My Second Death (25 page)

I sit very still and listen with the phone pressed against my left ear.

“Mickey? Come on, come on, don’t go silent. I know you called. You said you need help. Well, I need help. Babe, can’t you see? This is how you fix things. This is what you were born for!”

“But — ”

“Don’t be so ple
bi
an. You know I’ll never let you go to jail, I know you, right? Who knows you better than I do? I won’t let anything bad happen to you. I’ve got this plan, it’s perfect. This guy — this asshole — my dealer, right? He needs the money, breathing down my fucking neck, all the time, Jesus Christ, every second. I can’t handle it anymore, I swear, Mickey, the guy’s driving me fucking crazy. So I’m thinking, what can I do? And I know, right? I know this guy, he’s got no real ID, fuck, I don’t even know if he’s a real citizen. He’s not on anyone’s database. You think the cops are going to care if this asshole dies? No. So you just need to kill him. I’ve got a gun. Cops can’t trace it.”

“You kill him then. If it’s so safe, so
justifiable
.”

The sarcasm is lost on him. He laughs, a short bark of sound interrupted by a dry cough. When he can talk again, he says, “Jesus God, Mickey.
I
couldn’t do that. The moral imperative and all that. We’re talking about the capacity to end another human life. It’s like asking your librarian for a nice cut of beef, you can’t do that. One goes to one’s butcher for one’s butching needs.” He laughs until he starts to hiccup. “I’m kidding.
Jok
ing. But seriously, I’m the first person they’d look at. The cops, I mean. Fucker who owes the asshole ten grand? Are you kidding me? I’ve got to have an
alibi
. A
rock solid
alibi. And they’ll never think about the kid sister, the college-attending kid sister. I swear to God I’ve thought this through, Mickey. It’s going to work. It’s the
per
fect crime. I
swear
.”

Snow collects in a swarming lace over the windshield.

“You there? Mickey, come on. You there? Oh babe, don’t do this to me. This is what you were
born
for. This guy, I promise, he’s nothing. A total asshole. This guy would fuck his own grandma if it would pay him. He’s as fucked as I am, a total junkie. A user. Probably has AIDS already anyway. And you — Mickey, think about it. This is a
gift
.” And his voice cracks in a wavering giggle. “Happy Christmas, Mick! It’s my special Christmas gift to you!”

“A gift? You’re such a — why would I
want
to kill someone? How is this fixing my problem?”

“Mickey.” His voice turns hard. Congeals. He enunciates. “Mickey. Listen to me. You told me you fucked it up. Well you haven’t even
started
to fuck up. Do you understand? If you don’t do this for me, you will fuck everything up,
every
thing. Because I’ll tell. God knows I’ll end in the electri — no, what is it they do in this state? I’ll end up in
ject
ed but before I do I’ll tell everyone. I’ll tell the parents. I’ll tell Stephen. I’ll fucking tell Aidan. I’ll tell everyone. I’ll tell them the truth and nothing but the whole goddamn fucking truth.”

I pinch the skin between my eyebrows. This time, he lets the silence lie in a thick haze between us.

I know what he means by
the whole truth
. He means the truth about me, which is bad enough, but also the truth about him. Which, really, doesn’t leave me with many choices.

I say, “Okay. Fine. But, if I do it? If I do it, no gun. I want a knife.”

I’m only half certain that I am saying this to buy time and to figure out a way to get Dave out of his situation without having to call the cops on him.

But Dave doesn’t even question my willingness to kill. He gives a soft sound, a broken sighing cry that reminds me of Gregorian chants, of polytonic hymns in praise of the light.

“Yes,” he says. “Oh fucking Christ.
Yes
.”

I close the phone. It falls to the seat. My breath has created a white fog across the inside of the pane.

I drive south into darkness.

The snow fades and a moon glimmers a sheet of suspended cloud particles of dirt and chemicals.

My head replays the sound of my hand striking Aidan’s face. And Dave’s voice, a voice pitching like a stick on a turgid ocean, jabbering about how excited he is, and do I realize that this is my calling, my meaning, the thing I was
meant
to do?

My palms sweat against the steering wheel.

When I pass the exit for the university I hesitate. I think I should turn around and go back, make sure my asshole roommate hasn’t succeeded in killing himself. I’m tempted to let Dave do whatever it is that he is intent on doing without risking legal or moral complicity in it.

But if I leave Dave to do whatever it is that he is intent on doing, while I may escape legal complicity, I’m not certain what moral abyss I’ll have fallen into.

My breath is uneven.

The freeway dips and curves out around great hulking shoulders of earth, the bridge strung across the valley between Akron’s hills.

I swerve to the side of the road, a narrow shoulder against the cement embankment of the bridge wall. I kill the engine and sit watching rain steam on the sloped hood. The rhythmic zip-zip of cars outside. My mind shies away from Aidan, from how I thought I could fix him but I made everything worse. The back of my throat feels tight like a wad of gum sticks in it.

I don’t know what this is, but it feels like — I don’t like it. The cat. The clean snap of fragile cat vertebrae under my palm. The hot stink of fur and blood and diarrhea. It felt good. It felt
great
. When I faced those gutless assholes, I towered over them all, braced my feet on the shoulders of the earth and loomed. I was their god. Accuser, judge, and executor.

I’ve read all the psychology books and I know that feeling, that euphoria, is common. Serial killers feel like God when they watch their victims suffer. That’s why they kill. And I want to feel that again. And yes, okay, I know that, really, actually, in all truthfulness, of course I am no god. But fuck if I can’t awe with the best of them.

If I stand up straight and unclench my hands, they will sizzle and catch fire and the world will burn.

I am prone to hyperbole. The excessive word. The grandiose gesture. Dr. Telushkin likes the way my pen sweeps prose aside in favor of a more epic sanguinity. He doesn’t understand the truth. I know that I sound absurd, tongue-in-cheek, but really. Really, Dr. Telushkin. Look closer. That epic language? Life, death, the glory of it all? I am not made of dirt like a human being. I am not mortal. I am
mortality
.

I sit with my hands clenched around the wheel. Silence.

I wanted to be better than my genes. I wanted, God damn it, I wanted to be
good
, and I tried. I tried to take away Aidan’s pain, to give him a scapegoat that he could fucking
hate
with a clean, hot passion. But did I save him? Did I save him
shit
. I forced that sound out of him, the vomiting and then that fucking wounded-animal
noise
. I can’t do it. No matter how much I play the game I’ll always be a hundred steps behind everyone else, at my most civilized still a galaxy away from normal. But maybe Dave is right. I can’t fix sadness, or anger, or hurt in other people, but maybe I can at least — I don’t know. Maybe I can exact suffering where suffering is truly deserved.

I open the door and stumble out. The air tastes filthy and a film of salt covers the car.

Oh God. Because maybe he’s right. Maybe this is redemption, or as close as someone like me can get to it. Save my brother, kill a drug-dealer. It would be sort of funny if I felt like laughing.

The bridge hangs gray and cable-strung across a gaping chasm between two vast shoulders of earth. Slate-colored clouds overhead, weak lights strung along the bridge, the snow-covered hills pale under the moonlight. The cement buttress is cold under my hands. The bridge shivers with tremors of passing cars and wind and aging space underneath, the upholding nothingness that surrounds.

My breath fogs white in the vast, chill air. I bend forward and lean my forehead against the singing cold metal. It burns like ice or fire.

Downtown Akron is a crust of fairy lights. My eyes are hot ball bearings swiveling in their sockets. Car horns blare. People hate people. Cities prove this better than any philosopher. Homicide is humanity’s most basic instinct.

I rub the back of my wrist against my eyes.

I wonder how they do it, the nameless, faceless assholes in thousands of cars inching their way into and out of the city where they have sweated in nameless, faceless cubicles for eight hours and will return the next morning to sweat again for eight more interminable hours. I wonder what they would say if they knew who I was. A murdering deity afloat in a sea of gray-suited, deodorant-slick banality.

Dave lives in Akron’s so-called art district, a brick-paved neighborhood full of decaying buildings, populated by lovers and drug addicts. I find a parking spot at the end of the block. My palms slippery against the wheel, the gear shift, the dangling keys as I lock up the car and feed the meter.

A black painted metal door near a pawnshop. I buzz Dave’s apartment number and after a while the lock clicks. I go inside and climb a narrow flight of swaybacked stairs. A thin brown carpet worn yellow across the treads. Each slat creaks.

Up three floors and there’s a door ajar. Behind the door, a long warehouse room. The window at the far end is a warped pane of glass. The wooden floorboards are speckled with aged grime and boot scuffs. A low black couch. A mattress with a rumpled gray wool blanket and a ripped box of orange cheese crackers spilled across the sheets.

I find Dave in the bathroom. He’s sitting on the closed toilet seat with his head bent forward, his spine curved, elbows on his knees and hands dangling limp from bony wrists.

“Hey.”

He turns his head as if he’s moving underwater. Hair hangs in his eyes. He puts up two fingers and scrapes the hair back, leaving comb-lines in the greasy mess.

His mouth spreads into a smile. When he smiles, the skin on his lower lip cracks. He wipes at the dribble of blood with the back of his hand.

A glint of metal on the floor near the trashcan. I go over and bend down, look closer. Then I reach for the roll of toilet paper and tear off a hunk. I use the wad of toilet paper to pick up the needle and drop it in the trash.

“What else did you do?”

He wipes his hand under his nose and laughs. “Isn’t that enough? Or should I tell you it’s not contact solution in that contact lens case.”

He laughs harder when I reach for the case on the countertop. Open the green lid and see white granules like finely ground salt. I pour it down the sink, run the faucet. Rinse my hands in the tepid water and shut off the faucet. My fingers drip.

“Jesus,” I say. “What the fuck is
wrong
with you?”

He frowns and his lips quiver, his eyes filling with tears. “I know. I know I know I know. I’m a disaster, a fucking federal dis
aster
site, I’ve got so much po
tential
and I’ve made a great big fucking
mess
of it all. I hate myself.”

“I’m the only one here,” I say. “You can quit trying out for
Hamlet
.”

He blinks and the tears disappear. He grins at me. “Yeah? It didn’t work for you?”

I roll my eyes.

He laughs. “Wait till you see what I got for you.” He feels his pockets and then stands up. He puts the tips of his fingers against the wall as if to hold it, delicately, in place, then he goes over to a chest of drawers in the corner. He opens one and lifts out a pair of lacy women’s panties, looks over at me with an eyebrow raised.

“I don’t have an eternity to spend on your shit, you know.”

“Okay. Okay. Geez. Here it is.”

He comes and bows, hands held cupped in front of him, cradling a switchblade with a scuffed matte hasp. I pick it up, feel the heft of it. He leans over me, bent like a priest conferring the holy body on some reluctant acolyte. I pull my head back.

“Don’t.”

He ignores me and he places his hands gently around the crown of my skull. His breath huffs in my hair.

I reach up and put my hand around his wrist. My fingernails bite into the soft skin on the underside. I dig them in until I feel the soft skin give and he yelps and pulls his hand away. He puts his wrist to his mouth. His eyes shine.

I go into the main room. There is a small kitchen area and I open a cabinet, then a drawer. I find a box of cling wrap with one corner crushed in. “Give me a name, an address.”

“Don’t be so abrupt.
Sa
vor life.” He claps his hands together. “
Life
is but a — ” He starts to giggle and it turns into hiccups, then coughing. He coughs and then spits onto the floor and takes a breath, lets it outs slowly. He says, “Anyway, you don’t need an address. I will take you there.”

I put the knife in my jeans pocket and the roll of cling wrap gets stuck down the small of my back, hidden by my jacket.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

The street sings with febrile energy. Wind taps against my skin, flaps clothing strung across balconies.

He stops in the street and stands looking around. For a second I think he’s lost. But then he blinks rapidly and says, “It’s here.”

I look across the street. A corrugated metal door padlocked over a pawnshop, the neon lights buzzing and flickering overhead. Beside the pawnshop there is a small cracked stoop. The metal door above the stoop is wedged open.

I put my hands in my jeans pockets.

He looks at me and grins. His teeth look urine-stained in the weird half-light of city smog. “Yeah?”

“I suppose the locale is appropriate.” I don’t know what he wants me to say.

He laughs. Scratches his nose. “Oh, I almost forgot.
Bait
.”

“What?”

He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a roll of twenties tied with rubber bands. “Get the bastard to open the door and let you in.”

I take the money and look at the wad of bills. Not Stephen’s money. Mine, maybe. But not Stephen’s. Money my brother keeps in his wallet and hasn’t spent because he doesn’t need it. I wonder how much of my money has accumulated in his pants pockets over the years.

“You ready?” He wipes the back of his hand under his nose. “This is it.”

I take the knife and push the release button. The blade flares open with a gentle
schick
. I close it against my thigh. “Yeah.”

We cross the street and go inside. A pale yellow tile floor and a narrow flight of stairs, the rubber tread on the stairs peeled back and hanging loose. The floor tiles are streaked, faded, age-wounded, and the walls are spiderwebbed with cracks.

We stand on the tile.

“Here we go again,” he says.

“No.”

“Yes. Like before. Everything,” he says, “
every
thing you are is because of me.”

“Not everything.”

“No one would believe you if it weren’t for me.” He flutters his fingers in the air. “I gave you your
voice
.”

“Yeah? Well, no one would love you if it weren’t for me.”

He smiles. He leans forward and puts his hand around the back of my neck. His fingernails dig into my skin. I choke on a swallow. He bends his head against my shoulder. I can smell stale, unwashed body.

“
Get off
.”

He kisses my shoulder and steps away. “This is ours,” he says. “He doesn’t have
this
. Aidan doesn’t. Your meat pet. Your little pretty boy. No one has this. This is ours. This is
real
.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere else, establishing an alibi or something?”

He licks his lips. His eyes glisten. He hesitates like he wants to say something. We both wait. We listen. I know that my brother has no real reason to kill the man upstairs. I know that. My brother may do drugs, but he has no capacity for addiction. He is, as he would be the first to admit, a god, a shaper and wreaker, not one who is wrought. Oh, I have no doubt that the actual facts of the case are true: the man for whom death waits is most likely one of those invisible people, stolen or purchased identity, habitual association with the lowest of criminal lowlifes. But I doubt that he holds my brother’s life in his hands. My brother is not the sort to permit such power to anyone besides me.

He wants me to kill that man for a different reason altogether.

“I should,” he whispers. “Yes.”

My brother turns and leaves. The metal door drifts shut behind him.