Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

I sit up straighter. “Wait, can you — shit, slow down — you need what?”

Dave says, “I need you to kill someone for me.”

I sit very still and listen with the phone pressed against my left ear.

“Mickey? Come on, come on, don’t go silent. I know you called. You said you need help. Well, I need help. Babe, can’t you see? This is how you fix things. This is what you were born for!”

“But—”

“Don’t be so ple bi an. You know I’ll never let you go to jail, I know you, right? Who knows you better than I do? I won’t let anything bad happen to you. I’ve got this plan, it’s perfect. This guy — this asshole — my dealer, right? He needs the money, breathing down my fucking neck, all the time, Jesus Christ, every second. I can’t handle it anymore, I swear, Mickey, the guy’s driving me fucking crazy. So I’m thinking, what can I do? And I know, right? I know this guy, he’s got no real ID, fuck, I don’t even know if he’s a real citizen. He’s not on anyone’s database. You think the cops are going to care if this asshole dies? No. So you just need to kill him. I’ve got a gun. Cops can’t trace it.”

“You kill him then. If it’s so safe, so justifiable .”

The sarcasm is lost on him. He laughs, a short bark of sound interrupted by a dry cough. When he can talk again, he says, “Jesus God, Mickey. I couldn’t do that. The moral imperative and all that. We’re talking about the capacity to end another human life. It’s like asking your librarian for a nice cut of beef, you can’t do that. One goes to one’s butcher for one’s butching needs.” He laughs until he starts to hiccup. “I’m kidding. Jok ing. But seriously, I’m the first person they’d look at. The cops, I mean. Fucker who owes the asshole ten grand? Are you kidding me? I’ve got to have an alibi . A rock solid alibi. And they’ll never think about the kid sister, the college-attending kid sister. I swear to God I’ve thought this through, Mickey. It’s going to work. It’s the per fect crime. I swear .”

Snow collects in a swarming lace over the windshield.

“You there? Mickey, come on. You there? Oh babe, don’t do this to me. This is what you were born for. This guy, I promise, he’s nothing. A total asshole. This guy would fuck his own grandma if it would pay him. He’s as fucked as I am, a total junkie. A user. Probably has AIDS already anyway. And you — Mickey, think about it. This is a gift .” And his voice cracks in a wavering giggle. “Happy Christmas, Mick! It’s my special Christmas gift to you!”

“A gift? You’re such a — why would I want to kill someone? How is this fixing my problem?”

“Mickey.” His voice turns hard. Congeals. He enunciates. “Mickey. Listen to me. You told me you fucked it up. Well you haven’t even started to fuck up. Do you understand? If you don’t do this for me, you will fuck everything up, every thing. Because I’ll tell. God knows I’ll end in the electri — no, what is it they do in this state? I’ll end up in ject ed but before I do I’ll tell everyone. I’ll tell the parents. I’ll tell Stephen. I’ll fucking tell Aidan. I’ll tell everyone. I’ll tell them the truth and nothing but the whole goddamn fucking truth.”

I pinch the skin between my eyebrows. This time, he lets the silence lie in a thick haze between us.

I know what he means by the whole truth . He means the truth about me, which is bad enough, but also the truth about him. Which, really, doesn’t leave me with many choices.

I say, “Okay. Fine. But, if I do it? If I do it, no gun. I want a knife.”

I’m only half certain that I am saying this to buy time and to figure out a way to get Dave out of his situation without having to call the cops on him.

But Dave doesn’t even question my willingness to kill. He gives a soft sound, a broken sighing cry that reminds me of Gregorian chants, of polytonic hymns in praise of the light.

“Yes,” he says. “Oh fucking Christ. Yes .”

I close the phone. It falls to the seat. My breath has created a white fog across the inside of the pane.

I drive south into darkness.

The snow fades and a moon glimmers a sheet of suspended cloud particles of dirt and chemicals.

My head replays the sound of my hand striking Aidan’s face. And Dave’s voice, a voice pitching like a stick on a turgid ocean, jabbering about how excited he is, and do I realize that this is my calling, my meaning, the thing I was meant to do?

My palms sweat against the steering wheel.

When I pass the exit for the university I hesitate. I think I should turn around and go back, make sure my asshole roommate hasn’t succeeded in killing himself. I’m tempted to let Dave do whatever it is that he is intent on doing without risking legal or moral complicity in it.

But if I leave Dave to do whatever it is that he is intent on doing, while I may escape legal complicity, I’m not certain what moral abyss I’ll have fallen into.

My breath is uneven.

The freeway dips and curves out around great hulking shoulders of earth, the bridge strung across the valley between Akron’s hills.

I swerve to the side of the road, a narrow shoulder against the cement embankment of the bridge wall. I kill the engine and sit watching rain steam on the sloped hood. The rhythmic zip-zip of cars outside. My mind shies away from Aidan, from how I thought I could fix him but I made everything worse. The back of my throat feels tight like a wad of gum sticks in it.

I don’t know what this is, but it feels like — I don’t like it. The cat. The clean snap of fragile cat vertebrae under my palm. The hot stink of fur and blood and diarrhea. It felt good. It felt great . When I faced those gutless assholes, I towered over them all, braced my feet on the shoulders of the earth and loomed. I was their god. Accuser, judge, and executor.

I’ve read all the psychology books and I know that feeling, that euphoria, is common. Serial killers feel like God when they watch their victims suffer. That’s why they kill. And I want to feel that again. And yes, okay, I know that, really, actually, in all truthfulness, of course I am no god. But fuck if I can’t awe with the best of them.

If I stand up straight and unclench my hands, they will sizzle and catch fire and the world will burn.

I am prone to hyperbole. The excessive word. The grandiose gesture. Dr. Telushkin likes the way my pen sweeps prose aside in favor of a more epic sanguinity. He doesn’t understand the truth. I know that I sound absurd, tongue-in-cheek, but really. Really, Dr. Telushkin. Look closer. That epic language? Life, death, the glory of it all? I am not made of dirt like a human being. I am not mortal. I am mortality .

I sit with my hands clenched around the wheel. Silence.

I wanted to be better than my genes. I wanted, God damn it, I wanted to be good , and I tried. I tried to take away Aidan’s pain, to give him a scapegoat that he could fucking hate with a clean, hot passion. But did I save him? Did I save him shit . I forced that sound out of him, the vomiting and then that fucking wounded-animal noise . I can’t do it. No matter how much I play the game I’ll always be a hundred steps behind everyone else, at my most civilized still a galaxy away from normal. But maybe Dave is right. I can’t fix sadness, or anger, or hurt in other people, but maybe I can at least — I don’t know. Maybe I can exact suffering where suffering is truly deserved.

I open the door and stumble out. The air tastes filthy and a film of salt covers the car.