The exit man, p.25
The Exit Man, page 25
“Okay, and your answer?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
Zoe decided she’d try to kick her killing habit, without the benefit of psychoactive substances or psychiatric sessions. She’d recently read about a serial killer who lost his lust for blood and found lasting calm by switching to a vegetarian diet while in prison. She told me how the convict in question reportedly transformed from lion to lamb after just a few weeks on a strictly plant-based diet, and that he didn’t even fight back when a fellow inmate stabbed him to death with a fork in the dining hall. I promised Zoe I’d start stocking my place with spinach and beans, and to not attack her with any utensils.
Eliminating meat and dairy made Zoe’s skin glow like never before, but did little to bring her inner peace. Maybe she needed bars on the windows and doors to experience the full effect. While she wasn’t as angry or as volatile as before, I could tell she was being eaten up inside. She was quiet and withdrawn. Each time I asked if everything was okay, she’d just nod and let out a long, slow sigh. Thinking she might have been suffering from some kind of carnivore withdrawal, I secretly added beef broth to a soup I’d made for us for one evening, but it didn’t help. Nor did the ground chuck I snuck into our soy burgers the next night.
This wasn’t the meat she was missing.
A few days later Zoe told me she was going to stay at her place for a couple nights. I knew, or I assumed I knew, what that meant. But I had to let her go. I had to give her the benefit of the doubt. Issuing a mandate for her to stay put and keep her hands where I could see them would only push her further away. I couldn’t afford to irk or to alienate her, not with her next scheduled exit coming up in two days. Rodney Davis (colorectal cancer). Aside from the incident of the forgotten hat, Zoe had yet to let me, or any of our clients, down. I didn’t know for sure if she had plans to hunt again. All I knew was that she’d be there for Mr. Davis.
Two days later, all I knew was that all I thought I knew was wrong.
“Hello, may I please speak to Eli?” said the weak voice coming through my phone.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Eli? This is Rodney Davis. Um, I think there might have been a mix-up.”
I’ll say. You should be deceased by now.
“What? You mean… she never even… just hang tight Mr. Davis. I’ll be over in a few minutes. You’re at 1616 Seneca, right?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand what hap–”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this, Mr. Davis. One thing before I head over, are you expecting any visitors this afternoon?”
“No, just your associate.”
“I’ll be filling in. Be there in ten.”
Oh, Zoe, you’ve done it now!
It was bad enough that a dead man’s last call on official record would be to me. Now I had to do a suicide while distracted by fantasies of killing my girlfriend.
Two calls I made to Zoe while speeding to Mr. Davis’ house went unanswered. I’d have to deal with her later. I was in full recovery mode and had to focus. Fuming over Zoe’s no-show and wondering where the hell she was and what the hell she was doing wouldn’t accomplish anything – except perhaps increase the chances of Mr. Davis’ exit becoming even more of a disaster.
Poor Mr. Davis. There’s nothing worse than desperately wanting to leave a party but not being able to find your ride.
I tried to picture him, lying prone on his sofa or bed, trying to find a position that didn’t aggravate his symptoms, staring at a spot on a pillow to distract him from the fact that he had been stood up on his date with death. There’s nothing you can do to set this right. “I’ll make it up to you” doesn’t cut it here.
When I arrived at his house, Mr. Davis came to the door in a much more jovial mood than I had anticipated.
“That was fast,” he said, holding a glass of water. “Hope you didn’t run any red lights on my account.”
This man had just been severely dishonored, dismissed, forced to wait to receive something he was paying $10,000 for, and yet he was concerned about being a bother. I would have hugged the man if I hadn’t feared it would cause irreparable internal bleeding.
“Mr. Davis, words cannot express how deeply sorry I am for this unacceptable mistake. I hope you–”
“Let me stop you there. Truth is, you did me a favor.”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“I mean I’ve changed my mind. I would have called you back to tell you and save you the trip, but I just decided a couple of minutes ago, and figured you’d be here soon enough. Besides, you shouldn’t use the phone while driving.”
“Mr. Davis–”
“Please, call me Rodney.”
“Rodney, I can understand if my associate’s no-show has destroyed your trust and confidence in our services, but I assure you our methods are extremely safe and completely painless. We’ve never had an incident.”
“No, no, it’s not that. Her not showing up, I’ve taken it as a sign. With all due respect for what you do, I now see it’s not how the universe wants me to go out. I’m gonna stick it out a little longer, suffering and all. Who knows, maybe by some miracle I’ll even beat this thing.”
Not the “m” word. The very notion of miracles defies everything I do.
“I respect your decision, Mr. D– …Rodney. I just need to know you’re absolutely sure it’s what you want.”
“I’m sure, thank you. And I’m sorry to have taken up your time on all this. I realize you have a very busy schedule.”
“Please. You have no reason to apologize. I’m just glad you figured out what you wanted before it was too late.”
“I’d still like to pay you for your trouble.”
“Absolutely not. I won’t hear of it.”
“Don’t you know you shouldn’t argue with a dying man?”
“I don’t know a lot of things, Rodney.”
I took a few minutes to convince Mr. Davis I wouldn’t budge on the money issue. Afterward, I shook his icy hand and bid him farewell.
As I walked to my Pathfinder, I felt a sense of both relief and defeat. The relief came from not having to perform an exit while distracted, and from knowing I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone finding my phone number listed among a corpse’s recent calls. The defeat, well, that came from having lost a client. Sure, I’d lost clients before – Harve, who’d run out of time; others, who’d run out of patience – but this one was different. This one was still breathing.
Sitting in my car, the anger returned. Zoe. Still not answering her phone.
While Mr. Davis may have seen her forgetfulness as saving his life, I knew all it had done was ruin his death.
CHAPTER 27
I can put up with a lot in a relationship. I’m a broad-minded man, one who realizes that sometimes a girl has to do things like shoot her ex or jump off a bridge or carry out a vendetta on low, lawless men. But one thing I cannot abide is tardiness. Worse, absenteeism.
Where before I had convinced myself Zoe would soon stop making rapists dead and recommit to a good clean life of music teaching and euthanasia, I now realized she’d gone too far over to the dark side for any real rehabilitation to occur. Blowing off somebody’s suicide? There’s no coming back from that.
As soon as I pulled onto Zoe’s street I could see her Volvo parked in her driveway. Either she was home or had somehow found time to add grand theft auto to her rap sheet. I parked out on the street, cut the engine, and took several deep breaths to calm myself. I didn’t want my popping in to escalate into a crime of passion.
I pressed the doorbell and rapped on the door. No response. This was to be expected. You don’t ditch on an exit and then openly receive visitors. I rang and knocked again, to no avail.
I then remembered she kept an extra key inside a fake rock on the ground near the walkway. I’d never seen it, but she had told me about it late one night while we were watching an old movie in which the hero hoisted a boulder that was obviously made out of papier-mâché. The faux rock containing Zoe’s house key wasn’t quite as easy to spot, but after crouching down and inspecting the various stones in the vicinity, I finally came upon one that was trying a little too hard to fit in. There’s such a thing as too good a disguise. I picked up the relatively lightweight imposter, which was made out of some kind of polymer, and found a seam. Moments later the key was in the door and I was in the house.
“Zoe, it’s me” I called out. “I’m sorry to barge in, but we obviously have a lot to talk about.”
Silence.
I walked through the living room, where her baby grand stood alone, and made my way toward her bedroom. I passed the guest bedroom, the door to which was wide open providing a clear view of an empty bed.
The door to Zoe’s bedroom was slightly ajar. “Zoe?” I said softly, listening for groans or the shuffling of sheets – the sounds of a waking woman – but I heard nothing. I peeked through the crack in the door and caught a glimpse of a perfectly made up bed. Perhaps she was sitting in the chair she kept in the corner of her room, patiently waiting for me to enter. Or perhaps she was standing behind the door clutching an iron candlestick holder.
“I’m coming in.”
I pushed open the door and stepped into the room. No sign of Zoe anywhere. A peek under the bed and into the walk-in closet revealed nothing but shoes and clothes.
I left the bedroom and did a quick once-over of the house, making sure I hadn’t overlooked Zoe napping on the futon in the living room in the process. I looked out back to see if maybe she had decided to rest al fresco in a lawn chair, but I saw only birds and squirrels.
The bathroom. It was the only place I hadn’t checked. Not the best hiding place, but she might not have been hiding. It was entirely possible I had entered the house while she was in the middle of doing some very personal business, which may have left her too embarrassed to speak up when I called out her name.
There was a sensitive way to handle this.
I walked back down the hallway to the bedrooms and stood a good five feet from the closed door of the bathroom.
“Zoe? Are you in there?”
I took a couple steps closer. “I just want to talk.” Not a sound.
One more step closer. I was now standing right outside the bathroom door.
That’s when I smelled the metal.
The faint scent of copper and iron rust. Along with something almost sweet.
Probably just old pipes mixing with an air freshener.
Until I grabbed the doorknob and found that it was locked.
“Zoe! Zoe!” I shouted as I rattled the doorknob. “Are you in there? Please say something!”
I took two steps back, lowered my right shoulder and slammed the side of my body against the door, which contorted, but didn’t open. Ample structural damage had been done, however, as there was now a centimeter or so of space in several places where the injured door was supposed to cleave to the jamb. I shuddered upon not hearing a single word or shout of protest from Zoe after the loud ramming. Something. Anything. A single, “What the fuck?” A simple, “Are you out of your mind?” Some sign of…
I reared back and again flung my right shoulder, arm, hip and thigh against the door. This time it flew open, the back of it ricocheting off some linen shelves that sent the door back toward its original closed position. I stuck my foot out to stop it, then pushed it back open to bring the nightmare behind it into full view.
A small screw or nail – shrapnel from the busted open door lock – was spinning on the floor between the toilet and the bathtub. It spun as if it would never stop. That’s not the first thing I saw or the last thing I remember about the scene. It’s just where my mind chooses to rest whenever I go back to visit.
Zoe was lying motionless in the bathtub, soaking in red Easter egg dye, wearing a bra and panties. Her eyes were closed. The same could not be said about either of her wrists.
On the edge of the tub sat a razor blade lined with blood. Some of it had trickled down the white porcelain to a light green bath rug.
I think I screamed out her name before kneeling down and placing my ear to her chest. It’s hard to say for sure. I do recall futilely checking her carotid for a pulse, thinking that laying my finger on her neck and focusing all of my energy on the spot might miraculously jolt her back to life.
Ten minutes. It might have been twenty. Or maybe an hour. It doesn’t matter how long I actually sat with my back slumped against the outside of the tub staring at the chrome faucet of the sink in front of me. It didn’t change anything. Occasionally I’d turn my head and torso slowly to look behind me, half expecting to find the tub empty and dry and white. That wouldn’t have been any less absurd than what I’d already seen.
They say you can change the world by changing your mind. That we create our own reality. That reality is entirely subjective and thus can be altered by our thoughts. But no matter how many times I looked away or closed my eyes and tried to rewrite the scene, Zoe’s face remained as white and as cold and as quiet as when I had I broken open the door.
After asking myself “Why?” over and over while lying on the bathroom floor, the question soon changed to “Why this way?” Why would a woman with the skills and immediate access to the equipment needed to exit cleanly and neatly opt to cut through skin and veins instead? After pondering this for a few minutes, I had the answer: She wanted to protect me.
Zoe knew that if anybody besides me had found her body and saw her hooked up to the hood, I’d become the prime suspect. Maybe not for murder, but certainly for aiding and abetting. Only an investigation team with a serious collective mental deficiency would fail to make the Jubilee-helium tank connection. And even if Zoe had used one of the tanks she had purchased online, she knew I’d have a lot of questions to answer.
Those who say suicide is an entirely selfish act don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
But now I was back to my original question.
Why?
Though deep down, I knew the answer.
As jarring and as tragic and as heartbreaking as it was, looking back I can’t pretend that finding Zoe lying in the tub was the shock of the century. Not after what she had been through, what she had become involved in. Not with her trying to process everything with a bipolar mind and no lithium to weather the storm. And not with a boyfriend who knew all of this, but who didn’t do nearly enough to rescue her. A boyfriend who was more concerned with saving strangers.
As I sat there looking at an alabaster angel bathing in a crimson sea, I realized that, while I may have kept Zoe from jumping from the bridge that one day, I played no small hand in pushing her over the edge in the end.
There’d be plenty of time for guilt and self-pity after I finished with the business at hand.
But I couldn’t remember – who do you call when you find someone dead? I was pretty sure it was 911, but dialing that particular trio of numerals didn’t seem appropriate unless there was danger to be averted or an injury or illness to be immediately treated. I had always associated 911 with speeding ambulances and fire trucks, blaring sirens, paramedics moving like light to keep a perfect stranger’s heart pumping. Twisted metal. Shattered glass. Black streaks staining macadam and highway dividers. Jaws of life. Defibrillators. Poison treatment kits. But what use were speed and noise and heroics now? Why shatter the afternoon sun and disrupt traffic by sending teams of highly trained men and women away from their cozy posts to save nobody? Why ruin the serenity and the stillness that had descended?
As reluctant as I was about ushering in the emergency vehicles, I knew I had to make the call. But not until I recovered a few things.
I found Zoe’s car keys on a small table by the front door. I grabbed them and walked out to the driveway, where I popped the trunk of the Volvo and found three helium tanks – one from Jubilee, one from Zoe’s online supplier – and Zoe’s backpack, which contained another Party Down tank and the rest of the hood supplies. I took my keys out of my pocket, aimed them at the Pathfinder and pressed the unlock button on the key remote. After transferring the tanks and backpack to my car, I returned to the Volvo to search the inside for any additional paraphernalia that investigators might find interesting. The car was clean. Nothing but a couple of empty water bottles and a discarded paper bag from a local café.
I went back inside and searched the house for anything else that would raise eyebrows aside from the drained body in the bathtub, but I found nothing. I thought about taking Zoe’s laptop and phone so that the police couldn’t check her recent “activity,” but then realized they wouldn’t need her actual apparatus to do that. All they’d have to do is get with her Internet and cellular providers. Big Brother is very much alive and well in the Digital Age.
Her exit earnings. I remembered Zoe telling me she wrapped all her cash in foil and kept it duct-taped to the underside of her piano. I checked, and sure enough I found four or five aluminum bricks stuck to the belly of the majestic instrument. As I carefully peeled them from the wood, I couldn’t help but feel I was stealing rather than protecting, even though keeping the money for myself never entered my mind. I decided that, in a few days, some non-profit organization dedicated to providing musical instruments and lessons to underprivileged children would receive an anonymous envelope or two stuffed with tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds.
I put the bricks of cash into a brown paper grocery bag I found in the kitchen, carried the stash to my car, and hid it in the luggage well. Confident I’d covered Zoe’s and my tracks as best I could, I walked back into the house and pulled my cell phone from my pocket to report the end of the world.
“She is… she was my girlfriend. I came over to the house to take her out for a surprise dinner and found her in the tub.”
The detective, a tall and burly black man in his mid-forties, scribbled in his note pad while we stood in Zoe’s living room. The paramedics had moments earlier moved through with a stretcher and an empty body bag en route to the bathroom.
“Had she been suffering any serious depression or been under any serious stress?” asked the detective.
“I have no fucking idea.”
Zoe decided she’d try to kick her killing habit, without the benefit of psychoactive substances or psychiatric sessions. She’d recently read about a serial killer who lost his lust for blood and found lasting calm by switching to a vegetarian diet while in prison. She told me how the convict in question reportedly transformed from lion to lamb after just a few weeks on a strictly plant-based diet, and that he didn’t even fight back when a fellow inmate stabbed him to death with a fork in the dining hall. I promised Zoe I’d start stocking my place with spinach and beans, and to not attack her with any utensils.
Eliminating meat and dairy made Zoe’s skin glow like never before, but did little to bring her inner peace. Maybe she needed bars on the windows and doors to experience the full effect. While she wasn’t as angry or as volatile as before, I could tell she was being eaten up inside. She was quiet and withdrawn. Each time I asked if everything was okay, she’d just nod and let out a long, slow sigh. Thinking she might have been suffering from some kind of carnivore withdrawal, I secretly added beef broth to a soup I’d made for us for one evening, but it didn’t help. Nor did the ground chuck I snuck into our soy burgers the next night.
This wasn’t the meat she was missing.
A few days later Zoe told me she was going to stay at her place for a couple nights. I knew, or I assumed I knew, what that meant. But I had to let her go. I had to give her the benefit of the doubt. Issuing a mandate for her to stay put and keep her hands where I could see them would only push her further away. I couldn’t afford to irk or to alienate her, not with her next scheduled exit coming up in two days. Rodney Davis (colorectal cancer). Aside from the incident of the forgotten hat, Zoe had yet to let me, or any of our clients, down. I didn’t know for sure if she had plans to hunt again. All I knew was that she’d be there for Mr. Davis.
Two days later, all I knew was that all I thought I knew was wrong.
“Hello, may I please speak to Eli?” said the weak voice coming through my phone.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Eli? This is Rodney Davis. Um, I think there might have been a mix-up.”
I’ll say. You should be deceased by now.
“What? You mean… she never even… just hang tight Mr. Davis. I’ll be over in a few minutes. You’re at 1616 Seneca, right?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand what hap–”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this, Mr. Davis. One thing before I head over, are you expecting any visitors this afternoon?”
“No, just your associate.”
“I’ll be filling in. Be there in ten.”
Oh, Zoe, you’ve done it now!
It was bad enough that a dead man’s last call on official record would be to me. Now I had to do a suicide while distracted by fantasies of killing my girlfriend.
Two calls I made to Zoe while speeding to Mr. Davis’ house went unanswered. I’d have to deal with her later. I was in full recovery mode and had to focus. Fuming over Zoe’s no-show and wondering where the hell she was and what the hell she was doing wouldn’t accomplish anything – except perhaps increase the chances of Mr. Davis’ exit becoming even more of a disaster.
Poor Mr. Davis. There’s nothing worse than desperately wanting to leave a party but not being able to find your ride.
I tried to picture him, lying prone on his sofa or bed, trying to find a position that didn’t aggravate his symptoms, staring at a spot on a pillow to distract him from the fact that he had been stood up on his date with death. There’s nothing you can do to set this right. “I’ll make it up to you” doesn’t cut it here.
When I arrived at his house, Mr. Davis came to the door in a much more jovial mood than I had anticipated.
“That was fast,” he said, holding a glass of water. “Hope you didn’t run any red lights on my account.”
This man had just been severely dishonored, dismissed, forced to wait to receive something he was paying $10,000 for, and yet he was concerned about being a bother. I would have hugged the man if I hadn’t feared it would cause irreparable internal bleeding.
“Mr. Davis, words cannot express how deeply sorry I am for this unacceptable mistake. I hope you–”
“Let me stop you there. Truth is, you did me a favor.”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“I mean I’ve changed my mind. I would have called you back to tell you and save you the trip, but I just decided a couple of minutes ago, and figured you’d be here soon enough. Besides, you shouldn’t use the phone while driving.”
“Mr. Davis–”
“Please, call me Rodney.”
“Rodney, I can understand if my associate’s no-show has destroyed your trust and confidence in our services, but I assure you our methods are extremely safe and completely painless. We’ve never had an incident.”
“No, no, it’s not that. Her not showing up, I’ve taken it as a sign. With all due respect for what you do, I now see it’s not how the universe wants me to go out. I’m gonna stick it out a little longer, suffering and all. Who knows, maybe by some miracle I’ll even beat this thing.”
Not the “m” word. The very notion of miracles defies everything I do.
“I respect your decision, Mr. D– …Rodney. I just need to know you’re absolutely sure it’s what you want.”
“I’m sure, thank you. And I’m sorry to have taken up your time on all this. I realize you have a very busy schedule.”
“Please. You have no reason to apologize. I’m just glad you figured out what you wanted before it was too late.”
“I’d still like to pay you for your trouble.”
“Absolutely not. I won’t hear of it.”
“Don’t you know you shouldn’t argue with a dying man?”
“I don’t know a lot of things, Rodney.”
I took a few minutes to convince Mr. Davis I wouldn’t budge on the money issue. Afterward, I shook his icy hand and bid him farewell.
As I walked to my Pathfinder, I felt a sense of both relief and defeat. The relief came from not having to perform an exit while distracted, and from knowing I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone finding my phone number listed among a corpse’s recent calls. The defeat, well, that came from having lost a client. Sure, I’d lost clients before – Harve, who’d run out of time; others, who’d run out of patience – but this one was different. This one was still breathing.
Sitting in my car, the anger returned. Zoe. Still not answering her phone.
While Mr. Davis may have seen her forgetfulness as saving his life, I knew all it had done was ruin his death.
CHAPTER 27
I can put up with a lot in a relationship. I’m a broad-minded man, one who realizes that sometimes a girl has to do things like shoot her ex or jump off a bridge or carry out a vendetta on low, lawless men. But one thing I cannot abide is tardiness. Worse, absenteeism.
Where before I had convinced myself Zoe would soon stop making rapists dead and recommit to a good clean life of music teaching and euthanasia, I now realized she’d gone too far over to the dark side for any real rehabilitation to occur. Blowing off somebody’s suicide? There’s no coming back from that.
As soon as I pulled onto Zoe’s street I could see her Volvo parked in her driveway. Either she was home or had somehow found time to add grand theft auto to her rap sheet. I parked out on the street, cut the engine, and took several deep breaths to calm myself. I didn’t want my popping in to escalate into a crime of passion.
I pressed the doorbell and rapped on the door. No response. This was to be expected. You don’t ditch on an exit and then openly receive visitors. I rang and knocked again, to no avail.
I then remembered she kept an extra key inside a fake rock on the ground near the walkway. I’d never seen it, but she had told me about it late one night while we were watching an old movie in which the hero hoisted a boulder that was obviously made out of papier-mâché. The faux rock containing Zoe’s house key wasn’t quite as easy to spot, but after crouching down and inspecting the various stones in the vicinity, I finally came upon one that was trying a little too hard to fit in. There’s such a thing as too good a disguise. I picked up the relatively lightweight imposter, which was made out of some kind of polymer, and found a seam. Moments later the key was in the door and I was in the house.
“Zoe, it’s me” I called out. “I’m sorry to barge in, but we obviously have a lot to talk about.”
Silence.
I walked through the living room, where her baby grand stood alone, and made my way toward her bedroom. I passed the guest bedroom, the door to which was wide open providing a clear view of an empty bed.
The door to Zoe’s bedroom was slightly ajar. “Zoe?” I said softly, listening for groans or the shuffling of sheets – the sounds of a waking woman – but I heard nothing. I peeked through the crack in the door and caught a glimpse of a perfectly made up bed. Perhaps she was sitting in the chair she kept in the corner of her room, patiently waiting for me to enter. Or perhaps she was standing behind the door clutching an iron candlestick holder.
“I’m coming in.”
I pushed open the door and stepped into the room. No sign of Zoe anywhere. A peek under the bed and into the walk-in closet revealed nothing but shoes and clothes.
I left the bedroom and did a quick once-over of the house, making sure I hadn’t overlooked Zoe napping on the futon in the living room in the process. I looked out back to see if maybe she had decided to rest al fresco in a lawn chair, but I saw only birds and squirrels.
The bathroom. It was the only place I hadn’t checked. Not the best hiding place, but she might not have been hiding. It was entirely possible I had entered the house while she was in the middle of doing some very personal business, which may have left her too embarrassed to speak up when I called out her name.
There was a sensitive way to handle this.
I walked back down the hallway to the bedrooms and stood a good five feet from the closed door of the bathroom.
“Zoe? Are you in there?”
I took a couple steps closer. “I just want to talk.” Not a sound.
One more step closer. I was now standing right outside the bathroom door.
That’s when I smelled the metal.
The faint scent of copper and iron rust. Along with something almost sweet.
Probably just old pipes mixing with an air freshener.
Until I grabbed the doorknob and found that it was locked.
“Zoe! Zoe!” I shouted as I rattled the doorknob. “Are you in there? Please say something!”
I took two steps back, lowered my right shoulder and slammed the side of my body against the door, which contorted, but didn’t open. Ample structural damage had been done, however, as there was now a centimeter or so of space in several places where the injured door was supposed to cleave to the jamb. I shuddered upon not hearing a single word or shout of protest from Zoe after the loud ramming. Something. Anything. A single, “What the fuck?” A simple, “Are you out of your mind?” Some sign of…
I reared back and again flung my right shoulder, arm, hip and thigh against the door. This time it flew open, the back of it ricocheting off some linen shelves that sent the door back toward its original closed position. I stuck my foot out to stop it, then pushed it back open to bring the nightmare behind it into full view.
A small screw or nail – shrapnel from the busted open door lock – was spinning on the floor between the toilet and the bathtub. It spun as if it would never stop. That’s not the first thing I saw or the last thing I remember about the scene. It’s just where my mind chooses to rest whenever I go back to visit.
Zoe was lying motionless in the bathtub, soaking in red Easter egg dye, wearing a bra and panties. Her eyes were closed. The same could not be said about either of her wrists.
On the edge of the tub sat a razor blade lined with blood. Some of it had trickled down the white porcelain to a light green bath rug.
I think I screamed out her name before kneeling down and placing my ear to her chest. It’s hard to say for sure. I do recall futilely checking her carotid for a pulse, thinking that laying my finger on her neck and focusing all of my energy on the spot might miraculously jolt her back to life.
Ten minutes. It might have been twenty. Or maybe an hour. It doesn’t matter how long I actually sat with my back slumped against the outside of the tub staring at the chrome faucet of the sink in front of me. It didn’t change anything. Occasionally I’d turn my head and torso slowly to look behind me, half expecting to find the tub empty and dry and white. That wouldn’t have been any less absurd than what I’d already seen.
They say you can change the world by changing your mind. That we create our own reality. That reality is entirely subjective and thus can be altered by our thoughts. But no matter how many times I looked away or closed my eyes and tried to rewrite the scene, Zoe’s face remained as white and as cold and as quiet as when I had I broken open the door.
After asking myself “Why?” over and over while lying on the bathroom floor, the question soon changed to “Why this way?” Why would a woman with the skills and immediate access to the equipment needed to exit cleanly and neatly opt to cut through skin and veins instead? After pondering this for a few minutes, I had the answer: She wanted to protect me.
Zoe knew that if anybody besides me had found her body and saw her hooked up to the hood, I’d become the prime suspect. Maybe not for murder, but certainly for aiding and abetting. Only an investigation team with a serious collective mental deficiency would fail to make the Jubilee-helium tank connection. And even if Zoe had used one of the tanks she had purchased online, she knew I’d have a lot of questions to answer.
Those who say suicide is an entirely selfish act don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
But now I was back to my original question.
Why?
Though deep down, I knew the answer.
As jarring and as tragic and as heartbreaking as it was, looking back I can’t pretend that finding Zoe lying in the tub was the shock of the century. Not after what she had been through, what she had become involved in. Not with her trying to process everything with a bipolar mind and no lithium to weather the storm. And not with a boyfriend who knew all of this, but who didn’t do nearly enough to rescue her. A boyfriend who was more concerned with saving strangers.
As I sat there looking at an alabaster angel bathing in a crimson sea, I realized that, while I may have kept Zoe from jumping from the bridge that one day, I played no small hand in pushing her over the edge in the end.
There’d be plenty of time for guilt and self-pity after I finished with the business at hand.
But I couldn’t remember – who do you call when you find someone dead? I was pretty sure it was 911, but dialing that particular trio of numerals didn’t seem appropriate unless there was danger to be averted or an injury or illness to be immediately treated. I had always associated 911 with speeding ambulances and fire trucks, blaring sirens, paramedics moving like light to keep a perfect stranger’s heart pumping. Twisted metal. Shattered glass. Black streaks staining macadam and highway dividers. Jaws of life. Defibrillators. Poison treatment kits. But what use were speed and noise and heroics now? Why shatter the afternoon sun and disrupt traffic by sending teams of highly trained men and women away from their cozy posts to save nobody? Why ruin the serenity and the stillness that had descended?
As reluctant as I was about ushering in the emergency vehicles, I knew I had to make the call. But not until I recovered a few things.
I found Zoe’s car keys on a small table by the front door. I grabbed them and walked out to the driveway, where I popped the trunk of the Volvo and found three helium tanks – one from Jubilee, one from Zoe’s online supplier – and Zoe’s backpack, which contained another Party Down tank and the rest of the hood supplies. I took my keys out of my pocket, aimed them at the Pathfinder and pressed the unlock button on the key remote. After transferring the tanks and backpack to my car, I returned to the Volvo to search the inside for any additional paraphernalia that investigators might find interesting. The car was clean. Nothing but a couple of empty water bottles and a discarded paper bag from a local café.
I went back inside and searched the house for anything else that would raise eyebrows aside from the drained body in the bathtub, but I found nothing. I thought about taking Zoe’s laptop and phone so that the police couldn’t check her recent “activity,” but then realized they wouldn’t need her actual apparatus to do that. All they’d have to do is get with her Internet and cellular providers. Big Brother is very much alive and well in the Digital Age.
Her exit earnings. I remembered Zoe telling me she wrapped all her cash in foil and kept it duct-taped to the underside of her piano. I checked, and sure enough I found four or five aluminum bricks stuck to the belly of the majestic instrument. As I carefully peeled them from the wood, I couldn’t help but feel I was stealing rather than protecting, even though keeping the money for myself never entered my mind. I decided that, in a few days, some non-profit organization dedicated to providing musical instruments and lessons to underprivileged children would receive an anonymous envelope or two stuffed with tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds.
I put the bricks of cash into a brown paper grocery bag I found in the kitchen, carried the stash to my car, and hid it in the luggage well. Confident I’d covered Zoe’s and my tracks as best I could, I walked back into the house and pulled my cell phone from my pocket to report the end of the world.
“She is… she was my girlfriend. I came over to the house to take her out for a surprise dinner and found her in the tub.”
The detective, a tall and burly black man in his mid-forties, scribbled in his note pad while we stood in Zoe’s living room. The paramedics had moments earlier moved through with a stretcher and an empty body bag en route to the bathroom.
“Had she been suffering any serious depression or been under any serious stress?” asked the detective.
