The Architecture of Fear (24 page)

The blonde, meanwhile, was oblivious to it all: staring off into her drink as if it were a gateway to another world entirely. She was the Hooter Girl made flesh and then stepped on. Not pleasant.

I stepped up to the bar, stoned and shell-shocked, drugs and wasted adrenaline making the seamy details painfully apparent. I fished out a crinkly ten-spot and stared blankly at the wooden expanse of the counter. It was scarred and pitted, with initials and epigraphs and other vital pearls of wisdom. Ritual scarification. One stuck out like a message in a bottle: four words, carved deeper that all the rest.

TO BE A MAN.

To be a man.
A bitter sneer engraved itself across my face.
To be a man.
I'd heard enough of that shit to last me a lifetime. My old man had said it. My peer group had said it. The first caveman to bludgeon his object of desire and drag her home by the hair had grunted its equivalent.

To be a man. You bet.
If my mind had lips, it would have spat out the words.
Somebody got nice and manly with LeeAnn tonight. It's written all over her face...

I looked up. The blonde was glancing at me with weak and wounded eyes. I could see every crack and sag in her features. Ten years ago or so she must have been a real looker, but that was ancient history now. That kicked-around look spilled off of her in waves: the way she hugged her vitals, as if waiting for the next blow to fall; the way she'd sort of sunken into her own carcass, as if the extra padding might help; the way her eyes kept darting to the back of the room.

I stared, waiting for the pitcher to fill. And I wondered how the hell she could have let that happen to her.

Then the men's room door squealed open like a thing in pain.

And up stomped the Mighty Asshole.

The gnarled little man with the pitcher of beer was forgotten. So were the drunks and the hairball, the blonde, the dueling idiot boxes where Rambo played out his bloodless charade. Even LeeAnn slipped from my mind for one long, cold moment, as the entire spinning universe funneled down to the behemoth pounding up the cellar stairs.

Big as life and twice as ugly, he swaggered toward the bar, fumbling absently with his fly. Arms like girders. Eyes like meatballs. Feet pounding the floorboards like an overblown Bluto in a Max Fleisher cartoon, sending shock waves up my legs from halfway across the room.

The impulse to retreat must have come on a cellular level, because I had backed into a barstool before I even knew I was moving. Connecting with teetering solid matter jostled me back to the broader reality, and I cast a nervous glance over to LeeAnn, She was watching him, too.

We were
all
watching him.

It wasn't just that he was tanked, or that he was built like one. Or even that he was bearing down on us like some angry moron-god. Rather, it was his presence: the sheer force and volume of his rage. It was as vivid as the glow around a candle's flame, and black as the dead match that first fired it up.

The Mighty Asshole thundered over to his seat next to the blonde. The terror in her eyes answered my previous question quite nicely: they were an item. Like hammer and anvil, they were made for each other. I shuddered involuntarily.

Then the troll was back, pitcher and mugs clunking down onto the bar. He grinned at me, a toothless rictus, as I handed him the money. Looking into his eyes was like staring down an empty elevator shaft and never quite seeing the bottom. He smiled as he handed back my change, smiled as I hefted the goods, and kept right on smiling as I made my way back. The Asshole shot me a beady-eyed and territorial sneer as I hustled back.

I crossed the room like the guest of honor at a firing squad. The screaming of my nerves eased up only marginally, the farther away from the bar I drew. LeeAnn was already seated, tucked into one of the half-dozen claustrophobic, dimly-lit booths that ringed the desolate rear of the room. I joined her, setting down the pitcher and mugs, peeling off my wet jacket and tossing it into a heap on the bench. The beer sat untouched on the table. I sighed, grabbed the pitcher and filled both our mugs. LeeAnn watched, I handed her one, took a swig off my own, and waited.

Nothing.

"Well?" I said. It was meant to sound level and controlled, but it came out all wrong.

LeeAnn looked away. "Finish your beer," she said. She was serious. She was miserable.

"What?"

"Your beer." She was adamant. "Finish it."

I glared at her exasperatedly, then tipped back the mug, drained it in two gulps, and banged it on the table. "There," I said. "All gone. Happy?"

"Very," she said, refilling my mug. "Have another."

"What?! C'mon, LeeAnn, this is bullshit."

"Trust me, David. Drink up."

I stared at her for a moment longer, weighing the situation. I didn't want any more beer. I really didn't. In fact, the whole situation was beginning to grate on my nerves. My clothes were wet, the night was old, my bladder ached, and my patience was wearing thin. The words
don't play games with me, dammit
flickered through my mind on their way to my mouth. I caught them just in time.

But the anger remained. It was not lost on LeeAnn; she knew who it was for. Her whole body flinched back for a microsecond. The gesture was mostly surprise; but there was no getting around the fear, iris-black and widening, at its center. I'd seen fear in her eyes before, but I'd never been its cause.

I felt like a total shit.

"Jesus, kiddo," I whispered. "I'm sorry." Now it was her turn to avert the eyes. I looked at the mug of beer before me. It wasn't that much to ask. I wondered what the fuck was wrong with me.

I drained the goddamned mug.

"Okay," I said deliberately, with as much aplomb as I could scrounge up. "The beer is drunk, and so am I. I'm sedated. I'm fine. I will not get angry.

"So tell me: was it someone you know?"

She nodded, still looking away. Her good eye glistened.

"One of your lovers?"

Another nod, with an accompanying tear; that one hurt. It wasn't phrased to hurt. It couldn't help itself.

"Who?"

No answer.

"Who?"

A small voice, barely there at all. "Martin."

For one terrible moment of silence, the world went cold and dead.

"Come again?" I said. Vacuum, voice, through a throat constricted. I knew I'd heard it right, was terrified that I'd heard it right. My temples began to thud. The bile swilled in my guts.

"Martin," she said. Louder. Defiant.

"The
Martin?" I pressed. She shrank back again; inside my skull, there was thunder. "Scum-sucking douchebag Martin? Originator-of-this-whole-downhill-slide Martin?
That
Martin? Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yes." Less a word than a squeak. She was still shrinking back, her spine flush with the booth. Retreating, now. Into herself.

"Are you serious?!"

"YES!" She screeched, her tears flowing freely.

"JESUS!!"
I screamed, clapping my hands over my forehead. "You're sick!" She winced. "How could you
do
that?!"

But I already knew the answer. It was easy. She had help.

Martin.

The first, and the worst...

LeeAnn had broken up with him about two years ago, right around when we first met. I'd only seen the guy once or twice, when he came by the office to meet her after work. He seemed all right enough; tall and good-looking in a yuppified way. Real confident. Real smooth. They seemed like the perfect couple, and I was crushed.

But then I started hearing the horror stories about how he constantly bullied and sniped at her; how the emotional abuse had begun to turn physical, and the physical act of love became brutal, supply-on-demand... until, when she finally grew sick of him and was no longer willing to offer herself, he went ahead and took her anyway.

Repeatedly.

No charges were ever filed. I hadn't really known her then, had only admired her from afar, and it wasn't my place to speak out. But I remembered seeing the bruises and hearing about the asshole ex-boyfriend following her around, making threatening phone calls and an ugly nuisance of himself.

And I remember, even then, wanting to tear his stupid throat out.

She'd been with him for almost two years: a very gradual descent into hell. She never talked about it much; I had to piece most of my knowledge together from the rumor mill and an outsider's perspective. But the bitch of it was, I think she really did love him. And that's what scarred her so badly: she cared, and she trusted him. She'd truly given him a piece of her heart. His betrayal was tantamount to a traumatic amputation; even after the shock she could still feel a twinge of the missing piece. The phantom pain, where it used to be.

And tonight she'd gone back, once again.

To find it.

I really didn't want to hear the gory details; I could fill them in well enough by rote. She was scared: of him, of herself. She had good reason to be. It was a twisted sort of
ourobouros,
the snake forever consuming its own tail, forever vomiting itself right back up; victim and victimizer, locked in an endlessly spiraling death dance.

And for the very first time I saw her, flung head-first off the pedestal and down into the slime. I saw her the way
they
must.

Flawed. Vulnerable.

Pathetic.

And for one bone-chilling moment, I thought that maybe Martin had a point.

No.
The word was vehement, the voice very much my own.
No no no NO!
The vision ran completely counter to everything that I held dear, everything that I'd ever believed about the nature of love and the dignity of the human spirit. It made me crazy to think that such a thought had even entered my head...

...but still I could see it, in psychotic Technicolor clarity: LeeAnn, cringing before my swinging fist; the moment of glorious frisson, as flesh met surrendering flesh...

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?,
I silently screamed. My eyes snapped shut. The vision vanished. I whirled in my seat, away from LeeAnn and toward the bar, not wanting my face to betray the merest hint of what had just gone on inside my mind.

Then the bartender turned toward me. And nodded. And smiled.

And the pain in my bladder went nova.

It was remarkably like getting kicked in the balls: the same explosion of breath-stealing, strength-sapping anguish. It doubled me up in my seat, brought my face within inches of the table-top between LeeAnn and me. At that distance, with the dim light etching them in massive shadow, I couldn't help but see the four words crudely carved across its surface:

TO BE A MAN.

"What is it?" her voice said in quivering tones. Her tears were subsiding; she was regrouping in the rubble. I dragged my gaze up to hers with difficulty, still drowning in the pain.

"It's nothing, kiddo. Honest." I was trying to brush it aside, to hide it. It wasn't working. My voice was even more wobbly and wasted than hers.

"Don't bullshit me, Dave. You're in pain. Is it an ulcer?"

"I don't think so. I never had one before." But I had to briefly consider the possibility, because,
Jesus,
did it hurt!

"You look horrible."

"Thanks a lot."

"No, I'm seri—"

"LEEANN!" I thudded my fist against the table in pain and frustration and anger. "We didn't come here to talk about
my
goddamn pain! We came here to talk about yours! Now will you stop trying to change the fucking subject for a minute!"

She was stunned. In this, she was not alone. I could no more believe what I'd said than I could what I followed it up with.

"Baby, I'm not the one who got smacked around tonight! I'm not the one who went to Martin's and asked
him
to do it, either! I didn't even ask to come here! I only came because you begged me to, and I only did
that
because..."

I stopped, then. It was like slamming down the brakes at 120 m.p.h. The only sound in my head was the
screeeeeee
of rubber brain on asphalt bone. I blinked at the dust and smoke behind my eyes.

"Because why?" Her voice was soft as a whisper, warm as a beating heart. Her good eye was green and deep and inscrutable. It unnerved me, that eye, even more than its battered mate or the question that accompanied it. It scrutinized me with zoom-lens attention to every blackhead and ingrown hair on my soul.

Because I love you,
my mind silently told her.
Because I'm a goddamn chump, that's why.

I couldn't decide which conclusion was truer. I couldn't even sustain the internal debate. If I didn't get up and drag my ass down the stairs, I would let loose in my pants, and that was all there was to it. It was a matter of piss or die now, and there was no holding back.

"Excuse me a moment," I managed to mutter, rising up at half-mast and away from my seat.

But suddenly, LeeAnn didn't want to drop it. She grabbed my wrist just as I cleared the table. "David, please..." she said. It took everything I had to force the gentleness into my voice.

"I gotta pee, baby. Please. I'm gonna blow up if you don't let me go."

She actually smiled, then. In retrospect, were it not for the pain and embarrassment, that might have been the finest moment of my life. "I really do want to know," she said, soft as before. And her hand stayed right where it was.

I laid my free hand over it. The fingers meshed.

"Hold that thought," I whispered. Not entirely romantic; speech had gotten very difficult. Then I turned and beat a hasty retreat.

She watched me go. I could feel her eyes.

I knew what they were saying.

I will never forget.

***

Mark Twain once said that if God exists at all, he must surely be a malign thug. I wish it were true. It would be easier to blame God, or Fate, or the drugs, or the bar, or even LeeAnn.

But I know where the blame lays.

Right where it belongs.

I waddled away from the table with a smile on my face. The pain was still there... it kept me half doubled-over... but those last few moments had rendered it nearly insignificant. I was aglow with proximity to my heart's desire. I was aglow with impending triumph.