Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

Oh God. Because maybe he’s right. Maybe this is redemption, or as close as someone like me can get to it. Save my brother, kill a drug-dealer. It would be sort of funny if I felt like laughing.

The bridge hangs gray and cable-strung across a gaping chasm between two vast shoulders of earth. Slate-colored clouds overhead, weak lights strung along the bridge, the snow-covered hills pale under the moonlight. The cement buttress is cold under my hands. The bridge shivers with tremors of passing cars and wind and aging space underneath, the upholding nothingness that surrounds.

My breath fogs white in the vast, chill air. I bend forward and lean my forehead against the singing cold metal. It burns like ice or fire.

Downtown Akron is a crust of fairy lights. My eyes are hot ball bearings swiveling in their sockets. Car horns blare. People hate people. Cities prove this better than any philosopher. Homicide is humanity’s most basic instinct.

I rub the back of my wrist against my eyes.

I wonder how they do it, the nameless, faceless assholes in thousands of cars inching their way into and out of the city where they have sweated in nameless, faceless cubicles for eight hours and will return the next morning to sweat again for eight more interminable hours. I wonder what they would say if they knew who I was. A murdering deity afloat in a sea of gray-suited, deodorant-slick banality.

Dave lives in Akron’s so-called art district, a brick-paved neighborhood full of decaying buildings, populated by lovers and drug addicts. I find a parking spot at the end of the block. My palms slippery against the wheel, the gear shift, the dangling keys as I lock up the car and feed the meter.

A black painted metal door near a pawnshop. I buzz Dave’s apartment number and after a while the lock clicks. I go inside and climb a narrow flight of swaybacked stairs. A thin brown carpet worn yellow across the treads. Each slat creaks.

Up three floors and there’s a door ajar. Behind the door, a long warehouse room. The window at the far end is a warped pane of glass. The wooden floorboards are speckled with aged grime and boot scuffs. A low black couch. A mattress with a rumpled gray wool blanket and a ripped box of orange cheese crackers spilled across the sheets.

I find Dave in the bathroom. He’s sitting on the closed toilet seat with his head bent forward, his spine curved, elbows on his knees and hands dangling limp from bony wrists.

“Hey.”

He turns his head as if he’s moving underwater. Hair hangs in his eyes. He puts up two fingers and scrapes the hair back, leaving comb-lines in the greasy mess.

His mouth spreads into a smile. When he smiles, the skin on his lower lip cracks. He wipes at the dribble of blood with the back of his hand.

A glint of metal on the floor near the trashcan. I go over and bend down, look closer. Then I reach for the roll of toilet paper and tear off a hunk. I use the wad of toilet paper to pick up the needle and drop it in the trash.

“What else did you do?”

He wipes his hand under his nose and laughs. “Isn’t that enough? Or should I tell you it’s not contact solution in that contact lens case.”

He laughs harder when I reach for the case on the countertop. Open the green lid and see white granules like finely ground salt. I pour it down the sink, run the faucet. Rinse my hands in the tepid water and shut off the faucet. My fingers drip.

“Jesus,” I say. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He frowns and his lips quiver, his eyes filling with tears. “I know. I know I know I know. I’m a disaster, a fucking federal dis aster site, I’ve got so much po tential and I’ve made a great big fucking mess of it all. I hate myself.”

“I’m the only one here,” I say. “You can quit trying out for Hamlet .”

He blinks and the tears disappear. He grins at me. “Yeah? It didn’t work for you?”

I roll my eyes.

He laughs. “Wait till you see what I got for you.” He feels his pockets and then stands up. He puts the tips of his fingers against the wall as if to hold it, delicately, in place, then he goes over to a chest of drawers in the corner. He opens one and lifts out a pair of lacy women’s panties, looks over at me with an eyebrow raised.

“I don’t have an eternity to spend on your shit, you know.”

“Okay. Okay. Geez. Here it is.”

He comes and bows, hands held cupped in front of him, cradling a switchblade with a scuffed matte hasp. I pick it up, feel the heft of it. He leans over me, bent like a priest conferring the holy body on some reluctant acolyte. I pull my head back.

“Don’t.”

He ignores me and he places his hands gently around the crown of my skull. His breath huffs in my hair.

I reach up and put my hand around his wrist. My fingernails bite into the soft skin on the underside. I dig them in until I feel the soft skin give and he yelps and pulls his hand away. He puts his wrist to his mouth. His eyes shine.

I go into the main room. There is a small kitchen area and I open a cabinet, then a drawer. I find a box of cling wrap with one corner crushed in. “Give me a name, an address.”

“Don’t be so abrupt. Sa vor life.” He claps his hands together. “ Life is but a—” He starts to giggle and it turns into hiccups, then coughing. He coughs and then spits onto the floor and takes a breath, lets it outs slowly. He says, “Anyway, you don’t need an address. I will take you there.”

I put the knife in my jeans pocket and the roll of cling wrap gets stuck down the small of my back, hidden by my jacket.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

The street sings with febrile energy. Wind taps against my skin, flaps clothing strung across balconies.

He stops in the street and stands looking around. For a second I think he’s lost. But then he blinks rapidly and says, “It’s here.”

I look across the street. A corrugated metal door padlocked over a pawnshop, the neon lights buzzing and flickering overhead. Beside the pawnshop there is a small cracked stoop. The metal door above the stoop is wedged open.

I put my hands in my jeans pockets.

He looks at me and grins. His teeth look urine-stained in the weird half-light of city smog. “Yeah?”

“I suppose the locale is appropriate.” I don’t know what he wants me to say.

He laughs. Scratches his nose. “Oh, I almost forgot. Bait .”

“What?”

He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a roll of twenties tied with rubber bands. “Get the bastard to open the door and let you in.”

I take the money and look at the wad of bills. Not Stephen’s money. Mine, maybe. But not Stephen’s. Money my brother keeps in his wallet and hasn’t spent because he doesn’t need it. I wonder how much of my money has accumulated in his pants pockets over the years.

“You ready?” He wipes the back of his hand under his nose. “This is it.”

I take the knife and push the release button. The blade flares open with a gentle schick . I close it against my thigh. “Yeah.”

We cross the street and go inside. A pale yellow tile floor and a narrow flight of stairs, the rubber tread on the stairs peeled back and hanging loose. The floor tiles are streaked, faded, age-wounded, and the walls are spiderwebbed with cracks.

We stand on the tile.

“Here we go again,” he says.

“No.”

“Yes. Like before. Everything,” he says, “ every thing you are is because of me.”

“Not everything.”

“No one would believe you if it weren’t for me.” He flutters his fingers in the air. “I gave you your voice .”

“Yeah? Well, no one would love you if it weren’t for me.”