Loss (3 page)

“I see,” she said. She shot me a look . “Just like Will.”

A reference to me, not to her bestselling author husband. It took me back a step. Of course, she was also likening me to a chimp, so maybe it wasn’t quite the compliment I had wanted it to be.

“Well hello, Mojo,” she said, “how are you today?”

Mojo went, “Ook.”

Ferdi lifted his arms and clapped happily. “You see! He says he is fine!”

Gabriella laughed pleasantly and tried again. “It will be very nice having you in the building, Mojo, I hope we’ll become great friends.”

Mojo did a dance, held out his tin cup, and went, “Ook ook.”

Ferdi said, “Bravo, Mojo! As all can clearly hear, you have told them you are delighted to be a new neighbor to such gracious and wonderful people!”

“Why doesn’t he write us a note instead?” I said.

“I’m sure he soon shall! But at the moment he is enjoying this conversation so much, he has no need to give letters!”

Gabriella gave me the look again and this time I returned it. We were compatriots, we were sharing a moment. She was laughing and I was smiling. That was good enough. I drew another quarter out of my pocket and tossed it into the monkey’s cup. If nothing else, he was a smart chimp. He’d already taken me for half a buck.

“Are you with the circus?” I asked.

“No, nor any carnival! We are our own pair, a team! We have toured Central Europe, throughout Asia, New Zealand, and South Dakota! And now, we arrive here!”

“I’ll help with your belongings,” I said.

“Wonderful!”

Gabriella swept out past us heading for the door, and the overwhelming urge to touch her rose up in me and made me reach for her, maybe to grab her elbow and turn her to face me, so that I might finally find the courage to say something real and true to her, about myself or about Corben, or perhaps about nothing at all. Just a chance to spend more time with her, even if it was only a few more minutes. When you got down to it, I was as needy as Corben, and maybe even worse.

But my natural restraint slowed me down too much, and even before I managed to lift my hand she was already out of reach.

My last image of her:

A gust of wind whirling her hair into a savage storm about her head while she eased out the front door silhouetted in the morning sun, her skirt snapping back at me once as if demanding my attention, a curious expression of concern or perhaps dismay on her face–perhaps the subtle aftereffect of her argument with Corben, or maybe even considering me, for the first time, as a potential lover–moving across the street against traffic. A taxi obscured her, the door finished closing, the chimp chittered, and my secret love was gone.

~ * ~

I thought Ferdi and Mojo might have some friends or fans from New Zealand to help them move in, but they had no one but me. Luckily, they didn’t have that much stuff. Mojo really did have monkey bars, a collapsible cage that when put together took up an entire room of the three-bedroom apartment. It was probably my duty to call the landlord and squeal on them. No pets were allowed, much less restricted exotic animals, but I liked the action they brought with them, the energy. Let somebody else rat them out.

We carried everything up the stairs rather than futzing with the tight elevator. It took less than two hours for Ferdi and me to get everything inside and set up.

Ferdi handed me twenty dollars as a tip, but the monkey danced so desperately and kept jabbing his cup at me with such ferocity that I finally gave him the crumpled bill. Ferdi had a real racket going, and I wondered if I could talk him into being my new agent. I could just see him giving hell to my editors, the monkey using his little pen to scribble out clauses on bad contracts. Ferdi asked me to stay and share a bottle of wine with him, but I had a story I wanted to finish.

When I got back to my place I sat at my desk staring at the screen at some half-composed paragraphs that made virtually no sense to me. Being with Gabriella had inspired me, but now the words ran together into phrases that held no real resolve. I didn’t know my own themes anymore.

I sat back and stared up at the shafts of light stabbing down across my study, feeling the weight of the entire building above me–all the living and the dead, the bricks and mortar of history growing heavier every year. A hundred and forty years worth of heritage and legacy, chronicles and sagas. Soon they might crush me out of existence. Maybe I was even in the mood for it.

I had a stack of unopened mail on my bed. I tore into an envelope containing a royalty check for $21.34. I started to crumple it in my fist, but I needed the money. I decided that no matter how Mojo might push me, I wasn’t going to give it to him. I picked up an unfinished chapter of my latest novel and the words offended me. I tossed the pages across the room and watched them dive-bomb against the far wall. There wasn’t even enough air in here for them to float on a draft. I wondered if Corben was still up there howling. I wondered if Gabriella had returned to him yet or if she was out in the city enjoying herself, taking in enough of the living world for both of them. For all three of us. The claustrophobia started to get to me and I decided to go walk the building.

I hadn’t gotten twenty paces from my apartment door when I spotted a man laid out on the tiled floor of the lobby–a shallow red halo inching outward–with an ice pick in his forehead that vibrated with every breath he took.

I’d never seen him in the light of day, but I thought it was the guy who’d invented aluminum foil. I couldn’t believe he was still alive. Blood and clear fluids lapped from his ears. A wave of vertigo rippled through me and I bit down on my tongue and it passed. I bent to him and had no idea what to do. He was finished, he had to be finished because there was three inches of metal burrowed into his brain, but he was wide-eyed and still staring at me with great interest. He licked his lips and tried to move his hands.

“Jesus Holy Christ...” I whispered. I didn’t have a cell phone. I started to turn and run for my apartment when he called my name.

“Will.”

It was astonishing he could actually see. Death was already clouding his eyes and gusting through his chest. His voice had been thickened by it. It was a sound I’d heard several times before. He sounded exactly like my father when the old man had about three minutes left to go. There was no point in leaving him now. I kneeled at his side. “I’m here.”

“I lied,” he said.

“About what?”

“I didn’t invent aluminum foil. Aluminum foil was first introduced into the industry as an insulating material. It later found diverse applications in a variety of fields.”

“What?”

“It can be used instead of lead and tinfoil in other specified applications. The aluminum foil thickness ranges from 0.0043 millimeters to 0.127 millimeters. It comes with a bright or dull finish and also with embossed patterns–”

“Shhh.”

“Foils are available in thirty-three distinct colors. In 1910, when the first aluminum foil rolling plant was opened in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland. The plant, owned by J.G. Neher & Sons, stood at the foot of the Rhine Falls and captured the falls’ energy. Neher's sons together with Dr. Lauber–oh, Dr. Lauber! Dr. Lauber!–discovered the endless rolling process and the use of aluminum foil as a protective barrier.”

The ice pick had ripped through his memories. Even if he hadn't invented aluminum foil, he sure knew a hell of a lot about it. I couldn’t quite figure why his head was full of all this, but it was probably no worse than thinking about stealing Dutch Master prints and heading to Aruba. I wondered what I would be spouting on about in my last minute if someone stuck a blade into my brain.

I should’ve offered up some kind of soothing words to send him on his way, but he looked animated and eager to chat despite the fact that his brains were leaking out of his ears and tear ducts. I should’ve asked him who had done this to him. Instead I said, “Why the hell would you lie about a thing like that?”

“I wanted to meet girls. Forgive me!”

In the hierarchy of sins I thought that lying about inventing aluminum foil in order to meet chicks–which in itself wasn’t particularly immoral–just didn’t rate very high on the damnation scale. I figured if a priest had been handy, he would’ve given dispensation without much of a problem.

“You’re forgiven,” I said. “Who did this to you?”

“Dr. Lauber! Dr. Lauber!”

“Tell me who–”

“God, the things I’ve done. I once struck my mother. I ran over a dog, someone’s pet. I broke the hearts of my own children. I hurt a woman, she bled. I shall surely go to hell. Please, Dr. Lauber!”

“Shhh.”

“Dr. Lauber!”

“Close your eyes.”

He finally did and died that instant.

~ * ~

The cops questioned me fult tilt boogie. They came around in three teams of two. I got the Officer Friendlys, the hair-trigger hardcase growlers, and the plaintive guys who just sort of whined at me and wanted me to admit to murder. I told them his last words and they thought maybe he had ratted out the almighty and vengeful aluminum foil powers that be. They quizzed each other about the name Dr. Lauber. They all said it sounded familiar, maybe a hitman working for the syndicate. Maybe a plastic surgeon who’d gone out of his tree. I suspected that if anybody Googled the name they’d find him to be the man who’d discovered the endless rolling process with the sons of J.G. Neher.

The whiners took me down to the station and put me in a holding room with a big mirror, where I stared at myself and whoever was behind it and started to re-evaluate the cops in my novels. I’d been trying way too hard. I‘d been breaking my ass creating brilliant detectives who solved crimes with the sparsest clues. But these guys were never going to figure out who’d killed the aluminum foil liar, not unless somebody confessed out of hand just to stop all the bitching.

Eventually they cut me loose and I wandered the streets. I was the guy who had to clean up all the blood off the lobby floor back at Stark House. I didn’t want to go back yet. I’d seen death before but not murder. I’d written about it and I recognized how far off I’d been from what it really felt like to be in the presence of homicide.

A certain sense of guilt lashed me as I thought about how close I’d come to walking in on the man being attacked. Maybe two minutes, maybe less. Perhaps I could’ve prevented it. If only I’d moved a little faster. If only I’d run out into the street to see what could be seen. Maybe I would’ve spotted a killer rushing away or hailing a cab.

I stopped into a bookstore and bought Corben’s latest novel. His dedication read:
To all those who love the mysteries of life and death as much as I do.
It was followed by
And to my wife
.

Not even her name, her lovely name. The bastard pasted her in there as an afterthought. How could she read that and not be appalled? How could he expect her not to be upset? I didn’t understand it and knew I never would.

I read the first ten pages leaning against the window of a nearby bodega, and read another twenty walking back to Stark House. I sat outside on the front steps for a half hour and let the paragraphs slide by under my gaze. I didn’t know what the hell I was reading. I was too full of my own anger and past to even see the words. I flipped the pages by rote. I looked at the dedication again and tried to see the substance and meaning behind it. Corben didn’t love the mysteries of life. I wasn’t sure he loved anything at all. I left the book there and went inside.

The cops had put up little orange cones around the murder scene, with yellow tape cordoning the area off. The tape didn’t say “Police Line, Do Not Cross” so I tore it down and got my mop, gloves, scouring pads and sanitizers out of the closet. It took me two hours to do an even halfway decent job of it. I had thought it would take longer. There was still a bad stain. I kept having to stop when my hands started to shake. I didn’t know if it was because of all the blood or because I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems that I hadn’t seen someone else’s desperate loneliness. I’d thought I had it bad, but Jesus, dying with the dry facts of aluminum foil on your lips because you wanted to get laid, it was a whole other level of heartbreak.

~ * ~

Ferdinand the Magnifico and Mojo put on little shows for the neighborhood kids in the garden behind the building. It wasn’t much of a garden, but by East Side standards it was practically the Congo. The monkey grunted with certain inflections and Ferdi appeared to honestly believe Mojo was chattering like he was playing Bridge with the Ladies Auxiliary Club. Mojo went “ook” and Ferdi, with childish glee, raised his arms out and said, “You see there, clear as the chimes of St. Patrick’s! He said, ‘I love you.’ You heard it yourself! Did you not?” The kids said that they could. They giggled and clapped and tossed pennies and nickels. They chased the chimp and then ran away when the chimp chased them. It brightened the place up.

I didn’t quite get how Ferdi made enough to pay Manhattan rent while nickel and diming it, but maybe he had tours booked. He could’ve really cleaned up in South Dakota. It seemed possible. For all I knew, Mojo’d sold out Fourth of July at Madison Square Garden.

I’d used three different bleaches and detergents doing additional clean-up work over the course of a week but still hadn’t managed to get all the blood out of the tile in the lobby. It had become ingrained, as deep as the aluminum foil liar’s guilt.