North American Lake Monsters (2 page)

“We have to stop by the daycare and pick up my kid,” she said.

If this news fazed him, he didn’t show it.

As they passed Claude’s table they heard a distant, raucous sound coming from his earphones.

Alex curled his lip. “Idiot. How does he hear himself think?”

“He doesn’t. That’s the point. He hears voices in his head. He plays the radio loud so he can drown them out.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.”

Alex stopped and turned around, regarding the back of Claude’s head with renewed interest. “How many people does he have in there?”

“I never asked.”

“Well, holy shit.”

Outside, the sun was setting, the day beginning to cool down. The rain had stopped at some point, and the world glowed with a bright, wet sheen. They decided that he would follow her in his car. It was a rusty old battlewagon from the Seventies; several boxes were piled in the back. She paid them no attention.

S
he knew, when they stepped into her little apartment, that they would wind up making love, and she found herself wondering what it would be like. She watched him move, noted the graceful articulation of his body, the careful restraint he displayed in her living room, which was filled with fragile things. She saw the skin beneath his clothing, watched it stretch and move.

“Don’t worry,” she said, touching the place between his shoulder blades. “You won’t break nothing.”

About Gwen there was more doubt. Unleashed like a darting fish into the apartment, she was gone with a bright squeal, away from the strange new man around whom she had been so quiet and doleful, into the dark grottoes of her home.

“It’s real pretty,” Alex said.

“A bunch a knickknacks mostly. Nothing special.”

He shook his head like he did not believe it. Her apartment was decorated mostly with the inherited flotsam of her grandmother’s life: bland wall hangings, beaten old furniture which had hosted too many bodies spreading gracelessly into old age, and a vast and silly collection of glass figurines: leaping dolphins and sleeping dragons and such. It was all meant to be homey and reassuring, but it just reminded her of how far away she was from the life she really wanted. It seemed like a desperate construct, and she hated it very much.

For now, Alex made no mention of the objects in his car or the hat in his pocket. He appeared to be more interested in Gwen, who was peering around the corner of the living room and regarding him with a suspicious and hungry eye, who seemed to intuit that from this large alien figure on her mama’s couch would come mighty upheavals.

H
e was a man—that much Gwen knew immediately—and therefore a dangerous creature. He would make her mama behave unnaturally; maybe even cry. He was too big, like the giant in her storybook. She wondered if he ate children. Or mamas.

Mama was sitting next to him.

“Come here, Mama.” She slapped her thigh like Mama did when she wanted Gwen to pay attention to her. Maybe she could lure Mama away from the giant, and they could wait in the closet until he got bored and went away. “Come here, Mama, come here.”

“Go on and play now, Gwen.”

“No! Come here!”

“She don’t do too well around men,” said Mama.

“That’s okay,” said the giant. “These days I don’t either.” He patted the cushion next to him. “Come over here, baby. Let me say hi.”

Gwen, alarmed at this turn of events, retreated a step behind a corner. They were in the living room, which had her bed in it, and her toys. Behind her, Mama’s darkened room yawned like a throat. She sat between the two places, wrapped her arms around her knees, and waited.

“Sh
e’s so afraid,” Alex said after she retreated from view. “You know why?”

“Um, because you’re big and scary?”

“Because she already knows about possibilities. Long as you know there are options in life, you get scared of choosing the wrong one.”

Toni leaned away from him and gave him a mistrustful smile. “Okay, Einstein. Easy with the philosophy.”

“No, really. She’s like a thousand different people right now, all waiting to be, and every time she makes a choice, one of those people goes away forever. Until finally you run out of choices and you are whoever you are. She’s afraid of what she’ll lose by coming out to see me. Of who she’ll never get to be.”

Toni thought of her daughter and saw nothing but a series of shut doors. “Are you drunk?”

“What? You know I ain’t drunk.”

“Stop talking like you are, then. I’ve had enough of that shit to last me my whole life.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“Forget it.” Toni got up and rounded the corner to scoop up her daughter. “I got to bathe her and put her to bed. If you want to wait, it’s up to you.”

She carried Gwen into the bathroom and began the nightly ministrations. She felt Donny’s presence too strongly tonight, and Alex’s sophomoric philosophizing sounded just like him when he’d had too many beers. She found herself halfway hoping that the obligations of motherhood would bore Alex, and that he would leave. She listened for the sound of the front door.

Instead, she heard footsteps behind her and felt his heavy hand on her shoulder. It squeezed her gently, and his big body settled down beside her. He said something kind to Gwen and brushed a strand of wet hair from her eyes. Toni felt something move slowly in her chest, subtly yet with powerful effect, like Atlas rolling a shoulder.

Gwen suddenly shrieked and collapsed into the water, sending a surge of water over them both. Alex reached in to stop her from knocking her head against the porcelain and received a kick in the mouth for his troubles. Toni shouldered him aside and jerked her out of the tub. She hugged her daughter tightly to her chest and whispered motherly incantations into her ear. After a brief struggle, Gwen finally settled into her mother’s embrace and whimpered quietly, turning her whole focus onto the warm, familiar hand rubbing her back, up and down, up and down, until, finally, her energy flagged, and she drifted into a tentative sleep.

When Gwen was dressed and in her bed, Toni turned her attention to Alex. “Here, let’s clean you up.”

She steered him back into the bathroom. She opened the shower curtain and pointed to the soap and the shampoo and said, “It smells kind of flowery, but it gets the job done,” and the whole time he was looking at her, and she thought: So this is it; this is how it happens.

“Help me,” he said, lifting his arms over his head. She smiled wanly and began to undress him. She watched his body as she unwrapped it, and when he was naked she pressed herself against him and ran her fingers over his skin.

L
ater, when they were in bed together, she said, “I’m sorry about tonight.”

“She’s just a kid.”

“No, I mean about snapping at you. I don’t know why I did.”

“It’s okay.”

“I just don’t like to think about what could have been. There’s no point to it. Sometimes I think a person doesn’t have much to say about what happens to them anyway.”

“I really don’t know.”

She stared out the little window across from the bed and watched slate gray clouds skim across the sky. Behind them were the stars.

“Ain’t you gonna tell me why you stole a car?”

“I had to.”

“But why?”

He was silent for a little while. “It don’t matter,” he said.

“If you don’t tell me, it makes me think you mighta killed somebody.”

“Maybe I did.”

She thought about that for a minute. It was too dark to see anything in the bedroom, but she scanned her eyes across it anyway, knowing the location of every piece of furniture, every worn tube of lipstick and leaning stack of lifestyle magazines. She could see through the walls and feel the sagging weight of the figurines on the shelves. She tried to envision each one in turn, as though searching for one that would act as a talisman against this subject and the weird celebration it raised in her.

“Did you hate him?”

“I don’t hate anybody,” he said. “I wish I did. I wish I had it in me.”

“Come on, Alex. You’re in my house. You got to tell me something.”

After a long moment, he said, “The guy I stole the car from. I call him Mr. Gray. I never saw him, except in dreams. I don’t know anything about him, really. But I don’t think he’s human. And I know he’s after me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have to show you.” Without another word, he got to his feet and pulled on his jeans. She could sense a mounting excitement in his demeanor, and it inspired a similar feeling in herself. She followed him out of her bedroom, pulling a long T-shirt over her head as she went. Gwen slept deeply in the living room; they stepped over her mattress on the way out.

The grass was wet under their bare feet, the air heavy with the salty smell of the sea. Alex’s car was parked at the curb, hugging the ground like a great beetle. He opened the rear hatch and pulled the closest box toward them.

“Look,” he said, and opened the box.

At first, Toni could not comprehend what she was seeing. She thought it was a cat lying on a stack of tan leather jackets, but that wasn’t right, and only when Alex grabbed a handful of the cat and pulled it out did she realize that it was human hair. Alex lifted the whole object out of the box, and she found herself staring at what appeared to be the tanned and cured hide of a human being, dark empty holes in its face like some rubber Halloween mask.

“I call this one Willie, ’cause he’s so well hung,” said Alex, and offered an absurd laugh.

Toni fell back a step.

“But there’s women in here too, all kinds of people. I counted ninety-six. All carefully folded.” He offered the skin to Toni, but when she made no move to touch it he started to fold it up again. “I guess there ain’t no reason to see them all. You get the idea.”

“Alex, I want to go back inside.”

“Okay, just hang on a second.”

She waited while he closed the lid of the box and slid it back into place. With the hide tucked under one arm, he shut the hatch, locked it, and turned to face her. He was grinning, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Okeydokey,” he said, and they headed back indoors.

They returned quietly to the bedroom, stepping softly to avoid waking Gwen.

“Did you kill all those people?” Toni asked when the door was closed.

“What? Didn’t you hear me? I stole a car. That’s what was in it.”

“Mr. Gray’s car.”

“That’s right.”

“Who is he? What are they for?” she asked; but she already knew what they were for.

“They’re alternatives,” he said. “They’re so you can be somebody else.”

She thought about that. “Have you worn any of them?”

“One. I haven’t got up the balls to do it again yet.” He reached into the front pocket of his jeans and withdrew a leather sheath. From it he pulled a small, ugly little knife that looked like an eagle’s talon. “You got to take off the one you’re wearing, first. It hurts.”

Toni swallowed. The sound was thunderous in her ears. “Where’s your first skin? The one you was born with?”

Alex shrugged. “I threw that one out. I ain’t like Mr. Gray. I don’t know how to preserve them. Besides, what do I want to keep it for? I must not have liked it too much in the first place, right?”

She felt a tear accumulate in the corner of her eye and willed it not to fall. She was afraid and exhilarated. “Are you going to take mine?”

Alex looked startled, then seemed to remember he was holding the knife. He put it back in its sheath. “I told you, baby, I’m not the one who killed those people. I don’t need any more than what’s already there.” She nodded, and the tear streaked down her face. He touched it away with the back of his fingers. “Hey now,” he said.

She grabbed his hand. “Where’s mine?” She gestured at the skin folded beside him. “I want one, too. I want to come with you.”

“Oh, Jesus, no, Toni. You can’t.”

“But why not? Why can’t I go?”

“Come on now, you got a family here.”

“It’s just me and her. That ain’t no family.”

“You have a little girl, Toni. What’s wrong with you? That’s your life now.” He stepped out of his pants and, naked, pulled the knife from its sheath. “I can’t argue about this. I’m going now. I’m gonna change first, though, so you might not want to watch.” She made no move to leave. He paused, considering something. “I got to ask you something,” he said. “I been wondering about this lately. Do you think it’s possible for something beautiful to come out of an awful thing? Do you think a good life can redeem a horrible act?”

“Of course I do,” she said quickly, sensing some second chance here, if only she said the right words. “Yes.”

Alex touched the blade to his scalp just above his right ear and drew it in an arc over the crown of his head until it reached his left ear. Bright red blood crept down from his hairline in a slow tide, sending rivulets and tributaries along his jaw and his throat, hanging from his eyelashes like raindrops from flower petals. “God, I really hope so,” he said. He worked his fingers into the incision and began to tug.

Watching the skin fall away from him, she was reminded of nothing so much as a butterfly struggling into daylight.

She is dri
ving west on I-10. The morning sun, which has just breached the horizon, flares in her rearview mirror. Port Fourchon is far behind her, and the Texas border looms. Beside her, Gwen is sitting on the floor of the passenger seat, playing with the Panama hat Alex left behind when he drove north. Toni has never seen the need for a car seat. Gwen is happier moving about on her own, and in times like this, when Toni feels a slow, crawling anger in her blood, the last thing she needs is a temper tantrum from her daughter.