Mr. Apology Page 6

  Sarah.

  Four months ago she’d moved out of their apartment on 72nd Street; she’d gone upstate to the town of Fulton, the original one-horse, tightassed dump which had the balls to bill itself as The City with a Future. It was what lawyers called a trial separation. Twenty-four years of marriage, he thought: There shouldn’t be a trial anything after that length of time. And what was she doing in Fulton? Pursuing this folly of opening a small gift shop that also purveyed health foods and freerange eggs and protein drinks. Tourist items as well. But you couldn’t expect tourists in Fulton unless you had a couple of bewildered Canadians who’d strayed off the interstate. He turned to look at Moody and said, “I went up to see Sarah last weekend.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Last week her enterprise took in the princely sum of seventy-three bucks. Hardly enough to pay the electric bill.” He sunk down into his seat. Why did he feel this need to talk to Moody about the bruised condition of his marriage? Somebody, Frank, you got to talk to somebody.

  “What kind of place is Fulton?” Moody asked.

  “Shit. You know the kind of joint. It’s like the whole town’s got lockjaw.”

  Moody smiled. “Is she coming back home?”

  “She gives me this rap about how she just can’t take the pressures of the city anymore. She can’t put up with my absences. I said it was all I ever knew. Being a cop was the only thing I’d ever done. What else am I supposed to do, Doug?” Nightingale gazed at the storefronts. He felt uncomfortable talking like this.

  “Meet her halfway,” Moody said.

  “Which would be roughly around Utica.”

  “You know what I mean. Get her to come home, start trying to find more free time, take her out to the theater. That kind of thing. Pay more attention to her.”

  Nightingale said nothing for a while. He puffed his cheeks and whistled tunelessly a moment. He didn’t want to think about Sarah and the emptiness of the apartment and the ketchup labels he read when he sat down to some half-defrosted meal. “She’s a beautiful woman. She gets better as she gets older, Doug. I never figured it would work like that.”

  The car was on Bleecker Street now. Nightingale thought about Camilla Darugna. That’s the place to put your mind, Frank. Turn it in the direction of the victim. Just keep thinking about Camilla lying there in her kitchen.

  “Maybe you should call this Apology guy,” Moody said. Nightingale laughed. “Would you call him if you had something on your mind?”

  “Why not?” Moody said. “I’ll say one thing, though. It would be damn interesting to listen to his tapes.”

  6.

  Harrison stepped towards the figure that sat in the chair by the window. The lamp in the corner glowed dimly: You could see the uncombed dark hair, the hands dangling over the side of the chair, the shadows made by the bones of the knuckles. Harrison paused halfway across the floor. In his right hand he held a surgical scalpel. Warm steel, a thin mirror smudged by his fingerprints. It glinted in a pale way. A vehicle passed in the street below; lights flickered quickly across the ceiling. He watched them go. They reminded him of sudden shapeless butterflies. Then he was thinking about the figure in the chair again. Albert. Albert Somebody. He’d never had a last name. What the hell—that didn’t matter anyhow. He turned the blade over in the palm of his hand and wondered why he felt so tense, an electric tension that seemed to start, in a tingling way, in the soles of his feet and then work up his legs, through his arms, fingertips, reaching finally to the middle of his chest, to his heart. Strange, he thought. His mouth was dry and the palms of his hands itched. He moved closer to the chair, closer to Albert. He looked at the top of Albert’s head; this close, you could see the hair was a wig, a thatch of dark matting. Harrison smiled. A cheap wig. Albert, you poor bastard. He stared at the dark hairpiece for a long time. Maybe it feels this way, he thought. Maybe this is how it feels. Could you imagine it, work your way into it, pretend? He passed the surgical scalpel from one hand to the other, then back again. He was conscious of a wind rising outside, the way the whole building seemed to creak. He moved slightly to one side. Albert sat motionless: He was like a man sleeping off a heavy meal. Sleeping it off in complete silence. From this angle he could see the sharp point of Albert’s nose, the thick lower lip, the threadbare elbows of the old denim workshirt. He could see the old grey flannel pants and the tattered sneakers. Then he stepped a little to the side, so that he was directly behind Albert again.

  A guy kills somebody. What does he feel at that moment? In that split second of time when you know there’s no going back, when you realize that life has gone out of the victim, what do you feel?

  Harrison shut his eyes a moment. Outside, the wind died. There was a silence. He remembered how earlier, when he’d gone out to buy the scalpel, the wind had driven scraps of paper along the street, scraps that flapped madly like tiny ghosts hurrying from an exorcism. He remembered the scent of garbage filling the darkness, a smell rising from trashcans and plastic bags along the sidewalks. He’d been able to smell the river too, the dampness, stumps of mildewed wood, rotted planks. You could imagine skeletal figures trapped in the holds of sunken barges, old bones enclosed in weighted caskets, corpses drifting through the poisonous silt of the riverbed. And then he’d walked back, the scalpel strangely heavy in the pocket of his overcoat. And yet it was light, almost without weight.

  He opened his eyes, looked at Albert.

  It must feel like this.

  Tension, unbearable tension, as if the room were filled with a hundred clocks and every one of them was ticking at variance with every other.

  A slick of hot sweat slid over his eyelid and he wiped it away. A muscle moved in his throat. He was conscious of a square of pale light that fell through the open bedroom door behind him.

  He raised the blade.

  Then he froze. It seemed to him that his muscles atrophied and his body wouldn’t respond to his own messages. Bring the damn thing down quick and hard!

  He struck.

  The blade entered the side of Albert’s head, tearing at fiber, ripping, creating a gash from ear to neck, neck to jaw, a gash with the appearance of a grotesque second mouth. He pulled the blade free and stepped back. He was breathing quickly, his lungs tight, as if a fine string had been pulled inside his chest.

  He stepped around Albert. The eyes were open and glassy. The mouth was hollow, like a small space that might recently have been vacated by a bird. You could see the uneven dentures that had been cemented to pink gums. Harrison stared at the face for a bit, turning the blade over and over in his hand. Then he moved forward quickly, driving the instrument into the center of Albert’s chest, tearing the material of the faded blue shirt, puncturing the surface of the skin. Albert slipped sideways in the chair.

  Harrison, drawing the blade free, stepped back towards the window. He watched the dangling hands as they swung slightly from the force of the last blow. Then he shut his eyes and laid his forehead upon the cold surface of the glass. When he opened his eyes again he looked at Albert. He thought how well he knew that face, how long he had dreamed it, how intimately he understood its contours and shadows.

  Albert Nobody. A victim.

  Something else is needed. Something else.

  Something vicious.

  He swung his arm in a sudden arc and the blade glinted abruptly between Albert’s legs, searing the old grey flannel pants, severing the buttons, laying the groin bare. The scalpel fell from his fingers and rattled on the bare wood boards. He felt dizzy all at once, lightheaded—it was as if he had a sense of some distant muted exaltation, a freedom. The freedom of the kill, the blood game. Something that rose inside him and spread through him and made his nerves sizzle, his senses reel.

  There was a noise from behind.

  He swung around.

  Madeleine was standing in the bedroom doorway, leaning against the jamb. “Finished?” she asked.

  Harrison nodded. He was suddenly tired now.

&nbs
p; “What are you going to call it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. ‘A Victim.’ Maybe. How does that sound?”

  Madeleine folded her arms under her breasts and came into the loft. She was wearing one of Harrison’s old paint-stained shirts. She approached the chair and walked around the figure a couple of times, frowning slightly.

  “What do you think?” he asked. It was always important for him to know what she thought; her approval made him feel as if he were high. He was a little tense as he waited.

  “I think you’ve got the right title for it,” she said. “Poor old Albert.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I like it,” she said.

  “Why are you frowning? Though you look beautiful even when you do frown.”

  She smiled at him. “I was watching you. You were really getting into it, weren’t you?”

  Harrison bent down and picked up the scalpel, which he weighed in the palm of one hand. She was right. For a moment there, a fraction of time, it had been easy to imagine he was killing a real human being, not some papier-mâché dummy he had spent weeks shaping and molding and getting exactly right. Carried away, transported, drifting over into a world of violence. He put the scalpel down again: He didn’t want to look at it. Some strange strain far inside him, something that had come up suddenly to the surface, a mad thing, a deranged quality. Why had it fascinated him like that? You make believe a papier-mâché thing is solid flesh and blood …

  “I guess I was,” he said. “Take some consolation from this fact, my love. I don’t have the nerves to be a killer. Look.” And he spread one hand out: It was trembling. Madeleine caught it, held it against her breasts, a singular fluid movement that touched him inside.

  “You were pretty intense,” Madeleine said.

  “Well, I’ve been putting it off for weeks. Maybe it just built up inside me to a point where I had to explode, you know? I had an idea in my head, something vague—maybe I didn’t want to let it drift on any longer. Maybe I just wanted to be finished with the whole Albert project.” He put his arm around her shoulder, and drew her near to him. “Chalk it up to art, not the killer instinct.”

  “I don’t get the concept, Harry. You spent weeks making the figure. I watched you. I was so impressed with the care you took—then you carve him up. If I came in from a different perspective, love, I could say you’d spoiled your own handiwork.”

  Harrison wiped his forehead. Worrisome, unsettling to get carried away, but perhaps there hadn’t been any other way to do it. Perhaps there was only one frame of mind you could work yourself into with a project like Albert. “I built him for this one purpose, Maddy. Even when I was making him I knew he had to be disfigured. A victim of crime. I knew it would have to end up like this. I don’t see it as a waste of my work.”

  Madeleine didn’t say anything. She moved away from him and circled Albert again. She paused, chewing on her lower lip.

  “What’s on your mind?” Harrison asked.

  She shrugged. “You really did a number on him.”

  “It has to look convincing.” Then he remembered: There was one last thing left to do. He hurried inside the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and took out two plastic bags filled with chicken blood. He carried them back to the loft, pierced the plastic with the scalpel, then drenched Albert with the blood. Ragged trails slithered across the chair, the floor, the material of his shirt. He let the empty plastic bags fall from his hands. Finished, he thought. Over and done with. It was a project that had occupied him for too long, almost as if he’d been afraid to take the final step, the act of mutilation. Now he felt a sense of relief. A sense of completion. There was nothing between him and the Apology project now. He had tied up a loose end.

  Madeleine stood behind him, massaged his shoulders. “You’re very tight. Try and relax. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so involved in anything, Harry. For a moment there, you even scared me.”

  “I think I scared myself,” he said. “Let’s go into the bedroom and lie down. I’m beat.”

  They moved towards the bed. Harrison lay flat on his back and stared up at the ceiling. Drained. I think I scared myself. He shut his eyes and imagined people dying from acts of violence—they were happening even now, even as he lay here with his eyes closed and felt Madeleine’s fingers stroke the side of his face; people were being killed in acts of violence. It was more horrifying, more repulsive than the act he’d performed himself on a figure created out of nothing more than paper and paste and old dentures and threadbare clothes. You couldn’t compare Albert with the real thing.

  “I like the blood,” Madeleine said. “Pretty authentic. I just wish you weren’t such a slob and dripped the stuff all over the place, Harry.”

  “Nag nag nag, it’s all I ever hear.” He raised his face and kissed her, then glanced past her at the light of the answering machine. Red. The CALL light. Tired as he was, he realized he wanted to listen to the tape. He reached out, but before he could press the button Madeleine stopped him.

  “I’ve got something to tell you, Harry.”

  “Why does that sound ominous?”

  She hesitated. “It isn’t really. Do you remember a friend I once mentioned? Jamey Hausermann? She’s a journalist. She writes for New York magazine.”

  “Vaguely,” he said.

  “I had lunch with her today. I think …” She paused again. “I think I talked her into writing a piece about Apology. I hope you don’t mind.” She was biting her lip, looking worried; the expression made him want to laugh.

  “She wants to write about me?”

  “Why not? I think Apology would be of interest to a lot of people.”

  The notion pleased him. He hadn’t ever imagined anything being written about the project. “What about the identity thing?” he asked.

  “She’s an old friend, Harry. We went to school together. She won’t mention you by name. I promise.”

  He was quiet a moment. Publicity. He’d never thought about publicity before now; it was as if he’d become totally accustomed to working in obscurity. What was it about the idea of celebrity that appealed to him anyway? A definition of yourself, a projection of your work in front of thousands of people, people reading about you, calling the Apology number in the hundreds, thousands.… Wait, he told himself, don’t get so carried away. It would have to be a weird kind of celebrity anyhow; he might just as well be a masked wrestler, someone whose face is never seen and whose real name has to remain unknown. Still, it excited him. “Sure she won’t mention my name?”

  “Positive. Otherwise I wouldn’t have shown her the poster.”

  He lay back down and looked at Madeleine. He could tell from her expression that she still had something else to say. What was she up to now? He liked the way she looked, a vague mischievousness on her face—she might have been a little kid caught playing some forbidden game.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m waiting.”

  “Am I so transparent?”

  “Like clear glass.”

  She tucked her legs up under her body, placed the palms of her hands against the sides of her face, smiled at him. “I was talking with Berger this morning and I discovered an astounding thing. He doesn’t have anything planned after those miserable rainbows are removed from the premises. He doesn’t have anything planned next, Harry. Do you know what that means?”

  A faint, preposterous light dawning. He shook his head. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why not? It’s a big place. It would be perfect for Apology.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “I hadn’t imagined playing the tapes in a place like that.”

  “It would be a wonderful spot for them.”

  “He’ll never go for it, Maddy. He’s too conservative.”

  “Maybe. But he’s also confused. He doesn’t know what’s going to sell, he doesn’t know how the public is going to swing, and he’s in a bad position right now because he needs something terrific after the Tahiko disaster. He n
eeds something that’s going to get public attention, publicity.” She paused. He could see a light in her eyes, a quality that was a mixture of determination and optimism.

  “Those gallery owners are pretty damn fickle,” he said.

  “You forget, Harry. I work in the place. I know the man. It’s not going to cost me my job just to put a word in for the project, is it?”

  “I guess not.” The Bryant Berger Gallery. Midtown Manhattan. A prestigious spot. Critics attended shows there. They wrote about those shows in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The American Art Journal, Arts Magazine. What was this vague thrill he suddenly felt? He imagined the idea of fame thrust upon him, the sight of his face staring out from magazine photographs. He imagined going to parties, opening nights, doing interviews. It was a strange sensation—it was like seeing a shadow of yourself in the future, a faint projection, a different Harry Harrison—someone with some clout in the world of art, someone known as an innovator of some daring, prepared to take risks and chances for the sake of extending the boundaries of his craft. For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of tasting these perceptions, wallowing in them. God, you try for years to hack something out of your perceptions, try to construct links between your imagination and your fingertips, and nothing you create or construct ever satisfies, things hardly ever get finished, you drift into a half-world where you feel overlooked, abandoned, a world wherein younger artists clamber over you and have their works written about. Maybe, just maybe, he thought. Maybe this was an opening into a world he felt had neglected him. He hadn’t become bitter about it, merely a touch disappointed. No, don’t let yourself get too excited, Harry, when you start to think this way you court the specter of further disappointment. The one positive thing you could find to say about obscurity was that you never felt let down, because you had no expectations to start with.

  “I’ll talk with Berger when the time is right,” Madeleine said.

  “I’m wondering about something,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m wondering how the hell I ever managed without you.”