Tampa

chapter fifteen

That mid-October in central Florida held on to the distant heat of a diluted summer. Dusk began its onset preternaturally early, blackening the windows with menacing speed each evening. Boyd and I would begin having sex without the lights on and end in total darkness, barely able to see one another’s faces. He increasingly liked to do it to violent movies—tommy guns, stabbings, the sounds of splatter punctuating our thrusts. Once it grew dark, the glow of the small television in Jack’s bedroom had an eerie, otherworldly feel, almost too real, as if we weren’t watching a movie at all but actual footage of a live murder.

That evening my face was flat upon the bed, my ass in the air, Boyd behind me staring at the TV screen. There was a sudden pause when Boyd stopped pushing, but then he continued, slowly, as though he’d somehow forgotten what we were doing and how to proceed; had he stopped completely I would’ve looked up much earlier. Who knows how long Jack had been inside the darkened room, his eyes locked with Boyd’s and Boyd still fucking me, before Jack finally emitted the primal scream that made me jump off of Boyd’s cock and the bed entirely.

Being naked and in his bedroom, I had the initial impulse to approach Jack and start rubbing his crotch, see if he might calm down when there was equal affection given to both of them. The combat-heavy sounds coming from the television, though, seemed to be escalating the tension; I grabbed the remote and put the movie on pause. But the act of stopping the movie seemed to bring Jack’s frozen shape to life: with a guttural yell, he ran toward Boyd and threw him over, punching him. Boyd still had a full and moistened erection.

I don’t believe Jack intended the full damage incurred by Boyd’s skull—it was partially the angles of geometry, partially the physics of force. The back left corner of Boyd’s head slammed into a sharp nightstand corner and produced a gash that began bleeding heavily in mere seconds; by the time Jack realized that Boyd was hurt, Jack’s hands and clothes were covered with so much slick blood that he seemed to have just emerged from inside a large animal. Boyd cowered on the floor, both hands cradling his head as he made primitive groans. Jack backed away slowly, with all the confusion of a recent amnesiac, appearing to feel as if he were the victim of a horrible trick.

It was a while before I realized Jack was talking. Through a series of incoherent stammers, he’d begun leveling the allegation that I was not only responsible for his father’s needless death, but that my motivations were selfish ones. “You didn’t let him die so we could be together.” Jack’s hand made a broad, dragging wipe across his face, leaving a vertical smear of blood. “You’re cheating on me!” Every few seconds, quick spurts of gore consistently sprayed outward from the back of Boyd’s head in a theatrical manner; it had a special-effects feel to it, as though the blood’s release was being regulated by an electronic timer. Impressively, his rigid penis hadn’t softened. He kept trying to stand but instead would merely stumble, then crawl a few more inches. A full defusion of the situation and successful cleanup now seemed unlikely. Jack’s sticky hands were gripping my wrists; soon I felt them on my shoulders and neck as well.

I knew it wasn’t the best moment for a discussion, but I felt it was important to defend myself from the weighty inaccuracy Jack was casting toward me, in front of Boyd no less, although Boyd wasn’t in the best shape to remember the conversation or be unduly influenced by Jack’s hurtful remark.

“Jack,” I responded calmly. “I am sorry your father had a heart attack.”

“All so nobody would find you out,” Jack interrupted, his hands straining against my collarbone.

But after saying this, his grip on my shoulders softened. Something important had registered in his mind, drawing open his lips and causing his eyes to grow alert and panicked.

Seconds later, Jack began to run.

I suppose I chased him. It wasn’t even until I was outside that I realized I had the knife in my hand; I must’ve picked it up in the kitchen on my way out.

Stopping in front of Jack’s mailbox, I was winded, searching both directions for a sign of where he had bolted to. When a figure approached from my left, blending into the shadows with the passive gait of an herbivore and carrying two grocery bags, it hardly registered; my peripheral vision initially classified the motion as a shrub moving in the breeze. When I did finally notice her, we were face-to-face, her eyes squinting as she struggled to recognize me in such an unexpected context. “Celeste?” Mrs. Pachenko finally gasped, her forehead lifting into a growing tower of surprise that caused her hairline to disappear. It wasn’t Jack’s bloody handprints on my chest or the knife in my hand that she noticed first at all. “You’re naked,” she finally exclaimed. Her open lips had risen above the high, pink shores of her gums, revealing a hodgepodge of unbecoming bridgework; understandably, I was loath to take my attention from the situation at hand.

“Have you seen Jack Patrick?” I asked.

Like an answer, the streetlamp directly above my head timed on. I raised my eyes up toward its bright headlight as a gathering swarm of moths whorled into a loose formation; for several moments I actually stared on in wait, convinced they were going to give me a sign: form an arrow to say which way Jack had gone, or take off en masse and lead me directly to him. When I snapped back to consciousness, other onlookers had appeared: cautious neighbors standing on porches with phones to their ears, shocked spectators pointing at me from the edges of their lawns but not venturing a single toe over the boundary of their grass. Mrs. Pachenko had dropped her grocery bags and was retreating from me slowly; I looked to the ground to see a box of unsalted soda crackers sitting upon the asphalt. Soon an elderly couple approached. The woman was carrying a sea-foam green velour zip-up housecoat in her hands.

“Dear,” she said quietly, extending the garment. “Put this on.” Beneath the direct light of the streetlamp, her floating white hair looked so transparent as to be made of steam.

“Were you attacked?” the old man asked. “Are you bleeding?” It was only then, looking down at the dried handprints Jack had left on my skin, that I thought of Boyd, his head wound hemorrhaging profusely just feet away inside the house. Was there any way not to report his medical need that wouldn’t be judged harshly later when he was discovered? I could feign shock, I decided. I glanced down at the blood and gave it a surprised look, dropped the knife as I stepped into the housecoat, which smelled faintly of talcum powder and cat food. I had the sudden urge to lift the garment up above my knees and run as fast and as far as I could make it barefoot. But the sharp call of sirens nearing our block pressed me to the snap decision that it was better to confess Boyd’s presence and imitate extensive distress.

“There’s a boy in the house who’s hurt,” I said, perhaps too quietly. Two police cars were turning the street corner, approaching us but not seeming to slow down whatsoever. I knew I should produce a look of worry or strain, but habit prevented me from forming any facial expression that might aid in the development of fine lines.

“What?” asked the old man, covering his ears against the siren’s blare. I tried to survey the face of each officer stepping out of the cars—only after being sure that neither one was Ford did my urge to sprint toward Jack’s backyard begin to settle down, though the cold, expanding feeling that soon came in its place was almost as awful. An immediate realization of loss began to spread through me and quicken; as the knife was picked up and two officers branched off to run inside the house without my telling them about Boyd or instructing them on where to go, I realized perhaps the first person to call them had not been a neighbor at all but Jack. A sense of depreciation began to shudder through my ribs like a wind: had Jack gotten his story to the police before I’d told them mine? The knife was bagged, a gloved hand pressed against my back. “We’re going to need you to step inside the vehicle and come with us,” the officer said. He looked familiar—maybe I’d seen him before at one of Ford’s work functions. I kept my head low. If they knew who I was, they weren’t mentioning it yet; the entire ride to the station was silent and I tried to be thankful for these last moments of anonymity, even if they were pretended and more for the officers’ sense of comfort than my own.

Part of me expected Ford to be there at the station—waiting, concerned. Ready to make everything go away, even if it was just for the night, while he heard my side of the story. But I was taken into the station and processed like anyone else, though perhaps with a special sort of prejudice; the officers insisted on taking a variety of photos of my naked body, most at angles where Jack’s bloody handprints were starkly visible, but others not. Under a thin veneer of business, several male officers circulated through the medical-style room where I was told to lie down on an examination table and spread my legs while flash photographs were taken of my genitals. By the time I was dressed in orange prison scrubs and led to an interrogation room, a growing terror had seized me—was it possible that I’d spend the night in jail? It was the first moment that I had a true urge to call my husband—suddenly the opulence of our sheets, the splendor of my walk-in closet with its rows of neatly hung pajama sets, seemed proper cause to forevermore deny my darker urges. But when the detectives entered holding Jack’s personal cell phone, the one whose spread-eagle photograph of me I hadn’t been able to find and delete on its SIM card, I knew I didn’t want Ford anywhere near the situation.

A rough-featured detective with a shaved head and craggish voice led me through the most serious of the allegations. “We know you’re sleeping with these kids,” he began. In between sentences he chewed a wad of gum in the left side of his mouth with a mechanical fury. “That’s a given. That’s not even up for debate. What I need to know from you is what you were doing running around the street naked with a knife while blood was gushing out of Boyd Manning’s skull.”

I was surprised at the ease with which manic tears came forth. I shook my head repeatedly before speaking, as though it was too painful to relive. “When Jack saw us together, he just went crazy.” My hands slid through my hair to grip my scalp. “He attacked Boyd and all I could see was blood everywhere. Then Jack was gone. I knew I had to run for help, to get help for Boyd.” For possibly the first time ever, I didn’t feel the dynamic advantage of beauty in my corner as I spoke—my hair was mussed and I’m sure the crying had swollen my face; the detective was looking at me as though I was some obscene spectacle of nature. I realized he was watching me talk with a curious revulsion, the same way one might watch a cow give birth.

“You weren’t running after Jack?” For several seconds, the detective’s gum chewing went into overdrive, as if to simulate the energy of a speedy chase. “According to Mr. Patrick, you were in pursuit of him with a knife.”

“No,” I proclaimed, inflecting my voice with the outraged shock of the wrongly accused. “That’s not true.” The detective kept looking down at a folder in his hand, then looking back up at me. I wondered if he had printouts of the naked photos they’d taken of me when they brought me in.

“Thing is,” said the detective, “I’ve got roughly fifteen witnesses who saw you standing frozen in the street, looking around like you were trying to find somebody. You weren’t crying out for help. But you did have a knife.”

“I only grabbed it in case Jack came back to attack us again,” I explained. “I did go out to get help but I don’t remember anything after that.” I stared down at his Styrofoam coffee cup, which had a small series of bite marks along its left edge—perhaps, I tried to assure myself, he was just as nervous as I was. “I must’ve been in shock,” I added.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He leaned back for a moment, staring at me with a badly hidden smile upon his face. It seemed like he was trying to run down the time on a secret clock I was unaware of—that if he could keep me talking for just five more minutes, I would instantly confess. “Help me understand this then,” he finally offered. “Why didn’t you use either one of the two cell phones in your purse to call 911? Or the phone in Boyd’s pants?” Instead of looking at me while he waited for an answer, the detective began cracking the joints of his fingers one by one. Clearly he thought he had me.

There was nothing to do but cover my ears and begin making a high-pitched scream. I continued until my throat gave out and the detective, shaking his head, reminded me my dramatics were being filmed, then I caught my breath and began to scream more. Soon there was a sharp knock on the door that presumably increased in urgency upon hearing my distress. I didn’t quit screaming entirely; instead I lowered the volume to a trillish shriek and waited to see who’d enter. Had Ford finally learned I was being interrogated and arrived to take me home? I resolved to bed him vigorously and without complaint the moment we got to the house; perhaps, if my sense of gratitude had not fully dissipated upon arrival, I would even fellate him—there didn’t have to be anything sexual about it. It would simply be reciprocal appreciation for his getting me out of this most uncomfortable pinch.

But it was not Ford. Instead a man wearing a suit who looked very awkward wearing a suit stood in the doorway; he had a flat-top and a straight bristly mustache, and appeared to be somewhat bowlegged. “I’m Mrs. Price’s attorney,” he called across my low wail. “This interview is over.”

With that, I closed my mouth completely.