Man in the Empty Suit (31 page)

“I told you to leave the woman out of this,” I said to the Inventor.

The Nose answered. “I realized that you weren’t telling me everything you knew. You’re with the Elders.”

“I’m not with anyone, you shit.”

“Prove it.”

The three of us stood at the points of a shadowy triangle, the Suit and Lily at the center. Six sat on the floor, arms wrapped around knees. I looked at the Inventor and then the Nose. His handsome robes now seemed only costume, as cheap and threadbare as my own.

“So after you pulled the gun from the trash, did you ever get bullets for it?”

Eyes bounced back and forth. Six took in everything. Tethers unraveled furiously.

I asked Six, “Did they give you a loaded gun?”

He shook his head.

I felt a thud in my chest. Until that moment I didn’t realize I’d held my breath.

The Nose said, “We’re younger than all of you. As long as none of you found out it wasn’t loaded, what’s the harm?”

Lily laughed at that, and we all looked at her. To me she said, “See? Selfish.”

I thought back to myself last year, when I was Suit, almost ready to pull the trigger on my younger, armed selves. I hadn’t done it. I wouldn’t do it. And if I could figure out this mess and get Lily out of the building, I would take the gun with me. Everything could reknit itself into whatever scarred shape it might need to take, and I wouldn’t return.

“Show me your gun,” I said. Nose and Inventor exchanged glances, and I raised my voice. “I don’t care who, but one of you give me the fucking gun.”

The Inventor stepped forward, palm up, gun presented like a gift. I took it and stepped to the window to see it in the streetlight. I touched the sides and worked the mechanism. It was rusted and sticky with old dirt and grease.

Turning the gun in the light, I imagined what I would have done with it at six, seven, eight, twelve. In between trips I would have taken it out, played with it, held it, pretended it protected me from hordes of who-knew-whats, of things unseen but known, of older men not yet nicknamed. Played with and dreamed of, broken and rusted from lack of care and misuse, it would never fire again.

I threw it back toward the Inventor. It hammered the floor and echoed in the hall.

“You children should get downstairs. They’ll be starting the movies soon.” No one moved.

I joined Lily where she crouched. Something in her eyes said she wouldn’t take my hand, so I didn’t offer. I leaned down, my face close to hers, and I breathed her in, just a little. Her hands stroked Suit’s blood-wet hair. I told myself I’d get
over it. I suddenly felt my beard in a way I hadn’t before. I wasn’t that man on the floor. I exhaled a bit of Lily when I asked, “What will you tell him? Assuming you both survive.”

She gave a look that made me think of a sealed crypt. “Nothing.”

Her answer surprised me. “Why?”

“When people know things about you, it takes a part of you away. I’m tired of being picked apart.”

That was when I knew why she chose the man beside her, the one who was free of the time and knowledge that tied me to her, the one who hadn’t been marked with the bird flying in the wrong fucking direction. The fact that he knew nothing of her made him attractive; the fact that he held no preconceptions or beliefs about her made her choose him over me. He could still be pricked in the right way, bleed the way she wanted him to. I had facts. I had knowledge. I’d seen her surroundings, and I had lain in them with her. She felt burdened by my knowledge. She felt pressure to perform in an expected way; she felt trapped in a current of circumstances. But with the Suit, none of that existed. He was new. He might never know.

She understood the equation: Him plus her equaled me. She ignored me as a solution. She cared only for the problem. She knelt beside him, hands on his bleeding head, his hair between her fingers, and I groaned as I watched.

“Then don’t tell him shit. For his sake.” I suddenly saw both of them clearly, as if a switch turned on lights throughout the room. I said, “I mean ever. Don’t ever tell him a thing. Because the moment you do, you’ll start trying to kill him a little bit at a time.”

She refused to meet my eye. Her voice fell out in a whisper. I no longer knew or cared whether Nose and Inventor stood behind me, whether she was whispering to hide it from them or from some part of herself, but I heard every click of her tongue on her teeth when she said, “We both know I don’t have a lot of time left.”

I stood up and took an absurd inventory of my pockets. Empty. “Nothing has to play out the way we remember it,” I said finally. It was as close to a good-bye as I would ever have with the woman called Lily.

I DECIDED TO
leave the hotel, alone. Nothing would matter once I left. If I simply disappeared and didn’t return, there would be no shooting. Lily would live.

I cut through the ballroom on my way to the back exit. It was dark and littered with chairs. On the wall played images from the accidental video, the steps to Lily’s apartment, the shadows cast by me and Screwdriver as he carried her home, her blood splattering on dusty steps. Despite the chilled air, I broke into a sweat. My head hurt more than it had moments earlier, pulse tapping behind my eyes. I wanted to look away, but that was hard, too.

Most of the Elders I passed watched the flashing wall, alert and attentive, hands on knees, fingers worrying along pant seams. One or two cried, tried to keep it quiet, failed, cried anyway. There was no consoling, no hands on backs, no kind words. They were too like me to find and offer consolation in
any way except mutual suffering. I walked through the scattered selves, drew attention as I passed. It would have taken effort not to notice the suddenly steeled eyes that followed me. Had something changed from my last time through here, or would they pretend to sleep when the Suit passed?

Seventy sat near the projector, turned slightly away from me but aware of my approach. Had I really thought the Inventor could lure him upstairs? I’d unleashed my own problems yet again. I sat next to him. We stared at the wall for a few minutes. Above us the video played to the end and Seventy hit a button on the remote, the tape rewound, still playing, pulling everything backward at a slightly-too-fast pace. The gentle bounces of the camera became harsh shaking, a panic as the point of view was no longer that of the pursuer but the pursued.

I said, “How many times do you show it to them?”

“Oh, I lost count. It’s all they care about.”

On the wall the staggering figure holding the woman lurched backward down the stairs.

“I prefer the film this way,” Seventy, all nostalgic, whispered. “Easier to take, knowing that she’s gaining life as it goes on, rather than losing it.” He never had quite the same expression as the other Elders. Understanding and secrets floated behind his eyes, words I knew he wouldn’t share. What event had changed the quality of him, I couldn’t imagine. I wondered exactly how tethered he was to the others that he alone could treat me well. No, not well. Respectfully.

“I’m leaving the hotel.”

“I know you’ll try.” Eyes on the wall, shuddered lights reflected back at me, my silhouette at the center, inside what would be my own pupils.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me?”

At last his face turned toward me. “No. I heard. Just not going to happen’s the problem. Others won’t let you.”

“The Youngsters—”

“Not Youngsters I’m talking about. You’ve got to be a bit more self-aware, pun intended. These fellas haven’t been too happy with you ever since you put on that suit.” His hand stayed on the remote, fingers on buttons, waited for the video’s start, waited to press the action forward again. But in that hand I saw muscles twitch. He tried, with effort, to force calm into his limbs. How much of that was just elderly tremors? I wondered. How much was what I feared, that he was no more in control of events than I was, that the Elders were as much a mob as the Youngsters? He forced a casual smile to his lips. “You’ve been under the gun yourself. Will be again if you try to leave. And I heard that your raft is missing.”

“I’ll just go find one of the Youngsters’ rafts.”

“That would mean leaving the hotel. And that’s not happening.”

For an instant I couldn’t help myself, looked up at the wall, saw only Screwdriver’s shadow, distorted by Lily’s hanging arm and hair. I looked away, saw dark eyes shine in my direction, the video playing in each one. Elders watched me watch them.

“You told me the Youngsters were the threat.”

“They were and are. But right now you’ve got to move forward with your mind on who you’ll be, not who you were.”

Seventy leaned back in his chair. He was done with talk. The rows of heads turned away from me to watch their film. I edged close to the wall and made for the hallway, aware that
some of them must have watched me leave. I rushed to the front doors and looked through the glass to the street. Elders waited, hands in pockets, eyes locked through the dirty glass on mine. I gave an absurd wave, and they returned one, smiles on their faces too genuine.

Testing them was pointless. I’m sure more would show up if I tried. I was tired of everything. Something told me to hide in the finished room. Up the main stairs, I heard only dripping water. The Youngsters’ hunt for the Suit and Lily must have taken them upstairs by now. Possibly as far as the dumbwaiter. I found myself on the fifth floor, in front of that door unlike the others. Clean and cared for. My door, open. I sat on the bed under the burning lights and looked at the mess the Suit had left. The bed was rumpled, the video equipment still warm. I checked the bottle under the bed and found it nearly empty, as I knew I would. I finished what remained. Beside it was the brown paper bag. Written on it was the message in my handwriting—
“In case of emergency, break glass”
—the message that I hadn’t written. My hands shook as I read it.

The bathroom sparkled with splashed water. I added to the puddles, washed my face, my neck. Suddenly I was desperate to wash away the filth of the Drunk and stripped to the waist. I looked at the reflection in the mirror, watched water drip from long whiskers, run down my neck and onto my chest. My cheek glowed red with Screwdriver’s punch. My hair hung in greasy ropes to either side of my face. I had never seen myself this filthy before. I washed myself again, stripped naked, scrubbed at myself with wet hands. I looked around the bathroom and found no soap but a pile of scratchy towels. I wet one in the sink, ran it over myself again and again,
turned it gray on one side and switched to the other side, then another towel. Standing before my reflection, cold, tired, bruised, I couldn’t care what might have happened before. I held a strand of my long hair in my hand and pulled at it, felt the grease it left on my fingertips. I remembered the shooting, the hooded eyes of the Drunk, the angry whispered words condemning whomever they lit upon. Perhaps me, perhaps Lily. No one. Who did I blame for this? I pushed back my hair and looked at my face, my eyes. Red and puffy, they blamed no one. The Suit needed that, to see my eyes, to recognize I wasn’t a threat.

The liquor bottle smashed easily in the tub, curtain drawn, reduced to a handful of large shards. I picked up the largest shard and turned it in my hand until I found the best angle, careful to avoid cutting myself. I ran water and went to work with the glass blade. Handfuls of hair fell away, shaved with a minimum of skin cut free. The water ran. Hair clogged the drain, the bowl began to fill. I worked blind on the back of my scalp, yelped when I nicked myself, brought my hand back covered in blood, ignored it and cut more hair. I felt with oversensitive fingers for hair too long to be called stubble and worked the glass edge at it. At last the uneven shave was done. My scalp ran red in some places, but not for long, I imagined. I looked nothing like the Body. His beard wasn’t on my face. If I died, I couldn’t be him.

I hoped I’d miss the gathering upstairs but knew I wouldn’t no matter what I did. Still naked, I climbed into bed and fell into a dream where I managed to bury the gun in the soil behind my childhood home and walk away, certain that no one saw, no one knew. I don’t know how long I slept, but I
woke to the sound of water splashing on the bathroom tile. I hadn’t turned off the hair-clogged sink. It had overflowed, and an inch of water covered the carpet. I stood in it, watched the ripples move to the periphery and return. On the bathroom counter was the gun, the one I’d left on the toilet tank downstairs. Seeing it made me feel sick, but not surprised. Someone was placing all the necessary pieces together for a bloodletting. I felt sympathy then for Screwdriver, working so hard to do what he thought right, putting pieces into place that would lead to someone’s bleeding to death on the penthouse floor, and as I felt sympathy for him, I felt a little of it melt into me as well.

I dressed and pocketed the gun. The suit, still wet from rain and sliding under the bathroom stall’s door, stank like I’d already died in it. I put it on anyway, ill at its odor, its clammy grip. I stood at the door and pretended I wouldn’t go upstairs, pretended that the Elders weren’t outside the door at that moment, ready to put the gun in my hand and make me shoot myself or take that bullet as the Drunk had before.