Killer of a Mind

by Valerie Albemarle

Ryan pedalled along the dark empty road just as he’d ridden in the other direction with Mario only hours ago. He passed under the solitary light that had guided him to shore and saw that it was a bare light bulb worshipped by moths. He was lulled by the chirping of crickets and the soft screeching of the bicycle seat. The jungle was releasing scents ripened in the heat of the day, the sour and wistful scents of fermenting fallen leaves. A star lit up against the dark of the trees to his left. Why wasn’t it up in the sky? For a second he thought he’d gone mad, or maybe he really was drowned and dead, and this was the other side. And why not? Here, losing your flesh seemed like no great matter. Nobody here discriminated against the dead who enjoyed the same rights and privileges as the living.

  The first star went out and another lit up, then another. There were more and more of them now, and they were growing brighter. They were above the jungle and inside it, among the trees, and now he saw that some of them moved a short distance before their light went out. He came to a small clearing by the side of the road, and in this space surrounded by trees was a galaxy of softly moving stars. He got off the bicycle and walked into the clearing, stood among the softly moving stars that came into being and disappeared against the darkness.

  Fireflies.

  How come he’d never seen them until this night?

  More, I prithee, more. Shakespeare sure knew what to ask for: more. If not in life, then in death.

  Ryan didn’t remember how he got to his hotel or how he reached his bed. He wasn’t aware of seeing any dreams. He woke up at his usual hour, seven, to the lisp-whistle of a bird in the jungle canopy: Shpa-choo,shpa-choo,shpa-choo.

  No shit, little buddy. You’ve said it.

  Already the events of the previous night had started to feel like an implausible movie to which he’d fallen asleep. But it hadn’t been a movie; it had happened, and to him. He hadn’t imagined the movements his body had discovered and made in order to save itself.

  But now what? Go to thepolicia and explain in broken Spanish how one drunken gringo had tried to drown another? This seemed grotesque, a Kafka story set in the paradise of Tulum where such things did not happen. He wouldn’t be surprised if such a story earned him a cell in a Mexican madhouse or prison. Call the Canadian consulate and complain to them? Complain about what? There wasn’t a shred of evidence to support what had happened last night, no witnesses who saw him and Mario on the beach or in the boat. Mario had committed such a perfect crime it was almost a shame it hadn’t happened. No, going to the authorities was out of the question. Yet he knew some action was required of him, because he needed to worry about Mario. Mario had wanted him dead, and Mario was the kind of man who followed through on what he wanted.

  Ryan saw the door to freedom opening before him. How could he have been so stupid? All he needed to do was to play dead, and only for a short while. Once he was out of Tulum he’d be safe, swallowed by the sanitized anonymity of Vancouver. Here the world was small, shrunken down like the head of a head-hunter’s victim. Small, and on regrettably friendly terms with death. Back home he’d be protected from this primal barbarity, coddled by a civilization that worshipped safety. Mario wouldn’t dare to do anything to him there, even if he found out Ryan was alive. But for this to work, he needed to play along with Mario, to pretend he wasn’t among the living. He needed to bugger off before anyone saw him at the hotel, to leave with nothing but the shirt on his back and the plastic in his pockets, make a dash for the airport to catch the first plane out of here. He needed to ride the screechy bicycle to the nearest jungle and hide it there, then walk run to the bus station. There was no such thing as the perfect crime—he’d taken that away from Mario—but there could be such a thing as the perfect forgery. There had to be. He would have to forge his own death because his life depended on it.

  Ryan locked his room and ran through the courtyard to hop on the raggedy-ass bike before anyone could see it there. This was of course a stupid worry seeing as dozens of raggedy-ass rental bikes waited on the streets of Tulum as their riders shopped or sat in cafes. But as a fugitive Ryan expected the world to set its sights on him. He hopped on the bike and screeched off toward the intersection, planning to cross the main street and ride toward the ocean; there was a patch of jungle just outside Tulum where he meant to hide the bike. It wouldn’t do to ride to last night’s beach and leave the bike there: too many people would see him walking back to Tulum. He needed to be careful even on this short ride because Mario could come the other way any second. He thought about Mario and how he was probably enjoying his victory, congratulating himself on how well he’d done last night, and suddenly he became furious with himself. He’d done nothing wrong, so why was he the one hiding like a rat, cowering and trembling in its hole in terror of the catcher? Because the catcher would come. This would never end with Tulum; he’d been so naive to think it could! Tulum would follow him to Vancouver, and Mario would find him and come after him. No matter how big your world was, here in Mexico it became a very small one, just big enough to contain what you needed to survive. And once it got small, it stayed that way no matter where you went.

  Ryan pedalled backwards and came to a screeching stop. Two Mayan women looked at him in surprise that turned into shy mirth. The little Mayans laughed easily, bless their hearts. And well they could. Stupid fucking gringo. Stupid fucking white man! Ryan smiled sheepishly at the women and turned the bike around. He was in no state to ride anywhere or make decisions about anything more important than taking a piss. Go back to the hotel? What if Mario decided to pay him a visit, if only to establish himself as the concerned friend before raising the alarm? No, he couldn’t go there until he had a better idea of what to do. But first, food. Now that the flight response had been replaced with a fight plan, or at least a plan to make a plan, he realized he was weak and stupid with hunger.

  At first he had to force himself to chew and swallow the food, but after a few mouthfuls his body admitted its need and rejoiced at the help it was getting. He’d chosen a little eatery for locals on a quiet street unfrequented by tourists. The proletarian-grade tacos were the most delectable food he’d eaten in his life. A tomcat observed Ryan from its throne on a pile of rubble across the street. It was a small and lean animal with crusts around its eyes, but it made like a lion to whom the world could do no wrong. Ryan threw the cat a piece of tortilla smeared in sour cream and watched it pick up its prize and walk off to hide from the bother and envy of other animals. He recalled how years ago his college roommate’s cat had stared at him in profound indignation as he unsnagged its claw from the bug screen. The cat had been swatting flies, banging the screen with its hands until it got hooked. “I meant to do that,” it seemed to say when Ryan freed it from its mute embarrassment. Back then he almost peed himself laughing at the cat’s helpless valiance. And yet, millions of years of evolution couldn’t be wrong. Animals did the opposite of complaining because that was how they survived. By the way, what was the opposite of complaining? People didn’t have a word for that; it wasn’t a people thing to do. People carried on about whatever ailed or bothered them because that was how they reminded the world that they counted for something. Animals protected themselves by keeping quiet, downplaying their injuries and weaknesses, denying them altogether. Denying them..?

  Something in the storage room of Ryan’s memory shifted position and fell off its shelf. He couldn’t see what it was, but he knew where to find it. It was in the play he’d been reading, something written by hand on the margins. Back at his hotel and no longer concerned about Mario finding him there, he headed for the cupboard with the books. His nameless friend had reached out across the decades to prepare him for this moment. He openedGaslight at the page where the reader had written “so do it!” on the margin. So do what? The passage opposite the handwriting was Jack thundering at Bella to return the picture she’d supposedly hidden and which of course he’d put away himself. So do it! Stop whimpering and return the picture to its place, like Jack told you
to. Agree that you did hide it, and see what that does to him! Because Bella could’ve done this if she had any balls, or whatever a Victorian woman was supposed to have in place of balls. She knew where the picture was hidden (it was found there twice before), she just needed to raise her head above the fear and panic and to gaslight her dear husband right back. Ryan was witnessing a woman from the twentieth century talking to an imaginary one from the nineteenth, egging her on, telling her to get with it, to remember what she knew and to trust what she remembered. Hamilton had made Bella an extraordinary idiot even for her time, hadn’t allowed her to come into her own till the very end of the play, and the nameless reader had riled against this in her short outbursts on the margins. In life this woman was probably meek as a dove (look at the care she took to write) and cunning as a serpent.

  Ryan was witnessing the birth of an idea. It was his idea, but its birth was helped along by two dead people one of whom had written the book in his hands and the other—the pencil notes on its margins. They say that behind every crime there’s a woman. The nameless writer of the marginalia had inspired something a lot more interesting than even the perfect crime: the perfect denial that a crime had happened.

  Mario stopped so suddenly that he almost fell forward. He looked not so much shocked as outraged and disgusted, as if he was seeing a hideous deformity that had no right to exist.

  “You stood me up last night.” Ryan raised his brows in a look of innocent surprise, making an effort to keep his hands from shaking after all the espressos he’d downed while waiting. “We were supposed to go night fishing?” he continued after the compulsory pause. He was careful to sound slightly disappointed but mostly concerned for his friend. “We were supposed to meet at the intersection, remember?”

  Now Mario was petrified. Maybe before Ryan opened his mouth he’d believed or hoped that this was some sort of mirage; but now there could be no doubt that the person in front of him was real, and alive. Ryan remembered very well that Mario was superstitiously afraid of going mad like his mother. But was he afraid enough to believe he had actually gone mad? He wasn’t contradicting Ryan. But then, how could he? Who’s going to insist they tried to kill you when you’re sitting right in front of them and acting as if nothing has happened? And yet, there are more important things than being let off the hook for attempted murder: sanity, for example. No matter how much we might enjoy joking about losing our sanity, we don’t allow others to do so, nor do we easily forgive such attempts. Even people closest to us aren’t invited to cross that line. Ryan wasn’t even joking about Mario’s sanity, he was denying it altogether. He knew he was walking on ice so thin it might as well be water.

  Mario made a colossal effort to speak. “I wasn’t feeling well. Too much sun, I guess.”

  Ryan nodded in simple understanding. He knew his life depended on not overdoing it. To his surprise and relief, Mario drew up a chair and sat down at the table. He seemed to have regained what foothold he had on the beetling rock face of this new reality down which he’d plunged. He was studying Ryan, trying to understand what was going on, and he looked grim from the strain. Ryan knew he would lose this game if he lost the initiative, but he would also lose it if he pushed too hard and too far. He’d sat down at this table almost two hours ago knowing that Mario liked to come here for lunch, knowing that once he saw Mario he’d need to improvise. He’d resisted the urge to rehearse his words, to even think about what he’d say, knowing that Mario would detect any sign of a performance. In an instant of clarity he remembered what Mario had said on their first evening of drinking together about why he hated tequila, and how easily Mario had overcome his aversion. He remembered Mario remarking that the tequila they had yesterday was particularly smooth.

  “It sounds bad,” Ryan said in a guilty little voice, “but I was kind of relieved you didn’t show up. I waited for you for, what, twenty minutes, then I went back to my room and had a really bad trip. That tequila we had with lunch? It did a number on me. I can’t think what else could have done that.” He saw hungry puzzlement on Mario’s face, a desire to hear more. He gave more. “First I got a whopping headache. I thought it would go away, but by evening I was damn near hallucinating!”Hallucinating.Ryan was astonished by his discovery. He didn’t need to suggest that Mario had gone mad: a hallucination induced by bad tequila would spare his dignity. “Really weird, sick shit,” Ryan went on. He shook his head in disgust and amazement at the weird, sick shit. He didn’t have the slightest idea what it might be, but if Mario had asked him to elaborate, he would’ve thought of something. The muse had lifted him off the ground and was flying high on mighty wings, carrying him in her talons. It was a frightful and wonderful journey. “Hope you had a better time than I did,” he added in a tone of obligatory concern.

  “Er, not that much better,” Mario replied with a grimace. “I wasn’t feeling too hot myself.”

  Ryan could see hope on Mario’s face. Yes, Mario welcomed this explanation. Tequila, oh blessed tequila! Who knew that a vile concoction of ‘formalin’ with a worm at the bottom could be the elixir or life?

  “Have a coffee. You look like you need one.” Ryan knew to keep riding his luck, but not too hard. He resisted the temptation to ask why Mario’s evening hadn’t gone all that swimmingly. This was no time for facile puns.

  Mario did order a coffee and sipped it with extraordinary caution. You couldn’t blame him for fearing that the coffee too was part of the hallucination.

  “You saw stuff?” he demanded with sudden and aggressive interest. It sounded like an accusation more than a question.

  “Yea.” Ryan feigned reluctance to speak. He frowned and breathed heavily so as to look pained by the recollection. By now he’d had time to sketch a story in his mind, and was prepared to tell it. “I was in my room, but it felt like I was somewhere else if I closed my eyes and kept them closed long enough.”

  “Somewhere else? Where?”

  “On the beach, the same beach I was at in the daytime. It was dark. But I wasn’t just sitting there.”

  “Oh? What were you doing?”

  “There was this dude who’d been roasting himself on the beach all day, smoking one fucking cigarette after another, and he just had to be upwind from me. All the goddam day. I didn’t want to move from my spot in the shade so I had to put up with it. He looked like a middle-aged European, one of those arrogant pricks with dyed hair and speedos, or maybe he was some two-bit third world executive trying to look European. So in my vision I’m sitting there in the dark, enjoying the quiet and the stars, and he just has to come and sit right upwind of me again, and he just has to light up and start puffing away. The beautiful night and the sweet air aren’t good enough for him without his fucking cigarettes. I lost it, man. I walked up to him, grabbed him by the collar and sort of lifted him toward me, and I slammed my fist into his sleazy arrogant face. I think I broke his nose; it felt like I did. I’ve never hit anyone before! I don’t know what happened to him, because that’s when this thing, this vision, came to an end.”

  Admittedly it wasn’t the world’s greatest story, but it didn’t need to be. It was better than great: it was believable.

  “But you knew you were seeing things? Imagining things?” Mario insisted.

  “That’s the scary part.” It was indeed the scary part, the scariest of all: Ryan knew he was being interviewed for his life. People say you can’t lie if you’re looking someone in the eye, and that happens to be one big pile of baloney. Ryan didn’t have the slightest difficulty looking straight into Mario’s eyes with his own helpless and pleading ones. “The only reason I knew it wasn’t real is because when it ended, there was a hotel room around me. The only reason! Even my body was fooled. My knuckles hurt, like I’d hit him for real. There’s a bruise where my hand slammed into his face!” He showed Mario the bruise. “Then I remembered that I’d banged my hand trying to open a stuck window.”

  Ryan knew he was succeeding because Mario’s expression went fro
m dissatisfied to sad and confused, just like his own. Mario resembled a dog who doesn’t understand why he’s being punished.

  Suddenly Mario brightened up. “You figure they slipped something in your tequila, for a laugh?” he asked with hope. He had no idea how much Ryan loved him at that moment. They were improvising together, feeding off each other’s inspiration. What a shame they couldn’t be friends!

  “You know, maybe they did! Can’t imagine the tequila itself doing this. That waiter was giving me strange looks. Who knows, maybe he though I’d givenhim a strange look. Maybe he thought I didn’t tip him enough the other night. Maybe I reminded him of a monster he saw in a dream as a kid. These people are very superstitious. And it’d be impossible to prove that someone slipped a drug in your drink. Gringos come here to get drugged of their own free will, for fuck’s sake.” Ryan stopped himself before he could go too far on his triumphant march. Before he could suggest that both drinks had been spiked.

  Mario nodded slowly, put some money on the table, and got up. “I really don’t feel well. Sorry. I’ll go take a nap.” He sounded defeated and rueful, as if he’d abandoned the discovery he seemed on the verge of making a minute ago.

  Ryan didn’t push. “Yea, take it easy. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Once Mario was out of sight, Ryan stopped acting nonchalant. He was exhausted and drained, and the caffeine finally took possession of his body and gave him unpleasant jitters. In the corner of his mind’s eye he could see something dark and hideous: the fear that Mario knew everything and only pretended to play along. He refused to look directly at that fear, to give it his full attention lest it take him over. He insisted that Mario had believed him.

  His mind was put at rest when on the next day Mario came by his hotel to say goodbye before leaving Tulum. He seemed to have gained his grip on whatever reality remained for him to accept. He said all the right things, all the little platitudes befitting the situation; yet his speech seemed to run on autopilot. He looked to be in a state of quiet and shy rapture as one convalescing from a heavy illness and grateful for every moment spent free of suffering. For an instant he looked frightened to see Ryan’s backpack on the floor with the fishing rod sticking out of it like an antenna, and in that instant Ryan regretted his petty precision in reconstructing the scene of the non-crime. There was no need to rub it in like that. But the next moment Mario seemed back in his state of acceptance. Ryan thought it must be crushing to fall prey to such a monstrous illusion; no wonder Mario looked somewhat feebleminded. But it was amazing how the guy could pull himself together, all things considered. Yes, it was too bad they wouldn’t be friends; Mario really was one remarkable person. Ryan decided that his victory was complete and final, and felt no temptation to doubt it. He almost felt bold enough to flirt with the reality he’d created, was almost ready to think that the night on the ocean had been a shared illusion, that he’d imagined it no less than Mario had. Surely, if it had been real, they couldn’t be interacting like this now! They parted on peaceful if awkward terms, like boys who’ve come a step closer to being men after bloodying each other’s noses. Ryan wished Mario every success in his free-lance career and they agreed to stay in touch, both aware that this was just a phrase.