Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

VI

All the while I walked, the rain refused to ease up. It was cooler and darker, and although I tried to avoid puddles, I couldn’t keep my socks from turning into wet mush inside of my shoes. The weather had the effect of driving out of my mind the recent episode in the bar. I needed to get home. I increased my pace. My sense of urgency gradually closed around me until I was nearly running, blinded as much by the water on my face as by my singular focus. Anybody watching me would have assumed that I was making a mad dash for shelter, not that I was on the brim of some unexpected and hysterical frenzy — on the brim, barely restrained — as some dark effusion was getting ready to rise, bubble, and seethe. I didn’t know what had brought about this change in my emotions; a sudden sense of guilt stirred inside of me. I’d done nothing wrong, yet my incrimination started to rise to the surface of my skin. I consoled myself with the thought that the demons had fled, that the ugly swine had drowned themselves. Yes, I was merely on the edge of panic, feeling just a general uneasiness, like a harmless, slimy film upon the skin that needed to be desperately washed off. I had broken my routine, that was all, revealed myself as both a social and sensual animal. To a very small degree, I had taken the risk of exposing myself in ways I neither controlled nor expected. That was all.

As I hurried forward, I became conscious that I was envisioning myself from the perspective of a stranger. Anyone watching me, I thought, but then, why should anyone be watching me? Of course, not long ago, a young boy had curled up on my bathroom floor, and despite the cogency of my explanation, I could never escape my connection to that horrible scene. Surely, the investigation would persist. When all the possible leads were worn down to nothing or bluntly stopped by a dead end, then the officers assigned to the case would start afresh, and my life would have to endure another session of scrutiny. I try to reason with myself that the city street showed me nothing more than its blank, indifferent face, with no malicious intent lurking behind the windows or around corners, no probing eyes tracing my every foot fall along the wet concrete. Even so, I slowed down to a brisk walk in order not to appear guilty. I was thankful for one of my peculiar habits. Ever since my long ago days in therapy, I’d conducted almost all of my affairs in cash, renouncing receipts and any paper or electronic connection to even the most banal aspects of life. What had begun as my embarrassment over needing psychological relief had eventually turned into a mild phobia of there being any record of me as a social animal. If I’d ever previously upbraided myself for living a life of constant and trivial caution, then at last, on this Sunday night, my long observance of my particular paranoia seemed worth the effort. It gave me some comfort. Try as they might, investigators would only discover a quiet, unobtrusive, reclusive man who contented himself with the pleasure of books. All my reasoning, however, failed to alleviate my sense of being under surveillance. I didn’t know what exactly on the street had triggered my suspicions, but, in retrospect, I see now that I was undoubtedly a little misguided. Rather than fear that some legitimate investigator wanted to drag me out of hiding and expose me to the light of truth, I would have been closer to reality if I’d imagined a stranger crouched in a doorway, ready to spring on me and cut my throat or, better yet, bludgeon my head with a hammer.

By the time I reached my apartment building, I was cold and wet, but my nerves were no longer agitated. The lingering traces of alcohol left me drowsy and dull. Several days’ worth of mail, for both Claudia Jones and myself, was stuffed in my mailbox. In the hallway, I leaned my umbrella against the wall and shuffled through the mail. Although Teresa Morris hadn’t replied yet, W. McTeal had sent something to my neighbor, but not the usual manila envelope with its stamped warning against bending the pictures inside. Now, it was a simple white envelope, which seemed to contain, when held against the light, a handwritten letter. Because of my recent encounter with the real Claudia Jones, I no longer felt at liberty to tear open her correspondences. The rest of the mail, both mine and hers, was junk. Someone’s footsteps sounded on the landing at the top of the stairs, and I instinctively wished to avoid meeting my landlord, who would leer at me with his rodent-like eyes, silently accuse me of being intoxicated, and thus claim another reason to consider me loathsome. I gathered up my umbrella and headed down the hall in a hurry, even though I heard the person vanish down the second floor corridor, rather than descend the stairs. When I squatted before Claudia Jones’s door and began to slip her mail under, one piece at a time, a sudden compulsion to knock took hold of me. If my landlord could do it loudly and without reserve, then nothing should have prevented me. But I didn’t knock. I stood motionlessly. My senses seemed to be keenly tuned. I could smell the dull odor in the hallway as the caked dust on the radiator slowly smoldered. The air was heavy with moisture, and outside — as faint as an indefinable mood — the rain pounded the narrow city street. I felt sensitive to the tiniest movement and sound, but everything was still and silent. Drops of water fell from the hem of my overcoat. After a moment, I placed my hand on the doorknob and strained to discern any possible warning. I remained frozen for a long time, my eyes fixed on a section of the door’s molding. What if the latch jiggles and she hears me? I thought. What if the knob turns quietly and the door pushes open without the slightest creak of its hinges? Something vaguely palpable, which seemed darkly sweet and illuminated by thick purple light, tempted me. My breaths, going in and out, were like the mild ebbing of my hazy mood.

“Claudia Jones,” I said, and then hearing the sound of my own timid voice, I repeated more loudly, “Claudia Jones.” I knocked two times, hard, with the butt of my palm.

I waited for a response. When none came, I believed that somehow by knocking and calling her name, I’d earned the right to try the doorknob.

The mechanism moved, the latch slipped clean, and a wild fluttering possessed my heart. The gradual inward progress of the door, however, was abruptly arrested as a thin chain pulled taut across the sliver of the opening. I tried to look through the gap, but the interior was too dark for me to see clearly. I could make out the side of a couch and, beyond it, the framed opaque darkness of a windowpane. If Claudia Jones were in the room, she would have certainly been aware of me because I was letting the light from the hallway into her apartment. I searched for her among the shadows.

“Claudia,” I said through the crack. “I’ve got your mail,” I added, though I’d already slipped her mail under the door.

“Claudia. I just want to say hi.”

I obviously had no good excuse for opening her door, and even less of one for lingering there.

“All right then. I’ll talk to you later.”

Pulling the door closed, I stepped to the side, out of range of the peephole, and waited, hoping that Claudia Jones might think I’d walked away. I listened for a long while, but I didn’t hear anything stir within her apartment.

Now that I was returning home with nothing but my own mail, the phone numbers of two men, fred and Lyle Tartles, and the same articles I’d left with originally, I began to regret giving away the letter from W. McTeal. I’d spent so much mental energy trying to piece together a character study of the freaky man that I now appeared to have squandered a substantial clue. For the first time, I’d had his own words in my hand, and a possible explanation of his connection to Claudia Jones. The central question still remained: Why did he send pictures of himself to my neighbor?