Epiphany Jones (7 page)

I
t’s not until I’m right next to it that I notice what it is. I’m passing a brown Datsun that’s parked across the street from my building when a squawk comes from it.

The squawk, it says, ‘Car thirty-four, this is dispatch.’

Mounted to the dashboard are a CB radio and one of those heavy-duty laptops all police cars have nowadays. A portable police light sits on top of the glove compartment. ‘Car thirty-four, where are you?’ Squawk.

My building’s door bursts open and someone hurries out. It’s the tall detective who questioned me at the museum. I hesitate for a moment before I duck beside the Datsun’s passenger-side door. I crawl onto my stomach and press my cheek to the ground as I peer underneath the car and watch a pair of slender legs approach from the other side. The driver’s-side door opens and the car dips an inch closer to the ground.

‘This is Ross,’ the detective says from the driver’s seat.

And the radio squawks, ‘What’s your status, detective?’

‘We’ve searched the suspect’s apartment. He’s not here, but we do have the painting. We’re going to need a forensics team down here right away. And could you have someone at HQ notify the museum?’

‘Roger that,’ squawk. ‘Forens is inbound now.’

‘Copy.’

‘Detective Ross,’ squawk, ‘Officer Rogello wants to know if you’ve received his email.’

‘Checking now,’ he says and then laughs. ‘Yeah, there’s a shocker. Tell Rogello I got it.’

The car rocks as the detective shuffles back out. From peering underneath the car I see his feet shift on the asphalt. Then there’s a rustle of hands in coat pockets and a spent match drops to the street. The smell of a cigarette fills the night air.

This is where I think, I can turn myself in. I can get off the ground and say, ‘Excuse me, I’m the guy you’re looking for.’ Then I can explain how I didn’t stab Roland in the eye; how I didn’t steal the painting – how it was all done by my imaginary friend who turned out to be a real live person after all. ‘I swear. My figment named Epiphany did this, Detective,’ I’ll say.

‘Hey Fred,’ someone shouts from a window.
My
window. ‘You aren’t going to believe this!’ It’s the second detective – the short one. ‘The boys we sent to his mom’s house, they show up and he’s been there. He attacked her with a dildo! His own mom! With a dildo!’

‘What the hell’s with this guy?’ Fred shouts back. From my vantage point underneath the car I see ash from Fred’s cigarette drift to the ground. It lands and floats, hot and orange, in a little black puddle before the water drowns it.

‘Wait, there’s more!’ the voice from my window shouts. ‘There’s more!’ the voice shouts again like he’s enjoying this. ‘Just got a call from Mortimer. Responded to some guy who tried to make a citizen’s arrest. Caught our boy trying to rape a girl up north.’

‘Quit shouting and come down here,’ Fred tells the voice from above.

‘You told me to wait with the painting. You come up here.’

‘Just lit one. Don’t want to contaminate the scene,’ Fred says. ‘How do we know the rape is our guy?’

‘The guy who tried to make the arrest,’ the voice from above shouts, ‘he got the perp’s wallet! The ID in it says “
Jerry Dresden
”! This address and all!’

Fred takes a huge drag from his smoke.

‘Forensics on their way?’ the voice from above asks.

I guess Fred nods, because he doesn’t say anything. ‘Any sign of the videotape?’ Fred asks next.

Videotape?

‘Please,’ the voice shouts back, ‘he’s destroyed that by now. I would have.’

But I don’t have any videotapes.

Then the voice, it says, ‘Hey, do me a favour?’

‘What?’

‘I got a USB thumb drive in the glove compartment; can you run it up here?’

‘What on earth for?’

‘You should see the amount of porn this guy has. He’s got hard drives full of the stuff!’ he shouts, and in spite my horrible predicament my sincerest wish at this moment is that all my neighbours are sleeping. ‘I wonder if his girlfriend knows about all this?’

‘Girlfriend, my ass,’ Fred laughs. ‘We just got an email from Rogello. That “girlfriend” who works at Auntie Anne’s? The people who work there have never heard of her or of Jerry Dresden.’

Oh God.

‘Then Rogello checked with our boy’s boss at the museum and he said that most people there thinks he just makes up his girlfriends.’

I want to die.

‘His boss says his co-workers have caught him in too many obvious lies about “her”,’ Fred continues. ‘It’s a running joke with them. Rogello checked it out with Dresden’s mom. She even told him the same thing. She knows he just makes them up, too.’

Just kill me.

‘How old is this guy? Twelve? What grown man makes up his girlfriends, has
this
much porn,
and
attacks his mom with a dildo?’ the voice from above laughs.

Mortified isn’t close to being the right word.

And yeah, I lied. I’m busted. But what did you want, the truth? That I don’t have a girlfriend? That I’m not on a break from anyone and that I willingly
choose
to sit at home alone looking at fake celebrity porn? But what did you expect? I learned everything from watching sitcoms and talk shows and movies-of-the-week. I learned what was beautiful and what was ugly and how you should act in any number of situations.
I learned how to
feel
from these things. Larry Hagman. Ted Danson. Kirstie Alley. Roseanne. These were my fathers, my mothers. And they all took care of me half an hour at a time. Consider fake celebrity porn my own little version of the Oedipus complex.

I also learned a long time ago just to tell people what they want to hear. It makes it easier on everybody. But the thing about lying is that you need to have a good memory, and I don’t. At work I told my colleagues I was dating Harriett, but at a shrink appointment I slipped up and told the doc I was dating Heather. Two-timing the world in your head is hard work. The next week I forgot which name I had told Mom. But she knew, too. She was just patronising me the whole time when she asked about my girlfriends.

‘But come on…’ a voice is fading back into my awareness. ‘Bring my thumb drive up here. I want to grab some of his shit before forensics gets here.’

‘You gotta be kidding me?’ someone says. It’s Fred.

‘Come on, man. I didn’t bust your balls when you took a favour from that prostitute we didn’t arrest last week.’

On the other side of the car a cigarette hits the ground. It bobs in the black puddle for a second before it dies a cool death. ‘Will you shut up?’ Fred shouts.

‘So just bring it,’ the voice says.

Chicago’s finest, ladies and gentlemen.

‘Hold your horses,’ Fred says, and the weight of the car shifts towards me as he leans across the passenger seat and opens the glove compartment.

The flood of embarrassment fades from my skin as a cold shiver runs through me. I’m going to be caught. Fred will peek out the passenger-side window and see me lying flat on the ground. He’ll slap on the handcuffs and I’ll be taken to jail. At the trial I’ll tell them about Epiphany, how she was a real person for one day in my life. But the judge will call me a lunatic and a pervert and ask me how I could assault my own mother with a dildo. Then he’ll order shock treatment and he’ll send me to prison and that’s where my hell will really begin. Hard-timers aren’t kind to guys like me.

And I can’t end up like that. I can’t. So in the space of the time it takes Fred to close the door and his slender feet begin to move towards my apartment building, I make a decision that I’ve never imagined I would ever have to. When Fred enters my building, I slowly get off the ground and check to make sure the other voice isn’t still by the window. And when I know it’s clear, I don’t run, I don’t hurry. Calmly, I put one foot in front of the other, and like that I simply walk away from the Datsun and my apartment and my life.

H
ere’s the thing about walking away from your life: It sounds all dramatic and final when you decide to do it, but it’s a logistical nightmare. There are all kinds of things that you never realised you would need to consider. Things like, Where do I go? Where do I sleep? I’ve got no wallet and no money, how do I eat?

I wanted to go back to Mom’s house, to apologise, to plead my innocence, to have some dinner, but the cops would’ve been there. The best I could come up with is this little park I’m in. It’s far enough away from where everything that happened earlier went down so I don’t think the cops would consider looking for me here. Plus it’s dark and the bushes are large and do a good job of concealing me and keeping the wind off my back.

My father’s gold watch says it’s almost five a.m. and every time I close my eyes I hope I’ll nod off into the sleep my body desperately craves. But my mind’s on edge. My body’s wired. Because out of everything that’s happened in in the last twenty-four hours – Epiphany, Roland, my mom; Roland’s tongue on my mom – the only thing I can’t get out of my head is the videotape. The one the detective said they were looking for in my apartment.

And that’s when it hits me that the videotape they’re talking about is the one in the camera that I almost knocked over in Roland’s studio. The one the insurance company required the museum to record on when any
work was being done on the Van Gogh. If the cops are looking for it, it means it’s missing, which means it shows Roland being murdered. Which means Epiphany is doing the murdering. Which means she took it.

And just then, just when I’ve connected all the dots, all the fruitless dots that don’t count for anything because I let Epiphany get away, I feel a very cold, thin line form along the front of my throat.

It’s Epiphany, behind me in the bushes. She tells me to remain quiet. No more talk, no more lies, no more distraction. One word and my throat gets slit. ‘You touch me again and I do not run this time. Understand?’

And I feel a little blood dribble down my neck.

T
here was this story I read in
Time
magazine. It was about a little boy. Timmy, I think. One evening around dusk, Timmy’s swimming in the shallow Gulf waters near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He’s splashing along having a great time when suddenly a shark swims up and takes a bite out of him. So Timmy, he starts screaming like crazy because his arm’s shredded and there’s blood everywhere. Hearing his nephew’s screams from shore, Timmy’s uncle rushes into the water. He’s thigh-deep in the surf when he spots the shark approaching Timmy for seconds. And Timmy’s uncle, what does he do? Does he pluck Timmy out of the water and carry him to safety?

No.

The uncle, he wades into the water and grabs the whole damn shark in his arms and wrestles it.

He wrestles it
.

He literally grabs this six-foot eating machine from the ocean and throws it, fucking
throws it
, onto the beach. Its sleek grey body lands right where a stranger is walking along on his evening stroll. This stranger, he sees the shark – the poor thing – just lying like a big fish stick on the sand.

The shark’s breathing becomes shallow as its black eyes stare at the stranger. Its eyes seem to say, ‘I always thought a fishing hook would be the end of me.’ This is when the stranger calmly reaches into his pocket. This is where he slowly pulls out a gun and points it at the shark – who at this point just has to be wondering if his day could possibly get any worse. The shark’s big, black eyes stare down the barrel as three bullets are fired into its head.

Time
called the uncle and the stranger heroes, but I couldn’t help but feel for the poor shark. He was minding his own business – having some dinner – when he’s plucked from his normal life and forced into an insane world with insane people.

I know how he feels.

I’ve been holed up with Epiphany in this shitty place for only an hour, but it might as well be a lifetime. We’re somewhere on the south side of the city – the place middle-class white people go if they want to die. The street we’re on is either called Windsor or Jacobson. The street sign was ripped from the ground, so I can’t be sure which. This place, it’s not even her place I bet. She’s gotta be squatting. The outside of the building has a painted sign that reads ‘Upholstery’ in faded yellow letters with white drop-shadows. The furniture looks like it was found on the street. The ceilings leak and you can hear things crawling behind the walls.

At the park I checked my neck. The blood was from a little flesh wound Epiphany made to punctuate her point. She told me not to speak. She said she’d been following me since she saw ‘the little man’ who took a shot at me. She watched as I lay by the car listening to the detectives. She said she knew my plan was to get her to the police and that if I tried to do so again, I would fail. And then she used a leaf to wipe my blood from her blade.

As we walked south, taking back alleys and dark streets, Epiphany made sure I stayed in front of her. She never took her eyes off me. She said, ‘If you try what you did before,’ and produced the blade from her pocket.

It was a pointless threat. I wasn’t going anywhere. I thought of nothing but the videotape.

We arrived here just before dawn. And look, I know what you’re thinking. Why’d I go with her? To find the tape, sure. But why do I believe I can? My shrink told me that almost everyone today has something called ‘sitcom resolution syndrome’. He said that people watch so many TV shows that their neural pathways get warped. They expect simple solutions to complex problems. They expect to be able to resolve
all their dilemmas in twenty-two minutes, just like the characters on
Friends
and
Cheers
and
How I Met Your Mother
do. So maybe that’s why I went: because television has made me believe my major life problems, like discovering where an imaginary friend is hiding the videotape that exonerates me for murder, can be solved in the time it takes to eat a TV dinner,
sans
laugh track, and not including commercial breaks.

In the place we’re in, most of the windows are broken. At any given time a half-dozen pigeons are flying in or out. We’re on the third floor and that’s the good floor, believe it or not. The rest of the building is abandoned. The loft has three walls, which partition two small rooms. The first has an ugly corduroy couch that has been here since the seventies. There are holes bitten into it. The next partition creates the ‘bedroom’ – which can only be called so because of a blue floral mattress with deep-brown stains lying on the floor. The third partition contains what was probably a bathroom. Now there’s only a hole in the floorboards where a toilet once stood. A rusty tap drips chocolate-milk-coloured water.

When we arrived, after I took the grand tour of the place with my eyeballs, I said, ‘So whose place is this?’

And Epiphany, she shook her head.

I said, ‘What are we doing here?’

Epiphany, she rubbed her temples.

I said, ‘So, how long are we going to be here?’

Epiphany, she dug her pinky in her ear like she was trying to get a blockage out.

I said, ‘So what’s the game plan, Coach?’

‘Shut up!’ she explained. And then she said, ‘I’m going to lie down.’

That’s what she said. ‘I’m going to lie down.’ Like we’re a couple who just got back from a tiring family reunion with in-laws we hate and she’s
just got to get off her feet
. Like she didn’t just bring me here by knifepoint.
I’ve got one of my headaches, will you take out the trash before coming to bed, dear?

So Epiphany, she’s been lying in the room with the mattress for the last hour. Me, I’ve been standing in the same place since I entered, part
bewildered that she’s secure enough in her situation over me to take a fucking nap, part looking around for where the tape could be hidden, and part afraid to move since any extra pressure might topple this building in an instant.

With all the loose floorboards and holes in this dump the videotape could be anywhere. But even while she’s asleep I know there’s no way I can search the apartment. So I sit on the shitty couch and I hear things stir inside. In the cushion something bumps against me as it moves from one location to the next. I try not to apply too much pressure.

Through a large gap that’s rotted through the wall between this room and the next, I see Epiphany curled up, catlike, on the blue mattress with piss-brown stains. Her hands cup the side of her head, like even in her sleep she’s still suffering from her headaches. Her little blade is clutched in one hand, between her thumb and index finger. It’s pushing back her hair on that side, revealing her mutilated earlobe. And right where her feet meet the mattress, right next to a big brown piss stain, I notice an incision.

The incision, it’s wide enough to slip a MiniDV tape though – the kind Roland shot his video on.

That’s when it hits me. That’s why she’s so comfortable going to sleep and leaving me to sit here. She’s not lying on the mattress like a cute little cat; she’s Cerberus guarding a trap door.

Briefly, I consider taking advantage of this headache she’s having. I think of pouncing on her and digging into the mattress for my freedom. But that’s when reality sets in. She’s little, but stronger than she looks. She’s fast, too; I never saw that spork coming. And I feel the cut on my neck. What could she do with that knife if she really wanted to?

Out of nowhere Epiphany’s eyes flick open and lock on mine. For a second I’m afraid that she knows what I’ve been thinking. She’s creepy like that. And as she stares at me she just picks herself up from the mattress and enters the living room like she never had a headache at all.

‘It’s time to get started,’ she says. ‘We have a long journey ahead of us. We don’t have a lot of time.’

Oh, but we have time for naps?

I say, ‘Journey?’

She doesn’t reply. She just stares at me like I didn’t get the memo.

I say, ‘Where are we going?’

And she says, ‘Ensenada.’ She says, ‘We need to leave tomorrow morning.’

Ensenada? That doesn’t sound like it’s close.

‘It’s in Mexico,’ she says.

Mexico.

‘You can’t be serious?’ I laugh and begin to lose my cool. ‘Even if I weren’t wanted by the police, I couldn’t get across the border without a passport. I don’t even have my damn wallet anymore. It was taken from me when you flipped the fuck out last night. Remember?’

Epiphany sighs. She says, ‘Watch your language, Jerry.’

Watch my language?

‘Last night you lied to me, I reacted. It’s in the past,’ she says, like I’m the ex-boyfriend who can’t move on. ‘We need passports now and you can get them.’ I’m about to tell her I don’t know who she thinks I am, that I wouldn’t know the first thing about getting passports, when she says, ‘Your friend can get them for us.’

Now I know she’s insane.

‘I don’t have any friends.’

This is where she steps closer and I see that little warning flash in her eye – the one she gets right before she stabs you with something. I’m not playing this well.

‘I do have one … friend,’ I say. ‘Maybe he can help us. But I would need things first – so I can contact him.’

‘What do you need?’

‘A lot,’ I shake my head. ‘I need to get on the internet. I need a computer.’

I expect Epiphany to say ‘nice try’, but instead she just walks towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’ I say.

‘I told you we don’t have a lot of time. I’m going to get your computer.’

I
wait ten minutes in case Epiphany comes back, in case this is a trap. I mean she can’t really be going to my place to get my computer. She can’t be that stupid; the cops will catch her right away.

But after fifteen minutes I’m pretty sure she’s actually left. I go to the bedroom and find the incision in the mattress, the one next to the big brown piss stain. And using both hands, I stretch it open until it’s wide enough to fit my arm in. Then I plunge my hand inside. I blindly reach around the mattress springs and the stringy mattress filler until I’m elbow deep. I feel a tickle against my finger, but it goes away. I keep groping around the tightly coiled spring. And that’s when the tickle, it comes back. And this time it doesn’t go away.

The tickle begins to crawl along my forearm. Then it makes its way to my elbow, right by the mouth of the incision. It peeks its black, boney little head out. Its red rat eyes glowing rabidly. I cry out and the rat sprints up my arm and onto my neck. And me, I hurl backwards, shrieking like a little girl. The rat grips firm to my shirt collar, its claws pricking my skin, and squeals in unison with me as I grab its ropelike tail and fling it hard against the wall. It lands with a thump on the floor on the opposite side of the mattress.

I stand motionless as I wait for the rat to scurry at me, ready for round two. I can feel it orchestrating its best plan of attack. I wait. I brace myself. But after thirty seconds it still hasn’t shown its hand. That’s when I hear a light scratching. And cautiously, I peek over the other side of the mattress.

The rat, it’s slowly dragging its body across the floor with its front paws. Its back legs refuse to move.

A twisted smile creeps over my face. Like it’s one of my fake images, I picture Epiphany’s face superimposed on the rat’s ruined body. She’s beaten, broken. And as I bring my foot up, I pause. Her whiskery nose twitches and Epiphany-rat, she says, ‘
Look at you. You couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to. You’re pathetic. See you in Mexico
.’

So I stomp as hard as I can. The rat’s bulk cracks and collapses beneath my foot and when I lift my leg there’s a little pool of blood forming below its body.

And I’m euphoric. I feel like this actually hurt Epiphany in some way.

But then I notice the rat’s belly is still rising and falling in that pool of blood. It’s eyes – they’re still moving. It looks so afraid. Confused. Not understanding why its body won’t work how it’s supposed to. And I think of the shark, which makes me think of me, which makes me think of Emma in her hospital bed, her stomach rising and falling.

The rat keeps squealing in these short, painful bursts.

Suddenly, I so desperately want to end its pain, but I can’t bring myself to fuck up killing it again. So instead I scoop the rat up in my hands. Its heart beats rapidly against my palm. Then I bring the rat to the broken window, its little red eyes looking wildly around, looking down at the street from the three-storey height.

I don’t watch it hit the ground.

And under the rusty tap I scrub the blood from my hands in the chocolate-milk-coloured water. I scrub until my hands are raw. Until my skin splits. And even then I still feel the rat’s heartbeat against my palm.