Scenes From the Second Storey
Page 6
My time working the doors was fraught with problems. Everybody knew I was Billy Kick's son, so they all wanted to have a pop at me. I managed to talk most of them down, using my natural diplomacy to make them realise I would hurt them if they took it any further. Sometimes I was forced into a corner and had to employ violence: usually, all it took was a single punch to the throat or a stamp on the foot.
One time, though, things got out of hand. Once is all it takes.
It was round about 11:30, so everyone was drunk and the night was drawing to a nasty close. The other doormen and I were escorting people out into the street, clearing the bar so that the staff could clean up and go home. I was chatting to some drunken girl on the stairs when it happened, breaking out, as these things do, like a flash fire in a wheat field.
Two men started fighting at the top of the stairs. I ran over and tried to break it up, forcing my body between them so that they wouldn't hurt each other. Fists flew; feet and heads connected with bone. Eventually I managed to prise them apart and forced one of them against the wall while the other backed away, holding his face.
"Calm down!" I shouted, making myself big in the confined space. "Take it outside or I'll kick the crap out of both of you."
They attacked without warning, coming at me from both sides in an orchestrated movement. It wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing; this had been planned beforehand.
My training kicked in and I was able to jab one of them in the throat, putting him down in an instant. The other one — the bigger of the two — kept coming, windmilling his big ham-hock fists in the air. I ducked low, out of his reach, and then came up swinging; I caught him with a left on the temple and followed it up with a straight right to the mouth, mashing his lips against his teeth. He went down and slumped against the wall at the top of the stairs, then began to rise, coming up from his crouch like a monster from the depths.
Instinct; I can only blame instinct. I moved in fast with a short uppercut. Unfortunately, at that exact moment he lost his footing and stumbled, sliding down the wall to meet my fist at its optimum point of impact. His nose simply peeled away from his face beneath the force of the blow, shredding like a piece of ripe fruit. Blood spattered the stairs and the front of my shirt, and before I knew it he was tumbling down the narrow stairwell. He was dead before he even reached the bottom.
*****
Sally stood at the door and stared at the dining table. I'd gone to considerable trouble to make it look nice — fresh flowers, new cutlery and plates, an expensive bottle of wine — but still I didn't know if she'd be ready to sit down and eat with me.
"We need to talk," I said, opening the wine and motioning towards an empty chair. "Please?"
Sally took off her coat and walked into the room, pausing for a moment before sitting down. Her hands lay flat on the tabletop and her face was rigid, like a waxwork dummy. So far so good…
"This doesn't mean anything. I'm prepared to talk, but that's all…for now."
I nodded. Poured the wine. "My father was an animal. He was a thief, a drug-dealer, and a cold-blooded killer. I only found out when I was sixteen how bad he actually was; before then, I suppose I romanticised his life, justified his behaviour with stupid ideas about him being a sort of working-class hero."
Sally sipped her wine. She did not speak, just waited for me to continue.
"I told you about that guy I killed in the brawl at the pub. Well, what I didn't tell you was why I never served any time for what I did."
She put her glass down on the table; I refilled it; she started drinking again.
"I brokered a deal with the police: my father for my freedom. I told them everything; I gave them names, dates, details…and in return they set me up here, with a home, a job, a new identity."
"The witness protection programme?" Her words were slightly slurred. She never could handle her drink, and the wine had gone straight to her head.
"Sort of, but only on an unofficial basis. The detective in charge of the case had been trying to pin something on my dad for decades, so he managed to call in a few favours and offer me the deal. I wanted out, so I accepted."
I emptied my glass in a single swig, but did not refill it.
"Then you met me, and we fell in love." The bitterness in her voice hurt me more than any punch I have ever taken, any beating I have ever experienced.
"I guess that sums it up. I couldn't tell you, not then: we might never have lasted, and it was unfair to burden you. Then, by the time I realised how much you meant to me, it was too late, events had taken over. By the time we were married I knew I couldn't just spill it all out, so I kept it secret. I regret that more than anything I have ever done. Even more than killing a man."
Her face softened, lips parting to show a flash of wet tongue. She blinked, and I could see that her eyes were moist. "So what do we do now?"
I looked away, feeling weak and useless. "I'm not sure. Part of me knows that my father has sent someone to get me, but another part of me thinks he'll be too old and too tired to care."
Sally stood up and walked around the table, halting by my side. She looked down at me, the hatred gone, replaced by something much more complicated, and placed an open palm on the top of my head. "You stupid, stupid shit."
I nodded, unable to disagree.
*****
The very first time I ever saw the boxer was in the gym when I was nine years old. After my bout with the older boy, when he was tending his wounds and I was revelling in my father's approval, I started to do some work on the heavy bag. There was a dusty poster taped to the wall beside the punch bag, an old advertising flyer about a fight from the early 1940s. I still cannot remember the name of the fighter pictured on the poster, but I will never forget how he looked. In that moment, after the thrill of battle and the warmth of my father's scarred hands, that fighter looked like God.
*****
He was out there again, the boxer. Standing by the apple tree and going through his usual routine. Jabs, hooks, crosses, uppercuts; bend, twist, shuffle, sidestep. He was good; he was fast. I'd never seen handwork quite like it. I watched in silence, wondering once again why he was there, what he was doing on my front lawn.
I thought about that old poster in the gym for the first time in over twenty years: how I'd become obsessed with the image of the fighter, and a week later, when someone had taken the poster down, I retained the memory in my mind, building it up into something it had never really been.
"What are you looking for? Is there someone out there?" Sally's voice held a hint of fear, but she was bearing up well. We were now sleeping in the same bed, but there was still a barrier between us. It was like someone had slid a thick sheet of glass down the centre of the bed, and we lay on either side of it, unable to figure out how to remove it.
"Come here."
I heard the rustle of bed sheets as she stood up, the padding of her bare feet as she crossed the room. Felt her breath on the side of my neck as she stood at my shoulder.
"Look down into the garden, by the apple tree. Do you see anything…unusual?"
"What am I supposed to be looking for? All I see is an empty crisp packet and some dead grass." She moved in close, but not too close; her hand strayed halfway around my waist, but she did not grip me. "What is it you see?"
"Don't you see him, the man? The fighter?" Immediately, I knew I'd said too much. She moved away, her hand leaving my skin.
"There's nobody there, Gavin. Nobody at all."
When I turned and looked at her there was fear in her eyes. I'd witnessed her express many emotions over the previous week or so, but this was the first time I'd ever seen her afraid — afraid of me. "Forget it," I said, closing the curtains. "I'm tired. My eyes are playing tricks."
That night we slept together yet miles apart. I did not close my eyes until I heard Sally snoring; and even then, I could fall no deeper than a shallow doze. We were almost there, almost back where we needed to be, but the distance between us seemed sud
denly too vast to cross.
*****
The day after the poster disappeared I found it crumpled in a skip in the alley behind the gym. One corner was torn off completely and there were stains of what looked and smelled like shit on the paper, but I picked it up and held it close to my face. I committed the stoic features and firm stance of that forgotten fighter to memory, casting him as an ideal, a perfect image of manhood. Then I threw the poster away, burying it under the garbage.
*****
Someone came for me two nights later.
Sally was asleep upstairs but I was sitting in the lounge, lights off, television off, staring into the darkness of the room. I heard a rustle outside, then a muted thud against the door. Footsteps in the hall.
I stood quietly and made my way to a position directly behind the lounge door. The handgun was already in my hand; I'd been cradling it for hours, just as I had done the night before. It was a semi-automatic, a Polish model I'd been given years ago, by someone I'd known in my old life.
The man was large but silent. He moved with the practiced air of a professional, and when I shot him once in the small of the back he went down heavily but did not have time to scream. He thrashed on the floor for a while, bleeding onto the carpet. His mouth was open but no sound came out. I guessed that I'd destroyed his spinal column with my first shot. My second shot took off half of the upper part of his face, just above the bridge of the nose.
Only when Sally began to scream did I finally feel something.
"What have you done? Oh, God…oh, shit…what have you done?"
I went to her but she batted me away, back-pedalling towards the stairs. Her screams were loud, and through the open front door I saw lights come on across the street. The gunshots must have roused the neighbours; the screams would have cut through their fear and prompted them into action.
The boxer stood in his usual spot, by the apple tree, but this time he was motionless. I walked out of the house and onto the lawn, approaching him with the gun hanging loose at my side. He stared at me, seeing me for the first time, and I finally realised why he'd come. The boxer had been trying to warn me, to let me know that trouble was coming.
I stood before him under the cold moonlight, shivering and afraid. Up close, he was grainy, his outline opaque, but he was no ghost. The boxer was both so much more and a whole lot less than a phantom.
"What have you done?" Sally's voice was no longer of any importance; only the boxer existed for me.
"I'm sorry," I said, taking another step forward, wanting to be closer to him — as close as I could possibly get. "I'm sorry." I did not know what I was apologising for; nor could I think of anything else to say.
The boxer moved slowly, deliberately. He unlaced his old-fashioned gloves and let them fall to the ground, then opened his hands and raised them to shoulder height, displaying their emptiness. I stood there, dead in the centre of my own life, wondering what it was he wanted to show me. I'd never believed in anything but I should have believed in him. In turn, I might then have been able to start believing in myself.
"I'm sorry."
Silently, the boxer began to laugh, his chest heaving, shoulders rising. He did not lower his hands; they remained open. Empty.
The stars rained down long-dead light, bathing me in a shivering nothingness. People left their houses and walked out into the street, eager to see what was going on yet sensible enough to keep their distance.
Calmly, I raised the gun and opened up on him, pulling the trigger until the magazine was spent and the mechanism clicked only on dead air. The bullets had passed through him, hitting the apple tree behind, snapping branches and showering dry leaves onto the ground. The boxer continued to laugh; whatever the joke was, he didn't seem to be tiring of it.
He was still there when I sat down on the grass to wait for the sirens to arrive. He is probably there even now, standing in the shadows and laughing at the mess I made.
(Dedicated to the memory of Jim Thompson)
The Desert Song
Adrienne Jones
My house mate Brooksie couldn't drink alcohol because of some blood disease he'd had since childhood. The rest of us never bothered to ask about the blood disease, or what other sufferings he might endure because of it. He seemed fine otherwise. He just couldn't process alcohol, and therefore couldn't booze with us. For this, we pitied him. More than the guy with one arm who worked at the ski area; more than the girl from Archer Dorm with the severe acne; even more than the kid who went crazy the previous semester and tried to overdose on nasal spray. It was college. We had our priorities.
Today, however, I envied Brooksie, sitting at the front of the class with clear, alert eyes, cheeks pink from an early morning ski run. He was the only one of us not hung over from the Valentine's Day party at Dorrigan's Pub the night before. Dorrigan's clientele was 80 percent college, so they catered to our need to make a party out of every stupid occasion on the calendar. My stomach lurched at the memory of candy hearts floating in Bailey's Irish Cream, mixed with something red and vile to give it a festive pink tinge, like the evil mirror-universe cousin of Pepto Bismol. I promised myself that if I got into grad school, I would never again take a Saturday morning class, even if it meant career failure.
Brooksie raised his hand for the third time in five minutes. Dr Thomas smiled, but her gaze slipped past him to the rest of the class, wanting to give someone else a chance. Joyce Thomas was my favourite professor, but today I wanted her to spontaneously combust just so I could go back home and sleep it off.
"Gordon, how about you?" She pointed a piece of yellow chalk at me. "What would you say is the theme of the story?"
I looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. She never called on me. Why today? Invisible gnomes were drumming my skull and I'd only read half the story she assigned us for homework. My mind flipped through a mental rolodex of themes, frantically fishing for one that had at least a fifty-fifty chance of matching. Problem was, in my hindered state, I could remember nothing about the story. I took a shot in the dark.
"Um…love?"
Dr Thomas raised an eyebrow and the class broke into laughter. Brooksie looked back at me with a smirk and shook his head.
Dr Thomas held a hand up for quiet. "Mr Manes, The Cask of Amontillado is about a man who lures his enemy to an underground catacomb and buries him alive by bricking him up in a wall. How do you get love out of that?"
I should have kept my mouth shut, but I didn't. "Well maybe he killed him because he stole his love. Or maybe he loved him and didn't want to. Or something."
More laughter from the class, but Dr Thomas gave me her disappointed scowl. Brooksie came to my defense.
"He brings up a good point, Dr Thomas. I mean, Poe never reveals exactly what Fortunato did to piss the narrator off so much. Just that he vows revenge for injury and insult."
I looked to the right when I felt someone staring, and spotted David Quibbins gazing at me with his usual rapt expression. Quibbins was the librarian's son, and the strangest kid at school. I'd made the mistake of defending him one day when I saw a couple of townies hassling him in front of the general store. David had been following me around ever since.
I was no hero of the underdog, and I usually didn't involve myself in other people's fights. But even the disturbing enigma that was David Quibbins got loyalty over townies. Students rule, townies drool, no exceptions. But as I looked warily into David Quibbins' poppy eyes, I wished I'd minded my business that day.
I turned away when Dr Thomas announced we were done for the day, wishing us all a nice weekend.
Noise assaulted the silence as the class made a mad dash for the exit, voices cacophonous as they spilled out of Bevins Hall into the winter morning. My nostril hairs instantly froze, but I was used to that. Winter in the mountains of Northern Vermont might kill a weaker person, but we were acclimatised to it. Enough so that outdoor parties were still held throughout the season, provided there was plenty of wood and fire.
"Library," I muttered to him as I passed.
Brooksie grinned. "You'd better run!"
I pushed into the crowd, falling in with the train of students travelling the path between buildings. Dodging and weaving, I finally made it to the library, climbed the stairs and ducked inside. I considered finding an obscure desk hidden in a corner on the top level, but if Quibbins found me up there, I'd be trapped. I settled for a station in the computer room just off the lobby, and ducked low, trying to hide myself behind the monitor. Feigning an expression of concentration, I tapped the keyboard.
I checked my emails then started a homework assignment. For five blessed minutes it seemed I was going to be spared. Then the air went still, the way it does before a hurricane. I looked up from my electronic fox hole, and saw an awkward, lanky form speed-prance through the library lobby, stack of books curled under one arm, tilting him off balance.
David Quibbins reminded me of a foetus, if you stretched it to six feet and sent it to college. It was the colossal head on a long stem of neck, translucent skin, prominent overbite, and bulbous eyes housed in fleshy lids. His shaggy, white-blond hair looked wrong, mismatched, like someone had scalped Billy Idol and slapped the remains a little off centre on David's skull; a newborn duckling with a tuft of downy fluff atop its disproportionate head.
Don't see me. Please. Keep walking. I shrank behind the monitor, hiding my face, and concentrated on the web page about Edgar Allen Poe. As a shadow fell over me, I looked up. David stared down, trembling with a nervousness so palpable it made me take a deep breath on his behalf.