City of Strangers (18 page)

Holding his stomach, Terence stumbles back. For Paul the moment is a crush of visual information, of unfamiliar sensation – it is a trembling below his skin like something alive, separately sentient. His arm reaches outward, ahead of his thoughts, and sticks the knife into Terence again. Terence doesn't fall. Paul sticks the knife in again. A delirious, spacious rage fills him. It is a sound inside the dome of his skull, not quite a ringing, but something dull, a heavy mechanical drone, an expanding warmth in the meat of his face. The feeling is one of license: he can continue to strike Terence as long as he wishes to, as if his hand is empty. Terence wobbles forward, on his face an expression of perfect surprise, as if it hadn't occurred to him before now that his own existence, like that of every other living thing, would be a temporary one. And even staggering, almost falling, clutching at the cratered terrain of his front, he still appears to believe, as does Paul, that he cannot die.

He lurches toward the door. He wants to get away; Paul should let him. But the flight of the command from his brain skips his logic centers and engages the muscles of his arm, arriving in his hand as a full-born impulse. Paul continues to plunge the knife into Terence even as he rattles the whole door in his panic, even as his feet scamper frantically and pointlessly. Paul stabs him again, and again, and again, and each time meets resistance – rib, spine, leather jacket. At last he finds a clean line into pure, pliant flesh. Still Terence won't fall. Finally, in a deliberate motion, Paul turns the knife, fixing it downward, and clocks it back, above his head, before swinging down savagely. The motion describes an arc, at the end of which is a spot on Terence's back, beneath the blond ellipse of his head, between the wings of his shoulder blades. Terence's hands, which have been struggling with the doorknob, slip away, and his body slides down the door, forced briefly into the curve of a feather.

At first Paul does nothing. He waits, frozen, expecting Terence to stand. Then, taking his jacket, Paul pulls him away from the door and turns him over – already the body seems to have gathered an immense additional weight, as if at the moment of death something actually entered rather than left it. He wants to see the eyes; he wants them to be shut, proof that Terence won't move again. But they hang open – they performed their work right up to the final stroke of his heart. They have a waxy, unfocused luster like new marbles and across each appears a bleak, guttering image, an animation of the living world projected onto a dead surface: the nearest window and, beyond it, a sharp night sky. Lights flicker and drift. Paul, peering closely, can even see his own convex reflection, powerful and disquieting proof that a man's death does not halt the rest of it – that we die one at a time.

Small details briefly seem important; he notes the hair on dead knuckles, the rubbery Adam's apple lodged in the dead throat like a cork. In death, young and pale-haired, incapable of working his features into that cocky menace, the insignia of threat, Terence appears gentle, even boyish. When Paul steps back, other circumstances assert themselves – plain, vital facts. For one thing, he's still holding the knife. Patches of blood blackly stain his pants and more cling to his front. Blood sticks to the doorknob and on the door itself, against which Terence must have pushed his stomach as he tried to escape, hang a few shoddy lines, like the shreds of a flag. And there's more – it spreads heedlessly across the floor. Then he sees that Claire has risen to her feet: she appears not to be hurt. But on her face is an expression like none he has ever seen her make, even during their episodes of greatest marital agony. She looks at the body blocking the door, then once more at Paul. Though he cannot regard himself, he doesn't have to – it crashes down on him nevertheless, what she sees, the recognition of everything that he no longer is.

The sensation of the knife in his hand is odd, a firm object and a common one, but one whose weight and balance now seem totally foreign. And there's Claire, standing in the dark: she is a pair of damp, iridescent eyes, bobbling with horror. He would like to hold her. To be held. Against the silence he hears the distant hum of traffic; of lights; of machinery; the ambient din that in other circumstances provides comfort, proof that the human world is still switched on, people are still coming and going, wanting and striving. Out of the general static of his thoughts emerges a vivid, pulsing point:
It isn't what I meant to do.

This is what he would like say to her, to make clear that he's not – that he should not have been – a killer. Everything accelerated in that instant. Even now his breath saws at the air; a lifted, ecstatic feeling, like trapped gas, collects across his chest. He recognizes the need for choices, for action. This is an occasion for rationality, for the razor's edge of lucid decision-making, yet the only thoughts that will form are glossy bubbles, melting clumps. Heat flushes through him.

First he would like to put down the knife. An unpleasant, granular feeling chafes around the handle – dirty, harsh, like sand stuck against perspiring skin – and he can see how the weapon upsets Claire; ten minutes ago it was an ordinary kitchen knife. The threat is over, and she hasn't come to him. Not wishing to contaminate another surface of the apartment, he returns to where Terence lies and, in a motion of stupid delicacy, places the knife upon him. The blood, a body's worth of blood, a deep, dark pool, spreads unevenly under Terence; only the doormat, the bristles at its edge stained and wilting, stops its progress and prevents it from leaking into the hall. He moves away. Now he can go to Claire; now he can comfort her. His heartbeats are airy and light – each skips through his veins like a polished stone on water. Hers, too, must have a strange rhythm, that much he knows: this kind of fear doesn't go on and off at a snap; it will take time to ebb, bathwater struggling down a clogged drain. Yet the absence of the knife seems to have had no effect whatsoever. Each step toward her causes Claire to make one in retreat.

'It's over. You're safe.' He has to say something, and these words are as good as any. At the end of his arm, half raised, his fingers waver in a motion of reaching, asking. She withdraws further.

'Claire.'

Even the pronunciation of her name qualifies as contact for which she is unprepared. It acts as confirmation that it is indeed she, here, in the middle of this nightmare. She shakes her head violently, eyes closed. Seeing is an affliction – she won't even look anymore. At all of it, the body, the chaos? Or only at him?

'Do something,' she says, and he understands. The body seems to poison the air. But it is difficult to reconstruct the last ten minutes. Once more he surveys the room as if to confirm the reality of it. The body. The blood. It did, all of it, happen.

At last a practical phrase comes to him:
self-defense
. It has the soothing power of a lozenge. He says it aloud: 'Self-defense.' Claire's eyes briefly flicker, open, shut again, her look one of skepticism and residual terror. She watched it happen: now, with closed eyes, she rejects the plea. Claire, who once would have done anything for him, whom he believed he was saving. Was that actually what he believed? He would like it to be so, but he has trouble recollecting whatever threads of thought tightened within him during those last, cramped minutes. His mind writhes. It's impossible to find the honest version. Terence invaded the apartment, but he also tried to leave, and it was Paul who introduced the weapon, who raised the stakes. And Claire won't let him come near her: that one fact constricts him with a strong, accusatory grip.

More time goes by. The blood continues to spread. He wishes she would speak, even to say 'I hate you' or 'Go away.' Those at least would be expressions of emotion aimed at him. But she only cowers in the corner. Paul wants to tell her that she needn't be afraid, that he isn't going to hurt her, but to give voice to this is to admit that she appears to think it. He'll call the police. They will come and remove both him and the body. It can all be sorted out. He can be exonerated. Terence almost certainly would have killed him. Does that excuse the zeal with which he delivered those final blows? Even Terence would have preferred to go on living.

Paul takes out his phone and opens it. Claire hears: she watches him. It is clear that she has no idea what he plans to do, that she wants only to find out; if he's placing a call, a resolution may soon arrive. But by opening her eyes she has made him greedy for her attention, and he stops.

She asks, 'Who are you going to call?'

He makes no reply. The phone is open, the first digit is struck. Paul stares back at Claire, who shivers a little, clutching her bare shoulders, though it isn't cold. Actually, he realizes, it is quite hot in the apartment, an uncomfortable, downy closeness in the air. She won't come to him.

On the screen of his phone it waits, the nine, like a lowercase
g
, curled and innocent, for the hard double slash of the eleven that follows.

'I don't think we can call the police.'

'You,' she corrects him. 'You did this.'

What stops him from making the call? Claire, for one thing: even if he can't now cross the distance between them, the consequences of calling would pull him further from her. And he has the unfamiliar thought that there are pieces of his life he doesn't want disrupted. Had this happened a week ago he might not have cared, it might have been a relief to get hauled off by the police, but now he has a chance to write a book people will read, he has a chance to bring his brother back into his life. Like a child staring through a toy store's window, he gazes upon these things: bright, tangible, and just beyond his reach. He has chances. He has reason to want again.

He shuts the phone.

It makes a loud clap against the silence; Claire winces. He doesn't know how much time has passed since he killed Terence. When he next catches her eye, he replaces the self-pitying expression with one meant to impart decisiveness, and he sees that she plans to let him dictate the course of action. But she yields in a way that suggests simple fatigue, even submission. And she is – yes – she's also afraid of him.

'What are you going to do?'

Paul knows the answer; he sees no other choice. He hesitates, swallows, then opens the phone again and dials.

Ben picks up on the fourth ring. Paul hears in his voice an uncharacteristic note of concern, one that rapidly thins into a familiar, exhausted anger.

'Christ – Paul. I thought you were Jake. I was worried something had happened.'

'Something did happen.'

'Can't this wait until morning?'

'Please, Ben.' Paul's voice must strike the uppermost register of desperation, because his brother doesn't get off the line. 'I need your help. I need you to come.'

'Are you insane? Now?'

'You have to drive.'

Ben says something indistinguishable, and Paul realizes that he's speaking to Beth. 'I'm in bed. We were asleep.' There's a long pause. 'Paul,' he says, his voice gentler, drained of irritation, 'can't this wait? It's the Sabbath.'

'No,' says Paul, feeling something within him collapse. 'No, you need to come now. He's dead. I killed him.'

Waiting, Claire and Paul don't speak. They remain with the body but do not approach it, by silent agreement standing as far away from it as they can; from Claire's position it is probably not possible to see it. He washes his hands; for the time being he must live with the blood on his clothes. At some point he tries to go to her, but the reaction is unambiguous. 'Please – don't touch me.' He obeys, realizing that he expected as much. After a while, since there's no reason not to, he sits in a chair; she doesn't leave her rigid watch at the far side of the room and keeps the lights off. There are things Paul would like to say, but now that he's made a decision, his thoughts again have a rootless drift. When Ben arrives, Paul has to move Terence before he can open the door for his brother. The body is incredibly heavy, and he shunts it merely the minimum distance demanded by the situation, leaving it up against the wall, almost in a sitting position. Limbs and neck slouch at unnatural angles. It is behind the door, and thus out of Ben's line of sight when he enters. Instead he takes in the bedlam of the apartment: magazines spread across the floor like a folded hand of cards; the confetti of crushed glass at the base of the shelf; the cushions flung from the sofa. With his first true step into the room the heel of his shoe gives a small whine as it slides along the slick floorboard, then a light sucking sound as it peels up from the blood. Shifting to the left, where more waits, he only exacerbates his predicament, and in a quick, automatic motion he hurls the door shut behind him. It slams into the hall. Only then does he see the rest of it – the blood on the handle, on the door itself, and there, the reason for coming, the body. It is enough to halt him in his tracks, but by then it is too late: the blood is on him: he's standing in it.

Ben composes himself and moves to look more closely at the body and its wounds. 'Christ,' he says. 'Christ.' Ben stares at the body with glazed eyes, which, looking across Paul's shoulder, snap again into focus – Claire. It has been three years, and in spite of the present scene the social moment brims with quiet strain.

'Claire.'

'Ben.'

Their voices break the trance that has settled around them like dust. Ben wears an expression that doesn't lend itself easily to interpretation. Paul is out of options; he isn't. He could walk away, or even call the police himself. These seem to be the most likely outcomes. Finally he asks what happened. Paul explains, or tries to – he speaks too quickly, misremembers. Claire offers no help. At a few points Ben asks questions; Paul does his best to answer them. Ben, who is breathing heavily but otherwise seems impressively calm, takes a few steps around the room and by a gesture of his head makes clear that he is aware of the footprints he leaves. It isn't clear what he plans to do, but he hasn't left, and his face shows a quality of calculation as he analyzes the state of affairs he's come upon – and, doubtless, its consequences. And then he quivers slightly, like the shudder, the long creak, the buckling of wood and iron and plaster in a condemned building at the instant before it falls. With the flash of epiphany Paul sees what is happening: his brother is going to act irrationally, to step out of character: he isn't going to walk away. He's going to help. Despite the unlawfulness and the deep ignominy of the task at hand, Ben's eyes are lit, a mind at work: he is plotting, arranging, anticipating. Of the two of them, he's unquestionably the more fit to manage an extraordinary situation, even one not of his own making. This isn't his duty, yet, as Paul watches, he is strapping it on. It is what he hoped for, but Paul finds himself crushed all at once by a deep sense of shame, a massing dread, at winning Ben's consent for the endeavor. The feeling is one he knows too well, the disgrace of burdening others.