Bedbugs, p.14
Bedbugs, page 14
They exchanged meaningful glances again and shook their heads as though confused. Several of them shifted their glazes away from me, apparently not wanting to look at me except from the corners of their eyes.
“I wasn’t here alone! I went home with her! With the girl—the femme with the silver rings!”
It was useless.
They either didn’t understand me or chose not to understand me. Finally, in frustration, I turned away. I paid my tab and walked out into the purple evening. I considered trying to retrace our steps from last night and find her apartment again, but I knew that I couldn’t. I had no idea even in which direction to start. I began to wonder if she hadn’t purposely doubled back a few times and taken me in a roundabout way to her place in order to confuse me.
What I couldn’t figure out was, why?
She had wanted me. Perhaps not as much as I had wanted her, but she had been willing, and she had made passionate yet tender love to me in the warm and inviting darkness of her bedroom. I could still feel the cool sting of her silver rings on my naked back as we made love.
This all happened more than twenty years ago. I’m married, now, and have a nice home, a job I can tolerate, a wife I love, and three terrific children. Still, though, once or twice a year, I drive up to Quebec. Alone. I walk the streets after dark, and I’m particularly happy if it starts to rain like it did that night so long ago. But I can no longer even find the old cafe without a sign. I watch the rivers of light reflecting off the rain-slick streets, and my mind fills with the memory of how her hands had felt as they held mine. And I often think about that barn swallow I had caught and held when I was a boy.
I can almost accept the idea that the men in the cafe may have been right—that I never left with her that night. It happened so long ago, I have myself more than half-convinced that it might never have happened, that I never met her, that I never went with her to her room, that it had all been a dream, and that she was nothing more than a figment of my imagination . . . or maybe something else. . . .
But there are some things I do know.
I know that she still holds something of mine in her hands. I can feel the cold sting of her silver rings as she cradles my heart like a small, trembling bird in her cupped hands. And I know that, even now, with the slightest bit of pressure, she could still my heart’s warm, steady beating. I also know that, someday, she will quiet my heart, and maybe then I will see her again.
—for C. R.
Colt .24
-1-
Diary entry one: approximately 10:00 A.M. on Valentine’s Day—How ironic.
If you’ve ever spent any time in academic circles, you’ve no doubt heard the expression “Publish or perish.” Simply put, it means that if you want to keep your teaching position, at least at any decent college or university, you’ve got to publish occasionally in academic journals. I suppose this is to prove that you’ve been doing important research, but it also contributes to the prestige of your school.
My experience, at least in the English Department here at the University of Southern Maine, is that the more obscure and unread the periodical, the more prestige is involved. I mean, if you don’t write novels or stories that pretend to “art”—well, then, you can kiss your chances for tenure good-bye.
Bob Howard, a good friend of mine here, did just that. He wrote and sold dozens of stories and two novels; but because his work was viewed by the tenure committee as “commercial” fiction, he didn’t keep his job. After he was denied tenure a few years back, he and I used to joke over drinks about how he had published and perished!
I have reason to be cynical. The doctor who talked with me last night might have some fancier, more clinical terms for it, but I’m tempted to translate his conclusions about me to something a little simpler: let’s try—crazy as a shit-house rat!
That’s crazy, all right.
But keep reading.
I’m putting all of this down as fast as I can because I know I don’t have much time. I’m fighting the English teacher in me who wants to go back and revise, hone this sticker until it’s perfect, but if I’m right . . . Oh, Jesus! If I’m right! . . .
Okay, I’ll try to start at the start. Oops. Got a little redundant there. Sorry. Anyway, as I’ve always told my students, every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Life, I’ve found, unfortunately doesn’t always play out that way. Oh, sure—the beginning’s at birth and the end’s at death—it’s filling up the middle part that can be such a bitch!
I don’t know if this whole damned thing started when I first saw Rose McAllister . . . ah, Rosie! She was sitting in the front row on the first day of my 8:00 A.M. Introduction to English Literature class last fall. It might have been then that everything started, but I’ve got to be honest here. I mean, at this point, it may not matter at all . . . or it may be all that matters. I think I’ll be dead . . . and really in Hell within . . . possibly less than four hours.
One thing I do know is, when I first saw Rosie, I didn’t think, right off the bat—Goddamn! I want to have an affair with her!
That sounds so delicate—”have an affair.” I wanted to, sure; but that was after a while, once I got to know her. Once we started, though, we slept together whenever we could . . . which wasn’t often, you see, because of Sally, my wife. Ah, my dear, departed wife!
I guess if I were really looking for the beginning to this whole damned mess, I’d have to say it was when we started our study of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. You know—your classic “deal with the Devil” story. I didn’t mention too much of this to the police shrink because—well, if you tell someone like that that you struck a deal with the Devil, that you sold him your soul—yes, I signed the agreement with my own blood—you’ve got to expect him to send you up to the rubber room on P-6. If I’m wrong about all of this, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life writing letters home with a Crayola.
Wait a minute—I’m getting ahead of myself, but as I said, I don’t have much time left . . . at least I don’t think so.
Okay, so sometime around the middle of the semester, Rosie and I began to “sleep together.” Another delicate expression because we did very little sleeping. We got whatever we could, whenever we could—in my office, usually, or—once or twice—in a motel room, once in my car in the faculty parking lot outside Bailey Hall. Whenever and wherever!
The first mistake we made was being seen at The Roma, a fancy restaurant in Portland. Hank and Mary Crenshaw saw us. The Roma! As an English teacher, I can appreciate the irony of that, too. Sally and I celebrated our wedding anniversary there every year. Being seen there on a Friday night, with a college sophomore (“young enough to be your daughter,” Sally took no end of pleasure repeating), by your wife’s close (not best, but close) friend is downright stupid. I still cringe whenever I imagine the glee there must have been in Mary’s voice when she told Sally.
Hell, I’ll admit it. Why not? I never liked Mary, and I know she never liked me. Hank—he was all right, but I always made a point of telling Sally that Mary was her friend, not mine.
So, Sally found out.
Okay, so plenty of married men (and women) get caught cheating. Sometimes the couple can cope and work it out. Sometimes, they can’t. We couldn’t. I should say, Sally couldn’t. She set her lawyer—good ole’ Walter Altschuler—on me faster than a greyhound on a rabbit. That guy would’ve had my gonads if they hadn’t been attached. You must have heard the joke about the lawyer and the shark . . . well, never mind for now.
But I’m not the kind of guy who takes this kind of stuff—from anyone! And, in an ironic sort of way, I guess I’m getting paid back for that, too. Bottom line? If someone sics a lawyer on me, I’m gonna bite back!
Now here’s where it starts getting a little weird.
If I told the police shrink all of this, he’d bounce me up to P-6 for sure. I mentioned that we’d been reading Faustus in class, and that’s when I decided to do a bit of . . . let’s call it research. I dug through the library and found what was supposedly a magician’s handbook. Not sleight of hand kind of stuff. I mean what’s called a grimoire. And I decided to try my hand at necromancy.
Look, I’m not crazy. I went into it more than half-skeptical. And I want to state for the record here that I . . .
-2-
Diary entry two: two hours later. Time’s running out, for sure!
Sorry for the interruption. I’m back now after wasting two hours with the police shrink again. He ran me over the story again, but I held up pretty well, I think. At least I didn’t tell him what I’m going to write about now. But like I said earlier, I want to have this all recorded so if I’m right . . . Oh, Jesus. . . . If I’m right. . . .
Where was I? Oh, yeah—necromancy . . . a deal with the Devil. Yes—yes—yes! A deal that was signed in blood! The library on the Gorham campus had an ancient grimoire. Well, actually it was a facsimile of one, published a few years ago by the University of Nebraska Press. It’s amazing what gets published these days. I wonder if the person who edited the text got tenure. I can’t recall his name just now. Anyway, I looked up the spell for summoning the Devil and . . . now I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, but you have to believe me on this; I did it!
I actually summoned the Devil!
Go ahead. Laugh. What does it matter? I’ll be dead—and in Hell—soon enough!
I have a key to Bailey Hall, so I came back to my office late one night—sometime after eleven o’clock, so I could be ready by midnight. After making sure my office door was locked, I set to work. Pushing back the cheap rug I had by my desk (to keep the rollers of my chair from squeaking), I drew a pentagram on the floor using a black Magic Marker. I placed a black candle—boy, were they hard to find!—at each of the five points of the star and lit them. Then, taking the black leather-bound book, I began to recite the Latin incantations backwards.
Actually, I was surprised that it worked. My Latin was so rusty, I was afraid I’d mispronounce something and end up summoning a talking toadstool or something.
But it worked—it actually worked! In a puff of sulfurous fumes, “Old Scratch” himself appeared.
Looking around, he said dryly, “Well, at least you’re not another damned politician!” Then, getting right down to business, he said, “Okay, what do you want in exchange for your soul?”
With his golden, cat-slit eyes burning into me, I had the feeling that he already knew—more clearly than I did at the moment. Anyway, I told him. I said that I wanted an absolutely foolproof way of killing my wife and not getting caught. I told him I was willing to sign over my soul to him—yes! Dear God! In blood!—if I could just get rid of Sally and be absolutely certain that I wouldn’t get caught.
I’m writing this, you must have realized by now, in a jail cell. I’m the prime suspect for my wife’s murder, but I haven’t been charged with anything—not yet, anyway. I have a perfect alibi, you see, and there are these other problems, too. If you read the Portland Press Herald tomorrow, you’ll find out whether or not I got away with it.
What the Devil did was hand me a revolver. He called it a Colt .24—a “specially modified” Colt .45—and a box of nice, shiny, brass-jacketed bullets. He told me all I had to do, after I signed the agreement, of course, was load the gun and aim it at Sally—he suggested I sneak home sometime before lunch someday—pull the trigger, throw the gun away, and make sure I went to work as usual the next day. If I did exactly what he said, he guaranteed that I’d go free.
Sounded okay to me. At this point, I was well past analyzing the situation rationally. I’d been under a lot of pressure, you understand. My wife’s lawyer had stuck the end nozzle of his vacuum cleaner into my wallet and was sucking up the bucks. I’d been without sleep for nearly two days and nights running—I was getting so worked up about Sally.
And the capper was Rosie. As soon as she found out that Sally knew about us, she cooled off. Cooled off Hell—she froze! Maybe—I hate to think it!—but maybe it was just the chance of getting caught that had added to her excitement, her sense of adventure, her passion. Once we got caught, the thrill was gone for her. Could she really have been that shallow? I can’t help but think so.
I wasn’t completely convinced this whole business with the Devil had really worked, because . . . well, I must’ve fallen asleep after he pricked my finger so I could sign the contract in blood, gave me the gun, and disappeared. I woke up, stiff-necked and hurting all over, flat on my back on my office floor, mere minutes before my eight o’clock class. The candles had burned down and extinguished themselves, but in the pale wash of morning light, I could see the pentagram on the floor, so I knew I hadn’t dreamed everything. Also, I had the gun . . . a Colt .24!
I’d been asleep—I don’t know how long. Not more than four hours, I guessed. I remembered that I had started the summoning right at midnight, like I was supposed to, but I had no idea how long it took. At least for me, old Satan didn’t waste any time with dizzying visions of power and glory, or processions of spirits. Nothing, really—just a straightforward business transaction. Thinking about it later, it could just as easily have been Old Man Olsen, the night janitor in Bailey Hall.
But like I said, I did have the gun, and—damned if I didn’t decide then and there that I’d use it. I had my two morning classes first, but right after them, I planned to go straight home, point the gun at Sally, and pull the trigger—even if, then and there, it blew her through the picture window. I’d reached my limit, which, I’d like to think, is considerably beyond what most men can stand.
So I did it.
After my second class—between classes I had time to drag the rug back and gulp down some coffee and an Egg McMuffin—I took off for home. As luck would have it, Sally was—Damn! Here they come again!
-3-
Diary entry three: more than an hour wasted—not much time left!
This time the police came in again, not the doctor. Talk about being confused! I know they want to charge me with the shooting, but my alibi is rock solid, and the funniest thing about it all is, they can’t get my gun to fire. So they asked me some more about my relationship with Sally, using the excuse that maybe it’ll give them a lead on who else might have wanted to kill her. They said I might be released soon.
Hah!
As if that’s going to make a difference!
Where was I . . . Oh, yeah—Sally was home, and her lawyer, old Walter-baby, was there with her. I sort of wondered why he was there at my house. Maybe nosing around gave him better ideas how to skin me alive. Or maybe getting into Sally’s pants was part of his fee. You know what they say about lawyers. . . . But I couldn’t afford to leave a witness, so whatever he was doing there, that was just his tough luck. One more lawyer in Hell wasn’t going to make a difference, anyway.
I walked in from the kitchen and nodded a greeting to the two of them, sitting there on the couch. I mumbled something about having forgotten some test papers as I put my briefcase down on the telephone table, opened it, and took out the gun. Shielding it from their sight with the opened top of the briefcase, I brought the gun up, took careful aim at Walter, and squeezed the trigger. Not once—not twice—three times! Good number, three. A literature professor knows all about the significance of the number three.
But nothing happened!
Although I’d been careful to slip a bullet into each chamber before I left the office, there was no sound, no kick in my hand. There wasn’t even much of a click. The only thing I could think was that maybe the Colt .24 wouldn’t work for someone who wasn’t part of the deal, so I pointed it at Sally and fired off three more shots . . . with the same result.
Nothing.
I do remember—or thinking I remember—smelling a faint aroma of spent gunpowder, but I chalked that up to wishful thinking.
Sally and Walter never even noticed what I was doing. They just kept right on talking, ignoring me as I gawked at them; so I slipped the gun back into my briefcase, shut it, and went up to the bedroom, shuffling around a bit up there while I tried to figure out what to do. I’d been packing my things to move out, but Sally—against old Walter-baby’s advice, I might add—had said it was all right for me to stay in the house until the apartment I’d rented in Gorham opened up the first of the month. Thanks, Sal. As it turned out, that was the last favor she ever did for me—except a day later, when she dropped dead!
So anyway, I came back downstairs, got my briefcase, and headed back to campus with Sally and Walter still sitting on the couch just as alive as they could be. I was feeling like I’d been ripped off, set up or something by the Devil. As far as I was concerned, his Colt .24 was a dud.
Back at my office, about two o’clock, I checked the Colt. I was surprised as all hell to see six spent shells in the chamber—no bullets, just empty shells. I wondered if I could have been so dumb as to load the gun with empty bullets. I didn’t think so—I’d used the ones the Devil had given me. I shook the empties out into my hand and then tossed them into the trash. Then I slipped six fresh ones from the Devil’s box into the chamber. I was getting a bit scared that maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing, but that still didn’t explain where I had gotten the Colt.
I’m sure by then I wasn’t thinking too clearly, lack of sleep and tension and all, so I decided to test the gun right there in my office. I sighted along the barrel at one of the pictures on my wall—one of my favorites, actually: a silk-screened advertisement for the Dartmouth Christmas Revels—and gently squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Turning quickly, I aimed at my doctoral dissertation on the top shelf of my bookcase. Now there was something else to hate! I pulled the trigger a second time.
Nothing.
Again, aiming at the pencil sharpener beside the door, I squeezed the trigger.
