Good Neighbors (21 page)

She moves a hand forward and it slips and she barely manages to keep herself up with her other three limbs.

She tries again and this time she manages to move herself forward.

Just a bit. Just a little bit.

I’m not going to die, she thinks.

She looks down at her bloody hands, at the dirt now under her fingernails, at the blood dripping between them, dripping from the handle of the knife in her chest, and then she looks up to the three feet or so to the open door. Open door. At least she got it open again. Three feet.

Six inches each step she takes, three feet away. First the doorway, then the phone. Just think about the doorway for now. Six inches each step, six steps to go.

Six. She’s not going to die.

She moves herself forward another step, on hand and knee. The world goes gray, black dots swim in the air before her eyes – like insects, like dust motes – and she fights to stay conscious.

She is not going to die out here. She can do this.

He’s not going to come back again.

Don’t think about the phone.

Just get to the doorway.

Just get to the doorway.

Just get to the doorway.

41

William pours two cups of coffee and then sets the electric Sunbeam percolator down on the counter. He is dressed in clean jeans and a clean plaid work shirt. After his shower he got a trash bag and stuffed his bloody clothes – pants and sweater – into it and tied it up and hid it at the bottom of the trash can, lifting out some cracked egg shells and old newspapers first, and then replacing them atop the bag of clothes.

Next time Elaine does laundry she will find out they’re missing. She might ask him about them but by then he’ll have thought of something, a reason they’re missing. He can’t think of anything right now but it’s been a long night.

Elaine morning-stumbles to the kitchen doorway wearing the robe William’s mom got her for Christmas last year. She leans against the doorway, hugging herself.

William picks up both cups of coffee, walks one to Elaine, and hands it to her.

‘Good morning,’ he says.

She sips her coffee.

He sips his. It’s good – hot and bitter and good. Gentle steam rises from their mugs and dissipates.

‘Where did you go last night?’ she says after a while.

‘I went for a walk.’

Elaine shakes her head.

‘That’s not the truth.’

William looks away; he can’t look at her.

‘I did something bad.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I don’t . . .’

‘What did you do?’

He swallows.

‘I hurt someone.’

‘What happened?’

‘I hurt someone.’

He looks at his wife.

She is a heavy woman. She wasn’t when they met – she used to be thin and beautiful – but time does things to people and now she is heavy. William doesn’t really mind. She is also a sweet woman, a good wife. He doesn’t know how he ended up with her. He can’t let her know what he is. She’ll pack her things and she’ll take the kids and she’ll go away and she’ll never come back. That’s what’ll happen if she finds out. He can’t let her know what he is – but part of him wants to. Part of him wants it out in the open, exposed, over with.

He sets his coffee down on the counter and reaches into his front breast pocket. He pulls out his cigarettes and lighter, sticks a cigarette between his lips and starts a fire.

He can’t let her know what he is but part of him wants to.

‘I have these . . .’

He takes a deep drag on his cigarette – feels the smoke swim in his porous lungs, warm and heavy as liquid – and exhales through his nose. He looks at the clock on the wall. It’s almost five forty, twenty minutes to six.

‘I have to get to work,’ he says.

He downs the rest of his coffee in three big swallows, burps, pauses, and takes a drag off his cigarette.

He told himself this wouldn’t happen again but it has. He walks to Elaine and kisses her cheek; she does not turn her head toward him to accept it.

‘I have to get to work,’ he says again, then heads toward the front door. He grabs the doorknob, pulls the door open and steps through, out into the morning light.

He simply stands on the front porch for a minute, smoking and looking out at this new day. New day, yes, but it’s the same old world.

He feels shaky and weak from his lack of sleep. His eyes burn.

It’s Elaine’s fault. If she hadn’t pushed him away it never would have happened. He wouldn’t have gone back.

Elaine opens the door behind him and looks out at him. He turns around, startled.

‘What happened last night?’ She looks down at his feet.

‘Is that blood on your boots? It looks like blood on your boots.’

He looks down at them, his boots, and sees the faded smudges from where he scrubbed them earlier, and sees new bloodstains on top of those. Those ones he didn’t wash. The new ones he didn’t wash. He doesn’t know why he didn’t wash the new stains; he should have.

He can’t tell her. Part of him wants to.

He can’t tell anyone.

‘I’m gonna be late,’ he says, and walks to the car.

42

Patrick has made up his mind. He walks to mom’s bedroom and pushes open the door, knocking lightly as he does – hello, I’m here – and steps in.

Mom is sitting up in bed, looking out at the gray morning.

‘You’re up,’ he says.

‘I never went to sleep.’

‘I thought you were tired.’

‘I already said it’s the kind of tired sleep can’t fix.’

Patrick nods.

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he says. ‘I’ve just been thinking about that and I was thinking about getting drafted, thinking about going off to war, thinking about traveling to Vietnam and killing people who never did anything to me, maybe getting killed myself. It scares me when I think about it. But if I don’t go . . .’ If he doesn’t go, it will be because his mother is sick and he has to take care of her, because he has to stay here and take care of her until she dies; otherwise he must go. He did not receive a request to report for a physical examination; he received an Order to Report. Either they allow him to stay because his mother is sick or he goes. The alternative is jail, and he isn’t going to go from one small room to another, smaller, room. He lets out a sigh, shakes his head. ‘If you really want to go, if you mean it, if you’re really finished – I’ll help you. But I’ll also stay if you want me to, if the army will let me.’

Mom stares at him for a long time through the folds of skin that surround her eyes. She doesn’t move; she just looks at him. He feels as if she is trying to figure out something by looking at him but he has no idea what. Then she nods.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

43

Frank is in the front passenger seat of the police cruiser, looking through the spotted glass of the window, clenching and unclenching his jaw and just wanting to be away from this motherfucker.

‘It wasn’t personal,’ Kees says, breaking the silence.

‘It wasn’t personal to you. It was pretty goddamn personal to me. You tried to put me in prison. Would have ruined not only my life, but my wife’s. And I happen to love my wife.’

‘Just doing what I had to do.’

‘Oh, bullshit.’

‘You don’t know what I go through.’

‘Well, let’s all shed a fucking tear for the homicidal policeman,’ Frank says, laughing angrily. ‘I don’t know what you go through? I don’t need to know. I know you tried to kill a man and your boss just lickity-split cleaned up an attempted murder with some of the department’s petty cash. I don’t know what you go through? Motherfucker, you’re the one that don’t live in reality. You got that blue on, it’s like a shield. The rest of us gotta walk through the city naked.’

‘This uniform isn’t a shield,’ Alan says, shaking his head. ‘It’s a target.’

‘Maybe it’s not the uniform that’s the target. Maybe it’s you. In fact, I’m fucking sure of it.’

Frank is breathing hard now and his cheeks feel hot and his hands are balled into fists. He’s as angry as he can remember being. He can feel the tendons tight in his arms. Tight with tension. And in his neck. And he feels a throbbing in his temples. He’s more than just angry at the cop sitting next to him; he’s angry at the world that has allowed him to exist, that has encouraged his existence. No wonder he can walk around with that second lieutenant smirk on his face doing whatever the hell he goddamn pleases – the world is made for assholes like him. Frank has always believed that people like him get what they deserve in the end but he doesn’t believe that anymore. Not now, not ever again. He unballs his fists and balls them up again. He feels an ache in his tight knuckles, a spring-loaded tension in his forearms.

‘If you weren’t wearing that uniform I would fuck you up for what you tried to do to me.’

As the words leave Frank’s mouth, Kees turns the wheel to the right and brings the cruiser to a stop by the curbside in front of the Hobart Apartments.

He looks at Frank and smiles.

‘Then why don’t we just pretend I’m
not
wearing the uniform, Frank?’

‘For the same reason I don’t pretend the ground is made out of marshmallows and jump off buildings. I don’t need reality slamming me in the face. The world hits you hard enough when you take it for what it is.’

Kees licks his lips, doesn’t look away from him.

‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’

Frank knows he’s bluffing, knows it because he’s wearing that goddamn second lieutenant smirk that Frank grew to hate during his two years in the army. He knows Kees is daring him simply to anger him, simply to make him feel small, because he knows Frank wouldn’t dare.

‘You want to take a swing at me, do it. You’re just a nigger to me, and there’s nothing you can do or say to make me change my mind about that. So take your swing. This is your chance.’

Frank’s right eye twitches with tension.

Kees’s smirk turns into a smile which shows his teeth. His eyes say he knows Frank won’t do it no matter how much he wants to, no matter how much he can taste it – and he can taste it, like blood, in the back of his mouth, coppery and bitter.

‘I’ve been through too much tonight,’ Frank says through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t tempt me.’

‘That’s why the Negro will never move forward. You’re all cowards. You’re a born slave—’

But before the cocky motherfucker who knows he’ll never get hit hard by the world can get the last word out, Frank’s shoulder is in his chest, knocking him back against the police cruiser’s door, and Frank hears an
oof!
as the air is forced out of his lungs and hears the crunch of the window roller snapping off as Kees’s back slams into it and the hollow thud of his head slamming against the water-spotted window. And then the door swings open – Kees must’ve accidentally pulled on the handle as he tried to push himself off the door – and the two men fall out onto the asphalt, Kees on his back, Frank on top of him, staring down at this stupid son of a bitch who thinks the world will never touch him. Frank grabs the guy by the hair and slams his head against the asphalt, and there’s an ugly hollow thud, but Frank barely hears it.

‘Am I a coward now, you son of a bitch?’

He slams his big fist into the man’s nose.

‘Am I a born slave now?’

He punches the guy in the jaw, sending his head sideways, and three teeth fly out of his mouth and skitter across the gray asphalt like loose change, another imbedding into the flesh between Frank’s middle finger and his ring finger. But Frank doesn’t care. He’s not done yet. Even sharks die. Another punch to the cop’s face and his eyebrow splits open like the skin on a sausage and blood pours into his eye socket.

‘Am I?’

Another punch. And the cop is trying to push Frank away, trying to push him off, but Frank punches again and again and again and – the cop puts a gun in his face and Frank is looking down the dark barrel and past it to the hamburgered face of the cop and murder in a pair of bloody eyes.

‘I should put you down like the animal you are.’

Frank gets to his feet, backing away, breathing hard.

‘Are you pointing that at me as a cop?’ he says. ‘You dare me to attack you, call me a coward, and then when I do what you dared me to do, what you said I was too cowardly to do, you pull a gun on me? I’m a coward, you say, but you can’t even fight your own fights. You got out of one mess by letting your precinct captain buy off a man you tried to murder, and now you’re pointing your service revolver at me after you said you weren’t a cop for this fight. But you can’t do that. Because you lose. Because without that uniform and that fucking service revolver you’re nothing. Because you walk around like a fucking shark but you’re not. You’re a minnow who just happens to have a shark on his side. And if you pull that trigger, you’ll just let your brothers in blue clean up another mess. And why not? It’s their mess, isn’t it? They’re the ones who gave a fucking frightened minnow a set of shark teeth.’

As Frank talks – half sure he’s about to get shot, half sure his brains are about to Pollock the street behind him: the cop’s eyes are on fire – he and Kees walk around in a half circle, a sort of dance, repositioning physically as they reposition mentally. Frank is trying to figure out if he can get that gun away from Kees before the man decides to push a bullet into his forehead, and he can see the wheels spinning behind Kees’s eyes, trying to figure out if he can get away with pulling the trigger.

But then Frank stops.

He looks past Kees to the Hobart Apartments.

He can see blood everywhere, and he sees his neighbor, Kat, lying on her side, unconscious, just outside her front door. Keys hang from her doorknob. She was driving home just as he was leaving. He waved at her as he drove past – like he was just heading off to get a bottle of milk. Has she really been there this whole time? He looks over to the courtyard and sees carnage. He swallows.

‘Call an ambulance,’ he says finally.

‘What?’ Kees says, still pointing his gun at him, still angry.

‘Call a fucking ambulance.’

Then Frank, with the gun still on him, walks past Kees, right past him and his gun, and toward Kat, lying on her side just outside her front door. Blood everywhere.