Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

She turned down my narrow street and drove slowly between the lanes of snow-covered cars. I had her pull over in front of the alley beside my building. I noticed that although the snow hadn’t accumulated too much, my landlord had recently cleared off the steps. The car idled, and the wipers came on intermittently. Vanessa continued to hold my hand.

“You’re a good guy,” she told me. “Thanks for the book and everything.”

“I’m glad you went out with me.”

“I’m going to read that book, you know. And then we can talk about it.”

“Good.”

“Don’t forget I still have your clothes.”

With her eyes fixed on me, she slipped back into silence for a moment, waiting, as if she wanted to tell me something or to hear me speak. But I had nothing to say. Her fingers tightened slightly around my hand, and again I sensed that she was offering me permission, not merely to look at her, but to accept her yielding. Despite our privacy within the car, the simple distance between our seats, and her face turned toward me with a subtle mixture of pleading and surrender — I remained frozen, unable to lean close to her and give her the hug or kiss that she wanted. The moment seemed to be straining to the breaking point. I was about to say something, anything to offer us a release from one another, when Vanessa moved toward me, simultaneously raising my hand to the hollow of her throat and placing her lips, softly and slowly, on the side of my mouth. Afterwards, her face briefly lingered near to me, her breath trembling warmly upon my cheek, my fingers pressing lightly against her neck. But then she reclined back into her seat and released my hand.

“It’s nice to be with a gentleman for once,” she said.

“Thank you for the cookie,” I stupidly responded.

Yet, rather than regard me as a schoolboy or an idiot, she smiled as though I were teasing or flirting with her.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, which was my cue to get out of the car.

VIII

And then I was standing in the cold, with the snow slanting in on me. Even though I was on the sidewalk in front of my building, I was somewhat disoriented as I watched the red taillights of her car fading into the distance. My blood pulsed hot, and my body felt tuned to some taut and quivering cord. I didn’t even have a moment to collect myself, to allow my excitement to settle down, for I was still in the afterglow of Vanessa’s presence, heading toward the front door of my building, when I had a terrible sensation that with each step I took, I was getting closer to my prison, and what was worse was the premonition that once again I would be on display for a hostile world. I was returning to the life I wanted to abandon. And even this meshing of my emotions — my simultaneous thrill and dread — didn’t have time to quiet down, for I was mounting the concrete steps, and then in the process of opening the door, when I looked into the building and saw on the staircase to my right a pair of descending legs and a hand on the banister.

Moving backward, I gently pulled the door shut again, retreated down the front steps, and stood on the sidewalk. I gazed up at the building, afraid to go inside. Although I didn’t know who was coming down the steps, my intuition warned me that I needed to hide before the person could emerge from the front door and look down at me upon the sidewalk. I briskly started away, thinking that maybe I would duck down the alley. I was only a few paces away when from behind me came the sound of the front door opening and then closing. I didn’t turn around to look. With the person possibly walking behind me, I could no longer veer into the alley without drawing attention to myself. Keeping my head down, I started to cross the street. As I stepped between the parked cars, I glanced over to see that the person headed in the opposite direction.

And still I didn’t have time to collect myself or to ease the strain of my excitement. Even though the person was putting distance between us, my heart beat with a new terror. Suddenly, at the unmistakable sight of the corduroy jacket and the green baseball cap, I became aware that McTeal had been hiding in my building, waiting for me to come home. He surely must have seen me from behind when he’d stepped out the front door; he must have given me at least a cursory glance. Thus, Vanessa Somerset’s vintage clothes had saved me for the time being.

The man had a slow, lumbering gait like a pregnant woman’s.

Although he had been obsessed with Claudia Jones long before I’d ever offended him, I didn’t suspect at the moment that a part of his freakish behavior might have been to prowl around her building and slobber on her doorstep. Preoccupied by my own safety, I was gripped by the idea that he wanted me. By luck or contrivance, he had managed to get past the inner door and most likely lingered in the hallway or on the staircase, somehow avoiding contact with anyone who might have questioned his presence.

He was waddling away, heading into the snowy evening, but he would be back.

My building loomed beside me. Even though the lighted windows speckled its face, the building appeared as dark, cold, and impenetrable as a single block of stone. This was no longer my home, especially now that it had been violated not only by the investigators but also by McTeal.

As I stood for a moment watching him, I began to feel my anxiety start to subside. Being able to look at him, without him seeing me in return, seemed to give me an unexpected advantage.

Up ahead, he passed under a streetlight, where the illumination made the falling snow appear whiter and denser. Curious whether he was going to turn the corner, I walked forward a few paces, and then a few paces more, until I was standing by the other side of my building. McTeal continued straight. Only an inch or two of snow coated the sidewalk, and as I started forward, I looked down at McTeal’s footprints. Not quite certain what I was doing, I hurried a little in fear that McTeal would get too far away and I would no longer be able to see him. For months, I had been the one under scrutiny, but suddenly, by a bit of chance, the roles had shifted. While I might have been homeless, at least now nobody would be able to find me and put me under surveillance again. Following McTeal gave me a strange sense of freedom and control that I’d never had before.

When he crossed the street and headed down a side road, he left my field of vision. Yet I quickened my stride. He had small shoes with smooth bottoms, and his heels pressed all the way to the cement, while the tips of his toes left almost no impression at all. I reached the crossroad and peered in the direction that McTeal had gone, but I couldn’t see him. In the street, where the passing cars had disturbed the snow, I couldn’t see his footprints. Even so, on the opposite sidewalk, they reappeared. I followed them up to the next block, and the strange, waddling man came back into view.

I didn’t know how far or where McTeal would lead me. For some reason, I suspected that he was headed toward a dark, dirty room, where he spent all his time festering in his own perverse delusions, abandoning himself to the lure of his fantasies. Perhaps he had peeled away sections of wallpaper, broken holes in the sheetrock, and scrawled his thoughts with a clumsy black marker, his personal graffiti: I have several children I’m training to be killers. Wait till they grow up , or maybe something as indiscernible as Hi. I’m Mr. Williams. I live in this hole , with a crooked arrow pointing to a small jagged orifice, knee high, in the sheetrock. Of course, McTeal’s home might have been nothing this deranged, and more like that of an ordinary man, with potpourri in a little glass bowl in the bathroom, a fine collection of DVDs beneath the television, and a wife sitting at the kitchen table and cutting up a grilled cheese sandwich for their young daughter. This latter scenario was more unsettling.