Cartilage and Skin (19 page)

“Apologize, fuck face.”

“Stop,” the girl said softly, trying to soothe him. She gently tugged his arm.

Other people began to watch the commotion.

“Sure,” Kyle said, looking down at his glass.

“Did you hear me?” the young man demanded.

“Sure. I was just—” Kyle began to say. “Why not repent?” His voice sounded meek and tired. He still didn't lift his head to meet their eyes. “I didn't mean anything. I was just thinking that you might like her bald cunt.”

There was a brief moment when nobody reacted as Kyle sat all alone, dejected, and somber. If the boyfriend simply faded away, Kyle probably wouldn't have noticed or cared. But all at once, the young man leaped onto Kyle, knocking him to the hardwood floor and toppling Kyle's table and chair. The glasses crashed. People gasped and scuttled. At first, Kyle seemed lifeless, while the young man grappled and pummeled his limp body. “Fucker, fucker,” the boyfriend kept repeating. Then a strange sound escaped from Kyle, as if he were some kind of deformed creature that was shocked and scared, and whose only recourse was to bellow. The young man stood up and staggered a few steps backwards. The incident had lasted only a few seconds, and the group of students was already gathering their things and heading away. Someone set the table and chair right, as the waitress squatted and began to pick up the broken pieces of glass and place them on her tray. Kyle remained curled up on the floor. The bottom of his sports coat was turned up over his head. Although people looked down at him, nobody touched him. He was whimpering.

The apartment was lit by candles that were placed throughout the room: on the countertop, in the kitchen, and upon a pair of snack trays, which was a new addition to the scene. On the floor by the baseboard, a radio played techno dance music, its steady throb keeping the time and rhythm of a heartbeat. Despite the flickering shadows and the sound of music, the room seemed frozen. The moment was suspended, like a held breath, strained and ready to break. Ralph was sitting on the floor, with his forehead lowered to his knees and his arms wrapped around his shins. In the weak light, his bare flesh was ghastly, the color of ashes. His thin body appeared wasted. He didn't lift his head to look around, and he didn't move at all. Although the boy was standing—staring not so much at the man as beyond him, through him—the boy didn't move either. The chain, still fastened to the cast iron radiator, trailed across the floor, rose up the front of the boy's body, and ended at a black neck collar. One of the boy's stockings was pooled around his ankle, while the other stocking disappeared under the boy's red skirt. He stood with his hips cocked and one arm akimbo, as if he'd been posed. He was shirtless. His nipples were painted a bright, vibrant red; and the same shade of red, gaudy and perverse, was smeared all over his mouth. Yet, even when Ralph's body began to shake with tortured sobs, the boy still didn't move. His eyes remained as vacant as death.

The sunlight melted the snow a little, but by evening a cold, vivid darkness crept over the houses and streets, and froze the landscape all over again, turning the surface of the snow into a hard layer of ice, which reflected the next morning's sun so sharply that its blinding glare caused the few cars that were out to move slowly and the drivers to squint, while icicles dripped from gutters and windowsills, and long skins of ice dropped off of tree limbs like flayed bark, and trickles of water trailed down driveways to meet up with the more steady flow alongside the curbs: This was the sound of flaw as the rest of the world appeared suspended and hushed in an attitude of lethargy, and many houses seemed to cough up disease and silently create the gray sky out of chimney smoke. The blond haired boy named Ray and his friend climbed between the wooden rails of a fence and headed across a front lawn. They walked upon the icy surface with short, careful steps. They didn't have the shovels this time; there was no reason for them. Instead, Ray held a long stick, a makeshift staff he used for walking. The other boy was a pace behind him. They didn't talk. Before they came to Kyle's yard, they made a detour toward the road. Ray's staff tapped on the wet pavement. He was still in the lead. Both of the boys kept their gazes lowered to the ground, until they started to pass by Kyle's driveway. The tail end of the old Civic stuck out into the road, its engine softly idling. Despite the daylight and the glare upon the ice, the car's headlights were on, so the dark, slick driveway gleamed from their light. Ray and the other boy ceased walking. They still didn't look at one another or speak—even as Ray gave several light whacks to the car tire with his walking stick, as if testing the car for something. The other boy circled to the other side of the car, inspecting it. He peeped through its windows, although it was obvious that the car was empty. On the hood of the car was a wet, brown clump, which Ray first poked with his stick and then lifted into the air. It was Kyle's sports jacket. Both of the boys looked at the coat as though it were a strange artifact from a distant time. The other boy, still not speaking, sucked in air through his teeth, making a hissing noise, as if from disgust or brief, wincing pain. With wide eyes, he looked around rapidly and then dropped to his hands and knees, to check beneath the car. Ray shook the coat from the end of his stick. He stared up at the house, where nothing was moving.

“He's an odd bird,” Ray said.

“Should we shut off the car?”

“I'm not touching anything.” Ray continued to watch the house. “He's either dead or he's killed someone.” Because he was squinting a little, he appeared as though he might have been smiling.

“Let's get someone.”

“But he could be in there watching TV.” Ray now turned toward the other boy. “Let's go check.”

“You go check.”

“We'll peek in the window.”

“You go peek.”

“Don't be a pussy,” Ray said. “We'd look pretty stupid if we called the cops and he's in there jerking off.”

“Let's go then.”

“We'd look even worse if he had a heart attack and we didn't do anything.”

The other boy turned his gaze away from Ray and up to the house. Then he looked at the idling car again; it was a bad omen. He put his hands in his jacket pockets, lowered his head, and started to walk away. Ray watched him for a moment, but Ray didn't follow after him or say anything. He stood silently, with his head slightly cocked, as though contemplating something profound and mysterious. When he began to walk up the driveway, he still held the staff, but he didn't place it on the ground. He rested it on his shoulder the way he had previously rested the shovel. He looked from side to side, perhaps expecting to find Kyle sprawled out on the ground. The shrubbery was caked with little beads of ice, and the ground was too hard to have been marked by footprints during the night or early morning. As Ray moved up the driveway, the sunlight caught the windows of the house at a new angle, making them burn black and yellow—but close up, on the walkway now, the windows again appeared still and somber. He cupped one hand upon the glass and peered into the family room. Nothing captured his attention or alarmed him. Everything was quiet, save for the ice falling from trees and the sound of trickling water. On either side of the front door were two slender, rectangular windows. Ray looked through one of these and then turned around to face the road. The other boy was now out of sight. Ray headed slowly back down the walkway. There was something hesitant in his step, as though he were thinking about something, possibly about whether or not he should walk around the house and look into the rest of the windows. Kyle easily could have been sitting at the kitchen table in his underwear, drinking coffee, and reading the morning newspaper. When Ray reached the driveway, he first glanced at the car and then looked down the length of the house. Although he carried the silly stick on his shoulder, he appeared somewhat sturdy and composed. For the first time, as if he'd never noticed it before, Ray stared at the detached garage. Its side door was standing open—at once conspicuous and normal—as perfectly concealed as any good trap. Ray left the driveway and walked on the frozen lawn, making a wide arc around the door and all the while trying, with a fixed gaze, to scan the interior of the garage. He eventually reached the back corner, and from there, he could see that the side and the back of the building were windowless. Gripping the stick more tightly, he crept alongside the ice-covered firewood that was stacked against the wall, and approached the doorway. When he came near the opening, he paused for a moment, and as if suddenly visited by a strange premonition, he slowly looked back over his shoulder. Then he glanced at the house again, which still appeared lifeless. He lowered the stick and vaguely probed the doorway in a way that suggested that he expected to trigger something to clamp down on the stick. When nothing happened, he leaned into the opening. He looked at an oil spot on the concrete floor, the cluttered shelves, and a mess of boxes and tools piled up against the back wall; a push-mower was partially buried. Ray stepped inside the garage. His eyes settled upon the turned-over milkcrate in the center of the parking space. His gaze was causal yet penetrating, as if he had discovered in the milkcrate not only a clue but also the last visible sign that the world had once moved. Another premonition seemed to have visited Ray because all at once his expression changed as something inside of him snapped open. He looked up. Yet Kyle's body wasn't hanging from the rafters—only the rope, the empty noose.

At last, everything in the boy that might have been called inspiration, precocity, or sturdiness abandoned him. He dropped the walking staff and fled down the slick driveway in a frenzied panic, like a spooked child, overwhelmed with terror.

The world was in thaw and overcast with gray silence, as if a hard exterior had dissolved to reveal a soft, damp pulp. Ralph stood in his front lawn, his hands in the pockets of his open pea coat, his eyes fixed on the dark house. He stood for a long time, before he finally went inside and stood in the kitchen. All the cabinet doors were open; all the shelves were empty. The kitchen table was missing, the counter tops clear, and the walls barren. Although the blinds remained on the windows, there were no curtains. Ralph, now only in a white tee-shirt and jeans, stood before the sink and gripped its edge, as if he feared he was about to fall over or vomit. Eventually, he stepped away and shuffled into another emptied room. He muttered to himself, or maybe to someone else, possibly recalling words or composing them.

“First, you taught me love, and now you taught me heartache,” he said several times, his voice no louder than a whisper, tender, and remorseful. “I feel like you died. This is death. Your leaving is death.”

Abruptly, he sat down in the center of the family room, on the carpet, and stared blankly. All his past rigidity vanished, as if his bones were soft and his muscles were loose and gelatinous beneath his skin. As darkness began to creep into the house, he continued to sit. After a while, he slouched further and further, until he was lying curled up on the floor. It was nighttime when he finally got up. In the kitchen, he turned on the light, walked straight to the counter, and began to open the drawers. He seemed as though he expected to find something, but the drawers were empty, save for a plastic tray that separated utensils. He lifted a roll of paper towels from the wall and pulled out the wooden dowel.

Outside, a floodlight, which was attached to the corner of the house, came on and shone upon the driveway. The station-wagon sat beneath a canopy of barren tree limbs. The cellar windows then lit up along the base of the house, and shortly Ralph appeared from around the back of the house. He carried the wooden dowel like a hammer. Despite the cold, he still wore only the tee-shirt. He strode swiftly toward the car and beat the back door an abrupt blow with the wooden dowel. He stepped back, stared steadily at the car, as if challenging it somehow, and then struck it a second time. His breath hung gray in the air before his mouth. He began to pant, short, quick, halting breaths. He stooped and placed his free hand on his knee. Panting, he stared at the back of the station-wagon. The floodlight shone all around him, overexposing him in artificial light, his flesh washed to the same pallor as his tee-shirt. When he beat the back door again, the dowel splintered in his hand, but he didn't seem to notice; his attention was upon the car. Eventually, his breathing came under control, and he stood up straight, erect, with the rigidity of his other self. He took his car keys out of his pants pocket and stepped up to the back of the car. The keys remained in the lock as the hatch sprung open. He quickly pulled out a loose tire and let it drop to the ground, where it wobbled a few times, in a brief struggle with animation or life, and then collapsed all at once. The back of the car appeared empty, but Ralph pulled up the piece of floor panel that normally concealed the spare tire. No sooner, a bundle of blankets—bound in cords—began to flop as Ralph tugged it out of the tire compartment and let it drop onto the gravel driveway. He started to beat the moving mass with the dowel. The thing struggled all the more and began to screech. Ralph stepped back as the bundle twisted and flopped. Without a word, he watched the strange spectacle until the wrapped body eventually calmed down and the screeching ceased. Ralph was standing erect, composed, but his rigidity wasn't as solid as it was brittle, ready to snap. As soon as the bundle became still, Ralph approached it, stepping slowly, then squatting, and placing his hand gently upon it. Save for its small, quick breaths, the body remained motionless as Ralph touched it. Apparently, he was feeling for the head because when he came to it, he began to unravel the blanket until a clump of hair was exposed. Even though the boy wasn't moving, Ralph put his left hand upon the boy's head, to steady it, to keep it still, while he raised his other hand, wielding the dowel like a hammer. When he swung, in an attempt to bring the dowel down upon the boy's skull, the swift motion severed the already splintered rod, so Ralph was holding only a stub. His striking hand missed the back of the boy's head and smashed into gravel. Undaunted, as if he'd expected the dowel suddenly to break, Ralph stood up and dropped the stub. His hand was bleeding, but he didn't seem to notice or care. The boy wasn't moving; perhaps he was still waiting for the blow. Perhaps he wasn't waiting for anything. When Ralph went back to the car and took the tire iron out of the wheel compartment, as if he'd known all along where it was and that he would be using it at this precise moment—the boy, still mostly bundled, wormed and flopped his way beneath the car. Ralph—not looking at the boy, but at the back corner of the house, where the flood light shone sharp and white—reached down and grabbed the boy by the ankle, pulling him out from beneath the car, and dragging him along the gravel. All the while the boy screeched, but now the strange sound was almost mechanical, an involuntary reaction that had nothing to do with fear or pain, and Ralph—panting again, though he didn't move like a panting man, but rather as if he, too, were mechanical—placed his knee upon the bundled form, so the boy was face down in the driveway as Ralph raised the tire iron—not actually looking at the back of the boy's head, but at some indistinct space just above or beyond the boy's head—but then, all at once, Ralph's pants became deep and violent, so he was now gasping as his body began to tremble and his upraised hand became limp and dropped to his side. Ralph's body appeared to be revolting against itself. His gasping gave way to heaving and heaving, until he heaved dry and harsh, and he heaved again, his face strained and awful, the veins at his temples like deep fractures in his skull, and now this time when he heaved, something inside his stomach became unsettled, and with his heaving, something—black and stringy and rancid—bubbled out of this throat and landed upon the gravel. Even so, he continued to heave, although there was nothing left inside of him, not even bile.