Snake Eyes

by Joyce Carol Oates

  3

  Laughter up ahead?—loud, raucous laughter?—Michael O’Meara paused, and listened, on the stairs to Lee Roy Sears’s studio, on the third floor of a shabby warehouse in North Putnam. He would not have come if he’d known there would be other visitors.

  It was late Saturday following Thanksgiving. A chilly, diaphanous day. Though Lee Roy had been working in this place for several weeks now, the rent being paid (so Michael assumed: Lee Roy naturally had not said) by Valeria Darrell, Michael had not had time to drop by and visit, as Lee Roy had suggested.

  Nor had Gina, to his knowledge.

  Relations between the O’Mearas and Lee Roy Sears seemed to have subtly but unmistakably altered, from what they had been before Lee Roy’s dismissal from the Dumont Center. Gina avoided the very mention of Lee Roy’s name and found excuses for not inviting him to dinner; Lee Roy himself was reticent in Michael’s company. He thinks I didn’t try hard enough to keep him on at the Center, Michael thought guiltily.

  He imagines I have much more personal power than I have.

  The battered-looking door to the studio stood open, and Michael rapped on it and entered. He saw to his disappointment that, with Lee Roy, were Valeria Darrell and two aggressively loud companions, whom he was certain he’d never seen before. Valeria was pouring drinks, with a good deal of ceremony and chatter; seeing Michael O’Meara, she stretched her lips in a grimace of a smile and said, mock-graciously, “Why!—do come in! But where is your lovely wife?”

  Michael winced.

  He was fairly certain Lee Roy Sears winced too.

  Michael sensed how his presence was unwanted, unwelcome. But he concealed his unease with his usual hearty smile and shook hands all around. (How tentative and fleeting, Lee Roy’s handshake: though the man himself had grown quite muscular, and his fingers were certainly strong!) Valeria introduced him to her friends from New York “Vargas” and “Mina”—the one huge, fleshy, a man in his sixties with a round bald head, a yellow satin shirt and red suspenders straining over his belly, pink gums leeringly exposed as he grinned, the other tall, thin, storklike, a “girl” in her thirties with thick glossy lips and eyelids painted frosty blue. “Vargas and Mina own the Avanti Gallery on Greene Street,” Valeria said excitedly, “where Lee Roy will be represented.” Vargas laughed as he shook hands with Michael, exclaiming, “Michael O’Meara!” as if there were something amusing in the name; Mina lisped, “Oh!—hello!” widening her protuberant eyes at him and blinking rapidly. Was she flirting, so openly?—was she drunk? What was this?

  The bizarre thought crossed Michael’s mind, and was immediately dismissed, These are not human beings, these are demons.

  And there stood Lee Roy Sears, Michael’s friend, staring at him with a vague blank grin, as if he scarcely knew him.

  The men locked eyes, for a brief instant.

  Michael’s eyes searching, open—Lee Roy’s glassy and opaque.

  Valeria splashed bourbon into a cloudy-looking glass and pressed it into Michael’s hand. The woman was so excessively made up, her brunette hair so extravagantly streaked with gold, she was hardly recognizable as the person she’d been, for years, in Mount Orion society. She too is a demon. A demon-whore.

  Valeria’s fractured nose was mending, presumably. But it looked raw and bruised beneath its thick patina of makeup.

  Valeria raised her glass, loudly proclaiming a toast: “To Lee Roy’s new studio! To Lee Roy’s new career!”

  “Cheers!” cried Vargas, and “Cheers!” cried Mina, raising their glasses high.

  “Cheers!” said Michael, trying to fall in with their mood.

  Lee Roy screwed up his face as if in embarrassment, or anger.

  He said nothing, merely drank.

  It was only mid-afternoon, and Michael O’Meara assuredly did not want to drink bourbon, but, what choice had he?—among these people.

  Valeria began at once to talk of something—a party, an excursion, planned for the following weekend—about which Michael knew nothing, except, of course, that such talk was aimed to exclude him; to make him feel pointedly unwanted. Very well, he thought, I understand. He glanced again at Lee Roy Sears, who ignored him too.

  He drifted off, drink in hand. The room was an immense, drafty loft, in crude repair; with high ceilings, exposed girders, windows of grimy square panes. In a farther corner there were stacks of boxes and cartons. Lee Roy’s work area was crowded into a small space at this end of the room, near a window. There was a filthy double sink in a corner and, behind a battered screen, plainly visible from the door, a filthy toilet. A Pullman refrigerator, hot-plate burners, a cluttered worktable, benches, chairs, boxes of hastily packed art supplies, sheets of paint-splattered newspaper spread out on the floor—everything harshly illuminated by the chill November light, as if overexposed. And how strong the smell of oil paint and turpentine, assailing Michael’s nostrils.

  Michael saw that Lee Roy’s original clay figures, the humanoid males, were positioned on the windowsills, like lizards about to spring into life. And where were the “obscene” females?—had Lee Roy smashed every one of them?

  They’re what came out.

  What comes out.

  Since moving to Putnam, Lee Roy had returned to painting, which he’d done, or tried, in prison, with limited success. Michael saw several very messy canvases lying about, as if discarded in anger; on a brand-new easel was a large canvas partly untouched and partly layered in swaths of black, gunmetal gray, and bright arterial red, in a manner suggestive of Jackson Pollock. This work appeared, to Michael O’Meara’s uncritical eye, as somewhat more controlled than the discarded canvases. Yet, what was it?

  A tangle of machinery, perhaps. A blood explosion in its midst.

  More of the Vietnam nightmare?—which Michael O’Meara, who had never served his country, had never worn a United States Army uniform, had been spared.

  On the floor beside the easel was a stack of sketches, some in paint, others in charcoal. Michael squatted on his heels and looked idly through these, as, behind him, talking as if he were not present, their conversation interrupted by peals of laughter, the others continued their celebration.

  Casual sketches of machines, helicopters, humanoid figures. Sketches, in charcoal, of more realistically depicted men, and women. What to make of these?—there were dozens of sketches, most so hastily, or so unskillfully, executed, as to be without identity, just bodies, naked and unappealing. Yet their very quantity suggested Lee Roy Sears’s commitment to his art.

  Near the bottom of the stack, as if hidden away, were several that made Michael pause and draw in his breath sharply.

  A porcine figure, male, with tiny genitalia and a round, smug face—was this Clyde Somerset, crudely transformed?

  An obese creature, also male, with close-set piggish eyes, writhing horribly in flame, and dripping globules of fat?—was this Mal Bishop?

  An elderly female, rail-thin, naked, on her back, with white hair, tightly shut eyes, upper torso hacked and bleeding—was this Julia Sutter?

  A fleshy, big-breasted and -hipped woman, naked, lying on a bed, smiling insipidly, plump knees parted—was this Michael’s sister, Janet?

  And, this—this horror—could it be Michael’s wife, Gina?

  Michael stared. His vision blurred with moisture, and he blinked to clear it, holding the drawing in fingers that shook so badly the stiff construction paper rattled. He was desperate to see, to know—was this female figure meant to be Gina?—or merely a woman who resembled her?—clumsily drawn, as if in anger, yes it looked as if the charcoal crayon had broken in several places, gripped tightly in the artist’s hand. Thus the woman’s thin snaky nude body was smudged, and her beautiful masklike face smudged, giving it a leering, leprous appearance.

  “Gina. My God.”

  The next sketch portrayed the same woman—skeletal-thin, yet with sizable breasts, grotesque erect nipples, pudenda boldly displayed, with features comically suggestive of her own face. The n
ext sketch showed the woman lying on her back, wrists and ankles bound, arms and legs outspread so that her vagina was a raw, gaping O; her head thrown back, mouth an O too, of agony. The next sketch, at the very bottom of the stack, showed the same woman, standing, naked, arms lifted toward the viewer as if in a mock embrace, her face a horrifying mass of cross-hatchings (scars? burns? fresh wounds?) out of which, nonetheless, she smiled lewdly, the tip of her tongue protruding from between her lips.

  The tip of her tongue had been colored in, in bright pink.

  This dash of bright pink, shocking to the eye, was the sole color in the entire stack of sketches.

  The man is a madman.

  A murderer?

  No. These are works of the imagination. Fantasies.

  Perhaps he put them there deliberately, to test me?

  As, dreaming, we are the dreams we dream, and cannot escape from them except by the metaphysical impossibility of becoming someone other than ourselves, so too Michael O’Meara, on that appalling occasion, found himself behaving as if—almost!—nothing were wrong. Rising shakily to his full height, leaning for support on the edge of a table; and, in the process, nearly knocking over a bottle of turpentine into which paint-stiffened brushes had been thrust. He saw too, though not with much awareness, a curious sort of razor-instrument, for what function he couldn’t guess—it looked as if a razor blade had been secured by layers of adhesive tape to the handle of a broken paintbrush. The blade glinted, sharply.

  The others saw Michael O’Meara set down his glass of bourbon, which had been scarcely touched, and turn to leave. Lee Roy Sears stared as if stricken. Valeria, Vargas, lisping Mina—they were looking after the departing man with expressions of—surprise?—curiosity?—derision?—but he did not turn back, except to wave over his shoulder, a friendly sort of farewell.

  Lee Roy Sears called, quickly, “Mr. O’Meara!”

  Michael was descending the stairs briskly. He did not want to speak with Lee Roy Sears; he did not want to speak with him, nor even look at him, ever again.

  But Lee Roy persisted, following him down the stairs. “Mr. O’Meara—how come you’re leaving so soon? You just got here, huh?”

  Michael’s heart was pounding dangerously. The Liloprane in his blood removed what would have been “anxiety” and replaced it with a purely physical and visceral response, as if Michael’s body were a mechanism, begun to accelerate, over which he had no control, and about which he felt detached, even indifferent. His revulsion for Lee Roy Sears was wholly mental.

  Michael had stopped on the second-floor landing, and Lee Roy limped down quickly to join him. The men regarded each other with cautious eyes.

  Lee Roy repeated, with an effort at smiling, “Well, uh, Mr. O’Meara, I mean ‘Michael’—what d’you think of my new studio? Real nice, huh?”

  Michael said quietly, “Very nice.”

  He saw that Lee Roy Sears had not only grown thicker-bodied, but, oddly, taller: an inch or two taller, now, than Michael O’Meara.

  He saw that the dark, gold-spangled mark on Lee Roy Sears’s left forearm was a tattoo: a snake: partly visible beneath the man’s carelessly rolled-up shirtsleeve. What kind of snake, what sort of posture it was in, he could not see; and did not care to see.

  How could you. My wife. My sister, and my wife.

  How could you betray me.

  Michael stood tall, composed, listening politely as Lee Roy Sears nervously chattered about his new studio, his new work, the Avanti Gallery, which was going to represent his work—“Gonna make me a millionaire, says Valeria, and I says, ‘Shit, all I want is to pay my own way!’” Michael said nothing, or murmured a vague assent. Lee Roy pulled a paint-stiffened rag out of the back pocket of his trousers, and drew it roughly beneath his nose. His eyes too were damp; his skin was mottled, as with teenage acne. Now his hair was longer, it fell in greasy tangles over the collar of his shirt; its fine sheen was gone, and there were streaks of gray in it, as in Michael O’Meara’s own hair. How could you. After I saved your life.

  Not anger, nor even a sense of horror, but simple childlike hurt—as a boy might feel, betrayed by his brother. That was what shone in Michael O’Meara’s eyes.

  Lee Roy Sears was saying, “Uh—I heard they found the guy who killed the old lady? That’s a break, Jezuz! Now the fuckers don’t have to try to blame it on me.”

  Michael said, quietly, “You didn’t do it, Lee Roy, did you?”

  “Huh?” Lee Roy grinned stupidly.

  “You didn’t kill Julia Sutter, did you?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying.”

  “—I told you: no.” Lee Roy screwed up his face and seemed about to wink; then thought better of it. “You’re kidding, huh?—I get it.”

  Michael said, “Of course I’m kidding, Lee Roy. We both know that.”

  To Lee Roy’s astonishment, Michael was about to turn and descend the rest of the stairs, and leave him there, gaping after. Lee Roy said quickly, “Uh, wait—you’re mad at me, or something?”

  Michael said, in the same quiet voice, “Of course not, Lee Roy. Why would I be mad at you.”

  “You’re asking me if I killed that old lady, I’m the one that’s got a reason to be mad, insulted, huh?—what about that?”

  Michael shrugged. He glanced at his watch and made to move off. Lee Roy shyly touched his arm to retain him.

  “I got lots of reasons to be mad at you, but—I’m not!”

  “‘Lots of reasons’—?”

  “You fucked up with Somerset, didn’t you?—you know you did.”

  Michael’s face burned. “I did my best.”

  “And the old bitch Sutter—you fucked up plenty with her, I guess.” Lee Roy chuckled angrily. “They kicked me out flat on my ass and you said you’d help and what did it come to?—shit.”

  “Lee Roy, I told you I did my best. You exaggerate my power in Mount Orion.”

  “Yah, I guess I did!”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Okay, fuck it, I did. So what? I got a new place now, and I’m on my way. Valeria is commissioning me to paint a picture for her house, and she’s got friends who want to buy my stuff, and, like I said, the Avanti Gallery, in New York—”

  Michael interrupted, calmly, saying, “Lee Roy, my sister, Janet, has been seeing you, is that right?—she’s doing an article on you?—is that right?”

  “Article?” Lee Roy’s eyes narrowed, as suspiciously. “What kind of an article?”

  “Isn’t she doing an article?—interviewing you?”

  “I told her, Jezuz I don’t want more crap said about me—it always turns out wrong. Mis-leading.”

  “But you’ve been seeing her, haven’t you?”

  Lee Roy shrugged. Nervous, edgy, yet defensive, he stood on the balls of his feet, as if anticipating an attack; he gripped his left hand with his right, exerting tension, clenching his arm and shoulder muscles. Michael estimated Lee Roy had gained as much as forty pounds since he’d begun working out at the gym. He must have been consuming huge amounts of calories daily.

  “Haven’t you been seeing her?” Michael asked. “Just tell the truth, Lee Roy.”

  Lee Roy’s mottled face darkened. “What’s this, an interrogation?—who wants to know?”

  “I do. I want to know.”

  “So, shit, who’re you?” Lee Roy asked. Then, at once, guilty, he said, “Okay, you saved my life. Okay, Mr. O’Meara, yah you did, and I’m grateful—you and Mrs. O’Meara both, you been real nice to me. Yah, I been seeing your sister, sort of. Not much.”

  “How much?—how seriously?”

  Lee Roy glanced up the stairs, as if fearful that Valeria might overhear. He said, in a lowered, solemn voice, “Uh, your sister’s a real nice woman, y’know? Real nice, classy. Except, she’s always asking questions. Like, I’m supposed to give her answers.”

  “Do you see each other often?—are you lovers?”

  Lee Roy winced. He looked away fr
om Michael’s face. He said, as if not having heard, “I told her, I says, ‘Janet, you’re too good for me.’ I says, ‘You don’t want to get messed up, get your hands dirty, on a guy like me.’”

  “You said that?—really?”

  “Sure I did.”

  “Like a—gentleman.”

  “Hell, I just told her what’s what. She’s a nice woman, like I said, I don’t want to screw her up.”

  “But are you lovers?”

  Lee Roy shook his head ambiguously. “You want to know, ask her. She wants you to know, she’ll tell you.”

  “Then—you are lovers?”

  “I said—ask her.”

  Michael was gripping the stairway railing, hard. He saw again, fleetingly, in his mind’s eye, that image, crude, dreamlike, of his sister lying on her back, legs spread. Insipid smile. The O’Meara smile.

  And what of my wife. Have you dared touch my wife.

  As if reading Michael’s thoughts, Lee Roy Sears lurched away, backward, colliding with the wall; saying, in a whining, childish voice, “You got no right to ask me questions all the time, Mr. O’Meara. You, and everybody else! Just ’cause I’m an ex-con, I’m on parole, nobody’s got the right to treat me like some kind of freak. Like, Mrs. O’Meara, she—”

  There was a pause. Michael said, calmly, “Yes? What about Gina?”

  “—the way she looks at me! Used to look at me,” Lee Roy mumbled. Then he laughed, harshly. “Haven’t seen her in a while, huh!”

  “Gina has been very nice to you, Lee Roy. I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Seeing again, in that mirrored surface. Gina, in this man’s embrace.

  But no: it had never happened. He’d imagined it. Had he?

  How have you dared.

  Lee Roy was saying, in his whining, aggrieved voice, “—had Thanksgiving with Valeria. Her kids couldn’t make it, so”—he paused, sniffing. His eyes glared up at Michael’s, defiantly. “We had a big turkey dinner at her place. Just us two.”

  “Did you!—how nice.”