Poison Shy

by Stacey Madden

  A few days after Melanie’s testimonial, I went to a lock shop, got my apartment key duplicated, and gave it to her. Like most idiots, I was riding a wave of positivity in the aftermath of disappointment. I even looked forward to seeing Darcy so I could look into his jaundiced eyes, have a good laugh at his ridiculous perversions, and move on. It seemed I’d won the girl. Sure, my soul — which I wasn’t even sure existed — had been ripped up and crudely Scotch-taped back together in the process . . . but hey, that’s courtship.

  The following Saturday I had dinner with Chad and Farah at East Side Mario’s. I invited Melanie along, but she wasn’t feeling well. It turned out she did have chlamydia, just not the symptoms. The antibiotics made her nauseous. I, on the other hand, was almost completely healed. There was no more pain, just a vague discomfort, and only for the first piss of the day.

  “You’re one lucky bastard,” Chad said, with a mouth full of garlic bread. “You could’ve got AIDS.”

  “Don’t freak him out,” Farah said. “He’s been through enough.”

  “It’s no big deal, really,” I told them. “Aside from the day it hit me, it wasn’t too painful. I think I caught it early. I was more ashamed than anything. When you learn about these things in sex ed, you think they only happen to prostitutes and porn stars. I thought I’d go my whole life without even knowing anyone with an STD. It was a reality check.”

  “So you’ve forgiven her, then?” Farah asked. “I think that’s romantic.”

  “Romantic?” Chad snorted. “Can you pass the Parmesan?”

  “I wouldn’t say I’ve forgiven her,” I said. “More like we’re working through it.”

  Chad pitchforked his rigatoni. “Hey — they’re your balls.”

  When I got back to my apartment, I found two empty beer bottles on my coffee table. The door to my closet was open and the thermostat had been changed. My fridge had been left open a crack, too. I had to throw out a tub of yogurt and a carton of milk.

  I flopped onto my couch and cracked a lukewarm beer. Read the first few chapters of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, a book Melanie had left at my place. She was supposed to be reading it for school but said it was “boring as shit.”

  Around eleven my phone rang. The call display said Frayne Police Dept.

  I let it ring five or six times before answering.

  “Mr. Brandon Galloway?” said the gruff and vaguely foreign voice on the other end.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Detective Basil Darvish. I have a Mr. Darcy Sands and a Miss Melanie Blaxley here at the station. They say they know you.”

  “I . . . Yes, I know them. Can I ask what —”

  “And you work for Kill All of Them pest control services, is that correct?”

  “I work for Kill ’Em All, yes.”

  “I’d like you to come down to the station. Tonight. Can you be here in fifteen minutes?”

  “I don’t understand what —”

  “Bring photo ID, please. Fifteen minutes.” He hung up.

  It was about a twenty-five minute walk to the police station from my apartment. Instead of calling a cab I jogged all the way there, whispering the phrase “You didn’t do anything wrong” over and over again, though I wasn’t sure I believed it.

  I got to the station, took a few deep breaths, and went inside. Melanie and Darcy were sitting in the lobby playing cards like they were in their own living room.

  “Hey,” Melanie said blandly.

  Darcy met my gaze for a second, then turned back to his hand. He was wearing my Kill ’Em All uniform. It looked like a baggy straightjacket on him.

  “Mr. Galloway?” said a voice behind me.

  I turned to see a tall, olive-skinned man with short, curly black hair and a stubbly, greying beard. He wore a pair of chalky old cargo pants and a navy blue sweater vest. His eyes were bulbous and penetrating. His hands were enormous.

  “Detective Basil Darvish,” he said, approaching me. “I appreciate you coming.”

  “Can we go now?” Darcy said from across the room.

  Darvish ignored him. “I just spoke with my daughter,” he said to me. “She says she knows you. Her name is Farah.”

  “Oh, yeah. She knows my friend Chad.”

  Darvish nodded, then gestured toward Melanie and Darcy. “I caught these two breaking into a home this evening. Mr. Sands was posing as an exterminator. He later confessed that the uniform he’s wearing belongs to you.”

  “Oh jeez.”

  “Didn’t you notice it was missing?”

  “No, Officer. I didn’t.”

  Darvish cleared his throat. “It’s Detective, Mr. Galloway. Please.”

  “Sorry, Detective.”

  Melanie and Darcy had stopped their game and were looking at us.

  “I’m trying to give these two a break here,” Darvish said. “I don’t think they’ve gotten that through their thick skulls. Forgive me for being skeptical, but the uniform has the name Dennis stitched on it. I trust you brought some identification?”

  I handed him my whole wallet, which contained my KEA ID, a bus pass, some grocery receipts, and an expired driver’s licence. He flipped through it, scratching his scruff. I think he even glanced at how much cash I had in there.

  “I suggest you take better care of your professional belongings, Mr. Galloway,” he said. “Of course it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to suggest you take better care when choosing friends.”

  “Are they being charged with anything?” I asked.

  Darvish stood stone-still with his hands in his pockets. “The individual whose home they invaded has decided not to press charges.”

  “Can we go now?” Darcy said.

  Darvish took a hand out of his pocket and gestured toward the exit without a word. He was looking at me for some reason, not the two morons he’d apprehended.

  “What the fuck happened?” I asked when we got outside.

  “Darcy’s a pervert, that’s what,” Melanie said.

  “I’m the pervert? Excuse me, Miss Golden Shower —”

  “That has nothing to do with this,” Melanie snapped.

  “Will you two shut up and tell me what happened?”

  They looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

  “It’s stupid,” Melanie said. “Darcy was telling me about Sarah, that girl from his philosophy class. Apparently she has this rape fantasy —”

  “Shut up, I’ll tell the story,” Darcy said. “This girl Sarah, she’s a strange one — ultra-conservative, hates feminism, thinks it’s responsible for what she calls the ‘pansification’ of the modern male, the decline of traditional family values, et cetera. She likes it when men assert their dominance. Thinks misogyny will lead society back into Eden. She believes so deeply in these things that they’ve infiltrated her sexual preferences. The other day she confessed to me that if a man ever broke into her apartment to rape her, she’d let him have his way with her. She said she might even enjoy it.”

  “What a sick fuck,” Melanie said. “Personally, I’d bite off the guy’s testicles.”

  “Will you let me tell the story? Anyway, we were sitting around the apartment, bored off our asses —”

  “Speak for yourself,” Melanie said.

  “Will you shut the fuck up for one second please? God. Anyway, I was bored as shit, so I thought it would be a good time to put Sarah’s claim to the test. There’s nothing I like more than exposing people for the frauds they really are. I didn’t actually want to rape her, just scare her a little. See how she reacted. I knew Melanie had a key to your place, so while she was busy painting her toenails, I borrowed her keychain and told her I was going to Sarah’s. I knew you weren’t home because when I asked Melanie why she was at home instead of sucking your dick, she said you were having dinner with friends.”

  “W
ait,” I said. “How did you know where I live?”

  Darcy laughed and shook his head. “You think I don’t know where you live?”

  “I followed him because I knew something was fishy,” Melanie said.

  “So you broke into my house and stole my uniform.” My hands were shaking. “Maybe I should press charges too.”

  “Technically he didn’t break in,” Melanie said. “I caught up to him when I realized where he was going, and I let us both in.”

  “What the fuck for?”

  “So he could break into that bitch’s house dressed as a bug guy and scare the shit out of her, that’s why,” Melanie said. “I hate that little slut. She spread rumours about me in first year. Told everyone I was a walking STD.”

  “How prophetic,” Darcy said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “What the hell did you need the uniform for?” I said.

  “For effect,” Darcy said. “Spice the fantasy up a bit.”

  I looked at Melanie. “And you went along with this?”

  “I already told you. I can’t stand the bitch.”

  “You two are unbelievable, you know that?” I quickened my pace.

  “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

  What happened was this: Melanie let Darcy into my place so he could “borrow” my uniform. Darcy also “borrowed” a few of my beers — not for liquid courage but liquid aggression, as he put it. Then they went over to Sarah’s place, a mouldy old six-bedroom mansion she shared with five other girls. Darcy knew that Sarah’s bedroom was located on the main floor. He also knew that Jill, Sarah’s anorexic roommate, liked to crank up the heat. Because of this, Sarah would often keep her bedroom window open, though she kept the curtains drawn, especially at night. Melanie and Darcy crept into the backyard. Sure enough, Sarah’s window was open. They could hear her belting out Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” from the other side of the curtains.

  At this point in the story, Melanie chimed in to say that after hearing Sarah butcher such a classic, she hoped Darcy wound up raping her for real. She hoisted Darcy up through the window. Someone in the room screamed, but it wasn’t Sarah. It was her roommate Jill, all eighty-nine pounds of her, with soaking wet hair and a towel wrapped around her naked body. Darcy stared at her with a half-erection jutting out from the crotch of my uniform. Jill continued to scream. One of Sarah’s other roommates appeared, took one look at the scene, and called 911. Darcy and Melanie were sitting in the back of a cop car by the time Sarah, who’d had dibs on the shower after Jill, even knew what was going on.

  “She must have calmed her roomies down and told them she’d invited me over or something,” Darcy said. “Then told Detective Dipshit there were no charges to press.”

  “You realize I will never wear that uniform again,” I said.

  Darcy raised his ratty eyebrow. “You got a problem with my dick cheese?”

  Melanie bent over laughing.

  I stuffed my hands in my pockets and left the idiots in the street.

  11

  “Explain it to me again,” my boss Dick said. “Just so I’m clear.”

  “My girlfriend’s idiot friend broke into my home, stole my uniform, and almost got himself arrested for unlawful entry.”

  “And why isn’t the uniform back in your possession?”

  “Because . . .” I cleared my throat. “Because while he was wearing it he got an erection.”

  Dick stood up and rested his knuckles on his desk. “Let me get this straight. Some perverted muttonhead stole your uniform and was so jacked by his little game of dress-up that he got a raging hard-on and mucked up the inside of your duds?”

  “That’s basically what happened, yes.”

  “You expect me to believe that bunk?”

  “It’s true, I —”

  “Get the fuck out of my office, Brandon. Starting now you’re on an unpaid leave of absence until I decide whether or not to fire your ass.”

  “But Dick —”

  “Now go home and have a shower, for Christ’s sake. You look like hell.”

  Bad decisions. That’s what it came down to. Getting involved with Melanie was a bad decision. Giving Darcy the benefit of the doubt was a bad decision — he truly was a terrorist in the making. Getting a job at Kill ’Em All seemed like a bad decision, because I wouldn’t have met them otherwise. Being born in the first place wasn’t a bad decision on my part, but I could easily blame that one on my parents.

  Humanity was God’s bad decision, plain and simple.

  When I got to my apartment, I found Melanie’s key on my coffee table next to a post-it note. I think it’s time for a break, it said. No apology, no admission of guilt, nothing.

  I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. My phone rang, but I wasn’t in the mood to speak to anyone. My machine picked it up and I heard a woman’s voice say, “Hello, this is Saint Aiden’s Hospital calling for Mr. Brandon Galloway. Your mother had an accident and was brought to emergency. She’s okay, but, ah, she doesn’t seem to want to accept our help, and . . . Well, you were listed as her emergency contact person. Please come to the hospital as soon as you get this.”

  Was all of this really happening at once?

  I stared into the sink and actually started laughing. My mother was lying in a hospital bed and I was staring down a drain hole, tittering like a circus clown. I poured some beer into a thermos and drank it on the bus on the way to Saint Aiden’s.

  The woman at the reception desk literally pinched her nose when I told her I’d come to see Eileen Galloway.

  “Room 309. Elevator’s down the hall.”

  Some big lug stepped into the elevator behind me. It wasn’t until I’d pushed the button for the third floor that I noticed he was hospital security. The receptionist must have put him on my trail.

  I found room 309 and went inside, afraid of what I might find. My mother was propped up in her bed, flanked by pillows and — what else? — the orange blanket. Her half-closed eyes were glued to the little TV that sat on a shelf on the wall. She didn’t look at me, but I knew she knew I was there. When I sat down beside her I noticed she was strapped to the bed like a mental patient — which I suppose she was, now. It had finally come to that.

  “What happened, Mom?”

  “They want my organs, I know it,” she said. “They want to cut me open and sell my insides to inspectors, spies, and Satan’s minions.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Ma. What happened? Did you fall?”

  She moved her arms around under the straps. They were wrapped in bandages up to her elbows.

  Tears welled up in my eyes, but I fought them back with everything I had. “Did you do something to yourself?”

  She looked at me. Her eyes were weak and full of the pain of a tortured existence. “How am I supposed to live, Brandon? Tell me how.”

  It wasn’t a rhetorical question. My mother never knew how to live. I was beginning to think that I didn’t either.

  The security guard paced the hall outside.

  “You’ll be okay,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. “These people are going to take care of you better than I can.”

  “I don’t trust them. I don’t trust anyone.”

  With all of my heart I wanted to say Neither do I. Instead I said, “I love you, Mom.”

  She gestured for the cup of water on her bedside table. I held it to her mouth as she drank.

  “I want you to know something,” she said. “It’s about your father. Something he left behind before he died.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I didn’t want you to know, but you have to. You have to know. Your father hurt me badly. Sinned his heart out all his life. But you have to remember that love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, but delights in the truth. Yo
u have to know the truth, Brandon.”

  “Jeez, Ma.”

  “There was a woman named Gloria Sands.”

  I stopped breathing. Sands. That name . . .

  “She was your father’s mistress. Well, one of his mistresses.”

  “Mom —”

  “I found out about the affair on your eighth birthday. I went to her house, Brandon. I went to her house to kill her.”

  “Mom. Please.”

  She started crying, and I realized I was crying too.

  “I couldn’t do it,” she said. “Not after I saw her. I just couldn’t. She was pregnant with your father’s child.”

  My vision blurred. I stood up quickly. Reached into my coat pocket for the thermos and spilled it all over the floor.

  That was enough for the security guard. He stormed in and tried to tackle me. I swerved to avoid him and slipped on the beer on the floor. My head hit something hard. The last thing I remember before going unconscious is the look of pity on the guard’s fat face.

  I woke up on a stretcher in an empty room. My clothes were still on, but my shoes had been taken off and placed on the bedside table to my right. I could smell them.

  When I sat up, I could almost hear the blood rushing out of my head. I touched the back of my skull and felt something gauzy and wet. My fingers came away red. I didn’t need a mirror to show me that my head was wrapped in a turban of blood-soggy bandages.

  I needed to get out of the hospital and find Gloria Sands. Frayne was a small town, but not so small that this Gloria was necessarily my father’s former mistress, or even Darcy’s mother for that matter. It was all a coincidence and I wanted to prove it.

  I opened the door and poked my head out into the hall. Nothing but a few whistling orderlies, a bare-assed old man hooked up to a drip stand, and the cold stench of sterility and death. I zipped up my jacket and walked casually to the elevator. Pushed the down button and waited for the security guard to tap me on the shoulder.