Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

The taxi slows up when it gets to Manchester Street, coming to a stop at every intersection, timing the red lights perfectly. Then it stops at a green light halfway down the street outside a stereo shop. It pulls over, and Caleb goes through the intersection and pulls over too. He watches the woman in the rearview mirror handing money over to the driver and then waiting for change. When she climbs out she takes a cell phone from her pocket and makes a call. Her short skirt doesn’t seem as short in comparison to some of the other girls on the street, the hookers on the street corners that walk past on her way to. .

She stops walking. She stands on the spot, turning slowly, and then the cell phone is back in her handbag and is replaced by a cigarette, which she lights up. One of the hookers comes over to her and they start chatting. Caleb doesn’t get what’s going on. He knows how it looks-it looks like she’s standing on the corner waiting to fuck the next person willing to pay for it-but that can’t be. Only thing he can think of is she’s trying to help these girls. Ariel and her friend start chatting, and they’re both shivering because it’s so fucking cold and neither of them are wearing jackets. They’re smoking and laughing. On the corner opposite a car slows up and a girl over there approaches it and leans into the passenger window. A few seconds later she climbs in and the car disappears.

Another car pulls over to the same corner. It does a U-turn and stops next to Ariel and her friend. Both girls flick their cigarettes into the gutter, and it’s Ariel who approaches the car. He can see it all happening and it makes him feel sick. He can’t hear what she’s saying because the weather and the distance kills any chance of that. He waits for her to walk away, only she doesn’t, instead she opens the passenger door, throws a smile and a shrug at her friend, and climbs in. The car doesn’t move for half a minute as business is discussed, then it pulls away from the curb, goes through the intersection and past him, then hangs a right at the next corner.

He starts the car and follows.

The trip is a short one. The numbers on his odometer don’t even get warmed up. Half a block to the east and the car pulls into an alleyway. The lights switch off and nobody climbs out. The alleyway is so dark there is no room for any shadows, and the car and the people inside it are lost. He parks opposite and tightens his grip on the steering wheel and breathes hard and fast and his head spins and his hands-especially his right one-begin to ache. He lowers his forehead onto the steering wheel. He wants to head-butt it to make himself hurt. He takes deep breaths to try and calm the urge to vomit. The inside of the windshield starts to fog up. He wipes at it with his sleeve. He opens his mouth and closes it around the top of the steering wheel and bites into it. He wants to scream.

He picks up the knife. Sure, there are people around, not many-another hooker half a block back, a few people driving past, another couple walking the street-but he could probably walk right over to that car and spill a lot of blood before anybody called the police.

He puts the knife back down. It’d be stupid. He can’t afford to get arrested when he’s not even halfway done. There are teeth marks in the steering wheel. He stares out the windshield at a huge billboard overlooking the car. It’s for a travel agency, there are pictures of islands and water and people laughing and it’s the life he wants. He focuses on the billboard, staring at all the things he can never have. It only makes him angrier.

The car starts to back out of the alleyway and stops. The passenger door opens and the interior light comes on and Ariel climbs out. She closes the door without looking back and heads back toward the intersection. The car’s headlights flick on and it goes the opposite way. Ariel reaches into her handbag and comes out with another cigarette, fiddling around with a lighter as she walks. He can still see the car she climbed out of, it’s parked up at a set of lights.

He follows it.

He can’t help it. He looks at his watch. It’s ten-forty. This is going to throw him off schedule, but he still has all night. He should just carry on with the plan and come back and see Ariel later on tonight, try and time it for when she’s finished work.

It’s what he should do.

Only he doesn’t.

The scenery changes. They leave town and enter the suburbs. Some are nicer than others. He grits his teeth as he drives. They drive for ten minutes, finally pulling into a suburb full of middle-class homes, the streets empty, streetlights cutting circles of light into the darkness. The car slows. It pulls into a driveway. The automatic door begins to open. This is the kind of neighborhood you can’t hang around in for too long in a beaten-up car with a knife in your hand and not have somebody call the police.

Best make it quick.

He brings the car to a stop and brings the knife out from under the seat.

Make sure you don’t kill anybody.

Schroder’s words are rattling around in my mind as I leave the retirement home. He makes it sound like it’s become an occupational hazard for me.

The sky is dark with clouds and the night is lit up by the city and the life running through it. I head to the nursing home where my wife lives. I step through the main doors and into the foyer, warm colors and warm air enveloping me. It’s eleven o’clock and the nurse behind the reception desk smiles and asks how I’m doing. I tell her I’m doing okay. Visiting hours ended three hours ago, but the nurses know me well enough to let me in most hours unless I’m getting in the way.

I make my way to my wife’s room, looking for her nurse along the way, always hopeful that one of these days she’ll be there to greet me at the door with some good news. As it stands the news is always the same as the day before-which is no news. My wife’s condition doesn’t change and never will. When she isn’t sleeping, she stares straight ahead, enough synapses in her brain to make her chew when she’s being fed but not enough for her eyes to focus on anything, not enough firing synapses for her to smile at me and hold my hand, the vegetative state a permanent one barring a miracle or an advancement in technology, both of which I pray for.

I don’t see Nurse Hamilton anywhere, and I head straight to Bridget’s room. She’s asleep. There is a soft bedside table light and the curtains are closed.

A year ago I’d have brought flowers for Bridget, but a year ago I could afford them. Between the medical bills and my own bills, as it stands I’m only a few months away from losing my house. I don’t tell any of this to Bridget. If somehow she could understand I wouldn’t want her to worry. The drunk driver who put my wife into this condition should have been responsible for paying all the medical costs, but that’s not the way things work in this world. He never took responsibility, not until I took him into the middle of nowhere with a shovel and a gun and made him beg for a forgiveness I couldn’t give him. I pull up the chair next to Bridget and take hold of her hand and spend thirty minutes with her.

When I leave I’m hit by a tiredness that makes me aware I’ve been working since five in the morning, when I was driving around hotels looking for Lucy Saunders. And I’m not just tired either-because the thing keeping me from falling asleep and hitting a lamppost is the hunger pains, a hunger so strong it feels like it’s developed claws and is digging its way out from my stomach. So maybe it is a good thing I’m going home now, because I get to concede to the pain and pull into a drive-through at a fast-food restaurant. There’s a line of cars ahead of me and I keep myself entertained by trying to stay awake. Eventually I get to order something, and the guy who passes me my food looks like he keeps himself entertained by trying to eat every burger that isn’t sold by day’s end. I drive to a park and sit in the dark as one day ends and another begins. Mine is the only car around. My midnight snack is in pieces before I even get to take a bite, the burger also having absorbed some of the flavor of the small cardboard box. I get through it pretty quick along with the drink-ten bucks well spent because I feel more awake. I sit in the car and think about the two dead men, both retired, certainly a connection between them. These two might be the only victims or there may be more. Future victims, retirees maybe, the same thing linking them to an event in their past. The dots are there, but not clear enough to start connecting.