Do No Harm

Chapter 17

Clyde walked with his head set low on his neck, as though he could retract it within his body. Corduroy hat blocking his eyes, hands shoved into his pockets, loose shoelaces trailing from his dirty white Adidas sneakers, he wandered the streets of Venice aimlessly. A clown with a large red banana of a smile walked past, trailing a beer cooler with MR. FUNFACE lettered on the side in bottlecaps. He looked pissed off.

Two young girls walked by, shuffling and dancing to Walkmans, metal protruding from their pierced brown bellies like the tips of fish hooks. They were quickly gone, the tinny blare of their muffled music floating away with them. The wheels of the clown's cooler hiccuped across sidewalk cracks, a dissonant night song.

Fluttering window curtains, sleeping drunks, cars with steaming windows-the streets were empty but alive, their inhabitants withdrawn like creatures of the woods. Clyde walked alone, casting a broad shadow, the asphalt slick with ocean film underfoot. A smell came off his warm flesh-not a typical body odor, but something unpleasant and stagnant, something backed up in his pores.

A car drove by and Clyde caught his reflection in the flash of reflected light from an apartment window-a wide man with red cheeks and a bowling ball of a head. He stiffened. The night drew itself around his shoulders like an icy shawl. He walked for a few blocks, the muscles of his face relaxing by degrees, and then he sat on an empty porch and wept. His weeping was vehement and prolonged. He pushed his balled hands hard into his eyes until his knuckles ground the bone of the sockets.

The breeze cooled his cheeks quickly. Removing his hat, he worked the bill until it was curved in a loose U. It fit more snugly, protecting the sides of his eyes.

A pair of red pumps appeared on the sidewalk in front of him. The toenails, painted pink, struck an unpleasing contrast. "Hey, honey-honey. You look lonely."

"Not lonely." His voice was still thick with mucus from crying.

"What, baby? Don't you be all mumbling at me."

"I'm not lonely."

"Why don't you look on up here at me? See what I can lay on that big strong body of yours. I said look on up here. Ain't nothin' down there on the sidewalk."

She crouched, legs bending wide, the two wings of a butterfly. She was not wearing panties. Natural, sagging breasts hoisted up in a pink tube top. "See anything you like?"

"Not lonely."

"Let's go for a walk. Last chance for the Tuesday night special."

He ducked his head down into his arms, hiding.

The legs straightened. "Shit, fool." She knocked his hat off and he raised his arm quickly, like a celebrity ducking photographers. His thick fingers scrabbled over the pavement for his hat. She threw her head back when she laughed, one leg locked, one swaying at the knee, her fists resting on cocked hips.

Clyde grabbed the hat and pulled it on roughly, not bothering to straighten it. Her laughter followed him up the street like a cluster of winged insects. He walked with his shoulders hunched, his head lowered. His mouth was twisted up as if his self-loathing had a taste. The fingers and thumb of his left hand slid against each other, rubbing and flicking, as though something were coating them that he needed to rub off. As he put a few blocks between himself and the woman, his posture grew more erect, his stride more emboldened. His feet carried him toward home.

A building had been torn down on his block, the scorched skeleton of a Chevy sitting up on blocks in the weed and rubble. Clyde removed a hidden pack of Marlboros from beneath the hood and lit two cigarettes, which he smoked at the same time. Someone had placed a stack of weekly newspapers over the springs where the driver's seat used to be, and he sat on them, placing his hands on the broken wheel. Smoke wreathed his head, catching on the pockmarks of his cheeks. His pupils jerked a few times, horizontally.

The run-down two-story house visible through the cracked windshield was now a home for retarded adults. A measly row of browning snapdragons lined one side of the sagging porch. He waited and watched the large upstairs windows, most of them illuminated with night lights, for signs of life. Last week, he had seen two of the residents grappling on a bed in what he had first mistaken for a bout of violence. Over the months, he had seen many strange things in the house for retarded adults. His insomnia had left him with so many more hours to fill, each day a long, rambling journey to the next.

He pulled his second-rate money clip from his pocket and set it on the dash so he could admire it. The wad consisted mostly of wrinkled singles. He smoked the cigarettes down until they burned his fingers, then stubbed them out in the glove box. Closing his eyes, he murmured to himself, "Three, two, one. Three, two, one."

When he opened his eyes, a light was on in one of the upstairs rooms. A moment later, a back door opened and a heavy woman in her thirties walked out into the side yard. She wore a pink jumpsuit with a puffy bunny sewn on the front, and open-backed slippers. She tried to whistle but could not. Red cheeks, half-mast eyes, and a messy fountain of hair protruding from a flower-emblazoned scrunchy gave her the appearance of an overgrown child. When she stepped off the porch, a motion-sensor lamp cast a small cone of light on the ground. Elbows locked, she clapped her hands softly, still trying to whistle, though only a wet rushing noise issued from her lips.

A scraggly dog, ribs showing through a coarse gray coat, poked his nose around the far corner of the building. She waved to him and clapped again, stiff-armed. The dog moved toward her in a limping trot.

The dog drew nearer, sat, and growled, showing off a surprisingly healthy collection of teeth. The woman dug in her pocket, the cotton fabric of her pants pushing out in the imprint of her hand, and pulled out a fistful of moist tuna. A dollop fell from one of the spaces between her fingers, and the dog slurped it off the ground, tongue moving like a pink slug across the ground.

The woman crouched and the dog scurried back, teeth bared again.

"Um on," she said. "Um naw gonna urt you."

She spread her hand wide, revealing a mashed lump of tuna, and the dog tentatively approached, body coiled to spring back. He took the remaining tuna off the ground first, then moved cautiously to her hand, nose twitching. Then something in the dog gave way, and he docilely lowered the pointed tip of his snout into her hand. She giggled as his tongue played across her hand, almost squealing as he licked it clean.

The dog tensed and flashed back around the building when the car door slammed. She looked up at Clyde's approach. "Uht are you doing?" He drew nearer, and the dim porch light fell across his face. "Oh. It's you."

Her almost perfectly round eyes seemed pushed into the soft flesh of her face like buttons. Her cheeks, a raw red, crowded her mouth with folds. Another bunny decorated her thigh, smiling with white sequined teeth.

"Hey, honey-honey," he said. He pulled the thin blade from the side of his money clip, then flicked it shut with a deliberately casual gesture.

"Ello." She glanced nervously in the direction the dog had disappeared. "Uhr not onna ell em about my dog, are you?"

Four metal numbers nailed into the wall announced the house's address: 1711. He pried off one of the 1s with his blade, pocketed it, and turned back to the woman. "You look lonely," he said.

"You never um up ere. You ormaly ust sit in your ar."

"Not tonight." He crouched, found a stick, and dug its pointed tip into the dirt. "I want to go for a walk."

"I an't. I'm not suppose ta be out ere." The stars flickered overhead like winking diamonds. "I unt ant to miss orning bed check. Rhonda ill et angry."

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll have you back by then."

Her voice came high and pleading. "Uhr not onna ell em about my dog?"

He scratched his cheek, his uncut nails drawing blood from one of his zits. "Not if you come with me."

"Ee-yeew," she said, waving an arm in windshield-wiper sweeps in front of her nose. Clyde closed the door behind her and locked it.

"It doesn't smell," he said.

"It ure does."

He grabbed her and pinned her against the door. His fingers dug into her soft shoulders. "On't," she said. She stared at him. He blinked twice and looked away.

He walked a slow, sweeping circle around his apartment, stepping over the trash and clothes, then charged her and pressed his open mouth violently against hers. Her mouth was warm and dry, and surprisingly not sour from sleep. His eyes were squeezed shut, a defensive move for when she clawed at his face.

Instead, she kissed him back, her thick tongue making deep spirals in his mouth.

He pushed off her and wiped his mouth. "What're you doing?"

"Issing you. Unt you ant to iss me?"

Clyde's eyes went to the floor, his lips moving in a murmur. She stepped forward and put a hand under his chin, raising his head. He spun her and seized her around the waist from behind, shuffle-walking her to the bed. He bent her over, and she grunted when her elbows jarred against the mattress. Her jumpsuit bottoms came down easily, the elastic stretching to accommodate her wide rear end. He pulled them off roughly, and her slippers came with them. He fought her huge beige panties down to the crooks of her knees. She gave surprisingly little resistance.

He mounted her from behind, pushing and laboring through a panic sweat as the sequined bunny looked on from the pink puddle of cotton on the floor. After a few strokes, she responded with guttural noises, and he was alarmed and dismayed to realize they were colored with pleasure. He imitated them, drowning them out, pretending they were grunts of fear. His imagination could only stretch so far.

Limp and defeated, he climbed off her. They were both slick with sweat and unsatisfied. She sank down, flat on her stomach. She did not look at him. "Are you onna ell em about my dog?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

She cried softly into a stained pillow. He sat and stared at the floor. Her quiet weeping went on steadily.

He reached under his bed and pulled out an old shoebox. The rubber bands around it had grown brittle, and one snapped as he pulled it off. He nudged her. She did not look up. He nudged her again, and she rolled to her side, face swollen and ugly.

He handed her the shoebox. Sniffling, she slid to the edge of the bed and sat with the box across her lap, staring down at it.

He studied the half-moon of grit rimming his overgrown thumbnail. "Open it."

She removed the lid, her head jerking back slightly at the odor. "Wow," she said. Reaching in, she removed a white seagull's wing, balancing it on her open palms like a crystal plate. It had been severed at the shoulder, and the scapular feathers were stained black with blood.

Clyde took it from her gently and spread it, the primary feathers fanning wide. She reached over and felt the longest feather, her thumb tracing its lines. She tugged on the wing, and he relinquished it to her. Her tears dried as she spread the wing, then contracted it, spread and contracted.

She did not seem to notice when he rose from the bed. He opened the footlocker and removed a container of DrainEze and a Pyrex beaker. Alkali filled the beaker quickly when he poured, the white gradation numerals outlined clearly against the blue liquid.

He put the DrainEze container back in the footlocker and closed it. The full beaker sat alone on the table. He stood beside it like a stern patriarch in a family portrait, knuckles pressed to the scarred wood. She did not look up from the wing. "It's eautiful," she said.

Clyde picked up the beaker and set it back down with a small thump. Still, she did not look up. She was playing with the wing and smiling.

The mattress bounced her up a bit when he sat beside her. "You need to go," he said.

Fingers working through the soft feathers. "Huh?"

"You need to go. If you go now, I won't tell anyone about your dog."

Her eyes narrowed-she had forgotten about the dog. She set the wing gently back in the shoebox and rose, her long jumpsuit top dangling over her thighs like a dress. She pulled up her panties, then yanked on her pants, forcing her legs through without pointing her toes.

Clyde held his sweating head in his hands. "Go," he said. "Go."

She paused beside the table, rising up on her tiptoes to peer into the Pyrex beaker, though it was clear. "Uht is this?" she asked. "It's pretty. Pretty blue."

He rubbed his temples, rubbed them hard. "Taste it," he said.

Tentatively, she dipped a fingertip into the liquid. It colored the tip of her print like a blue condom. She stared at it for a moment. "Ow," she said, shaking her hand. "Ow." When she twirled her finger in the fabric of her top, it left a blue stain on the bunny's cheek. "Ow," she said. She stuck her finger in her mouth, made a face, and spit onto the floor. She gagged and drooled a little.

"Go," he said. His fingers dug through his tufts of hair, gathering them.

"I on't like that," she said. She spit again.

He did not look up at the sound of the closing door, though his fists tightened around handfuls of hair.

"Go," he said.