As I Die Lying (21 page)

"Well, tickle my dick and
paint my balls blue. If it isn't Richie Coldiron, pretending
to
give
a good
goddamn? Pretending to actually
care
for another human being? The
sensitive act again. Don't make me bust a nut laughing."

You cold-hearted son of a bitch.

"It's not
my
heart, bro’. That's
all yours, every pathetic little beat. My business is down lower.
You suck the shellfish oyster but today’s special is the bearded
clam."

Fuck you.

"I may take you up on that offer sometime,
Riddle-me-dick. If pickings get slim."

My feet led me onto the landscaped grounds of
the university. The grass was trimmed close to the ground, like a
putting green. Students sprawled on the common and sat Indian style
on the open courtyards. People in shorts were tossing Frisbees or
lying in the sun, chatting over the noise from loud radios.
Solitary figures sat under trees with thick books. I searched.
Always searching, we were.

I climbed some steps to a platform at the
entrance to the Student Union. I sat at a weathered wooden table.
Someone had carved "J.G. + D.R. 4EVER" into the tabletop. The
inscription was fresh, a testament gouged in the flesh of wood.

I looked out over the sea of grass from the
high lonely lighthouse of my soul. The lawn was broken by stone
boxes containing holly shrubs and red geraniums. The walkways
curved with the rises, guided by brick shoulders.

A long thin girl walked past, and my hunter's
eyes followed her. She was wearing a charcoal miniskirt, the fabric
so thick that it didn't shake. Her legs, raped by white nylon,
descended like sticks into heavy shoes. Her stockings reminded me
of Sally Bakken, and a sudden rage tightened my throat.

Little Hitler? But you weren't there. You
didn't come until...later.

"Your little snitch filled me in, Richard.
Makes my blood boil. Revenge—"

"—is a dish best
served
as
leftovers," Mister Milktoast said. “With a bowl of
serial.”

Mister Milktoast? Did you tell?

"I never kiss and tell."

Mister
Milktoast
.

"Well...maybe I let
something slip. It gets
lonely
in here, Richard. No one to talk with."

And Little Hitler is the best you can do for
companionship?

"Misery loves company but it sleeps with
whatever it can get."

The thin girl's carefully wrought curls
draped the front of her shoulders, but her hair was too crafted and
doll-like. Her alligator eyes were without passion, staring ahead
as if in permanent slumber. Even the faint sound of swishing nylon
didn't arouse Loverboy. Well, maybe a little.

But those stockings did something to Little
Hitler. He was filled with a desire to break her like bone China,
thinking of Sally Bakken and broken promises. I clenched my fists,
trying to drive him back inside. I didn't want Little Hitler to
hate her. I needed to love, even though loving was possibly
worse.

If there was one theme that emerged while
working on this book, it was the same old corny crap you can find
in every category romance and Internet porn site and Hallmark
greeting card and pop song and every church in the land. But after
Mister Milktoast imagined it, Little Hitler corrupted it, Loverboy
spewed on it, and Bookworm edited it down to dull powder, precious
little love was left. It never had a chance.

I watched as she headed for the entrance to
the library. In the reflection of the glass doors, the bright scene
played out in reverse. This backwards view was somehow truer and
more vital than the actual reality. She walked into her own
reflection and disappeared.

A round-faced blonde sat down at the table
next to mine. She was not Beth. She pulled a cigarette from the
pocket of her pink sweater. Her forehead crinkled as she lit it.
She inhaled and her cheeks hollowed. A finger of smoke hovered
seductively around her head, then was whisked away by the faint
autumn breeze.

She was playing a game with her cigarette, a
tiny joke of death. I could see the nicotine death skip across her
eyes. The danger was part of her thrill. But this was a death she
could control, one she could hold at arm's length, one she could
stub out. A slow suicide for someone who thought she had all the
time in the world to die.

"Do you wonder?" Little Hitler asked me. "How
would she really embrace death?"

Don't talk that way. Once was enough. One
time was too many.

"Oh, she loves this long-distance
relationship, this cigarette that is like a love letter from the
other side. Maybe she would accept a few collect phone calls, maybe
even sit with death in a well-lighted restaurant."

Don't talk madness, Little Hitler.

"From the lips of experience,” he responded,
with echoes of Bookworm or maybe even my Poet days, if he’d been
browsing the Bone House bookshelves. “But would she? If death
fondled her in a moonlit car, its breath foul and moist on her ear,
if death bent low for a soul-tainting kiss..."

"
Now
you're talking, Little Diddler,"
said Loverboy. "Cheap thrills and all that good shit. And you got
Richard's poetry crap down pat."

"...if death opened its black robes to her,
if it drew her into its frigid folds, if it sucked her as tenderly
as she sucks her cigarette, would she squirm then?"

"Damn, Diddler," said
Loverboy. "You're kinky. I
like
that in a headmate."

"I should offer to introduce her. Set up a
blind date, perhaps, with my friend Death? Hmm, Richard?"

No. Never again. Haven't I suffered
enough?

"
You
? Suffer? What about Mother? What
about Virginia? What about what you made me do to
Father?"

That wasn’t
me
. That was
you
, Little
Hitler.

The blonde flicked her cigarette butt into
the shrubbery and left.

The white-stockinged girl walked by again,
parading flesh. Loverboy let her pass. Little Hitler let her
live.

I basked in the sun, its healing rays
bringing life to my crowded flesh, driving the inner shadows deep
until I could no longer hear the voices.

I was ashamed of what they had let me
become.

An hour passed. I didn't see Beth. I began
the long walk back to my car, and then drove home.

There was a typewriter in the Bone House, and
we had to put this down before we forgot it all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

This was the point at which I almost quit
writing this book, because I have a great fear of confrontation. I
was going to dedicate it to Virginia after it was accepted for
publication, because I was her Poet and she died young, which is
always fashionably tragic.

But here came Beth and was acting like the
kind of woman whose feelings would be hurt if I dedicated my
autobiography to another woman. And she didn’t seem like the kind
who would conveniently die. Plus, there’s You-Know-Who, the
ghostwriter, the hack who wants all the credit but does none of the
work.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before: “Hey, I got
this great idea for a book. Why don’t you write it and we’ll split
the money?”

The problem, of course, is that this
particular co-author has no need for money. All he craves is a
little attention. Why do you think he wants to be the protagonist?
But so far I’ve spared you from his nihilistic clichés and
self-serving, ideological crap. Hopefully I’ll get this submitted
before he finds this version, so forgive me if I type real fast for
a few pages.

I was drifting on a black sea, with the
Little People like sharks nibbling away at the rubber raft of my
psyche or the pirate captain’s sword walking me down the gangplank
or some other lost-at-sea simile. The darkness was no longer safe.
I needed an anchor. I needed Beth, for hope and help and all the
other selfish reasons people used as an excuse to love one
another.

Love. Speaking of unwilling suspension of
disbelief…

I called her the next night, after a long
battle with Loverboy and Little Hitler. Her roommate answered the
phone. "Hello?"

"Hi," I said. "Is Beth home?"

"No, I'm afraid not."

"Know when she'll be in?"

"I think she went out with somebody."

A date? A bright flame of jealousy roared in
my chest. But what claim did I have? None but that of the
needy.

The mellifluous voice on the other end broke
the silence. "Uh...do you want to leave a message?”

"Yes. Just tell her Richard
called."
Nah, say “Loverboy,”
numbnuts
, whispered one of my
roommates.

"Richard?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"Oh.
Faux pas
. You're the guy she's been
seeing, right?"

Seeing. Was this sweeping romance for the
ages reduced to mere ocular activity? I wanted to slam the phone
into the wall. I wanted to blink razors. I wanted to...

Kill Beth.

Who said that? Little Hitler? Loverboy?

Or...

"I saw you yesterday," said the roommate. Her
voice was deeper than Beth’s, huskier.

"You did? Where?" My throat was tight, as if
Little Hitler were squeezing it into silence.

"Walking down the street."

"Oh. Uh...were you...?"

“
...the one looking out the
window yesterday? The girl at the bar?”

She's just another skinbag, Richie. A
sopping camel toe dipped in a desert oasis.

Loverboy, stay out of this.

"...I mean, I don't think we've met," I
finished, slamming the Bone House door.

"I'm Monique. I've seen you, you know,
bringing Beth home."

Did I hear her giggle? Was she taunting me?
Like Sally? "I've got to go. Do me a favor. Don't tell Beth I
called."

I hung up fast, before Loverboy had a chance
to lick his chops and say something I'd regret later. I had enough
to worry about as it was. Had some new dark closet opened inside
me? Some crack in the plaster that patched over my ego?

Help me, Mister Milktoast.

"Come inside, Richard."

No. Not in
there
. Not with
them
.

"It's safe. It's dark. It's cool."

But...

"Come, Richard."

Don't.

Want.

To.

Lose.

Me.

"I'll protect you," Mister Milktoast
whispered, in that maternal tone that both comforted and disturbed
and ultimately always won.

Darkness. Something dreamed, something
walked. I lost thirty-six hours.

Because this is my autobiography and I’m
writing this in retrospect, I could easily make up a bunch of
bullshit about how I went out of town for a hockey game or a rock
concert or a camping trip. But if I started making up alibis for my
own life, I doubt if you’d stick with me. We’ve established a
relationship, you and I. We’ve reached a mutual misunderstanding.
If you walked out on me now, closed the book, that would prove you
are unreliable and fainthearted. I have faith in you. You’re made
of better stuff than that.

"Did you see the paper?" Miss Billingsly
asked me at the bookstore on Wednesday.

"No, I haven't had a chance. I've been doing
inventory on the Harry Potter backlist." Actually, Bookworm had
been doing the work, but of course I couldn't tell her that.

"Some girl from the college has been reported
missing."

My heart flipped, hung upside down.
"When?"

"They're not sure. Could have been a few days
ago."

"Maybe she had enough of school and took off
for a hockey game or a rock concert or a camping trip," I said, in
Mister Milktoast's reassuring voice. But something inside knew
better. I started to sweat, even though the air was cool. No
Bookworm could amend this panic, no Milktoast could sop this
doubt.

Miss Billingsly pushed her eyeglasses up her
nose. "The parents are frantic. They're flying down from New York,
according to the paper. With all these school shootings,
everybody’s on edge anyway."

She stood behind the counter, a woman in her
element. She was like a captain standing on the bridge of a ship,
as if the bookstore were a pleasurecraft of words. But my own
pleasure was plundered along with my recent memory.

Mister Milktoast wagged a cautioning finger
from the back closet. Brittany, the other weekday employee of the
Paper Paradise, came down the history aisle.

"I knew a friend of hers," she said. I looked
into Brittany's heart-shaped face, her brown hair parted in the
middle. She wore a leather string around her neck. Little Hitler
saw it as a noose while Loverboy viewed it as a mild bondage
prop.

"Said her roommate hadn't seen her in three
days. She lived in an apartment off-campus. She liked to sleep
around, if you know what I mean—"

Brittany must have seen Miss Billingsly's
look of disapproval. Or maybe it was a look of wistfulness. But she
continued. "Anyway, the roommate didn't worry about her for a
while, but then she went in her bedroom to borrow a sweater and saw
none of the clothes had been disturbed."

"Meaning she hadn't come back for a change of
clothes?" Miss Billingsly asked.

"No. So she checked around, called the
parents..."

"And now the police," Miss Billingsly
finished.

“
Well, her boyfriend is a
person of interest,” Brittany said. “He has a motorcycle. You know
the kind.”