Now who’s the psycho? Mood walls? I really should call Dr. Moriarty and fill him in on some of my new theories.
I abandon the car on a yellow line and take the steps two at a time, catching a break when my ex-neighbor old Mr. Hong shuffles out the front door dragging his shopping buggy on a cord trailing between his bowed legs, pulling tight against an area where I would not want a cord to be.
“Mr. Hong,” I say, reflexively courteous.
“My balls are smarting,” he says to me crossly. “Like they’re tied in knots.”
The first hundred times he said this to me, I pointed out the cord dividing his nethers. Now I just make shit up.
“It’s the New Jersey damp,” I say, not putting too much effort into it. “Notoriously bad for balls.”
Hong grunts, produces a peach from somewhere, stuffs the entire fruit into his mouth and begins the daily race to gum the peach into a paste before it chokes him. I slip past into the brownstone lobby thinking, We are all mad here.
Sofia’s place is on the third floor and I take great bounds up the stairway, shouldering the wall on each turn rather than slow down. I knock a dent in the sheetrock on the second floor and it occurs to me that I will have to pay for that at some point, which bothers me, because a person should get a pass when he is trying to save someone’s life for Christ’s sake.
The banister bears the brunt of my shoulder charge on the final turn and I make splinters of the railings, which crack loud enough to warn any intruder that I am on the way. Even a deaf intruder could feel the vibration of my thundering approach.
What happened to stealth? I was a specialist once upon a time.
No time for softly softly. My Celtic sixth sense that only predicts bad stuff is bubbling in my gut. It’s like a spider sense that brings on the shits, which would be a very bad look for Peter Parker, swinging over Manhattan.
Bad things have happened. I’m too late.
This notion is confirmed by Sofia’s door, which yawns open, still creaking, so I’m seconds late. Seconds.
Oh Sofia, darlin’, I think, fearing the worst, what other way is there to fear? I did not protect you. I could not save you to be my own.
If she is dead I will hunt down that husband of hers and take my time with him, I promise myself. Maybe sell the video to Citizen Pain.
I barrel inside, my momentum carrying me across the room, totally off balance.
Stupid amateur. Stupid.
First thing my senses pick up is the tacky resistance as my soles leave the floor. My life is a trail of bloody footprints so I know what’s sticking to my boots. I look anyway to confirm it, and there is a lattice of blood following the grout patterns in the floor tiles, forming an irregular triangle. At the tip is a woman’s head, cracked open by a blow, hair fanned like a halo. Sofia lies awkwardly, the quirky spirit bludgeoned out of her.
I forget everything I ever learned about violent situations. I do not compartmentalize. I do not defer my grief. Instead I behave like a civilian who has had the blindfold of civilization whipped off to reveal a first look at the ugliness of the world.
I collapse from the inside out, tumbling forward as my brain cuts off motor commands. I fall to the floor cursing the men responsible for this brutality. I curse the banker at the off-ramp. Mike Madden, Zeb, Freckles. All those guys. A pox on their heads and a plague on their families.
All bullshit of course. I’m the one who brought this on poor deluded Sofia. I kissed her on the lips and lit her up for the bogeymen.
So I curse myself and my bloodstained hands. I curse my tangent-driven mind that cannot seem to focus in even the most urgent circumstances. I cry for everything that has ever happened. The line of bodies that dog me from the past all the way back to the tangled pile of limbs inside a crushed car in Dublin.
I am a rotten fruit with barely a scrap of untainted meat left. One more bite and I am lost.
I lie there on the floor, head half under the settee watching the sunlight draw laser lines in the blood pattern, when Sofia’s hand twitches and I notice the nails bitten to the quick.
Sofia doesn’t bite her nails anymore. She is proud of her painted talons. She likes to purr like a cat and scratch the air.
Not Sofia? Not dead?
This is too much for me. I feel dull and stupid, and left out of the joke.
I roll to my knees.
“Sofia?” I croak.
And she comes out of the kitchen, all in black, plenty of pockets, military style.
Janet Jackson. Rhythm Nation.
“Hey, baby,” she says, a hammer dangling from her fingers, a ribbon of bloody scalp in its claw. “You were right. Someone came a-looking for you, but I did what I had to do. No gun necessary.”
Who is on the floor? Who is nearly dead?
I need answers to fill this awful vacuum.
Crawling seems achievable. I crawl across the floor, dragging my knees through the darkening blood and with infinite care, turn the woman’s head and gaze upon her face.
I have finally gone mad.
It was only a matter of time. I should pay attention now, because Simon is going to want details when we go over this in therapy.
The woman is my mother.
Dead these twenty-five years.
My sweet mom. Looking not a day older.
“Mom?”
I hear the word and I know it came from my mouth but I am a little out of body right now. Shell shocked on seashells by the seashore on Blackrock beach, where we used to walk.
The woman’s eyes flutter open and she coughs a lungful of booze fumes in my eyes, scalding them.
“Danny,” she says like we talked yesterday. “Something happened to my head. I forgot again.”
My long-term memory fizzles into life and I get it in a jumbled rush of memories: ice picks, chaste good-night kisses, boob lectures.
Not my mother. Her baby sister, with enough of a resemblance to fool my frazzled brain.
Clearly not your mother, idiot.
Evelyn Costello reaches up a hand; her nail stubs are painted blood red. No, not painted. It’s real blood, her own.
“Danny. I found you. You treating girls with respect, Danny?”
Her eyes flicker and she is gone again, borne off by head trauma.
Just as well. I need to think.
I feel Sofia behind me. “Who is this, Carmine? You got some whore stashed away? Is that it?”
So I am Carmine again. Figures.
There’s a lot of blood on the floor.
“No, Sofia. This is not some whore, this is my aunt.”
Sofia sniffs like this is such a crock. Who can blame her? Evelyn is only a few years older than me.
“Aunt? Really, baby?”
It’s not her fault. Sofia was only doing what I told her to do, but suddenly I’m angry.
I jump to my feet and snatch the hammer. “Yeah, really. You brained my aunt.”
Sofia knows crazy when she sees it and backs off.
“Sorry,” And she cocks a hip and salutes. “Just following orders, Carmine.”
Dan-Carmine. Carmine-Dan.
Maybe I am Carmine. How hard could it be?
This is all too labyrinthine. There are too many strands for me to follow. Soldiering was simple:
You have one enemy.
His face will be darker than yours and he will be wearing desert shit. Not camo gear, genuine desert shit. Goatskin, rough scarves, vintage Levis.
Find your enemy.
Kill your enemy.
But here and now, my enemies are multitude and look all the bloody same. Mike, Freckles, Shea, KFC, Krieger and Fortz.
I need a friend. Someone who can out-sneaky the sneakers. A person with paranoia in his veins who owes me his life.
This apartment is too bright. Everything seems bleached. How does that happen with small windows?