Apathy and Other Small Victories

  As I sat there imagining this attempt on my life two high school kids sat beside me and surprised me and I almost went into shock. They started feeling each other up immediately, before the previews even started, even though I was right beside them freaking out. They looked like they were both eleven years old. They were small, but would make good human shields.

  The movie was a remake of The Maltese Falcon, set in modern-day Los Angeles. Critics had said it was “gritty” and “edgy” and “astonishing.” The Humphrey Bogart role was played by an actor who’d gotten his start on The Mickey Mouse Club a few years before. That’s where he’d learned his craft. He looked about the same age as the high school kid getting the handjob beside me. The guy playing Peter Lorre’s part had been in Menudo. His solo debut a year earlier had been a crossover sensation, and his newest single, “Ha Cha Cha!” was available exclusively on The Maltese Falcon soundtrack.

  I recognized the Fat Man from soup commercials, and the women all seemed to be playing the same role, which I didn’t remember even being in the original. They spent most of the movie taking showers and firing automatic weapons. At the end everyone had a dance off to see who would keep the falcon. Even the soup guy was shaking his ass to “Ha Cha Cha!”

  In the middle of the dance off one of the women, who was straddling a folding chair like a stripper—all of the women danced like strippers actually—stood up suddenly and flung the chair away from her to show how empowered she was by her partial nudity. It flew across the room and knocked the Maltese Falcon off the table. She had been sexy yet inexplicably clumsy throughout the entire movie, and I finally understood why. As the falcon shattered on the floor in slow motion everyone gasped, with quick-cut close ups on each of their shocked and horrified yet slyly comedic faces. Then they realized it had been a fake all along. The real falcon was still at that evil pimp’s house, being guarded by a team of deadly knife-wielding bitches. But that didn’t matter. They all looked at each other and laughed, then started dancing again. The End.

  If disgust was a shotgun I would’ve blown my own head off.

  I waited until the credits were finished before I left. I always do, whether I’m about to be murdered or not. Sometimes there’s an extra scene or some throwaway lines or outtakes that nobody else sees because they’re already gone. There usually isn’t, and even if there is it’s never any good, but at least everyone else missed it. That’s the most satisfying part of any movie for me.

  The Maltese Falcon did have an extra scene. It was a digital mock-up of Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, their real heads transposed onto the bodies of other actors. They were having their own dance off, while the rest of the new cast stood around clapping and shouting. Then Bogart and Lorre faced each other and did the Kid ’n Play dance from House Party, both of them standing on one foot and touching their free feet together in midair as they spun and flapped their arms while the cast chanted, “Go Humphrey, it’s your birthday! Go! Go! Go Humphrey!” Then the lights came on.

  I had to step over the high school kids on my way out. They were still going at it. They were in love.

  I was too consumed by loathing to fear for my own life anymore. How were people supposed to solve crimes these days with such shitty movies for mentors? I went in there looking for some old-fashioned Bogart advice, some ideas about how to be a real detective or at least how to act when everyone thinks you’re a murderer. Instead I got Mickey Mouse matching wits with Menudo. I got an old man who held a can of soup up next to his head and said, “Mmm mmm good” in the middle of the goddamn movie for no other reason than a campy laugh and a tie-in promotion. Who fires an AK-47 in the shower? Wouldn’t you go deaf? It was all gone to shit. If only I had danced more, none of this would have ever happened.

  I was actually enjoying my hatred for a while. It was righteous and good. Until I realized that I was very, very lost. Luckily my innate sense of navigation and survival had led me down a poorly lit street that was completely deserted.

  Shit.

  “TURN AROUND!” a pinched, atonal voice shouted behind me, and I immediately knew that it was going to end badly.

  “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

  I recognized him from the night he’d almost knocked me off the steps at Marlene’s party. I recognized his nearly incomprehensible voice from that time on the phone when I’d been tough. And it wasn’t like I fucking knew that many deaf guys.

  Marlene’s husband. His eyes were close together and drilled deep into his skull, and his broad lunatic forehead glowed orange under the dim streetlight. He was standing with his legs apart, just far enough away so that he couldn’t reach out and strangle me. His arms were at his sides and he kept clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID!” he shouted.

  The street was empty except for a plastic bag that skipped between us like a tumbleweed in the bullshit western that my life had become.

  “YOU KILLED MY WIFE!”

  No I didn’t. I swear! I signed, shocked that I still remembered sign language. It was a much less impressive example of that phenomenon where a ninety-eight-pound mother can lift a Buick over her head with one hand if her baby is trapped underneath. I’m sorry about Marlene, but I didn’t do anything to her. She was my friend.

  He seemed as surprised as I was that I knew sign language.

  You’re a liar! he signed. I know what you did to her. I found her in the bathroom.

  Listen, whatever happened to her, I had nothing to do with it. I already talked to the police and—

  “THE POLICE DON’T CARE!” he shouted.

  “You think just because I drew that picture of her we were having an affair?” I said, exaggerating my words so he could read my lips. “That’s ridiculous.”

  What are you talking about? What picture?

  Fuck.

  Then it hit him.

  The one of her sitting on garbage? he signed, getting noticeably more furious. “THE ONE IN OUR FUCKING BEDROOM!”

  Fuck.

  He took a step closer and I took a step back and put my hands up, palms out, like you’re supposed to do when you’re about to be attacked by a bear.

  “I swear, we were just friends,” I said.

  “SWEAR ON YOUR LIFE!”

  “I swear on my life,” I said, even though I didn’t feel comfortable doing it.

  “YOU’RE LYING TO ME! YOU’RE LYING TO MY FACE JUST LIKE YOU LIED ON THE PHONE! JUST LIKE YOU LIED TO THE POLICE!”

  I had to listen hard to understand him. He kind of sounded like a whale song, but I pretty much got what he was saying.

  “No I didn’t,” I said.

  “I FOLLOWED YOU!”

  “What?”

  “FROM THE BOWLING ALLEY TO YOUR APARTMENT! ALL THOSE NIGHTS, I FOLLOWED YOU!”

  “Bowling alley?” I said. Oh jesus.

  “I FOLLOWED THE TWO OF YOU BACK THERE. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.”

  “No, that was my landlord!” I said, excited. “He goes bowling all the time. I’ll show you where he lives.”

  “DO YOU THINK I’M STUPID! I KNOW WHAT I SAW!”

  “Did you really see my face? Look at my face.” And I tilted my head up to the orange streetlight. “Me and him are the same height, that’s probably why you thought—you didn’t see my face, did you.”

  He hesitated for a second, and that’s when I should have run. But I was much too satisfied with what a fantastic detective I’d become, and with what all this new information could mean for me. I kind of felt like dancing.

  I know it was you, he signed, cold and ominously calm. He reached into his pocket and I took another step back and was afraid, but he pulled out a folded piece of paper instead. When he unfolded it I was afraid again.

  “EXPLAIN THIS!” he shouted, waving it at me. It was the $800 check Marlene had made out to me. I saw Marvin the Martian with his hands on his hips in the upper right-hand corner.

  Shit.

  “YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN? I’LL DO
IT FOR YOU. YOU HAD AN AFFAIR WITH MY WIFE, AND THEN YOU TRIED TO BLACKMAIL HER. SHE PAID AS MUCH AS SHE COULD, AND WHEN THAT WASN’T ENOUGH YOU KILLED HER. YOU FUCKED MY WIFE AND THEN YOU KILLED HER FOR A FEW HUNDRED DOLLARS!” he shouted atonally, shaking the check at me. Then he dropped his head, sobbing.

  I had to admit, it was a pretty good story. I would have thought the same thing if I was him. And there was no way I could explain the truth without pissing him off even more. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway. No one likes to doubt their own detective work, especially when their dead wife is involved.

  No, I would be running away, and screaming like a woman as I went. There had to be someone around who would help me. And he was deaf so that probably meant he was slow, though I was not sure why. I just had one last thing I needed to know.

  “Where did you get the car from?” I said.

  “WHAT?”

  The car, I signed. “The General Lee,” I said.

  What are you talking about?

  “The Dukes of Hazzard car, where did you get it from? Were the doors welded shut?”

  “YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?” he raged incomprehensibly. “YOU THINK THIS IS ALL A JOKE?”

  He reached into his jacket again.

  “HOW ABOUT NOW? WHY AREN’T YOU LAUGHING NOW?”

  I wasn’t laughing because he was pointing a gun at me. I’d never seen a real gun before. Not in person. Not up close. I never knew how big the barrel looked when it was pointed at you. I couldn’t stop staring at it. It was gravitational. It was fucking huge.

  “Just wait,” I said, stepping back and putting my hands up.

  “YOU KILLED MARLENE!” he shouted, his whole hand rolling at the wrist, the gun shaking. “YOU FUCKED MY WIFE!”

  “No,” I said.

  “YOU KILLED HER FOR MONEY!” He was blinking the tears out of his eyes as he shook the check at me.

  “No. Please. Wait.”

  “YOU FUCKED MARLENE!” Tears were streaming down his face. Then his finger twitched and he pulled the trigger.

  I was in a car accident back in high school, two days after I got my license. I was making a left turn at a light at the top of a hill and I was gunning it because the light had just turned yellow. But there was another car trying to beat the light from the other direction, coming up the hill from the other side, and he was flying. Just as I crossed lanes to turn I saw him, and in the split second before he hit me I yelled, “FUCK!” But it happened so fast all I could get out was “FU” before he slammed into the front of my car and spun me around the intersection like the asphalt was a sheet of ice. I kept yelling “FUUUUUU” as my car pirouetted and then got broadsided by another car. I was in a coma for two days and I swear all I heard was “FUUUUUU” the whole time I was out. That’s the sound I woke up to.

  And that was the sound I heard when he squeezed the trigger. That was all. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, there were no epiphanies or revelations or beautiful memories. Just “FUUUUUU.”

  There was a flash as the gun went off and I closed my eyes. When I opened them he was staring at me, his eyes wide, and his hand was in ribbons. Blood fell to the sidewalk in spurts. The backfiring gun was a mess of blown-out metal, blackened and smeared red. He dropped it to the sidewalk and watched it fall. He looked at me again. And then he wailed. Holding his blood-soaked wrist, bent over, he wailed like a deaf man in agony. It sounded like a live cow being fed ass-backwards into a meat grinder. Then he fell to the ground.

  I heard a siren far off, finally.

  I reached down and picked up the $800 check just before the widening pool of blood caught it. And then I ran.

  I got what I needed from my apartment and then I got out. I took a room at a cheap motel downtown. It was filthy. There were cigarette burns everywhere and piss stains on the mattress. The whole room smelled like rubber bands and old people. It was like being back at the Mickeypot Tavern except this place had a bathtub. A bathtub with dried blood smeared all along its rim. The toilet made me sad and in the bathroom mirror, with a bare light-bulb swinging just over my head, I looked like I had jaundice.

  So I left and stayed at a Best Western instead. It was very elegant. I watched a lot of TV. And on Tuesday I went to see Bryce’s wife.

  She seemed surprised to see me when she opened the door. I liked it.

  “A lot of people are looking for you,” she said.

  “I know,” I said, looking right into her blue eyes and holding them, until she turned and walked towards the bedroom, untying her robe as she crossed the floor.

  Our canned tuna sex was transcendent. The edges were still jagged and razor sharp where we’d been pried open, but inside it was wet and salty, tender, and softly breaking to pieces. We used the whole bed and went slow. We held on to each other and closed our eyes. We were one fish, moving in rhythm through cool water. It was good. No matter who you are or what you try to tell yourself, everyone has to eat sometimes. The off duty clown took out a loaf of bread and some lettuce, and he was happy with the sandwich he had made.

  We lay back with our cigarettes and I tried to blow a huge smoke ring that would hover over us like a halo. Instead I coughed out clouds that curled towards the ceiling fan and scattered.

  I finished my cigarette and got out of bed. I couldn’t tell for sure but I think she was surprised again. I was finally unpredictable.

  “Listen,” I said as I started to get dressed, “it’s been a strange couple of months around here. I know that. And a lot of things haven’t made sense to me until now.”

  “Shane wait,” she said, using my name, and she didn’t sound disinterested like usual. She sounded flushed, maybe a little worried, and it just about killed me. I wanted to dive back into bed and stop pretending I was cool and pull her close to me and fall asleep. But instead I held up my hand, my two fingers and my thumb out like Jesus saying “Peace be with you.” She sucked on her cigarette and let me continue. I was unpredictable and Christ-like, all in the same night.

  “I know some people have been looking for me, and they probably told you some things. Maybe some bad things. But that doesn’t matter. Whoever they were, whatever they said, it’s not important. I can’t explain it to you right now, but I will.”

  She opened her mouth to interrupt me but I kept talking. I needed to make this speech. I hadn’t thought of anything else all week at the Best Western.

  “We still have some things to decide, you and me. But right now the only thing that matters is what we do next. Then we’ll see what comes out of it, either way.”

  I was watching her as I spoke, trying to read in her face if I was giving the right speech or not. I couldn’t really tell, but I thought that I was.

  “I have to take care of something tonight, and then it will be done. By tomorrow morning, everything should be a lot easier. For both of us,” I said.

  I turned to go.

  “Wait,” she said, sitting up, the bedsheet falling around her. “Don’t do anything—”

  “Stupid? Don’t worry.”

  “No,” she said, “not stupid. Just don’t do anything.”

  There was something plaintive in her voice, a faint note of pleading that made my chest ache as I heard it, although I wasn’t quite sure what it was for. Maybe she meant that some things have their own momentum and you shouldn’t fuck around with them. You’re not supposed to. They’re not yours. Maybe she meant something else. Maybe she just wanted me to stay. Maybe she knew what would happen next.

  “Trust me,” I said. I’d never said that to anyone before. It made me feel like a hero. And I looked at her heroically, my shoulders back, my jaw set, pretending I was being photographed for a movie poster. Then I went outside to wait for her husband.

  I stood behind the Dumpsters and prayed that I wouldn’t see any rats or wolverines, anything that could jump out of the trash and maul or frighten me. I couldn’t be in hysterics when Bryce showed up. I needed to be calm, in control. I needed to be cool. It seemed like hours and pro
bably was, but then I saw him coming up the walkway. His head was down and his hands were in his pockets. He scuffed his boots as he walked, scraping his soles on the concrete.

  I waited until he was at the door, until he’d put the key in, before I came up behind him. “Bryce!” I said, louder than I’d wanted to, so loud that it kind of scared me. But it scared him too. That was good. That was how I wanted it to be.

  “Oh, Shane. Hi. You, scared me,” he said, and laughed like he wasn’t sure if it was a joke.

  “Listen Bryce,” I said, looking over my shoulder, “we don’t have much time. I think you know why I’m here.”

  “No, uh, no. What do you mean?” he said and started scratching the back of his neck, his eyes shifting back and forth like a panicked villain.

  “We don’t have time for this,” I said, trying to sound stern, but I was shrill instead. I coughed and cleared my throat. “I’m coming to you as a friend Bryce. You know what this is about.”

  “No, sorry. Uhm, I’ve got to go now. Big day tomorrow,” he said, and turned to the door.

  “I know about Tuesday nights Bryce,” I said low, into the back of his head. “I know what you’ve been doing. And so do the police.”

  When he turned around the look on his face may have been worth it. He was like a dead fish the way his mouth was wide open, but his eyes were fucking jumping out of his head like he was being strangled. I kept my face blank, just like his wife had taught me.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what I was talking about, but I had a few theories. And instead of going through all the trouble of trying to prove them I figured I’d just throw something at him and see what happened. He was already so high-strung even the vaguest accusation, even if it was only close to being true, would have been enough to send him jumping out a window. He just couldn’t call my bluff, which is what these things always come down to in the end.