The Next(50)

I placed my foot onto the faded hall carpet.

Layworth placed a foot on the inside of my window frame on the sill.

My knees buckled.

God damn it! I can do this now! There's no fucking logical reason why I can't!

My mouth was dry and my throat was so constricted I couldn't utter a  sound. My vision was filling with red explosions. I was passing out. I  fell against the door. My palms were lubed with sweat, which provided  zero friction to keep me propped up. I slid to the floor, slamming the  door against the wall with the full weight of my body combined with  skyrocketing adrenaline. The doorstop tore off. The doorknob gouged into  the drywall.

Too motherfucking much too motherfucking fast!

Minnie started yapping up a storm at the crash.

I heard a thump and looked up.

Mr. Perfect stood on my floor in front of my window, spotlighted by the  stream of hall light. No gun blackened his hand. No knife gleamed.  Instead, what I saw was even worse.

I'd seen him in a towel only a couple minutes ago, but now he wore an  expensive black Armani suit, shining with thin pinstripes, buttoned over  a contrasting solid black vest, punctuated by a shiny silk white tie.  It was tailored perfectly to show off the breadth of his shoulders, the  flatness of his stomach, the muscularity of his thighs, and the bulging  sex of his package. Mr. Perfect, in-goddamn-deed, dressed up for this  confrontation like a CEO at a stockholder meeting delivering some bad  news. It was clear what his intent was. He only had one reason to dress  to the nines just to confront li'l me. He had a dead body bagged in a  box spring in his closet, a policeman stabbed in his bedroom, semen on  towels, and his wife's blood speckled on the walls. He had no chance of  emerging innocently. The fucker knew his kingdom had been overthrown,  but he had no intention of going down naked. He'd come to my apartment  to die with all the outward dignity he felt a suit represented. He would  die hailed as a fallen emperor.         

     



 

Drops of sweat stung my eye, causing me to squint.

Then I saw it illuminated between his feet.

Marzoli's gun.

Mr. Perfect looked down.

He did not bend down to claim it, but instead looked back into my eyes  with a strange tranquility. He stood in my apartment emotionally  resolved. The oddly un-confrontational standoff seemed to span minutes.

I found the words my brain was forming stunningly ironic. "Pick up the fucking gun!"

He didn't.

And in the blaring hush of stillness, I realized something …

I had no desire to give up. I sat on the floor in a pool of my own  sweat, dizzy, incapacitated with fear, but I was not pathetic. I was not  a loser. I was not hopeless. I had a life of dreams I was actively  fulfilling. I had injustices I was actively righting. A brother whose  memory I was actively maintaining. Even more importantly, I'd been  gifted by this cold city a man who seemed to need to care for me as much  as I needed to care for him. And, even on my knees before the King, I  had the dignity of being in the right.

I no longer desired death.

So, Mr. Perfect, fuck you!

"What's with that racket?" I heard Mrs. Abraham croaking distantly to her dog.

"Help … " I heard myself mutter to myself, squeezing sound out of my Death Valley dry throat. "Help … "

I heard Mrs. Abraham's door open.

I started crawling my way up the door back onto my feet.

Suddenly Mr. Perfect kicked the gun. Like a hockey puck, it slid swiftly  over the wood floor toward me. My fingers twitched to pick it up. My  muscle memory immediately itched to palm it, wrap my finger around the  trigger, aim with cool precision … but I did not touch it.

I realized as the gun settled against the edge of the carpet in the  hallway that my greatest act of justice would be to not kill him. To let  him receive the humiliating justice of a trial. To be excommunicated  from whatever homophobic circles he'd affiliated himself with. To see  his children grow to adulthood over the years through thick silver-grey  bars. I would not play by the King's rulebook.

"Pick it up," he growled.

I stared right into his pupils. All at once I knew how Marzoli did  it-how he navigated the channels of another's thoughts. The secret, of  course, was absolute selflessness. No agenda. No prejudice. No  expectation. No control. Just a willingness to accept and understand.  Yes, Mr. Perfect was a killer, and he still could kill me. But for this  split instant, he was an emotional wreck, desperately trying to keep it  contained in the shell of an Armani pinstriped suit. Imprisoned like the  rest of us.

I knew the second it dawned on him that I would not kill him. I knew he  knew why I would not kill him. I knew he'd concluded he had no recourse  but to force my hand. I was in no way surprised when Mr. Perfect  suddenly rushed toward me. His knees braced my biceps to the door as his  hands wrapped around my throat, and squeezed. Not hard enough to kill  me, just hard enough to scare me.

But was I scared?

No, I was not.

No, for I now had the clear recollection of the much more horrific  attacks of my past: Graves, the Blond Boy, my Dad. No, I would not be  frightened by this. Here this awesomely beautiful and handsome face was  inches away from my face, the Old Spice deodorant still wet on his  muscular armpits and seeping its way up his collar into my nostrils, his  thick strong fingers wrapped around my throat, and I felt nothing but  compassion.

He squeezed tighter, growling. "Pick it up."

I put my lips together, inched closer to his face, and pressed them against his rugged, sharp, clean-shaven jaw.

He stopped.

The kiss confused him.

I could see right into his brain. He could not get me to kill him. I  watched his resolution fall like Sally's had once Paul whispered "Stop."  I watched his mortification battle with yearning as Graves had when I  first caught him staring at our bodies through the trailer window. I  watched his struggle evolve into alarm just as Mom's had when Paul  pleaded for her to snap out of it in the shower. Then my heart froze as I  watched him react with a surprising grin just as Grandfather had when  he entered his trailer to find the white walls speckled with blood.

Huh? What had he suddenly become satisfied with?

I heard the wobbling behind me before seeing it.

Mrs. Abraham neared us in the hallway. If Mr. Layworth could not  intimidate me with the threat of my own death, he would threaten the  death of the little old lady with the barking pooch.

He reached for the gun. I kicked it farther down the hall. He leaped  after it. I bounded on top of him, landing with the full weight of my  body straddling his, slamming his torso into the floor. The wind knocked  out of him momentarily, he recovered and twisted to throw me off. I  wrapped my legs around his and wove my arms under his armpits to prevent  him from throwing me. He inched like a soldier desperately crawling  through the mud on the battlefield toward the gun. I felt his hard  buttocks thrust into my groin and I dug into him to force him to drag on  the carpet.         

     



 

Goddamn it! I could not stop him!

"Run!" I yelled at Mrs. Abraham, just as I commanded Paul to run. "Run!"

Suddenly Layworth bucked with the strength of an ox, his body jackknifing. I flew off him, hit the wall, and fell to the floor.

Bang!

I knew the sound instantly-sharp, crisp, and loud.

I knew the sound of the thumping of a fallen body on the carpet like the  sound of all the deer we'd shot collapsing to the forest floor. I heard  the exhalation of air from his lungs as they collapsed inward.

Layworth lay dead in front of me.

Minnie had finally shut the fuck up.

Mrs. Abraham stood above him, holding the gun.

"Look, dear," she pointed to me. "You're out in the hall."

Holy fuck!

I was fully outside my apartment, lying down on the carpet in the hallway!

"Congratulations, dear." She held out a plate wrapped in tin foil. "Have  some strawberry rhubarb pie to celebrate. Yes, fruit from jars, but I  think it's rather a success."

I looked with amazement at this woman. She seemed absolutely unfazed by  having taken the life of another man. I realized I'd no earthly idea  what kind of past she shared with her sister. To shoot someone with one  hand and not even drop the plate of pie in the other required a  background consisting of far more than knitting and cooking. I knew  nothing about this wondrous woman-my beautiful neighbor.

I smiled and took the plate, feeling surreally disconnected from reality yet one hundred percent clear-headed at the same time.

I hugged her, squeezing Minnie between us gently.

She patted my back and said, "Now, now, dear. It's just pie."

My cell rang in my apartment.

"Go," she ordered me. "And do let me know how it tastes."

I entered my apartment and retrieved my phone.

"What in shit happened? You okay?"

It was Marzoli.

Thank you!

I turned to look across the courtyard. He was standing above the body of  Mrs. Perfect facing me. Thank fuck he'd recovered. To face the future  without the hope of seeing him again …