Ryan Jahn - Low Life

He turned and stumbled toward the kitchen and the contents of his stomach splashed into the stainless-steel basin.

Then he stood there, bent over the sink, looking at his dinner, hair hanging down in his face, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead, and a shaky moist chill still possessing him.

After a while he stood up straight and turned on the hot water and washed the mess away. Then he cupped his hands under the water, brought them to his mouth, sucked in water, gargled, and spit. He did this twice.

If he called the police, would they believe it had been an accident? They couldn’t possibly believe he had planned to kill her by smashing her face against a doorknob. It was too absurd. They would have to believe it had been an accident – except that he didn’t even believe that. Not completely. He knew he hadn’t planned it, but there was a satisfaction in it which only increased his feeling of guilt. And hadn’t murder crossed his mind? Sure, it had only been for a moment, an angry urge that he would never have acted upon – except maybe he had. Part of him believed he must have done it on purpose. And so would other people. He had recently broken things off with her, she was pregnant with his child, she had threatened to tell his wife what had been going on: despite the absurd circumstances under which she had died, no one would believe it had been an accident. It would still be third degree murder. And even if it was an accident, even if they believed the death itself was an accident, it was still manslaughter. Or involuntarily manslaughter. Something like that.

He walked back to the living room, where Kate lay on the floor. He looked at her there – dead. He licked his lips. If he killed her, he was going to prison. But if she killed herself in a way that could do the kind of damage that was done to her, that was different. And if he got badly injured in the same accident, all the better.

A sane man, for instance, wouldn’t run himself off Mulholland Drive. Maybe she came here to talk to him about things. Maybe they made up. Maybe they decided to drive up to Mulholland with a picnic basket and eat sandwiches at one of the overlooks and watch the city lights twinkling in the night like stars reflected in the sea. Maybe that’s exactly what happened, only maybe they misjudged a turn and went over the edge.

He nodded to himself. Why not? People died in car accidents all the time, and there was no telling what kind of damage an accident could do. Accidents were unpredictable. That’s why they called them accidents.

But if that was how it was to happen, he had to get her in the car and over the edge fast. Coroners had ways of finding out time of death – rigidity of body and such – and he needed the car accident to be in the right time-frame.

He grabbed her by an arm and a leg and dragged her away from the closed door. Then he stepped out into the spring night, bloodying his hand in the process of opening the door. The air was cool and fresh-smelling after recent rain. No one was around. It was late and this was a neighborhood that went to bed early. Her car was across the street. He couldn’t imagine carrying her body all that distance in the open air; he would pull the car into the garage, load her body into it, and leave.

He went back inside and washed the blood off his hand. Then dug through her purse for her keys, found them, and pulled her car into the cave-dark garage. Then he went back to the living room. There she was, part of her face caved in. His stomach went sour, and he had to swallow back bile, which burned in his throat.

He walked over to the body, sat on his haunches, scooped one arm under the backs of her knees – she was still warm – and the other under an armpit and her neck, and then lifted. She was small, but a hundred pounds and change was still a lot of weight, and a muscle in his back spasmed, and he almost fell. He stumbled as he stood. Then finally he managed to gain his balance. He carried her to the garage, struggled to get the door open and the passenger’s seat forward, and forced her body into the backseat like oversized luggage.

With that done, he went back to the living room, cleaned the blood off the floor and the doorknob – using his thumbnail to scrape between the reedings – and walked the bloody paper towels to his neighbor’s trash bin five houses down.

Then he packed a picnic. He made turkey sandwiches with pesto and put pickles and olives into plastic bags. He sliced apples. He put a bottle of wine and a corkscrew into the basket with the food. They’d just gone up to Mulholland to share an evening together, to sip wine and eat sandwiches and talk.

He grabbed the picnic basket and carried it out to the garage.

He got into the car and pulled it out into the street and he was on his way.

It was almost eleven by the time he reached Mulholland Drive. The gray cratered moon hung over him and as he rounded certain bends he could see the sea of the city spread out below him. On one side a dirt wall lined with pink-flowered bougainvillea and brown rock and weeds and shrubbery, on the other a steep drop blocked occasionally by guardrails or chain-link fence, sometimes not blocked by anything. It made you woozy to see that long drop as your car rounded a bend, to see the ground forty or fifty feet below and know your car tires were only an arm’s length from the edge. He drove past various overlooks – dirt sections on the edge of the road lined with wood fencing, designed so you could park your car and gaze out at the city below. He drove past houses built into the cliffside, past pink-berried trees growing on the drop, past a few parked cars.

When he got to the Universal City Overlook, he pulled the car to the side of the road, tires throwing gravel off the edge of the cliff.

He was really going to do this.

He got out of the car, fought with Kate’s corpse, put it into the driver’s seat and buckled it in. It looked surreal sitting there. It looked waxy and fake. Blood dripped from her eye socket and onto her clothes.

A car passed while he was standing there looking at the body, but it didn’t stop; the driver didn’t even glance in his direction.

He slammed the driver’s side door shut and walked around to the passenger’s seat.

It was harder to drive a car from the passenger’s seat than you would think. Fortunately, he didn’t have very far to go. He put the car into drive and swerved jerkily out onto Mulholland, gassing it with Kate’s dead right leg while her head lolled on her neck and blood dripped from her caved-in eye socket and onto her lap. And then he saw the guardrail illuminated by the headlights and he realized it was actually happening. He might die. Part of him was glad of that – hoped he would die – because even if the police bought that this was an accident, Samantha would know about the affair, and he would have to face her. He didn’t want to have to face her. If he died it was over.

The car smashed into the guardrail, which tore into two pieces and peeled back, creating an opening through which the car continued on its course. And then there was nothing beneath the car but air and his stomach dropped like an elevator with a cut cable. The car tilted forward and he could see the trees beneath them illuminated by the headlights. A flock of birds flew from one, frightened by the sound of the car’s engine.

And then the green of the trees rushed up at him – and then there was nothing.

He read an article about the police suspecting Jeremy of foul play, another about him being arrested, another about the inconsistencies in his story, and finally one about his being released from custody, with no charges being filed against him, as there just wasn’t enough evidence to take to court. He was never charged with anything. He remembered Jeremy waking after five weeks in a coma (he had slept through all of May) to a police detective standing over him – the kind of guy who wore snakeskin boots and pinky rings but sniffed his fingers to see if his hands needed washing. He remembered an inquest. He remembered the strangeness of going back to work, how people didn’t look at him the same way, how he had to meet in front of several groups of people and answer questions, how several of them wanted him gone despite the fact that all charges had been dropped, how he barely managed to stay on. He remembered Samantha leaving him but coming back.