Fickle Page 22

  Sorry about the long silence, everyone—I needed a shower and my morning migraine tabs—so, no, hitman, it wasn’t some suspense-building tactic. All that said, I have to admit that I’ve been guided by your “logic” over the past few days and am glad to have you back. So tell me, have you been lurking all along, or am I just lucky in having you pick now to play catch-up?

  hitman @ February 3 10:19 am

  You want this to be about me or you?

  fickel @ February 3 10:25 am

  Something tells me that that was supposed to be an easy question. Look, I’m afraid the shower didn’t help. Maybe some more sleep will do it. I just had too much last night to think coherently.

  hitman @ February 3 10:26 am

  Full blown booze-up in the fickel flat after your “evening,” huh?

  fickel @ February 3 10:27 am

  Well, I was thinking of Slenderbuns’ death being the “too much,” but now that you mention it, I’ve been steadying my nerves with my buddy J.W.B. while posting and, frankly, I think it’s worked its magic. Got to refresh with zzzzzzzzzzzz’s. ’Til later.

  25

  February 3 @ 12:24 pm

  >AH—THE PORN POST<

  Okay. I wasn’t quite ready to get into this last night, but I need to get it sorted out before I contact Burly-Bear—if I contact him, which I have not as of today. And, I am happy to report, I have had no contact from the BPD about Slenderbuns’ murder. As observed by hitman earlier this morning in his inimitable “misogynist-cute” blog style, I wasn’t fully forthcoming about last night, although the title of my post will attest to my original intention to bare all. In any event, I will proceed. Parental warning: strange scene ahead.

  So, when I slip out of the gay club I hurry straight toward the T station. It’s maybe four blocks but a straight shot, so in spite of the distance and the drizzle, I can see the big round T sign all the way, its white, flat surface glowing like a streetwalker’s moon.

  I have maybe a half a block to go when a police car comes swinging around a corner, blue and whites flashing but no sirens. Its tires shrill softly as it crosses two travel lanes and comes to a halt across the sidewalk, very close to the T entrance. Two cops, primarily in silhouette from my vantage point, emerge from the vehicle and start accosting people. I think that it’s mostly the quiet that gives it its eerie quality, but I stop short. I’m not near to the cops, not within reach of the pulse of their vehicle’s roof lights, but not far enough away to go unnoticed if I turn and walk in another direction. I can’t help thinking that this police presence is about Slenderbuns’ death and I’m equally sure that they are there to find me, to grab me and hold me—that the bouncer has described me to the 911 operator and has sworn that I’d had something to do with the murder and fled the scene. With this rushing around in my head, I simply cannot go forward. I start backing off slowly, then quicker, and then I either see or imagine I see one of the cops swing my way and gesture at me.

  I almost spin around—almost start running up the street like a grade-A idiot, but at that moment an arm grips mine and I find myself being walked down the sidewalk, straight at the cops. I look and it’s the Mysterious Hottie, looking determinedly “curious” about the police presence. I manage to eke out, “Oh, so there you are,” and at this point I faint.

  MGM fans, you have counted correctly—twice in one evening, when the going gets tough, this rough-and-ready dame folds like a pup tent. But this one’s not the momentary swoon I experienced back at the gay club, nor is it a full-fledged horror movie glam faint where the guy has to catch her and carry her as her skirt slips coyly up her thighs and her hair falls in a shimmery cascade. I kind of faint on my feet and slump against the Mysterious Hottie, then stumble along with my shoes seriously tangling. I’m also drooling (if it must be known)—all in all, not unlike a veteran alcoholic a-tumbled from the proverbial wagon.

  M.H. handles it. He wraps my shoulders and half walks, half drags me directly past the cop car, where he whistles sharply—apparently he’s one of those guys who can shrill one out without using his hand. He speaks with one of the cops—I have no idea what they say but it’s not unfriendly and involves the words “six-month anniversary” and some low-register chuckling—and then I have a vague sensation of being piled into a cab. I remember rolling along some potholed streets, my head lolling against the duct-taped backrest, and I remember reaching out and feeling around me for my purse and finding myself groping the Mysterious Hottie’s thigh—somehow I’d gotten the impression that he’d put me in and given the cabbie instructions, but I was wrong because here is his thigh right next to me. I decide that I can descend back into semicoherence based on the knowledge that this somewhat ominous stranger is watching over me, and I promptly do just that.

  Then it’s up a bunch of stairs, exterior and interior. I hear nothing—no cars honking, televisions playing, no piano tinkling in a distant apartment. I have not a clue as to what neighborhood we’re in, or even if we’re still in Boston. The Mysterious Hottie shifts my weight, still clutching me around the shoulders although I feel like I could stand if I wanted to, and I take some vague notice of the fact that he wears his keys on one of those chains he’s hooked to his belt loop, which strikes me as sort of skinheady of him, but with my brother out there somewhere I’m not exactly judgmental on that score. We enter—there’s street light filtering through some tall narrow windows but just barely—and the Mysterious Hottie turns and embraces me. It’s like a victory hug—we’re a couple of crooks in sanctuary for the moment—and I don’t raise my arms to return the gesture but I do lean heavily against him, chest to chest, and try to feel our hearts beating through our coats.

  “Where were you?” I whisper.

  “Outside,” he whispers back. “Waiting for you.”

  “Why didn’t you come in?”

  “Not gay.”

  Simple, but, I have to admit, logical from a male point of view.

  “The boy we followed from The Blue Pearl was shot. He was standing right in front of me when it happened.”

  He absorbs this. “Dead?”

  I nod, my face against his chest, rather than saying the word.

  “One bullet?”

  I nod again.

  Then, as if to himself. “Good shot.”

  It’s tough to catch tone in a whisper. I don’t do anything for a moment, then pull my head away from his chest to observe his face. He’s frowning into the dark, more like a crime scene guy analyzing a death than some homophobic sadist getting off on someone’s slaughter.

  “I might have to be sick,” I say in my normal voice.

  “Straight through.”

  I stutter-step through into a room that’s inky black, where I grope at the wall until I slap a light switch. I find I’m in a low-ceiling kitchen, unused-looking and grimy. Ahead is a tiny windowless bathroom. I hurry in and shut the door, lean my back against it and breathe. Then I reach out with my foot and flush so he doesn’t have to hear whether I’m heaving. The room is claustrophobic, the ceiling flaking, the sink skid-marked with red-green rust, the shower curtain studded with mold along its edges and pulled closed over a cast-iron tub. I don’t even want to think about what might be behind there that prompts him to shut the curtain. Instead, I slap closed the toilet lid and sit on it, fumble in my handbag, then hitch up my skirt to prepare myself for what’s coming. And no, pulp fans, I do not feel in the least like a whore. But thanks for wondering.

  Back out in his living area, he’s waiting in the semidark, exactly where we left off. With the kitchen light on behind me I can see the room better, which looks largish, unclean (even in the half-dark), and strangely vertical. I can see the door we came in, its various chains and locks dangling undone, and some kind of low couch next to it that may have a pile of blankets bundled on it and two or three dark beer bottles on the floor nearby. The Mysterious Hottie is leaning against the only important furnishing, a large, walnut-brown table, its top completely bare, its legs sturdy
and festooned with a lot of muscular curlicues—a library table, made for working, not eating. Behind the table are a couple of windows, spear-shaped, cobweb-festooned—I’m about to fornicate in an old church that’s been converted to apartments.

  “You okay?” he asks huskily.

  “I didn’t get sick after all,” I say, sort of hovering in front of him, not quite sure whether he wants me to return to where we were before I ran off. “I just needed some water on my face.”

  He reaches out and pulls me in. I’m about to assure him that I’m not thinking about Slenderbuns, not planning on obsessing about it, when I feel something against my thigh. So I guess he’s taking for granted that I’m ready to move on to another topic. He kisses my forehead and undulates against me, almost as if he’s not conscious of what he’s doing, but there’s no denying that he knows that I know what we’re about to do if I don’t back him off in the very near future.

  So I don’t. Back him off, that is.

  After, he sits me down on the low couch. He walks away, his boots creaking on the floorboards, and I can hear him rustling around in the kitchen. I reach down and hitch my pantyhose back up to my waist and smooth down my skirt, adjust my coat around me, and touch at my hair. I’m still humming—ah, if only girls were tuning forks, what a wonderful wahh-wahh-wahhhhh sound I’d be making—but I’m also exhausted. Frankly, I feel really, really nice.

  I hear the sound of a teapot whistling—like everything else about the M.H., it is both comforting and vaguely alien. He comes back holding a mug, leans over me to snap on a lamp. As he fumbles with the switch, I inhale both the sweet, refined heat of the tea and the acid odor of his armpits—another mixed signal.

  Me: (lifting the mug to my face so I can breathe the steam) I thought you didn’t like tea.

  M.H.: Got it for you.

  He goes into the kitchen and I take in the parts of his space that I haven’t yet seen. I get the sense of walls with major pockmarks. Across the room there’s a bookcase built of cinder blocks and long bowed boards, three shelves crammed with books and bottles and smudgy boxes of various sizes. On the top shelf I make out a jar with something sticking out—dead flower stems?—no, it’s paintbrushes, big, flat-edged ones. M.H. is a bohemian extraordinaire, oui? The lamp next to my head, a clumsy glazed ceramic number, sits on a plastic crate. It has a bandanna draped over its shade—yellow with some faux-Indian pattern—accounting for the weak, uneven glow. The other light he’s snapped on is one of those metal accordion numbers, clamped to his work table. The bonnet shade is carelessly tilted away—in fact, the brightest point in the room is the reflection of its bulb off one of the spidery church windows. I see no canvases around, no easel, no rough compositions of charcoaled nudes tacked to the wall, nothing to support his claim that he’s an artist except the paintbrushes…and the way he uses his hands. Through the entryway into the kitchen, I can see a rust-peppered refrigerator door with one of those beautiful hands resting on its upper rim—something tells me that he’s staring in at some leftover lo mein and a lot of mold. Above the kitchen is a blotted-out space with a circular stairway in black metal leading up and a wood railing that someone’s fashioned out of what looks like a ship’s balustrade all round its edges. Like, does everyone but me live in a loft?

  M.H.: (emerging with a cell) What are you in the mood for?

  Me: (I hold the mug on my knees, cupped in both hands.) Not in the mood. For food, that is.

  M.H.: (smiles briefly, apparently thinking I’m hinting at a second bout of him, which I’m not…or am I, come to think of it?) You’re a vegan, right?

  Me: (vaguely) Not that I’m aware of. (I take a moment before my next sentence, wanting it to come out right.) What do you think about the shooting tonight? I mean, do you have any ideas about whether this murder could be somehow related to Stephen Pearle’s death?

  He’s looking at his cell, thumbing, and, I imagine, mulling over my question.

  M.H.: (as if musing aloud) Freakin weird.

  He clicks his cell off and heads right at me. For some reason I flinch like a puppy who’s done a piddle, but of course all he’s doing is reaching for his coat, which is hanging on a hook by the door. He sees the flinch and doesn’t register a reaction, but after he takes his coat he leans over and kisses me. I look up and the kiss hits my lips dead on. It’s a boy kiss, a lovely thing—those dry lips, unpuckered, pushing hard against mine for a rough moment. It’s something he’s giving me for my sake, some sort of assurance, like a pat on the head. It works.

  He goes to the door and I don’t bother following him with my eyes. I hear him pause and don’t need to see that cute, snaggle-toothed smile to know what it looks like—and then he’s gone. I hear his boots, light on the heel, tumbling gracefully down the stairs.

  I put aside the tea, get up, and, without knowing what I’m about to do, start roving around the place, sampling the private areas. I run my fingers through the dark stain on his table where he’d lain on top of me earlier, and then, without thinking, I raise them to my nostrils. The odor is all mine, not his, not mingled. I wonder about how much DNA that table’s absorbed while it’s been in his possession, how many eager women he’s had on that slab. I hope it’s a lot. There’s nothing as pathetic as a sex-starved male.

  I run my eye over the shelves, the brushes and paint tubes, pliers and pincers. I stroke a finger through a bin of twisted metal and tickle the brittle sticks of charcoal jumbled in a black mesh box. His supplies are relatively tidy in a scruffy, fingerprinty way. I’ve never been in a real artist’s space before, but it feels right. I meander into the kitchen. The light’s a bare bulb. There’s no counter or built-in cabinets—just the refrigerator, an oversized gas stove-oven that looks profoundly undisturbed, a metal table. The small, barred window seems to stare out at an air shaft. I duck back into the tight bathroom and pee, then gather up the stuff I left there earlier.

  Emerging back into the kitchen, I spot the laptop on one of those little wheeled butcher blocks, up against the side of the refrigerator. It’s an ancient Dell, its lid thick, keyboard massive. It’s open. The screen is black.

  Naturally, I’m drawn to it—me being me and all. I walk across and tap the mouse, one little jab with my third finger, just to see. To my surprise—I swear I expected nothing—the screen blinks awake and a bare-bones website appears. Amazingly, it’s a blog. It’s called Full Frontal, which I immediately like, but I can’t tell if it’s the Mysterious Hottie’s blog or just one he’d happened upon and was reading. The page I’m on describes a robbery at a midnight greasy spoon, presented in the style of a sensationalist newspaper report. It goes something like:

  End of an Era as Wee-Hours Coffee Shop Owner Brutally Disfigured, Face Pressed to White-Hot Grill During Late-Night Attack—Female Customer Sought for Questioning…

  I stop reading and turn away—gore has always turned me off, and I don’t want to know what kind of crap M.H. might be into. It occurs to me that his laptop should be back in hibernation well before he gets back, but that if he’s quick I’ll just walk into the kitchen with him and flick the mouse “inadvertently” so it looks like the thing wakes up just then. Duplicitous of me, but a guy leaves a chick alone with his stuff all hanging out…I mean, we’ve all read Bluebeard’s Closet at some point, yes?

  Leaving the kitchen, I tiptoe up the circular stairs, listening intently for any clue that he’s returning. I expect a loft bedroom; instead I find an easel and elaborately rigged lighting setup. I have to move carefully, as canvases lean in stacks against the railing and walls, but I manage to work my way around the place without putting a foot through any works of art. When I get there, I click the switch at the base of one of those bulbs-on-a-pole floor lamps, then stand up slowly to view the canvas currently resting on the easel. It’s an unfinished oil, barely more than roughed in and rather startling in the raw promise of its wet, uninhibited brush strokes. It depicts a woman with a haughty bearing. She sits very stiff on what might be a throne,
staring—staring down the viewer, you might say. The colors are going to be bright, I think, mostly reds and black, or at least that’s the way he’s patched it out in what must be an undercoating. It’s semiabstract, by which I mean the perspective has that art deco quality—purposely flat, although in spite of this the woman herself manages to stand out, her chin thrust forward, her eyes unpainted, unseeing. Behind her he’s painted the word “MASSA,” maybe to signify her imperialness.

  I glance around at the rest of the studio space. The other paintings, leaning against the walls and railing, are a murky lot. Most don’t catch my attention, but one’s a sketchy outline done in thin, deft lines of black paint depicting a naked man, relatively well built, stern-faced, youngish, cut off by the bottom of the canvas along his upper thighs—obviously the M.H. is mocking the viewer for the way our eyes jump greedily to that spot. This might be a self-portrait, but I’m not sure, never having seen the M.H. fully naked.

  There’s an old dresser against the wall, paint-spattered with the gypsy air of having been dragged off the curb some midnight years ago. Its sculpted top drawer is crookedly open. I peek inside, past the clutter of paint tubes. I can smell the linseed oil coming off a paint-smeared rag that half drapes the drawer opening. Beyond it, there’s a piece of paper, semifolded, wrinkled. For some reason I pull it out, extracting it gently, just two fingers. I open it. It’s a sketch of a necklace. In pencil, the lines sharp, the detailing exquisite: an arrangement of larger and smaller stones, laced together by a netting of thin chain. Artfully penciled words like “bridge,” “seam,” and “twisted cable” surround the sketch, connected to it by tiny darting arrow.

  Before I can even form a coherent thought about what I’ve discovered, an idea rises into my conscious mind with frightening, unanticipated clarity. I turn my head sharply to study the male figure in the nude study. This time the man doesn’t look young to me—his arms and chest are buffed up but there’s a hint of sag around his middle and a scrawny quality to the shoulders and neck—this is a middle-aged man who’s working to buck the tide of aging. It’s a study in vanity—cynical, maybe cruel—the artist has chopped it off at genital level to spare us an eyeful of fifty-year-old scrotum.