A Season for the Dead

Thirty-Six

She was sleeping. It made Gino Fosse feel odd. She’d made love to him on and off for two hours, never asking what he wanted, always knowing somehow. Irena was now curled next to him on the cheap, hard bed. With her mouth half open she looked younger, almost a child. The red and blue neon signs outside the window flashed repeatedly and cast lurid beams across her head. He touched the marks they made. She had soft, clean hair. It was fragrant, noticeable even amid the smells of sweat and sex that filled the room.

He’d never slept with a woman before, not like this. He’d not known what it was like to close your eyes and find them still there when you woke up. It was unreal somehow, like a scene from some dream that would be shaken from his head in an instant. Then she stirred, her eyes opened, she saw him and smiled.

Unasked, Irena leaned up to his face and kissed him softly on the lips.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“Why?”

“Acting like this. Like we’re… together or something.”

She touched his dark hair, let her fingers curl against his cheek.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You’re just a hooker. And I’m just… nothing.”

Her lips formed a pout and he was sure now: She was no more than seventeen or eighteen. “Doesn’t mean you can’t love someone, does it? Where’s it say that?”

Somewhere, he thought. In the books they wrote. It didn’t come from God. Even the old God, the cruel, hard one, understood the imperfections in the clay He’d once shaped. They were part of the journey each individual had to take, one that was unavoidable, though so many people tried to ignore it happened at all. She was right there: There was nothing to say either of them should be denied a thing.

“How much money have you got?” she asked.

“Why?”

“We could go. We could get out of this hole. We could go to the coast, Gino. Someone told me it was nice there. All clean and fresh and none of this crap to ruin us.”

He found himself laughing. “You are crazy. And what do we do when we get there?”

“Screw.”

The neon painted its colors on her hair again. He couldn’t stop himself laughing again. “And then?”

Her small, perfect shoulders shrugged. She grinned this time. He didn’t mind the bad teeth, he decided. “Whatever. We just roll, Gino. We just take it as it comes… and roll.”

He thought about it. They gave her to him. She knew their faces. She would receive a visit from the police sometime. It wasn’t difficult to guess what their solution would be.

“I never ran anywhere before. I never had that option.”

Her face lit up with surprise. “You mean, you just do as you’re told?”

“These are big people, Irena. I’m just so small.”

Her hand moved stealthily and took hold of his penis. It lay in her fingers, rising, hardening. “I wouldn’t say that.” Her fingers moved. “Let’s do it, Gino. Let’s go. Anywhere.”

He felt his breath begin to catch. He wondered how many times they had made love. His head felt fuzzy, unfocused.

The phone rang. Gino Fosse pushed her away from him and turned to get it. She looked at the sheets sulkily as he spoke. It took a good three minutes. Someone was telling him what to do.

“Got to go,” he told her when the call ended. He started putting on his clothes. Then he looked in one of the bags he’d brought, a big one. She’d taken a peek when he was in the bathroom, wondering if there was money there. It was just junk. Theatrical makeup. Stage props. Crazy stuff. And something at the bottom. Something gray and metallic she didn’t want to think about, didn’t want to see.

Gino Fosse sat down on a thin wooden chair by the neon-lit window, thinking, not taking any notice of her. Then he got up, ordered her off the bed and snatched the crumpled, stained sheet off the mattress.

She sat down on the bare divan and watched him. “We could catch a train,” she said, half pleading. “We could go anywhere. We could be in France or Spain.”

He picked up a pair of scissors and began stabbing at the sheet. When he was done he bent down and touched her hair. “But we’d still be what we are now, Irena. You can’t run away from yourself.”

“So you want me to go work some tricks while you’re out?” she asked petulantly. “Or do I sit here like some stupid girlfriend waiting on her man?”

He seemed shocked that she wanted him to stay. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some money. “Go buy some champagne. Tomorrow, I promise, will be a special day.”

Her face brightened. She was attractive, beautiful after a fashion. But she was stupid. This wasn’t about him. It was about her finding some rock she could cling to, something that could improve things a little. She kissed him on the cheek. He could smell her rotten teeth. Gino Fosse walked out into the stifling night with the bag on his arm.

The air was acrid with traffic fumes. He strolled down one of the grimy back alleys that led from the station, thinking. There were drunks and hookers and dope dealers.

And a small, dark van with a man standing by it. He was in uniform.

He looked as if he’d had a few drinks himself. Fosse walked toward the vehicle. He recognized what it was now. There was the sound of animals moving in the back. The dogcatcher still had his pole, with the noose on the end, in one hand. He held a bottle of beer in the other and waved it unsteadily in Fosse’s direction.

“What a job,” he said with a slur in his voice. “What a stupid, boring job. You know how many times I got bitten by these miserable mutts today?”

He hadn’t killed an innocent person before. But he knew now: there was no such creature. They all shared in the guilt. They all partook of the shame. It was weakness to exclude them.

The man held up three fingers. “Three times, Jesus…”

“I’m sorry,” Gino Fosse said, and took the knife from his pocket.

The blade caught the moonlight. A shaft of silver flashed in the dogcatcher’s face. Abruptly sober, he took one look at the young man in front of him, then turned and ran with a sudden turn of speed.

Fosse watched him race frantically down the street, debating whether to follow. There was a low whimper from inside the van. He peered through the barred window, open to the air at the rear. The vehicle stank of dog crap and urine. Several pairs of eyes stared back at him.

The animals growled. It was too much effort to give chase, he decided.

There were better, more profitable, avenues to pursue that evening.