Laughing Man

by Wright, T. M.

"From the earth itself," Erthmun said.

  "The earth can make whatever it wants to make," said Uncle Jack.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The woman who called herself Helen had gotten invited to a party in a high-rise near Central Park. The man who had invited her was wealthy and he looked upon her as another acquisition. Helen did not understand this, and it would have meant nothing to her if she did. What interested her was being among the people who lived in this city and making herself one of them. This was important to her because she was a social creature and so she needed the companionship of creatures who, in many ways, were like her.

  She was also an almost entirely reactive being. She did not have the capacity or patience for rumination; she did have the capacity, however, to read people and their intentions toward her as quickly as others read street signs. This was a defense mechanism, and it was as well-developed in her as in any of her brothers and sisters.

  She had also conformed almost completely to the etiquette and demeanor required of her in this gathering. It was an ability that was not the result so much of intelligence as adaptive response. It was chameleon-like. She absorbed the manner in which other females at this gathering acted and reacted, then she became an amalgam of what she had absorbed. No one noticed that this was what she was doing, of course, though a few at the gathering thought she was odd. One woman said quietly to another, "It's a good thing she's so drop-dead gorgeous," and the woman to whom she was speaking nodded her agreement, though neither of them could have said, in so many words, what exactly they were talking about.

  "Helen, yes," Helen said to a self-consciously dapper man in his mid-thirties who had come to the gathering alone but didn't want to go home alone.

  "Like Helen of Troy," he said, thinking that she would know the reference instantly—"The face that launched a thousand ships!"—and so would realize that he had given her a high compliment.

  Helen said, "Helen of Troy, yes," which sounded to the dapper man as if she were merely repeating what he had said.

  He pressed on. "You're one of Martin's angels?" Martin was the man who had invited Helen; "angels" was a euphemism for the women he made available to his closest male friends.

  Helen said, "Martin brought me here," and coquettishly sipped her drink. It was a Manhattan and the tastedid not appeal to her, but she had seen others at the gathering drinking similar drinks and they had looked as if they were enjoying them, so she was able to conjure up the same look of enjoyment.

  She continued, "I'm an angel of Martin," and gave the dapper man a coquettish smile. This was unfortunate because coquettish smiles did not mix well with her naturally predatory and overtly sensual appearance, and so her attempt at coquettishness came off as archly dishonest, which almost caused the dapper man to go and hunt elsewhere for his evening's conquest. But he decided to stick with Helen because he thought that she really was a knockout, and so what if she was a bit strange.

  "Have you known him long?" the dapper man asked.

  "Only insofar as one knows anyone," said Helen.

  "I see," said the dapper man, because her comment had not really been an answer to his question.

  Helen reached out with one long, exquisite finger and stroked the man's lapel. "I like this fabric," she said.

  "Thanks," the dapper man said—he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

  She stared him in the eye and smiled coquettishly again. She was wearing a black dress with bare shoulders. She wore no jewelry because it felt harsh to her skin, but she had seen many other women wearing jewelry and had decided, in her way, that it was a thing she should do as well. She said, "If you're turned on, I listen well."

  "Huh?" said the dapper man.

  Helen didn't realize that she was making no sense, although she did easily pick up on the dapper man's confusion. She was also picking up on the fact that his initial attraction to her was dimming. This was not a good thing. She needed this man. She wanted to take the evening with him. She cast about within the consciousness that passed, in her brain, for intelligence, and soon decided what her next move should be.

  She said, "I'm not available," and turned away, so her back was to the dapper man.

  He stared at her back for a moment—it looked tanned and smooth and exquisite—then tapped her lightly on the shoulder. This act surprised her. At this gathering, she was not prepared for surprises. Her eyes wide, she wheeled about as quickly as the swishing of a cat's tail and raked her fingers across his cheek. Blood flowed at once. His mouth fell open. He touched the scratches on his cheek, and saw the blood on his fingers. He looked confusedly into Helen's eyes, but saw nothing there that he had expected—anger, astonishment, apology, pending explanation. He saw that her eyes still were wide, and that her jaw was set, as if she were going to strike again. He backed away from her a step, and mumbled, "I'm sorry," though he had no idea what he was sorry for. He backed up another step, saw that Helen's eyes still were on him, that they still were wide, and that her stance was the stance of an animal waiting to strike—tense, anticipatory. Then, responding to some deep inner voice that told him that this preternaturally beautiful woman was a strange creature indeed, he turned and ran from the room.

  But Helen had no idea that she had blundered. Even when two dozen pairs of eyes turned accusingly or questioningly or with surprise on her, and even when Martin himself came over and demanded to know what had happened—"Jesus Christ, do you know who that is?"—her thoughts still were on the dapper man himself, and upon the fact that he had aroused in her the same need that had been aroused the previous evening.

  She salivated.

  A muted growling sound started in her throat.

  Smalley had come to Erthmun's apartment to tell him that Internal Affairs would probably call off their investigation, and that Erthmun would be reinstated to active duty in a couple of days.

  Erthmun said, "You woke me up." He was standing in his blue robe at the open door to his apartment.

  "Yes, I can tell," Smalley said, without a tone of apology; hell, it wasn't even 9:00 P.M.—what was this guy doing asleep?

  Erthmun started to close the door; Smalley reached out and stiff-armed it. "Don't you want to know why we're calling off the investigation?"

  "Not particularly," Erthmun answered.

  "Shit, that's disappointing," Smalley said.

  "I'm sure it is," Erthmun said. "Let go of the fucking door."

  Smalley said, "We're calling off the investigation because of lack of evidence. Which doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist." He quickly added, "Why do you think this perp stuffs chocolate in the mouths of the victims?"

  "Suddenly you're a homicide detective?" Erthmun asked.

  "I'm just curious."

  "I don't know why the killer stuffs chocolate into the mouths of his victims," Erthmun said, and pushed hard on the door, which Smalley was still stiff-arming. "Back off," Erthmun said.

  Smalley let go of the door.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Following Evening

  Near the House on Four Mile Creek

  The woman said to her male companion, "Do you know what my father used to say about winters up here?"

  Her companion looked expectantly at her, but said nothing.

  She continued. "He said they were cold enough to steal the breath from a dead man." She smiled. "I always liked that. I'm not sure what it means, but I like it."

  Her companion said, "I think I know what it means. And it's true."

  The woman took a long, deep breath. Her companion looked on, in awe; he knew that if he took such a breath in this frigid air, he'd end up doubled over with a fit of coughing.

  The woman declared, "It's so bracing, don't you think, Hal?"

  "Bracing, sure," Hal said.

  The woman—her name was Denise—grinned at him. "This isn't your cup of tea, is it?"

  "Of course it is," Hal claimed. "I'm the first to admit that we can't spend our lives wrapped up tight and warm within the
cocoons that we call cities." He smiled, pleased with his metaphor.

  "Agreed," said Denise. She glanced at her watch; it was closing in on 5:30 p.m. Soon, it would be dark, and the small lean-to where they had planned to spend the night was still a good distance off. She hadn't expected Hal to be so slow. Jesus, he jogged every day.

  "Problem?" he said.

  Denise glanced at the overcast gray sky. "Not really. I don't know. It doesn't . . . feel right here." They were in an open area fringed by evergreens, oaks, and tulip trees. The snow was knee deep and heavy, which made walking very difficult.

  "'Doesn't feel right'?" Hal said. "Could you explain that?" His sudden apprehension was obvious.

  She chuckled. "Only that I think we've got a little weather on the way and that we should pick up the pace if we expect—"

  "Weather? You mean a storm?"

  She shrugged. "Possibly. A small storm." She took her radio from Hal's backpack; it was tuned to a weather channel in Old Forge, half a hundred miles south. She turned up the volume. Nothing. She cursed, shook the radio, turned it off, then on again. Still nothing. "Hal, did you put new batteries in this thing?"

  He looked sheepishly at her and started to speak, but she cut in, "You didn't, did you?" She could hear the anger in her voice, but decided it was all right—he deserved it.

  He said, "Actually, yes, I did."

  "New batteries?"

  Another sheepish look. "Have you checked the price on new batteries, Denise? Jesus, they're a couple of bucks. So, I figured—"

  "This isn't a new battery?"

  "Sure it is. You know those batteries in the drawer in the dining room? I used one of them. I even checked it on the battery tester first—"

  "Dammit!" Denise whispered.

  "I fucked up?" Hal asked.

  She put the radio to her ear, turned the volume all the way up, heard nothing, sighed. "No, Hal, you didn't fuck up. It's all right."

  "But we're in deep shit?"

  "Not waist-deep. Not yet." She gave him a quick grin, as if for reassurance. "Listen, I know this snow is difficult to slog through, and I know you really hate being out here, but do you think that if we put our snowshoes on we could do a couple of miles before it gets too dark?"

  "How many is a couple?"

  "Three. Maybe four."

  "That's not a couple. That's several."

  "Okay, okay. Several miles. Can you do it?"

  "Shit, Denise," he said, "I jog every day."

  His leg cramps began twenty minutes later, when the light gray overcast had turned dark gray and a lazy snowfall had begun. He sat on a tree stump and massaged his thigh. "This is a very different kind of muscle action I'm employing here than when I jog," he explained.

  They were in a sparse grove of evergreens. Beyond it, to the east, the land sloped severely into pitch darkness; to the west, a few rust-colored remnants of dusk remained. There were no hazy reflections of city lights anywhere on the dark cloud cover, no distant noises of cars or airplanes. The air was as still and cold and quiet as stone.

  Denise realized all at once that she wasn't absolutely certain of their location. She asked for the compass, which Hal kept in his jacket pocket. He fished it out and gave it to her. She checked it, looked at the dark gray overcast and the lazy snowfall, checked the compass again, gave it back to him, and grinned nervously.

  He said, "Are we waist-deep in shit now, Denise?"

  Her grin quivered. "Mid-calf, I'd say."

  He stood, leaned over, massaged his thigh some more, and said, "A week from now, we're going to look back on this and say, Now that was a night to remember.' "

  She gave him a quick, quivering grin.

  He said, "We are, aren't we?"

  She said nothing.

  "Denise?" he coaxed, and noticed, then, that her gaze wasn't on him, but beyond him. He turned his head, looked.

  She said, "Hal, I think that's a goddamned house."

  He didn't see it. "Where?" he said.

  "What do you mean 'Where?' Right there."

  He turned around, so his back was to her, moved forward a few paces, then stepped to his right. The snowfall had picked up; a quirky breeze had started. He thought he was thankful for it, thankful for the whisper it made on the snow and in the trees. He had never been comfortable with silence.

  He saw the house, then, though not much of it—a steeply pitched roof, part of the top floor. It was too dark now for him to say what kind of windows there were. "Do you think someone lives in it?" he asked.

  "How would I know?" Denise answered.

  "It doesn't matter, does it?"

  "Goddamn right."

  "I want you to admit one thing to me," Hal said.

  "Oh, yeah? What?" Denise said.

  "I want you to admit that you've fucked up. I want to hear you say, 'Hal, I've fucked up. It's a first, but I've done it.' Can you say that?"

  They were standing in deep snow inside the remains of a picket fence. It was very stylized; each picket was flattened at its point, and, just beneath that, much fatter and rounder than normal picket fences. Denise had said that she liked this design quite a lot, and Hal had claimed that he could fashion similar pickets for their own fence, should they decide at some point to build one.

  They were not far from the house itself, which was large, gray with age, sturdy-looking, and clearly empty. Denise said, "Do you require that I confess to having fucked up, darling?"

  "Sure, I do," he said.

  She admitted that she had, and it made him happy. Then she said, gesturing to indicate the area inside the fence, "They liked bushes."

  "Those are forsythia," Hal declared.

  "I know that," she said.

  "Well, then, that makes two of us."

  She looked apologetically at him, then at the house, which, oddly, looked less forbidding from this vantage point—inside the friendly picket fence—than it had when they had first seen it. "Are we going inside?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said. "I'm cold."

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Helen heard the music of living things, which, in this place, was at once dissonant, like the raucous noises of blue jays, and melodic—the wet and powerful noises of sex, which are the noises that scream into the ear of eternity. And she heard the whispers that come from sleep, and the cries and the shouting that leaped from the minds of those who dreamed. And she heard the music that was music to other ears, too—Mozart, George Harrison, Marianne Faithfull, John Prine, Samuel Barber—because these were the sounds that living things made to put themselves in harmony with the earth.

  Helen's life was music, which was sex, which was food, which was music, and sex, and food, which was one thing, which was Helen.

  The dapper man, wrapped only in a towel, and peeking around the open door to his apartment, said, "My God, how did you get in here?" because the building was very secure, of course. There were smells wafting out from within the apartment; they were the commixture of beef, mushrooms, cheese, and red wine, and they got Helen's saliva flowing again. And there was Hank Williams on the CD player, because the dapper man loved Hank Williams, though he played him only when he was alone.

  How she got into the building was of little concern to Helen. She did what was necessary. It had been necessary for her to get into the building, so she had gotten in.

  She said now, "I need you!"

  "You need me?" The dapper man was astonished, confused. He touched the fresh bandages on his cheek, and repeated, "You need me?" and added, "For what?"

  Helen did not recognize such questions. She barely recognized questions as questions. They indicated uncertainty, which was not a part of her existence.

  She said, "You!" then swept past him, and shredded his stomach with her graceful fingers.

  And when she was inside, and had turned to face him, he had begun to double over from the pain she had inflicted, and his gaze was rising questioningly to meet hers, to find some answer in her sky-blue eyes. Why do you want to
hurt me? his gaze said.

  But there were no answers in her eyes, and no questions in them either. There was simply need, hunger, and certainty.

  "It's very dark," Hal said.

  "That's because there aren't any lights," Denise said. "Do you think this is safe?"

  "What do you mean? The floor? Are you asking if the floor is safe? It feels safe." She lifted one foot and brought it down softly; it made a slight whumping noise. "See, safe enough." She thought that she was babbling, trying to find solace in the sound of her own voice. But solace from what?

  Hal said, "There should be lights."

  "And room service, too," Denise said.

  "Okay, so what do we do now? Spread our sleeping bags out here?"

  "No." She bent over and held her hand near the bottom of the front door; "See," she said. "Feel that draft? Jesus, we'll be popsicles by morning."

  "I thought our sleeping bags were rated at twenty below."

  "I really think that our best bet is to find some inner room and sleep there," Denise said.

  "Inner room where? Down here? Upstairs?"

  "I don't think it matters."

  "Maybe there's a fireplace. I mean, there has to be a fireplace."

  "I'm sure there's a fireplace." She looked at him; his face was only an elongated oval a little paler than the darkness in the house. "But I'm just as sure we shouldn't use it. I'd say that birds have been building nests in the chimney for a couple of decades. We might light a fire and fill the whole damned place with smoke."

  "Oh, sure," Hal said, sounding chastened. "You're right. That was stupid."

  She looked at him, again. Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the low light. She could see his features swimming on the creamy oval that was his face. "Am I a bitch?" she said.

  And he answered, too quickly, she thought, "No. You're not a bitch."

  She sighed. "I treat you badly sometimes, don't I?"

  "No more than I deserve," he said. "Why are you suddenly assuming your 'true confessions' mode?"