Finally, he cleared his throat, sniffed, tears stinging his vision, “I just want to know why, Yu?”
“You killed momma! I saw the newspapers! The fire! The bodies! You killed her and burned our home!” She screamed. Hysterical. Mucus ran from her nose. Ben looked away at a fine crack in the light blue wall.
“I didn’t kill your mother, or the old man. They’re in the precinct’s drunk tank. They’ll be released tonight.”
“You fucking liar!”
“That’s pretty hypocritical coming from a fucking lying whore like you, isn’t it, Li Yu?”
She just glared through him.
He stepped closer to her and she flinched away.
“I just want to know why? That’s all. Why?”
Her lips quivered but she said nothing.
“Tell me why, Li Yu? I killed for you! Stevie died because of you! I loved you! I love you.”
She backed up on the mattress further, her eyes burning with hate, and shrugged.
Ben’s face broke out in spasms. Twitches. She shrugged. She shrugged. She fucking shrugged. As though he were insignificant. As if he were something that crawled. Less than a bug. He leapt on her, wrapping his hands around her throat, cutting off her shrieks and squeezing down hard. Feeling her windpipe giving.
She raked her fingernails across his cheeks. Her small fists hitting his mouth and ears.
“I tell you Stevie fucking died for you. That I’m going to hell because I love you. And you shrug? You fucking shrug at me?” The words hit her face hard with spittle and blood.
She gasped deep, bucking her hips against him, clawing at his features as he pushed a knee hard into her chest. Holding her down with his weight. Her eyes so wide. So white.
“Scared! I was frightened of you!” she gasped it out.
Ben pulled his hands away from her. Holding them out in front of him as though he was seeing them for the very first time.
Li Yu gasping, weeping and coughing.
He glimpsed his father’s ghost glaring at him from across the room, but it was just another mirrored reflection of himself and everything that he hated.
He stumbled from the bed knocking the wine bottle smashing to the floor. He snatched the opium box and the pipe. Fleeing her apartment. His face awash with tears and blood and the sounds of her relieved crying.
Salt Lake City, U.S.A
Sunday, February 24th, 1946
Shaking. Trembling.
The sound of fabric against fabric. Skin against skin. Another creaking of floorboards. The dragging of feet sliding softly, delicately over the carpet of his bedroom floor. He felt it then. The heavy, magnetic atmosphere of being watched. Observed. He couldn’t move. Frozen in place. The dragging of feet moving closer to his bedside. Closer. The wet sound of something breathing.
Ben snapped awake, revolver clasped in one hand, the opium pipe in the other.
“Jesus Christ, Englishman. Don’t point that fucking thing at me. This place reeks, man.” Leary waved his stump-fingered hand through the thick blue smoke cloaking the hotel room. “It’s our shift. For the watch. Time to get up and look like you give a shite.”
Ben stared at the Fat Man for a moment, attempting to remember where he was and then nodded. The Peery Hotel, Salt Lake City. The party. The twenty-year anniversary of his father’s death. The start of his disease. Sitting up like moving through wet tar. Leary pushed out a sticky hand to help him and Ben ignored it. Stood up slowly from the bed. Swaying. Pushed the revolver back into his shoulder holster and picked up the Thompson from on top of some cushions on a couch, giving it a wipe over with his handkerchief, concealing it under his long trench coat. Running his palsied fingers through long, greasy hair. Pushing his hat on his head and following a few paces behind the waddling Leary out of the room and down the brightly lit, carpeted hallway. Leary stank worse as the days went on. Ben sniffed at himself and cringed, realizing the filthy smell was coming from his own body. He hadn’t washed or shaved in days. Had hardly eaten. His slacks slipping from his hips. Lost weight like loose change. His fingernails grown into sickening yellowish claws. He’d grown a moustache. A beard. A shadow of a Boston Police Detective.
Bach’s Air on a G String filling the whole hotel from the party upstairs. Booming out. Leary grinned over his shoulder at Ben, “What about this fucking music? I gotta say I prefer Mozart. Some fucking party, let me tell you.”
Ben grunted, pulled the peak of his fedora down low, trying to block out the lights that burned through his eye sockets into the back of his skull. Vomit boiling in his guts.
“IOU says he was upstairs messing around with one of the maids and saw that FBI prick from the moving pictures and the radio wandering around on the second floor drunk,” Leary said, stopping to look at a painting of cherubs on the wall. “You believe that shit?”
“IOU says a lot of things, Leary. A lot of things. IOU says a lot of things,” Ben croaked. Head splitting. He’d been repeating himself more frequently over the last twenty-four hours and he’d given up trying to stop it. The Irish didn’t even look at him strange anymore. It was as though his whole life had led up to this point of unravelling. The kid and Li Yu, the only things that could have saved him were both gone. He patted his breast, the folded newspaper in his pocket that seemed aflame. Burning to be taken out. Examined. Solved. Saved. He stopped, leaned his back against the wall, took out the picture of the boy and screwed the newspaper page into a ball and dropped it onto the floor, chewing at his bottom lip.
“Yeah, true, but get this, he says the guy was all dressed up like a dame with rouge, make-up and shit like that on his face,” Leary said.
“It takes a fool to believe a fool. He’s a fool. Fool,” Ben cleared his throat and spat brown mucus onto the maroon carpet. Scratched at the bearded growth on his chin. Fingered the scabbed-over itchy remnants of the final time he’d seen Li Yu.
“That ain’t even the worst of it. He says that FBI guy was walking around with another guy on a leash that was acting like some kind of a dog or something.” Leary chuckled uneasily, continuing down the hallway.
“IOU is a strange man with a short attention span obviously. Tell him to lay off the mini-bars and the maids. We’re here to do a job and lay low. Lay low. I said, lay low.”
“Says the man that’s been off his gourd on poppy since we arrived,” Leary muttered.
Ben pulled the peak of his fedora lower. Sucking at the blood from his broken open bottom lip. Ignoring the comment.
The pair came out of the corridor into the simple yet beautiful lobby of the hotel. Cream colored marble pillars and marble flooring. Dark wood fixtures. A grand chandelier hanging from the ceiling aglow, and a grand piano pushed to the side near a small glass gift shop counter. A rack of postcards with pictures of snowcapped mountains. Ben looked over the empty check-in desk. The rich leather chairs the Irish had pulled into the center of the room on top of a huge, intricate Persian rug. The whole place looked like an abandoned, derelict building. An elegant crime scene.
“Well, looky here! Finally! It’s Fat Man Leary in The Peery! About fucking time. I’m bored as all hell,” Christopher called out from the couch he was sprawled across. IOU, Negro and Connor playing a game of cards in front of the fireplace on a table and chairs they’d dragged in from somewhere. Empty bottles strewn about the place. A maid came out from one door, nodded to the group shyly, hustled across the lobby, passed Ben and disappeared down the hallway that led to his room and further on another wing of the vacant hotel.
“Is that the one you were banging in the broom cupboard upstairs when you saw the dog man, IOU?” Leary asked, leaning against the piano and getting a cigar started.
“Nah, not her. My one was prettier. Mexican. Can’t get enough of those little senoritas.”
“It was probably the dog man he was banging,” Negro sniggered and shuffled cards. IOU held out the back of his hand and mimed a slap. The Irish laughed.
Ben went to the soberly designed
entrance doors, taking a glance outside. The day terminal, the sky streaked with pink and orange. The foot traffic on the street outside a trickle. The mountains looming over the city like ancient gods. A motel opposite with a few lights on in the windows already. Ben thought he saw a curtain twitch, blinking into an orange sun. The breeze that rolled through the doors around him a spiteful kind of cold. He pulled the collar of his overcoat up and turned back inside. Running his fingers over the tender scratches on his face. Li Yu. Feeling empty in the chest. Bottomless.
Tell me you love me, Ben. Say the words to me.
Her throat underneath his hands. That look of absolute fear in her eyes.
Scared! I was frightened of you!
Ben bit into his bottom lip hard again and squeezed the Thompson machine gun in his fist harder. Guts full of acid, ghosts and shit. He shuffled over to the check-in booth and leaned his weight against the desk, staring down at reflections crawling towards him on the marbled flooring.
“This place gives me the willies. Don’t seem right, empty the way it is. That music playing all the time. It’s like a ghost house or something,” IOU said, uncorking another bottle of wine from a collection beside him and gulping at it.
“I second that. Something feels strange. Not right,” Leary said.
“I think it’s fucking hinky that there’s a party going on and I ain’t seen hide nor hair of any guests. The music’s giving me a headache,” Negro said.
“The maid told me she saw a whole bunch of them arriving in flash cars. Said she saw some famous movie stars,” IOU said to the ceiling.
“Who’d she see?” Leary asked.
“I don’t know. She didn’t say no names. She just said famous movies stars. Besides, I was preoccupied trying to get her apron untied,” IOU sniggered and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Go on and tell them what you heard, Connor. It’ll put a chill down their backs.” Christopher nodded at his brother, sitting up on the couch.
“I don’t know what I heard; the music’s so fucking loud. Got a pounding headache myself too. Was probably nothing.” Connor shrugged, slapping an ace of spades down on the tabletop. Lighting another cigarette.
“What did you hear?” Ben said, wiping the seat of a leather chair with his handkerchief and sitting down underneath a painting of a poppy field. Blood red. Laying the Thompson on the floor beside him.
“Well, I was taking a look around on the second floor. Wasn’t looking to steal anything of course. Just looking out of interest, you know. And one of those songs, the music being played so fucking loud on the top floor came to a stop for a few seconds and I thought I heard a kid or something.”
Ben jolted like a man in the electric chair. “You heard a child? Here? In the hotel?”
“Yeah, maybe. A kid. Crying. I mean, really fucking crying. Screaming. In pain. Then the music came back on and I couldn’t hear nothing no more. Scared the shit out of me, to be frank. Got myself the hell off of that floor. Got my ass back down here. Not been back up there since. Won’t again, that’s for sure. Something don’t feel right about this place, like the atmosphere is off or something. I don’t like it. Hotel’s ain’t supposed to be this empty. Fucking classical music playing nonstop.”
Ben gagged and then vomited on the marble floor. Bile splashed across the cuffs of his slacks. The Irishmen stared at him for a moment and then looked away. He shook a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping at his mouth as he spoke. “Say it again, Christopher, what you said when you saw me and Leary. Say it again. Say it again. Say. It. Again.”
“What? Nothing.” Christopher’s eyes popped wide.
“What did you say?” Ben coughed. Pulling at the creases in his slacks as though they were hurting his flesh.
“Nothing. Just said I was bored. That’s it. Didn’t mean nothing offensive by it.”
“No. No. No. Before. Before that. What did you say? What did you say? You say?” Ben took off his hat and screwed it up in his hands like a wet towel. His mouth constricted to a slit.
“You mean, Fat Man Leary in the Peery?” Christopher shrugged, looking at Leary. The Fat Man shook his head at Christopher.
“Fuck!” Ben scratched at his neck. His face. Scabs tore loose and blood trickled down his face.
“What are you talking about, English?” Leary slid his machine gun onto the top of the piano and pressed a couple of keys. Playing Shave and a Haircut.
“The hairless man was trying to say ‘Peery’ not ‘Leary’…” Ben stood up shakily, stumbling towards the stairs.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Englishman?” Leary called after him.
“The hairless man in the café. Frankie told me about him. He was trying to say ‘Peery’ not ‘Leary’…”
“Wait a minute!” Leary called out again.
Ben couldn’t hear him. In a trance as he made his way up the stairs. His hand sliding over the oak bannister. Touch wood. Touch wood. Touch wood.
“Ah, let him go,” Connor said, waving a dismissive hand. “He hasn’t been right since Stevie died.”
“The Englishman? When was he ever right?” Leary walked across to the fireplace, threw his cigar into the flames, kicked off his shoes and collapsed into a couch, the frame gasped. Leary closed his eyes.
Ben deaf to the words they said. He was a child again climbing the stairs of a house in Chelsea, London that had poisoned his body and stunted his growth. Lost. In a trance. A man on the moon. Making his way slowly up the steps. Felt like he was traveling down. Inverted. Twisted. The lights burning down on him setting his flesh ablaze. The music, The Flower Duet, Duo des Fleurs choking his heart. Vibrating through his bones. Bringing tears to his eyes.
He fell to his knees on the second-floor landing, staring at his blurry reflection in a smoky floor to ceiling mirror.
Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there!
Then stumbling up the staircase to the third floor and the banquet room. Every step upon the stair a point-blank bullet of memory and violent imagery ripping and tearing its way through his brain.
Upon the stair, I met a man
Beetle Man
who wasn’t there!
Mother
Say it, Benny, say the words
A razor strop ripping into the flesh
Pillow soaked with tears
you love me
I love you, mother
Just a scared, lost kid
yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there!
Sickness and disease
very dirty... Filthy
A filthy, filthy girl
The Beetle Man
Tell me you love me, Ben
Say the words to me
I love you
Mother
Li Yu
And I love you. Even I know all the
terrible things
you’ve done
who wasn’t there!
I still love you
yesterday
upon
the stair
who wasn’t there!
Cold
Freezing
Goosebumps speckling his pale skin
Toys on a shelf with eyes that glistened in the moonlight
Twisted on string like dead men
hanging from the ceiling
Fabric on fabric
Skin on skin
Intoxicating
Scent of a woman
Her eyes
sucked him
in
Drowning him. Icy blue. Desperate
Inside of her
Whispering the words
Please, please, please
over and over
Crazy
Mother
Weak
Sick
Filthy
Crazy
Buggy
Mother
Mother
Mother
Mother
Ben stood swaying in front of the large banquet room doors.
Cold. Freezing. Goosebumps speckling his pale skin. Dark yellow piss trickling down his legs and puddling around his dark brown oxfords onto the floor of his childhood home. Hand shaking sickly as he reached out to the golden doorknob. Reflected like an insect in its smooth surface. The soprano’s screeching within the music assaulting his face and ears like blows of an angry parent’s fists. Couldn’t breathe. Suffocating. Hyperventilating, drowning as he twisted the handle and pushed the doors open wide onto a landscape of darkness, spotlights, and absolute pandemonium. Hell.
I'll Pray When I'm Dying Page 19