Cartilage and Skin (31 page)

She turned down my narrow street and drove slowly between the lanes of snow-covered cars. I had her pull over in front of the alley beside my building. I noticed that although the snow hadn't accumulated too much, my landlord had recently cleared off the steps. The car idled, and the wipers came on intermittently. Vanessa continued to hold my hand.

“You're a good guy,” she told me. “Thanks for the book and everything.”

“I'm glad you went out with me.”

“I'm going to read that book, you know. And then we can talk about it.”

“Good.”

“Don't forget I still have your clothes.”

With her eyes fixed on me, she slipped back into silence for a moment, waiting, as if she wanted to tell me something or to hear me speak. But I had nothing to say. Her fingers tightened slightly around my hand, and again I sensed that she was offering me permission, not merely to look at her, but to accept her yielding. Despite our privacy within the car, the simple distance between our seats, and her face turned toward me with a subtle mixture of pleading and surrender—I remained frozen, unable to lean close to her and give her the hug or kiss that she wanted. The moment seemed to be straining to the breaking point. I was about to say something, anything to offer us a release from one another, when Vanessa moved toward me, simultaneously raising my hand to the hollow of her throat and placing her lips, softly and slowly, on the side of my mouth. Afterwards, her face briefly lingered near to me, her breath trembling warmly upon my cheek, my fingers pressing lightly against her neck. But then she reclined back into her seat and released my hand.

“It's nice to be with a gentleman for once,” she said.

“Thank you for the cookie,” I stupidly responded.

Yet, rather than regard me as a schoolboy or an idiot, she smiled as though I were teasing or flirting with her.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” she said, which was my cue to get out of the car.

And then I was standing in the cold, with the snow slanting in on me. Even though I was on the sidewalk in front of my building, I was somewhat disoriented as I watched the red taillights of her car fading into the distance. My blood pulsed hot, and my body felt tuned to some taut and quivering cord. I didn't even have a moment to collect myself, to allow my excitement to settle down, for I was still in the afterglow of Vanessa's presence, heading toward the front door of my building, when I had a terrible sensation that with each step I took, I was getting closer to my prison, and what was worse was the premonition that once again I would be on display for a hostile world. I was returning to the life I wanted to abandon. And even this meshing of my emotions—my simultaneous thrill and dread—didn't have time to quiet down, for I was mounting the concrete steps, and then in the process of opening the door, when I looked into the building and saw on the staircase to my right a pair of descending legs and a hand on the banister.

Moving backward, I gently pulled the door shut again, retreated down the front steps, and stood on the sidewalk. I gazed up at the building, afraid to go inside. Although I didn't know who was coming down the steps, my intuition warned me that I needed to hide before the person could emerge from the front door and look down at me upon the sidewalk. I briskly started away, thinking that maybe I would duck down the alley. I was only a few paces away when from behind me came the sound of the front door opening and then closing. I didn't turn around to look. With the person possibly walking behind me, I could no longer veer into the alley without drawing attention to myself. Keeping my head down, I started to cross the street. As I stepped between the parked cars, I glanced over to see that the person headed in the opposite direction.

And still I didn't have time to collect myself or to ease the strain of my excitement. Even though the person was putting distance between us, my heart beat with a new terror. Suddenly, at the unmistakable sight of the corduroy jacket and the green baseball cap, I became aware that McTeal had been hiding in my building, waiting for me to come home. He surely must have seen me from behind when he'd stepped out the front door; he must have given me at least a cursory glance. Thus, Vanessa Somerset's vintage clothes had saved me for the time being.

The man had a slow, lumbering gait like a pregnant woman's.

Although he had been obsessed with Claudia Jones long before I'd ever offended him, I didn't suspect at the moment that a part of his freakish behavior might have been to prowl around her building and slobber on her doorstep. Preoccupied by my own safety, I was gripped by the idea that he wanted me. By luck or contrivance, he had managed to get past the inner door and most likely lingered in the hallway or on the staircase, somehow avoiding contact with anyone who might have questioned his presence.

He was waddling away, heading into the snowy evening, but he would be back.

My building loomed beside me. Even though the lighted windows speckled its face, the building appeared as dark, cold, and impenetrable as a single block of stone. This was no longer my home, especially now that it had been violated not only by the investigators but also by McTeal.

As I stood for a moment watching him, I began to feel my anxiety start to subside. Being able to look at him, without him seeing me in return, seemed to give me an unexpected advantage.

Up ahead, he passed under a streetlight, where the illumination made the falling snow appear whiter and denser. Curious whether he was going to turn the corner, I walked forward a few paces, and then a few paces more, until I was standing by the other side of my building. McTeal continued straight. Only an inch or two of snow coated the sidewalk, and as I started forward, I looked down at McTeal's footprints. Not quite certain what I was doing, I hurried a little in fear that McTeal would get too far away and I would no longer be able to see him. For months, I had been the one under scrutiny, but suddenly, by a bit of chance, the roles had shifted. While I might have been homeless, at least now nobody would be able to find me and put me under surveillance again. Following McTeal gave me a strange sense of freedom and control that I'd never had before.

When he crossed the street and headed down a side road, he left my field of vision. Yet I quickened my stride. He had small shoes with smooth bottoms, and his heels pressed all the way to the cement, while the tips of his toes left almost no impression at all. I reached the crossroad and peered in the direction that McTeal had gone, but I couldn't see him. In the street, where the passing cars had disturbed the snow, I couldn't see his footprints. Even so, on the opposite sidewalk, they reappeared. I followed them up to the next block, and the strange, waddling man came back into view.

I didn't know how far or where McTeal would lead me. For some reason, I suspected that he was headed toward a dark, dirty room, where he spent all his time festering in his own perverse delusions, abandoning himself to the lure of his fantasies. Perhaps he had peeled away sections of wallpaper, broken holes in the sheetrock, and scrawled his thoughts with a clumsy black marker, his personal graffiti:
I have several children I'm training to be killers. Wait till they grow up
, or maybe something as indiscernible as
Hi. I'm Mr. Williams. I live in this hole
, with a crooked arrow pointing to a small jagged orifice, knee high, in the sheetrock. Of course, McTeal's home might have been nothing this deranged, and more like that of an ordinary man, with potpourri in a little glass bowl in the bathroom, a fine collection of DVDs beneath the television, and a wife sitting at the kitchen table and cutting up a grilled cheese sandwich for their young daughter. This latter scenario was more unsettling.

McTeal waddled on.

I kept a safe distance behind him, but he never once looked over his shoulder. I was nervous but thrilled. The biting cold made me conscious of my wound again, for my temple began to throb. The muddy green jacket might have disguised me a little, but it provided poor insulation from the weather. I began to think about Vanessa Somerset; even though she had deluded herself into liking me, she began to settle warmly inside of me. I wanted to see her again. Perhaps she hadn't deceived herself in the slightest bit. After all, Vanessa was a grown woman with a string of past relationships, heartaches, and lusts, so undoubtedly she was old enough to know what she wanted, and experienced enough to know how to maneuver her way around me. Perhaps I was the one who was transparent and deluded because I was oblivious to the extent to which she'd charmed me. Noticing the loops of tiny colored lights in a window, I briefly imagined myself buying Vanessa a Christmas present.

McTeal turned a corner and stepped out of sight.

I hurried forward. I had a new idea that maybe I would discover the man in a little pigpen of debauchery, and I could turn him over to Dr. Ferguson and the intense black man. Somehow, by sacrificing McTeal, I would be rewarded. I wasn't looking to be a hero, but simply to be granted immunity. At the moment, as I strode toward the corner on this quiet, snowy evening, I neglected to consider that the authorities would wonder how I knew about McTeal in the first place. I would have been tying myself to the pervert.

When I came to the end of the block, I was standing in the full glare of a streetlight, so I approached the corner slowly and peeped around the edge of a wet brick building. Besides a woman in a purple overcoat who was fishing in the trunk of her car, nobody else was in view. I looked down and saw McTeal's footprints. Cautiously, I surveyed the area, fearing that maybe he'd known all along that I was following him and he was now crouched behind a car or in a doorway, ready to spring out and bludgeon me over the head. I tracked the footprints for roughly twenty yards, at which point they sharply turned and ceased at a large closed door.

I stepped back and looked up, wondering which window belonged to McTeal; at any moment, he would turn on the light.

“Get the door, sweetie.”

The woman in the purple coat was stepping toward me, carrying several plastic grocery bags in each hand.

Without saying anything, I turned the handle and pushed the door open.

Stinking of cigarette smoke, the woman shuffled past me into the building.

“Merry Christmas,” she said.

“You too,” I responded, a little off-guard by her cheerfulness.

The woman bypassed the staircase and continued down the hall, walking dead center on the matted runner, heel to toe, as if she were on a tightrope and using the bags for balance.

The warmth of the building compelled me to step inside.

I had no idea what I was doing, and I figured that I had lost track of McTeal. Even so, I stood in the corridor, thinking that the instant I went back outside, I wouldn't know where to go. Although I hadn't seen the interior of any of the apartments, the building seemed nicer than where I lived.

The woman set down her bags, dug her hand beneath the collar of her coat, and pulled a strap over her head, from which dangled a set of keys, like some gaudy amulet.

I stepped aside in case she looked over and saw me lingering by the door. I heard the jangle of her keys, the sound of her bags being lifted, one by one, and dropped onto the floor of her apartment, and at last the shutting of her door. When I looked back down the hallway, I saw that her boots had left little clumps of snow on the runner.

Because McTeal was wearing flat-bottom shoes, he apparently didn't leave a trail of snow for me to follow.

The staircase not only went upward but also turned and descended into a brightly lit basement. I bent down and touched one of the steps leading to the second floor. A spot on the coarse, gray carpet was damp, presumably from McTeal. The steps creaked as I started upward. Most likely, I was only going to arrive at an empty corridor, as well as the pointless option of continuing on to the third floor, yet I wanted to follow McTeal until the trail ran completely dry. Part of me recognized the absurdity of my entire pursuit, but somehow by making this offensive move, by taking a little control, I was ridding myself of the threat of McTeal to some minor degree. I felt as though I were somehow pinning him down, fixing him in a little box, and limiting his strength. Of course, I wasn't fully disarming him, but merely dulling his weapon. Perhaps seeing the man's home would simply make him more human.

At the top of the flight of stairs, I wondered if I should continue upward or retreat. Save for a fire extinguisher attached to the wall and a pair of little black boots on the floor beside a door, the hallway was empty.

I looked up the staircase leading toward the next floor, the succession of steps seemingly ending at a white wall.

My chase appeared over.

As I turned to go back downstairs, I saw that less than ten feet from me, a door suddenly opened wide, and without pausing an instance to see who was about to emerge, I wheeled around and mounted the steps toward the third floor. There, midway on the staircase, I gripped the railing, crouched down, and listened.

The door closed.

Realizing that I would have been discovered already if the person were heading upward, I started back down the steps. I stooped and peeped into the corridor. The little boots and the fire extinguisher were still there, but nothing else

It appeared to be a false alarm; my chase was over.

Even so, when I turned the corner of the staircase, ready to leave the building and venture back out into the cold night, there was my madman again, waddling down the steps, this time carrying a plump navy blue sack over his shoulder and holding in his other hand a bulky red container with a blue cap.

I froze on the steps and watched him. He reached the bottom and lumbered out of sight.

I waited, listening for him to leave the building, but I couldn't tell where he'd gone, save for the obvious fact that he was going to do his laundry. I remembered from the photographs, his “love letters,” that he used to change his sheets all the time, causing me to speculate, in that elaborate character study that I'd been compelled to destroy, why he changed them so often, what did he do off camera to make them so dirty?