The Next(26)

     



 

How much fat did he think he'd lose between now and tomorrow morning by  planking? But I understood. Obtaining a zero-fat ratio wasn't really the  point. He wanted to feel the satisfaction of actively bettering his  life. He was fighting the feeling of futility by engaging in the one  thing in his life he had power over-his body. He was just like all the  fighters in New York, trembling and sweating in a planked position,  struggling to maintain any kind of elevated leveling in life before the  collapse, the release, the expiration.

And me? I pined like a lover for Marzoli to merely be in the same room  with me. What did it say about me that when he showed enthusiasm to be  here, I showed him to the door? What result had I achieved? I was  extracting from my palm shards of the concrete proof of Ruben's murder,  and I could not inform the one person who could do anything about it.  I'd planked, but just gave up. Just collapsed.

I extracted the last and largest shard from the side of my thumb in an unenthusiastic act of self-preservation.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

My phone rang.

It was not Marzoli.

"Who's this?" I asked after answering it, smearing a drop of blood on the screen.

"It's Rebecca. Didn't my name come up?"

"Why would it? I deleted your contact info after you failed to sell any of my songs for a year."

I said it in a chiding tone, but in fact I had.

"I got your song."

"Oh, you got ‘Obsession'?"

"Yeah, it's fantastic."

"It's called ‘Paralyzed.'"

"Well, I like it. Have you got any other material?"

That single question could indicate one of two things: one, she cannot  push "Paralyzed" because it sucks, or two, someone liked it so much they  wanted to hear other songs by the same writer. I guessed the former due  to the fact that she hadn't remembered the name. If she'd forwarded it  to more than one person, even two, the name would have been reinforced  by typing it multiple times. Obviously, she hadn't.

There was a burst of activity in the kitchen of the Layworths. The kids  just came home, tossing their snow gear and jackets onto chairs and  scrambling around in frenetic disorder. Mrs. Layworth entered as well,  calm and a trifle distant, placing her leather computer bag on the  table. She exchanged a brief, steely look with her husband and proceeded  to pull spaghetti noodles out of the cupboard.

"Yes, I have other songs. You've got copies of my other songs."

"But do you have any new stuff?"

Stuff. I bled creating stuff.

"Rebecca, who rejected ‘Paralyzed'?"

"One of the American Idol runner ups."

"What place?"

"Seventh. I think. Maybe eighth."

Little Miss Felicity Perfect ran to the parents' bedroom. Mrs. Layworth  dropped spaghetti noodles onto the floor and ran after her. The dry  noodles spread all over the tile. Little Mr. Hunter Perfect laughed  hysterically and danced all over the pasta in delight, sliding from one  side of the counter to the other. Mrs. Perfect retrieved her daughter,  closing the bedroom door tightly behind her. Mr. Perfect rolled his eyes  at his wife and put his hands up as if to say, "What's your problem?"

And what exactly was her problem? Why were the children forbidden to  enter the bedroom when they'd always had free reign of it before? What  ought they not to encounter? Was Ruben's body in the bedroom? And if  so … where? Could I not see everything in the bedroom there was to see?

I heard Rebecca Stray cough over the phone, reminding me she was still on the other side of the satellite.

"Are you upset?" she asked.

"Why would it upset me to be rejected by the eighth place reject of American Idol?"

"You're upset."

"Which season?"

"Does it matter?" she said.

"You got a song on Saturday and a rejection on Sunday. If you were me, would you think you'd given it a fair chance?"

"You're telling me you know how to do my job better than I do?"

If there's anything I'd learned over the years, it's that pissing off  your agent does no good for you ultimately. A healthy antagonism keeps  it peppy. Being offensive, even if you're inarguably justified,  magically vaults your songs in a lost ark nailed inside a crate stamped  "top secret" and shoved somewhere in a mile-wide warehouse full of  identical crates.

The bitch doesn't even play the piano! How the fuck does she know ‘Paralyzed' wouldn't move?

"No, Rebecca, I don't have any other songs."

"What the heck are you doing with yourself?"         

     



 

"Spying on the neighbors."

Mr. Perfect bent down and spoke to his daughter directly. He pointed  toward the bedroom door. The girl walked to it, opened it, and entered  the bedroom. Mrs. Perfect followed her with her eyes, consternated, and  then darted a look of irritation at her husband. Or was it a look of  horror? The girl proceeded to the bathroom, retrieved a Little Mermaid  doll from the side of the bathtub, and returned to the kitchen. Mrs.  Perfect made an exasperated sound, closed the bedroom door, charged back  to the kitchen and pointed her finger to the spaghetti mess on the  floor, commanding her husband to clean it up.

Where the hell was Ruben?

"Well, I hope your neighbors inspire you. I can't sell this song, and  they've all seen your old stuff. Maybe it would've moved if Whitney was  still with us."

"Whitney wasn't with us when she was with us."

"But her people bought your songs."

"She never recorded them."

"She bought them."

"And you got your commission."

"I'm hanging up now. You and Johanna should come over sometime."

"I despise you, and I'm fucking men now."

"Good. I hope they're paying you for it. You need the money. Why don't you write some country songs for a change?"

What sucks about cell phones is you can't slam the receiver down. I tapped the "end" button.

There was blood smeared all over my phone now.

I had no Band-Aids so I ran my hand under hot water. When I stopped the  water, the bright red continued to ooze from the slivered skin. I could  blot it with a paper towel. I could try to get the blood to clot. Or …

I saw movement under a plate. A baby roach emerged and crawled to the end of a serrated knife blade.

Could I not just continue to bleed? Bleed until there was nothing more  to come out? Could I not speed up the bloodletting? To end the gnawing  self-pity? To end the self-hatred because I was one hundred percent  aware I was indulging in gnawing self-pity? To stop the sabotage of  random, menacing, purposeless attacks of a clawing, angry memory? To  stop the anxiety that derives from never knowing why, when, and how I  would be attacked? To stop the miserable pining for a life I wasn't even  sure I wanted? To stop pining for the people that would give me the  life I wasn't even sure I wanted?

Just to stop.

My phone beeped.

I'd received a text.

Please … Marzoli … please …

Even a "fuck you" from him would give my emotions something to chew on.  Something to look forward to resolving. Something to look forward to not  resolving.

But, no. Just an announcement from Verizon that my bill was ready to be  viewed online. Apparently, the money I'd given Mrs. Abraham succeeded in  paying only the previous months' overdue bills, but not the most  recent.

Lovely.

Life was lovely.

American fucking Idol. Seventh or eighth fucking runner up. Fuck.





Chapter Seventeen

I felt a cold hand on my arm. I was being silently and subtlety jostled  awake. I slit opened my eyes. Paul stared past me to the other side of  the room with fear. I turned over to follow his line of sight. The room  was as dark and as hot as fresh asphalt. The front door was open, but  only by a centimeter. The moonlight gleamed like the edge of long silver  sword in the crack of the door. I immediately felt the cold pierce of  fear Paul was feeling. The door had been completely closed when we got  into bed.

We stared for a full minute, frozen in position. Then, ever so slightly,  the sliver of moonlight got an inch wider. Then stopped. Whatever was  pushing it open was deliberately and strategically nearing us with the  prowess of a hunting panther.

Paul muffled his mouth with the pillow.

Then we saw it.

The Eye.

The shadowed black socket, prying through the inch-wide sliver of moonlight into our privacy …

"Go away!" I screamed aloud and sat up in a sweat.

It was four in the morning. I could not tell if I had screamed aloud or  only in my dream. I ripped off my damp shirt and walked to the window  for some cool air. I took a deep breath. The air was moist and frigid,  like it needed to dump a load of snow before the sun came up.

The night was actively bridging the calm Sunday evening to a hectic  Monday morning. At first glance little motion appeared in the courtyard,  but looking closer I could see those in the courtyard resistant to the  crossing, those unaware, and those who'd already traversed.

The Princess was just getting home. She was wearing a costly-looking  silver-blue dress with embroidered black birds flaring out glamorously  below her hips. Her long mane was conditioned to a smooth shine. She was  turned toward the door, finishing the last of a conversation with a  dark-haired, broad-shouldered gentleman in a dark blue suit with an  expensive sheen. The gentleman was insisting on another kiss. Possibly  more. Although the door was open, the Princess used the solidity of it  to reinforce to the gentleman that he would not gain any further access  to her magical kingdom.