Midlisters

by Burke, Kealan Patrick

  "Wait."

  He didn't, and I stood to follow him.

  But whatever I might have said to him next was forgotten when the doors exploded inward hard enough to send them smacking against the wall, and Audrey Vassar stumbled into the room screaming.

  She was covered in blood.

  Chapter 10

  This is how I imagine it happened. This is how the movie plays night after night behind my eyes, though I've tried so desperately hard not to keep dreaming my way to that theater, with its dilapidated façade and the posters of Raw Red Smile: The Motion Picture pasted all over the place, the edges torn and bleeding red. I'm always alone on that dead, empty street, craning my head back, though I don't want to, to observe the legend on the marquee, the chunky black letters stained and running with the verdigris of night: JASON TENNANT: THE CRACKHEAD'S CHOICE!

  I don't make my own way inside, past the lightless ticket booth. I'm just there, seated in the darkened theater, alone, always alone at first, the rows of vacant seats stretching out around me until they're lost in the gloom. The jaundiced lights flicker briefly, sending shadows fleeing into the walls, ducking between the seats, then out, and the dark is suffocating. It lasts forever, but in this dream, forever is a mercy not nearly long enough.

  An enormous wrinkled screen glows with the intensity of a freight train's light seen by its victim at the moment of death, and of course, that's exactly what I've been ushered in to see, for the thousandth time, and when at last the credits roll, I should be relieved to realize I'm no longer alone. But I'm not, nor can I turn my head to see if the expression on my dead father's face has changed. I don't need to. In the periphery, he is a charcoal blob, slowly shaking his head.

  There is a sudden burst of discordant music. It blares from the speakers set high above our heads and all around us, a torturous sound, like MGM fanfare played in reverse. I want to block my ears, but this is a dream, a nightmare, and in the inevitable, inexorable wasteland of the subconscious, such options are unavailable.

  The picture begins.

  There I am, a wretched creature in a suit with frayed cuffs, smiling a clumsy smile at a pair of Asian youths as they tell me in a language I don't understand, how much they love my work. I nod, looking pained, as I suspect I always do, even when I'm not aware of it, and they hurry away.

  In keeping with the hyperkinetic style that has become so popular in today's movies, mine without reason or apology cuts abruptly and jumpily to a medium shot of me in the hallway, looking lost, looking brave, as if afraid everyone there will discover that I'm a fraud. A comical moment ensues, complete with the Snagglepuss sound effect of scrambling, exit stage left, even as I duck into the bathroom. The camera stays on the bathroom door as it swings shut behind me.

  This is where I want it to stay.

  But of course, it doesn't.

  The next shot is an overhead one, starting from the stall on the far left, floating like a disembodied spirit, looking down on a bald headed man, pants around his ankles, multi-colored pamphlet in hand as he sighs in time with a silent emission of bodily gas. The camera continues, coming to rest over the man in the middle stall.

  That's me, in a similar pose as the bald man, but fully dressed and stressed. My hands are in my hair, my head down, feet spread wide apart on the floor. I cut a pathetic figure, mired in self-pity, worried as always about things I can't control. But this dream is the ultimate exercise in loss of control because now I have the benefit of omnipotence, seeing the scene through the vapid, uncaring eye of a movie camera. It may only be based on a true story, but it's close enough and real enough to terrify me.

  On the screen, still seen from above, my head turns to the right, and the camera pans accordingly. And I'm looking down on two people standing, crushed into the confines of the cubicle. At first glance, they might be making love, silently if frantically, and I would prefer to think they were. But the camera, still gazing voyeuristically down, begins to zoom in, slowly.

  There is a man and a woman.

  The man is leaning back against the far wall, his feet on both sides of the toilet, his bare ass pressed against the tank, the flush handle digging into his spine. One foot has somehow pulled free of his pants, but not his underwear, a soiled pair of boxers that hang from his ankle like a manacle. The other foot is still planted in his crumpled up jeans. A lone shoe lies on its side.

  A young woman, naked, her long drab dress hanging crooked on a hook on the back of the stall door, appears to have one hand cupped around the man's genitals, the other on the slim paperback novel she is cramming down his throat.

  Here is where movie magic compensates for the limitations of reality. The young man is gagging, foamy blood oozing from a mouth stretched impossibly wide. His legs twitch, trying to kick the woman who moves so fluidly and calmly to stand sideways that she must be a ghost. When she leans back, we see the metallic glint of something in the hand she's holding to her victim's crotch. And though the camera resists the urge to reveal the weapon, to cast a dead eye on it, I know what it is because I used it in a scene once.

  A scene much like this one. The woman turns the gleaming straight razor so the blade is held vertically down against the seam dividing the man's testicles. His arms are free, and flapping madly, thumping against the sides of the stall, but he dares not use them to defend himself for fear it will cost him his manhood, a strange concern when it's quite obvious the woman intends to kill him anyway.

  Only the bottom third of the book can be seen now, the cover bent almost double, and carving a groove in the man's lower lip. His mouth has split at the sides, making him look like The Joker. The woman has one hand on the bottom of the book, palm pressed flat as if she's trying to stuff a letter into an overfull mailbox. The man's throat swells. Blood runs. He gags, convulses, finally forgets the urge to protect his genitalia, and lashes out at the woman.

  "Hey buddy, you okay?" a familiar voice asks, muffled by the wall.

  The woman glances casually toward it, ducks her chin to affect a more masculine voice and sneers, "Fine." It should not be so easy for her to keep the man from overpowering her, but she manages, occasionally grabbing fistfuls of his T-shirt and forcing him back against the toilet. Tears stream down his face. His struggling subsides. He moans.

  There comes the sound of a stall door opening, then closing. The woman withdraws her hand from the book. Glassy relief enters the man's eyes.

  A sink runs; stops. The bathroom door opens, squeals shut. The woman curls her free hand into a fist and punches the edge of the book with all her strength before the man can begin to start trying to dislodge it. He jolts, feet scrabbling, and drops, eyes as wide as his mouth as the light in them fails. In falling, he forces his murderer to withdraw the razor. Something falls to the floor with a splat. The man gives one final moan as blood gushes from his groin. His choking dwindles to the sound of a slowing bass beat heard through a wall.

  Then he dies.

  The woman leans over where he has come to rest, his head reclined, body crumpled on the toilet, knees wedged against the opposite wall.

  She inspects her work, brushes sweaty hair away from the man's brow and gently kisses the skin there. Then she dresses, listens at the door, and hurries out. There are splashes of blood on her skin, now hidden by her dress, spots of spittle and vomit on her arms and neck that can be washed away, and anything she misses will go unnoticed by the convention crowd, ten percent of whom are here to celebrate murder.

  From there, the moody monochromatic Seven-style sequence ends, and reverts to brightly lit slapstick as we cut to the hall sometime later. A pasty-faced man wearing a bib of his own vomit flails blindly out into the hall and collides with an alarmed, drunk, and slightly repulsed Audrey Vassar. A laugh track rises as Audrey bats at the man, who appears to be speaking in tongues. Behind him, and taking great care to avoid touching the lunatic, another man sidles into the bathroom. He emerges a split-second later, blanched and nodding along to Vomit Man's raving. A
udrey brusquely shoves them both aside and enters the restroom.

  Extreme close up of Audrey's face in the Seven room.

  Dissolve to: that same face, her eyes distant, ringed with mascara, her nose red and raw from crying as we pull back to show her sitting on a chair in the lobby, sipping coffee from a cup that trembles in her hand. The crowd of aliens has been beamed elsewhere, replaced by men in very real uniforms, but the siren lights flickering through from outside preserve the otherwordly atmosphere.

  Finally, the credits roll.

  My father applauds, a long slow hollow sound like blocks of wood being smacked together. The lights come up, and on the screen, that rolling block of white against black ends on a single line:

  IN MEMORY OF WALT NEUMANN (1986 - 2004)

  And I wake.

  Chapter 11

  I never saw Kent Gray again. Whether or not he avoided me because of my connection to the murder, I'll never know. It could be that he might have liked to have concluded our conversation, and couldn't wait until the police were done with me, but I doubt it.

  He'd said all, if not more, than he'd needed to.

  With marked reluctance, the detectives eventually let me go, just as the sun was rising over Baltimore, and I figured I'd be hearing from them again, probably many times, before they were finally satisfied that I hadn't had anything to do with Walt's murder.

  Not that I could blame them. For the first time ever, though I'd written about such things before, I fully understood what it felt like to be an innocent man afraid to tell the truth for fear it will condemn him. But I had to. Had I not, it would have only made things worse.

  So: Yes, I gave the guy a ride, and no, I'd never met him before.

  We didn't argue. We got along just fine.

  No, I'm not gay.

  Yes I gave him that book you pulled from his mouth, and yes I wrote it.

  Yes, the title Raw Red Smile does seem ironic.

  Yes, I wrote a scene like that, only it was the hitchhiker doing the castrating. And no, it didn't happen in a bathroom.

  I do understand why you're keeping me here, but I don't know who might have done this, or why.

  I already told you, yes I might have been there, in the next stall, when it happened. I didn't know someone was being killed, or I'd hardly have just walked out and not told someone.

  Yes, I live in New York and, no; I won't be traveling anywhere else anytime soon. If ever again.

  I walked out into the crisp, cool morning air feeling as if I'd been boiled alive. My head hurt, my throat was sore from talking and smoking, my scalp itched, and all I wanted to do was sleep, despite the horrible feeling that it would be some time before I'd be able to do so without thinking about the murder.

  Poor Walt. The guy had seemed completely innocuous, maybe a little bit simple after too many years spent puffing on the peace pipe, and although I hadn't known him long, I had a feeling I'd have liked him. But then, how often do we think such pleasant positive things about the dead, knowing we'll never have to follow through on such speculations?

  I located my car and sat with the engine off for about an hour, trying to get my brain to deflate enough to consider the nightmarish and frightening implications of the scene I had just walked away from.

  My hitchhiker.

  My book.

  My murder.

  I shook my head, feeling as if I'd emerged from the hotel into a world in which everything had been moved three inches away from where it belonged—like when you come home convinced you've been burglarized but can't find anything missing. Someone had put their dirty fingers in my head and I felt as violated as if I'd been raped. Someone had taken my thoughts and used them as a weapon to take the life of someone I knew. I felt corrupt, unclean, covered inside and out with the kind of foulness no amount of showering can wash away. Then I cracked the car door, leaned out and retched.

  Once composed, I plucked the phone from the back seat, trying hard not to look at the boxes or think about the books snuggled within, all of which I resolved to burn once I got home.

  The phone's LCD display was a view of a dull morning sky full of rain. The battery was dead. Annoyed, but not enough to incite me to violence had I had the energy, I located the charger, hooked it up, and the display glowed green.

  Seven missed calls. All of them from Kelly.

  I started the car, hit redial, and when my wife answered, I broke down and sobbed into the phone.

  * * *

  I spent the rest of that weekend in bed but not sleeping. Kelly stayed with me, except to run interference when the reporters called to get my angle on a murder I'd inspired. She was ruthless with them, the hurt in her voice obvious. I should have been comforted by it, but instead it got me wondering whether the pain in her tone was because she felt sorry for me, or because she wasn't yet sure she could live with a man whose very thoughts had been borrowed to kill a human being. Her frequent assurances that I'd had nothing to do with what had happened weighed heavily on me too. I turned to alcohol for solace but found instead a purgatory of uncertainty.

  What if I had been more involved than I'd led myself to believe?

  What if my mind was the one doing all the protecting, fabricating my presence in the stall next to the one in which Walt had died when in reality I had been in there with him? After all, I had known Walt. It had been my book that had been crammed into his mouth, and the method of his execution had been one summoned from the Stygian depths of my own mind. Who better to have perpetrated such a hideous crime? If this turned out to be the case, then surely my defense would be a simple one: I was jealous and unstable to the point where my consciousness divided, inducing paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis, wherein, unable to bring myself to harm the true focus of my obsession, I'd simply settled for someone who idolized him.

  But there are holes in that theory too.

  Such as: why couldn't I have killed Kent Gray if indeed I'd awoken with the capability to do so? Yes, I'd met him in a bar surrounded by people, but surely a mind capable of deceiving itself enough to hide an atrocity of such magnitude would have been able to arrange something. I could have followed Gray to his room, strangled him, and left before anyone knew a thing. I could have waited until the weekend was over and tailed him until we got to a remote location. I could have crept into his room while he slept, and smothered him with a pillow.

  Sure I could.

  But that aside, there was a much more important flaw in the theory, and that was: Why the calling card? Why the methodical straight-from-the-page reenactment? Wouldn't this have the obvious effect of leading the police straight to me, which it had?

  A subconscious cry for help, maybe?

  No, I couldn't buy it, and not solely because I didn't want to.

  It wasn't me. I was a writer, compelled to farm the fertile fields of imagination, a place so far removed from reality, there were no limitations on what could be done there. I could murder to my heart's content, but in the end, outside of that field, murder was just a word.

  Until it happened for real.

  Scared, and more alone than ever, I test-ran my hypothetical confession on Kelly, which she vehemently rejected, telling me, as

  I had tried to tell myself, that I was not a murderer, that a deranged fan had been behind the tragedy, and I was not to blame. Though it had been my book, it could have been anyone's book. It was simply coincidence, she said. Anyone capable of taking another person's life and committed to doing it in the style of a scene that had some unimaginable importance to them, would have done it regardless of which book, or which author's work it had come from. If I hadn't written Raw Red Smile, it would be some other poor writer's face splashed all over the news.

  As the weeks went by, I let her persuade me because I needed her to, then watched her walk out the door, bound for her mother's and some indeterminate amount of time away from me and my increasingly agitated and unstable behavior, which had the ironic effect of working in contrast to her theory.r />
  She wasn't mad, she promised. She wasn't leaving me. She just thought she had done as much as she could for the time being and now I needed some time to figure it out on my own.

  Which I took to mean I was being a great spiraling, all-consuming asshole. And I knew I was. I also knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. So I let her go with the promise to collect her when I returned to myself.

  Three days after she left, I got two important emails. The first was from Kent Gray, which came as a surprise, though it might have been more of one if I wasn't drunk as a skunk and alternating between laughing at shadows and threatening them. I double-clicked on the virtual envelope and the white space of his message, broken only by a single short paragraph written in Berling Antiqua font, opened up on my screen. It read:

  Dear Jason:

  I'm sorry about what happened, both the unfortunate incident in the bathroom, and the one earlier in the bar. I assume this unwelcome education will be exorcised in a future work, which I look forward to reading.

  Keep writing the good write,

  M.S. (Kent Gray)

  Cute, I thought, in no mood for his condolences, or sagely advice, and had to resist the urge to finally let him know the feelings and emotions that had led me to that convention, had led me to him, but instead I hit the delete button and watched his words shrink into oblivion.