Trouble

by Jesse Kellerman

“I”—Jonah turned to face them—“I don’t have anything to do with her.”

  The white conductor said, “She’s humping you in the middle of the train, you think I’m gonna believe that?”

  “I’ve never met her before.”

  “If you don’t go take care of her I’m going to call ahead the station and have them hold the both of you.”

  He followed them to the cold, clanging vestibule, where Eve had curled up on the floor, her face pressed against the filthy metal wall, weeping like an orchestra.

  “I want to die,” she said. “I want to tear myself apart. You make me feel like a maggot. Every moment I’m alive I’m rotting.” A gag, a laugh. “Heal me. Don’t let me bleed to death. Without you I am ragged, I love you, please love me please please please please please—”

  The conductors looked at Jonah sorrowfully, although it was unclear whether their sympathies lay with him or her. He started back to his seat, and one of them caught him by the arm.

  “Man, look at her.”

  Snot embroidered the front of her shirt. She’d torn a hole in the sleeve of her turtleneck, and was in the process of tearing another in her stockings so that she could slice open her shin with a broken bobby pin. Jonah reached down to take it from her and she grabbed his neck.

  “Don’t ever let me go. Don’t ever let me go.”

  He gave in, sank to his knees and let her cry into his collar. At first he wouldn’t put his arms around her, but keeping his body away got to be too much of a strain. She cried. I love you don’t ever let me go. He wanted to help, he wanted to hurt; every cell of his body moving in two opposite directions, rending down the middle, disgorging its watery contents, leaving him divided, ruined, a mush of ambivalence. The train rocketed southward and she gripped him tighter, tighter, soaking him with her misery. They stayed like that until the conductors announced Grand Central, and people poured into the vestibule, crushing their bodies flat like palms met in prayer.

  HE TOOK HER HOME.

  He paid for the cab, pulled her upstairs. She looked ready to disintegrate.

  “I’m so unhappy,” she said.

  He grimaced and shifted her weight to one hip, angling in his pocket for the keys to his front door.

  “I’ve never been happy, not once in my life.”

  He took her to his bedroom, put her on her stomach.

  “Every minute I want to die.”

  He tucked a pillow beneath her head. Crowned with splinters of streetlight; a triangle on her forearm; dappled toes; a malformed ring between her shoulder blades, like her halo had slipped off. She tried to sit up and he forced her prone.

  “Go to sleep.”

  “I can’t unless you’re with me.”

  He slipped off his shoes and got in beside her.

  The average person took seven minutes to fall asleep, but nothing about Eve suggested that she was in any way average, so he decided to give her double that. Counting in ten second segments, he got distracted, thinking about his sister, who probably thought he was a demon, along with the people in the train and Belzer and Lance’s Internet audience. Quite a reputation he’d built himself. He lost count and had to start over. At a hair over five minutes, she kissed his shoulder absently. My love. It was dark and warm and a body beside him. He fought to keep his eyes open; dug his wrist against the sharp steel corner of his bedframe. He was winning, he would win. My love. He heard her as though through a bad connection. Falling asleep, he bit down on the inside of his cheek, tasted blood. He would win.

  Her body shuddered and then set.

  He got up as slowly as possible. She scratched at his shirt. He said, “I have to go to the bathroom,” and replaced her hand atop her hip. She shivered and was still.

  He sat on the edge of the tub and dialed Belzer’s home number. It rang three times and then he hung up without leaving a message.

  Soon she would come looking for him. What if she hadn’t been asleep?

  On his second try, he spoke rapidly into the machine.

  “Chip, it’s Jonah. She’s here at my place. She came to Thanksgiving. She showed up at my house. I don’t know if I should call the police—if you’re there pick up. I don’t know what to tell them. Shit. Please pick up.”

  He would’ve gone on babbling indefinitely had it not been for the slam of the front door. He almost juggled the phone into the toilet before swatting it down.

  He reached the first floor landing in time to see her disappearing in a flash of tartan. He called her name but she did not look back.

  Upstairs, his bare feet red and wet, he turned all the locks, put on the chain.

  His phone had come apart when he dropped it, the battery skittering under the bathmat. Upon reassembly it leapt to life.

  ID UNAVAILABLE

  He pressed TALK.

  Silence. Breathing.

  He tried to locate her by the background noises: honking, loud music, and shouts. She was probably on St. Marks or Second Avenue. He could put on his shoes and run; he could be there in five minutes. “Eve?”

  She said, “You should not have done that.”

  • 26 •

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2004.

  BELZER CALLED AT lunchtime, and Jonah—who, on his day off, had not left the apartment—recapped the previous evening, at every point attempting to explain his rationale: why he hadn’t said anything to his parents when she’d showed up at the house; why he hadn’t called the cops then; why he’d brought her to his place.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “She was holding my niece.”

  “I wish she’d been more explicit.”

  “I don’t.”

  “The clearer the threat is, the better off we are if we talk to the cops.”

  “It’s clear. Believe me.”

  “She’s a woman. You’re a man. That’s the world, kiddo, take it or leave it. And while we’re cutting to the chase, let’s note that she’s never done anything illegal except tackle you, and that’s pretty weak. You didn’t call them then.”

  “She broke into my apartment.”

  “Write that off,” said Belzer. “No proof.”

  “She came to my house.”

  “And your mother let her in of her own free will. Let’s look at the here and now, okay? What she said connotes a threat to you.”

  “Of course it does.”

  “I agree. I agree. However. We gotta problem: not much the cops can do without knowing where she lives.”

  Jonah was confused. “I thought you were going to get that from them.”

  “I did. None of the information she supplied is real. Address, phone. Tell you the truth I got my doubts about her name, too. Gones with a G? Whoever heard of that?”

  Jonah said nothing.

  “Any other way we could track her down?”

  Jonah said, “Not that I can think of.”

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2004.

  The trip out to the Bronx took about an hour on the , during which he had plenty of time to script and revise his opening lines.

  I’m sorry to bother you like this.

  I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday.

  I’m sorry if you don’t want to see me.

  I’m sorry—

  He’d considered cooking up a story; he could pretend to be from the Beacon. But he was too nervous to keep up a front, and if it collapsed he’d be in no position to start making demands.

  I’m sorry to show up unannounced.

  I’m sorry I ruined your year. Your decade. Your life.

  I’m sorry.

  He stretched in his seat and picked up a discarded copy of Hoy. When that proved tedious, he read the subway ads. A new thriller out by someone he’d never heard of; he didn’t read thrillers. New malt beverages promising an exciting nightlife populated by people with great hair. You could get free information about la prevención del VIH by calling the number indicated by the cheerily infected woman. The MTA map had been redrafted to include stops such as Bitch
St. and Ave. Pussy.

  George had been suspiciously generous that morning when Jonah called to beg off. Everybody needs time away. If anybody gets that, Jonah, it’s me.

  Thanks.

  I know how hard it can be for you. You know that, right? That I know.

  Yes, George.

  I can always count on you. One week missed is not a big deal.

  (So generous that Jonah had begun bracing for a bombshell.)

  As long as we’re still on for Christmas.

  Christmas break.

  What?

  Break. You told me you’d find someone for Christmas itself.

  Right. I know. Bernadette can’t come, you know.

  You told me that. You said you would find someone else.

  Mm…I haven’t found anyone yet.

  Is that right.

  Not yet. I’m still looking.

  I can get you a recommendation.

  No. I’ve got it all taken care of.

  Are you sure?

  What?

  Are you sure you’re going to be able to find someone. Because I don’t want—

  I’m sure, sure I’m sure. Listen, do you think you can come out next weekend? Instead of this one.

  I—I don’t know, George.

  If you didn’t…we wouldn’t see you until I was ready to leave for my trip. But. Whatever’s most convenient for you.

  He got off at Parkchester and clomped down from the elevated platform to the center of Hugh J. Grant circle. Above, tracks shuddered and wheels ground, showering him with rustflakes as the train pressed on. Next semester he had OB/GYN around here. He’d considered subletting a studio near the hospital so he wouldn’t have to get up at three in the morning every day. So his presence here wasn’t entirely indefensible; he could pretend he was apartment-hunting.

  From the street he saw the Cross-Bronx, which resolved, miles down the line, into various destinations: New England, La Guardia, Nassau County. It was ten forty A.M., the sky pigeon-gray and flat.

  Following his printed map, he walked beneath the train tracks for several blocks. A tattoo parlor, a beauty parlor, two check-cashing places, a brown building with an ambiguous logo and sans-serif lettering: PARKCHESTER ELECTRICAL SUPPLY. The supremely unappetizing Papa Mell’s Old-Style Sizzlin Hizzlin Cajun Chicken Fry marked his turnoff, where the main commercial drag grew semiresidential tentacles. He came to an intersection where a boy in a baggy parka and dark jeans was pulling figure-8’s on a tricked-out BMX. The seat was so low that the tail of his jacket scraped the ground. He saw Jonah, stood up on the pedals, and raced away.

  A church.

  Another church.

  The neighborhood seemed to have been hit by a neutron bomb. A flier taped to a telephone pole asked if Jonah felt like he was starting a new diet every Monday??? The wind rattled street signs and wove a plastic bag (THANK YOU PLEASE COME AGAIN) through the fractured lattice of a midsized crabapple.

  On a short street crowded with compacts and a handful of glittering SUVs, four identical brownstones—“weathered” for “character”—opposed a towering apartment complex that ran the length of the block. After the brownstones came a series of mottled brick houses sharing common walls and sitting atop sunken garages. In one driveway sat a large truck belonging to a produce company; the adjacent home had been converted into a dentist’s office for Dr. L. Sruthi, who accepted Medicaid and union insurances in both English and Spanish.

  Dominican flags, American flags, Puerto Rican flags: three permutations of red-white-and-blue. Hanging from fences and staked in yards; flapping in the breeze; the motion effacing their individual features so that, in times of turbulence, the neighborhood seemed united in patriotism.

  Near the end of the block he found the one he was looking for. At the side of the front steps lived a planter in the shape of the swan. Colorful pennants inexplicably gathered in a flowerpot; an uncoiled garden hose. From an open window across the street drifted a melody familiar to him from the wards: the querulous soprano of Old Woman, currently giving holy hell to a telemarketer. Jonah jammed the map in his back pocket and mounted the six steps to Simón Iniguez’s house.

  The doorbell summoned slow, heavy steps.

  “Yes?” The screen door stippled Iniguez’s face. He was wearing those same mafioso sunglasses. In an instant Jonah forgot his prepared speech.

  Iniguez frowned. “Hello?” He pushed through the screen door and stepped onto the threshold, forcing Jonah to back up.

  “Who’s there,” said Iniguez. Leaving one hand on the doorknob, as if to moor himself, he reached out, his free hand swimming through the space between them. Jonah hopped down the stairs.

  “Mister, sorry, Mr. Iniguez.”

  “Who’s that.”

  “I’m very sorry to, to bother you, like this. Like—I’m, I hope it’s not an inconvenience to come here without ca—I wanted to say—”

  Iniguez frowned again.

  “My name is—”

  “I know who you are.”

  A silence.

  “What do you want.”

  “I need your help.” Jonah saw himself reflected in Iniguez’s dark lenses: bulbous, pleading, absurd. The old woman across the street continued to pour forth invective.

  Iniguez scratched at his smooth, cologned cheek. His arm bulged inside his sleeve. Slippered, in wool drawstring pants, he managed to make Jonah feel both overdressed and slovenly. His resemblance to his brother was stronger in person: identically beefy necks, identically incipient jowls. And somewhere in his genome lurked some of the ore that, fired in the crucible of experience, had become madness.

  The wind stirred a neighbor’s leaf pile into a swarm.

  Iniguez said, “You can come in.”

  The house was solidly middle-class in its accoutrements: a wire umbrella stand; a hallway credenza that smelled of Pledge; a coat closet, ajar, stacked with bulk-bought cleaning supplies and shrink-wrapped packages of lunchbags. The foyer opened onto a living room, a gallery of family photos: Simón, an extremely blond and handsome woman who could have been a Swede, and two puckish-looking boys.

  Notably, the room lacked a television. A mammoth stereo—on but at zero—predominated, surrounded by tall shelving units built to accommodate LPs and CDs, filled with hundreds of the former and thousands of the latter. A forest-green loveseat bore the bactrian imprint of a man’s behind; on the floor was a stack of Braille newspapers and a half-full mug with a TASCAM logo. The hearth rug was askew.

  “Drink?” Iniguez asked.

  “No thanks.”

  “I have coffee on.”

  “All—all right—”

  Iniguez walked past him into the kitchen. Jonah stood reading the CDs, which appeared in no particular order. Janis Joplin rubbed elbows with Dr. Dre and Celia Cruz. The Beatles occupied one full shelf, as did Tchaikovsky and David Grisman. At the right end of every shelf was a small Braille label.

  “Sugar? Milk?”

  “Milk’s fine, thanks.”

  Iniguez reappeared, holding a mug steadily at chest level. “Take it from me.”

  The coffee was mild and good, a welcome change from the razorblade brew he usually took. Jonah found a spot on the sofa amidst piles of toys and stray CDs.

  “You’re lucky it was me who answered the door,” said Iniguez, reseating himself. “My wife wants your head.” He reached down, seemingly to plunge his hand into his mug. Then his fingers curled to receive the handle. “She took the kids to church.” He paused. “We have some leftover pie.”

  “No thanks.” Jonah glanced at the front hallway, half-expecting the Wife and Kids to walk in and chew his ears off for molesting their patriarch.

  Iniguez picked up the papers and folded them in his lap. “So. What.”

  Jonah said, “I—first I want to tell you that I meant what I said. When I called you. I still mean it, I’m sor—”

  Iniguez raised a hand. “Why’s it matter to me whether you’re sorry or not? Those are words. What
good does that do?”

  “…nothing.”

  “Correct. Nothing. So don’t tell me you’re sorry anymore.”

  “I”—intending to apologize, he finished with—“won’t.”

  “Your shrink send you here?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t see a shrink,” Iniguez said.

  “…it’s not for everyone.”

  “I think it’s for people who can’t deal with problems on their own.”

  “That…may be true.”

  “Your lawyer sent you.”

  “If he knew I was here he’d kill me.”

  “What, then. It’s like a pilgrimage?” Iniguez’s mouth twisted up. “Cause I don’t know. I let you in here, give you a drink, offer you some pie. I’m hoping you’ll entertain me a little. Give me a reason why I shouldn’t beat the shit out of you.”

  Jonah said nothing.

  “I’m a strong guy,” said Iniguez. “I guess you’re about five eleven. Am I close?”

  “And a half.”

  “One eighty-five?”

  “About.”

  “Okay. Then tell me why I shouldn’t break your arm.” Iniguez drank, stretched his fingers around the mug as though it were a neck. “You have thirty seconds.”

  Jonah said, “During the accident—”

  “Don’t call it that.”

  Jonah said nothing.

  Iniguez said, “You must feel like a real asshole.”

  “I do.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I don’t expect this to mean anything to you—”

  “I told you not to apologize.”

  “I’m not going to,” Jonah said. “I’m not trying to get you to feel bad for me.”

  “I don’t.”

  “All right,” Jonah said. “But what happened that night was a mistake.”

  Iniguez nodded. “Know what? I haven’t given you one second of thought.”

  “You’re suing me.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jonah said nothing.

  “Does that sound fair to you?” Iniguez asked.

  “…not really.”

  “Yeah. Me neither. Too fucking bad.”