Bedbugs (34 page)

He did just as he was told.

Gripping the blade between his thumb and forefinger, he carefully, almost lovingly ran the sharp edge from the heel of his thumb up the inside of his arm. The skin split open like a lizard shedding its skin. His blood spurted into the water in bright red strands that twisted like windblown hair before diffusing and turning the water pink. All the while he looked at me, and I saw myself—felt myself dimming as his energy and life flowed from his opened arm into the cold water.

I caressed his head again, combing back his long, damp hair with my fingertips as I watched him. I saw the very instant when the dark, moist light left his eyes and changed to a glazed, empty stare.

“Good-bye, Jim,” I whispered, leaning forward and kissing him gently on the forehead.

A soft, angelic smile curled the corners of his mouth.

I hurriedly dried off and got dressed. Making sure I had plenty of cash in my wallet, I left the flat in the pre-dawn stillness. At the time, I didn’t know that I would never see Pam again. That certainly wasn’t part of my plan, but I knew that I couldn’t have trusted her with my secret. I hoped she’d be strong enough to ride out the emotional storm before I finally dared to come back to her.

As it turned out, she wasn’t strong enough. The heroin had gotten too firm a grip on her.

The general press reported my death somewhat accurately, stating that I had died of heart failure. What do they think’s going to happen if you slit your wrist? Of course your heart is going to stop. Perhaps the French doctor who so hastily signed my death certificate and sealed the coffin simply wanted to avoid the scandal of a famous rock star committing suicide in Paris.

There have been other things written about me since that night—that I died of a heroin overdose or a punctured lung from that fall I took out of a hotel window. There’s been some speculation that I overdosed in the rest room of a nightclub and was dragged back to the flat and placed in the tub to look like I’d died of heart failure. And there were always rumors that I had committed suicide in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. A few investigative reporters have raised concerns that Pam was the only person to identify my body before I was buried in
Pere Lachaise
cemetery, that neither Bill nor anyone else examined the body, that the doctor’s signature on the death certificate might have been forged, and that no autopsy or exhumation was ever conducted.

Some of these stories come close to the truth, but none of them hit the truth. When do they ever?

But what about Pam?

I often wonder about her.

I know she took it real hard, thinking that I was dead, but I wonder if she knew or suspected what had really happened. Was she so far gone with grief, or so fucked up on drugs that she actually thought that guy in the bathtub was me? Or did she go along with it, covering up the truth and trusting that I’d eventually come back to her. Or maybe she figured I’d done what I did to get away from her.

Most people believe that I’m dead, and I’m willing to leave it at that. The man who took my place in the bathtub that night certainly didn’t seem to mind playing out the final act for me. Sometime, late at night, the memory of his voice as he died soothes me.

“. . . I want to be you! . . .”

T
here is liberation in death!

But now, for the past few weeks as I’ve been driving through the desert in New Mexico, searching for that dying Indian I passed by so many years ago, I can hear other voices talking to me, calling to me . . . voices inside my head, telling me to . . . to—

—This final journal entry, which ends in mid-sentence, was found in 1976 in an abandoned rental car several miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

—for Jim

L
aura Griffin, who is my absolute closest friend, says to me, “Do you realize what you sound like?”

I hardly notice the dampness of the wooden bench we’re sitting on outside The Book Shelf on Exchange Street. It’s a gorgeous late September afternoon. A rain shower passed through an hour or so ago and is moving off to the East and out to sea. The setting sun is shining at a sharp angle from underneath the retreating edge of the cloud bank. Seagulls circle high in the sky, bright white W-shaped dots against the gray, swift-moving clouds. Twisting wisps of steam rise like phantoms from the rapidly cooling street and sidewalk.

It’s getting late, and shops are closing, so the street isn’t nearly as busy as it was during the day. Still, a few people stream silently past us—one or two couples, a few moms with babies in strollers, groups of teenagers and college kids, and some professional people out running last minute errands before heading home from work. As warm as the autumn day is, though, it can’t come close to stopping the shiver I feel deep inside me.

“Yeah,” I reply after swallowing hard. “I know exactly what I must sound like, but I—”

My voice cuts off with a sharp
click
.

I want to say more.

I want to tell Laura what I’m really thinking, but I know that I have to ease into it. More than any other of my friends, Laura knows perfectly well what I’ve been going through ever since my—well, ever since what happened to my husband, Jimmy.

“Did you ever go talk to that therapist I told you about?” Laura asks.

I shake my head
no
and say, “I didn’t think she could really help . . . not the way I want help, anyway.”

Laura’s brow creases with concern. I know from more than fifteen years of friendship that her concern is genuine. Her dark eyes glisten like wet marbles in the gathering twilight. A maple tree arches over the bench where we’re sitting. Shimmering drops of water dangle like tiny jewels from the tips of each flame-edged leaf. The air has a clean, fresh-washed smell to it.

Laura looks to me like she’s about to cry, but I can see that she’s holding back her tears, trying not to cry so she can help me.

I feel nervous. My stomach feels like it’s filled with a thick, cold jelly. I want to reach out and hug her, if only for the solid warmth of a human touch, but I hold myself back. Even sitting right here beside me, she seems so far away. I can’t bring myself to touch her, no matter how much I want to.

I need to say what I have to say first.

“I—I know it sounds crazy, like a . . . like it’s from a nightmare or something, but I swear to God it really happened.”

Laura’s concerned frown deepens. She runs her teeth across her lower lip, sawing back and forth as she considers what I’ve said so far and what she should say to me.

It’s almost like I can read her mind and can tell what she’s thinking.

She’s thinking that my situation is much more serious than she thought or than I can recognize. She’s thinking that, maybe, I might even need to be hospitalized or something.

“Tell me
exactly
what happened,” Laura says mildly. “Don’t leave
anything
out.”

I hesitate, trying to gain at least a small measure of composure. Usually, I can stay pretty much in control of things, but after everything that’s happened lately, I’m not so sure anymore.

I blink my eyes rapidly to fight back the warm gush of tears I feel and tilt my head back and look up at the top stories of the brick and granite buildings across the street. In the slanting orange sunlight, every detail is dusted with powdery light and stands out in painfully sharp detail. The buildings look almost ethereal against the backdrop of the dark, rain-laden clouds. I can easily imagine that they’re not real . . . that they’re just projections against the rapidly darkening sky.

I look around, tracking one of the cars as it creeps past us down the street. Its tires make a sound on the wet pavement that reminds me of a nest of hissing snakes. No matter where I look, everything seems to be lost in a dim, dreamy haze.

“It seems so long ago, but it was . . . just last weekend—last Friday night,” I begin, almost choking. I don’t like the way my voice sounds so tentative, as if someone else is speaking through me.

“We were—I was—Jimmy and I went out to eat . . . at
Costello’s
. It always been one of our favorite places.”

Laura crosses her right leg over her left and shifts an inch or two closer to me. I think she’s thinking that I’m going to fall apart completely real soon, now, and that she has to be ready to grab me, hug me, and tell me that it’s all right, that I can cry all I want to as long as I need to.

“We were sitting downstairs, over in the far corner. I was trying hard to pay attention to Jimmy, to what he was saying, but I couldn’t stop staring at this man who was sitting at a table diagonally across the room from us. He was far enough away so I could only catch a glimpse of him every now and then. Jimmy was going on and on about how his boss at the station was driving him crazy, but I’d heard it all before, plenty of times, so I guess I just sort of tuned him out. I thought that—”

A sudden wave of emotion grabs hold of me, and my voice falters.

Looking fearfully over my shoulder, I glance up the street in the direction of
Costello’s
restaurant. Its arched wooden doorway looks dark and foreboding. I can’t see any lights on inside, which creates the impression that the restaurant has been closed for a very long time. People passing by on the street seem to sense this, too, and they hurry their steps until they are past it.

I look back at Laura, but it’s hard to see her clearly in the gathering gloom. Tears are welling up, warm in my eyes, making the lights shatter into bright spikes.

“So he caught you looking at another man and maybe got a little mad—is that it?” Laura offers. “Did you guys have an argument?”

Biting down on my lower lip, I shake my head and barely whisper the word, “No.”

Finally, after I catch my breath, I continue.

“It wasn’t that at all. Jimmy had already said several times that he thought I looked really distracted, and that he was worried about me. He mentioned more than once that he thought I looked pale, kind of sickly. I finally couldn’t stand it any longer and told him what was bothering me—that I thought I recognized the man who was sitting across the room from us, but that I couldn’t for the life of me remember from where. It was bugging the shit out of me.”

 
“Did you eventually figure out who he was?” Laura asks. I nod, but even the slightest motion sends a ripple of shivers up my back.

I look around at the people passing by on the street. I can’t rid myself of the impression that they all look so unreal. I’m convinced that I can see right through some of them, and that their shadows are somehow more real than they are. A city bus roars by in a blast of diesel exhaust. The sound of its engine seems to come at me from all sides, filling the air like the long, rolling concussion of thunder.

“What happened next?” Laura asks.

Her voice sounds so loud and vibrant and close to me that it pulls me back. I shake my head. Closing my eyes, I rub them hard enough to make bright, jagged patterns of light shift across my vision.

“I . . . I saw someone else,” I reply, even though it takes almost all the air out of me.

Suddenly fearful, I open my eyes and look at Laura again if just to convince myself that she’s really there. I am unable to speak for several seconds, but Laura doesn’t push or prod me. She just sits there, looking back at me with all the patience and understanding in the world.

“A woman walked in with a man,” I finally say.

My voice almost breaks, and when I lick my lips, they feel as dry and rough as sandpaper.

“They looked like they were in their late twenties, maybe early thirties. Both of them were nicely dressed. Healthy-looking people. Jimmy kept right on talking, not even noticing that I was tracking them as the hostess led them over to a booth near us. When they sat down, the woman was facing me. Sitting in the darkened corner, I felt almost invisible, so I could take the time to study her face.”

“And that’s when you recognized her?” Laura asks, obviously already knowing the answer.

“Yeah,” I say.

The word sounds like nothing more than a dry gulp.

“I was
positive
I knew her, but—just like the man sitting across the room—I couldn’t remember where I’d seen her before.”

Feeling desperate and alone, I want to reach out and grab Laura’s hands, but I hold myself back.

“Honest to God, Laura,” I say, and my voice is trembling terribly now. “It was the weirdest sensation I’ve ever had in my life—like a feeling of . . . of
déjà vu
that wouldn’t stop. I felt sort of like I was experiencing someone else’s memories or something. It was weird.”

I sigh so heavily that it hurts my chest. The sun has set by now, and the shadows are deepening around us. Even the autumn-colored leaves on the trees look like ink spots.

“I . . . I just don’t know what’s happening to me.”

Laura re-crosses her legs and leans forward, planting her elbow on her thigh and covering her mouth with her left hand. She stares intently at me for such a long time that I start to feel uncomfortable. I don’t like the way her gaze makes me feel as though she can see right through me.