As I Die Lying Page 22

  “Point taken, Loverboy,” I said. “But I think Bookworm’s on to something.”

  “Run with me, guys,” Bookworm said, excited for the first time since he’d booked a room in my flesh hotel. “Leap of faith. Maybe it put Beth in that gallery on campus on the same day that Richard was there.”

  “And you’re saying that it made me fall in love with Beth?”

  “Careful with the L word,” Mister Milktoast said. “Liability, labia, laborious.”

  “Stay on point,” Bookworm said. “And let’s go further from there. The Insider openly despises love, yet it makes sure that you find some version of it. We’re poison, remember, because we dream and love and hope and reach for something better than ourselves. And the Insider blames that for the extermination of its species.”

  “Yet it wants me to love, so it can enjoy making me kill?” I asked.

  “Which is another problem, gentlemen,” Mister Milktoast said. “Any minute now Beth will be waking up, maybe next to a drummer, maybe not. She’ll get up and make some breakfast. Eventually she’ll start to wonder why her roommate isn’t up and about. Maybe she’ll knock on the door to Monique’s room. Maybe she’ll open the door.”

  I knew what Beth would see. The Insider had taken photographs using my brain as the film stock. The project was currently in development hell.

  “How many witnesses saw Richard with Monique last night?” said Mister Milktoast. “And there’s bound to be other evidence at the scene, stray hairs or semen—”

  “Hey, don’t look at me,” said Loverboy. “That was more Little Diddler’s cup of tea. I ain’t into zipless drips.”

  “Let’s not think about that right now,” I said. There were hundreds of ways to hurt people, and I had a feeling I’d be learning every one of them.

  One of my neighbors was cooking bacon. The frost was melting across the hills, changing them from silver to brown. Children were waking up and sneaking into the Halloween candy they had collected the night before. People were putting away their masks.

  “And Dickie darling had the bright idea to go to the party dressed as Jack-the-fucking-Ripper,” Little Hitler said.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you guys,” said Bookworm. “It’s all too scripted, too perfect. Richard has no real reason to love Beth, because she’s hardly been a warm and fuzzy romantic interest.”

  “I don’t know if I can accept that,” I said. “This was already straining my willing suspension of disbelief. I mean, being possessed by an ancient soul virus is one thing. But if you carry this idea back even further—”

  “Exactly. Was Mother meant to be an alcoholic? Was her love for you destined to...turn out the way it did? You have to agree that the Insider would get a great deal of satisfaction out of something so depraved.”

  “You’re scaring me, Bookworm.”

  “Maybe that’s the way Evil has done business throughout history, stacking the deck so that it always wins.”

  “And maybe it was the Insider who made me kill Father? And Little Hitler is innocent?”

  “Just take a little blame for a change, Richard,’ Little Hitler said. “I know, I know, it’s against your beliefs to actually accept responsibility for your actions, not when you can spin some bizarre fantasy to get yourself off the hook. But go ahead, Bookworm. Your little theory is amusing, and there’s not a whole hell of a lot to laugh about these days. Except our gracious host and his eternally leaking heart, of course.”

  “All the bad things might be traced back to Richard’s childhood,” Mister Milktoast said, collaborating with Bookworm. “Maybe the Insider was at work even earlier than that.”

  “Sally Bakken?” I said. “The Garage Man? I can’t believe that the Insider has that much power. It’s just too...”

  “Impossible?” finished Bookworm. “Just like it’s impossible for you to be carrying on a conversation with four Little People who live in a place called the Bone House. It’s impossible for a soul-stealing psychic entity to sneak into people’s minds and make them kill, just so it can live forever. It’s impossible for you to carry the case histories of the human race’s worst butchers inside the filing cabinets of your home office.”

  “But I don’t have those memories—”

  “No. You’re outside. But they’re here, inside, all the memories of every murder.”

  I had a headache, and it was more than just the residue of beer. If I was just a temporary host, the Insider might already be sizing up its next victim.

  “It could already be outlining a sequel,” Bookworm said. “Because it’ll eventually get tired of you, Richard. It’ll break you down and use you up. If you don’t get caught first.”

  “I’ve got a feeling it wants a final victory before it lets me disintegrate.”

  “Yes. One last victim.”

  “One true love. The perfect blasphemy.”

  “Come on, Bookworm,” Mister Milktoast said. “This is starting to sound like self-referential metafiction. And you know such a thing can only end badly.”

  I pressed my temples. This had to be a nightmare, and I’d awaken with damp sheets and a hangover and a wife, kids, mortgage, lunch date at the golf club. A regular, boring, fucking pleasant life, one not worth writing about.

  “Better take the Ripper suit to the cleaners, Richard,” Mister Milktoast added. “Might have a few spots on it that I couldn’t sponge out. It has to be back at the costume rental tomorrow.”

  “Thanks for keeping me on task, Mister Milktoast.”

  “Beth is going to need comforting after the shock wears off. We’d better practice being indignantly outraged, or whatever it is society expects on such an occasion.”

  “That’ll be a switch,” I said. “Beth crying on my shoulder for a change.”

  “I took a trophy,” Little Hitler said, walking to the dresser, where a lump lay covered by a towel.

  “You’re a sick puppy, Diddler,” Loverboy said. “I like that in a headmate.”

  I flinched as he yanked the towel away. There lay Beth’s brown hat, headless. Mister Milktoast purred in excitement.

  “Now leave me alone,” I said. “I’d better get some writing done before things get crazy around here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I have come to believe all the rest is the fault of those big-time publishers, the ones who wouldn’t recognize genius if it rolled up on a courier bike with a serving of foie gras packed inside a warm duck. If only they had purchased the novel, the story would have ended there and I would have gone on to the life of a struggling, frustrated writer with suicidal tendencies. A poor man’s Palahniuk, a motherless Lethem, a born-again Brautigan, a disarmed Hemingway.

  Alas, it was not to be. Beth called me Monday after work, while I was opening the last of that day’s 19 rejection slips.

  “R-Richard?”

  “Yes?” Mister Milktoast said.

  “Did you hear?”

  I cleared my throat and delivered the line as I’d rehearsed it, Richard Burton by way of James Dean, with a little Peter Lorre thrown in for spice. “Yes. My God, it’s so terrible. How are you?”

  “When I opened her door and found her—”

  The dam broke. She sobbed over the phone.

  I despised women’s tears. They made me angry because I didn’t know how to shut them off. I was so grateful to have Mister Milktoast. “I’m sorry, Beth. God, I’m so sorry.”

  She sniffled and gasped, “I...I just can’t believe it.”

  “I wanted to come over when I heard, but I was afraid you’d think I was being too...presumptuous. How are you doing?”

  “I’ll live, damn it. But Monique won’t. What kind of monster would do such a thing?”

  What kind of monster, indeed. “I don’t know, Beth. I honestly don’t know.”

  Mister Milktoast looked at my fingernails. They were ragged from Bookworm’s biting. How could those be murderer’s hands? Those were innocent, with blunt broad fingers, hands made for loving, h
olding, typing, waving good-bye.

  I let Beth dry her eyes and blow her nose before I spoke again. “Listen, do you need anything? Where are you staying?”

  “I’m over at Xandria’s place. She’s got a spare room. She’s letting me stay here until...“

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Little Hitler said. He’d forgotten the script, the little prick.

  Silence.

  “Can I come over there?” I asked. “I need to see you.”

  “I’m afraid...I don’t think I’ll be very good company.”

  “I want to be there for you, Beth. That’s what...um, friends are for.”

  “Okay. It would be nice. I could use a hug…”

  I beat Loverboy back into his room, where he could flip through the Insider’s nude photo collection instead of wrecking my cover story.

  Beth continued. “But I’m warning you, I’m a total mess.”

  “It’s okay, Beth.”

  “No. It’ll never be okay again.”

  “I’m here for whatever you need. That’s my promise.” Little Hitler chuckled at that word “promise,” but I rolled it into a cough to disguise the glee. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  She gave me directions to Xandria’s apartment, stopping twice to blow her nose. I passed Beth’s place on the way uptown. The sidewalk was roped off with yellow crime tape, and a group of spectators gawked from the sidewalk. A television van was pulled up by the curb, and a man behind the wheel was eating a sandwich. Two police cruisers were parked out front, a big blocky Chevy Caprice and a new aqua Crown Victoria. I saw movement inside the apartment, but I couldn’t distinguish any faces.

  I was positive Frye was in there, dusting for prints and taking measurements and chain-smoking cigarettes. I had a feeling he was going to be a clever adversary. Minor conflict was essential to any story, to keep the audience interested while the main game played itself out. The Insider was up for a potboiler.

  Xandria’s apartment was in an old two-story house about a block from campus and a couple of streets away from the stone house, up on a wooded hill. Paint curled from massive Colonial columns and a tall oak tree showered orange leaves on the tin roof. The windows had black shutters and the watery sun reflected off the glass like light from dying eyes. The November sky was heavy and sober above the brown hills.

  Beth sat in a metal rocking chair on the porch. She wore a red sweatshirt and blue jeans and canvas-top sneakers. Sunglasses couldn’t hide the puffiness around her eyes. She tried to smile at me, but her face looked like it might break. Her lips quivered a little and pressed together.

  “Beth,” Bookworm said, running up the concrete steps like Bogart making for Bacall. I stooped and hugged her. Little Hitler could smell the salt of her tears. Mister Milktoast knelt and gripped her hands. My reflection danced in her sunglasses. Loverboy primped and checked his hair.

  “Richard,” she said. “It’s all so…I don’t know…unreal, maybe. It hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

  “Beth, Beth,” I whispered, rocking her softly. I pressed my cheek against her soft hair that was like corn silks. Bookworm thought the “corn silk” simile was utterly corny. He hadn’t lived in Iowa, though.

  “So awful, so awful,” she repeated in my ear.

  “Do they know how it happened?”

  “I shouldn’t have left her alone. You know, Halloween and everything…”

  “You can’t blame yourself, Beth.”

  “But it’s all my fault.”

  The dam was about to burst again. She looked like she had cried through the night. Her face was blotched from the blood rush of her emotions.

  “It’s not your fault, Beth. You’re another victim. It’s nobody’s fault, except…except for whoever did it.”

  “But who? Who? She didn’t have an enemy in the world, and this isn’t your typical Halloween prank. Oh, God, Richard, what am I going to do?”

  “When did you first...?” asked Mister Milktoast. Loverboy wanted to add some smart-assed remark about snaring a drummer or banging a gong or gobbling a drumstick but I slammed shut the door to his room.

  Beth wiped at the pink end of her nose with a damp wad of Kleenex. “I looked for you at the party,” she said, avoiding my eyes by looking out at the rocky slopes of Widow’s Peak in the distance. She forgot she was wearing sunglasses, that I couldn’t have read her eyes anyway.

  “I left early. I wasn’t feeling well. I drank a beer and it made me sick. My dog ate my homework. I had a flat tire. My grandmother died.”

  Beth nodded and looked down at the warped pine boards of the floor. She spoke, her voice as hollow as if she were talking inside a coffin. “After I couldn’t find you, I hung around until just after midnight, when there was nobody left but sloppy drunks and the costume freaks. I partied some with the band. Then I got home, I don’t know, I told the police it was one o’clock, but it was probably more like two-thirty. And I went straight to sleep. Passed out, to be honest. I didn’t even see Monique.

  “I got up yesterday and did a little studying. I noticed Monique’s door was open just a crack. And she’s usually an early riser, you know how energetic she is...” A sob caught in her throat as she tensed to change tense. “...was, I mean.”

  I patted her knee. Loverboy let my hand linger for a moment. Mister Milktoast wanted to know which story she’d told the cops, which lie we’d use. Bookworm assured him that just because the Bone House was a den of prevarication didn’t mean the outer world had a foundation of fabrication. Whatever that meant.

  The screen door squeaked and Xandria stepped out. She carried a cup of herbal tea. Steam wisped around her dark face. Her eyes were cold and faraway, artist’s eyes that saw too well. She put the tea in Beth’s hands and reached a protective arm around her shoulder. I smelled raspberry and lemon and uncomfortable silence.

  I stood up and nodded to Xandria. Beth looked up at her with a grateful expression. “I was just telling Richard...”

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Xandria answered.

  “I know, but...Richard understands.”

  You damn straight, bitch. Been there, done that. If anybody knows how to deal with personal tragedy, it’s Richard Fucking Coldiron, ma’am.

  Xandria glared at me for a moment as Little Hitler smirked inside my pupils.

  “Fine. But if you need anything, you just holler,” she said. She tugged at the strap of her coveralls and went inside. I sat in the chair next to Beth’s.

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, just rocked gently and sipped her tea. She looked out across the town below. She continued, softly, her words as light as the wind that was stirring the leaves across the broken sidewalk.

  “I called out her name. I figured she’d probably gotten up early or something, maybe went out for a walk. So I put on a CD and read a little bit. Later, when I walked past the hall, I saw something on the floor in her room, something pale.”

  She looked up at the top of the oak tree, staring as if watching the memory on a movie screen. Her fingers gripped the metal chair arm. Mister Milktoast cupped his palm over her closest hand.

  “If it hurts to talk about...,” he said.

  ...then talk about it, bitch. Because I need your fucking pain. I need you to whimper and leak your pathetic little human juices of sorrow. I need you to make Richard feel the guilt. Give me some emotional content the reader can identify with.

  She pushed away, sensing my mood change. “No, Richard, I’m dealing,” she said. “We were roommates for four years. You get really close to somebody after four years.”

  NOW you pretend to care. NOW you act like you give a goddamn about anybody but yourself. But tell me more. I’m just BEGINNING to rub Richard’s face in his own shit.

  “What did you see on the floor, Beth?” I had to know. It had to hear her say it.

  Her voice was flat, disbelieving. “I...went to the door and peeked at the thing on the floor. It was a white carnation.”
<
br />   “A carnation?”

  “Yes. Like the one...”

  “Like the one I was wearing with my costume. The one you gave me.”

  She nodded. “I was confused, Richard. I thought you might have dropped it when you came over earlier. I pushed open the door to pick it up, and then I...I saw...”

  And don’t you ever forget it. Slut.

  “You saw her,” Little Hitler said, his glee moderated by Bookworm’s anxiety over this potential piece of evidence.

  Beth broke down, wept dry tears and dropped her head. Loverboy reached out and cupped her chin. The gushing of emotions aroused him, custard in a cruller. There are certain times when erections are incredibly inconvenient—weddings and funerals among them. When you comfort a broken woman, an intimacy develops that healthy and sane men channel in an unselfish, platonic manner. Maybe that’s why Alpha male psychos get all the pussy while sensitive guys beat off to frilly fantasies of romance.

  Beth recovered and sipped her tea.

  “I loved her,” Beth said. “You know I don’t like to use that L word. But she was like a sister to me.”

  “I do understand,” Loverboy said. “I’ve lost loved ones to violence myself.”

  Beth’s head jerked toward me. “You?”

  “My father,” Little Hitler said with too much pride. “He was beating my mother, you know how people do when they think they’re in love. She must have snapped or something. She. . .”

  Mister Milktoast somehow summoned some crocodile tears. Little Hitler was bursting with mirth in the back of my brain. Beth slid to the edge of her chair and put her other hand over Loverboy’s.

  “. . .she went into the kitchen and got a knife. Stabbed him seventeen times as I watched. I was fourteen.”

  Beth’s mouth opened in a silent O. “Richard, I didn’t know...”

  If only I could have fought to the surface, reclaimed my body for one miserable heartbeat, I might have kept her from digging into the past. But the wound was gaping, the blood was flowing now, and she was drinking. She had broken me. She had won.