“You’re going to be okay, you’re going to get through,” Pen said, lighting one of her own Camel straights, and their smoke filled the small waiting room. Outside the winter sky turned to rose. If I finish this cigarette before the guy comes, it won’t be Michael.
“I hate places like this,” Pen said. “I’d like to blow this place up.”
They watched the heavy door into the hall, a little caged window. Before she was even halfway done with her cigarette, a black man in a blue blazer opened the door and stepped into the lobby. “Miss Tyrell?”
Josie stood up.
“Can you come with me? Both of you.”
They walked down the hall, the fluorescent light bathing them in its weird green glow. Inspector Brooks’s office was windowless, small, vomiting books, papers, folders, the walls covered with charts and a list on a blackboard, initials and magnets. They sat in two metal chairs, and he took a seat at his desk. “Are you all right, Miss Tyrell?” he asked.
“No, she’s not the fuck all right,” Pen said. “Can’t you see she ’s practically puking? Can we get through this already?”
Josie lifted a shaking hand to her lips, toked on her cigarette. If he didn’t like her smoking, he didn’t say anything.
“When was the last time you saw your boyfriend, Miss Tyrell?”
She saw the standing ashtray, flicked ash into it, her upper lip stiff and bowed and frozen in its downturned U. “Five days ago. Wednesday.”
“And when did you realize he was missing?”
Josie just stared at the lit tip of her cigarette. How long was he missing? She hadn’t known he was missing at all. She had just let him go. “I didn’t. I still don’t.”
The man pursed his full lips together and pulled out some white cardboard. “I’m going to have you look at some photographs,” Inspector Brooks said. “I want to warn you, they’re pretty disturbing. But it’s important to know, for everyone.”
White squares in his hands, the backs of two photographs, as he went on talking, talking, explaining about what she would see, the bullet entered the mouth and exited the back of the head, effect of the gunshot wound . . . She nodded, not listening. She wanted to rip those pictures out of his hands. Finally he laid them in front of her on the metal desk.
A face. Black eyes, like they’d been in a terrible fight. Swollen closed, though they weren’t completely closed, God, they should have closed the eyes. Whoever’s eyes they were. Not his. It couldn’t be. She could only see a little of the hair, there was a sheet all around the head, and those black eyes, a slight rim of blood around the nostrils, the mouth, no, she didn’t recognize him, it wasn’t Michael, and yet, how could she be sure? How could she know? He was alive the last time she saw him. “I can’t tell. I just don’t know,” she whispered.
The inspector gathered his Polaroids and put them aside with a folder, John Doe. “Does he have living parents?” Inspector Brooks asked.
“His father’s Calvin Faraday, the writer. He lives in New York.” Inspector Brooks wrote it on a legal pad, with the case number at the top, Michael’s name, and notes from their phone call. “His mother is Meredith Loewy.” She spelled it for him. “She’s in South America. On tour.”
“Well, first let’s see if it’s him.” He dialed his pea green phone. “Yes, we’re ready,” he said into the receiver, and stood up. Josie crushed her cigarette in the ashtray and they stood and walked back across the breezeway. She clung to Pen, using her like a Seeing Eye dog, all she could see was the image from the Polaroid, the black eyes, she hadn’t even thought to look for the little scar on his upper lip. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Michael was alive. He was up at his mother’s house, painting in the room off his childhood bedroom. She pictured him painting there in all the detail she could muster. The oaks outside the windows. The brightness of the winter sun. How they would laugh about this later. Imagine, for a split second I thought you were dead. If only she could see it clearly enough, it would be true.
Pen never let go of her hand, let her crush the hell out of it. She could smell the leather of Pen’s jacket.
“Whatever this is, we ’ll get you the fuck through it,” Pen said. “You hear me?”
Inspector Brooks came across from the other building and let himself through a doorway in the brown marble, held it for them. They walked down a dirty hall, pinkish beige, the doors all had black kickmarks at the bottom. They came to an elevator, Inspector Brooks held it for them, got in and turned a key in the operating panel, the door shut and the elevator descended. Josie stared down at the streaky linoleum. Please God. Let this not be happening.
The doors opened, and right there, against the gray wall, against a busted water fountain, on a gurney, lay a human form under a white sheet. She held Pen’s arm, or was Pen holding hers, the smell was different from anything she had ever smelled before, dirty, like old meat, and Inspector Brooks was saying, “He’s not going to look like they do in the funeral home, they’ve cleaned him up some but he ’s going to look like the photos, all right? I’m going to lower the sheet now.”
He folded back the top of the sheet. The body lay wrapped in another one, a knot like a rose at the chest, the arms folded in, the head covered, there was blood on the sheet, don’t look at that, don’t look, only the face. The bruised eyes, bruised mouth, lips dark as if he’d been drinking ink, the dark stubble, the handsome eyebrows, the eyelashes, his eyes were not closed. She slipped hard to her knees. The Inspector and Pen caught her but not in time. “His eyes . . .” The most diabolical thing she had ever seen. She threw up, on her coat, on her knees, on the floor. A project I’ve been thinking about. Some time to concentrate.
They picked her up and helped her into a chair. She sat with her head between her knees. Pen crouched next to her, holding her, vomit all over. His body. She was shaking, she couldn’t stop. His body, goddamn him! HIS BODY! Inspector Brooks was covering him again, she got up and yanked down the sheet and laid her face against his sweet horrible one, then recoiled. It was hard, cold. A thing. He’d turned himself into a thing. A goddamn thing. “michael, you fuck, you stupid goddamn fuck!” she was screaming into his face, but it didn’t change. He didn’t wake up. He just lay there with his black eyes and the whites showing, and Inspector Brooks covered him up, his hand dark and alive against the sheet.
“Let’s go.” Pen threw her arm around Josie’s shoulder. Brooks held open the elevator, and a brawny man with a beard brought a mop, and then they were going up again. Through the pink hall.
He indicated the bench in the brown lobby. “Please.” And then they were on it, she just sat next to Pen, shaking, her teeth chattering, trying to breathe. “Is there anything you’d like to know, Miss Tyrell?”
How could she make this not be happening? How could she turn this movie off?
“What happens now?” Pen said.
“We’ll be notifying the parents, they’ll make the arrangements, I’m sure they’ll let Miss Tyrell know what they’ve decided.”
Pen snorted. “Oh yeah, sure, they’ll be right on the phone. Don’t be a dick.”
“I’ll call then, when I know anything, all right?” he said, crouching, putting his living hand on Josie’s. She wanted to kick him. She wanted to punch his fucking face in. She hated him for being warm when Michael was hard as wood, wrapped in a sheet. “Anything I find out, I’ll call you, Miss Tyrell, I promise. I’m sure it won’t be long.”
What won’t be long? What was he talking about?
“Where’d you find him?” Pen asked.
“In a motel. Out in Twentynine Palms. Believe me when I say how sorry I am you have to go through this, Miss Tyrell.”
Michael, in a motel in Twentynine Palms, a gun in his hands. Not at Meredith’s, painting in an explosion of new creation. Not over on Sunset, digging through the record bins, or at Launderland, separating the darks and lights. Not at the Chinese market, looking at the fish with their still-bright eyes. Not at the Vista, watching an old mov
ie. Not sketching down at Echo Park. He was in a motel room in Twentynine Palms, putting a bullet in his brain.
“Let’s go home,” Pen said.
He didn’t even drive, how could he have gotten out to Twentynine Palms? None of it made any sense. It didn’t make sense. Where did he get a gun? She didn’t want to go home. Where could home be now, with Michael here in the basement, tied into a white sheet that was seeping blood? There was no home, only that body, the lips like black leather, dark smudge of beard shading his jaw, dark circles around his eyes against the drained yellow wax of his skin. Though somewhere in Twentynine Palms was a motel room splattered in the most precious scarlet. Suddenly, she wanted to go there, to be the one to clean it. Unthinkable that a stranger, some poor woman with a bucket, would look at his blood and think, Christ, that’s never coming out. Having no idea this had been Michael Faraday, no idea just what had died in that stinking hotel room, bleeding to death onto the moldy shag.
She drew her knees up inside her coat and lay on the bench, shaking, she couldn’t stop. Her head on her red schoolbag purse, she fought the urge to vomit again. She hid her face in the furry collar of her coat. Registered as Oscar Wilde. She wanted to wake up like Dorothy and see Michael’s face peering over the side of the bed, laughing. Why, you just hit your head. But it was no dream and there was no Kansas and he was never coming back.
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Janet Fitch, White Oleander
(Series: # )
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