The Murdered Man

She said that she had finally filed the papers. The day before Christmas Eve. Two thousand eight. She said that she could no longer “carry a boozed up schizo who was off his meds,” that she was leaving and I could kiss my house goodbye as soon as she spoke to her lawyer. Some of us actually believed that she was serious.

“It’s a good riddance, T. You don’t need the stress,” Horace said, his hoarse chuckle cutting the air, it’s vile echo pasting the inside of my eyelids.

“She’ll probably just be at her mother’s, T. Don’t worry. It’s only a few miles away,”

Mary Frances offered, her braced teeth sloshing every “s.”

I dripped on our leather sectional. I noticed my dim reflection in the dark flat screen. I tore at some misguided cowlick of graying nonsense on the side of my head. Here is where I would rot. I would pinpoint a spot in the middle distance, an imperceptible sphere just above the fifty five inch screen and prod at it with my brain. Nothing ever happened though. My wife’s cracked voice sent a distant, haunting stream of curses towards me from our bedroom like the horrible song of a rabbit in a bear trap. A trap that I had set with perceptive skill some fifteen years before this horrible morning in a downtown bar where we first met.

I was twenty one. A friend and I, far too drunk to be in public, even for St. Patrick’s Day, stumbled into a dive to avoid the parade. The dense air of the joint was laced with fluorescent heat, smoke-soaked desperation and the body odor of brooding hulks sipping yellow Budweiser. She was behind the bar. My memory of her face is blocked. It was the strangest thing, people all seemed like warped ghosts in a wormhole to me. I’m sure this was my fault.

I’ve always had a toxic nature about me, I know that.  I was always getting my snout into the most rancid slop. But when faces start disappearing you know you are really into something heavier. Something is deeply wrong there. That’s my black hole stuff.

My memory is my worst enemy. It tells me now that she was Kim Cattrall or Debbie Harry. But when I actually think about it, I can’t remember her face at all. I always just see paint being mixed at the hardware store. Brown, white and gray swirling until reaching that perfect shade in the middle. Paint. You put it on a wooden fence. It moves, even seems to breathe a bit, but then it dries. Hers had dried over a skull now twisted and fraught with the menace of marriage. Her eyes were cobras buried deep in a swirling white desert. She would glare at me blazingly. I could feel this stuff. Sitting in the kitchen while I watch Sports Center in the living room. Shooting her venom through the walls. I could see the contemptuous wrinkles that I had given her. The fresh veins that I had coaxed out of her. I couldn’t tell what exactly I had done to change her...but she was no longer my Kim, my Debbie. Her beauty no longer sang to me.

Our brand new TiVo came soaring into the living room and struck the Spanish cedar frame surrounding the front door. It exploded, clattering into a plastic mass of slick black shards on the floor next to our chrome and leather magazine rack. I remember realizing then that I had slept six hours in four days.

“Baby-” I yelled across the house from the couch. My voice, hoarse and liquored brown, a ghost’s echo over the egg-shelled walls and deeply stained hardwood floors. “Lemme at least say this...can I just say-” I paused as a strip of drool took a dive from my lower lip and onto my denim thigh. “My jeans…” I tried to stand, but the left leg was still sleeping, and I was introduced to the northeast corner of our mahogany coffee table.

“What was that,” she sort of cared from the bedroom, frantically packing clothes into large black carpenter’s trash bags. Her grunts and sighs.

“Real nice, look at that, T.” Horace said, “She could give two shits about us,”

 

“I actually think she could not give two shits, right?” Mary Frances said.

 

“I don’t know. I don’t think we’re using the expression correctly,” Horace said.

 

“Guys,” I said. “It’s all good. I’ve got my Defcon Five.” I pushed myself up from the coffee table and wiped my mouth.

“What is that, like your doomsday plan, T?” Horace asked with a chuckle, “Never

 

figured you for one of those loons with the bomb shelters and aluminum hats.” Deep purple blood from my lip smeared across the top of my hand.

“My blood doesn’t look good,” I said.

 

“Can it look bad? It’s fine, man.” Horace assured me. “It just looks faded,” I said.

“You need more water,” Mary Frances said.

 

“I should see my blood guy,” I said.

 

“Mmmm,” said both.

 

“Never mind, though….ssss’all good, cause I got the...the...theeeee...!” I stammered, searching my pockets.

“T,” Mary Frances said, “you know that you can’t just buy back her love, you have to offer yourself to her completely. Show her that you love her, make her see-”

“T,” Horace cut in. “Come on, man, “Say Anything is played out. You need to cut all ties, man. In fact, we need to start gettin’ all her stuff out of here. Liquidation. Everything must go!”

“Nah, nah nah nah it’s all good, man,” I slurred, stumbling a bit and attempting to steady myself against the glass dining room table. My left leg then blacked out again and I found myself face down on the hand-knotted oriental area rug that I bought at an oriental rug dealership (I know! I didn’t even think they existed until I moved out here,) from a very tall, pretty woman with “adult” braces (they’re still just kid braces on an adult, though right?) who-at least I think, had a yearning for something other than the ol’ checkbook, if you know what I mean. Her smile was bright, tucked slightly into the left cheek and excited by arched eyebrows and a furrowed brow. Very Laura Dern. I was into that. Maybe it was the Enya muzak. Maybe it was the heavy and elegant scent of fine oriental wool (straight from the Orient!). Whatever the case, there was definitely something between me and this brunette Laura Dern going on in this little shop downtown. Something had been planted. I think her name tag said something whimsical...like “Meeghan,” or “Star Wisp.”

“You’re on the floor again, T!” Horace said gleefully.

 

He was right. I stared into a red fibrous desert; I inhaled deep and sharp. The scent of manufactured liquid pine. “Three thousand, four hundred forty eight dollars and fifty three cents,” I wheezed, drooling a bit more, “- ‘s a pretty good rug, right hon? Had our honeymoon on this rug.”

“Pull it together! She’s already at the door!” Mary Frances’ high-pitched wail ripped across my airplane hangar’d skull.

“Honey,” I rolled on my back. “I’m gonna fix it!” I proclaimed with slitted eyes. Then a belch erupted like a dry hot spring from my throat. Thick, filthy air discharged from my lungs and arched upward against the dining room ceiling. The front door slammed so loud that the sound of the steel hinges snapping shut buzzed in my brain for the next forty minutes. A bitter victory siren.

“Well, she’s gone,” Horace said.

 

I rose to my knees. My head was a pallet of bricks on broomstick. I stretched lobotomized arms towards the wet bar in the corner. I lurched until the floor stopped spinning and I met the black walnut bar with a resounding clang from the glasses and bottles of liquor within. I reached down and opened the cabinet. Made a move for the Talisker. Missed it. Too many labels. Then it looked like we were headed for the Laphroaig. Got it. Greedy fingers snatched us up a tumbler. Nerves shook my forearm as I poured. The Scotch cut the glass with fiery fury, igniting translucent walls with crests of bright, golden grit and pungent, acidic vigor.

“How many is that now, T?” Mary Frances asked.

 

“What. Drinks?” I seemed to ask no one, bulleting my gaze to the bottom of the tumbler.

 

“She means, you know…d-words,” Horace chuckled.

 

“They’re both d-words, Horace. Aren’t we all adults here? We can say the word,” Mary Frances said.

“Yeah, but- “Horace started.

 

“Ninth drink,” I sipped. “Third d-word.”

 

I slumped against the wall and slowly slid to the floor. I tried to re-fixate on the floating sphere. I found it just below the glass dining room table, hovering above one of the chairs. Then

I started hearing him again. Way in the back. A deadened transmission slicing through stratified static.

“Do you hear him?” I ask them.

 

“Who?” asks Horace, “Oh, him again?” “Just block him out,” Mary Frances said. “He’s getting louder,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“You know he’s got nothing new to say,” Mary Frances said, “Let’s just turn on some music, drown him out.”

“I’m thinking Van Halen, ‘Running with the Devil!’” Horace elated.

 

“That’s the one, H-town,” I said, laughing and jumping to my feet. I flung myself across the room towards the sound system like a mannequin in a monsoon. My right hip collided with the waist-high record shelf, sending a few records spilling onto the floor. I drove over the covers like a leaking blimp. Dad’s copy of The Moody Blues’ Days of Future Past. I had found it in college when I was pilfering Ma’s collection.

God, to have met on a commune. What a strange existence. Maybe that’s where I could meet the mother of my kids. I could see her at the bin by the corn field scrubbing beat stains out of an apron on a washboard. Her sinewed muscles and coarse fingers pulsed intently. Maybe he was drawn in by her beautiful features: wild curly red hair and porcelain skin. Maybe he thought she looked easy because she didn’t wear a bra. Maybe he respected her as a woman and as a person. Maybe he loved her until I showed up-

“Bom…Bom…Bom…Bom…Bom…Bom…Bom…Bom,” Horace thumped, imitating Michael Anthony’s percussive bass.

“Ahaha!” I laugh, “How quick I have forgot! Good call, H-bomb,” I said, swiftly yanking myself out of my black hole, stooping above cracking knees and scanning our LP’s. “Let’s sssee… Sannana, Steevie Wunner, Tawkin’ Hezz,…ah, here we go!” I said, spraying simmering saliva over calloused lips. I located Van Halen, grabbed the sleeve, plopped the thin sheet of vinyl on the turntable and dropped the arm. Echoing feedback gave way to the pulsating bass line. The guitar slipped in like dripping electric icicles. The band swung like a sparkling cleaver into a crimson flank.

Horace and I bellowed along with Diamond Dave in unison, “Ain’t got no love, no love you’d call real. Ain’t got nobody waiting at hooome!” I stomped around the hardwood floors, shaking the bar and the chandelier. I jumped and screamed, spilling Scotch on the floors.

“Get used to this, T!” Horace yelled, “We got nothin’ but time! It’s just us now!”

 

As the song faded out, the doorbell rang. As I turned to walk to the front door, I felt that damn leg give out on me again. Pins and needles, pins and needles. Sinking in quicksand. A sharp and sudden absence of all light followed. Then, the beautiful black void. I used to sit and stare for hours at the swirling cosmos of the inside. Where the factory finally shuts down for the night. When you’ve locked them all in their rooms for the night. When you know that there will be silence. When you get to be the protector. The watcher.

*                      *                        *

 

 

 

Then came Mary Frances’ timid voice. “May the Lord protect you, serve you and keep you in peace, Amen,” she squeaked.

My eyes slit open and white light began to paint the inside of my skull. Shapes began to appear. An I.V. pumping something in or out of me. A television on a rack in the corner playing an episode of Matlock. Bright heat from torqued bulbs above me. Multiple machines beeping arrhythmically. St. Jude’s, I think. A young male nurse entered the room.

“Ah ha, someone’s up!” he said cheerily, “and how are we doing, sir?”

 

I attempted to respond but my tongue was numb and the teeth surrounding it felt like they were made of cork. I spat up a little, wiped my chin and shook my head.

He began checking the tube going into my right arm. His skin was tan and healthy. He

 

wore a crew cut and wire framed glasses. His smile was warm. “It’s morphine,” he said, “for the nerve damage.”

“Lord, have mercy!” Mary Frances yelped. My eyes widened. I spat up a little bit more and wiped what was probably partially digested apple sauce in my chin.

He calmly put his hand on my forearm. He wore latex gloves, but his touch was healing in a way. I calmed down, tried to look at my body. Everything was covered in tubes and cotton gowns and sheets.

“The doctors are bringing in a neurologist this afternoon,” he said. “Your chart says that you are prescribed to an antipsychotic. Prolixin? But…you didn’t have any in your system when you came in. Did you go off your meds recently, sir?”

“Don’t tell her, T,” Mary Frances said. “They’ll put you back on that stuff. We need to get out of here, and quick!”

“Hav’lin,” I told him.

“Sorry, sir?” he said.

“Hav’lin, in aba fabru,” I said.

 

I shook my head at the nurse. I turned and stared at Matlock.

 

“Well, you’d best get some more rest,” the Nurse said. “The neurologist should be on the way up soon.”

As he left the room, I noticed my medical charts sitting at the end of the bed. My muscles felt like wet clay. I attempted to lean forward and felt a cinderblock on my lungs. I grimaced and shoved it down, reaching to my feet for the clipboard.

“4/23/15: Roof, Terrance. 41 y WM. 165 lbs. Admitted unconscious by his wife Diane at 1:30PM. Multiple head wounds. Nerve damage suspected. Diagnosed Schizophrenic at 23 yo. Prescribed to Prolixin, to be taken once daily and refilled once monthly. None found in system. Administering Cat Scan.”

 

“She saved us!” Mary Frances proclaimed. “God is so good, T! Don’t you see This was all part of his plan. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here and go see her.”

“Oh, come on, Mary,” Horace laughed, “You really think this was a divine intervention of some kind? Who would want things this messed up in the first place?”

 

She must have come back for something and found me on the floor. My flesh began to tingle, I couldn’t feel my heart, but I knew I had to listen to Mary. Once she had an idea in her head there was no shutting her up. I gave myself a few breaths and slowly rose to my feet. I found my clothes. The clock on the wall said eight. I ducked out and found an elevator. I jumped on a bus and headed towards her mom’s place, Mary Frances singing us “Hallelujah” the whole way.

I remember when all of it started. When they first showed up. I was just out of film school, penniless and desperate for work. I survived bad wine and street tacos. I slept in a sleeping bag in an otherwise empty studio apartment. One night, as I lay there in the darkness, they just started speaking.

“Hey there,” came a thick, gruff tone, “I’m Horace,”

 

I licked my lips, rubbed my forehead.

 

“Hi, Horace,” I said out loud into the darkness.

 

“So, uh…how are you doing with everything, man?” he asked. I sat up on my elbow and spoke to the drywall.

“I guess I’m doing ok with it,” I said.

 

“You know what I mean, though, right?” he said through a smile.

 

“I-I don’t know,” I said. I sat up in my sleeping bag and looked around the apartment. Silence and darkness permeated the space surrounding me. A pitch black sauna of sweaty fear began to permeate my pores and seep into my consciousness.

“I’m talking about the doubt,” he said. “Oh,” I said. “That.”

“You’ll never escape it!” a woman’s voice, tight and shrill, piped up from the back of my skull somewhere. “The only way out is through God’s love!”

“Don’t start feeding him that line, Mary,” Horace said, “The boy’s got enough on his shoulders as it is. He needs a different kind of relief. A man’s got certain needs that can’t exactly be taken care of at Church!”

“You’d send him to those tramps down at those whack off clubs, wouldn’t ya, Horace?

 

You think that’s where a young man needs to be spending his time?” Mary said tauntingly.

 

“At least a man knows what he can get at a whack off club, Mary!” Horace shot back, “He’s sure, in fact. No guessing, no wondering, no searching about it. That boy’s gonna have a good time, and no one’s gonna judge him for it!”

“Except the only judge that matters,” Mary Frances replied.

 

“Well, I suppose you’re right about that one,” Horace chuckled to himself, “He sure does love to see his kids screw everything up, doesn’t he? Lucky him, he can just step in at any time and take care of things if he chooses. Or he can massacre entire towns with disease, torture innocents and cause global disasters of all kinds. With power like that, you’d have to be insane.”

“You lack the capacity to understand God’s love,” Mary replied, “only those who understand that will be allowed into his world.”

“And what about Earth? Who knew about him before they got here?” Horace asked.

 

“This isn’t Earth,” she said, “It’s Purgatory, everyone knows that,” Mary Frances said. Horace cackled.

“Oh man,” he said, “you sure do know how to tell ‘em, MF.”

 

I lay back and slid under my sleeping bag. The cold floorboards creaked beneath me.

 

My spine felt like it was braced with steel. Every muscle ached.

 

 

 

*                      *                      *

As I approached her mother’s house, the clay had seeped out of my arms and legs, and I could walk easier. I sighed and knocked on the front door. Her mother approached, noticed me and turned around. I sighed and knocked again. Diane came down the front steps, stopped short when she saw me and slowly approached the door.

She opened it. From inside I could hear her mother, “I’m calling them! Right now!” “Mom! Stop!” she shouted back, “Just give him a minute.”

She looked at me. I saw her with sober eyes for the first time in months. She was so beautiful and hurt standing there behind the door chain. Peering out at me like I was already a prisoner on the other side of the glass.

“Are you ok?” she asked, her face stained with tears, flush and tense.

 

“I’m fine,” I said, “feeling better. I just want you to know that I’ve got a plan. And you don’t have to believe me or even consider this as anything other than one of my rambling, incoherent promises, but I am finally going to do it.”

“Do what?” she asked.

 

I sighed. This was it. All in.

 

“I’ll go back to Amity, finish treatment,” I said. She stared at me.

“What, you mean rehab?” she said.

 

“Yeah,” I said, “I mean, I had a great start there. And I met some really important people, and I can meet more if I go back. I just- I know that the drinking is such a huge source of trouble for us, for-for me, and I want it to stop. I don’t want to be that guy you had to take to the hospital today.”

She looked at me from far away. She was on the lighthouse deck, and I was out in the middle of the ocean, looking back but not seeing anything.

“It’s just not that easy, Terry,” she said, “It’s so much bigger than the drinking. I’m sorry but I just can’t do it.” She shut the door.

I stood on her porch and swayed in the evening wind. Bones aching. Head swelling. Suddenly, the door swung back open. She slowly stepped onto the porch and handed me an orange pill bottle. My meds.

“Went and dug them out when I found you,” she said. “Right,” I said, “Thanks.”

“Take care, T,” she said, shutting the door.

 

I put the pills in my pocket and walked back towards the bus stop.

 

“Don’t sweat it, pal,” Horace said, “You gave it a shot. If a broad isn’t gonna go for it when you’re on Defcon Five like us, it’s time to pull the plug!”

“He’s always listening, T,” Mary Frances said, “especially now. Prayer is free! It’s

 

never too late to be born anew.”

 

“Forget that, let’s party!” Horace said. “There’s a seven eleven right up the street. Let’s get some forties and hit the glory holes! You know that’s a good time, T!”

“Yeah,” I said, “Let’s do that.”

 

 

 

I walked down the empty city sidewalks, tinted yellow and orange with night light and evening blue, all swirling together with the hard bricked monoliths, metallic fortresses and corporate castles. I felt my body work again. I felt muscles suddenly spring back to life. I

sipped my forty ounce of malt liquor. Some swill with a bear on the label. I sighed with satisfaction. I stopped at a stop light and pulled out my meds.

“What are you thinkin’ here, boss?” Horace asked. “Thinkin’…I don’t know…just thinkin’ I guess,” I said.

“We’ve been down that road, T,” Mary Frances said, “it’s really not for us. Plus, you know it will only bring him back.

“You think he wants to see that guy?” Horace scoffed,” After what he put him through? The boss-man here isn’t one for lookin’ back. He’s got his eyes on this prize. Aint that right, T?”

“No,” I said.

 

“No?” they said in unison.

 

“No,” I repeated. “He’s already back. Been here since I got out of the hospital.”

 

“You gotta be kidding me,” Horace said.

 

“T,” said Mary Frances, “you can’t be serious! He’s not good for you! He’s the worst of all of us!”

“He’s me,” I said.

 

“No, no, no,” Horace corrected, “he’s you before.”

 

“Me before?” I asked, “Before what? Before you came along?”

 

“He’s the weak you,” said Horace, “the one who was sleeping on Hollywood Boulevard in a studio apartment. Wasting his life away like he’s just another L.A. douchebag with a story to tell. He was bullshit. You would never have made money without us. Star Catchers? When The River Was Young? The Murdered Man? Any of those ringin’ a bell, T? Maybe not, because we

were blasted out of our minds for so long that we just sailed right through the shit! We’re Hollywood, brother. For life!”

“You made it because of God, and you know it, T,” Mary Frances said, “if we pray now, we can still save you. I’ll start. Hail Mary, Full of Grace, Hollow be Thy Name…”

I sighed and smiled. I opened the bottle and took out a pill, swallowing a sip of Big Bear. I felt the moon’s love shine down, the city’s discordant harmony sucking me up and spitting me out at the same time. I felt the sleeping birds and squirrels, the couples loving all around me, the babies sleeping, the cars crashing. All of this life that I had forgotten about when I went inside myself was suddenly right in front of me. I walked in cherished silence back towards home.