Top Ten (18 page)

Mickey’s look became confused. “If what happened?”

“If you was to die,” Nicky said. His half smile drained away. “Or disappear.”

Still unsure of why his father was telling him this, ten year old Mickey Strange felt a hand slide down the back of his head. To his neck. Fingers slipped forward around his neck. Began to massage his neck. Firmly. Then hard. Then harder.

“Dad...”

Nicky Strange clamped his right hand down hard on his boy’s neck, and brought his left to the front of Mickey’s throat. Together they squeezed. Choked off the boy’s breath. Made him flail his feet. Arms. Whole body. He started to turn red above the neck, his mouth gaping open for air. Air that was not coming.

“Die, boy, just—”

Engrossed by the execution of what he considered his plan of brilliance, Nicky Strange never heard the other car pull up behind the Danbrook Warehouse. Never heard its driver’s door open and its trunk come up. Never heard the quick steps coming toward his side of the Dodge. Only turned to look when his own door was opened. And couldn’t believe his eyes when he realized that it was his ex Muriel swinging the tire iron at his fa—

*   *   *

Justifiable homicide was what the police called it. Muriel Strange had been driving home from the plant when she saw he ex-husband heading the opposite way with her son. She’d turned, tried to follow, but had gotten caught in traffic leaving the games. Driving down the highway she could not see them. Driving past the Danbrook Warehouse she remembered it was where Nicky had taken her to make out before they were married. He’d told her then it was so deserted you could kill someone there and no one would ever know.

Six days after he’d almost been killed by his father, Mickey Strange told his mother he did not want to play little league anymore. He told her he did not want to be in right field. Did not want to be called Mickey Dickless.

She told him that was not his name. He was not even Mickey if he did not want to be. He could use his real name. His full name. Michael. Michael Angelo Strange.

He thought that sounded good.

She said he did not have to play little league, but she would still have to work. He would have to occupy himself at home. She asked him if he’d used the paints she’d given him yet. He said that he hadn’t, but that he would.

She smiled at him right then and said that maybe he could be the next Michelangelo. He asked who that was and his mother explained.

*   *   *

Near thirty years later, Mickey Strange sat alone in the room where he was never alone and thought of his mother. Thought of that day. That week. That time. His father had tried to kill him, and she had saved him. People at little league games jeered him. Kids at school maligned him with nicknames.

Those, he thought now to himself as he stared at the walls, were not such bad times. Yes, they had been relatively good.

Not as good as now, of course, but could any slice of time throughout history be as good as these times? These days of his success. His creating. His making. His art. The process.

No times could. None.

He only wished his mother were here to see how far he had come, but...

He turned his head aside and closed his eyes. Closed his eyes like the walls. He did not want to remember. He did not.

But the memories wanted him.

Sixteen

Mother May I

He took fast showers in Junior High.

In High School he did not date. He asked a girl named Suzy out once and she refused him. But he was not lonely. No. He had his art.

He took classes. Learned. Absorbed. Painting. Drawing. Watercolor. Pen and ink. Charcoal. Oils. Acrylics. Sculpture. Clay. Marble. Exposed himself to all mediums. Practiced. Made a name for himself. Teachers told him he was talented.

He entered his art in contests but rarely won.

He worked harder. Perfected. Executed more perfectly. Studied. Entered more. Lost as much.

One judge commented that he had an eye for color. One said his drawings were ‘stark’. One thought he might be able to sell some of his work at the swap meet.

In eleventh grade he stopped submitting his work.

His senior year he applied to a prestigious art school, but his portfolio was deemed inadequate. One person on the review committee thought some of his work amateurish and suggested further study. Two other applications were similarly rejected.

His mother told him not to give up. She praised him. Praised his work, though to her sister she confided that some of it seemed dark. Very dark indeed. She wondered if what his father had done had affected his...outlook.

One day a substitute in his 12
^th
grade art history class was calling roll alphabetically and called out Strange Michael Angelo. The class howled.

When he enrolled at a nearby community college in September he did so as Mickey Strange.

*   *   *

He knew he was going to be rich. Not just well off, but rich.

He received regular reports from a law firm in Houston once he turned eighteen. The man who had originally been assigned his trust had died some years back, but as a judge long ago had known, the lawyer knew his financial stuff. The law firm administering the trust by the time he was in college had little to do but sit back and watch the investments their predecessor had made grow.

Mickey Strange had turned one a millionaire. By the time he was nineteen he was that ten times over.

He would never have to work. He could paint. Study. And most of all, he could take care of his mother. In just two short years he could make her life easy.

He never got that chance.

She’d been coming home from work at the Hoover Plant. A shift supervisor now, she was doing well. Working hard but doing well. She had never remarried but did date. It happened a Friday night. She stopped off at a bar called Hoots. Had a beer. Talked a bit. Danced a bit. And never saw the man watching her from a dark corner booth. Never recognized him when, as she walked to her car in the lot next to the bar, he came up from behind and dragged her to his van.

The police found her nude body two days later in a culvert outside of town. Raped repeatedly. Beaten. Strangled.

Strangled.

Mickey stood among few others at her funeral, staring at the box that carried her down into the earth, thinking that she had been
strangled
.

Hands squeezed around her neck.

Her breath choked off.

By a man who had wanted to put his penis in her. Who
had
put his penis in her. A man who was never caught.

Never caught.

Never, ever caught.

Mickey lived in the apartment for a full year after his mother died. Drove to school every day there was school. Took a job at the local hospital to pay the bills. Swept the floors there. Had keys to every space. Had access to many things.

Things he took.

He did not know why right then, but there was a vague knowledge on his part that he should begin to
prepare
. For what he did not know. But something. Something important. Something coming.

So many things he took that he bought an old foot locker at an Army surplus store in which to keep them. Some items had expiration dates. He did not mind them. One thing had been delivered to the hospital by mistake. It had been destined for a veterinarian whose brother was an MD. Mickey took that as well.

He was never caught. If he had been he would have gone to jail. Would have been fingerprinted. Would have been known. He knew that was not acceptable. Knew not why that was so, but accepted it. Believed it.

After a while he stopped his taking and simply worked. Worked and went to school. Went to school and learned in the spring of his twentieth year what art was. Truly was.

*   *   *

He was not devoid of sexual feelings. Desires. Wants. If it had been possible he would have had a noticeable erection when the model took her clothes off. The class was doing a study in pencil of the human female form. Mickey was in the second row. He wished he’d been in the last.

Class lasted an hour. The teacher thanked the model. Several male students made clumsy approaches to her afterward. Mickey packed up his things and left for the night.

In the parking lot he saw her. The model. She recognized him. He had not been one of those to hit on her and so she said hello. He said hello back. She thought him shy, cute shy, and asked if she could see his drawing of her.

He wanted to reach out and put his hand to her breast, her left breast, because that had been the one he had full view of during class, but he did not. Would not.

She said she really would like to see what he had done and he agreed, setting his portfolio on the hood of his dead mother’s car and taking out his sketch. She admired it in the dirty light of the streetlamps. She said it was good. Very good.

He was inches from her. He could feel the air around her leap at him as she breathed. As her chest heaved beneath the sweater that covered her. That hid her from him.

He asked her her name. She told him. He asked her why she modeled. She said for money. She was transferring to Texas A&M in the fall. He said that was terrific. She said tuition was expensive. That she had to make a lot more money. That she was trying to get some off campus modeling jobs.

His heartbeat paused.

The world froze.

She smiled.

Would he be interested in hiring her for any private modeling? For oils or sculpture?

His heart began to beat again. To drum again. Loud in his ears now, as if the muscle had relocated behind his eyes.

Would he?

Sculpting, he told her. He had wanted to do a nude. She said she’d be willing and asked where. He suggested his place and she thought for a moment.

Say no
, he remembered one part of himself begging her.
Say no
.

She said yes and told him her price. Was it too much?

It was not.

They set a time and she shook his hand. The feel of her skin electrified him.

Three nights later she came. He’d cleared the living room of his dead mother’s apartment of furniture. Closed the drapes. Unplugged the phone. Put a sheet on the carpet.

She put her purse down by the door. He asked her if she wanted something to drink. She asked for water. He poured it and made small talk. How was the drive over? She didn’t have a car. She’d hitchhiked to the market up the street. Did she have to be done by a certain time? No, the evening was his. Did she mind posing on the floor? She looked to the clean sheet and said that would be fine.

Seven. He remembered. It was seven o’clock when they started. He brought out his clay and the pedestal on which he would work it. She kicked off her shoes. She took off her top. She was wearing no bra. His heart quickened. She took off her jeans. Her panties. He felt what Dr. Welford Elias had left him stiffen.

She laid herself on the sheet and asked if she had it right. He asked if he could position her. She nodded and he knelt next to her. Touched her. Put his hands on her. One beneath her back. One beneath her shoulder. Lifted her. Tipped her away from him. Put her back to him. She asked about her arms. He laid one along the long curve of her side. Made the other one a pillow for her head. Moved one of her legs forward. Took his time positioning it. Let his hand linger then slide slowly up the back of her thigh to her buttocks. Squeezed her there. She started to react, to roll back toward him, but he put the needle fast into the small roll of flesh he’d pinched. Plunged the syringe. She screamed. He put his hand over her mouth. She fought. He climbed atop her and held her down until she stilled.

When her movement stopped he stood. She was awake. She was breathing. She could not move. Her eyes lolled this way and that.

He saw a tear upon her cheek. He wiped it away but another came.

Her eyes rolled away from him.

He took in the sight of her. The magnificence of her form. Her form stripped bare.

He was more than aroused. He was...

...inspired.

He went to the kitchen. Came back with a knife. Stood over her. Bent down to her. Put the knife to her throat.

He had not known what he would do to her beyond making her still.

He knew now.

He would make her still life.

She never moved. As he cut her she never moved.

She seemed almost accepting as the blood spilled from her. Puddled on the sheet. Soaked the carpet beneath. Her eyes slowly closed. Her chest stopped its rise, its fall. Her skin grew pale. He sat beside her in the life that had spilled from her. He put his hand in it. Lifted it to his eyes. Looked at it. Twisted it in the light. Saw it.

Saw it.

Color. Life. Death. All in one. A new trinity.

He went to his pedestal and worked the clay with his hands made slick with her blood. He worked it. Shaped it.

It was nothing. Not anything.

Not her.

Not her.

He put his hands in her spilled blood again and placed them upon her form. Her still form. Worked his hands over her. Worked her. Colored her with the life that had spilled from her.

Made her.

Head to toe he worked the life over her.

Colored her with life.

It was good. This creation was good.

Some hours later he wrapped the girl and her things in the sheet. Wrapped that in more bedding. After midnight he carried her out and put her in the trunk of his dead mother’s car. Back inside he scrubbed the carpet. The stain would not come out. He cut out the marked area and put it with the girl. He drove her far out past the Hoover Chemical plant and rolled her into a crevice off the road.

When he got home after sunup he sat on the bare spot in the living room and waited for the police to come get him.

He slept and did not go to work and waited another day, but still the police did not come get him.

Two days passed. Three days. His supervisor called and asked if he was all right. Mickey said he was. He was not sure he was.

Four days. Five days. His job said they would need a doctor’s note when he came back. Mickey quit on the phone.