Pariah (13 page)

“Yeah, that’d be cool.”

“You humoring me?”

“No. I think it would be totally cool.”

Karl didn’t think it was
that
cool, but why make waves? Rifles and scopes reminded him too much of Big Manfred, who’d been as devout a hunter as he’d been a Christian. “Hey, Bambi, have a little of this,” had been his oft-repeated jibe when “thinning the herd.” “Hunting whitetail” sounded like one of the triple-X titles Karl had yearned to see on the marquees of the Deuce, but he’d kept that to himself. Big Manfred wouldn’t have seen the humor. The same went for “buck fever,” which sounded like gay porn. Big Manfred definitely wouldn’t have found that the least bit amusing. Guns. Bullets. A scope. The truth is, Karl thought if you’re going to make a wish, why not just wish none of this had ever happened in the first place?

Dabney lofted another hunk into the crowd and it dropped between bodies. He clucked in disapproval, then turned away from the cornice, massaging his bicep, sweat spilling off him. Above, the sky was clear and bright and in other circumstances would be lovely to behold. Dabney lay on his back on the tarp and closed his eyes, shielding them with a large hand, wishing for rain. The
clouds that roved the sky from time to time were a sadistic tease. Karl studied the older—but not old—man. He was still, in relative terms, beefy. When Dabney had shown up he’d weighed in at close to three hundred pounds so even now he looked formidable.

Karl’s attention drifted over to Dabney’s smokehouse. Was there still meat inside? Karl wondered if he should ask. Didn’t he deserve a second chance? Could he risk sneaking up when Dabney was asleep? No, that would be a bad idea. Lined up along the low wall on the southern side of the roof were Ruth’s flowerboxes. With seeds she’d collected from the last fresh vegetables—cucumbers, green peppers, peas, and tomatoes—she’d attempted to grow food for the building; a noble effort that never made it. Small spindly tendrils had poked out of the soil, but the lack of rain and the oppressive heat baked them before they’d blossomed.

Dabney rolled back onto his belly, then hoisted himself to his knees, crawled to the edge of the roof and looked straight down.

“You know how frustrating it is looking down there every day and seeing the top of my truck taunting me?” Dabney said. “Every day. Least those motherfuckers could do is turn it over, but they got no strength it seems. Just numbers. Turn it all the way over, onto its back like a turtle. Then I wouldn’t see it no more.”

Jutting out into the street at a forty-five degree angle languished the van Dabney had plowed into the building seven months earlier. Painted on the pale blue roof in black was the legend,
D
ABNEY
L
OCKSMITH
& A
LARM
, then smaller,
S
ERVING
A
LL
F
IVE
B
OROUGHS
S
INCE
1979
, followed by his phone number in really big purple numerals. The front end was crumpled, the small hood popped open, revealing a blackened engine block. The back doors hung open, jostled every few moments by figures that passed by or through them. No doubt sun-shy zombies squatted within.

“It mocks me. Reminds me I didn’t make it home.”

“Home is where the heart is,” Karl ventured.

“You say some stupid-ass nonsense, son,” Dabney said, but he was smiling.

“I know.”

“My van and that goddamn supermarket. Ain’t that a bitch?”

“Yup.”

Eddie and Dave, back when they’d been brawny, had hoisted Dabney from the roof of his van as the zombies groped for him. It was the first and last altruistic act either of them had committed, and even then, Eddie had needed lots of persuasion. “That nigger’ll just eat all our food,” he’d complained. “I mean look at him. He’s a fuckin’ house. He’ll probably rape all the women, even the old bitch. Niggers don’t care, man. Pussy is pussy to their kind.” The old “project your sin onto others and disparage them for it” routine. Talk about calling the kettle black. Ever since the rescue, Dabney was merely “that nigger on the roof,” as far as Eddie was concerned, though he’d never have the temerity to utter those words within earshot of Dabney, lest he end up pitched down to the congregation as a tasty morsel. Not that Karl would object. Eddie was every jock asshole that’d terrorized Karl over the years, all rolled into one.

He reminded Karl of his dear old papa.

Big Manfred was a sportsman.

Big Manfred was a bigot.

Big Manfred hated almost everything Karl held dear.

“I miss my music,” Karl squawked.

“Where’d
that
come from?” Dabney turned from his perch and looked at the slight young man. This normally placid little white boy was shivering with agitation, eyes popped wide and despairing. The right corner of his mouth was twitching.

“What kind of life is this? What are we doing with ourselves? We’re biding our time until we just shrivel up and die!” Karl’s voice
was stretched almost as thin as his small body, but there was vitality in his anguish. He sprang up and, fists clenched at his sides, glared up at the sky. “What is this? What the fuck
is
this?” He waved his arms around, gesticulating at nothing and everything. “What? What? What is this? What is the point? What’s the fucking point?”

He began to hyperventilate.

Dabney rose and stepped toward him, unsure of what to do. Talk to him? Tackle him? Give him a hug? Karl’s face was pulled taut, like his skull was trying to escape its fragile prison of skin and muscle. Dabney reached out and Karl slapped away his hand, then punched Dabney in the mouth.

The force of the blow surprised them both.

Karl sidestepped Dabney and walked in measured, deliberate steps up the rise toward the edge. Dabney massaged his jaw and watched. He wasn’t mad at Karl. If anything, he was a bit spooked by the sudden change in his visitor. Karl stood right on the lip of the drop and stared straight ahead.

“Are you happy?” he asked the air in front of him. If the question was meant for Dabney, it didn’t sound that way. “I’m not.”

“No one’s happy, son. Listen, Karl, step away from there. I mean toward me. Back away from there. Not forward. Don’t jump.”

“Don’t jump.”

“Right. Don’t jump.”

“You ever see that old cop show,
Dragnet
? Or any old cop show, for that matter? There always was an episode where some kid would try LSD, or sometimes even just pot, and he’d be up on the roof of the local high school or church or wherever. He’d be some square from Central Casting’s notion of a hippie or beatnik. Or sometimes he or she would be ‘the good kid who’s fallen in with the bad crowd.’ And there this twenty-five-year-old high school student would be, saying things like, ‘I can fly, man. I can fly. I just know I can,’ and Joe Friday or some other stiff in a fedora and
skinny tie would be trying to talk the kid down, but not off the roof. ‘Don’t do it, son, you’re having a bad trip.’ Yeah.

“I don’t want to jump. I don’t want to fall. My balance is fine. I used to play games like this as a kid. I’d pretend that I was way up high, only I’d be down on the sidewalk, walking along the thin edge of the curb. If a breeze came and unsettled my balance, if my footing got away from me and I dropped to the asphalt, in my mind I’d fallen into a bottomless chasm. There’s no breeze. I’m challenging God to knock me off this roof. Bring a wind. Sweep me away. I’m not worried. My dad always said ‘God is in the details,’ and I believe that. Because look at this world of ours. Seems like God’s missing the big picture, don’t you think?”

“I thought it was ‘The devil is in the details.’ ”

“No. That’s wrong. That’s a variation. What’s funny is that we’re not quite sure who to attribute the quote to. The consensus goes with Flaubert, but some say Michelangelo. Others go with the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, or Aby Warburg.”

“How come you know this shit?”

“It’s called retaining trivia. Maybe someone would be kind and call it knowledge, but it’s not. It’s trivia. It’s why I would have made a great ‘Lifeline’ on
Millionaire
. It’s why I kicked ass at Trivial Pursuit. I can throw facts at you and quotes and all kinds of shit. But it’s all meaningless.”

“It’s not meaningless.”

“Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that. Every Sunday my dad dragged us all to church, but you know what? In spite of that, I
still
believe in God. They taught us that God made man in His image, and that makes perfect sense. Man is a petty, awful creature. So, from that I deduce God is the pettiest and most awful creature in the universe. We’re God Lite. Are we being punished or did God just get bored and come up with a way to wipe us all out and have some fun watching the carnage in the bargain? Who
watches NASCAR for the racing? People watch for the chance to see someone blown to smithereens—several someones if they’re lucky. I know that’s not an original observation, but it’s true. God’s watching this sick show and laughing His ass off.

“I’m rambling.”

Karl stepped back from the ledge and headed for the stairwell. As he opened the door he turned to Dabney.

“Sorry about the jaw.”

The door closed behind him and Dabney just stood and looked into the empty space Karl had just occupied at the ledge. He felt tired all over. Two roofs away he saw Gerri staring off into space like one of the things.

Maybe it all was meaningless in the end.

“Is that what I look like to you or is this what I actually look like?”

Ellen stood at the easel admiring Alan’s immortalization of her in oils. With tiny orangey highlights on her back from the interior candles and her extremities rim lit from the light spilling from outdoors, she actually looked radiant. All but she was softly deemphasized, warmly enveloped in rich shadow. The pose was Ingres but the painting was pure Rembrandt, its understanding of chiaroscuro complete and accomplished.

“Alan, it’s remarkable.”

Ellen recalled ads in her ladies’ supermarket magazines for a syrupy hack named Thomas Kinkade, so-called “
Painter of Light
^™
,” that self-appointed appellation rendered in precious curlicues. With his squinty little eyes and fey mustache, Kinkade embodied American kitsch at its worst: cloying, banal, and tacky. Alan was a genuine painter of light—and dark. Though the figure on the small canvas was gaunt, it radiated eroticism. The sweaty pinpricks of light drew attention to the sharp contours, but somehow didn’t detract from the innate femininity of the subject. The subject. Ellen. Herself.

In all her years she’d never been captured so vividly. There were probably thousands of photographs of her, maybe even some good ones, but they all fell short. They were surpassingly two-dimensional. This representation didn’t just lie there, and even though it was a portrait of her present condition, it had life.

“May I have this?”

Alan hadn’t considered his attachment to this painting. While he painted he sort of zoned out, focused on technique and execution, but now that it was done he could stand back and judge the work. It was good. The best he’d done in . . .

Ever.

He knew it was good because even with things the way they were he was reticent to give it away. In his gallery of death he’d managed to create a single image that was, of all things, both tragic and optimistic. Ellen could see Alan was debating inside his head. For the first time in months she felt like she wanted something that wasn’t just a staple. But maybe this
was
a staple; one she’d forgotten a woman needs. This fed her sense of self. This fed her vanity. How long had it been since she’d applied makeup or thought about her body as anything other than a rundown, withering collection of deprived tissue? Alan had painted a twiggy but eminently fuckable woman, and that woman was her. Twiggy. Ellen’s mind raced back to the waifish ’60s icon. Small tits perched on a rack of bone—Keane-eyed and shaggable.

“Yeah, of course,” Alan said. It seemed like an eternity of deliberation, but only a few moments passed.

“I’ll cherish this,” Ellen said. “I didn’t think I was capable of cherishing anymore. Or coveting. But I couldn’t bear to not have this painting. And besides, you’ll get to be with it every remaining day we have.
Mi casa es su casa,
remember?”

“Uh-huh.”

As Ellen reached for the artwork Alan stepped between her and the canvas.

“Wait a little while. Oils take forever to dry. I can’t just pluck it off the board without wrecking it.”

“I’ll take the board.”

“I need the board to paint on.”

“Are you reneging?” Ellen’s expression was puzzlement with a hint of dander.

“No, not at all. Just let it dry a while longer. I’ll bring it up later. Or tomorrow.”

“You’re sure you’re not reneging, because . . .” There was an edge to her voice.

“No, no. I swear,” Alan said. “I don’t want to mess it up or tear it. Later. Scout’s honor.”

As Ellen went up the stairs, touching the wall to guide her, she felt a curious combo of up-till-now dormant emotions. She felt flattered, acquisitive, manipulative, feminine. She’d already manipulated Alan into cohabitating with her. Isn’t that what she’d done? Fresh on the heels of Mike’s demise she’d played on Alan’s compassion and hoodwinked him into her tender, needy trap. And it felt good. At first she’d felt she’d been pathetic, but now, in light of Alan’s painting, she retroactively amended that take. She’d used her feminine wiles. She beamed. She still
had
feminine wiles. She’d
seduced
him. Maybe it was with shock, grief, and tears, but he’d taken the bait.