they say the owl was a baker's daughter: four existential noirs

by KUBOA

  It occurred to me that maybe I hadn’t been mentioned.

  Maybe not.

  Why would Ginette or this other person have concluded that I’d had anything to do with it?

  I’d no idea what Dimtiri had written—even though he obviously suspected me, maybe none of that had come out to the others, he’d just thought to look into it, hadn’t even mentioned the vomit, the stolen condoms, the laundry room, the drugstore, any of it.

  Another knock and the door knob was also attempted, so there was no chance it was casual. Or little chance. The officer could’ve been checking just because when he’d checked thirteen thirteen had opened, just a little associative tick, something to do while he waited.

  Like a grade-schooler, I made my face puffy, play smacked my lips, realized I’d taken off my lounge clothes, had dressed, cringed, ducked into the bathroom and wet my face, moved some things around, idiotic, straightened at myself, some sort of idea to make it like I’d been in the bathroom getting dressed, hadn’t registered the knocks.

  I flushed the toilet as a pathetic little delay, flapped the lights off, looked at the dark of me reflected, the apartment over my shoulder.

  Everything was the matter—there was something the matter with time, with circumstances, with me, with the length of everything, the inertia, the sense of absolute, because nothing seemed absolute and everything was, absolute and ugly, leering, every moment and thought leered, groping me, lecherous.

  The door just was there, just was there.

  I waited, listening to the murmur of the two of them talking and after hardly a moment they knocked again.

  ***

  I more nodded Hello than said anything, turned to get a cigarette going, probably just an excuse to look away, face going plump with an urge to hug the officers, start crying, make them wrongfully console me before I snorted out a confession.

  One officer asked me if I’d been home all night, a pleasant tone to it, like the more cordial Good morning, how are you today? had just been mispronounced.

  I’d been home, I said, nodded, bobbed, the officer nodding with me, eyes set, friendly, a tilt to them that made me let a long breath out my nose, bob one more time, take a drag from my cigarette.

  -But? the officer said, a long way of saying it, off putting.

  -I cocked my head a bit, said But? myself, heard my lips part, the officer shrugging, eyes on me, saying it’d looked like I’d been about to add something.

  I couldn’t hear, understand, so chuckled, made a gesture of cigarette, focusing on my hand, infantile following it as I spoke, stammered and eventually got out that I’d been home all night, but had gone out to the drugstore at one point, said I didn’t know when they meant by all night.

  The officer, after coughing into his sleeve at his wrist, like coughing onto exactly the button there, asked when I’d gone to the drugstore and I said I thought it’d been shy of midnight, maybe even eleven or something, heard myself saying I might have a receipt around then shook my head, involuntarily, adolescent, caught, awkward, made a blah sound, said that actually I’d just got the cigarettes and medicine, remembered I’d waved off the receipt.

  As though what I’d said had been inconsequential, even off subject, the officer talking asked if I knew my neighbor, ticked his head toward thirteen.

  -Ginette, I said.

  -Ginette?

  It was question, but I couldn’t understand it as one.

  The second officer looked at the door to thirteen, bottom lip stiffening like a point, huffed miniature cough or something and I stammered A girl named Ginette lives there, I thought.

  ***

  Aware it was happening as it happened, but at the same time somehow helpless at reasonably finding a way to stop it, the officers had made their way into my apartment, both were through the door, as far as the kitchen entrance—it really may well have seemed to them that I was inviting them, or had conceded to their telegraphed motions.

  The thing was, they weren’t saying all that much to me, sort of half remarks, little gestures of One moment, talking to each other, seeming caught up in looking at something they’d written on some papers attached to a medium size clipboard. Either way, I couldn’t think of any real reason to—all of a sudden, from their perspective—object to their presence. It even seemed were I to ask them what they wanted I’d come off as abrupt, suspect.

  I stood by politely, testing to see if they’d venture further than me if I stayed put, and the one officer, giving a polite but rather unnecessary pointing gesture off past me whispered Excuse me, entered the kitchen, leaned the clipboard on the counter and made some few indications on the paper—it didn’t seem like he was writing, maybe ticking boxes, maybe nothing, tapping the pen while he read something back.

  I could feel my stomach cramping with filth, a trickle of moisture up the back of my neck, noticed Dimitri’s telephone on the counter, couldn’t even remember putting it there, ate my breath, went to my tiptoes to disguise my brief fixation on the off chance I was being peripherally observed.

  The stretching made the imperative sensation in my bowels hiss. I had to lean forward a bit, breathing in stupid swallows, knew I was being looked at, groaned that I would be right back and slipped past the officer who’d remained in the hall, closed the bathroom door, ground teeth, clicked the overhead fan on, the light switch hit, too, but I shut the lights off, locked the door, the room neither dark enough, loud enough, nothing.

  ***

  For what must’ve been five minutes, ten, I could hardly get a thought just for the cramping, the physical exertion, my focus more on the fact that even this was betraying me.

  I chuckled, groaning into hands covering my face, at the simple realization that I needed to flush the toilet, but that I was not through defecating, that if I wiped one more time, added any more paper, tried to flush it’d clog, but at the same time, if I just kept flushing the toilet, there was no telling what the officers would begin to imagine. Even if everything was baseless, just giving them an odd fixation, something flatly bizarre, would tint the impression, sepia me, alert focus where otherwise I’d be banal.

  It was impossible. I hated every inch of everything.

  If I just stood, flushed, stoically rinsed my hands, left the bathroom, I knew that inside of two minutes I’d need to return and this would be all the more devastating, could easily take on umpteen interpretations.

  Or maybe I could use this to excuse the officers out. I pretended saying it, I’m sorry I’ve been ill, I’m not feeling well, if you could excuse me.

  Except it might just force the issue.

  No, they might say. We’ll wait.

  And then they’d wait. They’d be waiting and I’d be in the same position only knowing they were waiting.

  I already knew they were waiting of course.

  I let my head hang flaccid, flapped it side to side.

  If they weren’t here having anything to do with me, they wouldn’t be in my apartment, wouldn’t have knocked on my door.

  I just didn’t want to admit things to myself, didn’t even want to admit this to myself, didn’t want to process it.

  They didn’t know anything, though, except something someone had told them and there were only so many things someone could’ve told them.

  I heard, I thought, one of them running water at the kitchen faucet, laughing, a clap at something.

  I didn’t breathe for as long as I could manage, the idea being to listen, but when I let the breath out I really couldn’t say if I had been, if I’d just been thinking about holding the air from leaving.

  ***

  I playacted a bit more distress than I was in when the second officer, looking up at me before the first, asked if I wasn’t feeling so good. Standing straight had cleared something, so I regretted having to pretend I was cramped, knew I was likely to actually cramp because of it, but it seemed better than showing relief only to have i
t collapse as suddenly as it might, go sour at the first wrong tension to leg or stretch of lower back.

  The first officer pointed to Dimitri’s phone, said it’d been jittering. I nodded, but again with an almost kindergarten game play. The officer didn’t really stop pointing at the phone, let his arm and finger go slack, a bit, but their positions not really altering.

  So I took up the phone, kind of turned away, had no idea if it was a ruse or not. I flipped it open, made a sound, saw that there was a message from the unnamed number, felt relief and nausea at once. I looked at the glyph of the message, closed the phone, set it down, said without prompting that it was friend finally getting back, letting me know they’d cover my shift. I added that they were probably just waking up, really, since I’d sent the message at three in the morning or something.

  The officer, like I was getting back onto a subject he was keen on asked, but it sounded more like he was suggesting it, if I’d been awake all night, in my apartment and awake all night.

  -I answered more or less affirmatively, said the phrase Little naps, shrugging my hands.

  Then silence, the blunt of the second officer sneezing.

  The phone still could’ve been a trick. Supposing more than one message had come in, they could’ve checked the first, seen the number, seen the foreign language.

  Ridiculous.

  I opened my refrigerator.

  It was ridiculous.

  But they might’ve known that the unnamed bastard was going to send a message, had it arranged that way.

  It seemed absolute.

  I took out some fruit juice, shut the door, looked at the burnt pizza on the stove top, a click of my eyes to the time.

  They’d told him call at such and such time.

  The time.

  ***

  I explained, when asked, that I’d not heard anything very strange all night, but that a lot of the time I’d been incapacitated, locked in, nodded at the bathroom door.

  -Or standing in the shower, I added.

  I ventured to ask what was going on, it seemed unnatural not to. I admitted—underneath listening to myself, to the response to me from the second officer, though he seemed to be saying it to the first officer, spot checking every other word for correctness—that maybe my phrasing was wrong, I should’ve worded the same generally inquiry better, but couldn’t think what could be done about that.

  I was told that over the course of the night, two separate calls had come in regarding the apartment next door. The first had been rather inconsequential, but then someone had called indicating they’d overheard an extended argument and sounds of violence.

  -From next door? I asked.

  I didn’t understand it. Such a call was impossible. If there’d been sounds like that, they would’ve been hours ago—but there’d been no argument, no raised voices.

  -Or from here, the first officer said, lifting his nose in such a way he might well have meant the apartment above us, might well have meant the inside of one of the light bulbs.

  I swallowed around the question When was this? or When was this said to have gone on? just made a glitch of my face, felt weight shift down in my bowels, warmth spread from my bladder into a pinprick, kept quiet.

  Dimitiri’s phone vibrated, again. I glanced to it, turned my attention to the officer, opting to seem engrossed, deflect from the phone, likely both actions equally as damning.

  Midway through my first word, the first officer asked me if I needed to use the bathroom. I felt caught, had to say Yes, apologized, he and the second officer turning vaguely away like to allow me some dignity while getting past them through the door.

  ***

  Leaned forward, I dug my knee up into the cup of my closed eye, moved my toes around in my shoes, didn’t even remember having put shoes on, why I’d put shoes on.

  The calls had been lies.

  Or the officers were lying now.

  Or the first call, the inconsequential one, that might’ve been straight, but the second call was a goddamned lie. It would’ve had to have been made inside the half hour, the hour at the longest, had to’ve been since Dimitri was already dead. Ginette or somebody had called, concocted a story about hearing all of this just to get the police out to investigate. Then the door to thirteen had been unlocked.

  Whoever had called probably said something about me, particularly.

  Or maybe it was a combination of the truth and supposition—some information from the messages back and forth, they’d made the leap that I’d done something based on stories from Dimitri of me pretending to live in another apartment, pretending to do laundry.

  I shriveled out of myself, flushed without sitting up.

  I’d more or less been pretended into a murderer, that’s what their story indicated—loud argument, sounds of violence, unable to reach their friend.

  It wasn’t true, but it was.

  It was a lie, but reality would prove it out.

  I tried to get calm, explain that now I was the one inventing, didn’t know any of this, just thought I knew it.

  I needed to behave just like I’d behave if the police showed up and I’d done nothing. I hadn’t done what they thought I’d done, so it should be simple.

  I could trust myself. I had to believe that. I’d only been a murderer an hour or two, for the most part I wasn’t one. I needed to forget about myself, just act how I’d act under different circumstances, let the murderer be someone else, me be me, or else let the murderer be me, but me pretend to be different.

  ***

  Like stage acting, I reentered from the bathroom, the officers having already moved into the main room, standing one over the spill of blood from my nose, the other over the smear of the insect.

  -Is this your blood? the one asked, just as ordinary as that, no misdirection to the question, eyes as on me as they ought to be.

  I sucked on the inside of my cheek, miserable, explained about my nosebleed, but left out that it’d been because I’d struck myself, just said it’d been off and on with the illness.

  -It’s a lot of blood, the officer said, still pinpointing me.

  I explained that I’d been in a state, very tired, had finally been getting comfortable when it’d started, elaborated for some reason a narrative of stubbing my toe when I’d stood up then how I’d just remained standing there, bleeding, giving up.

  The officer nodded, volleyed his eyes to the other and I prepared to explain about the stain from the insect, but the first officer spoke, again.

  -If it’s alright with you, we’d just like to have a general look around, just a look around the apartment.

  The strange tones again, the reiteration of Just around the apartment, like I was some imbecile who couldn’t have inferred that. But involuntarily, even despite my disgust at the snideness, I found myself saying Around?

  -Just around the apartment, the officer repeated, explaining that my neighbor’s door had been unlocked, it didn’t seem anyone was there.

  I nodded despite the fact that the two parts of the statement didn’t, of necessity, clarify why my apartment needed to be gone through, but I was also not about to raise my voice, start insisting on things.

  Let myself get caught or get myself caught, I thought to myself, the officers each in a different one of my eyes until I just looked away, moved back to the kitchen, all the more anxious that neither of them even bothered to keep an eye on me.

  ***

  At one point, both officers wound up in the bedroom. I just tried to breathe through it, didn’t think the signs of my bludgeoning Dimitri in the doorframe would be anything to make particular note of, nothing that could be done anything about. Then I sort of worried they were taking little samples of things they saw, slipping specks into thick sacks, but it wasn’t as though my standing near them would lead them to not do so out of propriety, embarrassment, they’d just also ask me about the stuff
, then and there.

  Then I thought about the clock radio. I didn’t even remember where it’d gone after I’d brought it into Dimitri’s head.

  Had I looked for it since?

  No. I hadn’t done anything since.

  What have I been doing? I suddenly felt like demanding of myself.

  I hadn’t so much as run a cloth over anything, Dimitri had cleaned up more of my filth than I had, had done more to scrub tell-tales of me away.

  The officers exited the bedroom, one moving toward the window, touching the curtain but not moving it aside to look out or anything, the other almost twitching a smile at me, almost nodding, moving into the bathroom. As he entered, I said to his back that I apologized for the state of the room, said it to indicate I meant any odour as well, he just saying it was alright, squinting into the water of toilet bowl, touching the click of his pen to the raised seat, a soft tick tock of the tip either being drawn in or stuck out.

  The first officer asked me, from a distance, over at my desk, if I knew the man who’d been in the apartment. I said I really thought that a woman lived there, the officer sniffing, brushing at something, a crumb on his chest, absently saying Ginette.

  He looked at me, held the look. I knew my eyes were held wide, couldn’t shut them, felt my tongue working out through the corner of my closed lips, pinched my teeth to it.

  -Ginette, I nodded, said Yes, Ginette.

  -He squinted, almost seemed upset. Ginette, he said, yes. Did you know the man who was there, tonight? the question a fist holding something, a threat, I felt weak from it, lost.

  -Wriggling, I said No no I didn’t no sorry, shrugged my shoulders four times while I did.

  ***

  I was told that a call had been made to the police concerning someone having entered apartment thirteen sometime during the night. The call had been made by a third party on behalf of the man staying in the room, who apparently was handicapped in such a way that he couldn’t use the telephone and was a foreigner, beside.

  I nodded.

  The caller had said that the man had found that the apartment had been entered, soiled with vomit—on that phrase, either as an odd emphasis or a genuine result of having to sneeze, the officer curled his lips in, closed his eyes, let a whistled pop down his nose—and had been generally tampered with.