CopyCat (4 page)

When I awoke the light in the room was soft and gray. I eased out from under him and went to the bathroom. He never moved, snoring softly and half burying his face in the pillow. I finished in the bathroom and moved quickly and silently around the room, finding my clothes and shoes and quickly getting dressed. Before I eased from the room I found a notepad and pen on a small desk by the window and left him a note.

If you’re still in town Friday night, I’ll be in the bar at eight o’clock. If not, have a safe journey.

I thought the message hit just the right note. It had a vibe that said
I’m interested but not a stalker
. I genuinely planned on seeing him again if he was still in town in a few days. He’d said he would be, and I was looking forward to a repeat of the night’s performance. I had no way of knowing just how soon I’d see him again.

Chapter Two

Once I got started in my studio, the time flew past as it always did, and I lost all track of time. I stopped thinking about Connor Todd’s visit earlier that morning, and mostly forgot about Miguel. I tried to, anyway.

Finally, as the light in the room began to dim, I realized my back was aching and my fingers were stiff. I straightened and stood back, looking the painting over and then started to clean up, putting my brushes in a solution to soak a few minutes while I put away my oils.

After cleaning my brushes and stowing them in their plastic case, I went into the kitchen for a glass of water and realized I was starving. I found a frozen pizza in the freezer and put it in the microwave. When it finally dinged, I ate it standing over the sink and chugged down a coke to go with it. Miguel had often expressed amazement at my eating habits.

“How you can eat so much junk and not gain weight, I’ll never know,”
he’d say, shaking his head.
“This body and that gorgeous face in one sweet little package.”
Here he’d usually grab my package for emphasis and squeeze, always a bit too hard, a bit too insistent.
“Too bad you’re a dummy, but hey, nobody’s perfect, right?”
He’d laugh then and pull me in for a hard, possessive kiss.

Yeah, I was a real winner in the genetics lottery all right. I’d trade every advantage I had to not be so different, to not be considered weird, to be just like everybody else. That was the one thing I actually envied the kids they called mentally challenged. Most of them, or at least the ones who’d been in the special classes with me as a kid, didn’t seem to realize how different they were, or if they did, it didn’t seem to bother them much. The other kids were really pretty nice to them too. They were in their own area most of the time and though the “normal” kids, the neurotypicals, pretty much ignored them, at least they didn’t tease them either.

The term “neurotypical” can be used for anyone who does not have typical neurology, in other words, anyone who has autism, dyslexia, developmental disorders, bipolar disorders, or ADD/ADHD.

The kids with Asperger’s, along with the kids who were ADHD, were mostly in regular classes with the neurotypical kids, and we were very aware of the differences, and knew exactly why the other kids sometimes laughed or rolled their eyes.

I cleaned up the kitchen and decided to go upstairs and watch some TV before going to bed. I locked the door and started up the stairs, not bothering to turn on a light, since it was only around seven o’clock and the fading light still was enough to see. It was as I got to the top that I took the last step and bright agony slashed up through my foot so suddenly and unexpectedly that I screamed with pain and confusion and reeled backward, remembering too late that I stood at the top of a very steep stairway.

I fell back, windmilling my arms, trying desperately to catch myself, but tumbling backward anyway. I fell helplessly, and maybe it was because I did manage to flail out at the rails a few times on the way down, slowing my fall, that I didn’t kill myself. I’ll never really know, but I wound up at the bottom of the steps on the little landing near the front door, on my back staring up at the ceiling, breathless and aching all over from hitting what felt like every damn step on the way down.

What the hell just happened? What was broken glass doing on the damn stairs? On the top of the stairs, in the dark? Even if I had turned on the light before climbing them, that area was always dim and in shadow. I knew damn good and well I hadn’t dropped a glass there and not cleaned it up—and there was no one else in the house.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around it, and I was in too much pain to dwell on it at the moment. I tried to ease myself up and take stock of any broken bones, but the throbbing in my foot made that my first priority. I gingerly sat up, pulled my foot onto my lap and dug out a huge chunk of broken glass lodged in a bloody gouge, along with several other bits of glass stuck randomly into the sole. The largest wound wasn’t exactly pumping blood, but it was pouring pretty freely. I hobbled as best I could to the bathroom for a towel to try to contain as much of it as I could and found a telephone to dial 911.

As much as I hated to admit it, this was beyond my ability to just apply pressure and slap on a bandaid. Also I was pretty sure I’d cracked my wrist or something because it was kind of numb, though sharp pains were shooting up to my elbow from time to time.

The operator kept me on the line, asking me lots of questions and within a few minutes I heard the ambulance pull up outside. She finally let me hang up and answer the door and soon they had me loaded up and on the way to the emergency room for stitches and x-rays.

Four hours later, the EMTs brought me back home. I was wearing a paper shoe on my uninjured foot that the ER nurses insisted I wear, and my other foot was swathed in bandages. My right arm was in a brace and a sling. It was only a sprain, thank goodness, and because I was left-handed, that meant I could still paint. I went directly upstairs as the painkillers were beginning to take effect, taking a big cautious step over the remnants of glass on the top step. I found a wastebasket and went back to sit on the top landing and rake the tiny pieces of broken glass still left on the step into the basket. It looked like a glass from my kitchen, but I still had no idea how it had gotten there.

Stumbling to my feet, I made it back to the bedroom, feeling like there was no spot on my body left unbruised. I put in a DVD to watch as I fell asleep. It was a gay porn movie that I’d watched a lot, with a handsome young man in the starring role. I’d watched it probably a hundred times, but I still loved it and thought its familiarity might lull me to sleep—that and the big dose of pain killers the doctor at the ER gave me. I turned the volume up a little louder. It was almost midnight, and if the knocking and the voices came in the walls again, I didn’t want to hear them tonight of all nights.

Propped up against the pillows, I watched the opening scene. The young star of the film, with long black hair and blue eyes, turned to a man sitting next to him at the bar. “I just came here tonight to get fucked by somebody,” the young man said. “It might as well be you, I think.”

The familiar dialogue made me smile as I remembered saying those same words to Connor Todd. I wonder if he thought I was really that glib, that bold. I wanted to be. I’d learned a long time ago not to trust myself to come up with a clever line and be all charming and sexy. That was for other people, not me. Too socially awkward to have any friends and not completely understanding the purpose of social banter anyway, I relied on my memory of lines from old movies to attract a partner and keep him interested long enough to fuck me. Afterward, I tried to get out of his way as soon as I could before he learned that I was mostly in the dark when it came to social banter. All I’d done was memorize some lines—just a copycat.

I closed my eyes and drifted off, snuggling down in the covers. The pain pills were finally kicking in.

Sometime later, I woke up to tapping in the wall. The room was lit only by the flickering light of the television. A blue screen stared out at me, the DVD long since having stopped. The sound hadn’t come from the movie then. I eased to a sitting position, wincing at the aches and pains that seemed to emanate from every part of my body. My foot was throbbing with every heartbeat and when I put it down too quickly on the side of the bed, I had to close my eyes for a moment from the brief torment that made my stomach muscles clench and contract.

I snapped on the lamp next to the bed and sat rigidly, listening for the sounds in the wall to come again. No voices this time, at least. After about ten minutes, I heard a little sound of shuffling, but the sound seemed to be going away from me, receding into another part of the house. I eased up to hobble over to the wall and place my ear to it. Only silence, but a silence so profound that it had a
listening
quality to it, as if the house itself were holding its breath, tense and expectant.

I wondered if I could possibly have rats in my house. If I did, one of us would have to go. My grandfather called them mice, but they were rats to me. I hated the way they darted around, so quickly you almost missed them and just caught a glimpse of them out of the corners of your eyes. I’d go in the morning and get some traps, except I wasn’t quite sure how I’d get there. I usually walked to the market which was only a few blocks away, but I couldn’t make it on this foot. I needed to pick up some groceries too, so I’d just have to take a taxi.

They had wheelchair carts I could use once I got there, which was a good thing, because I didn’t think I could manage to walk around a big store, even leaning on a cart. Distracted by the plan, I finally managed to go back to sleep, but the lights stayed on the rest of the night.

****

I slept late and was awakened by the sound of loud banging on the front door. At first I thought it was coming from the wall again and sat up in alarm, looking back at the one behind my bed. The sudden movement brought a fresh crescendo of pain, and I rubbed my eyes and considered the idea that I might have actually been run over and dragged by a large truck at some time in the recent past. The banging on the door continued, getting even louder, if that was possible, and then the doorbell began
gong
gonging
through the house too. I groaned as I got out of bed and hopped on one foot to the top of the stairs. I could see straight down the stairway and whoever was knocking was alternately ringing the bell and calling my name. I heard a familiar voice call out.

“Come to the door, Gavin. I need to talk to you.”

“Just a minute,” I yelled and made my slow, unsteady descent downstairs. The person at the door continued to bang away, as if they hadn’t heard me, and who knew if they did or not with all the noise they were making themselves. I finally got to the door, breathing hard and swung it wide. Connor Todd was standing there, his face irritated and flushed.

“It’s about time!” he yelled and then my battered appearance must have finally registered.

I was wearing only my knit boxers along with the huge bandage on my foot, and my arm was in the brace. I was as bruised as if I’d been on the losing end of a fight with an aluminum baseball bat.

“Hi,” I said and his mouth dropped open even farther.

“What the hell happened to you?” he asked, crowding in and not waiting for an invitation. He wrapped an arm around my waist and started half-carrying, half-dragging me to the sofa. “You look like you’re about to fall down, damn it.”

Since I felt like that might indeed be a distinct possibility, I allowed him to help me sit down. He pulled a pillow up behind me and pressed me back into it. “Now tell me. Were you in some kind of auto accident?”

“No, Connor Todd, I fell down the steps.”

“Fell down the steps?” he repeated blankly, and then his eyes got round. “You mean the
stairs
?
Those
stairs,” he said, pointing at them, his voice incredulous.

I nodded. “Yes, from the top. I stepped on some broken glass.”

His eyebrows drew together and he glowered at me. “Then why the hell don’t you have a broken neck? How did this happen? Don’t you have sense enough to pick up a broken glass?”

I looked at him with surprise. “Of course I do!
I
didn’t put it there.”

“So you’re saying somebody else came in your house, broke a glass, and left it on the top step?”

“Yes.”

He started to smile and then seemed to catch himself. He cocked his head and looked at me strangely. “You’re serious?”

“Yes, Connor Todd.”

“Gavin, how could someone come in your house like that? And why the hell do you keep calling me
Connor Todd
?”

“Because it’s your name…did I get it wrong?”

He looked puzzled and regarded me closely, like I might be teasing him. “No…but you shouldn’t…most people don’t…” He broke off again and his lips got firm. He nodded at me, like I’d asked him a question. “Look, just call me Connor, okay?”

“Oh, okay. Is that why you came to see me?”

“What? No, of course not. I have more questions for you, but I guess…I don’t think you’re up to it. Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yes, last night. I called an ambulance, and they took me to the emergency room.” I held up my wrist brace. “That’s where I got this.”

“Jesus, Gavin.”

I stayed quiet, knowing that his calling on his deity was just something people did sometimes, though it never made a lot of sense to me. My grandfather used to do it a lot, and even Miguel, who didn’t seem to believe in anything, really, used to call out loudly for Christ a lot, and that was Jesus’ last name. My grandfather didn’t take me to church a lot, so I’d need to research the whole thing more.

“Can I look at your foot?” Connor To—Connor asked me, and I shrugged and thrust it over onto his lap. He looked up at me sharply and then back down at my foot. He drew in a deep breath, and then he put a warm hand on my knee and slid it down my calf before picking up my heel and looking at the bandage. The gauze was kind of gross, being already soaked through with blood in a couple of spots, but he carefully peeled off the tape and eased the bandage down. He hissed his breath in a little as he looked at it and then back up at me.