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The Next(17)

By:Rafe Haze


     



 

What the fuck was going on?

God I wanted to call Marzoli. I wanted to call him so badly. Who better to direct some synapses toward this puzzle?

I looked at the bills Johanna had left on my piano. Cash sitting atop  music. What a goddam perfect metaphor! I would have to find a way to pay  that Verizon bill with cash. My heart started thumping. I did not know  how to execute this feat without leaving the apartment. Also, did  accepting Johanna's money like a whore constitute an obligatory  commitment to our future together? Wasn't there something ethically  wrong with using Johanna's money to help me call another person who  caused my dick to tent my sweatpants?

Errrggg … .





Chapter Twelve

I whacked the ceiling with my broom.

No, Ruben had not been practicing above me. It was twelve in the  afternoon, but I hadn't heard a single footfall on the wooden floors of  his apartment. Yes, I needed to validate my hypothesis that Ruben had  arrived home last night and all was as well as can be expected, but I  needed something else too.

The snow had been falling steadily since six a.m. My eyes were blurry  from watching the Layworths do basically nothing since three. Mrs.  Layworth had fallen asleep on the bed, and Mr. Layworth had dozed off on  the couch with his laptop on his chest.

Inactivity and curiosity was making me feel …

 … restless …

Restless! Didn't this mean the Next had somehow snuck into my cave in  the night and already started burping on the couch and leaving the  toilet seat up?

I opened my front door to test the temperature of the water.

I started sweating. My heart thumped irregularly. My eyesight blurred. I started a mild hyperventilation.

Apparently I wouldn't be released just yet. So I came up with another truly sociopathic plan to get the cash to Verizon.

I whacked the ceiling again.

No response. No movement. No stamping with irritation. Odd.

I whacked again.

If Ruben did not come downstairs, I had no fucking way to get that phone bill paid. What a fucking imbecile!

Oh … wait … I'm the asshole banging the ceiling for no fault of Ruben's.

Whack. Whack.

I heard a knock on the door.

There's that twerp!

I opened it immediately, expecting to see Ruben, but instead found Mrs.  Abraham holding the lovely little yapster in her arms and a foil-covered  plate of buttery-who-the-hell-knows-what in her hand.

"He's not home," she croaked softly.

"What?"

"I heard you thumping on the ceiling. But he's not home. I tried to  bring him this two hours ago," she held the plate up, "but he didn't  answer the door. I knocked at least ten times and his door is locked.  He's not home."

She smiled warmly and handed me the plate.

"Here. Why don't you eat it instead? I made it just this morning."

Oh, shit. Blubber gut time.

"Thank you," I grinned my shit-eating grin, accepting the plate.

She turned to go, but hesitated. "I'm going to run some errands. May I do anything for you, dear?"

Her question was not just a coincidentally fortunate offer, it was  intuitive. The way she looked me was not just generic generosity, her  eyes twinkled with understanding. But how could she possibly understand  what I had never vocalized to her? And yet she did not ask, "Do you need  anything, dear?" That would've been the expected question from a casual  kind neighbor. But Mrs. Abraham's question was more specific: "May I do  anything for you?" A question more appropriate for an invalid, or for  someone incapacitated.

She withdrew a delicate embroidered handkerchief and placed it on my glistening forehead.

"These upper floors get hot, don't they?"

She knew they didn't, but she waved that handkerchief like a banner that  said she knew I was actively struggling with something. I neither  needed nor asked for maternal care, but I also never knew how good it  felt to receive it.

"They turned off my cell phone service, but there's a phone store open on Sunday on Eighth Avenue, and I have the cash … "

"AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint?"

I felt compelled to hug her, but instead just froze and looked at her in  disbelief. I think my eyes were watering. I think she saw that. I  simply didn't know anything but how she overwhelmed me.

I handed her the money and the phone bill, which she accepted with that  same caring twinkle in her eyes, then she waddled back down the hall. I  closed the door, still unable to believe my good fortune and gratitude  to this beautiful woman.

Gratitude was an emotion I hadn't felt with this much lack of cynicism  for so long. So very long. I just needed to sit in its light for a few  more seconds before the shadows obliterated it.         

     



 

I took the foil off the plate. Instead of strudel, I saw and smelled in  my hands a mouthwatering plate of white and dark turkey meat covered in  thick goopy brown gravy, mashed sweet potatoes glistening with butter,  bright green string beans, and chunky cranberry sauce. The food was  steaming hot. She hadn't brought this to Ruben two hours earlier. I  believe she made it just for me right before knocking on my door. I  believe she sensed this was exactly what I needed. I believe she'd been  aware of whatever the fuck imprisoned me here all along.

There was a current of good in the world. Why couldn't I swim to it?

Or was I? Slowly? Stroke by stroke?





Chapter Thirteen

My iPhone beeped back to life at 4 p.m. that Sunday.

I had an irrational yearning to call Marzoli, but enough rationality to  recognize the irrationality. I buried my iPhone under a pair of boxers  with the phrase Show Me The Money printed on the ass. My phone was out  of sight, but my fingers remained twitching. I redirected as much of my  attention as possible to other things. Anything.

Something on the wall near the window caught my eye.

A bulge in the wallboard stretched from the ceiling down a foot to the  top left corner of my window. The bulge was only about half an inch  thick and hardly anything to be alarmed about, but it was a fascinating  new irregular protuberance that had no immediate explanation.

The gusty falling snow obscured the view of the puppets across the way.  The Layworths were both in the kitchen on cell phones, dictating in  urgent tones to their respective minions while simultaneously shooting  irritated looks at each other for interfering with their respective  conversations. They faced off on either side of the kitchen island, each  in self-righteous indignation that said "My conversation is more  important and therefore you should leave the room first." But neither  budged.

This was the general behavior they'd had all morning and all afternoon  with each other. It occurred to me I'd never seen them alone together.  I'd always seen them either completely alone or fussing with their  children. But today, free of childcare, their dynamics came to the fore.  It looked to me like it was not turning out to be a happy skip through  the daisy field.

Growing up, Paul and I used to spy through the window of the Moody's.  She was an artist who painted on massive canvasses, had wild red hair,  and spent hours in her yoga corner on her yoga pillow. He was a  bespectacled lawyer who spent hours shifting stacks of pages from one  side of his desk to the other. They were our favorite victims because  the moment they entered their house, they would remove all articles of  clothing and walk around the house perfectly naked. They never had sex  in front of us, but they treated nakedness as freedom from all outside  constraints. Both Mrs. and Mr. Moody had hair growing out of their  armpits and pubic areas in large dark bushy tufts. Our Dad scowled when  he saw them on the street and called them squish-headed hippies, but  privately Paul and I enjoyed them for how comfortable they were with  their eccentricities.

They had a beautiful Rhodesian Ridgeback named Sheeba. Rhodesian  Ridgebacks are loyal and full of personality, but also neurotically  co-dependent and aggressive food hunters. No scrap of anything that  smelled even remotely edible was ever safe. Sheeba demanded constant  attention from the Moody's, which they administered with unceasing,  happy amusement.

Paul and I would frequently open their gate and sneak through the  bougainvillea to spy on them. However, one evening, as we were watching  the Moodys chase Sheeba through the house trying to retrieve Mr. Moody's  case for his glasses before Sheeba chewed through it entirely, we heard  our Mom scream sharply down the street for us. It was the kind of  scream we recognized immediately as Mom's urgent need for us to referee  some argument with Dad. We left the gate open in our haste.

The next day we learned that Sheeba had escaped the yard and been hit by  an orange Volkswagen bus on Wild Cat Canyon Road. Paul and I knew we  were responsible. We knew, and for fear of a belt strapping on our bare  asses, we had no choice but to say nothing.

When we returned to the bougainvilleas a week later, we saw the Moodys  separated in their house. He was still at his desk pushing his glasses  up the bridge of his nose, and she was still meditating in her corner on  her pillow with furrowed brow, but they were spiritually separated.  They were wearing clothes inside. Shielded. Sheeba was not there to  provide any active redirect of their attention from minute-to-minute.  She was no longer there to structure their day for walks, for feeding,  for cleaning, for fulfilling her constant needs. The Moodys no longer  had their driving force of joy, of frustration, of love, and of  amusement. The Moodys had only themselves.