Cartilage and Skin (21 page)

“You figure someone would sell the furniture,” she said. “Have a house sale or something.”

In the living room, she sat down on the couch. He stood for a moment, looking down at her, and then seated himself beside her. He put his feet on the coffee table, and she pushed them off.

“Don't be an ogre,” she said. “Somebody's got to own this stuff.”

“He had no family. They all left him without a word. I heard his wife took off with her lover and the kids,” Ray responded. “As my dad said, ‘Lonely people are a tragedy waiting to happen.'”

He stood up and walked over to the television.

“He's got some movies down here. We can watch something, as long as it's daylight.”

“I don't feel like it,” she said. She leaned forward, untied the laces of her sneakers, and slipped them off. When Ray returned to the couch, she said, “What does your dad know?”

“I don't know.” Ray shrugged. “That's what he said.”

“It takes more than one person to make a tragedy. Tell him that.”

He smiled at her again, and she turned her head away.

“I'm not going to tell him anything,” Ray said. He leaned back on the couch and moved a little closer to her, so his thigh touched her thigh.

“Let me kiss you again,” he said, still staring at her.

“You are an ogre.”

They sat silently, and after a while, she began to inspect her surroundings casually, as if Ray no longer sat beside her, touching her leg and looking at her face.

“It's like you're all coiled up inside,” she said at last, not so much addressing him as speaking to the room itself. “And you're ready to spring on me.”

“Let me kiss you,” he said.

She turned her face toward him, and no sooner, he leaned in, pressed his mouth against hers, and let his hand glide up the bare flesh of her arm. She pulled her face away, but he kept his hand on her. She stared at his eyes, which were bright and eager.

“You're never satisfied,” she said, a little breathless, and they kissed again. This time his hand slid up to her throat, where her fingers lightly touched his.

“You're like a puppy,” she said. “All coiled up inside.”

He smiled, his face close to hers. “I thought I was an ogre.”

She held his hand more tightly against her throat, and as she leaned back, pulling him down on top of her, he brought his mouth first to her lips and then to her neck, pressing himself against her and searching her midriff with his hand until her shirt pulled loose and her naked stomach momentarily contracted and then eased beneath his touch, while her own hand, which had previously dangled over the side of the couch, now found its way onto his back, to feel him and hold him closer, and he seemed to want to burrow his face into her neck, as if all he wanted to know about the girl's body was her current offering: merely her stomach and neck because, without her permission, he didn't dare to explore any further, even though he was pressing against her and her hips were rising to meet him and both of her hands were pulling him down, and then he was beginning to take his cue from her motion, to follow her lead, so now his hands seemed at liberty to slip beneath her and touch her back, as though she'd asked him to venture, to hold her tightly and draw her up against him, allowing his hands, not to glide, but to move in clutches from her shoulder blades down to her hips, as if he somehow wanted to crush or devour her, and her hands were also moving, unabashed and tactful, as if she had never known fear or shame or anything else that might have held back her desire, clasped it down until it strained hard and furious against the seams, as if desire were something that she could regulate and control, rather than something that simmered and gathered strength, and thus she possessed liquid ease, in her torso and her limbs, all the while he rushed spastically forward, uncoiling in avid fits and bursts, even though she was showing him, perhaps by instinct, how a body moves and finds a rhythm within itself, her hands roaming without fear, her body yielding, arching and rising to meet him: the boy who labored above her with apparent and clumsy self-consciousness, which now—despite her flesh undulant, warm, and human beneath him—was beginning to fall away in flakes, leaving him all alone in his lust, because even though she was slender and soft, he seemed as if he needed to wreck himself against her, to bash himself to pieces, like a ship caught adrift, a captain-less vessel tossed against a rocky shore, pulled away by ebbing waters and then smashed again and again with the heaving of water, pulled away and then smashed, as if the only way to reach a deeper level within himself, to venture into mystery, was to become undone.

Water trickled in the dark, and farther away, beyond the arched opening, rain fell, and the wind, blowing across the face of the opening, filled the interior with a rushing sound, as if the entire edifice itself were moving and the collection of people inside, scattered and sprawled out upon the cement floor, were its passengers, but nothing was actually moving, save for the flicker of firelight and shadow against the back wall, while a woman's voice—somewhat harsh but jovial, originating not from any one of the dark forms in particular—wasn't something that really moved, though it possessed a strange kind of force or agency that seemed to give it a presence, perhaps simply because it was the only human sound rising intermittently from among the mute, motionless figures. “Little fucker,” the voice sounded, “throw him another piece,” and then paused, “he eats almost anything,” as the rain fell and the wind rushed “probably ate his own toes” across the opening and the water trickled down the cement walls and the fire “throw him a raw piece this time” flickered against the back wall “a raw piece, damn it” the voice loud but then halting all at once in abrupt silence until softly, coaxingly “yes, yes, go on, you sweet-mouth fucker, go on, eat it” and then laughing.

There was one boy now. He leaned his head against the bus window and stared out at the edge of the road as it whipped along in a flickering procession of broken images whose only connection to one another was the fluidity of motion, as if the world were a thing that slid and darted past in an unbroken line; or perhaps the continuity was not exactly motion, but time, and the sliding was an illusion of the eye, so the world was actually stable, indivisible, and yet set into motion and set into time by whatever head leaned against the window and stared out at the passing landscape.

When the bus stopped and the doors opened, the boy stepped out onto the sidewalk. The bus rumbled for a moment and then started away, leaving behind the odor of its blue-gray exhaust. The day was clear, dry, and hot. The boy was dressed in a tee-shirt now; the legs of his navy green sweatpants had been cut off, to turn the pants into shorts. He walked without haste, his wounded foot moving at a pace slightly slower than his other foot. Now that his hair was cropped and a bright agility colored his hazel eyes, the boy's full, pouting lips, which had once given him a feminine quality, seemed to make him appear strangely angry. A dog barked at him, but unaffected, he walked on. The suburban streets were mostly peaceful. A few cars passed. In the distance, a lawn mower roared. The boy seemed to be governed by instinct as he selected avenues to turn down, continuing with his measured pace, not bothering to lift his head to look at street signs or houses. Eventually, he turned up the driveway to the yellow house where Kyle had once lived. The real estate sign leaned in the lawn, and the agent's brass lock-box was fastened to the front doorknob. The boy tried the knob, and finding it locked, he went around to the back of the house and also tried the back door. He crossed his arms and stood on the concrete slab for a while, staring up at the house. At first, he seemed almost rigid, but then he cocked his hips and lowered his head. He continued to stand, as if waiting for something. After a while, he walked around to the front of the house and tried the handle again. He didn't make any noise, not even to ring the bell or knock on the door. With his back to road, his hips cocked, and one thumb tucked under the waistband of his shorts, he stared up at the house for a long time. The boy didn't seem angry or scared; he didn't seem like anything at all.

Although I had made an earnest effort to encounter life and tried to seduce whatever I could, from abstract flesh to abstraction in the flesh, from bovinity to probity, I was thwarted at every turn, as though all of society had conspired to keep me an isolated creature. People seemed indifferent to a person's particular obsession, whether lofty or depraved, as long as he stuck to himself. This was the modern revision to Christ's golden rule: Don't bother your neighbor. Everyone seemed hopelessly ignorant of the mental machinery of a certain kind of reclusive man; no matter if he were an academic, a pervert, or a poet, going inward was always a descent. Of course, many fine citizens—who are contently enmeshed in their ordinary lives and even shake their heads in confusion and disgust at the random madman presented in the press—would themselves turn into completely different animals if their attentions weren't so occupied with the average routines and customs of culture. Deprived of this external reference point, they would find themselves lacking definition. If they continued to look outward, they'd become susceptible to the first appealing figure or Führer that cared enough to remake them. However, if a man happened to look inward, even just for a glance, then the real devolution would begin, until finally one day he would be pulled out of his little hole and exposed to the bright lights, clicking cameras, and ordinary citizens shaking their heads in confusion and disgust.

In a bitter cold December, when the city's main concern was the surplus of homeless people freezing to death, I realized that society wasn't merely apathetic. Indifferent and devoid of the slightest bit of warmth, it seemed to have passively abandoned me. Yet I abruptly learned, on one harrowing day, that society actually possessed certain mechanisms to hasten a man's devolution. They didn't simply allow him to decay at his own pace; they dug him up just to throw lime on him.

It was a Tuesday morning, while I was pretending to be Marduk and chatting with several supposedly single Jews, when a phone call disrupted my connection to the Internet. The instant I heard the sound of the social worker's voice, I went numb and slipped into a defense mode: I adopted the equanimity of the conscientious and obliging citizen, and yet beneath this mask, I remained as alert as a spooked rabbit. Yes, I said. She wanted to know if I could come to the clinic that afternoon. Of course, sure, yes, I said. I even began to nod my head as I acquiesced, although the woman couldn't possibly have seen the gesture through the telephone line. There was trouble with the boy.

Months ago, when the boy had first met his social worker and doctors, his demeanor vacillated between extended stretches of stolid silence—less due to his distrust of the doctors than to his impulse to protect a secret or even a person—and stretches of tireless rants and tirades that were punctuated by flashes of grotesquely sexual knowledge and imagery. At other moments, however, he became a cheerful boy who lacked the faintest trace of depravity; during these calmer interludes, when he seemed most approachable, the doctors tried to advance their investigation. I imagine that this itself was surely a perverse scene because the boy would be sitting at the table, fiddling with the tongue of his sneaker, the tattered string to the hood of his sweat jacket, or whatever else was loosely attached to him, in a light blue aura of innocence, like an ordinary child; and then a full-grown adult, his size unsettlingly conspicuous in relation to the boy's slight frame, would cautiously sit down and try amicably to initiate an obscene conversation, asking questions that no healthy boy could possibly understand. From what I was told, the boy conveyed his responses, though fragmented, in a thoughtful and sweet tone, as if he were listing all the fun he'd had at school that day. He said that his father used to cut up his spaghetti into tiny bits, so he could eat it with a spoon. Also, he was afraid of the “bottle man” because he smelled of licorice and made bird noises. “Cunt-whore”—who was possibly more than one person, an amalgam in the boy's mind—was shaved clean; one of his legs was raw red below the knee, and his eyes would smile whenever he wanted a little spice or to make a cream pie. The fancy-dressed man in the dark room with the bugs sometimes used to cry, and he called the boy Missy. Although he often gave the boy small gifts, such as a can of soda or a box of colored markers, he also threatened that if the boy didn't stop ruining his home life, he'd make a necklace out of the boy's teeth. Other characters, all without proper names, appeared in the boy's story, but most likely only one or two people made several distinct reappearances in the boy's memory. Nevertheless, one thing was unmistakably clear: The boy trusted me. Apparently, he came to me when he was sick because I always made certain that we were even. I wasn't needy, consuming, or unfair. By some intuitive reflex unbeknownst to myself, I demanded that everything between us remain upfront and equal. If the balance was off in any way, it was because I was generous. With everyone else in his life, except for the shadowy image of a dimly remembered father, things were uneven in the other direction. In part, the originality of the boy's theory of scales seemed to throw doubt on any question of Stockholm syndrome. His allegiance to me was in earnest; I was a good man, not a captor. Yet, despite the boy's affection, I disclaimed him, telling the doctors and the police that I didn't really know the boy or what had happened to him. I had to wash my hands of him. I distrusted the investigators because I sensed that everything they told me about the boy's situation served as a roundabout way of trying to indict me; they were feeding me specific details to see what and when I would bite. Of course, I never let them suspect that I understood their insidious method, and rather than let them play me off of the boy, I acted like a vaguely curious bystander.