THE MURDER
by Ethan Canter

Everything is forever, and nothing, in its own way, is also forever. The one is the beginning point and the other the end point of eternity – only it’s unclear which is which – and even more unclear if it matters. It probably doesn’t matter, he thinks.

1
Looking down, he follows the drops of blood falling on the ground up to the soaked red stain on his shirt. He pulls his coat back. On his left side, just above his belt, his white shirt is a red mess. He touches the spot. A surge of pain rips through him. He muffles a scream against his shoulder and digs his head into the side of the building.

2
The fluorescent lights buzz and hiss. His shoes squeak against the shiny, white tiled floor as he drags himself up and down the aisles. Something for the pain. Something to stay awake. Something to stop the bleeding.
The man at the counter doesn’t look at him – there’s blood on his hands, on the boxes of pills and the packages of bandages. He motions at a bottle behind the counter.

3
He chews the pills as he walks. He slips into an alley. He opens his shirt. Black-red blood oozes slowly in pulses from the small hole in his side. His eyes water as he throws up the pills. He leans against the dirty wall, his breathing fast, shallow – each breath a stabbing pain. More pills, this time washed down with the alcohol. A sudden, though only momentary sense of clarity.
Another drink from the bottle for strength and to calm his hands. He opens his shirt. He grits his teeth. He holds back another retch. He sprays the antiseptic on the wound and it stings all the way inside him. He pulls his shirt up and grips it between his teeth. He reaches the spray around his side and douses the hole in his back where the bullet entered. He drops the can. It makes a dead clank and rolls away. He opens the bottle of blood coagulating gel, scoops it out and with his fingers putties it into the wound. The bottle cracks as it hits the ground. Another drink. The gauze pads stick to the gel and he wraps a long bandage around his abdomen.
He buttons his shirt. He closes his coat. He wipes his hands on the paper bag and lets it drop. Another drink.
He stumbles out of the alley. Headlights pass in the street. A light rain muffles and merges the sounds of the city into a flat din.
For a moment everything’s alright again. The pain’s numbed and turned into a hot ache. People pass in the street, but it’s evening, it’s dark, and it’s beginning to rain, and no one stops to notice him. But as the glare from a streetlight brings out a face, then another, and another, his mind collapses onto a single thought – I’ve been murdered.

4
Jerry had a face like a fist – meaty, dented, not made for the pleasure of eyes. “It’s what God gave me, so you can take your complaints up with Him,” he’d often say. He didn’t believe in God. Or rather, his ethics were Earth-born – he couldn’t concede to a higher set of rules any more than he could to another man’s. “It’s my life. I’m the one who lives it, and who dies it. So I’ll be deciding how,” he says. But for all his masculine and individualistic posturing he’s still just another weak and scared and defenceless soul – another bundle of flesh and blood and bone bound and tethered to a mind more ignorant of itself than the world around it.
“I don’t buy it,” he says.
“Buy what?” Jerry says, pinching grease out of a pockmark in his cheek.
“You didn’t come from nothing. Life’s inherited – you didn’t make it. And it’s been around a hell of a lot longer than you – and it’ll still be here long after you’re gone.”
“Your point?”
“My point...you can say anything you want, but so what. You can say red is blue, you can say the sun goes round the Earth, you can say God is dead – you can say whatever you want, but it doesn’t mean anything.”
“You want me to prove it?” Jerry says, reaching across the table.
“It’s not proof if you have to impose it. And either way, proof’s just dogma – dogma derived from the same course of explanations used to concrete the epiphany that bore it.”
“What?”
He stares at Jerry. His ugliness is inescapable, inexcusable – and all the more so when he displays his ignorance so sharply. And his ignorance, inevitably, is all the more unforgivable because he’s ugly.
“Speak English,” Jerry says, and lights a cigarette.
“Forget it,” he says, turning his head to the window and letting his eyes wander into the cold street.
“Hey!”
“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter. Just forget it.”
“You think I’m so stupid I don’t know you’re calling me stupid?”
“I’m not calling you stupid, Jerry.”
“The hell you’re not.”
“Look,” he says, tearing his eyes from the street and meeting Jerry’s angry glare. “Look, I’m not saying you’re stupid. I’m not even saying you’re wrong – it’s your life, believe what you want.”
“Believe what I want?” Jerry says, exasperated. “Believe what I want?” he repeats, inflating himself. “Believe what I want while you sit there with the truth!”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“Sure it is. And I oughta punch you in the mouth for it.”
“Look,” he says, putting his hands on the table. “I’m saying believe what you want – we all believe what we want. But your words are empty. I mean, everyone’s words are empty – words, just words themselves are empty. They’re just words. They don’t mean anything. They point to the things they mean. So sure, go ahead, tell me your life’s yours and you choose how to live it. But don’t expect me to believe it just because you can say it. And if you’re going to prove something to me,” he adds, “just remember that proof has to effect and alter my perception, not barbarously elicit agreement. So, yeah, I don’t believe what you’re saying. But believe what you want. And now I’m going to look out the window again.”
It’s a thin and cold light from the sun. The street looks like frozen rock. Dirty cars drive past dragging spewing whirlwinds of exhaust behind them. People rush everywhere – rush from the inside of vehicles to the inside of shops, from the inside of shops to the inside of other shops, to the inside of vehicles again, to offices, appointments, apartments.
“Well...what do you believe?” Jerry says slowly, offering the question in place of the apology he doesn’t know how to make.
He turns from the window and stares Jerry in the eyes again.
“I believe that I lack the insight to know what’s worth believing,” he says.
“Why don’t you just believe what you want to believe – what suits you, what makes you happy, I mean?”
“That’s reductive. It’s a coping method – half denial, half delusion.”
“What’s delusional about believing what’s good for you?” Jerry asks, his off-handed tone meaning to suggest that he understood, but the question itself once more exposing his ignorance.
“Nothing, if you know what’s good for you,” he says, raising his eyebrow, hoping his cryptic response will sway Jerry from venturing into yet another conversation destined to ignite his frustrations for disrupting the foundation of his ignorance.
“Exactly. But don’t try to tell me you don’t know what’s good for you.”
“I don’t.”
“Damn it! How can you say that? Who else is gonna know but you?”
“Exactly. But how can I trust what I know – or what I think I know?”
“Wait...I know what that is, I know what that one is.” Jerry searches the empty bottles and garage-girl calendars in his mind, unconsciously chewing at the inside of his lip. “Nihilism!” he says with a sudden burst of triumph, sitting up straight and tall and looking around the coffee shop. “That’s nihilism.”
“If you’re a sophist. But if you’re a nihilist it’s just the fact of the matter.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.”
“Look,” Jerry says, lighting a fresh cigarette off the butt of the last, “I’ll give you that no one really, really knows – maybe there’s a God, maybe there’s not – maybe there’s ten. But we’re all gonna die, we’re all gonna find out someday. So you can’t just stop living. I mean, I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, but I’d be a fool to let that stop me from living today. You see what I mean?”
You’re an oaf, Jerry. Your head’s full of newspapers and radio talk. How am I supposed to listen to you when you don’t even listen to yourself? But don’t get me wrong, I do want to know what you think – sincerely, I do. But...but how are you ever going to tell me what you think when you don’t even know what you think? He laughs to himself – then stops, and curling his brow tries to figure out if he laughed out loud or just in his head. Jerry takes a slow drag on his cigarette and looks at him through slit eyes. He must have laughed out loud. But that only makes him laugh again.
“What are you laughing at?” Jerry says, trying to hide his insecurity.
“You, Jerry,” he says provokingly. But then immediately cuts in with, “You’re right. You’re totally right.”
Oblivious to his sarcasm, Jerry nods his head and says, with seriousness, “I know. You gotta live in the present. The present’s all we got. Tomorrow’s always a day away, and you can’t change the past. All we got is now. And it doesn’t matter if God, or the law of gravity, or whatever made it that way. The thing is, that’s the way it is.” Jerry rubs his cigarette out in the ashtray and leans across the table. “But when you figure that out then you got the advantage.” He ends in a whisper, and with a wink.
“Advantage?”
“Sure. You know what the game is. You know the score. Suddenly you see that ninety-eight percent of people don’t have a clue what’s going on. They live hand-to-mouth, day-to-day. They believe everything they’re told. They never question anything. But hey,” he adds, leaning back and shrugging his shoulders, “that’s how it goes – it’s their loss, not yours.”
“Jerry?”
“Yeah.”
“I need a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“I need a gun.”

5
Into her mouth. The wine – easy, promising so much. Her hair – I know that I used to love it, I know that I used to make it look like her, like my loved idea of her, like – not just like hair. I know that things used to be...different. He looks down. He looks at the table. Emptied plates, crumbs, a drop of orange sauce and a few red stains from the wine on the white tablecloth. She coughs, intentionally. The waiter clears their table. She coughs again. He stares at the tablecloth.
“What are you thinking about?” she says.
If only you wanted to know, he thinks – then quickly wipes his mouth in case his sneer wasn’t only in his mind.
She taps her glass with the flat side of her fingernails. He looks up. He stares at her face, but avoids her eyes.
“So,” she says, taking a dramatic sip of her wine, “what are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” he says.
“You mean you’re thinking about nothing, or you’re thinking about ‘Nothing,’” she says coyly, with her hands adding quotation marks around the second nothing, then reaching for her wine, again, and smiling, pretending – more for everyone in the restaurant than herself, he thinks.
“C’mon, really, what are you thinking about?” she says.
He searches her face. She tightens her lips. He can see her clench her teeth and swallow – swallow down or back an unsafe emotion – an emotion no longer trusted in his hands. Her eyes dart – from the table, to him, to something behind him, and then to him again. She doesn’t avoid his eyes. She looks right at them, right into them, trying, he can tell, to evoke in him the man she remembers loving. He feels something shift. A softening in his brow maybe, or a tension falling from his shoulders – a sudden sense of room, of space, of air to breathe. But then it’s gone – gone, replaced, bullied. And again he just stares at her with glossy, absent eyes.
“You won’t take your coat off?” she says, and tries to smile.
“Why bother,” he says. “I’m just going to put it on again to leave.”
“You’re leaving?”
“No,” he says. “Not yet.”
Why do things change? he thinks. But he knows the answer. And he knows that answers don’t help when the things they answer don’t change. Answers are only as good as the changes they cause.
She’s hurt. Her face is tight. She drinks her wine just to finish it now. She refuses dessert. She even requests the bill. Part of him feels guilty. He’s disappointed her. He’s exposed her, and in public. It’s a passive violence, and he’s not proud – but too, he’s not ashamed enough to stop.
“Your hair looks nice,” he says.
She just looks at him.
“You’ve had it cut,” he adds.
Why does he like that look in her eyes, he wonders. It’s not weakness, but a kind of fragility – he can see her struggling, wanting to believe him and trying not to at the same time. If she’s a slave to anything it’s to her emotions, he thinks. Maybe that’s what I like – how powerless she is against her own feelings, and how well I know how to conduct them.
The waiter places the bill on the table.
“We’ll see the dessert menu now,” he says, catching the waiter’s arm.
She looks up at him. She looks tired. Maybe she’s going to cry. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a cigarette. He lights a match and holds it across the table for her. She stares at him with the cigarette between her lips and fingers. That struggle again, he thinks. She hesitates. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink. Finally she leans into the flame.
“I saw your article in the paper,” he says.
“Saw it or read it?” she says, trying to sound aloof.
“A bit of both,” he says.
The waiter places the dessert menus on the table.
“I’ll have the mousse,” he says, without looking at the menu, without taking his eyes off of her.
“Of course,” the waiter says. “And for Madame?”
“Brandy,” she says, pushing her jaw forward and sucking at her teeth.
“Very good,” the waiter says, gathering the menus.
“And a coffee,” he says.
“A coffee,” repeats the waiter, and walks away.
She takes a long drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke hard up into the air.
“Do you believe what you write before or after you’ve written it?” he says.
She smiles sarcastically and butts her cigarette out in the ashtray.
“You haven’t changed a bit, have you?” she says.
“I’m serious,” he says.
“Sure you are,” she says. “The same old game. You just can’t stop playing it, can you?”
The waiter places the dessert and drinks on the table. She rubs a bit of ash into the tablecloth with her finger. He leans back in his chair and watches the waiter.
“What do you think this generation’s gonna do to change the world?” he says to the waiter.
“For God’s sake,” she says, raising her hand to her face.
The waiter looks back and forth between them.
“Are you a family man?” he says, touching the waiter’s arm.
The waiter swallows, uncertain how to respond.
“Do you have a family?” he says slowly.
“Leave the poor man alone for God’s sake,” she says, reaching across the table and sharply removing his hand from the waiter’s arm. “Just go,” she says to the waiter.
“I wasn’t done,” he says, nearly snarling.
“Yeah, you’re done,” she says, and pushes her chair back from the table.
“Sit down,” he says.
“Don’t even think–”
“Sit down,” he repeats, his eyes glaring.
“You can’t tell me–”
“Sit down before I get up and make you sit down,” he says, his hands flat on the table.
She stares at him, half up off her seat. He stares back, and this time, finally, looks her in the eyes. He rubs his face with his hands and exhales a deep and labored breath. “Look, I...,” he says, staring down at the table. “I’m...I’m sorry. I...I didn’t mean that. Just please....” He looks up at her, his eyes nervous, his right hand molding his left. “Just please...sit down. Please.”
She sits down again. He takes a breath. He swallows. He attempts a smile.
“Thank you,” he says in a low whisper.
“My God, what’s happening to you?” she says, her eyes concerned, nearly trusting.
“I think...” he says, his eyes nervously darting around the restaurant. He leans in across the table. She leans in to meet him. He whispers, “I think someone’s trying to kill me.”

6
I’m a cruel man. I’m a sick man. He laughs to himself. I’m a vengeful man. A young girl stares at him on the train. Her dark hair is uncombed. Her eyes are soft, the flesh around them still puffy from sleep. He watches her too long. She turns away, looks out the window, but periodically steals a glance in his direction. Her fingers are long, thin, womanly. Her lips are pink without effort. Her skin makes his hands ache. I’m a desperate man. The train stops at a station. People leave. The whistle blows. The train resumes its course. The girl looks at him again. They’re alone in the car. This time it’s he that can’t hold the stare. He pretends to look at the watch he’s not wearing on his wrist. He tries to look out the window, but the train’s entered a tunnel. He catches a scent like sour orange and it makes his mouth water. He clenches his teeth. He looks up. The girl’s staring at him. Her lips glisten like rain. Her bare white knees pull his eyes down. She pushes herself forward on her seat. His eyes drag slowly up between her legs. His heart punches at the inside of his chest. His mouth goes dry. He grips the armrest like a man in a plane falling out of the sky. He swallows and follows the line of buttons up her shirt. She crosses her legs and digs the ball of her foot into the floor, pushing herself back against the seat. His knees rub hard against each other. She mouths something. He stops breathing. She closes her eyes. He remembers the light of the sun on a street when he was a boy. She shudders. His eyes water. The train stops. People enter. The girl grabs her bag, and leaving, turns to him with a melancholy smile as the doors close. The train jerks into motion. He watches her through the windows until she disappears out of sight. He stands and walks to her empty seat. The sour orange coats his mind. He breathes it in with an open mouth. Slowly, almost tenderly, he sets himself down and basks in the cradle of her lingering warmth. I’m a lost man. A lost man in a transience of moments that must be strung together, but that no longer make any sense to me. How do I move from one to the next? How does it happen? Who...who makes it happen? Do I? Does she? And what have I done? What haven’t I done? What could I have done? I don’t know anything anymore. He laughs to himself. I don’t even know if I don’t know anything. He opens his eyes. The gray rain trails across the window. Is that freedom, then? he wonders. Is that what they mean? Beyond knowing? Beyond not knowing? He closes his eyes again and breathes in the last of her scent.

7
At the end of the line a barren platform. Two station workers stand together, smoking. The air is still. The light from the sun seems, even feels, solid. It’s warmer than in the city. He buys a newspaper and carries it under his arm. The glare outside the station makes his eyes sting. He stands against a wall, for a moment, and looks. A taxi sits waiting in the distance. The driver’s asleep, the motor isn’t running. Through the windshield he sees the man, his head back and off to one side, his mouth hung open – nearly like a corpse, he thinks. He pushes his hands into his pockets and enters the town. If only I’d been born here, he thinks. If only I grew up and never left a place like this. I wouldn’t be in the way I am if I’d been born here. Or is that really true? he wonders. A car drives past. Has circumstance made my life what it is? Do I have any control, any say, any choice? He laughs to himself. It’s too late for that now – too late to dream of who I might have been if I weren’t what I am. Because I am – I am what I am. Looking up, past the row of little storefronts, past the flower boxes, past the clean and wide streets, looking separate like a cut out or cut free marionette, he sees the church on the hill.
The church is small, stone, some hundred years old. Thick, wooden doors. Arches. Inside – silent, cold, and damp. The scent of paraffin. Streaks of morning light through the high stained-glass windows slowly creep reds and blues and golds and yellows down the opposite wall. A white marble basin of Holy Water. He smiles to himself. Above the altar, the hanging crucifix meticulously carved to detail – the thorns, the wound, the nails pierced mercilessly through bone and flesh, and that look, in His eyes, of pious masochism. For a moment he sees the pews filled and the priest at the altar delivering his sermon, not unlike a madman releasing his incantations in the middle of a downtown street. The intoxication of word and gesture. His blood dripping from the cross, like tears, like rain, like semen. And the priest, his head back, his arms outstretched, baptizing himself in the blood of God. And in the pews, and against the walls, and pushing around the pillars so eyes can see, heat – the heat of a thousand candles, of a thousand mouths exhaling, the heat of a thousand pairs of hands reaching.
A small door in the wall to the left of the altar opens with a creak. The priest is tall and thin, his face long and heavy, his eyes sunken and tired. His walk is slow, methodical, arthritic – as though God were holding him by the shoulders and dragging him along.
“I want to confess, Father,” he says.
“I have not seen you before,” the priest says. “Why do you not confess in your own church?”
“My soul is heavy with sin, Father. Every breath is like a spear in my side. Shame keeps me from my own church. I should return to it, I know, you’re right. But I lack strength, Father.”
“What church do you belong to?”
“It’s in the city.”
“There must be others, in the city. Why did you come here?”
“I’ve been traveling.”
He doesn’t shy from the priest’s probing look. In fact he opens himself to it, even putting in the effort to embellish a look of forlorn burden.
The priest looks into his eyes, follows the contours of his face, the lines of his coat, and with a compassionate smile sees the disheveled newspaper held tight under his arm.
“Well, we are all the children of God,” the priest says. “And He has chosen to guide you here in your time of need. We shall no more question His work, for it is divine,” and he gestures towards the small confessional laid against the wall.
The confessional is cold, and smells of wood and frankincense. The only light inside finds its way down through the latticework above his head. The priest slides back the wooden panel between them. Through the mesh screen he sees the priest’s face in profile, reciting a short prayer under his breath, crossing himself, and finally tilting his head towards the screen to hear his confession.
“Forgive me, Father, for I am going to sin,” he says, watching the priest’s face through the screen. “I’ve become a hateful man, Father. I’ve become a vengeful man.” He stares at his hands. “I feel no joy, no love for life.” His eyes wander and he recalls the face of the girl from the train. His lips soften, but it’s not a smile. “I’m misunderstood, Father. And judged – judged for things I haven’t done. Judged for things–” He clenches his hand into a fist. “My desires are not wrong,” he says to himself. He takes a deep breath and rubs his face with his hands. “Father,” he begins again, “my compassion has dried up. I’ve forgotten, to extinction, what it is to feel compassion. Others’ pain only causes me irritation now. Others’ pain disgusts me. I’m so full of hate, Father. I’m drowning from so much hate. The world is ugly and bare to me. I see it only in gray. I see it far away.” In the silence he hears the soft clacks of the priest fingering his rosary. “It doesn’t matter what I believe anymore – I see that clearly.” His eyes trace invisible memories in the air. “But without belief I cannot have faith. And without faith, reason is lost. So I’m left only with actions – I have become a man in the worst sense of the word, Father. I’m half dead – half dead and waiting for the rest of me to follow – but now I’m tired of the wait.” The priest steals a glance at him through the screen. “Don’t think of trying to talk me out of it, Father, because you won’t. What you must do is try to understand me.”
The priest leans his mouth to the screen and whispers, “It is to God, not to me, that you’re confessing. I’m just the witness. I’m just a channel for God. It is He that has the power to understand, and forgive.”
“I’ve not come for forgiveness,” he says sharply. “I submit to this ritual for your sake, Father, not mine. And as for God...it would be better if we left Him out of this.”
“It is to God that you are confessing – not to me,” the priest repeats with emphasis.
“I am not confessing, Father,” he barks. “I am telling.” He leans his face close to the screen and stares at the priest who won’t meet his eyes. In a sardonic whisper he adds, “It’s a subtle difference, I know. But I do expect you to become aware of it.”
The priest crosses himself for strength. Still refusing to look through the screen, he says, “If you’ve not come here to confess, then I think it best if you leave.”
“Would you run me out of your house, Father? And without even first hearing my confession?” The priest bows his head, his shame and his pity so easily evoked. “Can you not see the demons that afflict me, Father?” he says in a soft and sincere voice. “Can you not see how they’ve torn this heart? Can you not see how they bury my soul? But can you not also see a man, somewhere in my eyes, Father? Weren’t his intentions once good?” The priest keeps his head bowed. “Weren’t my intentions once good, Father?” he asks, tears welling in his voice. The priest crosses himself and mouths a silent prayer. “Look at me, Father. Please.” His voice is pleading. The invisible weight on his shoulders bends his back. His head hangs. He stares at the priest. “Please, Father.” Slowly, tentatively, the priest turns his head and sees, as though for the first time, his sunken eyes, his twisted brow, his sallow skin. The priest lets his eyes fall again. “What? What did you see, Father?” he asks. But the priest is silent. “Father? Father, please.” His mouth goes dry and his chest feels heavy. “I’m desperate, Father. Can’t you see that? Don’t you see I–” His eyes narrow. His breathing becomes labored. “There’s no air in here,” he complains. Pressing his face against the screen, he whispers, “It’s not a burden that I carry, Father – it’s something worse, something far, far worse – something your incense and candles will not cure. A compulsion, Father – that’s what I carry. A compulsion even you cannot exorcise.” The priest begins to stand. “Sit down, Father,” he says. But the priest doesn’t obey. “Sit down, Father,” he repeats forcefully.
“You have no right to speak like this,” the priest says.
“I’m sorry, Father,” he says. “Forgive me–” But the priest is already outside the confessional.
He pushes through the curtains. The priest is slowly walking away. He grabs him by the arm. The priest turns, calmly, sternly. “You are in the house of God,” the priest says, looking him straight in the eyes. “You said you came here seeking refuge, but you are only full of anger and blasphemy. He is a forgiving God, but you speak with the tongue of a devil. You are no longer welcome here. You must leave now.”
He lets the priest’s arm go, and watching him walk slowly and methodically back towards the vestry, feels suddenly weak and hollow – abandoned, left. He bends his knees and lets himself down onto the cold stone floor, his eyes dry as a desert, his heart closed as a tomb. Desperate but unable to weep, he whines, like an imbecile, staring up at the eyes of the bleeding Christ.

8
Words are empty, are meaningless, they rely too much on who’s listening...there’s really just no point in talking, he thinks to himself, pulling his collar up a little tighter around his neck. The wind is cold. It might snow. The sky is gray and heavy and hangs so close he can feel it just out of reach above his head.
It’s early. He buys a newspaper from a newsstand and tucks it under his arm as he walks. A woman runs past. A car horn sounds in the distance. A garbage truck lumbers along on the other side of the road, two men following behind tossing bags into the back of it. At the corner Jerry’s already waiting, the car engine idling.
“You’re late,” Jerry says, shifting the car into gear and pulling away.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, reaching for the seatbelt.
“Nerves?” Jerry asks.
“No,” he says, not finding the seatbelt. “Where’s the seatbelt?”
“Had to take it out.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask,” Jerry says, lighting a cigarette while he drives.
He folds the newspaper and stuffs it into his coat pocket. He looks at his hands. He takes the newspaper out again and slides it under his leg.
“You still wanna do this?” Jerry says, turning a corner.
He watches the snow hit the windshield, melt and get wiped away.
“‘Cause it don’t matter to me if you don’t,” Jerry says, inching his way into the intersection. “I mean, I ain’t getting anything out of it, you know,” he says, his head turned to watch the oncoming traffic. “I mean, I’m doing you a favor,” he adds, hitting the gas and peeling through the intersection. A car horn sounds behind them. Jerry checks the rear view mirror. “What I’m saying,” he continues, his attention back on the road in front of them, “is that I’m doing this gratuit – you know, for free.”
“Pull over,” he says.
“What! Here?”
“Just pull over,” he demands.
He stumbles to the back of the car. Jerry watches him in the side mirror. He stands for a minute, leaned against the vehicle, then falls to one knee, doubles over and vomits onto the ground. Jerry turns the radio on and looks away.

9
A car horn blares. He’s standing in the middle of the street. It’s cold and his coat’s not warm enough.
On the sidewalk he stares down at his hands. Rough flesh. Creases in skin made over time, and then worn in over time – now permanent, now a part of him. But not me, he thinks. These hands are not me.
Her face re-enters his mind – her closed eyes and uncombed hair. He wants to hold her. He wants to lay next to her and see if her softness could really make him forget everything.
Someone knocks into him from behind. A thin man in a thin suit says “Pardon me” over his shoulder as he walks on, disappearing into the crowd. Another reason, he thinks. Another piece of machine.
The cold wind pushes his collar back and sends a chill all through him. He pulls his coat shut and fastens the top button. My actions are not without reason, are not without good reason, he tells himself. The wind hits him again, and he feels a spray of rain on his face. The sky is dark and low and speeds past. Another gust of wind nearly pushes him off his feet. I’m not a bad man. He searches the faces in the crowd around him, but she’s not there. Of course she’s not there.
The wind rips down the street like a punch. People scurry for shelter. People turn their heads down and to the side. The air smells suddenly fresh and moist. He looks down the street. A dark blur follows behind the wind, making its way towards him. Rain. But not rain like spring. Not rain like green grass and molten windowpanes. Not rain like relief from the heat of a summer’s day.
He steps back as the rain hits the street. But I’m not a bad man.

10
The rain pounds the street like glass bullets. Gutters overflow. The fresh scent of the before approaching downpour is replaced by a musty stench coming up from beneath the city. He leans against a newspaper box under the cover of a line of shop awnings. His feet and hands are cold. His body feels heavy like a cage. The dense and damp air makes him cough. The evening appears without warning. Streetlamps come on. The rain fizzes and steams off their hot glass. Traffic moves slowly through the street, pushing the flood onto the sidewalk in waves. Lights flash and slash through the rain. People rush into cars, into taxis, into buildings. His stomach turns. The wind picks up again, tossing the rain down onto the street in blankets. Someone runs across the street against a light. A car stops fast. Another hits it from behind. A horn sounds endlessly. In the noise and commotion he kicks in the front of the newspaper box. With the evening edition folded under his arm he passes the two drivers yelling at each other in the rain.
Walking is good – it warms his body and unclogs his mind, clears the din of voices echoing in his head. The refuse of other people’s words, of other people – so unhelpful. Like a disease, he thinks, they pass their feeble thoughts around – like dirty hands, like uncovered mouths. So unhelpful – a little plague of pedants.
He stumbles. His head spins. The evening city lights twirl and bob. He reaches out to grab at something. He falls against a shop window. His ears ring. But the cool glass feels good against his hot forehead. He leans into it. Through the glass, distorted by the rain, he sees books – one of them is hers. He swallows and clenches his jaw. He drags himself along the window to the door, his breathing shallow and fast. He shuts his eyes, hard, and making a fist tries to regain his balance. He pushes through the door and stumbles into the shop. The fluorescent lighting punches at his eyes, he feels a tug of pain all the way to the back of his head.
In front of the counter he sees her book on display. He stumbles towards it. The woman behind the counter – her long hair graying, glasses on a string around her neck – says something. He ignores her. He picks up the book. The woman says something again. He doesn’t hear her. He opens the book and reads. The woman says something again, now more forceful and standing in front of him. The book begins to slip from his fingers. His stomach curdles. He steps back. Then stumbling forwards again he drops the book onto the pile with the others. He catches himself with his hands. He looks down at the tens of copies of the book. A sudden and violent convulsion erupts in his gut and he vomits onto the display. He staggers back and to the side. His throat and nose burn. Another convulsion seizes him and he vomits onto the floor, splattering the woman’s shoes and ankles. She backs against the counter, her hand over her mouth, on the verge of being sick herself. He looks at the books all covered with pink-yellow vomit. He wipes his mouth with the back of his coat sleeve. He turns to leave. A slight grin pulls at his eyes as he stumbles out of the shop.

11
In the all-night diner across the street from her building, the newspaper folded under his coat beside him, he sits with his shoulders hunched at a booth by the window. The clock on the wall slowly ticktocks in the quiet distance. The waitress is in the kitchen, with the cook – through the order window he sees their leathery faces, eating bowls of rice and boiled chicken, talking Chinese. At the counter an old man sits in front of his coffee and half-eaten piece of pie. Shaking. Alone. Deserted. Waiting for the morning to come. Hiding from the nightmares that await him in his one-room apartment. Silently cursing all the things he’s done. Near the door four women sit together at a booth, drinking soda pop with straws, smoking cigarette after cigarette, chirping and gossiping and occasionally laughing out loud.
Outside the streets are dark. Trees and shrubs shimmer and shake from the odd gust of wind, but the rain has passed. Across the street, in a strong and sturdy brick building, her seventh-floor apartment window is still lit. The waitress does a round of refilling drinks. The four women take no notice of her as she places fresh bottles on their table. The old man exchanges some small talk with her as he does every night, and then sinks back into his private desolation.
Outside a taxi passes. A streetlight goes out. He looks up at her window and the light there too has gone out.
In the dark glass of the window he sees his reflection. He remembers photographs of a boy – so impossible to understand that this is the man that boy has grown into. But no more possible to think that this is the man that emerged out of that boy. Something changed. Some drastic moment occurred. Some threshold was reached, and passed through, and the boy was left behind. That boy would not be sitting here, he thinks. That boy would not do what I have done – would not do what I am doing. Where has he gone? And who was he anyway? His face looks soft in the glass – his features blend one to the next, signs of age and pain lost to the smoothed-over lack of detail in the window’s reflection – just a face, just an image – nearly just an idea of himself. Myself, he thinks. And who am I, what am I, anyway?
The bell above the door rings. Out of the corner of his eye he sees uniforms. He picks up his cup and drinking steals a look across the diner. Two police officers meander slowly in his direction, one of them looking back at the four women, the other inspecting him. His throat tightens. The women quiet their chatter. The waitress comes out of the kitchen all smiles and broken English – but her English was fine before, he remembers. Unable to swallow, he lets the lukewarm coffee slip from his mouth back into the cup, and putting it down on the table again, hides his shaking hands. He looks out the window, trying to look bored or distracted. Her light is still out. She must be asleep by now, he thinks. In the glass he sees, reflected, the two officers taking seats at the counter. The waitress serves them coffee and pie – smiling, bowing, playing Chinese like a bad movie. He swallows and tries to control his breathing. If I leave now, he thinks – no, it’s too soon. His eyes twitch. He watches the officers in the window. They’re harassing the waitress about the coffee, making her brew a fresh pot. The officer on the right, the bigger of the two, lights a cigarette and pointing at the four women in the booth by the door says something to his partner. They chuckle cruelly. The fat officer adjusts his belt, still staring at the women. The other officer, thin and insect-like, stares at the glass pie-fridge on the wall in front of him. The back of it’s mirrored. But it’s not the pies that interest the officer.
In the window he too sees the pie-fridge, and its mirrored interior, and the officer’s face – and then his eyes. He looks away, out into the dead street. But it’s too late. The insect turns slowly on his swivel-stool. He can feel the officer’s eyes searching him. He swallows, but the nervous lump in his throat won’t move. He feels his heart pounding. Looking down he sees his shirt tremor from his racing pulse. “Wet night, huh?” the insect says. He pretends not to hear, pretends he doesn’t know the officer’s speaking to him. “Hey, I’m talking to you,” the officer says. There’s no escape. He turns his head slowly. The insect’s half on, half off his seat, his feet planted on the floor, his arms crossed, his inspecting little eyes staring him down. His fat partner turns and joins in the stare. The insect’s eyes fall to his coat bundled on the seat beside him. The fat officer keeps watch on his eyes. He needs to say something – something to distract them. But the lump in his throat won’t move. And then it’s too late – he’s waited too long. “So what kind of business you in?” the insect says, sliding off his seat, letting his hands come to rest on his belt and taking a step towards him.
The sound of a porcelain cup breaking against the hard tiled floor turns everyone’s head. Following the cup, the old man slips off his stool, his forehead knocking against the counter on the way down, his legs getting caught in the metal footrest, his body bending and snapping at the hip. His shoulders hit the floor, his arms outstretched, his head jerking back. Half on the floor, nearly hung upside-down by his caught legs, blood beginning to ooze from the gash on his forehead, the old man fights for breath, wheezing, his whole body spasming, his tongue blue and bloated, looking like a huge worm trying to crawl out of his mouth.
The waitress screams and drops the fresh pot of coffee – the boiling liquid sprays her bare legs and soaks the fabric of the insect’s pants, burning both of them. The waitress stumbles backwards and falls to the floor, grabbing at her scalded ankles. The insect curses and brushes at his pants. The table of four women shriek nearly in unison. The fat officer moves to the old man whose tongue’s swollen so much he can’t breathe – his eyes look like they’re going to push out of his head. “Call a goddamn ambulance,” the fat officer shouts at the insect, shoving his jacket under the old man to prop him up and trying to pry his mouth open so he can breathe.
The insect hurries to the phone behind the counter, slamming against the cook who’s getting a bowl of ice for the waitress’s ankles. The four women gather their purses and packages of cigarettes and rush out the door. He takes their cue – grabbing his coat and the newspaper under it, he holds the bundle against his chest and makes for the door.

12
The women’s voices and the clickclacking of their high heels echo down the empty street.
He looks up. Her light is still out. She’s certainly asleep, perhaps even dreaming. He puts on his coat, still damp from the rain, and tucks the newspaper under his arm. A siren starts up in the distance. He crosses the dark street towards her building.
At the front entrance he presses her buzzer, then waits. He presses it again, and again, and until he hears her pick up the receiver. She doesn’t say anything – it’s late, she was asleep, she’s not expecting him.
“It’s me,” he says quietly, his mouth close to the wall-mounted microphone. There’s no reply, but he can hear her breathing. “It’s me, please.” He thinks of what to say. “I don’t know where else to go.” Silence. “I can’t go home,” he says, his tone serious and grave. “I’ve been out all night. I’m cold.” He pauses, dramatically. “I’m scared.” Silence again. Then the sound of the door-lock being released.
The elevator opens on the seventh floor. He steps out. The corridor’s empty and silent. The elevator starts to close but he presses the safety bar and it opens again. He takes the newspaper and wedges it into the elevator, pushing the safety bar in, making the door stay open.
She lights a cigarette and stands by the open balcony doors, a glass of wine in her hand. “Is it for money?” she asks.
“What?” he says.
“These people who’re after you,” she says, “is it for money?”
“No,” he says, suddenly irritated.
“Have you talked to the police?” she says – almost tauntingly, he thinks – staring out the balcony doors, the city in the background glittering all the way to the horizon.
“No,” he says, not hiding his agitation. “Look, it really doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” she says, turning to look at him. “Then what the hell are you doing here if it doesn’t matter?”
“I don’t want to argue,” he says condescendingly.
“Argue?” she says, becoming agitated. “You don’t want to argue!” raising her voice. “It’s three in the morning – you begged me to let you in – you said you’re scared, that you can’t go home – and now you tell me it doesn’t matter!” She stares at him, her face flushed. “What the hell’s going on?”
He says nothing.
She rubs her cigarette out in the ashtray and pours herself another glass of wine.
In his jacket pocket he runs his fingers over the cold metal of the gun.
She rests herself against the bureau, an arm across her chest cradling the elbow of the other holding up the glass of wine, her lips pressed against it, her eyes looking at him, then the floor, then at the balcony doors, then back at him again.
“You used to understand me,” he says, looking at her, trying to recall how he once had wanted her.
“I’m not having this conversation,” she says, lowering her glass and gesturing with her hand for him to stop.
She was beautiful, he thinks – I remember I used to think she was beautiful. Has she changed so much? Was she always not beautiful? “How do these things change?” he says to himself.
“People change,” she says, re-crossing her arms.
“Do they?” he says.
“Yes,” she says. “People change – it’s what they do.” She takes a deep breath. “Look, you’re not going to make sense of it, alright? They’re emotions. You can’t control them, they just happen.”
He feels a sadness saturating him like a dull poison.
“You need to move on,” she says, walking to the balcony doors. “You need to get out, you need to see people,” sounding almost boastful, placing a cigarette between her lips. “You need to meet someone,” and she stresses the word meet with innuendo.
His brow tightens.
“And you need to lighten up,” she adds, forcing a smile.
His hand slides around the handle of the gun. “Did you learn all that from the television?” he says under his breath.
“What?”
“I said you should write for television,” he says in an offhand tone, letting go of the gun and walking towards the bureau.
“What does that mean?” she says, her eyes tight and following him across the room.
He places his untouched drink on the bureau and stares at it, his back to her. “I was just thinking,” he says, not turning around, “that you have so much advice it’s a shame to waste it all on me.”
She tilts her head back and stares at the ceiling. In a quiet tone she says, half to him, half to herself, “I don’t even know when to get along with you anymore.”
He clenches his jaw. Then suddenly he turns around, and in an upbeat tone, says, “You know what I think?”
She resists responding, resists even looking at him. She takes a sip of wine and stares out the balcony doors again.
“I think we should go on a vacation,” he says, moving across the room towards her.
“What?” she says in disbelief.
“I think we should go on a vacation,” he says again, coming up beside her. “Just the two of us. Alone. Together.”
“Have you lost your mind?” she says, exasperated, nearly laughing from the absurdity of the suggestion.
“But I’m serious,” he says.
She looks at him, confused, almost pityingly.
“I think it could be good for us,” he says.
“I think you should leave,” she says flatly, and starts to walk away.
“I’m serious. Listen,” he says, reaching at her shoulder.
She turns, aggressively pulling her arm away from him. “Don’t touch me,” she says sharply.
“You see,” he says gravely. “This is what I mean.”
“You need to leave,” she says, looking him sternly in the eyes.
“We’ve lost touch. We don’t understand each other anymore,” he says, his voice soft and lamentful.
“This conversation is finished,” she says. “And now I’m telling you to leave.”
“Don’t you remember how we used to be in love?” he says, his voice nearly a whisper, and his hand reaching up, gently, towards her face.
“I’m calling the police,” she says, backing away from him, towards the kitchen.
He looks at his hand – alone, shaking slightly, left in midair, having never reached its destination. He closes it into a fist, and shutting his eyes, tight, holds back the rush of sorrow coming up from his chest.
In the kitchen she has the phone to her ear.
“Put down the phone,” he says, walking towards her, the gun in his hand, at waist level, pointed at her.
For a moment she’s stunned, frozen.
The emergency operator picks up on the other end of the line and says something.
He grabs the phone and hangs it up.
He stands and stares at her in the silence. Light, from the under-counter lighting behind her, floods out around her. She doesn’t look scared – just confused, shocked, even disappointed. She swallows. He can tell she’s thinking of what to say. But he feels nothing. I feel nothing, he thinks – only, like a first kiss, I wish this moment could go on forever.
“This is crazy,” she says finally, trying to make her voice sound like the voice she thinks he remembers.
He smirks. Even her sincerity is insincere, he thinks.
She steps forward. He moves in front of her and motions with the gun for her to remain where she is.
“Oh for chrissake,” she says, pushing her hair back off her face. “I’m just getting my glass of wine.”
He doesn’t respond, just continues to stare at her, his face expressionless, his eyes blank, the gun at his waist aimed at her.
She steps back and rests against the counter again. She crosses her arms. She looks at his face. She looks into his eyes. She glances down at his hand wrapped around the gun. She looks up into his eyes again, his blank stare making her feel cold.
The phone rings.
She jumps.
It continues to ring.
She looks at it, then at him, then back at the phone, and then at him again. “It’s the police,” she says.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t respond.
“If I don’t answer it they’ll suspect something,” she says.
The phone stops ringing. But then it suddenly starts again.
“If I don’t answer it they’ll send someone here,” she says threateningly.
He steps to his left and rips the phone from the wall.
“Now they’ll definitely send someone,” she says. “They can tell when a phone’s been unplugged, you know.”
He looks at the floor. Then raising his eyes back up to hers, says, slowly, “Why did you change?”
“There’s another phone in the bedroom,” she says, ignoring his baiting question. “I can call them from there, tell them everything’s fine, tell them they don’t need to send anyone.”
“Why would you want to do that?” he asks.
“Because I don’t want to see you get arrested, okay,” she says, irritated that she’s been forced to make the admission.
He smiles – it’s that struggle of hers again, he thinks.
“What? Are you in trouble with the police?” she says, misunderstanding his smile. “Is that what this is about? Did you do something – my God!” she says suddenly, looking at the gun in his hand. “Did you–”
He doesn’t need to look into her eyes to feel the sudden change in her – but he does anyway. It were as though she were gone and now some actress is standing across from him, playing her part. He feels suddenly cold, and disoriented. The kitchen looks strange and unfamiliar, though he knows he’s been in it a hundred times or more. And for a second, like light passing through the room, he sees her beautiful – her flowing hair, her soft skin, her eyes always on the verge of laughter. And then it’s gone again.
“Why did you change?” he says, almost pleadingly.
“The police will be here any minute,” she says, trying to distract him. “If you leave now you–”
“I don’t care about the police,” he shouts. “I want to know why you changed. Tell me why you changed,” he demands, waving the gun at her.
“I don’t know,” she shouts back.
“You’re lying,” he screams. “You’re lying. Why are you lying to me?” His voice is distraught. He grabs his head with both hands, anguish contorting his face, his mind arguing with itself.
In that split second – his eyes closed, his attention distracted away from her – she runs for the door.
In the hall he slams the door shut with the weight of his body and throws her up against the wall.
“Why did you change?” he demands.
She pushes him and tries to run down the hall.
He catches her by the arm and spins her around.
She raises her hand and hits him hard across the face.
He pins her shoulders against the wall and demands “Tell me why you changed.”
She tries to bring her knee up between his legs, but fails, ineffectually kneeing him in the thigh.
He pushes the gun into her belly. “Tell me why you changed,” he says slowly, his eyes full of rage and sadness.
“I don’t know,” she says through clenched teeth.
“You don’t know?” he says, pushing the gun harder into her.
“You’re hurting me,” she says, trying to squirm free.
“You don’t know what hurt is,” he says, his voice suddenly subdued, and a strange, faraway look glazing over his eyes.
All at once he lets go his hold on her. He searches her eyes for something he can’t find. He looks down at the floor. His arms hang at his sides.
Ever so slowly she begins to slink away along the wall.
“I know why,” he whispers, half to himself.
She glances to her right, judging the distance to the door.
Without warning he punches her hard in the belly, just below the ribs.
She falls to the floor, choking for air, unable to move, unable to make a sound – winded.
Kneeling beside her he softly pets her hair, a distorted whimper pulling at his lips.
“I know why,” he whispers to her.
Violently trying to take in a breath she searches him with her eyes – fear finally showing on her face.
Gently he places the gun in her hand and slides her finger around the trigger. He smiles, almost lovingly, and still kneeling turns his back to her. With his hand wrapped around hers he lifts the gun and presses it into the small of his back. He slides his finger over hers and squeezes.
The sound of the gun is deafening. The bullet rips through him and lodges into the wall with a spray of blood. He feels a burning sensation, then a sudden surge of pain rippling outward from the wound, sending his whole body into spasms. He lets go of her hand and falls forward. Every movement, every motion is agony, like a piece of glass turning and twisting in his side.
She starts taking in tiny gasps of air.
He makes it to his feet and leans against the wall. He looks down at her.
Twitching, her eyes look up at him, terrorized.
He smiles, then clenches his jaw and drags himself towards the door.
He dislodges the newspaper from the elevator. Down the corridor an apartment door opens and a middle-aged man in pajamas pokes his head out. Getting into the elevator he looks at the man and says, “Call the police. I’ve been shot.”

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 28.03.2010

Alle Rechte vorbehalten