Apathy and Other Small Victories (5 page)

Doug was amazed.

“I can stand here and ask her the same question five times and she has no idea what I’m talking about, but you just move your hands around and she knows exactly what you mean!”

Doug never really understood the concept of sign language. And most of the time I wasn’t even signing. I was mashing my hands together and flittering my fingers while clearly mouthing the same question to her that Doug had just asked five times. When he talked he mumbled or played with his mustache or turned his head in mid-sentence. Then he’d say the same thing again, only louder. Doug never understood that for someone to read your lips they need to see your mouth, and that volume doesn’t matter when you’re deaf. Doug never understood a lot of things.

“I can’t believe how quick you picked it up. Did you speak any sign language before you started coming here?”

“No, I did not,” I said, while signing
I hate you
.

Marlene barked a laugh, then pressed her lips together as her face went red.

“That’s great,” Doug said, smiling. “Say something else.”

“I speak sign language, but I am not deaf,” I said, and signed
I want to throw my shit at you
.

Marlene was trying to strangle the laugh in her throat. She sounded like a gagged hostage whimpering for her life.

“How do you say ‘I am a dentist’?” he asked.

I eat my shit
, I signed, as Doug haltingly imitated me. Marlene couldn’t hold it together. “HMAAA! . . . HMAAA! . . . HMAAA!” she blared in a series of atonal bursts that rose into strange registers and pitches, then went silent before blaring again, like a malfunctioning boat horn signaling to the shore. She hid her face in her hands.

“Why is she laughing?” Doug asked.

“I’ll ask her.”

Why do you have sex with my shit?
I signed.

Stop it! Asshole! I’m going to get fired!

“She says when we speak sign language it’s like we have lisps, and we use broken phrases, like immigrants. She says we talk like lisping immigrants.”

“Ha ha, well, we’re in the right country for it!” Doug said.

I don’t think he even knew what he was talking about.

I eat my shit
, Doug signed slowly to her, grinning.

And tears rolled down Marlene’s deaf cheeks.

If I could’ve said for sure where I’d been the night before I would have felt a lot better about sitting in the interrogation room of a police station, but even so I didn’t feel that bad. The bright light made the room a little warmer than it should have been, and I was still pretty hung over, but I was getting used to it. I had nothing to worry about. I was probably down at the bar, drinking pitchers of beer and not talking to anyone. I probably was. Everything would be fine.

Detective Sikes walked in holding a manila file folder, his chest puffed out like a little bird. He sat down in the middle chair and laid the folder on the table between us. Brooks was probably at the tinted window with The Chief saying, “Let’s see how the kid does.”

“Before we get started detective, can I ask you a question?” I said.

“All right.” He was immediately thrown off.

“Why did the other detective call you ‘Sergeant’ at my apartment? I thought detectives and sergeants were different?”

“They are different. Sergeant is my first name,” he said.

“Wow. What a crazy coincidence.”

“Not really. My dad was a detective. Two of my uncles were cops. My grandfather was chief of police back in the fifties.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. I know,” he said, temporarily human and forlorn.

“Detective Sikes, can you come out here for a second?” It was Brooks, talking over a speaker that sounded like it was right above my head. He was pissed.

I tried to keep a straight face as I imagined the shouting that was going on outside. When Sikes came back in his face was flushed and he was all business.

“All right, let’s start over. How well did you know Marlene Burton?”

“I knew her all right. I was at the dentist’s a lot. Doug has some kind of banged up narcolepsy from getting his head smashed by a bus door, so while he freaked out in his office me and Marlene used to talk. She taught me sign language.”

He looked at me the way my mom did the time she caught me officiating the wedding of Mr. Potato Head and He-Man. I had just said, “You may kiss the bride,” and when I looked up she was standing in the doorway. I was fourteen years old, and I was not wearing any pants.

“We’re in a police station here tough guy. I don’t know if you realize how serious this is. A woman is dead.” I got the feeling he was trying hard not to have a nervous breakdown, just like my mom did.

“I am being serious,” I said.

“When was the last time you saw Marlene Burton?”

“About a month ago, maybe longer. At the office during my last appointment, whenever that was.”

“Anything happen between the two of you? She seem like she was okay?”

“Nothing happened. She seemed fine to me.”

“You ever been to her house?”

“Nope. Wait once. For a party. She put a sign on my back. It was humiliating.”

He looked at me like I had no pants on again. It wasn’t my fault. He-Man and Mr. Potato Head were in love.

“Did you have a sexual relationship with Marlene Burton?”

“No way.”

“What, you don’t like girls?”

“I like girls. She was married.”

“Don’t like married women huh?”

I immediately remembered my landlord’s wife, and I hoped there wasn’t more involved in this than I first thought. Things suddenly didn’t seem so funny anymore.

  Chapter 3

I didn’t know what I was doing in that city. I never know what I’m doing anywhere. I only know how I’ll leave. It’s always on a Greyhound. It’s almost too easy. They go everywhere cheap and all you have to do is sit back and look out the window and pretend that motion and direction are the same thing.

The drivers are nice to you as long as you’re not obviously drunk or touching people when it gets dark. Sometimes they’re funny and friendly. They tell jokes like, “Why are Tigger’s paws always dirty… because he’s always playing with Pooh!” and “What’s the worst part about having sex with a three-year-old girl… the fact that you have to kill her afterwards!” Nobody laughed at that one but me, and I was mostly being polite.

Sometimes they bark out a list of rules when you get on the bus and they try to be hard about it because they really wanted to be a cop or join the army but they couldn’t pass the physical and became morbidly obese bus drivers instead. Sometimes they say prayers for a safe journey, but it never feels like they’re violating your civil liberties. For the most part they just drive and leave you alone. They’re all right. Even that lady who told the joke about the three-year-old. She was just lonely.

It’s not the worst way to go once you know what to expect. There’s a baby crying on every bus, and a couple is always fighting. Teenage girls are going to visit their boyfriends and teenage boys are going to live with their stepmothers. There’s an old woman with huge novelty sunglasses and a pinwheel who won’t stop talking to everyone, and somebody’s car broke down and they have no other way to get home. There’s a pair of nuns up front who don’t speak English. Women with creased faces buy one-way tickets and men in camouflage pants eye you up because they think you want to steal their bags. And there’s an old man sitting on a bench and looking down at the ground outside every bus station in America.

It’s all the people who aren’t rich enough for Amtrak or airfare and aren’t bothered enough to care how they get to wherever it is they’re going. And when they start talking, and they always do, you find that each of them has a story they want to tell. Everyone, no matter how old or young, has some lesson they want to teach. And I sit there and listen and learn all about life from people who have no idea how to live it. Nobody knows how to just shut the fuck up and look out the window anymore.

The bathrooms are tiny and filthy and you have no choice but to piss all over yourself when the bus swerves, but the streetlights look like blurred stars exploding in the window when it rains at night, and you can sleep knowing that if there’s an accident and everyone on the bus dies it wasn’t your fault. Someone fat and snoring will sometimes sit beside you and sweat on your shoulder even though it’s twelve degrees outside, and someone else with a big head shaped like an onion and dirty hair that smells like fish sticks will sit in front of you and recline their seat into your lap. And you’ll be trapped and sleepless and sad for the entire ride. But then other times you get two whole seats to yourself, and when that becomes your idea of luxury you know you’ve found something that no one else is even looking for, and if you gave it to them for Christmas they’d return it the next morning as soon as the stores opened. And then you get to think of yourself like the little drummer boy, playing for Jesus even though he’s too young to understand, even though nobody in Bethlehem really likes percussion and they think you’re a cheap ass for not bringing gold or frankincense. And it’s a shame when you realize that you won’t get to be in the Bible, and it doesn’t seem right. But then nobody gets to be in the Bible anymore, no matter who they are or what they do, and the sooner you realize that the easier it all becomes. But it’s still a shame.

And that’s why I had to talk to Bryce. I wasn’t going to be in the Bible, so it was time to make other arrangements.

He was crouched low, painting the molding around the front door outside the apartment building. He was the landlord, so he had to do that kind of thing. Bryce was tall, about my height but built, with tattoos twisting all the way up his arms, snakes and hearts and daggers and all kinds of shit. He had a drawn, lean face and the transparent remains of a thinning rockabilly pompadour still clinging to his head. He’d probably been in a band a few years ago, bought into the entire scene, but it hadn’t worked out. And now he was stuck with the cigarettes and the sideburns and all those fucking Stray Cats albums. But like the working class hero he’d never become, Bryce hung in the best he could. So while Brian Setzer sang on Gap commercials and pranced around the stage in his fancy pants, Bryce still cuffed his dark jeans and carried his wallet on a chain, still kept the hairstyle even as it betrayed and openly mocked him, still shot pool with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth even though it sometimes fucked up his shot. If it wasn’t exactly noble, it wasn’t without conviction either.

“So Bryce, we need to talk,” I said seriously, but smiling. I was being funny.

“Oh hi Shane. Hi. How are you?”

He stood up from his crouch and held the paintbrush upright so the white paint dripped slowly down the handle and ran onto his tattoos. He didn’t even notice. He was too busy scratching the back of his neck and looking at my shoes. He was always much too nervous for a guy with so many tattoos.

“That’s just it Bryce.” I kept using his name to build trust, like a hostage negotiator. “I’m not so good.”

“How much are you short?” His voice cracked on
short
and he dropped the paintbrush.

I was stunned. The element of surprise was gone. I had no more time to build trust and pity. I was the worst hostage negotiator ever.

“Uh, about two hundred.”

“Oh… Oh…” He bent down to pick up the paintbrush but it kept slipping out of his fingers, the handle hopping off the steps with a tedious
tink tink tinktink
that was driving me fucking crazy. I wanted to kick him in the face and run away. Then he stood up without the brush and scratched his neck with both hands.

“We should talk about this,” he said. He was even more nervous than usual. He was tearing at his neck and jerking his head around like a frightened animal, looking everywhere except at me. I was about to be evicted. Fuck. This was no good. Obviously I wanted it to happen, but not yet. The timing was all wrong.

“Okay, this is serious,” he said.

Goddamnit Bryce, people are supposed to have more faith in each other. Landlords especially. I’m living in your building. That makes you kind of like my dad. Family is supposed to be important. When I stiffed him on next month’s rent, then he could throw me out with a clear conscience. Until then he was just being a bad father and a dick.

“This is about my wife,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“If you do, I’ll take the $200 off your rent.”

“Do?”

“Would you?”

Would I what? Did he want me to kill her? In every movie I’d seen that costs more than $200. Was I supposed to have sex with her? That would make me a whore. Did I really want Bryce as my pimp? No, he was paying me, he’d be my john. But what would that make her? She’d be the groom at the bachelor party who fucks the stripper. I’d be the stripper. What?

“I didn’t even know you were married,” was all I could get out.

“I am.” He was ripping up the back of his neck, digging his nails in and tearing it raw. And with the white paint all over his one hand, smearing it around, it was just making me sick.