Steve Tem - Ugly Behavior

“I can’t get clean. Not this time. No, not going to work this time.”

“C’mon, Liz. How much you have to drink, anyway? He’ll be back. Probably bring you some candy and roses. Walter’s got no spine. You told me that yourself.”

She started laughing again, and I just wanted to leave. I couldn’t stand being in that room. I thought I was going to be sick. “No, not this time, lover,” she said. “You’re lying about that one. And you were always so good at lying. Guess you’re losing your touch.” She clamped her lips over my mouth then, and stuck that thick, salty tongue of hers inside me, and then I was so full of the sad smell of her I couldn’t breathe anymore. I started to choke and I pushed her away. My hands came away from her shoulders warm and sticky.

“Christ! What is this stuff? You throw up on yourself, Liz? Jesus! It’s like you’ve been swimming in garbage!”

“Oh, I have, lover. You and me… pure garbage. Walter knew that, too. My Walter wasn’t such a dumb man after all. He knew garbage when he smelled it. That’s more than I can say for you, lover.”

“I don’t need this crap.”

“Oh? You get this ‘crap’ at home, lover? Is that why you’re with me three nights a week? Not enough crap at home?”

“I’m outta here.” I pushed myself off the damp carpet and leaned onto the edge of the bed. That’s when she grabbed my ankle and twisted, trying to pull me back down. I jerked myself away from her and sprawled across the bed. On top of somebody else.

A hand caught in the lining of my coat. Trying to unsnag myself I rolled over a face. The lips were wet, smearing across me. The chest was wet. Liquid had pooled in the hollow of the belly.

“Whaaa…!”

Liz’s damp chuckle stopped me before I could get all the way off the bed. Then she had her hands around my ankles again. “You like threesomes, lover? Walter’s not gonna mind.”

I cried out and tried to kick her but it only made me lose my balance. Before I knew it the dark came up and slammed me in the face. The fuse blew. And I was out.

I don’t know how long I was unconscious. Probably not all that long, but long enough for Liz to crawl up on top of me, pinning me to the floor. She was a small woman, but right then she felt like she weighed three hundred pounds. Her clothes were soggy, heavy against my skin. She’d gotten my coat off. And my shirt. My pants were unzipped and something cold, something metal, was rubbing up against me down there.

“Liz…” I knew it came out like a hiss, like I was all excited. It scared me, that was all. I couldn’t help it.

“Make love to me, lover. That’s what you do. Love me, now. Garbage against garbage.”

“Liz.” I sucked air. She’d jabbed the cold metal hard into me.

She laughed, then she moaned, like the noises I was making excited her. But I couldn’t help it. “Shut up and kiss me,” she said, and her wet lips moved across my face and found my mouth, and then I recognized that taste. Maybe I’d recognized that taste all along and just couldn’t admit it. That warm, salty, metal taste. That coppery smell.

I turned my head away. “No.”

She slapped me across the face and jabbed harder with the cool steel. Something thick dripped off her head onto my nose, into my eyes. She bent down and she kissed me. She forced my lips open with her teeth and she bit them. “Walter likes to watch,” she said. “We’re going to let him watch now. Usually he does it from the closet, in the dark. He told me all about it. We had no idea; Walter’s not so dumb. But watching us from the bed is better. That way he won’t miss anything.”

“Liz…” My throat hurt; she’d clogged it with her own blood. “I cared about you.”

“Liar!” She tried to scream it but she couldn’t. “Walter told me all about it while he was using the knife on me, the one that was lying by the roast beef just waiting for him. I always tried to get him dinner on time. He told me how he’d watched you with your wife and kids, how happy you looked, how you kissed her every morning. The way she smiled. Walter knew all about men, he told me all about men. How they’re always looking for something on the side. And how it isn’t personal. How it isn’t personal at all.”

“Liz, please…” I started to choke. Then I started to cry.

“Please yourself, lover. Make love to me. Make love to me with my husband watching us. Make it good because it’s the last time. Walter saw to that. He’s hurt me bad.”

She jabbed the gun into my groin. “Oh, Jesus, don’t hurt me!”

“I’m not going to hurt you, just slip out of these pants. I’ll help you, if you help me. Take your pants off.” Wiggling, squirming in panic, I did. “Good. Good. I won’t hurt you. Just make love to me and I won’t hurt you. I won’t shoot you. I promise. You’ll have a good time. Make love to me while Walter watches from the bed. I’m dying, lover. I’m dying hard. Make love to me hard. Do it right and all the time you won’t be able to tell if I’m still alive, or if I’m dead yet. You won’t be able to tell.”

She was right. I couldn’t.

It is the smell of the body laboring for survival. It is the stink of fear. It is the odor of cooking and cleaning and the lingering aroma of sex in darkened rooms. It is the reek of poverty and the sharp tang of desperation. It is the sour bouquet of bodies aging into death, the whiff of illness and the fragrance of failing organs. It is the scent and the sense of sadness that comes with realizations hard won. It is the stench.

Riley had no use for uncleanliness. He’d been raised by grandparents who by the end of their lives had lost their sense of smell. They did not know how unpleasant the odors from their bodies had become, although he thought his grandmother sometimes guessed, judging by her periodic and frantic binges of scrubbing and scouring on hands and knees as if praying before some ferocious god. But these spells would pass and when next he was in her proximity his nose would hum and his eyes water from the smell of her dying in the small rooms of their farmhouse.

His grandfather claimed that food had turned on him years back, barely able to nourish him and unpleasant in both taste and digestion. He’d spent long hours each day locked in the bathroom, and walking around the house smelled like a leaky oil furnace ready to explode.

Riley had left his grandparents at a relatively young age, unwilling to wait with them to some inevitable and unpleasant conclusion. He’d felt compelled to travel to the city in order to secure employment, even though it was the most unsanitary place he could imagine. Here you were forced to walk closely with other people, breathing the air directly from their mouths, rubbing against their sweat and touching what tens of thousands had touched before. Whenever possible he bundled up well, covering as much skin as he could, wearing gloves when he thought he could without drawing too much attention. For the last thing he wanted to do was to draw attention to himself.

“A quarter, please, sir? All I need is a quarter.”

At first he couldn’t find the source of the request and wondered if he’d imagined it or caught a stray fragment of conversation from some passing car. Then he saw the rag-wrapped figure, so close to him he should have not only seen but smelled it.

A woman. There were no obvious signs of femininity, only a patch of unwashed face peering from the rags, but somehow unmistakably a woman. “What was that?” He was too off-balance to think of stepping away.

“A quarter, a dime, whatever you can spare?” A rank scum on corn-colored teeth. Riley could not imagine what she could have eaten to create such a stench. Her eyes were lightly shielded by the worn cloth covering her head. Riley thought of untouchables, lepers, blind beggars in some Asian slum.