The Visible Man (23 page)

19
Dave just sat there and took it. It went on forever.
(12:24 [25])

20
There was a knock on the door, right after the yelling. It was the red-haired woman from across the hall. Dave answered the door. Everybody in the room got quiet—that unnatural variety of quiet that happens when the cops try to break up a party. She was obviously asking about the yelling, although we couldn’t really hear what was being said. Dave finally came back inside and said, “You guys should probably leave. It’s later than I thought.” Nobody argued. The heavy dudes got off the amps and started filing out, shaking hands with Dave as they said goodbye, mentioning how they’d had a great time. They all left at the same time. But Zug didn’t leave. Zug stayed. He went to the fridge, opened a Guinness and a Bass, and poured himself another black-and-tan. Nobody seemed to think this was unusual. I suppose I did, but I was the only one.
(12:27 [23])

21
Dave started cleaning up the apartment, placing empty schooners in the sink. Zug was leaning against the kitchen counter with beer foam in his mustache. He says, “I’m sorry I yelled at you, D.” Dave says something along the lines of, “I just don’t understand why you do that.” Again, Zug says he’s sorry. But then he just starts lecturing Dave all over again. “You need to have more sophisticated ideas,” he insists. He tells Dave that he doesn’t read enough, and that the books he does read are facile, and that he’s sometimes embarrassed by the things Dave says. He’s not yelling when he says this, but he’s talking like a bad father. He says, “All your opinions are received wisdom.” He says, “If you don’t have an original idea, it’s better to just listen to the people who do.” This was real perverse, real condescending shit. It was appalling. I was appalled. Dave just sort of shrugged it off and didn’t say anything. He acted like he was concentrating on half-ass organizing his totally unclean apartment. Finally, Zug stops talking. He downs half his beer in one gulp. Then something peculiar happened: Dave turned to him and casually said, “Are you staying over here tonight?” Zug took another drink of beer and said, “We’ll see.”
(12:31 [26])

22
What was going on there? I don’t know. I have an idea, obviously, but I don’t think it matters.
(12:30 [27])

23
I was upset. I don’t like to admit when I get upset, but I was. He was an awful person. I regret what happened, but only the last part. I don’t regret the first part very much. I suppose I regret it a little, but just barely. I can see the absurdity in what transpired. I can recognize the irony. It’s probably not the worst thing I’ve ever done.
(11:53 [13])

24
Zug is walking around the apartment, looking at the guitars and finishing his drink. And I’m looking at this huge, hairy, heavy dude, and I just hate him. I’m a
pretty good judge of character. Everybody thinks that about themselves, but I’m right. I’m different. Zug was a bully. It wasn’t like he was doing anything for the world, or producing anything the world needed. He was just an educated cretin who took advantage of people like Dave, probably in lots of bizarre psychological ways. I was thinking about how Zug had talked all that bullshit about the nobility of honor cultures, and how transparent that was. Sometimes it’s wrong to let people get away with their behavior.
(11:56 [16])

25
I was only going to freak him out. That was the totality of my intention. I thought I would just scare him, fuck with his mind, fuck with his reality, put him in a subordinate position. Was it out of character for me to do this? Yes. But I did it for Dave. Dave deserved my help.
(11:55 [15])

26
I didn’t overthink it. It was just an honest reaction to what was happening at the time. Dave goes into the bathroom and closes the door. I see the light come on under the crack of the door, and I hear the fan running. By now, I have a strategy: I’m going to walk up to Zug, poke him in the chest, and tell him he’s a coward. I’m going to tell him that he’s fake and that everyone knows he’s fake, and that everything he believes about the world is wrong. If nothing else, I want him to think he’s having an extremely bad trip. Then I’ll just run out the door and spend the night in the hallway. He’ll flip. That was my thinking.
(12:50 [32])

27
Okay, I get it. I get it. You’re still not getting it. Let me try to simplify the situation: Dave’s still in the bathroom. I can hear him working in there. It’s gross. Zug is standing in the middle of the living room, looking back toward the kitchen. The positioning seems perfect. I walk straight toward Zug’s face. I can tell he can’t see me at all—and, even if he could, this is a person who’d probably had ten or twelve beers and a bushel of psychedelics. I have all these brilliant things in my head that I
want to say, but I don’t say them. I choke. I just say, “Fuck you, man,” real fast, almost like it’s one three-syllable word. And I poke him in the chest with my finger. Hard. I poke him hard in the chest. But, you know, it was only a poke, and this was a huge man. Normally, I don’t think I could have knocked him down if I’d punched him in the face. But this poke
really
surprised him. Really, totally surprised the shit out of him. He got this hilarious look on his face, like he’d just remembered something awful. His arms shot out. His eyes were like bicycle tires. He tried to back up, and he fell. And he fell straight back, real fast. And his fucking head went right through the fucking table. His skull went through that glass coffee table like a cannonball. It shattered into a million fucking pieces. My first thought was “This is bad.” But then I saw the blood. It was pouring out of the back of his head. It seemed like it was being forced out by a pneumatic pump. Blood was pooling up under his neck, crawling across the floor in every direction, seeping into his beard. His hair was like a wet red sponge. So my second thought was “This is as bad as it gets.”
(12:39 [28])

28
His head struck one of the metal legs of the table, and it punctured the bone. Put a hole in his head the diameter of a golf ball. That’s exactly how it was explained in the
Pioneer Press
—the reporter was weirdly graphic about the trauma, almost like he was getting off on describing it. You can read it for yourself. The details are all online, if you’re curious. Their archives are free. It turns out Zug’s real name was Marion. Just like John Wayne!
(11:59 [17])

29
These are vivid memories. Vivid, vivid, vivid. I close my eyes and everything happens again. The toilet flushes and Dave flies out of the bathroom, his belt still unbuckled. He doesn’t scream. He just says, “Jesus.” He tries to help Zug, but what can he do? He gets blood on his hands, blood on his shirt, blood on his pants. It’s now a room of blood and amplifiers. It looks like a photo shoot for
Vice
magazine. Dave starts frantically
searching for his cell phone. He calls 9-1-1, explaining the situation as best he can. He explains everything too calmly, actually. His voice was perfectly composed. This would come back to haunt him. I know they played that 9-1-1 call for the grand jury in an attempt to portray him as unfeeling.
(12:10 [19])

30
Waiting for the cops to show up was a strange fifteen minutes. Dave just stood over Zug’s corpse, kind of hugging his own body with both arms. The dude was so clearly dead. He turned white when he bled out. The cat started licking some of the blood, so Dave picked it up and patted its little orange head, real gentle. The cat didn’t care about Zug. He understood. Animals are like that.
(12:12 [20])

31
As soon as the police arrived, I left. A room full of police is not a good place to hide, even if you’re the best hider on the planet. People were constantly coming in and out of the door, so it wasn’t hard to exit. I read that they interviewed redheaded Tina the very next morning, and she told them about the loud argument. All the other heavy dudes gave depositions, too. The newspaper wouldn’t directly say what the relationship between Zug and Dave was, but several of the heavy dudes implied it was complicated. That was the word they all used:
complicated
. It was too frigid for me to go out into the night, so I spent the rest of it on the second-floor landing. They took Dave to the station around 3:30 a.m. He wasn’t in handcuffs, but they charged him with murder when he got downtown. I saw him walk out with two cops. He looked guilty. He did. Just before they went down the stairs, he asked one of the cops if he could run back and give his cat to the woman across the hall, but they said they’d take care of it for him. He said, “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”
(12:15 [21])

32
I can tell you have questions, Victoria. I can see them on your face. But just let me finish. I don’t care if our session goes long. You can charge me extra. We’ll address your
concerns next week. Next week, you can ask me anything you want. But I just need to power through.
(12:04 [18])

33
As you might expect, I’ve been following this case pretty closely over the Internet. The daily papers don’t write about it much, but some of the weeklies report almost everything. Personally, I don’t think he’ll go to prison. Maybe he’ll take a hit for manslaughter, but certainly not for second-degree homicide. That’s what the prosecution wants, but I see a lot of holes in their case. Why would you murder a man by pushing him through a coffee table? Is that even something you can do on purpose? Plus, Zug’s blood alcohol level was jacked through the roof, and he still had some uneaten mushrooms
in his pocket
. The fact that they had an argument hurts, of course. Tina’s testimony was a problem. And—of course—Dave’s lawyer won’t allow Dave to testify on his own behalf, which makes it seem less like an accident and more like an
incident
, especially with all this “complicated relationship” crap that the heavy dudes keep repeating. You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d be a little suspicious myself. I saw an AP photo of Dave in the courtroom, wearing an ill-fitting suit, looking like he hadn’t slept in weeks. His hand was over his mouth. He looked worse than Zug’s corpse. I hope this hasn’t ruined his life. I mean, I’m sure it hasn’t made his life better, but I like to imagine he’s got some grit. (
12:58 [34])

34
Part of me wanted to get inside Tina’s apartment to check on the cat, just because I feel like I owe it to Dave. I owe him that much. But now there’s too much risk, and I’m never going to Minneapolis again. Too many nutcases in that town. Too many weirdos. I’ll stay here.
(12:51 [33])

[I’ve generally avoided using two-sided transcripts in this manuscript, partially to keep the focus on Y
____
’s words but primarily because I’m uncomfortable with my own elocution. However, I’m suspending that rule temporarily in order to illustrate why certain things were said in our July 18 session. My queries have been streamlined for clarity. This is not the full conversation; I am including only the opening thirteen minutes. I’m mildly embarrassed by some of the things I said in this exchange, but it was a confusing time.]