by Peter Manus
I slip into his head and fourrage. Like every man after sex, his mind is blissfully blank.
Très sincèrement,
Nightingale
SEVENTEEN
I am Nightingale—
He lies on his back, his eyes tracing the bloom of a ceiling leak over in the corner by where he has tacked up a picture of Leopold Auer. The mattress smells musty, or perhaps it is me, lying next to him. We are naked. A vague current of chilly air seeps through the room from the window next to him. He can feel it touching at the sweat that has pooled in the hollow of his chest. He hears the strike of a match, then smells the cigarette.
“Should we not try again?”
He feels the mattress depress as I roll to one side to tap ash onto the floor.
He considers, then shakes his head in the negative.
“It will make you play better,” I say. “You owe it to the music. When is this concert?”
After awhile he swallows audibly. “Sunday.”
“And it is important?”
He shakes his head at the ceiling. “No.”
“Ah, you lie.” I smoke and pass it to him. “It is your life. The acoustics alone! If you do not do your best, I will blame myself. Would you like that?”
“If I play poorly, the failure will be mine.”
I gesture and let my fingers come to rest gently on the downy surface of his damp, chilly stomach, which spasms at my touch. “But I come here. I distract you. I remind you of some terrible moments from the past. You dream horrible stuff. Always le pénitence, the torturing, of yourself. You are so miserable you have forgotten to be afraid of death, I think.”
“I’ve never thought about suicide.”
I tap a rib sharply to get his attention. “Do not bother lying to me. I fourrage in your mind, remember? I told you about this talent I have.”
He considers this. “When do you read my mind? Now?”
“Anytime, whenever I want. But not now, no. You are screwed up in a big way, and I am afraid to go in there so much.”
He sits up and throws his legs off the bed. “I need to play.”
“It is all because of the kid in the VW, yes?” I say to his rounded back.
“He wasn’t a kid. He was a young life. I destroyed that life.”
“But you were not to blame.”
“I was guilty. You didn’t bring the guilt with you when you came here. So your presence has nothing to do with my problems playing, or…with any other problems.”
“Wilkie said different.”
“What?” He half turns his head. His profile is gaunt, his beard spikes out, dirty blond, from his jaw. I have been sculpting his stubble, and I make him look better.
“Wilkie said you were innocent. He said that. Only you, he said.”
“You spoke to him?”
“I did.”
“Wilkie Morley’s dead. It was in the papers.”
“Yes, well,” I chuckle without humor. “I do not pretend to speak with the dead. It is only the minds of living men I fourrage, and only that from time to time. I spoke with Wilkie before his death. He told me you did not help to tip that car.”
Simon considers this, then stands up and walks toward the kitchen. His rump is quite thin. It is yellow and pocked, with deep hollows on each side.
“An angel, he called you,” I call after him. “That was the word he used. You think about it, and maybe later we will try again, huh?”
He shuts the door. I hear the shower and watch him step over the rim of the tub as the door slowly swings open.
Later he is playing the Vivaldi while I prepare to go out. I am wearing my Jeanne Moreau wig, adjusting the heavy bangs so that they frame my eyes closely. I apply a mauve lipstick and adjust my pale shift on my shoulders. He plays like a master, fast and faster; it is sharp and insistent but he is right that there is no life—the instrument does not sigh and weep when he slows. It is because he is thinking all the time, a state that is not healthy for a man.
There is a knock on the door. A male voice, polite but insistent. The police would like to speak with him.
He looks at me, seeking instruction, his instrument under his jaw, his bow across the strings. His eyes are pale green-blue, almost transparent. I nod to him, then lower myself to the floor and slide under his bed. It is a clumsy spot to hide but there is no other. He walks to the door, flicking the blanket so that it hangs down further on that side as he goes by.
“Nice music. Sorry to interrupt,” the cop says. When he speaks, his sentences begin from deep within his chest. I picture a mountain, so imposing that he can afford to be pleasant wherever he goes. “Hope we didn’t startle you. Buzzer’s broken and so’s the latch. Might want to get on your landlord about it. Seems like this could be an unpleasant neighborhood at night.”
The male cop has a woman cop with him, introduces her as his partner. She wears short lace-up boots with low heels and a pair of wool pants, cuffed, dusty green with a herringbone stripe. Walks springy on her heel like an athlete. Her voice is fluid and she accommodates the male cop, but she is not aware of this. Likes to see herself as hard and in charge. A man of the clay and a woman of the water. This is what their voices say to me.
“Leopold Auer,” the female cop says, noticing the poster. “You know he was related to Mischa Auer, the character actor? Played the first victim in René Clair’s And Then There Were None. Rolled out the movie’s theme on the piano just before throwing back a glass of cyanide. Had these long musician fingers, like yours.” They continue to toss topics round to warm Simon up. They get to the point when they ask whether he has picked up on the recent deaths: Terence D’Amante, Jake Culligan, Elliot Becker, Rocco Petrianni, Wilkie Morley.
I hear him laying his violin in its case. “Rocco Petrianni?” he says. “I didn’t know.”
“He’d relocated. Wasn’t local news.”
There is a short silence while Simon prays in his head for Rocco’s soul.
“You heard about the others, though,” says the male cop, not disrespectfully.
Simon mumbles about wishing Jake Culligan’s death was a peaceful one. I come to realize, lying there within inches of these cops who would do anything to stop me, that the guy trying to protect me cannot lie. Apparently he also knows this about himself, and so he tries instead to prevaricate. Unfortunately, at this he sucks massively as well.
“We don’t want to make anyone paranoid, Mr. Love,” says the female, “but as you know from the papers, at least a couple of these deaths were not peaceful at all. We thought it was fair to check in with the remaining people associated with the case.”
Simon says that he is grateful.
“Look, we’ll be frank,” the male cop throws in. “The police don’t have the capacity to provide round-the-clock protection. Any way you might be able to get yourself out of town for the next little while? Maybe your church could help you arrange to play out for a change?”
He says he has obligations. They seem disappointed that they did not scare him well enough. Maybe his surroundings gave them hope that he was a drifter at heart. Maybe he struck them as cowardly. Reluctantly, they go somewhere new with the conversation.
“Mr. Love, there’s some indication that a woman’s been involved in at least a couple of these deaths,” the female says. “Descriptions have been vague, so the best we got is that she’s white and in her mid-thirties, maybe with an accent. She might wear a wig, but her real hair is short and at one point it was dyed blonde. Might call herself Julie Moreau.”
“You seem to be nodding to yourself, Mr. Love,” the male cop cuts in. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a woman that meets this description lately? Maybe in a church where you play or here in your neighborhood?”
“I was just thinking.” Simon sounds nervous. “About whether I’ve seen her.”
“And?” Male cop’s shoes rock like he’s shifting up onto the balls of his feet.
“Yes,” Simon says in a tight voice. “I remember her
from the trial. Short blonde hair, and she…she’d be in her mid-thirties now. I didn’t know she was French back then.”
“How do you suppose you remember her?” the woman cop throws in. “I mean, it must have been a hectic time for you, crowded courtrooms, all that public attention. How does one woman stand out?”
He pauses. “She was someone to look at. She seemed not to judge."
“And you haven’t seen her lately. You’re sure of that?”
Simon gives them some mute indication.
“I ask because you said that you didn’t know she was French back then. Almost as if you’d learned that fact about her since the trial.”
There’s a pause. “You didn’t say she was French?” he tries.
“No. We said that a woman who may have been associated with some of the recent murders may speak with an accent.”
“Oh. Her name, though.”
“Moreau? Sound French to you?” Male cop is playing it dumb.
“Yeah,” Simon says. He sounds testy that they toy with him. But this is what they want, of course, the cops with their psychology.
“Point is you haven’t seen her,” says the female cop. “Right?”
Simon mutters something.
We wait, none of us moving, to see what will come next. The two cops must know that a person who cannot lie often cannot tolerate a long silence while his lie hangs in the air. I take a risk and suggère a strand of thought at Simon. Just a gossamer prod to stay quiet, not get duped by the double-edged psychology. I do not know if I am able to suggère him, as I have been out of his head for days now. This was not the time to test.
The female cop, who is standing by the window, suddenly turns. “What did you say?” she asks Simon. Her tone is not hostile—more startled.
“I said I don’t know,” Simon tries.
“Not that,” she interrupts. “Someone said…it was something like, taise-toi…” She pronounces it roundly, as if she has not spoken much French.
“Pop?” says the male cop. “You okay? Could have come from outside.”
She walks directly at me, over to the bed, but she does not make it, quite. She misses her step, in spite of her sturdy shoes, and rolls onto the outside of her foot. She murmurs, “Holy shit, Harry,” sounding very gruff and needy, and then she collapses to the floor. You ever watch someone faint, my friend? It is not at all like they do it in the horror classics, gracefully into the hunchback’s arms so he can carry her off, drooling, to his master’s lair. In reality, every part of the person falls at once, straight down—it is quite a fright, how the gravity hurtles us earthward when we do not resist. The skull is heavy and starts highest up, so it lands with the violence. This female cop is lucky. She sits straight down on her bottom, taking the bulk of the fall in the spine, then from there she continues onto her back, her arms in their stylish jacket cascading about her, her bare head set to smack the boards quite hard.
Simon is closer than the male cop. He sprawls forward and somehow slices his hand between the female cop’s skull and the naked floor. He is the Good Samaritan, Simon, but perhaps he moves so quick also out of the fear that this cop will see me, as indeed she lands beside the bed, side by side with me, with perhaps four feet between us. Simon tries to thrust himself so as to block her view of me. He does not succeed, however, and as his shoulder rams the shuddering bed frame and the male cop’s feet pound from across the room, the female cop’s head lolls about, quite loosely, and for one long and drawn-out moment she and I look directly at each other.
I see much in that sliver of time—she has a strong face, her skin porous, her nose somewhat broad, her lips elegantly shaped, nude of lipstick. She is delicate but decidedly masculine—hair cropped, chin cleft, brow furrowed. There is a humor, however, perhaps even a child’s mischief in the lines around the lips. I notice this even as her mouth sags and falls open to allow a heavy foam to pool against Simon’s callused hand. Mostly, however, I look across the floorboards and into the eyes, in that split second of time that we lie close to one another with no obstruction between. They are large eyes, colored the darkest brown, liquid and clear, and bright even in sightlessness. These are eyes that yearn, and stubbornly deny whatever pain she has suffered. She wants something, this cop, or maybe there is no particular thing but it is just that she will live out her life grasping, always, for whatever is beyond. I think it is normalcy that she is after. Stability. Why, when she has so much more?
She cannot see me, of course, as we stare at one another, but on some level she discerns my presence; and indeed she snaps out of her faint only moments into it. She blinks and her tongue protrudes in a spasm just as Simon insinuates his narrow torso between us and as the male cop asserts his ownership of her, lifting her bodily from beyond, his powerful legs spread wide, and lying her on the unmade bed directly above me. The springs depress toward my face, and as I hear her cough and struggle to sit up I close my eyes and will my mind to go blank.
As if from some distance I hear them arguing, him for her to stay put, her for her right to rise, and in the mist of my willed semi-consciousness I realize through their blurred words to one another that they are in love, these cops. They laugh uncomfortably, she as if scoffing at what has occurred, he as if to help her rise above it. Both of them are frightened, for their own reasons. Both are the whistlers in the dark.
“Someone step on your grave, Pop?” he quips.
“More like stuck a finger in my brain socket,” she says back, not quite lightly.
“Head hurt?”
“Wasn’t like that. I swear I heard something for a second.”
Male cop tries to solve it with common sense. “You got a radio playing in there, buddy?”
“I don’t own one,” Simon offers. I can tell from his voice that he is more scared, even, then the two of them. He has me to protect, you see.
Male cop says, “Maybe someone in another apartment turned on their TV, then cut the volume. You never know.”
“Spanish station,” says Simon. “I remember now.” Fortunately they ignore him.
Female cop gets her way. She rises, plants her feet on the floor, her heels inches from my nose. She stands there, right up against the bed, leaning with her thighs against the mattress, for a moment. Finally she murmurs, “Get off, would you? Honest, I’m fine.”
Male cop steps back and they stay put, all three of them, as she tests her legs. I think she is also trying to figure out what she heard, and perhaps also what she saw. The silence stretches, and then finally the female cop breaks it. I can tell from her voice that she is dissatisfied. She knows she was close, but she does not want to admit how she knows this, maybe even to herself. We are kindred—a cruel irony, as neither of us hunts for the soul mate. But there is the hand of fate for you. I do not know, yet, whether it bodes in my favor or against, but I cannot believe that it is random, the fact that this cop with psychic ability has crossed my path.
They give Simon their contact information and finally leave. Simon closes the door, then crosses the room to his violin. He strikes several harsh introductory chords, pauses to tune, and then resumes playing, picking up with a wild and furious passage.
Lying under the bed, I rest my cheek against the floor. He has done better than I would have expected. It is the guilt that has broken him down, diminished him. As I listen to the music, I see a shadow underneath the crack of the hallway door. Then another shadow. Two feet on the landing. Simon stops playing, kneels by the bed. I reach for his lips but am too late.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “They drove off.”
I shake my head and shoot a look at the door. Simon rises, crosses, and yanks it.
“What the hell do you want?” he says.
“Chill, bro. I heard the classy tune and stopped to listen. No big deal.”
The steps clatter down the stairs, but not before I catch the faint metallic clang from the heels of his boots. The voice was masculine and quite sure of itself—someone who sees himsel
f as in command, although perhaps the world does not agree. Not a personality I would expect in this building, although life may play the dirty tricks on any of us. Where have I heard a footfall that makes that noise? There is an answer, but it eludes me. So yet another twist arises—one that I do not fully recognize at the time.
Ah, but now my bus arrives through the fog, late, the water spinning from its tires as it wheezes to a halt, half on the highway macadam and half on the rocky soil that erodes toward the gully beyond the guardrail. I make the dash. The men, they must be fed in all weather. It is a need we create, we who compel them to rely so absolutely on our care.
Très sincèrement,
Nightingale
EIGHTEEN
I am Nightingale—
I go today to Wilkie’s memorial service. Not to the church or the cemetery—those events are being planned for God and the select—but to the public event on Boston Common. It does not seem a risk for me to be there; it seems indeed as if the city had ripped open its gut and poured its writhing bowels into the park this Saturday to mourn en masse. Chants of “black lives matter” rise and fall, sometimes nearby and insistent, sometimes like a far-off cheer. The crowd is so dense that there are many long moments when movement is not possible and one simply closes one’s eyes and curls inside oneself to endure the crush. Others interpret this as prayer, and reach out to squeeze a stranger’s arm or pat a shoulder. They pat my shoulder—yes, this killer’s shoulder—quite gently. And indeed, I too am saddened and moved by what I have done.
At a distance from where I stand, on the steps of the State House beneath the massive gold-leaf rotunda, speeches are delivered—the governor, a senator, the local cardinal. We who stand deep within the crowd watch these speeches on screens that have been propped up amid the trees. Wilkie’s widow is reflected on the screens now and again, and appears each time like an Amazon, fifteen feet tall, her skin jet black in the crude outdoor lighting, with the tattered autumn boughs swaying to her left and right. I recite Scripture to her, just in my head: Your men whom I cut down shall consume your eyes and grieve your heart. At one moment I find that I am whispering aloud the word “salope,” repeatedly. Most people near me cannot understand, but one young Haitian woman turns to stare in frank disgust. Perhaps it is something about my tone. I move along, putting on my sunglasses.