disintegrate long before I had any chance of collecting my pay- off. But then, when you need something to be a certain way bad enough, the hope that things will get better in the future is an easy blindfold to wear.
Maybe it was because she was doing it just when she’d gotten some money, maybe it was the coke in my system. I don’t know. Maybe it was just the fear of being abandoned. Whatever, when I routed back into the flow I kind of lost control and hit her.
She shrieked at me and I shrieked back, we grabbed each other and lurched around the room, and out of anger and desperation I hit her some more. It wasn’t a pleasant scene, in fact it was very, very bad, and it ended with her running out of the apartment, bleeding from the mouth. I didn’t try to stop her.
“You can keep the fucking car.”
It was the last thing she said.
I stood in the middle of the suddenly silent and empty room, under an unshaded bulb that was too bright. Night air came in through the open door and something by my feet moved in the breeze. I picked it up—a crumpled piece of paper that had my name on it—the pink slip for the car. It made me feel pretty bad.
Chapter Three
I checked the clock. Already too late for work. Tough. I wasn’t going, I had an excuse—a death in the family.
A death. Her death.
How far did she make it? How much time passed between our fight and the carving of her belly? Maybe she got it straight- away, hacked up just half an hour after she stormed out into the night. But the body in the park hadn’t looked eight days old.
If she’d been killed some time last night and the police did find me, things could get difficult—I had no way to prove where I’d been after I left work.
My pill supply was in the icebox—a biscuit jar full of blister packs and brown plastic vials Karen had accepted as payment a month or two back for taking a shit in front of a room full of doctors up from San Diego on a stag night. They were all downers of one kind or another and they were all past their use-by date. But they still worked just fine. I swallowed 20mg of Valium and thought about phoning Donut Haven. Explaining why I wasn’t there seemed like such a hassle, though—better to sit with a beer in front of morning TV and wait for the benzodiazepine haze to wrap me up. Then just drift …
Scenes in the park. Scenes of her leaving the apartment. A question of consequences, of meaning, of how I felt. Would she have ended up dead if I hadn’t exploded? I guess I had to assume some responsibility—but I was only a link in the chain. I forced her out of the apartment and sometime later she died. But I forced her out because of the things she’d done, and she, in turn, had done those things in response to a lifetime of earlier events, back down the line to childhood. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t suppose either of us was entirely at fault. But we both played parts and each part carried its measure of guilt.
And beyond this vaguely apportioned blame, the issue of grief. Slumped on a couch in a furnished room, while the day stoked its furnaces outside and bustling, self-improving Californians carelessly let snatches of their conversation and laughter float up to me, I can’t say grief was paramount in my emotions. There was shock at violent death, of course, and there was my own fear of being alone and adrift in the city again. But a devastating sense of loss? No.
There was relief, though. It sounds foul to say, but it was there—an obscene voice of truth shouting that the unmanning was over, that the nights spent waiting for the sound of her feet on the steps outside the apartment were finally at an end. The hideous compromise I’d had to make to hang on to a soulless and incomplete replica of a relationship was finished. There was certainly an element of relief.
But as much as I wanted to bathe in this traitorously comforting emotion, Karen’s last gesture made it impossible to avoid an artesian
Maybe it was because she was doing it just when she’d gotten some money, maybe it was the coke in my system. I don’t know. Maybe it was just the fear of being abandoned. Whatever, when I routed back into the flow I kind of lost control and hit her.
She shrieked at me and I shrieked back, we grabbed each other and lurched around the room, and out of anger and desperation I hit her some more. It wasn’t a pleasant scene, in fact it was very, very bad, and it ended with her running out of the apartment, bleeding from the mouth. I didn’t try to stop her.
“You can keep the fucking car.”
It was the last thing she said.
I stood in the middle of the suddenly silent and empty room, under an unshaded bulb that was too bright. Night air came in through the open door and something by my feet moved in the breeze. I picked it up—a crumpled piece of paper that had my name on it—the pink slip for the car. It made me feel pretty bad.
Chapter Three
I checked the clock. Already too late for work. Tough. I wasn’t going, I had an excuse—a death in the family.
A death. Her death.
How far did she make it? How much time passed between our fight and the carving of her belly? Maybe she got it straight- away, hacked up just half an hour after she stormed out into the night. But the body in the park hadn’t looked eight days old.
If she’d been killed some time last night and the police did find me, things could get difficult—I had no way to prove where I’d been after I left work.
My pill supply was in the icebox—a biscuit jar full of blister packs and brown plastic vials Karen had accepted as payment a month or two back for taking a shit in front of a room full of doctors up from San Diego on a stag night. They were all downers of one kind or another and they were all past their use-by date. But they still worked just fine. I swallowed 20mg of Valium and thought about phoning Donut Haven. Explaining why I wasn’t there seemed like such a hassle, though—better to sit with a beer in front of morning TV and wait for the benzodiazepine haze to wrap me up. Then just drift …
Scenes in the park. Scenes of her leaving the apartment. A question of consequences, of meaning, of how I felt. Would she have ended up dead if I hadn’t exploded? I guess I had to assume some responsibility—but I was only a link in the chain. I forced her out of the apartment and sometime later she died. But I forced her out because of the things she’d done, and she, in turn, had done those things in response to a lifetime of earlier events, back down the line to childhood. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t suppose either of us was entirely at fault. But we both played parts and each part carried its measure of guilt.
And beyond this vaguely apportioned blame, the issue of grief. Slumped on a couch in a furnished room, while the day stoked its furnaces outside and bustling, self-improving Californians carelessly let snatches of their conversation and laughter float up to me, I can’t say grief was paramount in my emotions. There was shock at violent death, of course, and there was my own fear of being alone and adrift in the city again. But a devastating sense of loss? No.
There was relief, though. It sounds foul to say, but it was there—an obscene voice of truth shouting that the unmanning was over, that the nights spent waiting for the sound of her feet on the steps outside the apartment were finally at an end. The hideous compromise I’d had to make to hang on to a soulless and incomplete replica of a relationship was finished. There was certainly an element of relief.
But as much as I wanted to bathe in this traitorously comforting emotion, Karen’s last gesture made it impossible to avoid an artesian
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