Lightning People (32 page)

“Here's what we do,” Quinn said finally. “We go down to the station, find the detective, and explain. We don't even need to mention the repair to the car right now. We just say you were scared. That's enough, I think. I'll be with you at every step.”

William lifted his head in shock as he stared at the meaningful clench of Quinn's pale lips waiting for it to ignite into an altogether different proposal.

“What?”

“That's how we fix it. We walk right down there, and you turn yourself in. That way, they'll go easier.”

“No,” he choked. “No. I'm not doing that. They'll put me in jail.”

“William,” he whispered tenderly, the kissed knuckles still pressed in William's hand. “You have to. It's your responsibility. You have to accept what you did. It's the only way you'll be able to live with yourself.”

Quinn stared so solemnly, he could easily be mistaken for a man
who had weathered high moral roads all his life. He looked utterly unlike the reckless prankster that William had come to love, the man who told stories of harassing cops and throwing used condoms at patrol cars. His fat, bloodshot face with its brittle dent for cheekbones and its burdensome drape of jowls showed every year of living outrageously on his own appetites—his loud indecencies and the even louder declaration of his rights to perform them, which always fought against the order of the law. William couldn't believe that same man was telling him to turn himself in when it wouldn't change a single thing. The woman was dead. She wasn't coming back, no matter how long William sat in jail. He realized he had misjudged Quinn, his entire nature, all along.

“No fucking way,” he screamed, jumping off the sofa and trying to reach under Quinn's legs to gather his bags. “You can't ask me to do that.”

Quinn pushed William back, and in a second he was off the sofa too, collecting his wallet and house keys from the desk.

“It's for your own good,” Quinn snapped. “I was wrong about you. I expected more.”

“Where are you going?” William asked in panic.

“Where do you think? Down to the station. I'm going to tell them whether you come along or not.”

William could feel his own heart racing so hard his fingers bunched as if to collect the blood. So few seconds were left to bring Quinn back to his side. “What good will it do?” he screamed. “I told you it was an accident. Please, Quinn.”

Quinn wasn't listening. He tossed his keys into the pocket of his windbreaker and shouldered past William's halting arms. He stood at the door, trying to release his hands from the jacket pockets and said one last thing without turning around.

“You have to behave like you share this world. You should learn this. We aren't all just decorations for you, William. It isn't right to treat a person like that. Like roadkill. Like they aren't even human.”

Every muscle was firing down William's spine as he whipped his arm around Quinn's neck, and his body fell on top of him before he could open the door. At first William held him almost like he was
hugging him, like they were both staring out of the door's small portal window at the weaving branches that hid the black lace of a fire escape. William only meant to stop him, to bring him down to the ground and make him listen, force him to understand. But Quinn's hands quickly jerked to wrestle William's arm from his throat. His hands were caught inside the pockets of the red windbreaker so they only lifted up like two oven mitts performing a boxer's pantomime. Then Quinn jabbed an elbow into William's stomach, gutting his air, and tried to wiggle free. Quinn started to scream, no longer in argument but shrieking as if he were under attack. His elbow struck William again, and to stop the screaming, William squeezed his arm tighter around Quinn's neck, until the cry dissipated into a gurgle that exploded from his nose and lips.

William closed his eyes, pinning his forearm against Quinn's throat as hard as he could, all of his panic concentrated on that arm. If William let go, if he softened his hold, Quinn would scream, and if William looked into those eyes he would find them so engulfed in hatred that no pleading would ever be able to stop that hatred from spreading. Two feet frantically kicked against the base of the door. William kept his eyes shut and breathed into Quinn's ear, the one action his friend could no longer perform. He constricted every muscle in his body, tightened every vein. William squeezed so hard it was as if his own brain contracted into the smallest pinprick, with no room for thought, no room for guilt or even understanding of what he was doing, just squeezing until the tightness blotted out any other message in his head. He felt Quinn's legs buckle, and they both dropped quietly to the ground.

When all thought was the size of a pinprick there was no room for consequences. But now the pinprick grew and with it came the realization of where he was and what he was doing. William wrenched his arm away. Quinn stared absently at the tiny black gap under the refrigerator. His face was purple, and his mouth hung open. William slid back frantically on the wood and grabbed the first thing his fingers found, a T-shirt balled on the floor. It was Quinn's tie-dye rainbow shirt, his errand-day favorite. William wound it over his own face, stuffing the fabric in his mouth, and screamed with every
ounce of strength into the sweet, dank body odor of the wonderful man who lay in front of him, gone.

 

SUICIDES TELL LIFE backward. They start with death—the how, with what weapon—and the entire biography becomes a scavenger hunt for what went wrong. It hurt to acknowledge how easily the facts of Quinn's life would make sense of such an end. The cottage was a museum wholly devoted to lost glories and leftover vices. And so was Quinn's own body, disintegrating like everyone else's, only at a faster rate.

He pulled Quinn's heavy body into the bathroom and finally released his hands from the windbreaker's twisted pockets. He took the house keys out, threw them in the sink, and tied the end of a bed sheet around Quinn's neck. Then with all of his remaining strength, he lifted the body on one shoulder while lassoing the other end of the sheet around the steel shower pipe. William pulled until only a few inches hung between the nozzle and Quinn's neck. He made a tight knot and then let the body drop. The pipe bent at the weight but held. Quinn's black Converse sneakers, a ridiculous but touching testament to youth, swayed an inch above the basin of the tub.

William grabbed a towel from the closet and began wiping the tub under Quinn's feet, the sink, the medicine cabinet, the pill bottles. He scrubbed the bathroom floor, backing out on hands and knees until no trace of his prints remained.

The living room glowed in the evening sunset, all orange and cobalt reflected across the glossy plaster walls. He grabbed his duffle bags, shoved the dirty towel into its pocket, and placed them by the door. He knew his fingerprints were all over the room—why wouldn't they be, they were friends?—but he was afraid that any further cleaning would look suspicious. Who cleans before they kill themselves? Suicides tell life backwards because they beg for answers close at hand. The calm disorder of clothes and furniture strewn in the eccentric effects of poverty, with magnets and LGBA pamphlets announcing Quinn's condition before an autopsy would, were proof enough. Who would look further for answers into a life so strangled in old age and disappointment?

William picked up his bags and locked the door behind him, ducked across the garden, through the tunnel, and out onto West Twelfth Street, moving in the opposite direction of the car, which was still parked five feet from the entrance.

He walked toward the Hudson River, drenched in sweat, pressing his palm through his hair to keep an appearance of sanity, as his lips trembled at the flash of Quinn hanging in his shower like the loneliest man on earth. The path along the river was full of baby strollers and spandexed bikers whirling by on ten-speeds. William leaned over the railing, pretending to watch the sun dissolve into New Jersey, and tossed the dirty towel wrapped around the set of car keys into the water. He tried to catch his breath and, shivering, waited only long enough to see it sink.

IT STARTS THIS
way, with Joseph's great grandmother, Aurelia Guiteau, pacing at the bedside of her dying husband. It is 1928 turning 1929, three hours left before the calendar becomes a useless piece of scrap paper. Chintz curtains are pinned closed, and the sounds of joy and fistfights stream through the open window.