Ryan Jahn - Low Life

Simon shook his head again, turned around, and pushed his way out the door.

If he’d considered what Samantha had said this morning – that Jeremy Shackleford had been seeing Dr Zurasky – he would have realized sooner that he was somehow involved in the break-in, even if indirectly. He had to be. It couldn’t be a simple coincidence. But he hadn’t thought about it. His mind had been focused on making sure Samantha believed him to be her husband.

But now, knowing that Zurasky was somehow involved, Simon felt an intense urge to get the corpse out of his bathtub – what was left of the corpse. When he thought no one knew – no one but Robert, who seemed to have kept his promise – holding on to the body seemed the safest course of action, but if Zurasky knew, well, there was no telling what he would do.

It was time to get rid of it.

Simon parked on Wilshire, waited for a patch of traffic to pass, pushed open his door, and stepped out into the midday sunshine.

He felt cold despite the heat. He didn’t know why, but he did. The sun warmed his skin but he felt cold inside.

He stepped up onto the sidewalk and headed for the Filboyd Apartments. But then he froze. Helmut Müller was walking by on the sidewalk in front of him, wearing his yellow cardigan sweater and threadbare slacks, aged skin hanging loose from his bones. He looked skeletal but he was very much alive.

He turned toward Simon as he passed him.

‘Walk the mile,’ he said.

‘What?’

But Müller simply turned away, looked straight ahead, and walked past.

‘What did you say?’

The man did not respond.

Simon grabbed him by the arm and spun him around.

‘What did you say?’

Müller put his arms out to keep his balance, looking for a long moment like he might topple anyway, swaying left on one foot while his arms waved, and then finally he managed to stabilize himself. He looked up at Simon with fear in his eyes.

‘I have no money.’

‘I don’t want money. I wanna know what you said.’

‘I – I said nothing.’

‘I heard you.’

The old man’s eyes were wide and pale and water was building up on the bottom lids.

‘I said nothing. I swear to you, sir. Please – do not – please.’

Simon grabbed his collar and shook him.

‘Just tell me what you said!’

As Simon shook Müller water fell from the edges of the man’s eyelids and rolled down his cheeks, flowing along the deep lines that were carved into his flesh, and a sob escaped his mouth.

‘Please.’

Simon stopped.

Several people on the sidewalk were looking at him. The old man’s entire body was shaking violently.

‘I’m – I’m sorry.’ He let go of the man’s shirt.

It couldn’t have been him. He was dead. It had been in the newspaper.

Walk the mile.

Did he know that Simon was wearing another man’s shoes?

He couldn’t know anything; he was dead.

Goddamn it – what was happening?

He pushed through the glass doors and into the lobby of the Filboyd Apartments. It smelled stale and dusty after the bright sunshine of mid-afternoon. He entered the darkened stairwell and made his way up its creaky steps.

He was three steps from the top (and seventeen steps from the bottom: he still counted every time), the light from the second-floor corridor just penetrating this far down, when he saw it on the wall. It was right where he had seen the other graffito, and he thought it had been sprayed on by the same person. The letters were formed the same way, with the same looping strokes.

Simon stood motionless, looking at it for a long moment. His tongue felt like a dead piece of meat, dry and coarse, and it stuck to the roof of his mouth.

There was no evidence that any other writing had ever been there. The other graffito was not painted over – it just wasn’t there.

Walk the mile.

He turned around and pounded back down the stairs, through the lobby, and out into the sunshine.

Cars passed by.

An old couple holding hands.

A helicopter throbbed overhead.

He glanced left, saw a homeless man sleeping on the bench in front of Captain Bligh’s. He glanced right and saw a yellow cardigan disappearing around a corner.

‘Hey!’ he shouted.

But Müller was gone, swallowed by the edge of a building.

Simon ran down the sidewalk after him. His throat still hurt when he breathed hard. It was strange that his cheek had healed but his throat still hurt. The bruising hadn’t been that bad.

He turned the corner.

Müller was gone. The side street was empty of human life. A block north traffic flowed. Then, from an alley, a dog came trotting out onto the sidewalk with something in its mouth, perhaps a half-eaten hamburger.

Simon recognized the dog – he recognized it by its steak-fat ear and its one white eye with its bulging vein.

He pushed his apartment’s front door closed behind him. Then he stood with his forehead pressed against the cool wood, his moist, sweaty skin sticking to the paint. His head throbbed above his left eyebrow. His eye watered.

Calm down, he told himself.

There’s an explanation for this.

He pushed himself off the door and turned around.

You’re okay. You’re better than okay. You’re on the verge of a new life. You just need to get rid of the evidence and walk away from here. If there’s no evidence, then it doesn’t matter what Zurasky knows or how he’s involved; he won’t be able to prove anything.

Forget Helmut Müller for now, forget the dog. You can find out what that’s about later.

Just get rid of the evidence.

He walked into the kitchen. He found the box of trash bags underneath the sink – the cardboard slightly damp from leaking pipes – but couldn’t find the other item he needed. He dug through several drawers, coming across dead batteries, broken screwdrivers, dirt-black pennies, rusty screws, bent nails, twisted spoons, and then, finally, in the last drawer in the kitchen, bottom right, hello, he found the electric carving knife and a brown extension cord he thought would probably be long enough. He had bought the carving knife while drunk at one o’clock in the morning about two months ago after watching an infomercial about it and deciding that he had to have it – though he didn’t know why. Well, now he did know. He thought it would be perfect for cutting whatever meat was left between the bones, whatever was holding them together at the joints.

With the knife in one hand and the damp box of trash bags in the other he made his way down the hallway, past his bedroom, and into the bathroom.

He put the items on the tile floor, unzipped his pants, and took a leak.

He exhaled.

‘I guess it’s time,’ he said, ‘for us to part ways, Jeremy.’

He finished urinating, the last coming out as a shiver elevatored up his spine, then shook, tucked, zipped, and flushed.

‘It’s safer this way,’ he said. ‘And anyways, it had to be done sooner or later.’

He turned to the bathtub. It was empty. Someone had taken the body.

‘Oh – oh, fuck.’

He walked to the bathtub and looked down into it. There was dirt lining the bottom of the tub and a brown ring running around the inside and black mold growing in the corners where it met the tiled walls, but it was empty. He ran his fingers through his hair. It was oily and slick with pomade and sweat. The pain above his left eyebrow burrowed deeper into his brain. He wiped his palms off on his trousers. He thought he might start crying.

This was not good. This was not good at all. Who would have done this? Who would have taken the body from his tub? It had to be Zurasky, didn’t it? It couldn’t be anybody but Zurasky. He was the only one who had known – if he had known. But Simon wasn’t certain he had. He was involved somehow, but he might not know everything.