The Next (12 page)

Mr. Layworth stood in tight boxers, rippled with hairy, toned perfection. Mrs. Layworth flung open a window and lit up a cigarette, wearing only a white bra and white panties.

Odd. Why would she feel the need to stuff herself into panties and a bra after what they just did rather than thrown on a nightie, or a slip or a bathrobe or a quilt? Unless she never took them off to begin with, but then…that was confusing…

The light in the bathroom window was on. Steam hovered above the tiles, fogging up the mirror. It was three in the morning. They were both tightlipped and stern, hardly making eye contact with each other. Perhaps the Perfects’ sex was not so perfect. Perhaps switching holes with that much rapidity took a bit of a toll on the ship’s mast.

Mr. and Mrs. Layworth stared absentmindedly out into the courtyard, saying nothing. They appeared not merely tired but
exhausted.

I saw the corner of Marzoli’s card sticking out from under the computer keyboard.

It was not all my imagination after-fucking-all.

The night crystallized into clarity as my brain regained authority. I heard a Vader-deep breath release from the bottom of my lungs, and I realized I had actually been holding it, doubting my capacity to grasp reality. That, in itself, was a kind of crazy.

Involuntarily, I pressed Marzoli’s card to my lips.

Schwing.

I looked down at the sudden tenting in my sweatpants.

For real? Just from his business card?

Mr. Perfect crossed to the kitchen, holding a pair of pliers. No, they were smaller than pliers. They were wire cutters. I recognized the orange grips from the last time Mrs. Layworth attempted to wire a painting of a rainy Parisian café to hang it on the kitchen wall. Although I seemed to be increasingly open to all sorts of sexual variations, for the life of me I could not imagine what role a pair of wire cutters would play into any behind-the-curtains misbehavior.

As my mind began to explore any and all avenues of possibility to explain their function, Mr. Perfect performed a very simple act that caught my full attention, banishing every last grain of three-in-the-morning haziness.

He washed the wire cutters in the kitchen sink, scraped off what looked like dark, dried grease with a paper towel, and placed the tool in a kitchen drawer. Not just placed it. He opened the drawer entirely, buried it in the very back, and closed it. Then walked the paper towel back through the bedroom to the bathroom…

…and flushed it down the toilet!

I’ve no doubt that would have passed completely unnoticed by any casual observer amidst the whirlwind of courtyard activities on any given afternoon, but to a spy of my caliber at three in the morning, this activity riveted my attention at every level. It was so oddly out of sync with normal behavior.

What the hell would anyone do with wire cutters at three in the morning with his wife? There were no other tools. No hammer. No nail. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any wire. Why place it in the back of the drawer? It implied concealment. But why conceal something as innocuous as a wire cutter? More importantly why flush the paper towel?

An anal retentive personality might be motivated to wipe a tool clean of oil and grease, but why not throw the paper towel into the garbage? Someone suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder might feel compelled to dispose of any grime from his house in order to restore some psychological peace. But this was not the case with Mr. Layworth. This was the same man who, earlier in the evening, slathered lube onto his butthole, onto Ruben’s dick, and then impaled himself on that stranger’s freshly-slicked rod, letting white foam froth between his cheeks. This was a man who had no hesitation face-sucking a complete stranger without even a breath mint. It was not consistent that this same man would, hours later, feel compelled to dispose of a paper towel he used to clean a tool down a toilet.

What the fuck was going on?

God I wanted to call Marzoli. I wanted to call him so badly. Who better to direct some synapses toward this puzzle?

I looked at the bills Johanna had left on my piano. Cash sitting atop music. What a goddam perfect metaphor! I would have to find a way to pay that Verizon bill with cash. My heart started thumping. I did not know how to execute this feat without leaving the apartment. Also, did accepting Johanna’s money like a whore constitute an obligatory commitment to our future together? Wasn’t there something ethically wrong with using Johanna’s money to help me call another person who caused my dick to tent my sweatpants?

Errrggg….

Chapter Twelve

I whacked the ceiling with my broom.

No, Ruben had not been practicing above me. It was twelve in the afternoon, but I hadn’t heard a single footfall on the wooden floors of his apartment. Yes, I needed to validate my hypothesis that Ruben had arrived home last night and all was as well as can be expected, but I needed something else too.

The snow had been falling steadily since six a.m. My eyes were blurry from watching the Layworths do basically nothing since three. Mrs. Layworth had fallen asleep on the bed, and Mr. Layworth had dozed off on the couch with his laptop on his chest.

Inactivity and curiosity was making me feel…

…restless…

Restless! Didn’t this mean the Next had somehow snuck into my cave in the night and already started burping on the couch and leaving the toilet seat up?

I opened my front door to test the temperature of the water.

I started sweating. My heart thumped irregularly. My eyesight blurred. I started a mild hyperventilation.

Apparently I wouldn’t be released just yet. So I came up with another truly sociopathic plan to get the cash to Verizon.

I whacked the ceiling again.

No response. No movement. No stamping with irritation. Odd.

I whacked again.

If Ruben did not come downstairs, I had no fucking way to get that phone bill paid. What a fucking imbecile!

Oh…wait…
I’m
the asshole banging the ceiling for no fault of Ruben’s.

Whack. Whack.

I heard a knock on the door.

There’s that twerp!

I opened it immediately, expecting to see Ruben, but instead found Mrs. Abraham holding the lovely little yapster in her arms and a foil-covered plate of buttery-who-the-hell-knows-what in her hand.

“He’s not home,” she croaked softly.

“What?”

“I heard you thumping on the ceiling. But he’s not home. I tried to bring him this two hours ago,” she held the plate up, “but he didn’t answer the door. I knocked at least ten times and his door is locked. He’s not home.”

She smiled warmly and handed me the plate.

“Here. Why don’t you eat it instead? I made it just this morning.”

Oh, shit. Blubber gut time.

“Thank you,” I grinned my shit-eating grin, accepting the plate.

She turned to go, but hesitated. “I’m going to run some errands. May I do anything for you, dear?”

Her question was not just a coincidentally fortunate offer, it was intuitive. The way she looked me was not just generic generosity, her eyes twinkled with understanding. But how could she possibly understand what I had never vocalized to her? And yet she did not ask, “Do you need anything, dear?” That would’ve been the expected question from a casual kind neighbor. But Mrs. Abraham’s question was more specific: “May I do anything for you?” A question more appropriate for an invalid, or for someone incapacitated.

She withdrew a delicate embroidered handkerchief and placed it on my glistening forehead.

“These upper floors get hot, don’t they?”

She knew they didn’t, but she waved that handkerchief like a banner that said she knew I was actively struggling with something. I neither needed nor asked for maternal care, but I also never knew how good it felt to receive it.

“They turned off my cell phone service, but there’s a phone store open on Sunday on Eighth Avenue, and I have the cash…”

“AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint?”

I felt compelled to hug her, but instead just froze and looked at her in disbelief. I think my eyes were watering. I think she saw that. I simply didn’t know anything but how she overwhelmed me.

I handed her the money and the phone bill, which she accepted with that same caring twinkle in her eyes, then she waddled back down the hall. I closed the door, still unable to believe my good fortune and gratitude to this beautiful woman.

Gratitude was an emotion I hadn’t felt with this much lack of cynicism for so long. So very long. I just needed to sit in its light for a few more seconds before the shadows obliterated it.

I took the foil off the plate. Instead of strudel, I saw and smelled in my hands a mouthwatering plate of white and dark turkey meat covered in thick goopy brown gravy, mashed sweet potatoes glistening with butter, bright green string beans, and chunky cranberry sauce. The food was steaming hot. She hadn’t brought this to Ruben two hours earlier. I believe she made it just for me right before knocking on my door. I believe she sensed this was exactly what I needed. I believe she’d been aware of whatever the fuck imprisoned me here all along.

There was a current of good in the world. Why couldn’t I swim to it?

Or was I? Slowly? Stroke by stroke?

Chapter Thirteen

My iPhone beeped back to life at 4 p.m. that Sunday.

I had an irrational yearning to call Marzoli, but enough rationality to recognize the irrationality. I buried my iPhone under a pair of boxers with the phrase
Show Me The Money
printed on the ass
.
My phone was out of sight, but my fingers remained twitching. I redirected as much of my attention as possible to other things. Anything.

Something on the wall near the window caught my eye.

A bulge in the wallboard stretched from the ceiling down a foot to the top left corner of my window. The bulge was only about half an inch thick and hardly anything to be alarmed about, but it was a fascinating new irregular protuberance that had no immediate explanation.

The gusty falling snow obscured the view of the puppets across the way. The Layworths were both in the kitchen on cell phones, dictating in urgent tones to their respective minions while simultaneously shooting irritated looks at each other for interfering with their respective conversations. They faced off on either side of the kitchen island, each in self-righteous indignation that said “My conversation is more important and therefore you should leave the room first.” But neither budged.

This was the general behavior they’d had all morning and all afternoon with each other. It occurred to me I’d never seen them alone together. I’d always seen them either completely alone or fussing with their children. But today, free of childcare, their dynamics came to the fore. It looked to me like it was not turning out to be a happy skip through the daisy field.

Growing up, Paul and I used to spy through the window of the Moody’s. She was an artist who painted on massive canvasses, had wild red hair, and spent hours in her yoga corner on her yoga pillow. He was a bespectacled lawyer who spent hours shifting stacks of pages from one side of his desk to the other. They were our favorite victims because the moment they entered their house, they would remove all articles of clothing and walk around the house perfectly naked. They never had sex in front of us, but they treated nakedness as freedom from all outside constraints. Both Mrs. and Mr. Moody had hair growing out of their armpits and pubic areas in large dark bushy tufts. Our Dad scowled when he saw them on the street and called them squish-headed hippies, but privately Paul and I enjoyed them for how comfortable they were with their eccentricities.

They had a beautiful Rhodesian Ridgeback named Sheeba. Rhodesian Ridgebacks are loyal and full of personality, but also neurotically co-dependent and aggressive food hunters. No scrap of anything that smelled even remotely edible was ever safe. Sheeba demanded constant attention from the Moody’s, which they administered with unceasing, happy amusement.

Paul and I would frequently open their gate and sneak through the bougainvillea to spy on them. However, one evening, as we were watching the Moodys chase Sheeba through the house trying to retrieve Mr. Moody’s case for his glasses before Sheeba chewed through it entirely, we heard our Mom scream sharply down the street for us. It was the kind of scream we recognized immediately as Mom’s urgent need for us to referee some argument with Dad. We left the gate open in our haste.

The next day we learned that Sheeba had escaped the yard and been hit by an orange Volkswagen bus on Wild Cat Canyon Road. Paul and I knew we were responsible. We knew, and for fear of a belt strapping on our bare asses, we had no choice but to say nothing.

When we returned to the bougainvilleas a week later, we saw the Moodys separated in their house. He was still at his desk pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and she was still meditating in her corner on her pillow with furrowed brow, but they were spiritually separated. They were wearing clothes inside. Shielded. Sheeba was not there to provide any active redirect of their attention from minute-to-minute. She was no longer there to structure their day for walks, for feeding, for cleaning, for fulfilling her constant needs. The Moodys no longer had their driving force of joy, of frustration, of love, and of amusement. The Moodys had only themselves.