche,” I murmured. “Aha.” He closed his eyes. “‘Pity in a man of knowledge seems almost ludicrous, like sensitive hands on a cyclops.” ’ Zitelli grinned. “You Harvard guys,” he said. “You’re all dickheads.” As I saw them out, they thanked me profusely, swearing never to bother me again—a chip I doubted I’d be able to cash in. I fetched half-Nietzsche from behind the file boxes in my office closet, where I’d left him. Upon return I’d been too distraught to deal with cleaning him, and in the intervening days the blood had turned to pinpricks of rust. One large patch cataracted his single eye. I scraped at it and my fingernail came away orange. The green velvet lining the base was dyed black. I tugged it off, crumpled it up, flushed it down the toilet. Google’s preferred method for removing rust from cast iron involved dish detergent and a potato. These I obtained at the corner market. Sitting at the kitchen table, I cut open one of the potatoes, dripped soap on the exposed face, and used it to rub at the bookend until the flesh turned black, the rust slowly coming away. I sliced off the dirty layer and began anew. The police had come and gone and said nary a word. But I wouldn’t be fooled. Something was up. It had to be. Once you begin to believe that the world could end you, you not only accommodate yourself to that belief but learn to feed off it. You gorge on your own fear. And when it is gone, you churn more, and gorge yourself again. I cut off another blackened slice. My friend, the policeman had called him. My friend was looking good.
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etween the background noise and Yasmina’s sobbing, I could scarcely make out a word she was saying. “Where are you calling from?” I asked. “Are you calling from the airport?” “I’m on the red-eye. I get in at five forty.” “I thought you weren’t coming back until Wednesday.” “I changed my flight. It’s over. I told Pedram about us.” If she was expecting me to let out a victory whoop, she was to be disappointed. All I could get out was, “Really?” “I had to. I couldn’t stand it anymore.” Still crying, she described the engagement party, guests packed up to the rafters of a Beverly Hills steakhouse; glistening platters of melon, crystal vases brimming with grapes; Pedram digging his fingers into her shoulder, making her feel like a naughty girl being kept close at hand. When it came time for her future husband to speak, she listened as he said nothing of her education, nothing of her as an individual, referring only to her sterling upbringing and her pristine family history and, above all, her beauty. She blew her nose. “My sister found me freaking out in the bathroom.” I sat at the kitchen table, fingering my wounded cheek. The area around it was tender, warm to the touch. “I don’t know what to say.” “You don’t know what to say?” “Well—” “Say you’re sorry.” “I’m s—” “Say you’re happy.
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