Mr. Apology Page 30

  “Somebody killed my closest friend,” she heard herself say. “Somebody killed Jamey Hausermann.…”

  “The woman who wrote the article about Harry?”

  She nodded. “Somebody strangled her.”

  Dry words. The bare bones. Killed, strangled, murdered. They were electric shocks of language. Suddenly she could see Jamey in her head. She could see the white dead face, the bruise marks on the neck, pictures she just didn’t want or need.

  Rube Levy rubbed his jaw for a time. “Jesus,” he said. “What did Harry say?”

  She glanced at Levy. She watched him take out his pipe and stuff it with tobacco. She said, “I sometimes get the feeling that he’s begun to slip inside his answering machine, like he’s fallen into a magnetic hole. Harry in Wonderland.”

  Rube was quiet a second, then said, “You make a connection between the murder and Mr. Apology?”

  “Damn right I do.”

  She stared across the bar. The shadowy drinkers hunched on their stools. Somewhere, music was playing—tinny piano music. She listened to Levy suck on his pipe, then she turned to face him and said, “I went to the cops, Rube. I stole one of Harry’s tapes and I took it to the cops. I took one of the cassettes with that guy’s voice on it—”

  “What guy? The maniac who calls regularly? The guy with the constant threats?”

  She nodded.

  Levy looked inside the bowl of his pipe. “I think you’ve gone and done something our boy won’t be very pleased about, Maddy. You’ve broken the law according to Harrison. I think he’s going to be pretty damn pissed. I’m trying to imagine his face when he finds out.” He shook his head from side to side. “I’ve known him for years and one of the things that’s always rubbed him the wrong way is anything he sees as interference in his work. He didn’t like listening to critical suggestions when we went to school together. He didn’t like professors telling him what to do. Interference, Maddy.”

  “How can it be interference when all I’m interested in is his safety, Rube?”

  “I’m only telling you how Harry is going to see it, that’s all.” He paused. “What did the cops say?”

  “They weren’t exactly helpful. They’re going to listen to the tape. I’m pretty damn sure the guy I talked to thought I was just some kind of maniac.”

  Levy dumped his pipe in the ashtray. “You’ve got to tell Harry, of course.”

  “Of course.” She felt them suddenly just behind her eyes—tears, the pricking of moisture. She was thinking about Jamey again. She struggled against the thought.

  “I don’t know what he’s going to say. I can only imagine.”

  She finished her drink. Rube Levy was looking at his watch. He said, “I’ve got a business appointment nearby. It’s going to be one of those interminable things where executives open glossy folders and mutter about presentations and present me with what they call facts. I’ve got these people who do nothing more than look around like scouts for likely acquisitions, which my tax people tell me are necessary. But …” He paused, then smiled at her and put his hand against her shoulder. “I can cancel it if you need me … I mean, if you need some basic human company, a little sympathy. You don’t look as if you should be left on your own, Maddy. Like you need a friend.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got to see Harry. I’ve got to talk with him. But thanks, Rube. Thanks for the offer.”

  He was standing up now, obviously reluctant to go. “I’m really sorry about your friend, Madeleine. I’m not very good at knowing what to say at times like this.… Look, if you need me, if I can be of any help at all, call me. I’ll be home all evening. Okay? Don’t forget.”

  “Thanks again.” She watched him go towards the door, where he turned, raised his hand in a limp way, then left. Alone, she picked up her glass and listened to the ice shift and creak inside. A flying visit from the ubiquitous Levy. Rube on his way to the towers of high finance. She shut her eyes. She felt suddenly squeamish, as if the scotch had bruised her insides. There was sticky saliva in her mouth all at once and she knew she was going to throw up if she didn’t make it to the rest room and run her face under cold water. She rose quickly, knocking her glass over, creating lines of melting ice, and went to look for the john, which she located at the end of a long corridor beyond the telephones and the cigarette machine. She found a door marked GALS and went inside a large white-tiled room, and walked to the sink, where she let cold water flow over her wrists. Sweat on her forehead, prickly heat behind her eyes. She splashed water across her face, dried herself with a paper towel. But she still felt nauseous. She walked to the nearest cubicle and opened it, stepped inside, locked the door behind her.

  Safe. A world of locks. A world of locks and a woman’s toilet—how inviolate could you feel? Maybe Jamey Hausermann had locked the door of her apartment and somebody had forced it open. Maybe Jamey had felt safe like this too. There wasn’t any safety, she thought. There wasn’t any to be had.

  She inclined her head and looked down into the bowl. Still blue water. I don’t want to have to stick my finger down my throat and throw up here.

  She shut her eyes.

  She heard footsteps. She heard footsteps click across the tiles. Silence, then the noise of a lock turning in the adjoining cubicle.

  Somebody is next to me.

  Somebody separated from me by this thin wood.

  She turned her face slowly to the side.

  Old graffiti.

  Sarah loves Timmy Madigan

  Captain Kirk lives

  Denise Stroud gives good head

  What had Harry once said about graffiti, about how he’d seen it on the sides of boxcars and in the subway and how it suggested some violence lying temporarily dormant?

  Violence—

  She sucked her breath in tightly.

  There was a peephole cut in the wood just a few inches above her head, an oval opening about two inches wide.

  A peephole.

  A small oval slit in which something moved

  something dark

  moved

  Someone is watching me through the wood.

  She fumbled for the lock, which slipped between her moist fingers.

  “Madeleine, Madeleine …”

  No, no, no, I imagined the sound of a man’s voice calling my name, I dream it out of my panic and fear—

  “Madeleine, Madeleine…”

  The door was open. She moved out, running across the tiles.

  She saw her own white reflection in the mirror as she raced towards the front door, the safety of the corridor, the security of the bar, the street beyond—

  Nobody came after her.

  The cubicle remained shut.

  It remained as tightly shut as the locked lid of some impenetrable puzzle.

  She went hurriedly back towards the bar, pushing her way through to the street. She rushed through the swinging glass door, unconscious of upraised voices behind her—and then she was running along the sidewalk, running blindly, missing some pedestrians, colliding with others, then making it finally to the next block, where she turned away from Fifth Avenue and along a quiet side street where she stopped running, out of breath, a pain in her chest.

  She leaned against the window of a restaurant, oblivious to the curious stares of people passing.

  You imagined it, Maddy. A man’s voice saying your name. You imagined the eye pressed against the hole in the wood—you invented it all somewhere in the troubled recesses of your brain, manufactured it out of your fear.

  No.

  No, you didn’t dream it.

  She shut her eyes. She wanted never to move from this spot, to remain here forever in the safety of the darkness behind her closed eyelids.

  Madeleine, Madeleine…

  She gazed along the street. Businessmen. Women coming from the great stores of Fifth Avenue, hauling their purchases in large bags with famous names on them. Everyday things. So ordinary, so banal. How come it looked different t
o her suddenly, as if she were perceiving the world through faintly stained glass? As if she’d just lost a very important angle of perspective and things were tilting away from her?

  Dear Christ.

  There had to be an end to all this. There had to be an end to the bad dream her life had become.

  7.

  Bryant Berger hung the CLOSED sign on the door of the gallery, then walked in the direction of his office, where the desk lamp threw a feeble little glow. A white nimbus of light. He stared at his desk, ran the tip of his finger over old wood, saw how white his hand looked in the lamplight. He sat down, picked up Madeleine’s cassette, and placed it carefully inside his dictating machine—but he didn’t press the PLAYBACK button immediately. The voices—he didn’t want to listen to anybody’s confession, remembering how embarrassed, how humiliated, he himself had felt when he had talked to the infernal answering machine. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He remembered last night after he’d gone from George’s apartment, caught a cab that rushed him to the railroad station, made it to a late train to Bedford Hills, called Angela from the station with a sincere apology for his lateness, believing his own words, swallowing his own sad lies, waiting for Angela to come pick him up. How pleased she’d seemed to see him—she’d even forgiven him his tardiness. It was almost as if she hadn’t expected to see him at all, thankful for small mercies. Walking to the car she’d even held his hand and squeezed it and he had thought of invisible leashes, something intangible but very tightly strung around his neck. You wanted to step back then and get away and catch the next train that would carry you to the city and out of this suburb, this marriage, this gallery.… He opened his eyes. He got up, walked around his desk, stared at the failing sun through the window.

  The pièce de résistance, of course.

  One does not forget that, does one?

  She had nibbled on his neck in bed, her hand sliding over his stomach, fingertips scraping the inside of his thighs. And, dear Christ, he had been aroused in a perverse way, almost as if he were pleased to fuck her. As if the act of sex constituted some meager form of vengeance for him. She had sucked his nipples, her heavy breasts slapping against his skin, her breath hot and moist on his throat. The slapping of the breasts—he was reminded of sodden paper bags bobbing on a tide against a seawall. Or shapeless jellyfish. And he had died then, the swelling went away, the feeling left him. When she’d put her hand between his legs there was nothing, nothing, nothing for her to hold, no erection for her to shove between her thighs and into the damp hairy center of herself. He felt something turn over inside him; she rolled away, lit a cigarette, smoothed his hair across his skull. Kindness. Why did she have to be so damnably kind then? You’re tense, Bry, you’re tense. It’s going to be okay, sweet baby. A little time, that’s all we need.

  Bry. Sweet baby.

  Cringing.

  It might have worked if only I had imagined George in bed beside me, George’s body; it might have worked then and I could have pretended my beautiful boy was next to me.…

  He reached out and touched the pane of glass, which was surprisingly warm. I couldn’t have imagined George. George no longer exists. And he remembered the young man’s violent anger, the verbal assaults, the outbreak of rage. He walks an edge, Berger thought. George walks some savage edge and is close to slipping.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. Tonight there were to be visitors, dinner guests, dreary people who basked in Angela’s multicolored glow at the table. She would be more sparkling than the silver, the wine in the decanter, the little vases of flowers. She would shine.… It had the texture of a very bad dream.

  He went back to his desk, sat down. The train he had to catch … but he didn’t want to think about it now. He pressed the PLAYBACK button of his dictaphone, leaned back in his chair, shut his eyes. There were squeaks and whirs, clicks, dial tones, and then he heard the sound of a voice that was almost inaudible. It was a kid muttering something about having taken acid in a graveyard and then digging up a fresh grave. Berger squirmed. He put out his hand and stopped the machine. Were all the calls like this one? Sickening and ghoulish? Did Madeleine truly imagine he’d want to play such monstrous things here in his gallery? He pressed PLAYBACK again.

  I’M RESPONSIBLE FOR MY PARENTS’ BREAKING UP, MAN. I MEAN I THINK THEY WOULD HAVE STAYED TOGETHER IF I HADN’T CAUSED THEM SUCH HASSLES ALL THE TIME, YOU KNOW.…

  How dreary, Berger thought. The adolescent who blames himself for his parents’ divorce. It had to be so commonplace it was barely of any interest. He raised his face from the dictaphone and gazed across the darkened gallery.

  There was a shadow pressed against the front door.

  The sound of something metallic being rapped against glass.

  He knew. The palms of his hands started to sweat; there was a circle of warmth beneath his collar. His heart seemed to stretch, pressing against ribs. A pulse inside the brain, rooted in the dead center.

  Dear God, I need him.

  He walked slowly to the door, unlocked it, watched George step inside. He was holding a brown paper bag. Bryant Berger put out his hand, curled the palm against the side of George’s face, then he was kissing the boy, the tongue drawn lavishly along the hard edges of teeth, touching the soft gums, the roof of the mouth. He stepped back. His lips were wet. George was smiling; in the dark of the gallery his red hair seemed black, his eyes unlit and mysterious. There was tension, a tight thing strung across the air.

  “A present, dear,” George said.

  Berger took the brown bag and looked inside.

  “You should never be without your hat, Bryant. It’s part of your mystique.”

  The bag slipped from his fingers. His mind was running; he was astonished at his own display of passion—just seizing the boy as he came in and assaulting him with your mouth and lips and tongue. The need was bewildering, the hunger crazy, a terrifying pounding that involved all his nerve endings, all his senses. He could smell George, the skin, the cologne, the hair.

  “George said some terrible things to Bryant last night, didn’t he?” George asked. “And George has come in all humility to beg for forgiveness.”

  The boy went down on his knees and pressed his face into Berger’s groin. The excitement, the intensity, the rising of blood. Berger clutched the young man’s head and forced the face deeper into his body. The erection seemed to scald him. He dropped his hand and fumbled with his zipper, fingers clumsy, uncoordinated, flying in their haste.

  George, George.

  He glanced down at the top of the boy’s head. I need you. I need this. I don’t have the words for this kind of need.…

  George’s cold palm was smooth against his penis. He moved it slowly up and down, caressing, tasting, his tongue wet and warm. Berger shut his eyes. They shouldn’t do this here so close to the window, the street. They should go inside the office and shut the door. He stroked George’s hair. But he couldn’t stop; he couldn’t make himself break away from George, couldn’t stop the mouth, the slow killing movement of the hand, the sweetness of the fingertips. He unbuckled his belt and let his pants slip to his ankles and he placed both hands against the back of George’s neck, pushing slightly, making tiny movements of his hips. This is all there is, this is all there has to be. This love. This agonizing hurtful terrible love.

  George looked up at him and smiled. “You missed me, didn’t you? Tell me how much you missed me, Bryant.”

  “It’s like dying, George.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I don’t know how I could cope without you.” There, out in the open, revealed: a stark confession.

  “Did Angela try to fuck you, Bryant?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Are you lying?”

  “George, there’s only you.” He felt very tired as he said it. It was as if such an encounter with truth made him weary, the weariness of stepping out of an automobile after a long journey, when you shut your eyes and the white line
s still streak through your head.

  “There’s only me,” George said. He took Berger’s hand and stood up. “Why don’t we go in your office, Bryant?”

  “Yes.” Berger hitched up his pants, conscious now of how ungainly quick passion could make you look—ridiculous, a clown figure, something stuffed and absurd. He followed George into the office and watched the boy take his jeans off. He stood there in blue bikinis. He removed his windbreaker and shirt and dropped them on the floor. He put his hand inside the elastic of his underwear and touched himself. Berger was only barely conscious of the voice issuing from the dictaphone.

  “What are you listening to, Bryant?”

  “A tape somebody gave me. It’s boring.”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “My assistant, Madeleine.”

  “Of course,” George said.

  I don’t want to talk about it now. I don’t want to listen to it. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters now is you, George.

  … SO WE WORKED OUT THIS ELABORATE SYSTEM OF CHEATING DURING THE FINAL EXAMS WITH THE RESULT THAT WE BOTH GOT A’ S, AND NOW I FEEL LIKE A TOTAL FRAUD.…

  “Sounds fascinating, Bryant.”

  “George, please, I want you.” He covered George’s hand with his own, watching his fingers slip inside the briefs. The tip of George’s penis was moist, sticky.

  George …

  HERE’S ALL I GOT TO SAY TO YOU … UNTIL THE NEXT TIME ANYWAY.… I’M GONNA KILL SOMEBODY. I MIGHT USE MY KNIFE, I MIGHT JUST USE MY BARE FUCKING HANDS, BUT IT’S GONNA HAPPEN, APOLOGY.…

  “George.” Berger slowly slid the shorts down, revealing the glassy sheen of the hip, the amazing curvature, the fine yellowy hairs that were almost imperceptible. He got down on his knees and took George in his mouth and moved his head back and forth. He shut his eyes. His pleasure seemed a thing apart from himself, something that filled the room, warmed it, a thing that existed independently. He clutched George’s balls in his hands, feeling them brush the side of his face, touch his lips. The swelling, the tightening, the head of the penis slipping against his teeth and gums. Come for me, George, come inside my mouth, come for me. He heard George moan, felt the sharp nails of the boy’s hands dig into his neck. So hard, there had to be blood, the skin had to be broken, punctured. And then George groaned and pressed himself deeper, reaching for the throat, the roof of the mouth. His body shook violently several times and then he slumped against Berger, still moaning. Berger pulled his face back. He wanted to rise and hug George, wrap his arms around him as if he might permanently bind the boy to his body.