Suicide Squeeze

46

Conner awoke on cool, clean sheets. His shirt and shoes off, gauze and surgical tape on his slashed forearm. He lifted his head, looked around the room. The Kevlar vest and Batman utility belt sat on the chair in the corner, the metal attaché case leaned against a leg of the chair. His entire body ached.

He remembered. Tyranny’s house. It must be a guest room. Conner took in his surroundings, dark wood paneling, plaid bedcovers. A wooden duck on the nightstand. Some kind of L.L. Bean nightmare.

The hazy early-morning light seeped in through the open drapes. Barely after dawn. Clouds on the horizon, thunderstorms later in the afternoon, Conner predicted. Good. Maybe they’d cool things off.

Tyranny entered the room, sat on the side of the bed, put a hand on Conner’s good arm. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not dying in my lap, you asshole. I really didn’t need a funeral with me all sobbing and snotty and red-eyed. Anyway, you were mostly just shocked and exhausted. The cut on your arm isn’t very deep. Dan wanted to call an ambulance. Or the police.”

“You stopped him?”

She nodded.

“Thanks.” Conner looked at her fingernails, her lips. “It wasn’t a dream then.”

“Huh?”

“I dreamed you were a zombie,” Conner said. “Like in Dawn of the Dead.”

“Fuck you.” But there wasn’t much venom in it. She lightly stroked his bandage. “Conner, what happened? I saw something about terrorists on TV.”

He shook his head. “I don’t have anything to do with terrorists. I… well, I was in on this deal. The details aren’t important.” He sat up in bed, winced at his protesting muscles. “I’m going to have some money.” Without Rocky or Becker, Conner wasn’t sure how he’d go about selling the card. “I need to work out the particulars, but I thought… I know you were mad at me before, but-”

“Would you stop acting like money is such a big deal. Just shut up about it.”

“Why don’t you love me?”

“Idiot!” Tyranny balled her little fists, beat the mattress. “It took you ten seconds to open your mouth and ruin it.”

A long silence.

“So I’m just… I’m just…” Conner’s voice shook. He was having trouble keeping it together. “I’m just another one of your…”

She shook her head, closed her eyes so tight. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. In the pool house, I thought…” She exhaled, shoulders and arms going limp, all the coiled anger in her leaking out in a sad puff of defeat. “Did I tell you about when I went to the Louvre in Paris?”

“With Dan?”

“No,” she snapped. “I mean yes, we went together, but that’s not the point. Will you listen and shut the fuck up?”

Conner shut the fuck up.

“I went to see The Mona Lisa. Have you seen it? I mean on television or in a book, how they have it displayed?” She knew he hadn’t traveled.

“I know the picture. Not anything else.”

“It’s behind glass,” Tyranny said. “And you have to stand way back behind a velvet rope to see it. I mean, here I am, this artist, right? And there’s a giant museum full of a million different paintings, no velvet rope, no glass. I could get right up close and check out the brushstrokes. But all I want to do is stand twenty feet away and look at The Mona Lisa. I stood there for over an hour, just thinking, Wow that’s the famous painting.

“That’s how you were to me, Conner,” Tyranny said. “Special. Behind the protective glass. If I just kept our relationship at a certain level, then it wouldn’t be ruined. That’s what I thought. Funny, isn’t it? You were my longest-running act of restraint, and I blew it. I didn’t want to fuck you and make you part of my sickness. I wanted you separate from that. I messed it up.”

“You didn’t mess it up,” Conner said. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. In my mind, it’s all messed up and ruined, and my mind is where the problem is. No, Conner, we’re broken. I broke us. And the only thing that can fix us-if we can be fixed-is time and distance. I have to put you back behind the glass and the velvet rope. And that’s the best I can explain it. If you still can’t understand or won’t understand, then I can only say please please please trust that I know what’s best for myself.”

“Tell me what Dan does. I’ll do the same thing. I won’t ask questions. I’ll stay out of your business.”

“No. You’ll end up hating me. Or you’ll drive me crazy, and I’ll kill you.”

Conner shook his head, eyes fogging. “Then that’s it. I’m just supposed to understand. I’m just supposed to go away.”

Tyranny nodded once slowly, watching with big, deep eyes. “You’re just supposed to go away.”

Conner stood, reached for his clothes. “I have to get out of here.”

“Are you okay? Your arm.”

“I don’t even feel it,” Conner said. He put on his shirt, grabbed the vest and the belt, looked around the room for anything else. He didn’t want to leave anything behind. He resolved in that instant to sail away on the Jenny, become a wandering boat bum, port to port, hugging the coast around the Gulf and down to the Keys, tie up at some island and become a hermit.

Or Mexico. Isn’t that where rogues went to start over? Maybe Conner would grow a moustache, take up with a sixteen-year-old Mexican girl. Drink tequila and brood, and the locals would know him as the crazy gringo with secrets. There was a whole world of tragic possibilities to choose from, and Conner wanted to get started.

I’m so goddamned dramatic.

Conner opened the attaché case, took out the DiMaggio card, and put it in his pocket. It fit snugly, the plastic case making an awkward bulge. He dropped the attaché case. “I’ll leave that here, if you don’t mind. I’m tired of lugging it around.”

Tyranny didn’t say anything, looked at her toes.

Conner left the bedroom without another word. She followed him down the stairs, out the front door to the yellow Lincoln.

“Conner.”

He ignored her, opened the car door, threw the vest and belt into the backseat.

“Conner, don’t be angry.” She put her hand on his back.

He flinched from her. “Don’t touch me. I hate you. You suck, and you’re ugly.”

“Okay,” Tyranny said. “You can say that if you need to.”

“Go to hell.” He got behind the wheel, cranked the engine.

It was sinking in now, everything she’d said. Conner could not do anything, say anything, be anything that would make any difference. That he could have so little control over something so important to him hit him harder than anything else that had happened. Even Otis’s death. Conner felt feeble and stupid and small. Nothing he’d done had changed anything about him.

He looked at Tyranny, then over her shoulder at the house. The blinds pried apart in an upstairs window, Professor Dan watching the big breakup scene.

“I love you,” Tyranny said. “I just want you to know that. You have to go away, but I love you.”

Conner pulled the door closed, drove away. Just like Joe DiMaggio, Conner thought, the ballplayer in love with the mysterious woman. He tried to convince himself that somewhere inside Tyranny was a persona it was okay for him to love. Or maybe he only loved the woman he thought she was. But he couldn’t convince himself, knew it simply wasn’t true. He was in love with all of her, the warped and wretched parts too, the funny little buttons in her brain that needed pressing over and over again so she could feel whatever it was she needed to feel. And anyway, Conner made for a pretty cheap DiMaggio.

The long curves of Scenic Highway unfolded before him, the morning sun muted by the rolling gray, the sky promising a trademark Florida thunderstorm. It would build and build until the sky opened and drowned everything, not out of malice, not spite, but only because the sky would be too full to hold it all.

But Conner didn’t see the sky. His eyes felt so hot. He sniffed, wiped his nose on the bottom of his shirt. What in God’s ugly world would make the pain in his chest go away?