Kiss Them Goodbye

by Joseph Eastburn

  Dr. Clarence rubbed his face feverishly, managing to still himself. He stumbled over to Ms. Coates, bent down, and whispered in her ear. “When I clap my hands, you will wake up and remember nothing of what has happened here.”

  He clapped his hands.

  Her eyes fluttered open. She smiled at the doctor, who blanched, backing away from her, his anxious eyes flying toward the strange figure in front of her.

  The schoolboy loomed over Ms. Coates. She looked up, startled, not understanding, as this strange tall boy above her smiled, his clown lips spreading across his white face. He seemed shy, embarrassed.

  Her mouth parted gently, in slow recognition. “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Can you hear the voices?”

  Her troubled eyes fell on the doctor, still backing away. “What’s going on?”

  Dr. Clarence shrugged. “I couldn’t stop him.”

  She sat up in the chair. “You couldn’t—”

  “He insisted on speaking to you. I’m sorry,” the doctor murmured, then walked out of the room.

  A panicked look, an escalating dread was strewn across her features. She looked up to face the boy. “Well, it’s nice to see you.”

  He just stood there, eyes distorted, swaying. “Is it?”

  Nervous. “You’re looking—fine.”

  “Can you hear what the voices want me to do?”

  “Why are you dressed like that?”

  Tears started running down the boy’s face, leaving tracks across the white makeup. “I dressed for you.”

  “What?”

  “You like boys, don’t you?”

  Her skin turned visibly pallid, lines of sweat appearing across her forehead. “Look, dear, we were married a long time ago. You and I were never meant for each other, you know that.”

  “I loved you.”

  Waving him off, a jittery glance. “Oh, you did not.” She attempted a laugh, looking around the room.

  “I worshipped you, wanted to protect you.”

  She went silent, staring up at the dangerous man—a man she once loved—standing there dressed like Buster Brown. “Look, I have to be going.” She leaned forward.

  “I have something to tell you.”

  Standing up. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “Sit down!” The voice was deep, stern.

  She swallowed. “All right.” A placating tone, as she sat. It only made it worse.

  “I took care of your boys.”

  “My boys?” A slow terror coming into her eyes.

  He looked at her and shook his head. “I’ve come full circle now. You are the cause.”

  Very agitated, rubbing the back of her neck repeatedly. “The cause of—what?”

  “The voices say you failed me—they’re rising, falling—they’re in the room now, they’re—”

  “What did you mean—took care of what?”

  “You know.”

  “No . . .”

  A silence . . . then his eerie voice. “I absorbed them.”

  She started crying silently, her shoulders bending forward. “You did it?”

  “I wanted to be the only boy in your life.”

  She jumped out of the chair, the horror finally hitting her. “You monster, you—”

  “I did it for you.”

  “Don’t say that! I had nothing to do with this!”

  “You betrayed me.”

  “Well, of course! You’re less of a man than those boys were.”

  Now the room was full of silence. She saw the rage in his face, the clown features distorted—then the strange smile. She picked up her purse, moved tensely toward the door.

  He blocked her. “Kiss me.”

  She put her face in her hands. “Those boys were beautiful!”

  He slowly raised the knife into the air. “No, this is beautiful! You’re the reason I started, do you understand? My reason for becoming.”

  She was backing up now in terror, her mouth opening, nothing coming out. “N—n—no.” A shriek. “NO!”

  “The reason I came into being.”

  Her eyes flew up to the hand that was holding the knife. It all became clear. She leapt across the room, screaming.

  In one hand he grabbed a tuft of hair as the screams continued. Then the knife flashed through the room. It fell, as if from a great height, the cold steel streaking the air. The flawless mouth and long lashes and stylish hair were left untouched. The freckles under the makeup on her cheekbones were still shining, evanescent, as the terrible gagging began and her arms thrashed the air. For a few brief seconds, her lashes rose and she glanced up at him, through a hypnotic haze, the blood seeping through fingers tearing at her throat. Her eyes searched his face savagely, until the blue pupils began to plead, then gradually went empty, a vacuous clarity filling them, until, almost drained of color, the irises fixed on the void.

  51

  LET ME KISS you . . . your lips so soft, still warm . . . never mind the blood . . . let me smell your skin, your soft ripe sweet perfectly moist—even though you’re dead—skin . . . are you listening? . . . finally listening to me? CAN YOU HEAR ME?

  I didn’t think so.

  Now scissors . . . what to take . . . of course, the brassiere . . . let’s see. On her side . . . now unbutton the dress, easy, there, pull the halter down around her shoulders, don’t wrinkle, goddamnit! . . . Oh, red lace . . . that’s nice, so nice . . . God, how can I, what can I, where . . . now, be calm . . . reach behind, unsnap, unsnnnnnaaaaaaap it, yes. Lift the cups off . . . Oh. Oh. Let me just, please just once, let me. Yes.

  NO, NO, NO, NO PLEASE, quiet the voices, just this once leave me alone, please leave me—JUST—

  Fine. Pick her up, where? Here, out the back door, fast, doesn’t matter, he’s gone, out the back, now—leave it unlocked. Where do I take her? . . . here, outside, just run, doesn’t matter, no place to take her, run, carry her, run, watch out for the branch, crash through leaves, branches cut, doesn’t matter, just carry her through the woods, find a place for her . . . prickers, thistles, thorns, keep going, her hair swaying, feel the mist, it’s wet, moist like her, wet leaves, twigs, sounds, voices, owls, doves, crickets. Keep going, find a place, must be a place, some way to show the world, branches cutting my back, now see—these branches don’t hurt, do they? . . . they’re soft, feel the branches, feel the night, leave your smell in these dark woods, these soft . . . quiet . . . terrible . . . cold . . . where to take you. . .

  CAN YOU KISS ME NOW?

  I didn’t think so.

  NATHAN CLARENCE WAS on his knees, mopping up the swirls of blood on the hardwood floor. He had watched hopelessly as the boy had grasped the woman’s lifeless body, flailing it around the room. There was no attempt to dance actual steps; the turns, the dips, the sways, had all come out of a kind of rage he had never seen before, the hands clutching the inanimate limbs, the boy’s lips kissing the dead woman’s face with fury.

  He washed and rewashed the blond wooden planks until all the dried red splatters were gone. He scrubbed the wall with cold water until he was sure the stains were out. He looked over at Ms. Coates’s body lying peacefully on a piece of plastic he had dragged in from the garage. She was lying with her arms at her side, while the boy lay drenched in the corner, his face hidden.

  When Nathan Clarence had finally washed everything he could think of, he burned the letter. He wiped all the doorknobs, the wooden handles of the chair she had sat in. He drove Ms. Coates’s car out in the middle of a fairway on the school golf course, the typewriter in the backseat, the purse on the passenger seat; he then walked back through the playing fields—in the dark—all without being seen.

  When he got back, he found the boy had done a bad thing—he’d taken her body and hidden her in the woods, behind the doctor’s house. They had to go with flashlights to find her, and there she was, lying in the leaves. They had to bring her back inside and discuss where s
he should go.

  The tall boy finally cleaned up, washed the blood from his body, and wrapped the figure’s clothing over his schoolboy’s uniform. He put the scarf back on and was lying on the couch now, his eyes raking the ceiling plaster. The doctor stood over him, not knowing what state of mind he was in. “We have to put that body somewhere,” he insisted.

  He saw breaths deflating the scarf on the figure’s face as he sucked them back through a cavity that appeared through the black material.

  “We’ll find a place.”

  Dr. Clarence took his pad and pen and pulled a chair up next to the couch, crossed his legs and looked over at the feverish eyes.

  “Tell me.”

  The stranger pulled the scarf away from his lips. “It was . . . more poetic this time. When the knife went in”—he adjusted his body on the couch—“her skin was like paper, the kind I used to cut up as a kid, workshop paper, that made that crisp sound when the scissors—”

  “What happened with Gluckner?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you disembowel him?”

  There was a long tense silence in the room. “Why are you asking that now?”

  “I’m interested.”

  The stranger glued his crazed eyes to the ceiling. “Would that turn you on?”

  “Should it?”

  The stranger turned toward the doctor. “You don’t want to hear about a woman’s flesh?”

  The man in the chair stiffened. “We missed our session on the last boy.”

  “Of course you’d prefer a boy.” There was a caustic tone in his voice.

  “No, I’d rather hear about someone else, actually.”

  “Look, I always tell you what I did, and THEN YOU TELL ME—”

  “Like all your promises.”

  “What?”

  The doctor put down his pad. “I sense you have completed the guilt and punishment you have directed at yourself all these years. I believe you have resolved the issue.”

  “Resolved?”

  “With the boys. Now I see, intuitively, you’ve moved on to other concerns: your mother . . . more work to do there, of course, but I think you should tackle the biggy.”

  “WHAT?”

  “You know who I mean.”

  A tense pause in the room. The figure’s forehead reddened beneath the makeup. “Not him?”

  “Yes, him. You said he had a studio?”

  The stranger rolled his head back and forth. “Not now.”

  “I gave you Ms. Coates, now it’s your turn to give me something.”

  The doctor watched the hands of his watch click around. The man on the couch kept distressing an area of flesh between his eyebrows. He lay there silently, jiggling his feet uncontrollably.

  After several minutes, he took a deep breath. “It all started because of the gloves.”

  “What about them?”

  “I didn’t want to wear them.”

  “He made you?”

  “I didn’t care that my mother wouldn’t—that she couldn’t—”

  “Couldn’t what?”

  “Do it with him.”

  The doctor trembled. “She couldn’t do what with your father?”

  “You know.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “She said it depressed her.”

  “Why did it depress her?”

  “It reminded her of when she . . . was young.”

  “So you had to take her place?”

  “Yes.”

  The doctor paused, carefully, said, “What was it you had to do?”

  “Wear white gloves.”

  “And?”

  “You know.”

  The doctor’s breathing began to quicken. “What did ‘doing it’ remind you of?”

  “How much I hated his studio, hated the people there—the way they smiled at me in the mirrors.”

  “What way did they smile?”

  “Smug, self-satisfied smiles, as if I was such a good little boy.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes. OH YES.”

  “Why did they smile at you?”

  The figure rolled his head. “Because I had to demonstrate every . . . single godforsaken . . .”

  “Say it.”

  “As if I . . .”

  Dr. Clarence licked his lips. “Go ahead, say it.”

  “As if I was her.”

  “In front of his classes, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “I didn’t feel anything. I couldn’t feel my feet. My hands. No breath coming out.”

  “You just put on the white gloves and you . . . ?”

  The figure paused. “Yes. I danced with him.”

  The doctor dropped his pad and pen on the floor. “With your father.”

  “The Waltz, the Swing, the Fox-trot . . . all the ballroom dances.”

  “The Rumba?”

  “Do you know it?”

  “No.” The doctor rocked back. “No, I don’t dance. I—I—”

  “I had to do the Bolero Break, the Varsoviana, Tuck and Spin, the Dishrag.”

  Dr. Clarence’s neck began to twist over the back of the chair. “So you made your victims . . . do it?”

  “I even made them lead.”

  Dr. Clarence was leaning back in his chair, beginning to swoon. “No more,” he said almost inaudibly. “Don’t. Please.”

  “I made them dance the way I had to.”

  “The whole time.”

  “What?”

  Dr. Clarence was mewling, rocking his head back and forth. A small rivulet of spittle draining from his mouth had attached itself to a button on his shirt. His eyes had disappeared up under his lids. “The whole time . . . you were killing yourself!”

  The stranger frowned. “No, I was showing those boys how—I was demonstrating how I—I—” He gave a quiver.

  “You killed them because . . . because . . .”

  “The way their strung limbs beat the air. It was beautiful. Kind of like a moth at night—when it lands on a light bulb, you can almost see through its body—that’s the way those boys were. I could almost see the blood inside them stop moving, start to congeal, the organs going into failure one by one . . .”

  “Like you!”

  “What?”

  “You made them feel what you felt!”

  “NO!”

  “And your mother.” Dr. Clarence’s legs were each coiled around a leg of the chair, his neck swelled out, his pelvis arched into the air. “You’ve killed her now.”

  “She had nothing to do with this.”

  “She betrayed you.” His legs were vibrating as his body arched into the air. “Just like Ms. Coates.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What other women betrayed you? Ohhhh!”

  “I don’t know—I . . .”

  “It’s so . . . Freudian! Oh! Oh!” The doctor’s back seemed to vault toward the ceiling as he began to achieve orgasm. His hips and thighs shuddered, his head fell back over the chair, rolling wildly, as he screamed. “Ahhhh!” Then he pitched back and forth quietly in the chair for a long time, singing softly.

  It was a lullaby.

  AN HOUR LATER, the figure was staring through the same thin break in the curtain, lost in thought. The lights were low. Nathan Clarence was behind him, nuzzling him like a newborn calf, prodding his back with his shoulders. He pulled at the edge of the black scarf, blowing on the black hairs along the tall man’s neck. “Come on, Masked Man.”

  “Leave it alone.”

  Nathan whispered in his ear. “You promised.”

  The figure pulled away solemnly and once more walked to the other side of the room. Dr. Clarence followed him around the room, gesturing, beseeching him to pay attention, reaching out to touch his arm. The figure continued to pull away with indignation. “I can’t,” he finally said flatly.

  “Then why did I help you? These murders were useless to me.”

  He looked
at the doctor. “How about a useful one?”

  “Why can’t we make love?”

  “I thought I could, but . . . I’m changing now . . .”

  “I’m changing too. For you.”

  The man shook his head. “Not now.”

  The doctor touched a brass lamp that was by the couch. He was talking again to the man’s back. “Well when?”

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  “You keep saying that, but you never—”

  “Just try to be patient.”

  Dr. Clarence’s stricken face turned and seemed to float out of the light as he walked to the other side of the room. “I’m nothing if not patient.” He left the room.

  The figure put on his hat and slipped out the side door onto the deck. He stood in the dark for a long time, gazing out over the town, thinking about the dance.

  52

  WHEN MS. COATES did not show up for class the next morning, all the students left when the clock ticked to the tenth minute after the hour. They piled out of the room and scattered down the halls, disrupting the other first-period classes. The voices of a few of them could be heard as they chased each other under the stone arch, the soles of their shoes slapping the cement. They threw books at each other, yelled at the top of their lungs.

  In his office, the headmaster heard the students’ voices and looked down at his watch. He had been startled out of a daze that followed the phone call. The call had come at nine A.M. sharp, just as he was sitting down.

  Dr. Hickey limply stood up and opened the door to his office. He walked across the hall into the assistant’s office. Mr. Allington’s secretary was not in yet. The headmaster walked through the outer office, rapped on the door, and entered. Allington was seated at his desk, on the phone. When he saw Dr. Hickey enter, he rang off quickly and rose.

  “That was the chairman. He told me.”

  Dr. Hickey moved gravely toward the window, not making eye contact with him. He seemed to be staring into the chrysanthemums outside the window. “The last straw was me being hospitalized. They lost confidence in me.”

  “I’m sorry, Brandon.”

  “Did Hungerford sound relieved when he called you?”

  “No indeed, he was very sad.”

  Hickey turned to face Allington. “Are you sad?”