“Sometimes they’re beautiful,” says Kelly.
We reach her apartment and she says she’ll ping me once she hears from Mook about their next appointment, that I can meet him if I show up in her place.
“I’m expecting to hear from him tonight—”
I wait to see her safely inside before leaving. Alone on her front curb—like dreams I’ve had of finding myself alone on city streets I know should be crowded. By the time a cab answers my call I’m as hungry as if I’d never eaten, the mahimahi feeling like little more than an appetizer.
“Destination?” it asks as I buckle in.
“How about some barbecue,” I tell it. “Maybe just sort by user reviews, I don’t have a specific place in mind. Take me to the highest rated—”
Back in my hotel room, Memphis Minnie ribs from a Styrofoam tray and a slice of chocolate cake in a plastic cup. I flip through the books I bought, but don’t want to stain the pages with barbecue sauce fingerprints so I loop Kelly’s commercials from her portfolio, aroused by liquor spots where she’s dripping with strawberry sauce and vodka. I scroll through her production credits, looking to link to her version of Persona—instead I find her version of Genet’s The Maids, and watch her in her mistress’s clothes, playing out the roles of domination and submission with her sister maid, the women tiptoeing toward sex and blood. Watching the women onstage, bathed in the blood of their masters, the actresses kiss each other and I think of Kelly’s wrists spritzed with lilac perfume—I could have kissed her wrists, delicate wrists. Theresa. I’ve undressed and lay huddled beneath the blankets, the room lights off but the coupon grids on the ceiling and walls bathing everything in an artificial multicolored glow. I don’t know if the coupons are real, if they’re really lighting my room, or if the coupons exist only in my Adware and the light I see is nothing but an illusion. I check the sat-connect rates and even though they’re peak right now, I accept—
Schenley Park where we walked together. Winter in Pittsburgh. Snow sits heavy on the canopy of branches and sifts down in sudden, gentle gusts. Panther Hollow Trail, creek beds dried out leaving black rivulets of mud skimmed with ice, snowfall on the stone bridges. Adjust the tabs to summer and watch the ice melt to flowing water, watch the trees thicken with dark leaves, the paths obscured by shadow. This is loss. There was never a funeral for Theresa, for anyone—just the mass cremation.
We’d lose ourselves in those long walks through the park following our meetings with Dr. Perkins and Dr. Carroll, discussing options—Lupron, Clomid, Serophene. Remembering how difficult it had been to conceive. In the summer, at home, we’d escape the swelter of our second-floor unit by walking through Shadyside until 2 a.m. or later. These were the nights she’d dream of our lost child. She wondered whether something was wrong with her—afraid to use fertility drugs because she worried about God, oddly fatalist those nights and terrified about bleeding. We’d come home in sheens of sweat and strip naked and sit on our couch drinking ice water while the box fans propped in our windows churned the humid air.
I go there now—
Through the foyer—but it’s Kelly waiting for me in our living room, the box fans pushing moist air around the room. Zhou. I wake in my hotel room in the middle of the night with a leaden ache through my chest that I wish I could grab with both hands and pull from myself.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” I pray, but I don’t know who or what I’m praying to—nothing answers my prayer, nothing ever will.
Nearing 3 a.m., Kelly pings: Brocklebank, Room 2173; shoot scheduled for 3 p.m. the day after tomorrow. Gavril called. I’m off to London, a red-eye. Ciao!
3, 9—
The victim of urban renewal, it looks like, Nob Hill looped off from the rest of the city by a ring of sheer one-way streets called the Downtown Connector—box stores lying dormant, storefronts choked off and vacant. The city’s done well retrofitting nineteenth-century architecture instead of tearing it down, but everything’s dingy and boarded up. Poor whites meander the streets, obese women in spandex herd groups of kids on leashes to dollar stores and men clutter the liquor stores and QuickCash. The AutoCab announces we’ve arrived at the Brocklebank, but the building looks nothing like the pictures online. A famous building, once—Wiki pop-ups flash Technicolor vid snippets of century-old films that were shot here, but the building’s changed, the stonework facade’s been effaced, updated with smooth white weather barrier that’s already cracked and streaked with filth. Hovering billboards advertise Pussy squirts and cum lovin’, Adult Books and More. I ask the cab to wait for me in the turnaround.
“I shouldn’t be long—”
There’s a kiosk in the lobby, but no attendant and everything’s off-line anyway. A bank of elevators with scratched metal doors and buttons with broken lights. I don’t really know what I’m doing here, I don’t really have a plan—I’m nervous… nervous to see Mook—a bit manic, toe-tapping to Bruce Hornsby and the Range over the speakers, “Mandolin Rain.” I lean on the elevator wall and force myself to breathe, to breathe, to regain myself. He’ll recognize me, I realize, but I won’t recognize him—I’ve only seen his avatar, assuming the droopy-old-man bit is an avatar. What the hell was I thinking by coming here? I should have handled this differently. When the elevator doors slide open, I pause in the second-floor hallway, figuring out what I’ll say to him—but my mind’s gone blank. Tell him Kelly sent me here? Twin vases filled with fabric flowers arranged in front of a smudged mirror. I’m moving without quite realizing that I’m moving—first the wrong way, down the wrong hallway, the unit numbers increasing, so I swing the other way and count down until I find 2173, a corner suite. A white door with gold numbers. The door’s already inched open.
“Hello?” I say, knocking, nudging it farther open. Odd odor from the room, rancid metallic. “Hello? I need to talk with you—”
No answer, so I slip inside. The fetid metal stink’s dizzying, but it’s not the smell that overwhelms me—I scream when I see him, the dead man half flopped on the sofa, his toes dangling to the carpet, blood on the ceiling and walls in sloppy looping arcs like someone’s sprayed the wall with blood from a hose. I fall. Backward, against a television and knock it from the stand. Screaming. Or I must have wanted to scream, but the stink of blood fills my mouth like a filmy coating when I scream so I choke it off. Mook—here he was, the legs in trousers, the head scalped, the face wearing a veil of blood, the crown of his hair a few feet away on one of the throw pillows as if he’d sat up from a nap and left it there. My Adware’s flashing a red strobe, attempting to call 911 but I keep overriding the emergency settings, the software scanning nearby buildings for an AED, flashing directional vids for performing CPR, overlaying the dead body with bright white medical graphics, pointing out exactly where I should lay my hands and push. Chest compressions, breathing. Check for breath. I shut it off, shut everything off. I shut the door and set the chain and dead bolts and slump quivering to the carpet, thinking.
Ping Kelly, the police? No, no—keep quiet. I’ve never seen a corpse before, not in reality, not like this. Ten or fifteen minutes or more before regaining some sense, before my breathing evens, even though my heart’s still pounding like a rabbit’s heart. This was his studio—this suite, every piece of furniture cleared out except a sofa and the television. There’s a kitchen, a bedroom off the main hall. The rest of the space is white, blood-spattered now, with an array of cameras that have been toppled over and broken apart. There’s a green screen setup and a white stage, the stage set with buckets and clotheslines and fabric that’s been dyed purple hanging to dry—my God, replacing the trace of Albion in Peyton’s apartment, that first trace I’d found. Opening the window, I feel like I’ll get drunk on the fresh air—I throw up on the balcony and spend another few minutes with dry heaves before I bring myself to look again at the body. Whoever did this had attacked his face—the face is zebra striped in blood and cuts, like he’d been hacked at with a flurry of crisscrossed razor blade swipes. The neck was gashed open and dug out, the head nearly decapitated. So much blood, Christ, so much blood, the comforters sopped like wet paper towels, the carpet squishy. His hands are cut off at the wrists. Sawed off, but the hands are still folded on his lap. Like Twiggy’s body—Timothy did this. I try to avoid the blood but it’s already on me—my pants, my shoes. The top of Mook’s head has been removed—the top of the skull’s been cut open and the brains scooped out. The brain is smeared across the armrest, at least I think this is the brain—the Adware gone. The eyes have been cut apart, the retinal lenses sliced out.