American Dead

by PW Cooper

  Slowly, she turned her hands palms-up and opened them. There was ice melting in her hands, the cold water running between her fingers like dripping glass. “I told him that I was going to get ice...” she whispered.

  Jeffrey stuck his hands deep into his pockets. He could feel something teeming inside him, anger or guilt or maybe fear. He took his hands back out of his pockets, clenching and unclenching them impotently at his sides.

  Alice coughed. She wiped her lip and her hand came away smeared with blood. The brilliant red of it ran though the water on her palm, spread across her hand like a vein of crystal put under ultraviolet light. She said, “I thought everything was going so well... He seemed so happy tonight. Like everything was normal.” Her eyes were puffy and red, black streaks of mascara running down her cheeks like deep cracks. “Did you see him with Sally? He was so good... it was like back when we first met...”

  Jeffrey shuffled his bare heels across the carpet. He could feel the electricity rising through his legs. “What do you want me to do?”

  “He knows things, Jeff! About what's going on in the park. I think...” She took a long slow breath. A dark wet spot was forming on the carpet beneath her dripping hands. “I think he's done horrible things.” She came abruptly to her feet, looking for a place to dispose of the ice. Jeffrey offered her a plastic cup from the bedside table. She dug in her pockets and come out with a little brass key. She held it out to him. “Here. It's the spare key to his room, I got the girl at the desk to give it to me.”

  “What do you mean, 'his room?'” He looked at the number on the key. “This isn't your room number.”

  “It's his room,” she said, annoyed at his interruption, “We'll both be gone tomorrow. He wants to show me a house, so we'll be gone for a while. Long enough, I think.”

  He took the key. “What do you expect me to find?”

  “He has secrets, Jeff! I know you'll find something in that room. He never lets me in there, I've tried, but he's so suspicious. I know there's something there.”

  “Alright alright. I'll do what I can.”

  She wiped her nose on the back of her damp hands. “Thank you, Jeff. Thank you so much.”

  “That's okay.”

  “I mean it.”

  He looked at the clock, and a strange thought came to him. “Do you know what day it is?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It's July forth now.”

  “So what?”

  “That's Independence Day.”

  “So what?”

  He shrugged. “I don't know. Just thought I'd mention it.”

  Alice looked down at her hands. “Do you have some ice? I don't want to go back without any...”

  Jeffrey nodded. He went to the mini-fridge and fished out a handful from the little icebox. The oblong cubes stuck to his fingertips when he plucked them out. He passed them wordlessly to his sister.

  There were tears in her eyes; she wiped them away and she left, cradling the ice in her hands. He shut the door after her, but stood there a while longer, listening for sounds in the hallway.

  He was so very tired.

  * * *

  11:46 am, July 4th, 2002

  Jeffrey watched from the window of Robert Summer's hotel room as his sister and brother-in-law crossed the parking lot. Robert lead his wife firmly by the arm, the way a parent would lead a child.

  He had waited. Waited for what felt like a lifetime, and all the while the thin metal key biting into his sweaty fist. He'd watched the hands of the clock tick the day slowly away, and felt a growing sense of desperation, a sickly unease in his stomach. He tried to rest, but sleep remained beyond his reach.

  He had begun to think while he waited, began to wonder. Every day since he had come back to Verden, there seemed to be less and less of his life remaining, like the shreds of it were being pulled ceaselessly through his fingers. Ever since he'd come back it had been like a dream almost, like he was still at school and asleep in his dorm room. He would wake up any minute and see that he was late for class, that he had forgotten to write the big term paper, that the world was normal.

  That thought seemed somehow worse than anything. It had felt like a cruel joke when, after having tried so hard to get there, he'd knew almost at once that it wasn't going to work at San Diego. It had all felt so wrong, like he was intruding on a world in which he had no place. His semester and a half at the university had left him with little more than a sense of overwhelming and pervasive dread, the feeling that nothing he could ever do would be enough and that there would always be one critical detail which would be always outside his reach no matter how carefully or how long he searched.

  He had the same feeling now, standing in Robert Summer's hotel room.

  There wasn't a lot to see. Robert traveled light, apparently. His clothes were neatly folded in the dresser. They were starchy and clean as Jeffrey flipped through them. They smelled like laundry detergent, and the dresser drawer faintly of pine. Jeffrey tried not to touch them too much.

  There was a weighty metal wristwatch on the bedside table. The leather band was stained with sweat, the dial on the side worn smooth. He ran his thumb over the scuffed glass cover. There was a set of car keys on the table, and beside them lay a small flat key, a sort of machine-pressed metallic luggage key. He left them undisturbed and went back to his search.

  The bed was made. There was a single toothbrush beside the bathroom sink and little tube of toothpaste along with a razor and a mini-bottle of shaving cream.

  He stared at the bed. The sheets were pulled tight over the mattress, tucked in at the corners and folded over the pillows.

  One night when they were kids, Kim had left them without a word, had stumbled out into the night. He'd started to cry, but Alice stopped him. She gathered all the pillows and blankets in the house and made him help her build a sprawling labyrinth of tunnels through the trailer. Boxes with blankets stretched tight across the tops made tunnels, just wide enough for them to wriggle through on their elbows. It was a tight, sweaty place under those blankets, small enough to feel safe from the world. They curled up together in a passage just below the window. They sat there, their cheeks pressed against the cool glass, looking up at the night sky, not saying anything, just sitting together and looking out at the stars. Kim tore it all down when she came back the next morning.

  Jeffrey knelt down on the floor. The hotel carpet was rough on his hands. He peered under the bed. There was something gleaming in the darkness. A leather suitcase. He reached for it, found the handle and pulled it out. It was heavier than he'd expected. The suitcase was sealed with chrome locks. He picked up the case and laid it on top of the mattress.

  The key on the nightstand unlocked the case. Jeffrey threw back the lid and looked at what was inside:

  There were two big packages of white powder wrapped in bands of duct tape. Jeffrey took them gingerly out of the case and set them aside.

  There was a cobalt blue revolver in a vinyl-web holster. He put it beside the powder.

  There was money, a wad of fifties wrapped in a wide blue rubber-band like the kind they used on vegetables in a grocery store.

  Finally, there was a stack of Polaroids. The first picture showed a young woman in lacy black lingerie. Her lips were bright red and her unfocused eyes stared blearily up at the photographer. The concrete floor on which she knelt was stained and littered with cigarette butts. Tammy, 5/21/02 was scrawled in loose lettering across the bottom of the picture.

  Jeffrey leafed through the pictures. They were all about the same: women – and a few scrawny boys – undressed and posed languidly for the camera. Alexis, Petra, Dominique, Alex, Roberta, Connie, Shawna, Carla, Tommy, Olga, Jackie, Ava, Yvonne and, finally, cupping her bare breasts in her fingers, Kimberly.

  Jeffrey looked at his mother. She looked back, offering herself to him.

  There was a faint scent of gasoline from the inside of the suitcase.

  He thought of the Virgin M
ary statue he'd seen the day before, the blank stone face so serene and empty, so very ageless. Kim looked old. There pooled in her gray-green eyes a sort of yawning decrepitude. A dependence, a need which he found repulsive. Who had she been looking at with those dazed, intoxicated eyes? Robert, most likely.

  Jeffrey tossed the stack of pictures back into the case. He stood there for a moment, looking down at the items on the bed and flicking his tongue against his teeth. There was one more picture still in the case, separate from the stack, tucked into the corner. The face was familiar. It was Mike Conner. Jeffrey picked it up. Michael, 2/14/01. He felt a queer turning in his stomach, like he was going to be sick. He turned the photo over. There was an address scrawled on the back. He put the picture in his pocket, and as he did so he happened to look out the window. He saw Alice stand motionlessly beside a dirty gray Camry in the parking lot. Robert was nowhere to be seen.

  Click. He heard the scrape of a key entering a lock and the metallic scratch of its turning. And Jeffrey's blood went cold.

  “Come on! You don't really believe that.” Robert's voice came through the door.

  Jeffrey moved automatically, shoving everything back into the briefcase, the powder, the pictures, the money. He snapped the case shut and pushed it back under the bed.

  The gun!

  No time to get it back in the case! He snatched it up and dashed into the bathroom, preying his footfalls weren't too loud. He slipped behind the bathroom door just as Robert entered the room, cell phone held to his ear.

  “Yeah, I'll be a few more minutes.” Robert laughed. “No, she's waiting for me outside.”

  Jeffrey heard the dresser drawers opening one after the other. His nose was itching horribly, but he didn't dare move, didn't dare breath. What was Robert doing? Goddamn it!

  “No. Look, it won't be a problem. Just trust me. Because I said so, Kevin, that's why.”

  Jeffrey stared at the gun in his hands. Cold blue metal. It burned against his skin. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to picture the room. Had he left everything the way he'd found it? Would Robert notice if he hadn't?

  “He did? I didn't think he had the balls.”

  There was sweat gathering on Jeffrey's upper lip. He stepped out from behind the door and reached for the shower curtain. Robert was facing away, kneeling at the foot of the bed and feeling along the floor. Jeffrey pushed back the curtain. The stiff plastic crinkled ever so slightly, not too loudly, he hoped. He crept into the shower and sank down against the smooth wall. His knees were shaking.

  “Shit! Where the fuck are they? No no, I just... never mind.”

  Jeffrey stared at the drain. He listened to footsteps coming towards to him, coming into the bathroom. There was a long blond hair caught in the drain. His sister's? It wasn't dark enough to belong to Robert.

  Robert's shoes clicked on the tile. He stopped just on the other side of the curtain. Jeffrey slid the pistol out and closed his hand on the black rubber grip. It slipped noiselessly from the holster. His finger caressed the trigger. The metal was cold.

  The faucet started running. Jeffrey heard splashing.

  “You checked out his place then? Anything there I need to worry about?”

  Jeffrey swallowed. Blood was throbbing in his ears. Why was it so loud! How could Robert not hear it? He tried to quiet his heartbeat.

  “Fine, fine. Just leave it alone then.”

  Robert shut off the faucet, flicking water from his hands.

  The shower curtain wasn't completely drawn. There was a certain angle from which Robert would be able to see him, crouched there with the gun in his hand. Robert would see.

  “Well it's not like he's coming back for it anytime. We don't wanna be anywhere near this shit. Not with the police involved.”

  In that moment, for reasons which were not entirely clear to him, Jeffrey understood: his brother-in-law had killed Michael Conner. His grip tightened on the pistol. It was loaded, wasn't it? The possibility suddenly occurred him that he was about to be discovered there in the shower with an empty gun in his hands. The urge to squeeze the trigger was nearly irresistible, even if only to find out if there were any bullets in the gun.

  Then the sound of footsteps moving away from the shower, across the room to the bed. A clatter of something metallic against wood, then more footsteps, then the door opened. Jeffrey shut his eyes, holding the revolver against his cheek, and he let out a trembling breath. Robert had come back to the room for his car keys. Just the keys.

  He didn't know how long he sat there, holding the gun and shaking in the damp shower, listening to the empty room. Eventually, though, he got back to his feet.

  * * *

  2:29 pm, July 4th, 2002

  Jeffrey looked up at the disheveled apartment building. This was it. He checked the address scrawled on the back of the photo once more.

  The road curved sharply down towards Ithaca. It was a narrow and almost alpine sort of road, like many those in that city. Bent trees lined the street, like shaggy men in ragged green clothing, dragging their long limbs on the sidewalk. Most of the windows in the face of the rust-colored apartment building were boarded over. The handrail on the stair was twisted. Every building on the street was the same, old and broken. The city was a living ruin.

  He went up the crumbling steps and pressed his thumb against the doorbell. Bare wiring hung from the light fixture above him. The naked wires glistened angrily in the dull afternoon light.

  A pale gray car rumbled down the road, thumping music spilling from the rolled-down windows. The wind groaned audibly through the trees.

  Jeffrey rang the doorbell again.

  A narrow driveway ran alongside the apartment building. Crabgrass scrabbled amid thin-spread gravel. At the end of the drive there was a rusted-out junker sitting in a wreath of broken glass; it didn't look like it had been on the road since Reagan had been president.

  Jeffrey rang the doorbell one final time before he stepped inside.

  The lights was dim. There was a long hallway, the walls some kind of dark wood, mahogany or walnut. A set of worn stairs lead up to the second floor. At the top of the stairs he found a door. The apartment number was printed beside the door in worn gold paint, stenciled directly on the dark wood. Four.

  Michael Conner had lived here. What was inside? Jeffrey pressed his hand against the old wood. His fingertips followed the swirling grain, looping in ever tighter circles. The building seemed almost to have been carved, hallowed out rather than built. The near-black wood drank away all the light from the few bare bulbs recessed in the ceiling. It would be a depressing place to live, he thought, ancient and beautiful and fearful. There was a sense of permanence to old buildings, the sense that they would go on forever, stand erect against the weathering centuries long after their occupants had died.

  An old man in a bathrobe stepped out into the hall, his woolen eyebrows beetled and coarse as gray wire and his expression fierce. “What are you doing there?” he demanded, his voice a hard rasp from deep in his throat.

  “Who are you?” Jeff asked, pulling his hand away.

  The man grimaced. “This is my building, that's who I am. Who the hell are you?”

  “I'm looking for a friend of mine. I think he lived here.”

  “You think?” He spat the word like it was an offense to his tongue.

  “It's been a while.”

  “Well, what'd he look like?”

  Jeffrey tried to remember. All he could think of was the decayed body in the gorge. “Shorter than me. Blondish hair, nice face? Sort of thin?”

  The landlord took cigarette from of his breast pocket and lit it. Smoke leaked from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth. “Sounds like the guy.” He took his jaw in his hand and pushed it from side to side so that his teeth ground together. “Haven't seen him around. Would have rented out the room to someone else, but the money kept coming so I left it alone.”

  “What do you mean, the money kept coming in?”

&nb
sp; “Came in the mail. Brown envelopes, like, uh... like grocery bag paper. No return address or anything.” He shrugged, plucking out his cigarette and looking about for somewhere to drop the ash. Not finding any, he let the hot ash fall on the thick carpet and ground it out with his slipper-clad heel. The carpet was covered with dirty black stains. Jeffrey wondered if the dim lighting was intentional.

  “What name did he use?”

  “Used his real name, far as I know. Had all the paperwork. Eddie Conner.”

  Conner. Well, that was his name, of course. Eddie... his middle name? Edmond, was it? Something like that.

  “What did he use the apartment for?”

  The man gave Jeffrey a scornful look. “The hell does that mean? He lived here. And now someone else is gonna live here. That's how it works.”

  “Someone else? I thought you said the money-”

  He cut Jeff off with a wave of his hand, the cigarette between his fingers leaving an arc of smoke in the air. “That stopped a while back. Month or two. I would've cleared out the crap, but there no point doing it before the college students come back.”

  Jeffrey looked back at the gold painted number. Four. “I'll take it,” he said.

  The landlord squinted at him. “Hm? Take what?”

  “The apartment. I'll take it. I'm looking for a place to live. I'll take it.” It felt right to Jeffrey, somehow. That he could take Michael's place...

  The man looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and relief. “I can get you started on the paperwork. If you're serious.”

  Jeffrey nodded.

  “Fine then. I'll have his junk cleared out by the end of the week.”

  “Couldn't I move in sooner? I don't care about the stuff. Just leave it, I'll take care of it.”

  The old man massaged his chin. “I guess we could work something out. Not like he's likely to be coming back for it, really.”

  Jeffrey touched the wall again. What looked so smooth and polished was actually, now that he'd felt it, quite rough, worn with age. He shook his head. “Nah. He's long gone.”

  * * *

  6:13 pm, July 5th, 2002

  It was raining. He hurried inside the apartment building, one arm held up over his head in a feeble effort to keep dry.

  Miss Erickson greeted him at the door. He'd met her earlier that morning when he'd come back to give his paperwork to Mr. White – which he'd learned was the landlord's name. Miss Erickson, he had gathered, was the receptionist at a dentist's office downtown. She hadn't known Michael, but she had heard some strange things from the other tenants about the young man who'd lived in apartment four.