Low Life

4 THE BREAK-IN

He read an article about the police suspecting Jeremy of foul play, another about him being arrested, another about the inconsistencies in his story, and finally one about his being released from custody, with no charges being filed against him, as there just wasn’t enough evidence to take to court. He was never charged with anything. He remembered Jeremy waking after five weeks in a coma (he had slept through all of May) to a police detective standing over him – the kind of guy who wore snakeskin boots and pinky rings but sniffed his fingers to see if his hands needed washing. He remembered an inquest. He remembered the strangeness of going back to work, how people didn’t look at him the same way, how he had to meet in front of several groups of people and answer questions, how several of them wanted him gone despite the fact that all charges had been dropped, how he barely managed to stay on. He remembered Samantha leaving him but coming back.

He was inextricably connected to Jeremy in some way. And now he was becoming him, becoming a man who, from the inside, he hated. He was an angry, bitter, violent man. He had a beautiful wife and a beautiful home and he wore nice clothes but he was a monster – he was a monster because he allowed the beastly thoughts that lived beneath the surface to lash out of the deep. Everyone had a low life. Not everyone let it control him.

He stood up from the microfilm reader and walked out of the library thinking about the man he’d seen in the corduroy sport coat – the man who had left the graffito on the corridor wall.

He sat in the Saab smoking a cigarette, holding it between two fingers in his shaking right hand and looking through the window at Wally’s, inside which he could see Robert and Chris and a third man eating. The third man had prematurely gray hair and was wearing a brown corduroy coat. He was eating a sandwich he had pulled from a brown paper bag.

He smoked two more cigarettes before Robert and Chris and the man in the corduroy coat left. He watched the man in the coat step out of Wally’s and light a cigarette of his own with a Zippo lighter before disappearing around a corner with his two friends at his side. Once they were gone Simon stepped from the car and went into the diner.

He looked around till he saw Babette. She was dropping some sandwiches off at a corner booth and gnawing away on her gum. After she’d dropped off the food she turned away from the booth and started bouncing toward the kitchen, where plates were being set out with prepared food.

Simon walked over to her and touched her arm and said, ‘Can I talk to you, Babette?’

‘Sure, Si—’ But then she stopped when she turned to look at him. Confusion gleamed in her eyes. ‘Uh.’ She licked her lips. ‘What – what is it?’

‘Those three guys who were sitting there – ’ he nodded toward a table a busboy was clearing off – ‘who was the guy in the corduroy coat?’

He knew what she was going to say but he had to hear it anyway.

‘Simon?’ she said.

‘Wrong,’ he said.

Though he didn’t understand what was happening, a theory was forming in the back of his mind, a theory that he’d been half-ignoring for the last three days – ever since he’d accosted Robert and asked him if he took it. This sick vertigo of repeated events had overwhelmed him again and again but he couldn’t make the events make sense – not in a world where two plus two equaled four, not in a world where distance traveled could be measured by multiplying velocity by time – so he had kept them at the back of his mind. He had kept them back there waiting for something that could make them make sense. And now a theory was forming, but it wasn’t whole. One thing he did know: he hated what he had become, he wanted his own life back – and there could only be one Simon Johnson living at the Filboyd Apartments.

Parked in front of the office building, waiting for the man in the brown corduroy coat to leave for the day, Simon smoked and watched his side-view mirrors. He saw three cop cars roll by, but none of the drivers so much as glanced in his direction.

His stomach ached. His liver hurt.

He pulled out his cigarettes and flipped open the top and counted how many he had left. Seven. He put the pack to his mouth, pinched one of the filters between his teeth, and dragged the box away. Six. He lighted his cigarette with a match. The smoke felt heavy in his lungs. He exhaled.

Two cigarettes later he saw the gray 1987 Volvo pull away from the curb and out into the street. He started his Saab and pulled out after the other car, making sure he stayed several car lengths back so that the man in the brown corduroy coat wouldn’t see him.

After a few turns they were on Wilshire, heading west.

Simon followed from as far back as he could while still keeping the rectangular tail lights in view. They drove right past the Filboyd Apartments, and then past the under-construction Ambassador Hotel, which would soon no longer be the Ambassador Hotel at all. They continued on. And then the man in the brown corduroy coat turned right and parked on a side street not far past a place fronted with a sign that read

Simon slowed down and watched the guy buzz the bell and then enter the place. Then he drove to the next light, made an illegal u-turn, and headed back toward the Filboyd Apartments. If he was right, the guy would show up there soon.

When he reached the apartment building he made another illegal u-turn. There was an empty spot across the street – right in front of the Filboyd Apartments – that he wanted to pull into. He drove just past it, and backed his way in. But as he was backing in his car hit something and he heard a yelp. He braked. He looked in his rear-view mirror and both side-view mirrors but didn’t see anything. The car behind him was still a good five feet from his bumper. He continued back and finished parking before he stepped from the vehicle. He walked around the back of the car and saw it – the stray dog with that ear like chewed-on steak fat and that white eye. It was dead, its head on the curb. There was blood streaked across his rear license plate. He hadn’t been hallucinating. Not the dog, anyway, and if not the dog, then not Müller. But now he had caught back up with the dog’s death, and so – unfortunately for the dog – had it.

‘Fuck,’ he said. He sat on his haunches and petted it and said, ‘Boy?’ just to be sure. It didn’t move. Its chest neither rose nor fell. Its tongue hung limp from its partially opened mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

It was very nearly dark out – the moon clearly visible and the sun making its descent – when he saw the man in the corduroy coat head around the corner – onto Wilshire – and walk to a pay phone. He picked up the phone, punched three numbers, talked for a couple minutes, and then hung up the phone in a hurry. He walked right past Simon in the Saab and pushed his way through the fingerprinted glass doors and into the Filboyd Apartments.

After the man was gone, Simon pushed his way out of the Saab and walked to the corner. Helmut Müller lay on the sidewalk across the street beneath an unlit streetlamp. He had no shoes on. Simon was fairly certain that the shoes were in the possession of a man with a neck tattoo.

He thought about walking straight up to his apartment and killing the man in the corduroy coat – he thought about doing it right now – but he needed a minute to think this through. He needed a minute to wrap his mind around what was happening, now that he was certain it was indeed happening.

He walked back to the Saab and got inside.

He lighted a cigarette, dragged deep, coughed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He had circled around somehow – he had become Jeremy and he’d come full circle. If he went in there, that meant what? It meant the man in the corduroy coat would kill him and put him in his bathtub; it meant he was walking into certain death – didn’t it?

Maybe it didn’t.

Jeremy had failed to kill him; didn’t that mean that he stood a better chance now that he was him? Or was—

Think this through. You’re Simon Johnson. Simon Johnson lives a quiet life in a small four-room apartment, working every day, listening to records and drinking whiskey every night. He hurts no one. He is harmless. He is a harmless nobody who would never hurt a soul. I am a harmless nobody who would never hurt a soul – I’m Simon Johnson.

I was Simon Johnson. And I could be again.

Just because Jeremy was killed when he broke into the apartment – that didn’t mean that’s the way it would happen this time. It didn’t have to happen that way this time. He was sure it didn’t.

He pushed his way out of the Saab, walked across the sidewalk, putting his hand forward to push one of the glass doors. But just before his fingers touched that cold, translucent surface he stopped and turned away – I can’t do this; I can’t fucking do this – and got back into his car.

He opened his box of cigarettes. Last one.

He stabbed his mouth with it and made a fire. He tossed the empty pack of Camel Filters out of the window and onto the sidewalk.

I can’t do this.

You have to do it.

His chest hurt and his eyes stung and his stomach felt hollow as a gourd. He looked down at his clothes – the overcoat, the green tie, the green scarf: what Shackleford had been wearing on the night of the break-in.

He laughed.

‘Fuck,’ he said. Was there anything he could have done that would have put him in a different position? He wasn’t sure. Perhaps all paths led here. Only the scenery was different.

But it didn’t have to end the same way. Just because it had happened that way once, that didn’t mean it had to happen that way again.

He smoked the rest of his cigarette slowly, and when it was gone – smoked down to the filter, which he pinched between thumb and index like a joint; smoked down till he could taste the filter itself burning – he flicked it out the window.

If he killed the man in the corduroy coat, if he performed just one more brutal act, he could finish this. He could step back into his life as Simon Johnson.

He didn’t care about whys any more. He just wanted it finished. And if he killed the man in the corduroy coat it could be – it could be finished. He could go back to his quiet life and pretend that none of this ever happened.

At the end of the day, he thought, it’s the only sane thing to do.

Then he started laughing and he couldn’t stop for a long time.

He pushed his way through the front doors and into the lobby of the Filboyd Apartments. An electricity ran through his body – and yet he felt cold.

As he walked up the stairs he reached into the inside pocket of his overcoat and pulled out the Stanley screwdriver he’d used to switch the license plates. He gripped its black and yellow handle in his fist. The plastic handle was warm from pressing against his body, but the pad of his thumb was cold against metal. As he walked up the stairs his head swam with déjà vu, with a sense that he had done this before – not once before, not twice, but dozens of times. Maybe hundreds.

But that didn’t mean it had to happen the same way again. Things could change.

He felt cold.

He reached the top of the stairs and saw a graffito.

it said in black, that‘s’ smeared on the wall above it.

‘I intend to,’ he said back. ‘I intend to take him.’

His voice sounded strange in the empty corridor.

He licked his lips and breathed loudly through his nose. He turned to face the length of the corridor. He blinked. He saw ice cubes spread out before him, saw his own breath on the air like a speech bubble in a comic book, saw icicles hanging from doorknobs. He blinked again and all that was gone. It didn’t have to happen that way. He was so cold.

His body had remembered even if he had not.

It didn’t have to happen that way again.

As he walked, a sense of vertigo swam over him and he leaned against the wall and put his forehead against the paint. It felt good. He felt sick.

He could still turn around and walk away.

No, he couldn’t.

He didn’t want that.

He had no life as Jeremy Shackleford.

He walked to the front door. He looked at it. It was painted white. There were dirty-finger smudges along the outside edge, by the doorknob.

He swallowed, looking at that door.

He breathed in and he breathed out, faster and faster, working himself up – making himself hyperventilate.

Okay, he thought.

He brought back his foot and then he kicked it forward.

The door swung inward and splinters of the doorjamb flew in every direction, scattering across the small living room’s hardwood floor.

‘I know you’re here,’ he said as he stepped into the apartment. ‘I watched you come in.’

But as he walked in, a second wave of vertigo rolled through him and he stumbled toward the kitchen, thinking he might be sick. He dropped the screwdriver on the kitchen floor and hung his face over the sink. A sick groan squeaked from his throat, but nothing came out. He hadn’t eaten anything in days. He hadn’t eaten anything since Monday and today was Wednesday. He thought it was. Of course it was. Jeremy Shackleford had broken into his apartment on a Wednesday, so today had to be Wednesday. He was missing that special on UFOs. If he failed, the man in the corduroy coat would simply go to work tomorrow with a bruised neck. He would eat lunch with his friends. He would read in the paper about Helmut Müller’s death.

He stood there for a long time, arms resting on the edge of the counter, just breathing in and breathing out, looking at the smooth white basin. He could smell rot like the breath of an animal coming from the garbage disposal.

He heard a noise from the bedroom – faint. The man would be coming soon. He couldn’t let him find him like this. He stumbled to the fuse box and swung the gray metal door open and flipped all the switches, killing the power in the apartment. That would buy him a few minutes. It would let him get himself together. He leaned against the wall, still feeling sick. Breathing in and breathing out. Collecting himself.

Okay. He could do this. This time he wouldn’t die.

It could turn out differently.

Then a sound came from the living room. He jerked and looked through the kitchen entrance. He saw a man pushing the front door shut, cutting off the forty-watt light coming in from the corridor. He was wearing green pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt.

A shiver ran through his body: that was him.

He had to do it. It didn’t have to turn out the same way it had before.

He rushed the man – screwdriver forgotten on the kitchen floor – arms outstretched, and he gripped the throat. It was warm. He could feel the Adam’s apple being crushed under his thumbs.

‘Die, you son of a bitch,’ he said, and spittle flew from his mouth.

First there was only the cold. Then the pain. A pain above his left temple like no pain he’d ever felt before. Everything was black and he couldn’t figure out why. Then he did figure it out – and opened his eyes. A white out-of-focus something was hovering over his face like a ghost. He blinked several times. He had a plastic bag over his head. He exhaled and heard the plastic shift. There was a hole in the bag, a small tear shaped like a ragged z, and he could see that someone was sitting on the edge of the tub in which he was lying. That someone turned to look at him – that someone was Simon. Prematurely gray hair, glasses, a complexion like the surface of the moon. His breath caught in his throat.

He was buried in ice. He was cold. But he thought he felt open air on his left hand. He shifted his head slightly – trying not to make a sound – and saw that, yes, his left hand was lying upon the ice. He remembered pulling the hand out to see if there was a wedding ring on it. He could thank himself for freeing that hand later – once he was himself again.

The other man must have heard him because he leaned his head in and listened.

He reached out clumsily with his left hand – he was right-handed – and grabbed a handful of hair. Then he pulled back as hard as he could, gritting his teeth, and slammed the other man’s head against the tile wall. The hollow sound of a thud filled the room and the man fell to the floor with a clacking of teeth.

He clawed his way out of the ice, groping for the man, climbing toward him, gripping for his throat.

As he fell atop the man he throttled his neck. Blood dripped from the hole in the bag covering his head, drizzled onto the other man’s face and eyes and mouth. And visions and memories filled his head. Memories that belonged to Jeremy – except they were Simon’s as well. In one memory of baptism he was Simon, in another he was Jeremy, but the memories were otherwise identical. Stealing the kite. Swimming at that public pool in Austin. Dozens of others, hundreds of others. And he knew. Something had happened in the car accident. What exactly he didn’t know – but something. Or maybe while he was in that coma. The part of him that couldn’t stand what he was broke off like a branch that was bearing too much weight. He remembered the fog that was Simon before Simon became a man: this non-existent fog. And he remembered the spells. Renting this apartment, bringing old clothes and old glasses and records here and telling Samantha he had taken them to Good Will or sold them to Amoeba Records, telling himself the same thing. He remembered creating this identity: going to Westlake and buying illegal paperwork that gave him a name and a Social Security number. And maybe he’d even planned on disappearing himself, starting anew and forgetting his ugly past, pretending he wasn’t what he was, but at some point Simon became a real person. Almost. But the universe had rules and one of those rules was that ½ plus ½ could never equal two. A part of a man might break away but it was still only a part of a man. And when he became nearly whole the universe rejected this defiance, and like a scratched record this part of his life played over and over again – because ½ plus ½ could never equal two. It could only equal one. Over and over this would play until Simon and Jeremy were one again. That was all. The universe had rules. He just hadn’t understood them.

Velocity and distance.

Time.

The other man grabbed a porcelain jar from which a bamboo plant was growing. He could feel it cold and firm though he was touching nothing but the other man’s throat. He could feel it because the other man could feel it. And he could see himself through the other man’s eyes. As everything came to the surface he experienced both lives simultaneously. It was like two mirrors facing one another: he saw himself regressing infinitely through both pairs of eyes.

The other man swung the porcelain jar at him – and this time he knew it was coming because he was swinging it at himself and he dodged to the left and the jar failed to smash into his face. It had happened before, it had smashed into his face, dozens of times before, hundreds of times, but not this time. This time was different. This time everything was coming to the surface.

As the memories continued to invade his mind, making him whole, his vision through the other pair of eyes faded – his vision through Simon’s eyes faded, went gray and out of focus and smeary at the edges. Simon had only been a small part of what he was; the part that couldn’t bear the weight; that’s why he had felt so hollow, so cold, so empty; and that what was he was again: a small part of him.

And then there was nothing beneath him – nothing but clothes laid out in the shape of a man: white T-shirt, green pajama bottoms, a pair of aviator-type glasses.

He was sitting alone on a cold tile floor.

He was breathing hard.

He sat there for a long time breathing through a pained throat. Eventually his heartbeat slowed to a near-normal rate and he thought he could risk standing. He got to his feet. Black dots swam before his eyes and he stumbled left, caught himself on a wall, pushed himself into a vertical position again, gained his balance.

He unwrapped the duct tape from his neck and pulled the plastic bag away.

He saw a glass of whiskey sitting on the counter and he drank it down. It burned but it felt good too. It warmed his middle.

He looked to his right and saw the bathtub full of ice. Then he looked at the medicine-cabinet mirror, the reflective film on the other side peeling away like sunburned skin. He looked at himself in the mirror – his scarred face, his dyed brown hair, his contact lenses, his green tie and scarf and expensive suit. His face was covered in blood. There was a long gash running across his flesh just above his left eyebrow where the flashlight had smashed into his head again and again. His nose was broken. He turned on the water and washed his face. He dried it with a towel. Despite having washed his face, blood smeared onto the towel’s fabric. He looked at himself again. There was still blood in his hair, drying it together in clumps. But his face was clean and nearly blood-free.

There I am, he thought.

He hadn’t become anything – this was what he had always been.