by KUBOA
***
I’d reached a point of such mental exhaustion that I walked an hour, thinking about various television shows I’d watched, various films, mumbling to myself about them, about ways some plot might’ve gone instead, having some made believe debates with old friends about whether a movie they thought was good was actually bad or vice versa. Simple thoughts, having nothing to do with anything. Distractions that consumed me, totally consumed me.
I finally started thinking of how I would call in to work the next day, apologize, say I’d had a personal emergency, had gotten too caught up to call. I was on good terms with the people at work, I thought, I’d not be terminated without ceremony, not for just not showing up to one shift without calling.
I got myself smiling, genuinely felt in a good mood, went into a franchise restaurant, got a table, ordered an appetizer, a meal, some coffee, a glass of wine, even apologizing to the waitress for my appearance, telling her I’d had an awful time of it all day, to which she smiled, said I didn’t look so bad and I had to stop myself from responding to her because I would have flirted and she’d not said it to flirt.
Gradually, I came back to myself. Reluctantly I let in some slight pockets of thought about Montgomery, about the old man, then got caught up in my invented scenario of Montgomery escaping by using the woman’s apartment, again, but the thoughts were still numb.
I likely was feverish, touched my forehead, wondered if it would be stupid to ask the waitress to touch my forehead, or to ask her, more appropriately, to ask some male staff member to touch my forehead.
I appalled myself. My food cramped stiff inside me.
I waited until I was certain I could do so unnoticed, put my coaster over my wine, got a cigarette in my mouth to at least give the appearance I was just stepping out for a smoke, then left the restaurant, hurried, almost jogged, three blocks, at each cross street taking a turn.
***
I entered the lobby of a large hotel, crossed by the front desk as though I was already a guest, walked the main floor corridor until I came on a door to a public restroom. It was a single occupancy toilet, so I locked myself in, the overhead fan activating loud when I flapped at the light switch.
I really was in no mood to vomit, anymore, especially as I couldn’t tell where my inebriation ended, my fatigue started, or how much of what I felt was due to my becoming agitated, unspooled, desperate. But I did go to my knees, leaned my head over the bowl, curled two fingers, as though ready to probe them down, gag myself, empty everything out.
On my knees, I felt better immediately. So I lay down. I couldn’t get comfortable curled, so lay flat on my back, staring at the fluorescent light and the underside of the sink.
I closed my eyes, but when I did everything went haywire, I felt the floor was being upended beneath me, the sensation of tumbling, pain, every thought had the thundering insistence of each bleating pulse of my blood’s seething.
Standing at the sink, I just gazed at my face, wetted it, made my features seem menacing, touched my forehead to my glass forehead, backed away slowly, letting my face reconstitute in front of me out of a glob of confused colours drifting out of crossing images of each other.
For a long time, ten minutes, longer, twenty minutes, longer, I felt tense, waiting for some flood of images to overwhelm me, waiting to feel the violence of my mind rewiring itself, to have memories chortle up from my past, memories of me watching Claudia, but really just watching an empty lot, of me strangling Gavin, burying him under trash bags, clumsily wiping my hands of him on my pant legs, only to have it revealed that I’d only buried a wet cloth or a bag of my own clothes, to realize there hadn’t been any one in front of me while I walked the street outside that movie theatre, that it’d been me out on a date with some disgusting fat woman at that bar, that it’d been my own door I’d pounded on, me who’d called the police on no one, called the police on myself. I waited to feel the sting of this, have my life reassemble in a cinematic epiphany, know I’d killed no one, had spent the last day stalking myself, a deluded wreck. I waited to suddenly realize that my name was Montgomery or to have my reflection suddenly leer out at me through saliva wet lips, notice how bloated it was, see that my hair was nothing more than a damp lick of grease from my hands, hear my shoe bottom flop when I went to stand straight.
When I realized this is what I was waiting for, I smiled, saw my face smiling, saw how red with wet my eyes were, how drawn my face was, gaunt past sickness.
I tested memories, bringing up without pain or difficulty clear images of myself leaned harshly up against Gavin, his hands holding my face so that I had to tilt my neck and back oddly, look almost behind me, and I remembered my groin practically dry humping his upper thigh and remembered how obnoxiously sudden he’d collapsed, how I’d collapsed half way on him, perspiring, recalled with clarity how he’d died with no more sound than the squeak of a half asleep fart.
***
Head down, my eyes reaching toward my chest like they should be sewn there, I walked a block from the hotel. Walked back. Walked a block in the other direction. Walked back.
I was shaking involuntarily, but it came across as jumpiness. I shuffled where I stood, probably looked giddy to anyone watching. I tried to sit, would squirm on the bench, the curb, some upcrop of brick. My feet walked me in circles, blocks long or paces long.
-Pajamas.
I hiccupped the word, a wince clamping my eye on some fleck of dirt had blown in it.
-Pajamas, pajamas pajamas pajamaspajamas I kept whispering, rubbing my raw eye, keeping it open, letting it water, rubbing at it more, trying to dislodge whatever had gotten in it.
Montgomery had been wearing pajamas when he’d answered the door for the police. Or had been wearing dingy house clothes, sweatpants, some loose shirt. They couldn’t have been the woman’s, she was a stick, a nothing, while he was a blot of tumor.
Why would there be clothes in the apartment to fit him? Why would he have changed, in the first place?
My head swayed and I set off, again, no direction in particular, trying to keep to any street not so crowded, eyeing liquor stores, feeling saliva under the rough of my dry lips.
Why even think about it?
-There isn’t a mystery, I said, stamping once, almost tripping, stamping again to make certain I was driving this point home. No mystery.
The woman had a fat husband?
She seemed to not understand, though, even when I’d pantomimed I was looking for a fat person.
So what?
He’d snuck the clothes in, earlier, hid them under her sink, or had left a bag with them outside the rear window earlier in the day.
What did it matter?
A crowd welled up around me at a crosswalk. I held my breath, could feel everything writhing in me, my eye still worthless, heavy with wet from the irritant that must’ve been already flushed.
***
I felt lucky to have found the rear seats of the bus available, most of the other seats already filled. It was bright where I sat and the steaming of the bus wheels drowned so much noise out, replacing it with blats that kept my concentration subdued, I was grateful.
I started to think, in single breaths out single breaths in, about Montgomery, directly. The look he’d mocked up, smeared over his bloated eyes was indelible. I thought about it without being able to cast it as phony, as the cruel joke it had been.
There was no way I could’ve reacted differently, I wasn’t just an offhand doodle, he’d rattled me. Especially the thing with the pill bottle, it was too absurdly tempting a path to be lead down. I started to think he may have done it to be kind, offering it as an out, a better drunk than the sour that I could feel kicking in my gut.
I lolled my eye to watch the pavement out the window, saw it like the grind behind the skin of my reflected face.
Kind?
He’d done it to be horrific. He was horror.
Montgomery Fent. I couldn’t have shaped him out of exhumed slimes of animal. He was repugnant, a cruelty so complete I felt my eyes tearing just considering him.
I also found myself actually wondering what I’d done to him, why this was happening to me. For a minute, five minutes, for a little while, I felt I’d not done anything to deserve a speck of the nightmare I roamed headless, ugly through.
I realized the bus was pulling up to the street outside of the old man’s apartment, the woman’s.
I shot up.
Why had I gotten on the bus?
I laughed, so astonished I just focused on the unsettling humor of it. I’d meant to walk back to Montgomery’s building, steel myself to go back to his door, but I must’ve cross-wired my thoughts, gotten this building in my head when I thought about His Apartment.
Some other passenger pulled the stop cord. I stood, waiting behind her at the center door, looking up at my smile in the tilt of circular mirror that hung lazy, like it was asleep, half dreaming me.
***
The stairwell all but hurt to walk in, the space left by a lost tooth I was scraping at. It was a cowardly little ascent, had nothing to do with anything. I knew I was just climbing the stairs to keep myself convinced I didn’t need to see Montgomery, again. I was certain the stress I’d been put through and my only recourse against it being trembling tugs at joints and bottles had likely turned him into more of a ghoul than he was, but it didn’t change that each step up made me feel safer, just because I was more away.
I got a cigarette going, again. Again looked at the mat. Again leaned in the opening of the corridor entrance.
There was the old man’s apartment. There was the woman’s apartment.
I let smoke out of my nose deciding which to approach, totally ignoring the option that I might do both.
If I knocked on one, they might answer, but the other would creep to their door, maybe on hands and knees, verify I was out there, douse lights, not answer if I knocked all night.
Ridiculous. Not true at all. None of it remotely corresponding to reality.
I might as well knock on the one door, dash down the corridor, knock on the other, wait in the middle.
As it was, I was doing neither.
The old man hadn’t done anything, really, hadn’t indicated a participation.
Although, I thought, licking the outside of my two front teeth, he had looked at me. He had. Looked right at me.
With what expression?
None.
And the woman?
Out and out lied, pretended as absolutely as Montgomery had pretended, claimed that the description didn’t even ring a bell.
Even if she didn’t know Montgomery had been in her apartment, was I really to believe she’d never had occasion to see him, not once, even a visit to his old man?
She disgusted me, reeked of bile as I sucked in more smoke. I threw tight punches into the air just in front of my stomach, thought about driving a blade up her.
But I stood, doing nothing. Staring at two doors. Unfocusing. Hardly even looking at the bauble of light and the rough grime of dark the corridor I refused to look at had become.
***
The old man’s door sounded normal when I knocked and for the first time I noted how painful my hand was, the one
I’d run in to the wall. It was swollen and didn’t shake as much as the other, maybe the only part of me that had successfully gone numb.
No answer.
I didn’t care. It’s why I’d picked the door in first place, the old man wouldn’t answer like he hadn’t before.
I felt finished, looking down, not stopping a long of drool from going over my lip, heavy like rubber, dwindling down into the fuzz of the mat top. I trudged to the elevator, keeping my eyes as closed as I could.
It could’ve been Montgomery had wanted me to come here, again, odd as it sounded. There was no way he could’ve known I would, as I hadn’t known I was, even while doing it. Unless he was so keenly aware of the minutia of my psychology he could map me, mark out trails for me to take totally unconsciously.
But what could I do?
I glanced back at the woman’s door.
Did she have something to do with Claudia? How could she?
I blinked.
Claudia?
With Gavin, I meant.
Why was I pushing this off to have something to do with Claudia?
She didn’t have to have anything at all to do with it.
I let the elevator close in front of me, even though I knew I was just pretending. I wasn’t going to walk down the corridor, back to the door.
Gavin’s mother? Was that it? Why would that be?
I slapped myself.
Even if it was, which it wasn’t, it wasn’t it wasn’t it wasn’t, what would it matter?
She pretended not to know about Montgomery. This proved beyond doubt that it wasn’t Gavin’s mother or Gavin’s anybody.
Some woman lost her son is going to go along dressing up pretend with some goblin, her boy’s corpse not even in the ground a quarter year?
I pressed the elevator button again, listening to the sound of the motor, stopping, going again, the doors simpering open in front of me, the stale smell of the old stains on the carpeted walls of it bumbling out, the door closing in my face again, leaving me looking down the corridor at the door I wasn’t going to approach.
***
What was unsettling me so much, new cigarette, new drive in me to walk a block to get coffee, sit in a café full of noise, people, nothing to do with me or anyone, was that I had, however temporarily, slipped out of Montgomery’s clutches, but had done so inadvertently. Knowing he didn’t know where I was, had no way of knowing, had no purpose for me to be where I was, made my stomach tight, disoriented me. I rather wanted to be in the confines of the game, feel its mechanics around me. It made me dizzy to feel I could shoot off in some random direction, see myself drift out of the orbit of the end of my life.
Not that I was away. Not that I was any less trapped.
I felt nervous when I thought about him wondering where I was, why I hadn’t done what he’d meant for me to do next.
Which was to go back to his place. That’s what I’d tried to do, it’s what made some semblance of sense. He’d made a buffoon of me, had his grimy little chuckle about it, but I should’ve gone back, called him out, gone ahead with the next charade.
How had I felt? Angry?
I couldn’t recall.
I’d gotten on the bus, something churning in me, some set to my features and now was lost in this pointless interlude.
I had my coffee. I was staring at three women, their voices grating but one of them holding a book I became obsessed with learning the title of.
There was no reason for me to be here. This is what it would be like. Forever. Watching three woman in some coffeehouse, wondering what they were reading, no place to be, always feeling the plump of his sucked wet thumb on the back of my neck, the top of my hands, his breath just outside my mouth.
If I ran.
When I ran.
Had this been the next proper move? Had this been what he’d meant me to do?
I couldn’t shake it, couldn’t not care.
Maybe he hadn’t exactly meant me to go to the old man’s apartment, though that was suddenly a reasonable place to imagine I’d accidentally go, but he’d wanted to me go just anyplace, get lost, feel lost, feel how no one he’d brought me to. Then go back. Finish coffee and go back. Lack the nerve to meet the woman’s eyes, be a mongrel and crawl back, groaning for a pat on the head.
***
The entire day seemed to have vanished, was gone already, I could hardly think of what I’d done. On top of that, my fatigue was becoming a suffocation. I waited at a bus stop, counting the minutes it would take once the bus came to get back to Montgomery’s p
lace. I tried to come up with some equation, to find the value in time spent for what result.
My apartment now had an allure. I had one more day, certainly. One more day, one more night before it would be done, one way or another. If I were to return to my apartment, my body was finally ready to give out, I’d likely not wake until midday, evening, then it would just be a gloomy sense of approach. I’d likely wake with my head straight, ready to leave town, run.
Thoughts crawled out of me, up my throat, down through my nostril. I was dank, riding the bus before I knew it, eyes closed, wide awake as though clutched inside my own fist held to my chest. I pretended a scenario of my begging, literally hands and knees, groveling, humiliating myself however he’d like if only he’d cut out the game playing, tell me what I could do.
My eyes opened.
This was fantasy. It was a waste of time. He’d told me what to do.
Don’t worry about it. Nothing I can do.
Perhaps this was something even more damning than I thought, his way of letting me know how outside his hands it was. He could’ve put something in motion that not even he could alter, some endgame he couldn’t slow, couldn’t reverse. He’d just started some motor, I’d be turned over without his having to make another move.
It could be.
Maybe he felt his skin was peeling, so much regret. Maybe he’d thought twice about it but it no longer mattered.
Maybe.
No. Not maybe. Just no.
He was a growth. He was something sicked up, scrubbed at but never quite gone.
My apartment, my apartment I thought. It didn’t matter if it was cowardice, I was allowed to be as much a coward as I felt.
I thumped my fingers to the outside of my cigarette packet, having to leave the bus early, get one lit, not so much minding the rest of the walk.
***
Right away to bourbon, a quick shot, then I remembered my marijuana. The motions were too quick to second guess, so much that I didn’t even get around to double checking I’d securely locked the door until I was tilting back my head for a second swallow of bourbon, the lit joint set down, end over the lip of the sink, brought back to my mouth immediately after the growl of the liquor down.