Blood Music (26 page)

Last night his wife had gone out, and when she came home and went to bed she had writhed in her sleep next to him. “Pat,” she had said, and, “flood,” or something like that. He had been home night after night for as long as he could stand it, night after night he had watched the moon through the window and watched her sleeping, her yellow hair splayed out on the pillow. It was mixed up now with other hair, wheat and honey and gold, as she lay on the pillow next to him he thought sometimes of how she would look with her hair all red. The whores would drain the fever like pus, maybe he wouldn't have to do it anymore and his wife could just be his wife and his memories memories only. So tonight he had gone out.

Light and dark, light and dark.
NEW JERSEY
/
NEW YORK
. Up familiar streets, tree-shaded, out into the barren light and empty warehouses of the meat-packing district.

John and Madeleine had walked the streets again, but they were no closer to knowing what they were looking for. He had a sharp nose and Asian eyes. A penchant for brunettes, a boundless rage, and a dark van. At first it had seemed that what Angel had told them was an answer; it was not an answer. Nights had come and gone and Angel hadn't called.

John sat in Madeleine's kitchen drinking coffee out of a chipped mug; tonight they had walked over by the river. They went out night after night but they were beginning to know that they would never find him. Bodies lay at irregular intervals, huddled up against walls or sprawled across the sidewalk. The homeless. They could have been dead bodies and no one would notice.

While John and Madeleine were walking a dark van turned the corner and Madeleine's step faltered. John's breath stopped until the street lamp exposed the driver's flaccid profile; while he was waiting the eternity for the van to pass into the light John thought about how far away his own car was (three blocks), and did he have the keys, was there enough gas, and he felt the blade of his knife, along his thigh, familiar now. And he got to his car in time and he chased and caught and killed the man in an instant in his mind, and then he went back to Madeleine's kitchen and drank coffee. They would never find him.

The nights since they had almost made love had not been uncomfortable. They had reached an unspoken agreement. He and Madeleine barely touched. A hand across her hair, fingers gliding over the small of her back, nothing more. And each time they said good-night he kissed her. John thought about kissing her good-night from the moment of the kiss's end until the moment of its next beginning, investing it with erotic possibilities undreamed of in the simple lay. Her mouth, her hair, her hand, held more than the thighs or breasts of any casual, complete encounter. The memory of kissing her was more real in his mind than any sex he had ever had. Her simple kisses lay tactile on his mouth for a long time. He thought of her at work, at home. Now he sat drinking coffee in her kitchen and thought of her, tangible and fragile across the counter. When they smiled at each other he invested that, too, with possibilities.

The phone rang. Madeleine and John had been sitting in companionable silence. Her kitchen was made more complete by his presence, the space expanded out to meet the walls and the windows through which the outside world leered in. There was no outside world; they smiled, and then the phone rang. Madeleine jumped comically. As she reached for the phone John caught her slopping cup; their arms brushed and she smiled rueful acknowledgment. “Dad,” she mouthed. But when she put the phone to her ear and listened she paled and said, “Hang on,” and held the receiver out to John, and her face was entirely blank.

Somebody's dead, John thought; the image of another death leapt in his mind. When he put his ear to the receiver he could not at first understand the words. There was a wind in the phone line that disembodied the voice at the other end.

“John?” A tentative, husky whisper, frightened. An invitation. A voice for whom all communication was sexual innuendo. “He's here now. The man. He's with Lucky. You hurry you can get him now.”

“Where are you calling from?”

A long pause; wind in the line. “Ah . . . I don't know. It's—it's Little West Twelfth, I think. And—no, it's Gansevoort. Sorry. And Washington. On the corner. There's a phone booth right here. He's here, man. Dark van with tape on the doors. But he won't be long with Lucky. She finishes 'em off fast.” A giggle. John realized that Angel was high as a kite; this was just another adventure, another episode in Angel's Life of Angel. “You'd better come before
he
does, Mister Man,” the voice whispered excitedly, and Angel laughed again and the phone went dead.

The whore was standing unsteadily under a streetlight, and she had dark hair. He could hear Paganini in the back of his head, very low and fast. The transaction was automatic; he didn't pay any attention to her face. Another whore tried to attract him from across the street, she pulled her skirt up to expose a startling whiteness and blackness. The dark-haired one muttered something and held her hand up absently, in half a gesture; she didn't pause to see if he had changed his mind. Her heel snagged on the step up and then she was next to him; she smelled of sweat and something else; for a moment he was somewhere else, green, and a train was roaring by overhead. My mother used to wear that too, he thought with surprise. He had no memories of his mother. A field, a train, a low-ceilinged room. He became aware of an ache in his left temple.

“You want me to unzip it?” the whore asked nastily. She slurred her words. She was looking at him. He didn't want to see her face. He resented her eyes.
Her eyes had had blood in them.
He unzipped his fly: if she'd had honey hair he would have killed her right there.

She bent her head and with her warm mouth he felt the ordinary, expected stirring. He grasped her hair at the nape of the neck, where the fragile vertebrae gave way to a pocket of soft flesh, just below the medulla oblongata. Beneath his fingers blood flowed and chemical impulses leapt across tiny synapses. The knife lay on the leather seat under his left thigh and with his left hand he caressed the handle: he could stop her breathing with a jerk of his hand.

The whore was sloppy, like a faltering clock. The music inside his head had changed, it was Handel now, a chorus of voices. The wet, dark walls of her mouth moved in uncertain counterpoint; she snagged a tooth against him. He tightened his grip on her hair and looked out the window of the van. All sensation was circumscribed by the four sides of the window. The light on the cobblestoned street, the mouth quickening, hopefully and prematurely. The fair-haired whore was smoking a cigarette across the street, next to a brightly lit telephone booth that he didn't remember having been there a moment ago. A truck drove by and honked as the whore exposed herself again. The woman snagged him on her tooth again, a quick, sharp sensation, and two people walked into the window frame. One was a black whore with long, incongruous blond hair; the mouth became larger, sensation deepened, and he closed his eyes and sank down into it.
And He shall reign forever and ever.
The knife fell through the air and he opened his eyes and suddenly he saw the whorebastard, the pouting Garbo mouth and the painted mismatched cheeks; it was standing between the whores across the street and laughing.

Madeleine rose without a word. She turned from John at the door and ran toward the car without a word. He ran, cursing his office-soft muscles and his weak lungs, which began to pulse with burning air after half a block. He had a stitch in his side and the streetlights bobbled ahead of him, out of the trees where the sidewalks were without shadow. Horatio Street, Twelfth Street, Gansevoort veering into view like an oasis in the desert of his cheap, unearned pain.

His breath was ragged and he felt decidedly unheroic. When he turned the corner he could see a crowd of people at Greenwich. He could hear discordant cries, like the cries of seabirds, and he saw two people that looked like birds fighting in the sky. They swooped and crouched; a small figure and a large one, sparrow and crow, a high thin keening and a deep-throated bellow of incoherent rage.

It was Angel—Dixie stood to one side, teetering in excitement on one heel, and Twinkie was yelling something but he didn't move to help—and a tall man with a sharp nose. The man was dressed in black or blue, and he looked as if he had fallen out of the night: he looked like a piece of the night. Angel was on his knees now and the man was beating him, and nobody else moved.

The mouth was moving frantically, losing the rhythm. He looked out the window and his hand tightened again against the unprotected neck, and the mouth uttered a muffled
humph
of protest he didn't hear. The whore-bastard was gesturing excitedly and holding his hand up to his ear like a telephone.

The whore lifted her head against the pressure of his hand. “Jesus fucking—” she said. He pushed her away from him, hard, against the hard door. “What the fuck—” she said. But he had opened the door and leapt out in one motion—“Where the fuck is my money?” she shouted behind him—and the whore-bastard turned and saw him and his cheekbones were still delicate and sharp, but now they were asymmetrical and his eyes were beautiful and full of fear.

John couldn't hear very well above his own idiot breathing. Even when he stopped, his hands on his knees, gulping for air, he could only hear a sound like the sound inside of a seashell. The man was shouting something—“Lazy, stupid, lazy, stupid.” Nobody turned as John walked quickly toward the corner. Dixie's face was transfigured by what was happening to her:
And then he just jumped on poor Angel
—A few other of the hookers and transvestites stood around, and there was a van parked across the street, across from the phone booth, which stood too bright, a prop out of place. A dark car veered theatrically around the corner, lights careening. A red Camry. Madeleine. John was running again now, and Madeleine was getting out of his car across the intersection. At the sound of the car door slamming, the man suddenly stopped beating the boy and looked up and Madeleine froze; her silhouette under the street lamp broke John's heart and he was running faster, Twinkie turned, and Angel kneeling on the pavement broke his heart, and Cheryl lay broken again on the cold sidewalk, and then he threw himself on the man.

Somebody screamed. The man was holding Angel by the hair; his hand had blood on it. The man turned his startled, feral face toward John, and they were as close as lovers. The man's face was suffused with residual anger and new surprise, as though he'd thought he were alone. He looked first beyond John, into the crowd's excited, impassive face. John looked into his eyes while they were looking beyond him and time just stopped: he saw Madeleine frozen beyond them, even though she was behind him and he couldn't possibly see that, and he saw her lying prone on the sidewalk, her pale face averted against intrusive pain, and he saw Cheryl as he had last seen her—had it been at the door or at the kitchen table?—she had been saying good-bye. And in a fraction of a breath the man looked at him, uncomprehending, and John heard his own voice shouting, “Enough! Enough!” and his hand was on the man's hand, his weight against the man's body; there was blood on his hand.

The arm that came down was not his. “Lazy, stupid, lazy, stupid,” his uncle was shouting, and another arm came down in another room, and the whore-imposter crouched under the blows, a boy crouched in the corner where they couldn't see him, and under the streetlight a crowd was gathering.

There was a crack of broken bone. There was somebody yelling and the sound of running on pavement and his hand came down again and there were other hands on him, on his back, his neck. He brought his own hands up and turned. A pair of eyes, another echo of something: he had seen those eyes before. He shook the man off and it was like shaking himself awake. He stepped over the whimpering form at his feet and away from the uninvited accusation in the man's eyes. He turned, and he saw a pale face and blond hair, and he thought suddenly of Zelly. It was as if he had come off a drunk to find himself in a strange room; he had to get back to Zelly.

The woman in front of him looked afraid and he didn't know why. She reminded him of someone but he didn't know who. He was separated from all the images by a thin membrane of music in his head:
King of kings, and Lord of lords. Blond hair the color of honey with the sun shining through it, and she had sung him so many songs.
He walked past the woman, and because she seemed to be asking something he said, “Zelly”; he had to get home to Zelly. Was there a baseball game tonight? There was a funny buzzing, the memories getting louder or the crowd—a horn honked and it was like Technicolor on a black-and-white image—and he walked over to his van and got in and closed the door and was surprised that the light didn't go out. The passenger-side door was open—he didn't know why. It looked so strange, and his bloody hand reaching to close it looked strange. With the snick of the door the darkness surrounded him, and it comforted him, and he forgot where he was.

The man's hand fell open and he stepped abruptly back, throwing John off balance. They faced each other like loopy fighters across Angel's stooped body. The man didn't seem to know where he was. Angel's head was down as if in prayer, and as the man stumbled backward he looked down and a spasm of mystified disgust crossed his face; he looked up into John's eyes and started to mouth something—“what”—and paused, almost with recognition, and shrugged, and almost smiled, and turned away.

The man turned toward Madeleine; he walked toward her. John had felt his breath on his face—but he had not killed him. To put the sharp blade against the skin and just push—Madeleine stood absolutely motionless. John knelt to touch Angel's shoulder; he looked toward Dixie where she stood, her cigarette burned down to a column of ash unnoticed in her hand. When he looked toward Madeleine the man was almost upon her. John leapt forward, but the man veered over toward the van, not noticing Madeleine at all where she stood like a half-hypnotized bird.