Control

by Ed Kurtz

  “Shit,” Cheryl said, her face bright red and sweat dribbling down her face and chest in rivulets. “He’s pissing on the fucking floor.”

  “I’m pissing on the fucking floor!” Andy howled.

  “God, I love this song,” Cheryl cooed. She resumed her gyrations, lacing her fingers behind her head. Her hair frizzed in wild curls that bounced like springs as she moved.

  Andy zipped up and wobbled unsteadily toward the large television nestled in the entertainment center. He kicked the screen several times until it cracked. Ignoring this entirely, Cheryl glanced down at Leon on the sofa. He sat with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap, watching the chaos unfold with detached amusement.

  “Leon, get my cigarettes from my purse, would you?” she asked with a seductive purr.

  “I want one,” Andy piped up.

  Cheryl nodded. “Get the whole pack. We’ll all have one.”

  Leon shrugged and went over to the checkered handbag hanging on a hook by the front door. He poked through it until he found a crinkled green pack of Salems and a yellow plastic lighter. He brought them over to Cheryl, who stabbed two cigarettes in her mouth and lit them both. She then passed one to her son, who sucked greedily at the filtered end before spewing out a blue cloud with a prolonged, hacking cough.

  “Can’t handle it,” Cheryl said with evident disappointment. “The kid can’t handle it.”

  “Can too,” Andy protested.

  He took another drag and held it in. Red veins burst in the whites of his eyes like bloody spider webs, but he did not cough. He exhaled the smoke and smacked his lips.

  “Just not used to the menthols, is all,” he explained.

  Cheryl snorted.

  Leon sat back down on the sofa and recrossed his legs. He marveled at the absurdity of the strange tableau before him, and how ridiculously simple it had been to set it in motion. None of what these people were doing came at his suggestion, not directly. He did not tell anyone to dance or smash things or piss on the floor.

  All Leon had said was, “You are completely uninhibited. Have fun.”

  He never knew Cheryl particularly well—there was an impregnable barrier between a supervisor and her underlings that precluded such familiarity—but based on his observations over the course of his employment at Thompson & Associates, he would have guessed that fun for her was plucking the wings off of flies or triple checking her tax return. Never in a thousand years would he have imagined how quickly she would shed her blouse and skirt to bounce on the tabletop like a Las Vegas stripper.

  Since she did, Leon seized the opportunity to gawk at her semi-naked body. She was not a particularly attractive woman, even for her age; cellulite dimpled her thighs and buttocks and her flabby stomach accentuated the deep scar on her abdomen from an apparent Caesarian section. And though her lacey white bra did a fair job of supporting her more than ample breasts, the stretch marks that scored the flesh on her chest hinted at a worse than average sag that Leon did not care to see. Nonetheless, Leon ogled while Cheryl danced on with utter abandon, oblivious to his leering stare and totally unconcerned with anyone’s opinion about her appearance.

  Tired of the cigarette and looking a little green in the face, Andy let the burning butt fall to the rug and stamped it out with his shoe. Cheryl watched him do this and smirked.

  She said, “Andy, go to your room.”

  “That’s not fun,” he countered.

  Cheryl blinked several times, temporarily stricken dumb by her son’s logic.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Go do whatever you want.”

  A demonic grin spread across the boy’s face and he bolted for the door. In an instant, he was gone. Cheryl let out a heavy sigh and clumsily dropped down to a squat in front of Leon. She pursed her lips until they looked like a duck’s bill and lowered her eyelids in a preposterous attempt to look beguiling.

  “Hi, Leon,” she rasped.

  Leon sat back on the couch and wrinkled his nose.

  “You wouldn’t know it by looking at me,” she went on, “but I was such a slut in my college days.”

  “Oh…?”

  “I was a whore, Leon. A real whore.”

  “Um.”

  Cheryl bared her crooked teeth in a rictus grin and reached back with both hands to unhook her bra. Leon made a wet noise in his throat and said, “Don’t.”

  He wondered where the boy went, what he was getting up to. Then Cheryl’s breasts drooped down to her midriff as she flung the bra across the room. It ended up dangling from a lampshade. Janis Ian crooned over the stereo speakers, bidding the listener to have another cigarette and to not forget why she came.

  “You can fuck me if you want to,” Cheryl said matter-of-factly.

  Leon moaned. The circus had escaped his control. All he wanted to do was embarrass his boss, make her behave in a shameful and incriminating way, something to help him keep his job by way of blackmail. When it was all over and Cheryl regained her senses, he planned to express his intent to remain on the company payroll, no matter what he did. He never meant for it to escalate to this painfully uncomfortable level.

  But there she was, naked to the waist and balancing herself by clamping her vein-streaked hands on his shoulders. She flicked her tongue in and out of her mouth like a snake and gave Leon an awkward wink.

  “That’s enough,” he said sullenly. “I’m done here.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Cheryl said. “I know what you came here for. I know what you men want.”

  Leon scowled and pushed Cheryl away. She had to stand back up to keep from falling over.

  “I mean it, Cheryl,” he grumbled. “Stop…having…fun.”

  In an instant her nostrils flared and her eyes bulged out of their sockets. For a full minute she and Leon remained perfectly still and regarded one another.

  “Leon?” she murmured at length.

  Leon stood up and moved around the table. He’d had his fill.

  “Leon, I—I don’t like this.”

  Cheryl raised her arms and crossed them over her breasts, covering herself. She was trembling now, her knees turned inward and feet twisted out. Leon shook his head and went for the door.

  “Put some clothes on,” he said.

  “Where—where’s Ron? Where’s Ron, Leon?”

  Ron was her husband. Leon had met him once or twice and gathered no impression of the man one way or the other, apart from the strong notion that the poor man was probably henpecked to beat the band. He had no idea where the guy was, so he refrained from answering the question. He just turned the knob and opened up the front door. He half expected to see Andy outside, smashing somebody’s windshield with a crowbar or stomping a cat to death. To Leon’s relief, Andy was nowhere to be seen.

  Behind him, Cheryl began to cry.

  “Leon, wait a minute,” she whimpered. “Please.”

  He turned to see her step down from the table with one foot while the other one faltered and bent in on itself. Cheryl cried out and made cartoonish circles in the air with both arms as she dropped backwards onto the table. She hit the glass with her full weight and it shattered instantaneously. Cheryl went through it and crashed against the iron crossbars underneath. Leon heard a sickening crack and knew it was her back. He gasped and rushed to her side, leaving the front door standing wide open.

  “Oh Jesus,” he groaned. “Oh, Christ.”

  Cheryl gurgled and red bubbles formed and burst at her lips. Her jaw was slack and her eyes wide and brimming with tears. Leon could not help but notice that her breasts lolled down to her armpits on either side.

  “Gluh,” she said.

  Leon surveyed the damage, scanning Cheryl’s twisted body from top to bottom. When he saw her leg, he quit worrying about her back. A broad, triangular shard of glass was jammed deep into her inner thigh. Blood rapidly welled up all around it, spilling down her leg and pooling into a slick black puddle on the rug.

  Cheryl said, “Luhn.”

  Acti
ng on instinct, Leon grasped the massive shard with both hands and gave it a terse yank. It only gave a couple of inches, scraping against bone along the way, but it was enough to let the blood flow more freely. At first it came in pumping spurts that shot out and splashed Leon’s shirt. He yelped and scrabbled away, keeping his eyes on the wound, which soon slowed down to a measured pour.

  Cheryl Minchillo was bleeding out. Her face went pallid, her skin clammy and clay-like. Whether or not her back was broken was a moot point now. Leon stumbled to his feet and rushed into the kitchen in search of a towel, a rag, anything to staunch the blood flow. He found a clean dish towel hanging over the oven handle. On it was a picture of a dog puckering its lips and a legend underneath that said kiss the cook. Leon snatched the towel and sprinted back to the living room. He jammed the towel against the gaping hole in her thigh, stuffing it in as far as it would go and soaking up the fast escaping blood. Cheryl jerked and made a wet clicking sound in her throat.

  After that her chest sank in and her eyes rolled down as though she was examining her left shoulder. Leon’s breath came in short gasps as he lunged for her and shook her by the arms. Her body was completely limp. She was dead.

  On the radio, a toy piano clinked along with Seals and Crofts. “Summer Breeze” again. Leon got up, wiped his bloody hands on his jeans and turned the stereo off.

  * * *

  Andy was tired. He had been running around the neighborhood for the better part of an hour, looking for one of his friends—any of them would do—with whom he could raise some hell. He wanted to knock over mailboxes and break windows and spread people’s garbage all over their front lawns, but none of that was much fun without a partner, someone to share in his devilish mirth. At one point he passed by Kristen Burns’ house and considered scaling the tree outside her bedroom window to see if he might catch a glimpse of her with no clothes on, or just scare the hell out of her, but the impulse to cause havoc was already dwindling by then. He wasn’t at all sure where it had come from in the first place. The longer he wandered around and thought about it, the stranger it all seemed to him.

  He’d broken nearly everything he could find in the living room. He’d smoked a cigarette in the house. He pissed on the floor, for God’s sake. And his mom didn’t even care. She was much too busy dancing in her underwear for that odd man, whoever he was. It was weird. Andy was beginning to feel rather uncomfortable about the whole affair. He walked on.

  * * *

  Leon sank into the sofa cushions and listened to the steady drone of the central air. He was positively covered in Cheryl’s blood, which he smeared all over the sofa when he sat back down, but he was not terribly concerned about that. His concern was squarely focused on the naked, bloody corpse twisted up in the wreckage of the coffee table, a corpse that used to be his supervisor, and what he was going to do about it. That it was an accident was beyond doubt, but it was not an accident easily explained. He supposed he could call the police and say that he and Cheryl had been having an affair—whatever methods they used for determining cause of death would surely bear out that part of the story, while his little lie would cover his presence and her nudity. But that left open the problem of Andy. He had been there, after all, clear up to the moment before Cheryl’s fateful fall. The kid would have quite a tale for the police if the fog lifted; one Leon would not want to stick around to hear.

  He leaned back and rested his head on the plush back of the sofa. He wished he hadn’t come there, or at least that he hadn’t set the stage for the nasty outcome that followed the so-called “fun.”

  Mostly, he wished he’d used his influence to make Cheryl’s last minutes less horrible. If only he said, “You don’t feel any pain.” Maybe she wouldn’t have. But he didn’t—she died in agony. He could see it in her face.

  After a while Leon’s back got sore from the way he was sitting, so he got up and went to the kitchen to wash the blood off his hands. The bandage on his finger was brown-black with it, so he unwrapped it and washed underneath. The cut was almost completely healed now. Only a thin white line remained.

  He then traipsed up the stairs to the second floor and peeked into the rooms along the hallway until he found Andy’s. He needed a fresh change of clothes—it simply wouldn’t do to go about town splattered in blood—and he figured the boy was approximately the same size as he was. It turned out that he was right, though the majority of Andy’s wardrobe was so strikingly adolescent that Leon had difficulty choosing something that would not make him look outright idiotic. He found only one pair of jeans that wasn’t so baggy as to make him look like a silent film comedian and a plain blue tee shirt that fit perfectly. These he donned while his own gore-painted clothes went into green army bag from Andy’s closet. Leon had to empty out the astounding plethora of porno magazines and videotapes to make room. The kid had amassed quite a collection.

  Back on ground level, Leon set the bag by the door and noticed the ornate brass key rack on the wall, several tangles of various sizes and shapes of keys dangling from the four hooks. It took him a moment to realize that the intricately woven brass vines on the back of the thing spelled out minchillo.

  “Cute,” he said.

  He reached for a random tangle, which included a key with a black plastic head that had the Chrysler symbol etched into it in silver. He remembered there was a LeBaron in the driveway when he first arrived. Cheryl’s car, he guessed.

  Why not? he thought. Beats the bus.

  And she sure as hell didn’t need it anymore.

  But that left the problem of Andy. And then there was Ron, wherever he was.

  Leon hung the keys back on the hook and shut the door. He carried the army bag over to the sofa and sat down beside Cheryl’s dead, broken body. And he waited.

  15

  The ancient analog clock on the rickety nightstand flipped over to 4:12. Ron groaned and rolled over on his back. Dust mites floated like a swarm of summer mosquitoes in the amber haze of the afternoon sun, which spilled through the crooked blinds in criss-crossing shafts. He reached for his cigarettes, shook one out of the pack and poked it in his mouth. He’d smoked so many that the place smelled more like a pool hall than a motel room. He struck a match from a paper matchbook and ignited the cigarette. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and blew it out through his nose.

  The girl beside him—she’d said her name was Susie—hadn’t bothered to get dressed. She just lay there naked as the day she was born, her right leg draped over her left and her hands resting on her slightly paunchy stomach. There was a tattoo of a rose on her right breast and a misspelled quotation inked down her side, from the middle of her ribs to her hip. It said something about being true to yourself, except it was spelled youself. Ron did not know if Susie was aware of the error or not. It didn’t really matter.

  As he dragged on his smoke, Ron studied the matchbook in his hand. It had a red foil heart on the cover and the hourly rates on the back. The place didn’t screw around—they just came right out with it. Back in the day he would have had to register under phony names, like Mr. and Mrs. Smith from Bladensburg, Iowa. Now, in a joint like this, everyone knew he was just a john come in for a bed to screw on, and nobody cared. Ron was not at all sure which way was better. Either way he got his rocks off, which he supposed was the point of the whole thing. And now his hour was just about up.

  “I guess it’s about time,” he said.

  The girl sniffed and said, “Gimme a cigarette, would you?”

  She uncrossed her legs as Ron handed the pack to her. His eyes floated down to her pubis, to the thin strip of short brown hair that ran up from the top of her vulva. He could never get over the strange things young women did with their pubic hair these days. When he was their age nobody trimmed their pubes, much less shave them into peculiar shapes or off completely. Now he couldn’t even find a girlie mag with a bush anywhere in it. It made him feel unaccountably old.

  “Matches?”

  Ron’s line of sight sho
t up to her eyes.

  “Sorry,” he said, passing the matchbook over.

  She lit her cigarette and they smoked together in silence.

  It was a long time since Ron slept with his wife, seven months or more. He lost count after six. He really didn’t much care anymore—it was essentially a dead marriage. They were pleasant enough to one another, he and Cheryl, but that was about the extent of it. Most nights he fell asleep on the sofa watching the sports roundup and nursing a glass of scotch. And then there were days like this, when he off-handedly explained away his absence by way of a meeting with the boys. Real estate wasn’t such a regular hours sort of business, he’d say. Then he was off to the cabaña for a quick soiree with whoever the escort joint sent his way. Today it was Susie, a laidback girl seemingly content with her low lot in life. She had a sad face and a good body, though Ron could tell it wouldn’t last. Nothing ever did. He wondered where she’d be in five years. In ten. He doubted it would be anyplace good.

  The clock clicked over to 4:20 and there was a prompt and insistent knocking at the door to mark it. A smoke-damaged voice on the other side wheezed, “Time’s up.”

  “That’s it, lover,” Susie said, sitting up.

  Ron stabbed out his cigarette in the black plastic ashtray and pulled his shirt on. His chest felt hollow, his limbs rubbery.

  “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here,” he said.

  Except he did have to go home. There was an image to keep up, an empty husk to keep parading around as though there was anything substantial to it. That was life, he guessed. Lots of guys had to do it. He made a noise in his throat and stepped into his trousers.

  * * *

  Incredibly, the television still worked, though the picture was hard to make out past the lightning-bolt cracks in the screen. Leon sat and squinted at it for a short while, trying to discern faces while listening to their disembodied phantom voices, but he eventually gave up. He was too anxious about Andy and Ron, and too appalled by the corpse in the middle of the room. She was already turning gray and the blood smelled pungent and sickly-sweet. Probably he should not have let her climb up on the table to begin with, but he did not feel particularly culpable. After all, he had not told her to do that. It was her own dumb idea.