How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? (11 page)

I picked it up. Its thong had broken. I couldn’t understand how—it was made of tough leather, and as far as I knew it hadn’t started to fray. I couldn’t imagine what I could have done to break it while sitting quietly in meditation. I wasn’t superstitious, but it made me afraid for Janine.

I walked to the Museum of Death. The owners let me use their phone. Janine still wasn’t home.

We were sharing the bill with a local pop-punk band. They went on first. They were okay; they warmed the crowd up well. We went on at around ten-thirty. We hadn’t played any gigs for a while, and so I was nervous. I didn’t get gig nerves if I played often enough to stay in the habit, but I always freaked out at the first gig after a layoff. I had to get used to it all over again. This time it was intense. As I strapped on my guitar, I was afraid that my voice wouldn’t appear. But when I moved up to the microphone at the start of the first song, I belted out the first verse without trying.

“My name is Jack

I’m a necrophiliac

I always get frustrated

’Cause my lovers get cremated”

The audience got into it right away, and I relaxed. We played a good set. In spite of the personal frictions within the band, we were tight into the same groove. We played for an hour, songs either by me or Ricky Retardo. They brought us back for an encore, and we did a deadpan, hard-core cover of “YMCA”.

After the gig we went to the nearest Denny’s, us and the other band and some people from the Museum of Death. George and Swineboy seemed cool with each other now; it seemed like we were still a band. While we waited for our food to arrive, I found a phone and called home. Janine still wasn’t around—or, if she was, she wasn’t picking up. I now knew how I was staying with—each band member had been billeted at a different person’s house—but I didn’t want to leave the number on my machine and have her call late and disturb my host.

I stayed at the house of a guy who played in the other band. I was still feeling numb and would have preferred to sleep by myself in the van, but the guy had offered and I didn’t want to be impolite. I slept on the couch in his living room. The house was close to the airport, but the noise didn’t keep my awake. I went into a near-coma for ten hours. I think I’d have slept even longer if my merry men hadn’t swung by to pick me up. I dragged on my clothes as George honked his horn outside. I thanked my host, and told him I’d reciprocate if he ever came through Phoenix. Then I used the toilet and ran outside to the van.

I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t had anything to eat or drink that morning. George had driven from house to house, picking the guys up, and he’d hustled them into leaving right away. Only Ricky Retardo had been up early enough to have eaten breakfast by the time George arrived.

George wouldn’t pull into a diner, saying he had to work that night, so he wanted to get back to Phoenix as soon as he could. We stopped at a Circle K. I got some oranges and a bottle of water. The guys got chips and Twinkies and Dr Pepper. “You eat like a bunch of junkies,” I told them.

We got back on the road. The guys made fun of me as I said a Buddhist grace over my food. They put their hands together and began singing,
“Gimme that good old-time religion...”

I pulled down my jeans and shone my bare ass at them. “Gentlemen, you may commence licking whenever you please.”

We did an autopsy on last night’s show. We were satisfied with it. We clowned and told jokes for a while. Then, as it always did on our road trips, the conversation slowed down, got tired and died.

As we crossed the border into Arizona, I wondered what I was going back to. I tried not to imagine going into my apartment and finding everything normal, everything as it should be, except for Janine’s broken corpse on the floor. The killer had to stop somewhere, I told myself. Going after me made sense. But if he went after Janine too, he might as well start killing everyone I knew—my band, Laurie, my customers, my optician. Being a pro, he wouldn’t be that crazy. He’d hunt me, and that would be it.

At least, that was what logic dictated. That was the method of a pro. But he might be getting desperate. He had killed two people in the space of a few days. What would he do if he was panicking and not thinking professionally?

Whatever, in the end the possibilities were simple. Either he would kill me, or I would kill him. And it would be over.

It would be strange to kill someone. If I hadn’t killed anyone in a while, there was always a feeling of fear before I did it, a fear of pissing in the face of something sacred. But, after I did it, I was always overwhelmed by the weight of how little I felt. It should have been so horrible, and it was always so easy. And, if I killed someone else soon after that, it was easier still, until I could kill people as easily as I could change my shirt. Only after a break from killing did it begin to seem like a big deal.

How many people had I killed? I didn’t know for sure. In the combat zone you can’t be sure who you do or don’t actually kill. But I had killed people close-up and face-to-face. I could have added them up, but I didn’t allow myself to. One thing I was sure of—the number of men I had killed was considerably greater than the number of women I had slept with. I was never sure if that meant anything, but I tried not to give it too much thought.

Aside from my fear for Janine’s safety, I felt calm. If I killed the killer now, I would be doing it in the best state of mind possible. I had always liked the old story of the samurai who spent a long time hunting a man he intended to kill. Finally he found the man, and drew his sword. As he was about to strike, the man spat in his face. The samurai sheathed his sword and walked away. The guy spitting in his face had made him angry, and he knew you shouldn’t kill when you’re angry.

Just last week I had been angry, which was why I’d gone to see Fallowell. Then numbness had eclipsed my anger, and now numbness had given way to a sense of the inevitable. I knew that my way of being was a violation of the Buddhist precept against killing, but you can’t talk to a skilled warrior about what is forbidden by the Buddha. And, if what I had to do was wrong, I could now do it in a way that was less wrong than it could have been. As the van rolled into Phoenix, I was ready to kill or be killed in a spirit of equanimity.

SEVEN

Strangely for a soldier, I’ve never been much of a traveler. Given the choice, I wouldn’t leave my neighborhood, let alone leave the city. Even if I’ve only been gone overnight, I always love the feeling of coming home, of the landscape becoming increasingly familiar until I’m in my street, outside my apartment.

It was one of the hottest days of the year when I got back from San Diego. George stopped the van outside my apartment complex and I got out, telling the guys I’d see them for practice next week. I shouldered my backpack and walked into the complex.

Janine’s car wasn’t there. I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. If she wasn’t here then she was probably okay, but I’d hoped to find her at home.

I unlocked the door and went inside. The apartment was dark. All the shades were closed. I opened them and let the light in. Janine must have been gone for a while—the air-conditioning hadn’t been on and the living room was like a sauna. I opened the windows and left the front door open. Then I saw that something was wrong.

The place was clean.

Janine and I lived in squalor. It wasn’t my choice; I won’t even wear boots that don’t have a perfect shine. But Janine was so disgusting that pigs would have kicked her out of their sty. When we first moved in together I used to clean up her shit, but I soon got tired of it and gave up. So we lived in a state of near-barbarism, halfway to
Lord of the Flies
. The apartment was like a museum of white trash domesticity.

Not today. The dishes were washed and neatly stacked, the kitchen counter and even the floor were scrubbed clean. The carpets had been vacuumed and the furniture dusted. The bathroom was fit for humans.

I poured some water, took off my boots and lay on the couch. Janine had apparently wanted to do something nice for me coming home. Now all I needed was her. I played the messages on the machine. None were from her. That made me a little uneasy. We always left each other messages to say where we were.

I wasn’t very worried, though. It just didn’t feel like anything would have happened to her. I drank the water, then picked up a magazine and started to read it. But I was more tired than I realized, and I fell asleep while reading. When I woke up, it was the sound of Janine’s key in the door that woke me.

I sat up and looked at her groggily. “Hey,” I said.

She didn’t smile. “Hey.”

“So what made you clean the place up? Have you got a dual personality—like, Dr Janine and Ms Hyde?”

Now she did smile, but the smile was feeble. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t sit down. She just stood there looking at me.

“Is something wrong?” I asked her.

“Yeah. Really wrong.” Pause. “We need to call it a day.”

I looked at her. I knew the literal meaning of the words, but I had no clue as to what she meant. “What?” I finally said.

“We need to call it a day. We need to break up.”

“This is a joke, right?”

“No. I’m serious. I really mean it, Andy.”

“Is there something I don’t know about?” My voice was rising, and I made an effort to lower it. “Is there something I’m not getting?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think there’s a lot you don’t get.”

“Last I heard, you loved me. I sure as hell love you.”

She didn’t say anything, just looked at me and looked away.

“You do love me, don’t you?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think I do.”

“Janine, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“I don’t know what to tell you. I think what I’m saying is pretty clear.”

“But...Shit. Are you seeing somebody else?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“How is that stupid? How is it more stupid than me leaving to play a gig, and everything’s okay, and then I come back and you want to break up?”

“Everything wasn’t okay, Andy. You were talking about finding someone and killing him.”

“Yeah, because he’d killed three people and he’ll probably kill me. Is that what this is about? If it is, I’ll tell you what. I’ll drop it. I’ll go on with my life the way you want me to. If he kills me, boo-hoo. Anything you want. Just don’t do this.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m trying to tell you something, babe. You’re not listening to me...”

“I am listening. What’re you saying?”

“I said it already. I don’t love you. I thought I did, but I don’t. I’m really sorry.”

“When did this happen? I mean, what brought all this on?”

“It’s been brewing for a while. I just thought things were weird because you were upset about Mara, and you had to teach that sick class, and then Tim got killed and everything else. But it’s got nothing to do with that. It’s that I don’t want this anymore. I realized it while you were gone. I liked that you were gone. So I went and got a monthly rental downtown, and I moved as much of my stuff as I could.”

I sat quiet for a moment. Then I said, “Why did you clean this place up?”

She laughed nervously. “Guilt. Stupid, I know. But I was like, hey, I’m leaving you, but at least you’ve got a nice, clean apartment. Look, the bathroom floor’s clean for the first time ever...” When I didn’t smile, she reached out and took my hand. “I know what this must be like for you, babe. If I still felt the way I used to feel about you, and you left me...Jesus. But I don’t feel like I used to. And I know you still do.”

I nodded. I squeezed my eyes shut hard, trying to keep the tears from getting out. But they got out anyway.

“I’m so sorry,” Janine said. “I hate myself for doing this to you. You’re the most wonderful man. But I can’t be with you out of pity. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

I shook my head.

“I’d better go,” she said. “I’ve paid the rent on this place for next month, so don’t worry about that. Here’s my new address and phone number. I’ll call you in the next couple days, okay?”

“Janine—“ I said.

“What?”

“Nobody ever loved me before.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. And she left.

I sat there in the apartment for a while. Then I called Laurie and told her what had happened. She asked if I wanted her to come over, or if I wanted to come to her place. I realized that I wanted to get out of the apartment, so I said, “Can I come over there?”

“Of course,” she said. “Just drive carefully okay?”

“I will,” I said.

When I parked my car in her driveway, she came out of the house and came toward me. She put her arms around me as soon as I got out of the car.

We sat in her living room and drank tea. “I just don’t get it,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense. I mean, this kind of thing doesn’t happen.”

“It happens,” she said. “It happens all the time.”

I told her what I’d said to Janine, about how nobody had loved me before. I expected sympathy, but Laurie burst out laughing.

“Is that funny?” I said.

“Yeah,” she told me. “It is. You fucking idiot.”

“What are you talking about?”

She was still laughing, but it wasn’t unkind. “I’ve been in love with you for about two years, that’s what I’m talking about.”

She made up a bed for me on the futon in her living room. I was falling asleep when she crawled in beside me. “Is this okay?” she said. “I’d hate to molest you when you’re vulnerable.”

I didn’t say anything, just kissed her.

“But if you don’t object, I’m going to assume I can have my wicked way with you,” she told me. “Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”

I held my peace.

When I woke in the morning, I liked being where I was. I knew better than to trust this feeling. It all seemed unreal, and I knew that it hadn’t sunk in properly. But it still seemed good that, instead of screaming at the impassive walls of my apartment, I was here, with Laurie naked and wrapped around me, her arms crossed on my stomach, tits soft against my back, cunt nestled to my ass.