Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

They ask my name.

I look at the floor and hug my elbows against my ribs. The smell of the fluid on my hands. His hair on my knuckles as I brush it aside and touch — God, it’s gone. The corpse is burnt, shuttled away in a blue medical examiner’s van. My body feels weightless.

I hear Aidan telling them my name. My parents’ phone number. The male cop has already turned for the door.

The female cop says, “All right. We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.” Her voice lowers. “You may want to reconsider housing options, potential roommate situations. Can’t be that pricey around here.” She snaps her book shut. Aidan follows her out. I hear their voices in the hall and then the snick of the outer door.

He comes back, his footsteps slow. He comes in, leans his shoulder blades against the doorjamb, and puts his hands on his head again, his gesture of helplessness. He slides down the frame, legs splayed out, and says, “Oh, my God .”

I blink and lower my hands. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you think is wrong,” he says. “You just flashed half of Akron and I — I think I just talked two cops out of arresting you for murder and arson.”

And then he bursts out laughing. He starts laughing so hard he gets hiccups.

I laugh too. The sound startles me and then suddenly we’re both laughing. My stomach quivers and I feel sick and I can’t stop laughing.

I gulp and get quiet first.

I look at my roommate. He’s inside my room, sitting on my floor, cackling like a demented loon. I think this is the closest I’ve ever been to him. Close enough to see the dark prickle of beard on his jaw, the shadowed indentation on his upper lip. Underneath the delicate scent of turpentine his skin smells palely of Ivory soap. Turpentine is an accelerant. But he doesn’t smell like smoke. His skin smells clean.

He stops smiling. A delicate pink stains his cheekbones. “Geez, Mickey,” he says. “You could maybe get some clothes on sometime soon.”

I cross my arms over my breasts and frown at him. “Why? I thought you were gay.”

He opens his mouth. “You did?”

“You came over to the house with my brother. You said you knew him.”

“I do — I mean, I just know him. We just talked at that poetry reading and somehow my art came up and he wanted to see if I was any good. He came by the studio a couple days later and we got talking. He asked if he could see some of my older stuff, and it’s here at the apartment so I invited him over. That’s when he told me about you.”

I laugh.

He squints at me. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing. It’s just, he wanted to see your art? He was stalking you.”

“Come on, Mickey. That’s not stalking. Look, I knew what was going on, okay? I told him I wasn’t interested and he was cool. And anyway, what does it matter to you?”

“It matters because I thought you were — I thought that it wouldn’t matter to you. My being a girl.” I shrug. “Or being crazy. Or naked. But I guess it does.”

“No, no,” he says. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You deserved to know. But it doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t. You being a girl. That’s fine.” He laughs again but it sounds harsh, uncomfortable. He avoids my eyes and his are all shiny. “But the naked isn’t — I mean, I could be Elton John — okay?”

This is another thing I don’t understand: how crazy is sexy to some people. Most people who meet me randomly realize I’m likely to go off at the slightest provocation, cussing, throwing things, slamming doors. They call me a bitch and they avoid me. But sometimes my brother or someone will introduce me to a person and explain that I have mental problems. And then when I lose it and fuck up I see this look — this glassy-eyed look — the same look all the pajama-clad gawkers had, gazing at the fire. A ravenous, rapt look.

I turn around suddenly. My stomach is still trying to heave the turkey sandwich I ate earlier, from being so close to those cops. I recognize the feeling tingling behind my eyes, in my chest. I’m angry. Pissed off. Furious .

I yank open my closet, pull out a pair of jeans and step into them.

“I don’t start fires.” I grab a T-shirt and tug it over my head, pull it down. “I don’t randomly attack and kill people, like some out-of-control — I mean, some idiot starts a fire and burns an already-dead corpse and I’m the crazy one. Some stupid bitch cuts her legs for fucking fun , and I’m the crazy one.”

“Mickey, come on, I don’t think that, okay? If you mean your roommate, about the cutting thing, listen, I’m sorry about that and all, but it wasn’t really your fault. Dave told me about her and I know—”

“I am fucking crazy,” I say. “That’s not news. I mean I’m not out of control, I didn’t do those things. I didn’t try to kill her.” I pull my hair out of my shirt and loop it into a loose knot at the back of my neck. I come back and stand in front of him.

“I know,” he says. “Dave told me. I know she let you cut her. You went too far. You called the cops. You saved her life. You weren’t trying to kill her.”

“No.” I look up at the ceiling. “Shit.” I don’t understand why I’m so angry.

I say, “She knew I liked it. The blood. I liked watching her cut. She was in the bathroom with her leg up on the sink and she had the razor snicking through her skin and I came in and she saw my face. She saw I liked it.”

“Mickey—”

“She held out the razor and said, here, you can try it.”

He makes a noise like he’s going to say something else.

I put my hand over my mouth and then pull it down. “I didn’t cut her. I never touched her. I stood there and watched, but I didn’t touch her. I didn’t lick her blood. I didn’t do any of those psycho things she said I did. I just — I just fucking watched . But she was bleeding a lot and I thought she might — you know, be in trouble. So I called the EMTs.”

I lower my head and look at Aidan. He’s staring at me.

“The guy I killed when I was ten—”

“My God, shut up, Mickey. You push a pervert wannabe rapist down the stairs and he breaks his neck. Jesus. That was the sanest thing any ten-year-old could do. No one blames you for that. No one.”

I come to the doorway and crouch down. “I was going to say the guy I killed when I was ten was the only crazy thing I’ve ever done.”

I don’t know if he’s noticed that he sat up straighter and leaned his shoulders forward when I crouched down. The skin between his eyebrows wrinkles. “No,” he says.

“Yeah. Yes. That was pretty crazy. You know what I did when he fell down the stairs?”

He’s watching my mouth move, frowning at the shapes it makes like he’s trying to read a foreign language.

“I went down the stairs after him.”

I remember what really happened. I dream about the stairs a lot, but the dreams are always different than what happened. In reality there was no blood. Just the guy in his shabby pants and yellow polo shirt lying there with his head toward the basement floor and his feet halfway up the stairs. I noticed the smell when I was edging my feet around his hips. The dark wet spot spreading on the front of his beige pants. And then I climbed down to where his sagging fat face lolled to the side, his eyes half-open. I was only ten. I didn’t know that eyes stay open when you die. No one had told me that. In the movies, people die with their eyes closed. I was fascinated by the shiny white gleam under his half-closed eyelids. I put my hand out. I pushed my fingertip against an eyeball. It was moist and pulpy like a skinned grape. I pressed my fingernail into the eye and watched the pinkish viscous liquid well up.