Deviant Behavior

by Mike Sager

  “I saw them at this trick’s house,” she explained, keeping it vague. “Rich guy. He have this big ass mansion up in Georgetown, I think it was. You know, up that hill wit all the stores?”

  “Wisconsin Avenue?” Jim asked.

  “Um-hmm,” she confirmed. “He have this room with all these skulls—four or five of em. But they wasn’t all crystal. One was a purply color. Another was green—it look like jade. Maybe one of em was crystal, I ain’t sure. It was creepy, you know what I’m sayin?”

  “Do you think you can find this house again?” Freeman asked.

  42

  Detective John O’Rourke stood outside the Pope’s medical observation cell, speaking with an orderly in pink scrubs.

  “Pancreatic,” the cop repeated. He licked the end of his pencil, jotted it down on his pad.

  “Advanced,” the orderly pronounced gravely. His kinky top-knot was secured by a purple ponytail band. He scanned the pages on a medical clipboard. “It looks like it’s metastasized to the lungs and the spine. They don’t know yet about the brain—ain’t no money in the budget for a head CT.”

  “How long’s he got?”

  The orderly flipped a few pages. “Says here he’s due to be released at five P.M.”

  “The judge must have just signed the order.”

  “Ummm-hmm,” the orderly said archly. “If he die in here, the city gotta pay to bury him.”

  “Not much of a flight risk at this point,” O’Rourke chuckled. “Is he lucid?”

  The orderly raised an eyebrow, carefully tweezed and sculpted. There was a hint of makeup on his lids. “With that man, it hard to tell.”

  O’Rourke shook his head ironically, a thread of mutual understanding between two individuals who couldn’t have been more different. The orderly produced a set of keys and unlocked the door.

  The Pope’s head was elevated; he was wired to an array of bags and machines. A cacophonous silence filled the room—the whoosh of forced air from the ceiling vent; the hissss of oxygen running through a nasal cannula; the beep beep beep of the EKG.

  “Michael David Rubin?”

  The Pope’s eyes fluttered.

  “Mr. Rubin? Are you awake?”

  “Howdy, honey, howdy,” he said weakly.

  “I’m Detective O’Rourke. From Internal Affairs? Do you remember me?”

  Brightening: “Have you brought the missing sacrament?”

  “No, sir, I’m afraid not.” He said it politely, without hint of irony. It didn’t seem to bother him at all that the Pope was here under false pretenses. In his mind the Pope of Pot was a felony-level drug dealer. What kind of drugs, how much, the details of his arrest—those were just formalities. This guy was guilty. He needed to be off the streets. Period. If anything, O’Rourke felt bad about causing the city the expense of caring for this deadbeat. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  The Pope stared off into the middle distance. “What you say and what you do are equally important,” he said.

  “I wanted to ask you about something that may have been stolen from your storefront.”

  “Be number one in a class of one.”

  Uncertain if he was getting through—Is this guy delirious or just fucking with me?—the detective pushed on. “It’s a skull,” he said. “Made out of crystal rock. I believe at one time it was in your possession. According to our information,” consulting his pad, “it was kept behind your desk, on the credenza. Surrounded by your collection of—” he hesitated, seeking the right word. “Figurines.”

  “All men put on their pants one leg at a time.”

  “Can you tell me how you came to possess the skull? Is it possible that you might have obtained it while living in Amsterdam?”

  “Respect must be earned.”

  “According to our investigation, the chain of custody seems to end at a pawnshop in Amsterdam—” He consulted his pad again. “On a street named”—stumbling over the pronunciation—“Leidekkerssteeg? Are you familiar with this pawnshop?”

  “Less is more.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Win by example.”

  “About the skull, sir—”

  “Make of your body a living sign.”

  O’Rourke closed the pad, replaced it in his pocket. He thought of his father some years before, full of morphine and nonsense in a similar hospital bed, his head jacked up for comfort, the conclusion foregone.

  Suddenly the Pope grabbed the sleeve of O’Rourke’s suede jacket—a desperate, viselike grip. He searched the detective’s bland and doughy face for a hint of compassion. “Tell ’em, toots,” he implored. “Tell ’em what I said. Let the world know. You must.”

  O’Rourke peeled the Pope’s fingers from his sleeve and replaced the spindly arm on the bed. “You got it, pal,” the detective said, a reassuring tone. “I’ll shout it from the rooftops, okay?”

  “Bless you, my son,” the Pope whispered. He closed his eyes. A faint smile crossed his lips.

  And then the beep beep beep of the EKG went to flatline, the tone long and shrill and final.

  43

  Seede lay fetal in the alley. His skull was staved in at the left temple. His jeans were still at half-mast.

  He opened his right eye, the one nearest the ground.

  And there she was again.

  Standing beneath the weed tree, the boy on her hip, wearing his subzero-grade snowsuit.

  Seede blinked, trying to clear his vision. The image of his wife and child seemed to waver and wobble, like a faint signal from far away. He wondered if he was dreaming. He wondered if he was dead. He wondered if he’d know the difference when the time came, if it hadn’t come already. He tried to move but he couldn’t. He felt very heavy, yet very light—ephemeral, in-substantial, not long for this world. His mouth tasted of metal. He felt no pain.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Dulcy asked.

  “Research.” The word came out wet and garbled. His jaw felt unhinged; he guessed it was dislocated.

  “Research,” she repeated.

  “For my book.”

  “And what is this book supposed to be about, if may I ask?”

  “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

  “Give it a try.”

  “It’s about the drug culture in the shadow of the nation’s Capitol—behind the scenes of the war on drugs. It’s about society and class. It’s about the crack economy. Look at us: we’re only a mile from the White House—the rabble in the rubble outside the castle walls.”

  Her lip began to tremble. Her face caved in upon itself. “Why are you doing this to me?” she sobbed.

  Had his own face been functional, it would have registered utmost incredulity. “To you?”

  She nuzzled Jake’s plump cheek. “To us.”

  “I’m not doing anything to either of you.”

  “Then why are you doing this to yourself?”

  “Because I can?” he proposed. “Because I’m not supposed to? Because everyone says it’s wrong?” He thought a moment. “Because it feels good and because for so long I haven’t felt good.

  Because I wanna do what I wanna do.”

  “You sound like a spoiled brat.”

  “What do you care, anyway?”

  “I’m married to you. You’re the father of my child. You’re a drug addict.”

  “The addiction is only one small part,” he said. “The book is about so much more than that.” He tried again to move but couldn’t. He wondered if he was paralyzed, if his condition was temporary or permanent. He wondered if he’d ever be able to type again. “As an artist, you have to see your life as a quest. You have to put yourself out there. You have to take chances. You can’t be afraid to fail. You can’t worry about what society expects of you, what anybody expects of you. You can’t worry about anything but the process of creating your art. It’s like the Pope says: You have to make your body a living sign.”

  “Pope John Paul said that?”

/>   “The Pope of Pot. He has a storefront church on Fourteenth Street, near P. He’s a genius. The cops are trying to kill him. I’m putting him in the book too. He’s gonna be a big part, at least a whole chapter.”

  “What is your body supposed to be a sign of right now?”

  “Make shit of me if you want, but I’m telling you—this book is gonna deal with a lot of important issues. It’s about the nature of the human urge, how the whole concept of Just Say No is bad for us. How prohibition and sublimation are detrimental to a healthy life. How, if you don’t satisfy your needs, if you don’t do the things that are natural, that feel good, that make you distinctly human, you end up with big problems. Our culture and religion teach us to suppress our basic instincts, lest we end up consigned to hell. But guess what? It turns out that denial and suppression leads to a whole other kind of hell.”

  “And you have definitely found it, Jonathan. You are there.”

  “That’s right,” he said defiantly. “I fuckin found it. And I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “You are not going to blame this on me.” Her image flickered and disappeared, then reappeared, like a neon sign on the fritz. It occurred to him that this conversation couldn’t be happening, not really. Most likely, he was dreaming or hallucinating. Or maybe he’d entered purgatory, the twilight zone, wherever you actually go when you die, provided there is such a place. In real life Ducly wouldn’t be by herself in this dangerous alley with Jake. And even if she really was here, she probably wouldn’t be arguing with him like this, as they had so often during the past several months. In real life, wouldn’t she be helping him at this point? Making some move to minister to his wounds, to stanch the blood flow, to cover his half-naked body?

  “Who else would I blame it on?” he continued. Real or imagined, this conversation was long overdue.

  “Here we go.”

  “Say what you want. But that was the idea, at first.”

  “What?”

  “Seeing how far I could take this whole project before I was discovered … by you. Because you weren’t paying attention to me—unless you needed something done, something purchased or carried or installed, some task taken care of, some errand run. It was a joke I had with myself, a little wager: How long is it going to take her to realize what I’m doing? How far can I go? Is it really possible that she’s so wrapped up in herself and the baby that she won’t even notice when I become a crackhead?”

  “Of course I noticed. I left you, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, but it took you nearly ten weeks.”

  Incredulous: “You’ve been smoking crack every day for ten weeks?”

  “Not every day. Never on writing days. Writing is the temple.”

  “How could you be so selfish?”

  “Selfish? Me? How could you not know what I was doing all that time?”

  Her eyes fell. “I was busy. There’s so much to do for Jakey. It’s overwhelming.”

  “You act like you’re the first woman who ever had a child. If women who lived in caves could do it, if women who lived in trees could do it, if pygmies in the rain forest can do it, why can’t you? Why does everything have to be this huge damn drama?”

  She stared at him, speechless.

  “I’ll make you a wager. I’ll bet, if you researched the statistics—and I plan to do so before I’m done, because it’s probably going to be one of the central theses of this book—I’ll bet you’d discover that I’m not alone in my thinking. Maybe what I’m saying isn’t popular; maybe what I’m saying is dangerous. But lemme tell you, I am not alone. They’re out there. I’ve seen their faces in the malls, in the grocery stores, at Babies “R” Us, at pharmacies late at night—shoulder-slumped men, afraid to stand up and speak their minds, to demand their rights, lest their wives, to whom they’ve pledged eternal love (not to mention half their net worth), unleash upon their heads another hysterical tirade, another hormonal tsunami of biblical proportions. I see them everywhere, everyday, men who feel the same way I do: alienated, embattled, angry, pent-up, horny. Totally fuckin horny, ain’t-been-laid-in-nine-weeks horny. Six times in twenty seven months! What the hell is that? What in the hell is that? Have I not brought you flowers and chocolates and jewelry? Have I not kept a roof over your head? Did I ever hit you or treat you badly? Did I ever deny you anything? Everybody knows that marriage is a barter system. It’s give and take. I take care of your needs, you take care of mine. But then the kid comes along, and all of a sudden the whole deal is off. I’m chopped liver. Worse—I’m rotten chopped liver. I’m toxic spill: avoid at all costs. What about my needs, you know what I’m sayin? What about my motherfuckin needs? Have you ever once heard me say, ‘Sorry dear, I have a headache, I don’t feel like paying the mortgage this month.’ Have you ever heard me say, ‘Sorry dear, I have cramps, I won’t be paying the phone or the cable or the electric bill.’ You’ve never heard that from me. Because I hold up my end of the bargain. I do what I’m supposed to fuckin do.

  “Check the data. I know what it’s going to show. It’s gonna show that a huge percentage of marriages break up during the first, say, eighteen months of a child’s life. Sometimes the first kid is enough to do it—witness us. More often, it’s the second. Because you know how people are, they have one kid in diapers, they gotta hurry up and have a second, because everybody says they have to, because everybody else does it, because the kid needs someone to play with—as if siblings ever do anything together besides fight. Think about it: how many people do we know who are divorced with two small children? Just at the Herald I can give you five examples.”

  “So what are you trying to say, Jonathan? Do you want a divorce? Is that it?”

  “I’m trying to say that I’m tired of being taken for granted. Does being a father have to mean totally subverting your needs to those of everyone else? Shouldn’t I be getting something out of this too? A little appreciation? A little attention? A little sex … at least now and then? I work my ass off to support you and Jake. I do everything anyone asks of me. And I get nothing in return. Nada. A lot of attitude. A lot of responsibilities. A lot of expenses. A shitload of expenses. But nobody cares about me. I am the bottom of the totem pole—least considered, holding everything up.”

  “What kind of person are you? You hate your son. You hate me!”

  “Are you kidding? Are you fuckin’ kidding? I love you. I want you. I crave you. You wanna hear something priceless? When I beat off, I fantasize about you, Dulcy. How pitiful is that? My own wife is my stroke fantasy. Because you are unreachable, untouchable. You are totally unattainable. You might as well be Halle Berry. Because I have just as much chance of getting a blow job from her as I do from you.”

  “If you did more for Jake and me, if you helped around the house more, maybe I’d be in the mood, maybe I’d be—”

  “And for the record,” he continued, “I never wanted to be a father, it wasn’t in my plans for myself. I told you that up front, long before we were married. I remember the exact words: ‘I don’t need someone else to carry on my name.’ When you’re trying to be a writer, that’s what you’re out to do for yourself. You’re out to write something memorable. Something that lasts. Something that carries on your name by its own merit. It’s easy to spill sperm. It’s no big accomplishment.

  “I’m twenty-nine years old. For more than a third of my life, ever since high school, I’ve been totally dedicated to one mission. All the choices I’ve made, all the sacrifices—quitting law school to become a copyboy at the Herald; deciding to stay on graveyard shift so I could freelance during the day, coming home early one night to find my live-in girlfriend fucking the neighbor. The first two years at the Herald, I worked every weekend and every holiday. I never took a day off, not even a sick day. By the time I was twenty-four, I’d lost my hair. Every decision, every move, it’s all been geared toward trying to write something good, something that people will remember. It’s always been about one thing: putting forth my best effort,
seeing how far I could go.”

  Dulcy shifted the boy from one hip to the other; he was restless, he wanted down. He reached out and caught hold of her necklace, an Elsa Peretti Open Heart from Tiffany, the first gift Seede had given her, its shape so artfully pulled and distorted, like love itself. “Can’t you be a father and write something memorable at the same time?”

  How many times he had asked himself the same question. It’s not like he wanted to be alone. It’s not like he didn’t want to be loved, to have someone to love. “I just can’t see how you’re supposed to do both,” he said, defeated. “A good father is someone who chooses his family’s needs over his own. I’ve never read about any great artist who was known for being a great dad, have you? Can you imagine William Burroughs coaching peewee soccer? I don’t think Henry Miller ever drove a minivan.”

  “Fine.” She blew it out between her top teeth and her bottom lip, Finnnnneeee, a sustained note of dismissive finality that backed up abruptly into her throat and behind her nose, resonated into the frigid air, meaning: Not fine, not fine at all, you will pay dearly for all of your sins. Tired of struggling with the fidgety child, she lowered him to the ground.

  Jake toddled toward his father, proud and purposeful, his diapered bottom twitching this way and that, like a duckling’s.

  He squatted beside Seede, as kids do on the playground to inspect something of fascination, his knees wide like a catcher behind home plate, only instead of dirt he was squatting in a puddle of blood. His face assumed a serious expression, brows knit. He pointed a finger at Seede’s broken head. “Dada owie,” he declared.

  Then he looked back to Dulcy. “Mama fix?”

  44

  Salem leaned forward from the back seat of Freeman’s Jaguar. “Pull over there,” she ordered, indicating the 7-Eleven.

  Freeman parked at the northwest corner of Fourteenth Street and Rhode Island Avenue, careful not to scrape his fancy spoke wheel covers on the curb. Slamming the rear passenger door behind her, Salem bounded off.