I didn’t know. So it was wrong.
-Not wrong not wrong, I said, massaging the side of my neck with the receiver.
The first part made perfect sense. Say one-thirty was the cutoff. Early afternoon, afternoon, midafternoon, something, late afternoon, evening.
What something?
I started to fume, couldn’t put the receiver down, knew it must have been the high proof, cheap bourbon, the fistfuls I’d just taken, the shock of the people outside my room. I was delirious, again, had probably never stopped being delirious.
When had I last slept?
Not too long ago, I realized, so shook my face, trying to focus.
Early evening, it occurred to me. That’s how it would work. Early afternoon, afternoon, midafternoon, early evening, evening.
I giggled, ribs cramping. A moment later, I deflated. It was wrong. Because that would mean early evening came before evening. Which it did, of course, but it would be the equivalent of early afternoon being eleven o’clock and eleven o’clock was still morning.
Wasn’t it? Why didn’t I know how this worked? Was it subjective?
Eleven o’clock was early afternoon, noon was noon, one was just afternoon, so was two, three was midafternoon.
Or was two midafternoon?
I was missing some word, fixated, couldn’t move away.
When I used another coin, just to distract myself, confused, tired, draining with every twitch of eye back and forth, it was four twenty-three. Time was slipping out at both ends.
***
Blocks later, some direction, I perked to attention at the sight of a gas station with a little food mart, saw the bright sign indicating there was a cash machine inside. I trotted past the pumps, a shivering wince when a woman met my eye and smiled.
I walked over to the coffee pots. I was obviously still being followed. More than ever. And it was now abundantly obvious that I’d always been being followed, more than I’d ever known.
I saw flaws in the idea of withdrawing my cash from the machine. That would make it vulnerable, utterly defenseless, the first thing that would happen is someone would accost me, rob me, leave me dizzy, wondering what had happened. However, leaving the money in the machine left me no less vulnerable. Someone could rob me of my card, use it at a bar or something. They didn’t even have to spend the money, in fact. Without the card, I couldn’t get at it, anyway. I’d never be able to get it if I didn’t get it now.
Maybe Montgomery hadn’t even thought of the money. He clearly wouldn’t care.
If he was so cocksure he’d have me caught before I could get away, why bother with planning on how to get at my money?
-Just to have it covered, I said, unable to keep the thought a thought, needing vocalization. I’d start babbling soon, talking aloud every flitting little mistake that occurred to me.
I felt I should do some clever feint, pretend to take out my money as a way of testing the water, but then I was smacked with the absolute, undeniable, weakling pointlessness of this idea. I should just take the money. If I took it and I was robbed, they’d take my card, too. If I got rid of my card I’d never get the money. If I pretended to take out the money and was robbed, when they found I had no money they’d take the card.
-I’m not going to be robbed, I said, coffee cup covering my mouth, spits of the hot liquid rippling to bubbles off my lips.
***
His motion was so casual that my response was reflexive, even gracious, going to my pocket for a cigarette, opening the pack, saying some commonplace There you go as he took it.
I got out a cigarette of my own, started going through my pockets for a lighter. As I did, I peripherally saw that he was doing the same. Chuckling, I turned to him and said You can’t find one either and overtop of me, chuckle one second after I’d chuckled, each word just a little bit delayed, not quite said with confidence, he said You can’t find a light?
I stared at him. He stared at me. I imagined that the look that crossed his face was his best approximation of my own expression in that moment. My arms were limp, his arms were limp. I saw him grin, oddly, uncertain, his eyes peering at every detail of me he could take in.
-What do you want? I asked, my voice cracking on the last few words even while his slightly delayed, much more confident, make-believe tones of fearful to it What do you want? came overtop.
His lip pretended to tremble, stick out, his eyes wrinkled like they would tear. I flapped my arms, he, almost synchronous, flapped his. I started to cramp up, very painful, and also pretended a fit of laughter was coming on. He bent a little bit like me, either pretending a laughing fit or pretending to be pretending a laughing fit was coming on. We stood on first this one foot then the other, then did a stupid wiggling dance I’ve no idea if he imitated correctly. I flailed, made jibber jabbering noises and he did the same, less concerned at that point with exact mimic than the general idea.
I stopped short, stood stock and, perfect facsimile, he did the same. I was livid. I couldn’t tell if this had been coincidence or if I’d given clear signal it was what I was about to do, if it was obvious, like counting down three two one now. I seethed and he pretended to seethe back.
When I shoved him, he had to wait until he got his footing back to shove me and I laughed, mocking, as though I’d won just because he hadn’t been able to do it at the same time, like I was the clever kid, he just the nitwit thug.
Again, I trusted the expression on his face was mine, felt such a weakling from it, so infantile, afraid, so brought low that I huffed off, an overdramatic, high pitched sob of a sigh, began pouting down the block.
He didn’t follow.
I made some farting sounds, snapped my fingers, hummed a bit of a song. I peeked over my shoulder, saw that he had walked down the block in the opposite direction a way, but had stopped, waiting to see if I’d turn around. So miserable, so spiteful, I bent my legs, did a bit of a monkey dance, clapping my hands at the ends of arms dangled forward.
He did the same.
I turned, didn’t care if he had or if he’d just wait until I didn’t turn back all the way out of his sight.
***
Up the street up the street, every street seemed up the street, never down.
My mind had totally shunted down paths I couldn’t curb, control, I’d no dominion over what was just a flake of thought, an opinion, a fear, an attempt at reasoning, a plea, a screech of desperation.
These new people involved, or these people who’d been involved all along, it was all too shaking. It couldn’t have to do with Gavin, but it did. Gavin was what I’d be turned in to the authorities over, nothing else, there was no other crime. But it was impossible to fit this persecution to that offense. Obviously, in an ethereal, abstracted sense I was deserving of the flagellations, yet there was no objectively real way to reconcile this, to account for the tortures actual existence. If there were a soul to rot, yes it would, disfigure, cancer, collapse under its own putrid weight, but as it was there was only my skin to peel, hair to whiten, tug out, my eyes to cut, watch scab over from behind them.
I couldn’t stand that so many people would go along with applying this otherworldly effort onto me.
For what goal?
Montgomery by himself, an obese ghoul, a drooling, hiccupping butcher, I could understand, see him, isolated, getting his jollies from it, convincing himself of a superiority he knew each time he looked at the mongrel his body had deformed into he didn’t actually possess, but add another person, another person, another, another, a concerted, philosophical, cultivated effort and it spun into flames, was too incomprehensible.
Montgomery didn’t have but six hundred dollars to his name, so he couldn’t be paying out sums, nor could he have blundered in to this many damning secrets, broken so many people so utterly, taken risk after risk of a bullet to his chest in the hopes of building his empire.
And I was
on empty streets, up empty streets up empty streets, each second in the fresh air, each second avoiding even the most casual encounter, knowing it would be arranged to garble into abstract taunts the moment it started, made me feel comfortable.
All of this for the goal of arresting me on evidence in a file folder was inhuman. But that was the leash, what kept me tethered, gnawing at my bound limbs. Imagination, play-pretend was the only thing made sense.
If they could do this and did, if they conceived it and bothered to execute it, why in Christ would they ever give it up?
***
A touch of wind or something, a shift in temperature, walking got to be too much to bear.
I sat on the stoop of an apartment building, certain I was being observed, though I’d no idea how. Everything around me was dead and quiet, only slight sounds of early morning cars starting, the hiss of a trash truck somewhere, the first softs of blue breathing at the blank cold of the sky’s black.
It didn’t even have to be Montgomery.
This thought accompanied my body relaxing, sore to the point of sharp pain, uncomfortable in relaxation.
He might be just one creature out of many. He clearly was. He may have had no particular importance, whatsoever. I couldn’t actually believe this, but that was, I imagined, because he had been the face of my tormentor for so long, it seemed ages, like I had a long standing rapport with him, a lifetime. I’d succumbed to the reality of being in a single demented person’s unique grip after flailing this way and that, and now even this sour comfort was being taken away. I might never see him, again. He might not care. I could picture him, taking off his flopping shoe, sitting in front of a television, eating some plate of garbage, sleeping in his unwashed creases, warmed by the rank of his odours, his part played out, my name for a few hours a dream, then a memory, then forgotten.
-So maudlin, I scolded myself.
I screwed myself into the most uncomfortable way of sitting I could, asked myself if Montgomery vanishing made me sad, lonesome, nostalgic, in love.
-Better him than an anthill, I retorted. Better to be singled out, pawed over wantonly than to be slathered on by countless mouths, each one getting less than a thimble full of me.
Soon enough, up the street, a woman slunked in to view, leaning on some newspaper vending machines, halfway seated, walking a dog, having a smoke. Maybe five minutes after, a man approached from the other end of the block, giving me a surprised glance as he passed me. The two of them embraced, kissed, his hands gently over her ass, the dog sniffing at his shoes.
Disgusted with the display, honestly reviled, I stood, stiff, began clunking in their direction, glowering, my teeth gritting, each a cockroach, halfway buried, groaning in violence to wriggle out. I was ten paces away when they took notice, the dog curious, the woman tightening her grip on the leash.
What did I look like? What could I possibly look like to them?
Their victim. A piteous half buried man, still breathing, but the breaths the ones that would’ve been my last, dirt down my throat or none.
***
Onward, the hours all taking too many steps, it couldn’t have been half hour, it couldn’t have been twenty minutes, not fifteen, not quite ten and just as much it could’ve been dawn the following day. The streets were not filling, but the leaks of the first commerce of morning were going, employees showing up to shops, chatting, opening the doors, closing them, locking them behind.
I’d wound up in some part of the city close to nothing I knew, found this dismal and happy all at once. It was probably seven o’clock in the morning, every hour up until then already wasted.
Would they offer me some bargain? Become Montgomery’s imp and they’d spare me? Stand at some window, from time to time?
Such nonsense, utter, unforgivable nonsense the thoughts, simply nothing else left to think about.
They would vanish in the waking day, become hidden, entwined in with everything else so fully I’d have no chance of knowing when the trap would spring, of knowing when the final gnashing would begin.
I’d accept it.
On what grounds could I deny them?
I would accept, beg them even, beg them to not turn me over.
Pathetic, worn down to this, I held up one hand, the other, but unquestioningly preferred the imprisonment they would offer to that of the police.
Why? Why why why? Did I feel there would be a chance to fool them later, slip the noose, escape? Is that what the woman had thought? The old man? Is that what the three outside my rooms had thought, maybe still thought, so beaten over and drained, what the hateful mimic thought, that he could run away when their attention slipped?
This odd spell was broken by the thought of walking back to Montgomery’s place, waiting there.
I wouldn’t do that. No. They would have to drag me under, hold me down, I’d not limp back only to be denied, see the spit bubbles in the creases of his mouth foam and cleave as he one minute said he’d spare me, the next that he wouldn’t, the next that on the other hand he would, the next that no, no defiantly he wouldn’t.
I’d not serve myself to them.
Serve myself to them?
I laughed. I stopped laughing. There was no thread to my life, now, I’d no idea what I was thinking, no idea where I was. And while I’d sat, the day had smeared not quite gray through a thin strain of overcast.
***
I took the deepest seat, the large chair in the corner of the coffee shop café, the lighting dim, filtered through tints of lampshades, the seat around a corner, no windows directly facing me, just the sliver of one that it didn’t seem anyone could see me if they looked through. I had a large coffee, letting it cool, took a few of the free newspapers, wanted to close my eyes.
It seemed unlikely I could be found. It might just be a waiting game, wait until evening, try to slip away.
Would they have searched everywhere for me by then? The police? Montgomery and his posse?
Obviously, they could show up at any moment, theatric, or simply take a seat across from me, I’d never know until I stood to leave and they stood with me.
I challenged myself to read an entire article without looking up, like if I could do that it proved something out. I didn’t question what it might prove. It had momentum, inertia, what I needed.
I failed my first attempt, so looked for a shorter story. Even one column was too much. I flipped pages, pausing at the police blotter. Little boxes of text. I made a game, I’d read one, let myself look up, I’d read two, look up, read three, look up, read the last four. I was delighted at the idea, so glad of the one two three four symmetry.
The first brief concerned a young man who was apprehended in his home after a call had been made to the police from a witness. Apparently, the young man had wanted to rob his former employer, an ice crème shop, had smashed the window with a rock, entered, was unable to get the safe or cash registers open so, in frustration, stole two large tubs of ice crème and some bags of toppings which he proceeded to return to his apartment with, carrying one, rolling the other. The witness was a neighbor who’d seen him rolling the ice crème across the lot, knew his name from some conversation at a community barbecue, and who’d heard from a friend who had a job at a bookstore in the same shopping center as the ice crème store that it had been robbed.
The chairs around me remained empty. I smiled, drank my coffee, turned my eyes back down.
A man who had murdered a child had been arrested at a community cold weather shelter. The article noted that the man, apprehended naked, had refused to put on any clothes or to cover himself with the blankets that the police offered.
***
The girl who had served my coffee was kind enough to tear three pages out of her own notebook when I’d asked if she had a pen, perhaps a scrap of paper I might write on. Sitting, trying to decide what surface I would use to write, likely just le
aned forward, painful, use the low coffee table, scoot it in a bit toward me, this simple gesture on her part took on odd angularities, shriveled, turned vulgar.
Why had she given me three sheets?
I’d only asked for a scrap of paper, I’d said the word Scrap, asked for a pen and I may or may not have also used the word Jot.
-Do you happen to have a pen, a little scrap of paper I can jot something down on? I whispered, testing, now certain it was what I’d said.
From that she’d assumed I needed three sheets? From that she’d assumed I was a writer?
No. For all she knew, I was just noting the price of one of the mugs for sale, copying down something from a newspaper or magazine, making a shopping list.
I wanted to stop from thinking, but it was too direct, too inside me.
I’d wanted to write a letter to Claudia and had been provided more than enough paper, enough for a draft, revisions, more.
What was I going to write?
I doubted I even really wanted to write anything, had wanted the scrap to doodle, placate myself, pretend I was going to write a letter I didn’t want to. And the girl had, like a machine, given me a profanity, a curse word of paper, she had extended it so encouragingly.
So why hadn’t I said That’s alright, I just needed a scrap? Why not?
She could’ve been assuming I was a writer because she was a writer or something, it was natural enough, and if I didn’t need the paper I didn’t have to take it. But I’d taken it because I knew that I had it in mind to write a letter so the amount of paper made sense.
Except I didn’t want to write a letter, so I was back to the beginning, to the fact that she wanted me to write the letter.
No.
I lit a cigarette, absent mindedly, doused it immediately. No one seemed to have noticed. I hid the stub under the seat cushion, waved the sips of smoke away.
***
A young woman took a seat, one of the chairs across the way from me, curled herself in to a comfortable position and, taking three quick taps from her coffee before setting it on the little table, opened a paperback book. Her eyes flitted up to meet mine and immediately a warm, embarrassed smile, blushing, crossed her face, her head turning down to the book, self-consciously. I looked another moment, then turned my attention back to my paper.