Disintegration (2 page)

I kept the answering machine. It sits on the shelf in the stony wasteland that is my kitchen. And I press the button. Way too often. I press the button when I am drunk out of my head. When I'm bouncing off the walls, tearing at my skin. I press it and become a marble statue, completely still, eternally cold, and empty inside. I stand next to the sawhorse, with its mangled bits of wood and metal shards sticking out of it and I press it again.

“Hey, baby, I guess you're working late again….”

I should be dehydrated by now, but I'm not. It's been three years. I ache as if I've been punched in the gut, my head swimming. It's like she's right there. Just up the street. Be home in a minute. And I see the house in the suburbs, the green grass, the red mailbox flag sticking straight up, the blue siding a calming presence.

I head to the bathroom. Happy is calling.

I don't know what it is. It could be speed, crystal meth, ecstasy, LSD, Special K, or all of the above. I assume the latter. I can't talk about Sad right now. I'm too fluid.

Completely naked now, I lie on the hardwood floor, fully erect, as if I could slide it between the slats. One gaunt cheek is pressed against the wood, my eyes counting the individual fibers in the yellow manila envelope. It isn't really yellow. More like a rust. A burnt sienna, peach, tangerine, a bit of sandalwood, tan, beige—it keeps changing in the light. I run my tongue over the edge of it, the corner, slowly, very slowly as it creases my skin. I can feel the tiny capillaries, each one a skyscraper in my mouth. I close my mouth and swallow, the copper gliding down, the paper-thin cut a Grand Canyon, gaping wide for the world to see. I smack my lips, and run my tongue over them. They are parchment, flaky and dry, now moist and plump. I wish that Holly was here to kiss me, to slide her perfect pink bits of flesh into my mouth.

Holly is not my wife. She is my guardian angel, or so I'd like to think. She often appears in the middle of the night. I worry that perhaps she simply sneaks away from her other life, her time in the daylight, to be with me. I have so little to cling to that I don't question it, I'm just grateful when she appears—her key in the door, her warm body slipping under the sheets, the most real thing I know.

When she reclines in my bed with me, running her fingers over the tattoos on my arms, my chest, my wrists, my back, she says that she can save me. I have no phone, no television set, no computer, and no mail comes to me. I have one key—one. I close my eyes and summon her. I want to see her perfect face, the sharp pale angles, the short black bob, the frosty skin with the creamy filling. She could show up at any time, any minute. I drift off into a black hole, I become one with the gaps in the ancient hardwood, my cells merging into the swirls and grooves, and as I go, I kill again. I see the bodies stacked like a cord of wood—broken bones, bullet holes, dented skulls, and bruised necks. Knife wounds and bloody thumbprints and a baseball bat with long black strands of hair glued to the end by a sticky red syrup. I whimper and go over.

I'm warm and dry and her moist breath is on my neck. I don't feel the world around us, we are floating on a cloud, her body pressed up against my back, her every curve etched into my memory. Her heat is soft against my shoulders, my arms, and I can feel the soft fur of her decadence pressed up against the curve of my ass. Her hand reaches around me, her tiny hand and long fingers grabbing hold of my turgid erection. Her touch makes me cry and as the tears run down my face, as she rubs up and down, her tongue in my ear, she whispers to me, she says all the things I need to hear, her musk and sweet perfume intoxicating. I feel her other hand busy between her legs and she is a machine, pistons pumping, her hot gasps filling my ears, and the sky parts, erupting in sunshine and white light, an explosion of speckled white scattered against black felt, her body pressed against mine, trembling in unison, and I am filled with her. I am overloaded. My circuits shut down and I go blank.

A cat yowls outside, waking me up. My friend, Luscious. She gets jealous, and yet still plays hard to get. I roll over to stare at my naughty elf, but she is not there. On the nightstand sits a solitary tube of lipstick. She has left me a memento, a purplish red tint called Bruise. I stare at it in wonder, but I'm light today. I'm a feather. I float for a moment, the darkness pushed to the edges, the clouds only fringed in gray.

But I know what the day holds.

Death.

Like any employee, I have a uniform. For this position, as Everyman, this version, I must be a bohemian hipster, cool without trying, invisible in any neighborhood
haunt—coffeehouse,
bar, restaurant, Salvation Army, Burger King, or currency exchange. I must be immediately forgettable riding the Blue Line el into the city, into the tunnel, screaming by water-laden alleys and rotting back porches. I must not stand out when hanging at the corner of Damen, North, and Milwaukee holding a Starbucks Venti Mocha or in a dive bar with a bottle of Miller Lite, while eating a hot dog, gyro, or plate of sushi.

My apartment is not as small as it looks. Kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom. No closets. I kept a few things from my previous life. I kept the hand-hewn dining room table. I run my hands over it when I pass it, every bump and scratch, every touch a moment in time. It's cruel and I don't care. I wallow in it. I kept the armoire from our bedroom, intricate moldings and shabby chic
embellishments,
more dark brown wood, to match my hair, a wavy thick brown mane, and my cup-of-coffee eyes, a cup left out on the counter
overnight—cold,
bitter, and dull in the middle. And I kept the dresser. Mexican artisans, no doubt shirtless while they drank tequila, sucking on limes and salt, bushy mustaches, scrawling
GRINGO
in every drawer, way in the back, only visible if you pull them out and flip them over.

The uniform I wear when I leave my burrow is a variation on a theme. Black in every sense of the word. Not onyx, obsidian, midnight, or coal. But T-shirt, mock turtleneck, polo, or tank. Black combat boots. Black leather jacket. The only deviation the workingman's staple, the blue jeans—Levi's, the Gap, DKNY, Old Navy. They fill every drawer with their pitch, every hanger with their vacuous glare.

I have a bus ride to take. But it's still light out, and I need more help. The third bottle is larger than the first two, and lies on its side on the medicine cabinet, one shelf lower: Recovery.

I haven't seen Vlad in three years. His face is a distant memory, and I fear I may transpose the faces of others onto his. He gave me the package and he gave me the keys. The few things I'd kept, after I sold the house, after I fled the suburbs for the anonymity of a small apartment in the city, they were in storage. A friend. I forget his name now. Bill or Brian or something. Doesn't matter. Vlad lent me a van. Quick trust on that guy.

I don't remember much from that trek.

I remember my friend, shaking this man's hand, him hugging me, and I was clay. His face dragging on the ground, skin slack, heart on his sleeve, his business card thrust into my hand. I wiped my ass with it that very night. A word bounces around my empty skull on the highway drive back south. Severed. Before merging onto the highway, I pull into a tiny liquor store in the middle of the cornfields and buy a couple of forties. Budweiser. I polish one off every fifteen minutes. And every twenty minutes I pull over and vomit up white foam—in half-filled parking lots, scattering whatever drunks are near me; on the side of the road, my knees in the grit, black moons grinding their way into the denim patchwork that covers my stalks. And then I do it again.

By the time I get to the city, I am hammered.

For years I've held a resentment against the kind of asshole that speeds around you, cutting over to the merge lane, flying past, only to move back into traffic four cars ahead of you. I'd done enough commuting to create a long-standing resentment toward this particular breed of jerk. Nine times out of ten it was a BMW.

Today was not his day.

A dark blue burst of speed on my right side, and I see him cruise past, only to shove his way back in again down the road. A smile crosses my face. I set the forty down. Traffic surges ahead, and I move up the best I can. Swerving in and out, finding the gaps, I punch the pedal, pushing the trembling van forward.

I follow him for miles. He does it again and again. Riding up on some poor helpless sap's ass, then gunning it to the right, punching it down the exit lane, only to cut back in again.

My turn.

Working my way down the right lane, two cars get off at Fullerton, and he's right in front of me. I can see the back of his shiny, coiffed hair bobbing up and down, moving right and left, tilting back as he laughs at the funniest joke in the world, chirping into his cellphone, living the life. I see an upcoming exit lane, and he's going to do it again. This time, I'm right behind him, and he has no idea. Brake lights and rearview mirrors are for suckers.

My spine crackles with electricity. Palms sweaty, I wipe them on my pants. A twinge flutters in my stomach, and as he guns it wide, I floor it straight ahead. I find a gap in the middle lane, and cut over. He's flying down the right lane, the exit lane, but he's not exiting.

Two cars in front of me, one car, then I'm clear. I'm still on his left, in his blind spot, off the left rear quarter panel. We swerve over at the same time, me to the right, and him to the left. He sees me too late to do anything but look up. And in this game of chicken, I'm not backing off. In fact, I'm
overcompensating,
I keep going to the right, my face filled with white teeth, a grin as wide as my head.

We connect, metal on metal shrieking, sparks flying, and he tries to pull it to the right. I keep coming with him. My head is filled with cotton candy. I'm bending him over and fucking him in the ass. I'm salivating as I push his Berliner into the guardrail, his eyes wide, mouth agape and I'm laughing for the first time since…

Well…

Since it all happened.

I keep coming, I accelerate, and push against the front of his car until it wedges between the van and the metal rail. Rushing up to us is a triangle of metal that separates the exit from the highway, and we're not going to stop in time. With a bone-rattling finality we hit.

I am rocked to the core of my frame. I glance over at him and he's as pale as my inner thighs. Steam rises from the hood of his car, mangled metal pushing up into the air. His car slid up a bit past mine, and I get out of the van, covered in bits of broken glass and beer. Wandering over to him, my vision is a film of strawberry, the wind from the passing cars fluttering across my skin, horns and great groaning rushes of metal and air. His door is open and he's trying to get out. He looks up at me, a gouge across his forehead, blood dripping down into his eyes. He can hardly see. I lean into the car.

“It's okay man, just hold on, I gotcha.”

“What the fuck?…Oh man, my arm, I think it's broken…. Oh, my baby, my car…”

I pull him out by the neck, the head, the shoulders.

“Ah shit, man that hurts, hold on….”

I hold him up and when he raises his eyes I punch him in the face.

“You stupid motherfucker,” I say.

I hold his blue-striped button-down in my left fist and pummel him. As I ram my fist into his nose, it cracks—great squirts of hot liquid hitting my chest, again and again, until his face is gone. He goes limp, and filled with glee I drop him in the dirt, a bundle of bent limbs. I lean over him and whisper.

“That's for driving like a dick.”

I stand up and look around. It feels like twenty minutes, but it's more like twenty seconds. I run back over to the van, jump in, and back it up just enough to get around his broken beauty and head off down the exit, clipping the right rear taillight for good measure.

Somehow the apartment appears. I park the van on a side street, the damaged side toward the sidewalk. I grab a screwdriver out of the back. Coated in sweat, eyes glazed over, I take off the license plates, and switch them with a white van up the street. Russo Flowers. And kick in his front left taillight. Funny how many white vans are out there just waiting to be used.

Stumbling into my new hideout, I collapse in the middle of the floor. I giggle uncontrollably and pass out in a puddle of my own urine. And sleep like a baby.

My first taste, that's what it was. I stand in the shower, eyes closed, in the dark. The memory of that day flitters across my eyelids, and I lean against the white tile and let the hot water beat down on my back. I haven't opened the envelope yet, but I know what it will say.

A glimmer of light seeps under the bathroom door from the kitchen. Shapes and figures skitter across my flesh. A band of black rings wraps around my left biceps. An orange koi fish curls around my left calf. Bar codes on my wrists and I turn my hands over. I bend back and let the water baptize my head,
for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory
. Opening my eyes, I grab the bar of soap, and lather up my hands. Another leftover, Oil of Olay. The shea butter. It's a small thing, but it gives me great pleasure. The black letters on my knuckles. The gossamer wings across my shoulder blades. The spinal column tattooed over my own spinal column, the fifth vertebra fractured. Celtic crosses on my forearms, ancient Hebrew script, Japanese letters, cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and fire-breathing dragons covered in scales. This is my new language.

To record each incident, to mark the moment, I get a tattoo. Every time I bury another body, every time I burn down a house, inject an air bubble into a shaky vein, every time I corner a man in an alley, his head shaking back and forth, blubbering like an idiot, filling his pants with piss.

“No, no man, you've got the wrong guy. No, please, wait, it was an accident, I have money. I mean it, I thought she was eighteen.”

Every time I kill I get a new tattoo. I have a lot of tattoos.