The Next(43)

Below her the Little Old Man sat against his headboard, staring with  reverence into the painting still propped against the television. Was he  enraptured with an image that captured his future or his past? Or  something disconnected from reality altogether?

The Princess's door opened. Her hair was disheveled, as if she had just  struggled to get away from something. A pink silk blossom hung sloppily  from a thread off the right shoulder of her slim, cotton, calf-length,  Kelly-green dress, as if it had been partially ripped away. Her pink  lipstick was smeared from the corner of her mouth onto one cheek. Since  it was only nine at night, she obviously terminated the evening early.  It was not hard to surmise just how and why she ended her date. The girl  locked her door, threw her white and pink leather clutch onto the  silver dresser, and collapsed onto her white quilt, burying her face in  her hands.

I wanted so much for her to taste happiness. To give her one-quarter of  the beautiful intimacy Marzoli and I had just had. She deserved that  happiness. Or at the very least, nobody deserved that much unhappiness  night after night. Nobody.

Two days ago, I couldn't have given two flying shits about the  neighbors. Who would have guessed how transformative meeting Marzoli  would turn out to be?

The buzzer rang abruptly in the Couch Potatoes' apartment. One of them  stirred and shook the other's shoulder. The buzzer rang again and one of  them righted himself on his squat legs and wobbled to the door. He  spoke into the speaker. He took the wardrobe bag from the door, folded  it in half, pecked his partner on the cheek, and then departed. I smiled  to myself. This little act of goodbye had been the most physically  active I think I'd ever seen the Potatoes.

When the other Couch Potato was left alone, I saw him pick up his cell  phone and dial a number. Simultaneously, below him, Schlongzilla  answered his phone.

No fucking way! Surely they're not talking to each other!

Schlongzilla looked at his calendar, and then spoke. After several head  noddings on both their parts, they both hung up at the same time. The  very second his partner left, the Couch Potato had scheduled a massage! I  would guess by lightness of the wardrobe carry-on bag the partner had  taken, the massage had to be scheduled sooner than later. The Couch  Potato adjusted his crotch. He was already excited. It made total sense  Schlongzilla and the Couch Potatoes would frequently run into each other  since they lived in the same building, but who would have guessed that  this particular mouse would play when that particular cat was away?  Schlongzilla resumed reading his script, and the Couch Potato proceeded  to lick the tomato sauce off his plate.         

     



 

The Beached Whale sunk into her futon to watch television, now dressed  again in her old faded muumuu. In her hand were strips of blue and white  satin, which she was absentmindedly shredding into confetti with the  scissors as the TV light glowed on her fleshy face.

Mrs. Layworth now proceeded to attack the mound of silverware soaking in  the glittery pink Tinkerbell cup. She clanged the forks and spoons into  the dishwasher with haste and frustration. Mr. Layworth locked the door  to the bathroom as he unfastened his pants and lowered with his  newspaper out of view.

Then it happened.

Little Hunter Layworth raced his remote car into the master bedroom.  Little Felicity Layworth followed him, demanding the remote control,  which Hunter refused to relinquish. It sped under the bed, rounded left,  then smacked into the walk-in closet door. Apparently, whatever the car  was escaping from or speeding toward required it to access this portion  of the apartment. The boy opened the closet door and followed his car  into it. The girl followed after him. Fifteen seconds later the car  accelerated out, and the boy emerged with his sister at his heels still  begging for the control. They were both unfazed by anything they'd  encountered in the closet.

That made no sense.

Ruben was not a small-framed man. Even bagged in a full-length garment  bag, he would not have been skipped over. He could not have been  suspended from the clothes rod without breaking the damn thing from his  weight. Rigor mortis would have reached maximum stiffness after twelve  hours then dissipated almost completely over the next two days, so Ruben  could no longer be propped upright against the wall like a board  between other clothes. He would have had to be lying horizontally on the  floor, and the plastic garment bags Mrs. Layworth always brought home  were transparent. And yet the children made no fuss over any such morbid  presence. What could I conclude from this other than …

Ruben was not there!

Had the Layworths already removed the body? And if so, when had they  that opportunity? They'd been under our microscope almost constantly  since he'd disappeared. No trunks or coffin-sized crates had left the  apartment.

How in New York City could anyone remove a body from a doorman building without being seen? Or from any building in Manhattan?

Had they removed it piece by piece?

No, I would have seen knives and saws. Instead, all I saw was a wire  cutter, and the only thing that could have concealed body parts that  entered and exited their apartment was Mrs. Layworth's computer tote. It  opened at the top and its contents could be easily viewed by anyone  passing by. Or their children's knapsacks and lunchboxes.

Could they have dissolved the body in the bathtub?

Possibly, but it would have taken gallons of sulfuric acid to completely  liquefy every bone and bit. I saw no gallon-sized cans of anything in  their apartment.

Where the hell was Ruben's body then? What else could I conclude other  than Ruben had never been killed? That in spite of the flamingo-pink  Korean's fears and my suspicions, Ruben had walked away that night and,  for whatever reason, decided not to return to his apartment?

We were wrong. We had to be.

I heard Marzoli stir on the couch behind me.

I needed to tell him. If he was wasting his time pursuing the wrong  subjects over a crime that was never committed, he had to know. He  opened his eyes and the whites sparkled in the glow of the light from  the courtyard, pure, deep, and honest. He roused himself and walked over  to me.

A coldness hit my heart.

If I told him that we were barking up the wrong tree, would I see him again?

I was barely necessary to his investigation as it stood. Would he not  assume my involvement in this case to be altogether superfluous? Would  he not by necessity need to leave this courtyard in pursuit of a whole  city of suspects, leaving no time for this pathetic man-boy trapped in  the six-hundred fifty square foot rear prison on the third floor?

Marzoli approached me, wrapping one arm around my shoulder and the other  around my waist. He stared over my shoulders at the activities in the  glowing apartments. The Layworth girl had gotten the remote from her  brother and sent the car careening underneath her mother's feet, who  stepped on it accidently. Crying and high-pitched screaming commenced.  Mr. Layworth stood in the bathroom, flushing, and washing only one hand.  This family appeared as ordinary and dysfunctional as every other  family. It now seemed perfectly natural to view them as innocent.

Marzoli's arms felt smoother on my bare shoulders and waist than any  cashmere. I kept my mouth closed, knowing full well I was compromising  so much by not disclosing what I'd seen.

I would tell him in the morning.

"I feel selfish," he said softly.

"Why?" I asked, swallowing the jagged irony.         

     



 

His fingers snaked around my waist, underneath the blanket, and wrapped around my warm member.

"You took care of me, but I kind of left you hanging … "

I turned to his rugged face, just as sexy as before but fantastically  more approachable. His smell was musky and hmm hmm hmm yummy. The terse  whining and arguing of the Layworth family grew faint as Marzoli locked  his muscular lips on mine and pushed me toward the couch …





Chapter Twenty-Two

"Look!" Marzoli whispered, pointing in the direction of the Little Old Man's apartment.

I stared through the falling snow toward his apartment and spied him  still sitting against his headboard facing the gold-framed painting. The  light of the courtyard outside his apartment filtered through the snow  romantically, bouncing off white-capped ledges and windowsills.

I'd been crouched below Marzoli, applying skin-toned makeup onto his  thigh, scrotum, and shaft. He knew that today's performance had to seal  the deal, and he couldn't avoid complete nudity. At a distance, with Mac  cover-up, Layworth would never know to what extent the splattered  battery acid had deformed him.

"How," I asked, "will you disguise it when you're invited over?"

"Dunno," he said with a wink. "Just go by the seat of my pants."

He was acting brave, but he was as apprehensive as a rookie soldier  crouched low in a trench smearing black mud on his face to disappear.

I could not blame him. There was no roadmap in life for overcoming  people's disgust for sexual organs melted by battery acid. I had  anomalously embraced his damage as a tool for greater intimacy with the  man who had enough cojones to allow me to see his flaws, but others  would not have that incentive.