The Animal Hour (33 page)

Her eyes began to fill again. She glanced up at her own reflection.
Whoa.
She snorted. What a sight she was. Jesus. Her skin looked like the side of a submarine. Her hair …
Well, I just had it dipped in shit and I can't do a thing with it.
There were scratches and streaks of black filth on her cheeks that made her lips look ashen like the lips of … well, of a corpse. She studied herself. She was almost fascinated by the disaster. And then, slowly, she smiled a little.

Ooh
, she thought.
Do you know what I'm going to do?

Moments later, she was stripped naked in the bathroom down the hall. She was in the shower. Catching the hot spray on her chest, letting the water run down between her breasts, over her belly. Her sense of rushing time was gone. Her sense was gone of everything except that water. On her back. In her hair. The shampoo in her hair. The foaming soap on her face, on her breasts, in the crack of her ass. The satisfaction of the black water running off her, running down the drain.

She dressed again in the bedroom, gleefully stuffing her old clothes in a little pink waste can by the window. She found fresh panties in the dresser. Wonderfully dry panties—soft where her thighs had been chafed by the others. She found a full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door, and she watched herself as she fastened her bra. She was half in love with the sheen of her own skin, pink from the heat of the water.

She pulled on some loose-fitting black jeans and a bulky gray turtleneck. She slipped her pistol into the jeans' waist, covered the handle with the sweater. She turned this way and that, studying herself in the mirror.
Dressed for travel, armed for hunting
, she thought. And the reflection of herself in her clean clothes made her feel more awake, more clearheaded, than she had all day.

She pulled on a pair of sneakers and she was finished. She stood in the center of the room. She felt satisfied with herself, but she was a little at a loss as to what to do next. She had to fight back that sense of urgency that was creeping back on her now. She glanced over at the dresser. Noticed a lipstick beside the ballerina box.
Ooh
, she thought. She went to it. Uncapped it. A pink gloss, good for her pale skin. She leaned in close to the mirror and spread it on.

Oh, it was a luxury. She would never take makeup for granted again. Wonderful makeup. She would build a shrine to it. Lipstickhenge. She would sacrifice a lamb. Just to feel it on her lips now, to see the color come, as if she were drawing it out of herself, drawing herself out of the ashes, becoming more distinct, more real …

Her hand stopped moving. Absently, she pressed her lips together to even out the color. But her eyes had moved away from her reflection now. She had noticed something—another reflection in the glass.

It was a clock. On a table on the far side of the canopy bed. Right under the shade of a bedside lamp. She had not noticed it before. It was a small digital clock with red-light numbers. 6:27. She stood there, with the lipstick in her hand, staring at the numbers reversed in the mirror. An hour and a half, she thought. And she thought of voices down a hallway.
Eight o'clock.
She narrowed her eyes. Trying to remember. That long hall …

But now she noticed something else, something in front of the clock. And she thought:

We'll have to draw him there. Bring him there at just the right time.
Voices down a hallway. The hard carpet under her hands, against her cheek. The low voice at the hallway's end.
You won't forget now. You have to be there. Eight o'clock.

She hadn't realized she was holding her breath until the air came shuddering out of her. She put the lipstick down on the dresser. She turned around, away from the mirror.
What is it?
she thought.

She could see it more clearly now. Lying right in front of the clock, a faint glow of red on the shiny white cover.

Oliver Perkins.

Ollie. The name murmured at the end of the hall. The name on the shiny white cover.

She moved quickly away from the dresser. Moved around the bed to the side table. The book was lying face up, the title clear in black letters.
The Animal Hour and Other Poems
by Oliver Perkins.

That's him
, she thought.
Good God, that's him.
She picked the book up. Her hand was shaking. She began to turn the book over and she knew what she would see. The voice from down the hall was murmuring, murmuring to her. Whispering in her ear.
He's got to die at just that point, so don't forget. Eight o'clock.
The hall seemed to telescope, grow shorter and longer. The voice was in her ear, then far away, down the hall. And she turned the book …

She saw the face she knew she would.
His
face. Angular and sardonic. Wanting her from deep in the eyes: lonesome without knowing how lonesome, needing her love, her comfort. It was her poet: the one she had imagined. A face to turn to her in the dark, to press against her skin in the dark, against her breast …

And he's the one
, she thought. She shook her head at the photograph, thinking:
He's the one who's going to be murdered tonight.
The low voice whispering down the hall, whispering in her ear.
Oliver Perkins. He's going to be killed. He's going to be killed at eight o'clock.

You have to be there.

She gazed down into the lovelorn face a long moment. Then she jerked back suddenly, the book falling from her hand, fluttering to the floor. She gasped, covered her mouth to keep herself from crying out.

There had been a loud, jolting noise from down the hall. The front door was opening.

Someone was coming into the apartment.

A
vis was sitting in the blue dark. The rocker was gently moving. The baby was taking a few last sleepy tugs at her breast. The balloon-pattern curtains were drawn against the evening light. But around her, in the pearly outglow of a street lamp, the shapes of mobiles were visible as they swung and dangled. The shapes of stuffed animals, of cardboard mice and birds and frogs, sank into the gathering gloaming. All the colors of the room sank slowly into blue. Avis held the warm weight of her baby against herself and stared into space.

In her daydreams, she was sitting at Zachary's bedside. He was lying there ill, gazing up at her weakly. She was running her cool fingers over his hot, damp brow. She imagined his grateful face.

She knew what he looked like. She had seen his picture. Oliver had once shown her an old Polaroid of the two brothers together. Arms around each other's shoulders. Zach's smaller, slender body pulled to Ollie's. His broad, shy, silly smile. She knew he had taken drugs for a while and that he had had breakdowns. And she knew he had a girlfriend whom Oliver didn't like. In her daydreams, Zach's girlfriend was in prison for the murder that Zachary didn't commit. When he was acquitted at the dramatic trial (at which Avis had been the key witness) he collapsed into Avis's arms …

Avis took a deep breath and then let it come streaming out of her. She rocked gently back and forth. The baby was slack in her arms, asleep. It was after six, maybe close to six-thirty.

The baby would sleep for at least half an hour now. She could run downstairs, Avis thought, and check on the Perkins brothers. If the baby woke up and cried, she would hear him through the window. She did not want to take the baby downstairs.

She thought about that now. Oliver would be there, she figured. He would introduce her to Zach. She had made some chicken soup with rice for Zach's bad stomach. She would heat it up for them. “It's no trouble,” she would say. After Oliver told her what was going on, she would say she had been too agitated to finish the horrible book she was reading. So she had made the soup instead. The soup was in a plastic container now on the counter in the kitchenette.

She stood up out of the rocking chair, cradling the baby. She stepped forward in the dark, ducking through the mobiles. She moved to the rail of the crib. Lay the baby down among his stuffed animals. She tiptoed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

She stood for a moment in the living room. The empty room with its canvas chair and its folding card table. Its un-decorated white walls and the bare white bulb in the ceiling above. Voices came in through the window. The crowd murmur from the street, and the sound of footsteps on the lane: people hurrying to see the parade. She stood for a moment, thinking. And then she decided: yes. She would go downstairs. Definitely.

And she moved to the kitchenette to get the chicken soup.

D
ownstairs, around three hours earlier, just around three-thirty, just after Oliver had left to find Tiffany, Zachary had opened the red bag. The minute he saw Oliver heading off toward West Fourth Street, he had hurried into the bathroom for it. That's where the bag was, stowed under the sink in there. He had pulled it out and he had told himself: he had to move fast.

He had kept telling himself that. He had knelt on the floor in front of the bag and thought:
I have to move fast.
Over and over. But it wasn't so easy. He really was sick. The aftermath of the drug. Dizziness. Flashes of light. Occasional goblins crouching at the corners of his eyes. And that diarrhea. That's what had stopped him from dealing with the bag when he first got here. He had just finished hanging his raincoat in the closet when he was hit with yet another attack of the shits. He'd been pinned to the toilet for nearly an hour. Then, after he'd finally stashed Tiffany's dresses in the bag and gotten out his real clothes, Oliver had come home. Nearly caught him too before he could get the bag closed again. Nearly ruined everything. All relieved and glad to see him. Pumping his hand, slapping him on the back. Zach thought he'd never be able to get him out of the apartment again.

And, now that Ollie
was
gone, he was sure to be back in a big hurry. Tiffany's bookstore was only ten minutes away. Which gave Zach less than half an hour to do what he had to do.

I have to move fast
, he kept thinking. He knelt in front of the red bag. His fingers moved to the bag's zipper. But still, they just hovered there. His mind … It felt like a great balloon, massive and wobbly. Weighted down with details, sluggish with them.
Fast
, he kept thinking.
Fast!
But he was distracted by the feel of the cold tiles through the holes in his jeans. Mesmerized by the spots of brown rust on the silver pipe beneath the sink. The sting of his asshole, the liquid chill in his intestines. All of it was magnified. All of it crowded into the mind-balloon and kept it anchored soddenly to the earth.

Finally, he unzipped the bag. But it was only more of the same. More clutter. Tiffany's skirt, the one he'd worn here. Her sweater. Her scarf. Things, things, things. He pulled all these aside. There was the skull mask underneath. The syringe. The vial of blood. The butcher knife. The stag-handled Colt automatic. He gazed at them—these
things
in their solidity. He couldn't quite take them in, they seemed so meaningless and real.

He swayed on his knees. He thought:
Oh Jesus.
He closed his eyes and sent up yet another quick prayer for forgiveness. Could it really have been so wrong? he thought. Breaking his promise to God, taking the drug? Did he really deserve all this sickness: the oversleeping, the diarrhea, this heaviness of mind? He had only been trying to recapture the old vision, after all. To become part of the great tapestry again. And the living truth was that if he had another needleful of Aquarius right this second, he would pump it into his arm without thinking twice. Christ forgive him, but he would. Just to clear all this
crap
out of his system. Just to be free again, the way he was last night.

Looking down at the objects in the bag reminded him. Last night. How beautiful it had been. These very same objects—how beautiful
they
had been. The knife, the blood, the silver-handled gun. Now, strewn at random in the bottom of the red bag, they were just things, just
its.
Like the rust on the pipe. Like the little blue patch of mildew in the corner near the tub. Like his own slim fingers … So much of their magic, their truth, had seeped away.