Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

And there are images to go with the sounds, glimpses of movement and light framed within the obsolete largeness of the tenement windows on the opposite side of the street. The windows belong to the second-floor apartments above the street-level storefronts and most of them are without shades or curtains. He can see picture after picture of people in the midst of an assortment of common activities — dancing, smoking, embracing, pacing, eating. Everyone he spots seems to be dressed in black, as if the entire neighborhood had agreed to mourn some terrible loss.

Ike thinks the windows are a lot like the succession of comic strip frames in the newspaper. Only this is a long strip that makes little or no sense. And that’s probably totally appropriate for the Zone. A living comic strip of the absurd. Live-action Nancy and Sluggo in the grip of post-punk existential boredom. Someone else, maybe even Lenore, might get a real kick out of the window-pictures. Ike just wants to get back home. He wants to find the most direct route back to the green duplex and lock himself inside. He wants to pull some 1930s mystery off the shelf and lose himself in the logic of its investigation. Or even better, he wants to be inside Lenore’s apartment. To eat waffles in her kitchen — he’ll do the cooking — while she checks the bolts on the doors and stands a confident watch with her Magnum.

He’ll tell it all to Lenore as soon as he gets home. He’ll run down the whole sequence of events and ask her what it might mean. He’ll leave the next step up to her, trust in her experience and general wisdom. It occurs to him now that what he’s casually taken to be faults in Lenore’s character — aggressiveness, suspiciousness, and, at times, full-blown paranoia — are really probably talents, tools for survival, the very attributes that could ensure longevity and, maybe, peace of mind.

On his right he passes an old Catholic church made of sandstone and stained glass. It’s long been abandoned by its parishioners, desanctified and sold by the diocese a good decade ago. Ike was inside once for some forgotten relative’s baptism. He was only a kid, eight or nine years old, and all he can remember is the infant’s screaming at the water and balm.

Now the place is a nightclub of some sort. It’s retained part of its original name — St. Anthony’s — but the new owners have added, in orange neon under the original sign, “Temptation.” There’s a bouncer standing before the heavy wooden double doors, a big black guy in leather pants and wristbands, but wearing a priest’s shirt and white collar. It must be the uniform, Ike guesses. He wonders how the waitresses dress. The bouncer stares down at him as he passes, the whole time running a finger around the white collar like it was choking him. His tongue comes out of his mouth and stretches up toward his nose, then dips back inside and does a run around his gums, making the mouth and cheeks balloon out. A clicking noise starts to come from him and Ike turns his walk into a jog and hurries past the church club.

He runs a right onto Verlin Ave and slows back to a fast walk. In a doorway across the street, he spots a man and a woman, obviously deaf, speaking with their hands. They’re lit by a yellow bulb in a wire-mesh cage mounted above the building’s entrance. Ike makes himself watch as, simultaneously, their hands speed up, practically convulse, fingers flying, opening and closing and making forms too fast to be perceived. They’re jabbing their hands so close to one another’s faces, it seems someone will lose an eye. Ike begins to run again.

Within a block he comes upon two women, both dressed in white leotards, dancers he’s sure, brawling in the middle of the street, rolling over and over, clawing and choking each other, slapping wildly, biting, butting heads. Their bodies are covered with dirt and oil from the street. And the sound of an insect swarm seems to engulf them.

He reverses direction, cuts through an alleyway, emerges onto Congo to see two teenage boys facing off on a second-story fire escape. They’re stripped to the waist and sweat on their chests actually glimmers in the glow of the streetlight. They’re both holding baseball bats, waving them in narrowing circles directly above their heads, mouths open, hollow, taut — the wasp sound gushing forth, echoing off the walls of the brick five-family tenement opposite them.

Ike’s in a panic now. He starts to run through backyards, across driveways and parking lots, turning every time he comes to a corner. He sees a pack of dogs, shepherds, leaping up and over cars parked in a club’s lot. They let out a sickening, altered howl, lower and louder than is natural, staticky, painful-sounding, like their bodies were forcing out a noise that would eventually rupture their throats.

Everywhere Ike looks he sees people in a state of noncontrol. Every window he views in the distance shows someone’s head and body in a jerking, spastic dance. And everywhere, hovering above him, is the noise. The buzzing. The clicking. The air is choked with it.

Finally, he crosses the border out of the Canal Zone, and after a time, he begins to notice the noise has stopped. On the way back home, the streets are fairly empty. There’s an occasional person out walking a pet, but they act normal enough, silent but for clearing throats or sniffling noses.

He’s still managing a wheezy jog when he comes to the green duplex. The Barracuda is parked out front and he wants to run to it, fall on his knees, and kiss the hood. There are no lights on in Lenore’s apartment. He’ll have to wake her. She’ll yell at first, but he’ll make her understand in no time. He’ll be as rational and controlled as possible, simply present her with the facts and request assistance. Instruction. Protection.

He digs a key chain out of his back pocket as he comes up the walkway. His lungs are seizing up in his chest, and he feels a knifing pain with each throb. He climbs the stairs and fumbles with the keys in the darkness. There are only two on the ring, his and Lenore’s. He lets himself into her apartment, slides his feet along the carpet, maneuvers through the living room without banging into any furniture. He moves down the hall toward the bedroom. As he walks, he debates whether to start calling out his presence, alerting her that it’s only her brother, that there’s no danger, no need to go for the gun.

But he keeps quiet. He’ll wake her with a gentle touch to the shoulder, his voice low and calm. It’s safer that way.

The door to the bedroom is slightly ajar. There are shadows from the moonlight outside, making their way into the hall, forming lines and patches of darkness on the walls. He pauses, takes a breath, pushes the door open, and stops dead. There are two forms in Lenore’s bed. She’s with someone. There’s someone in bed with Lenore. A man is in bed with Lenore. And she’s sitting on top of him. He’s on his back, his knees are raised slightly, and she’s straddling him. And they’re rocking together. Up toward the headboard and back again. She’s naked. Her back is arched and her breasts jut out from her body, angled toward the ceiling, perfectly visible in the blue light of the moon. She’s making a low moaning sound. He’s in her, Ike knows. Whoever he is, he’s inside her. Inside Lenore.

He begins moving backward. Retracing his steps toward the living room. He stops in the doorway, looks at a lamp, and thinks about picking it up, charging back into the bedroom, smashing the lamp’s base into the man’s skull. He could say he thought she was in danger. He was trying to protect her.

But he gives up the idea without making a move, pulls her door closed and locked, and lets himself into his own apartment. He sets all the locks on his front door, then begins to move furniture in front of it that he can lift without any noise. He moves into the kitchen and performs the same procedure on the back door.