Transcription (12 page)

“Wouldn’t it be Foodway justice?”

“Bo Justice!”

“But if you’re all doing…”

“Bo Justice!”

James gave Bo a sidelong glance. “You’re insane.”

“That’s right. The justice of Bo is insane.”

They sat in silence for a minute. James wiped sweat from his forehead. A breeze brought in some cooler air, and both men sighed at the relief.

“She has a crush?”

“Yup,” Bo said. “You can trust me on this one. Girls tell their gay friends everything.”

“She told you this?”

“No, not in so many words, but nonetheless, I know. It’s Bo justice.”

James smiled.

“It’s been a long time since anyone had a crush on me,” James said. “Or vice versa.”

“How long have you been a hermit?”

James squirmed in his chair. “I wouldn’t say I’m a hermit.”

“Oh, pardon me! How long have you been a recluse? A shut-in?”

“Hey! Didn’t I just go hiking with you?”

“Once, and never again, from what I understand. Just answer the question—how long has it been since you’ve been a real, functioning member of society?”

James let out a whistling breath between his lips. “Honestly? High school?”

“What?” Bo asked. He pushed himself upright. “Are you kidding?”

“I told you—I’m agoraphobic,” James said.

Bo shook his head and waved James off. “You’re something, but I don’t believe it’s agoraphobic. Hell, I just figured you had a bad breakup, moved to town, and decided you would keep to yourself for a while. Where did you move here from?”

“Most recently? Tennessee,” James said. “Wait, why can’t I be agoraphobic?”

“You can, if you want, I just don’t believe it. You seem like a smart guy. You would be on medication or something. I’ve known plenty of crazy people, and you don’t seem crazy. What happened after high school that made you lock yourself away for twenty years?”

“Almost twenty-five,” James said, shaking his head. “Forgive me, but I really don’t think I can talk about it.”

Bo rolled his eyes and flopped back down in his chair. “How are you ever supposed to heal if you won’t let yourself think about your injuries?”

“It’s not an injury,” James said. “It’s just my job. Speaking of which, I should get inside. I’ve got to make sure everything is ready.”

“You should talk about this,” Bo said. He stood up when James did. “Whatever is eating you up, you shouldn’t let it fester forever. Trust me, I have some experience with the pain caused by keeping a secret all to yourself.”

“Thanks,” James said. He moved to the door and waited. He didn’t feel completely comfortable unlocking the door while Bo stood there. After a few seconds, Bo seemed to get the hint. He slid over the balcony and James went back inside. He locked the door behind him and let the curtains fall back into place.

When he heard the knock on the sliding door, James almost screamed.

He caught his breath and poked his head around the side of the curtains. Bo was standing there.

“What?” James yelled through the glass.

Bo didn’t answer. He held up the gin bottle still wrapped in its paper bag and pointed to it. James had left it on the balcony, right next to his chair.

“Keep it,” James yelled.

Bo tilted his head and frowned, shaking his head. He set the bottle down and climbed over the railing again.
 

James looked at the gin. It seemed a shame to waste it, but it was dangerous to let it sit there. If he ignored it now, it would still be sitting there in the morning. Morning drinking was a very dangerous practice. James stood by the door for several minutes, waiting to make sure that Bo was actually gone this time. When he was convinced, he fumbled the lock open, shot the door to the side, and grabbed the booze. He had the door buttoned back up in moments. Soon after that he was dumping the gin into the sink.

As the liquid disappeared down the drain, the smell of the gin captured his wandering mind. He didn’t want to remember, but it seemed hopeless to try to fight it.

#
 
#
 
#
 
#
 
#

For a while, back in West Virginia, gin had seemed like a godsend. Pills were untrustworthy. When he took pills to sleep, he would wake up in a fog, unable to get his brain reactivated in time to make good decisions. James felt himself spiraling deeper into the control of the narcotics. His hallucinations started out as random lights and shadows. They grew, until he was unsure of what was real.
 

Alcohol, if only because it was so easy to procure, had seemed vastly more safe. James started out tentatively, with just a cocktail at the end of his writing. He used the drink to relax himself into sleep. It worked perfectly for several months.
 

After a few days in a row with bad nightmares, James had increased his dosage to one-and-a-half and then two drinks. Again, this worked for a month or two before his body adjusted and the dreams came back.

When he woke, he often suffered from a hangover. Unlike the aftereffects of the pills, his alcohol hangovers actually seemed to help. His headache was a welcome distraction from the words that entered through his eyes and spilled from his hand. He achieved a detachment that was impossible with pills.
 

Until he lost control, he was proud of his discovery.

James brought a discipline to drinking. His achievement was the result of a mental fortitude that most people lacked. His pride extended right through three drinks one morning, and didn’t stop until he was sipping on his fourth. Somewhere in the middle of that drink, he decided to top off his glass and head for bed. Refilling his tumbler back to the top was the last thing that he remembered of that day.

James had a terrible dream.

In his dream, sunset came, and he wasn’t at his desk. He was drunk—stinking drunk, his mother would have said. He was sitting on the floor of his kitchen, remembering jokes from junior high, and laughing. He hadn’t laughed like that since… He couldn’t remember when he’d laughed like that.

“How do you make a dead baby float?” he asked the dishwasher. “Easy—some ice cream, a blender, and two scoops of dead baby.” He cackled and slopped a little of his drink.

“Hey—why do they always boil water when a woman goes into labor?”
 

The dishwasher didn’t have a guess.

“So if it’s stillborn, they can make soup!”
 

He tilted his head back and laughed.

“Oh! I’ve got a good one. What’s the best part about having sex with twenty four-year-olds?” he asked.

He looked to the refrigerator.
 

“There’s
twenty
of them!”

James set his glass down on the floor as he fell to his side. He laughed, and laughed, until it felt like his lung might actually come up his throat.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

The sound shook his chest. A tiny, sane part of his brain thought,
heart’s giving out. Finally catching a break
.

The idea only made him laugh harder.

THUMP-THUMP.

James pushed up to one elbow, realizing the source of the noise. Someone was banging on the underside of his floor.
 

“How rude!” he whispered

He made a fist and used it. BANG-BANG.

THUMP-THUMP.

James shook his head. Ever since the treadmill of Pennsylvania, he had been a model neighbor. He never made any noise at all. People weren’t allowed to laugh in their own kitchen? James reached to gather his bathrobe around himself and realized that he was wearing a t-shirt. He tilted his head. That should have been his first clue that time had gotten away from him. He was still dressed from the night before.

It took him three tries to get to his feet. He wound up staring straight down at the floor, where his hand was closed around his glass. With pure delight, he realized that all he had to do was straighten out, and he would be standing up. He attempted the maneuver. When he tipped backwards, he fell right into the face of the refrigerator, which kept him upright.

James swayed towards the door.

With reflexive habit, he made sure he had his keys. He ventured out into the hallway. This was still part of his territory—he came out here six days a week to check the mailbox. That wasn’t his destination today though. He locked the door behind him and found the stairs. He hadn’t used these stairs since the day he had moved in. He had forgotten how they looked. They had rubber mats fused to the treads and metal corners dotted with rusty screws. The whole thing reminded him of the swimming pool at his high school. He didn’t know why.

One hand gripped the drink and the other took the railing. He surprised himself halfway down the stairs when he realized that there was still fluid in his glass. He took a quick break for another sip and then continued the descent.
 

Standing in front of the door, he realized that he’d forgotten the purpose of his trip.

If the person in the apartment had been looking out their peephole at that moment, they would have seen a very interesting sight. His eyelids were halfway down, his head bobbed and swayed. From a thousand yards away, anyone could have identified James as drunk. He was
stinking
drunk. He was
dead-baby-joke
drunk.

Behind those unfocused eyes, something was rising to the surface. Something loomed out of the depths and swam into view.
 

One more slurred sentence came from his lips before drunk-James disappeared—“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

His eyes shut. When they opened again, James straightened to his full height. His clear, wide eyes looked thoughtfully at the glass of gin in his right hand. With an easy motion, he tossed the glass to the side. It shattered in the dark place under the stairs. James reached up and gave three quick knocks on the metal door.

He folded his arms behind his back and clasped his hands out of sight.

“Just a minute,” he heard from the other side. The peephole went dark as the person inside finally looked. They had missed drunk-James by seconds. They only saw a kind, charismatic person standing there.

The door opened to the extent of the chain. The face of an older woman appeared.

“Yeah?”

“Hi. I live upstairs and over on this side,” he said, pointing. “Have you heard any strange noises from the apartment directly above you?”

“Yeah. Wait, though. Up and that way—that’s the Christiansen woman who lives there. The one with all the pamphlets. Who are you?”

“Not on the second floor,” James said, bringing his open hands around to his front. The woman shied back. “I meant on the third…”
 

He raised his foot and kicked the door, right next to the handle. The chain didn’t seem to slow the door at all. It flew backwards, pushing past the woman’s grip and slammed into her forehead. She stumbled as James slipped inside. He closed the door behind himself before the woman finished her rambling fall to the floor.

“Oh!” she said. She sounded more surprised than hurt.

James strode forward and planted his foot in the center of her chest. He leaned forward until most of his weight rested there.
 

“I can’t…” she wheezed. “I can’t breathe.” Her hands came up to his ankle and slapped gently at his leg.

“Claire?” a voice called from deeper within the apartment. “Who was at the door?”

James looked in that direction, waiting to see if someone would appear in the hall.

“You have to…” the woman said. “Please. I can’t breathe.”

James tilted his head down and looked at the woman. He gave his foot a jolt and heard something crack beneath his shoe. The woman let out another wheeze, this time accompanied by gas from a lower exit. The smell of her fear swept through the room. James frowned.

When James raised his foot from her chest, she said, “CACK!”

He brought his heel down in the center of her face. Her hands fluttered. He brought his heel down two more times. She was still.

Without looking, he lowered his hand and grabbed one of the woman’s ankles. He walked forward, dragging her across the wool carpet they had laid down over the wall-to-wall. Her nightgown rode up with the friction. Her limp arm banged against and end table. The table wobbled, but stayed upright. Blood was just starting to leak from her head. The back of her skull was crushed.

They layout of the apartment was the same as his own. James pulled the old woman halfway down the hall and then dragged her into the bathroom on the right. With her next to the tub, he collected her wrists and hauled her up and over the lip. He did the same for her legs. They made a hollow thump when he let go. James smiled.

“Well? Who was it?” the voice called again.

James continued down the hall and turned into the bedroom.

Wearing boxers and an undershirt, an old man was propped up on the bed. He took his eyes off the tiny television and saw James standing in the doorway. The old man’s hand reached towards the bedside table, where a cordless phone sat in its charging station.

They were locked in a stare as the old man reached and James covered the distance. Their hands met on the phone. James squeezed until the old man’s fingers cracked and he realized he should scream.

“Help! Help!” was all the old man managed.

With straight fingers, James jabbed at the old man’s throat. Something popped and the man’s voice gave out before he could form another word. With his other hand, James still squeezed the old man’s fingers to the phone.
 

The old man swiped a weak strike. One of his jagged fingernails tore a neat line across James’s cheek. James smiled. He formed a fist and struck the old man on the chin. The man’s head swayed back and his eyes fluttered. With one more punch, the man sagged backwards. His hand clawed at the bedspread, which was a quilted into the shape of a giant flower.
 

James punched once more, bouncing the man’s skull off the headboard.
 

The man was out.

James turned and walked for the door. He appeared a second later with a long knife from the kitchen. First, he leaned in close to the bedspread. He lifted the man’s hand and held it up while he inspected the fabric. With the knife, he carved out a square of the material. Next, he used the knife to saw through the old man’s finger. He held it close to his eye, looking at the skin and blood under the nail. He took the bloody finger and folded it in the square from the quilt. He tucked the little package into the back pocket of his jeans.