Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

Maybe two minutes now, I told myself.

Although I didn’t think of it at the time, the ultimate thing — the thing that would have unnerved and baffled McTeal more than any note slipped under his door or posted on his refrigerator — would have been to take a picture, one which would have revealed myself not explicitly, such as a full body shot or a portrait of my grinning face, but rather tangentially, from an angle that would somehow simultaneously provoke his fear and his curiosity. He would realize that I figured him out and defeated him. No matter what the photograph depicted — a close-up of my head-wound, the brim of my hat, one glimmering cat eye, the hooked claw of his hammer — the image would’ve indicated far less than it would’ve suggested, provoking McTeal’s soggy mind to work out the details.

Yet I wasn’t thinking any of this as I looked at the bare walls and the sparse furniture, which could have belonged to any man who hadn’t taken the time or the opportunity to live among his own things, in his own home, and thus leave an impression of himself or a trace of his personality. McTeal’s apartment wasn’t a pigpen of debauchery, a home for a loving family, or even a façade to mask his private perversion. It was simply devoid of character.

Because I didn’t see a computer station, I suspected that either he had a portable laptop or else he visited libraries or computer labs at some college.

Of course, I was overlooking the most obvious reason that the apartment appeared unused. Stooping down to peek under the bed, I wasn’t really thinking yet. Instead, I stood up and moved toward the closet, still holding the cut handle and still imagining that if I continued with my search, I would find something. But I never reached the closet or opened its door because I was feeling the object in my hand and dimly considering that it might be as old as the building itself, older than McTeal, when I realized that the handle didn’t belong to McTeal at all. He was just renting it because it came with the apartment. When the sliding glass door was shut, the handle fitted into the track, so the door couldn’t be opened from the outside. And yet I still didn’t fully comprehend the significance of the things I saw. Just as I was shutting off the light and exiting the bedroom, a part of me was beginning to surmise that McTeal was merely a tenant, which meant that he had as much connection to his home as I had to mine. Crossing the span of carpet again, moving swiftly now, I wanted to leave the handle where I’d found it and to get out of the apartment. At the moment, I wasn’t so much thinking it as I was sensing it, namely that McTeal was in transition. He was in the process of moving, and he was several steps ahead of me because he had already packed and taken away most of his things. His home wasn’t actually bare by design or neglect, but because he was clearing it out. I was squatting down to lean the handle back up against the glass door, feeling the cold air blow in, and wondering why McTeal was preparing to take flight, when all at once I arrived at the idea. McTeal was on the brink of action. I understood that he was moving, but I didn’t have the chance to ask the question: Why? What are you about to do, fruitcake? — when I heard an unmistakable sound behind me: The front door opened.

Without looking around, I crouched down between the back of an easy chair and the sliding door. I hadn’t yet returned the handle, so it was still in my hand, being pressed into the carpet as I leaned my weight upon my palm. My hiding place was horrible; at any moment, McTeal could have casually walked around his apartment and discovered me. Afraid to move, I strained to hear the sound of his laundry bag being flung to the floor or the clear thumps of receding footsteps into the kitchen or bathroom. Yet all I could discern was the indistinct sound of McTeal shuffling his body across the carpet, as if he didn’t actually walk but rather spread himself out in several directions at once, like something heavy and gelatinous. At last, when the bulk of him seemed to settle in one indeterminable spot, I could hear the internal motions of his body, which weren’t quite breathing and not quite gurgling, but the sound of some viscous liquid being drawn up to the top of a hollow tube and then released back down, drawn and released. Then he was moving again. My muscles tightened in terror, and listening, I became conscious of the sound of my own breathing. Although I was afraid to risk peeking around the side of the chair, I noticed that McTeal was reflected in the black pane of the sliding glass door — not in distinct contours — but as some translucent and boundless form. He was close by, perhaps as near as the coffee table, and he was doing something, moving vaguely, almost shimmering, as his reflection, the dark pane, and even the shapes in the night beyond the glass, bled into one another. As I waited, my heart pulsing in my breast, my wound twitching and tender, I began to focus on a single idea, which kept repeating in my head, silently commanding McTeal as if by telepathy: Go to the bathroom; go to the bathroom; go to the bathroom . In response came the small grating rasp and the momentary hiss of a lighter being struck. The flame was a brief orange gash in the dark reflection. McTeal grunted, and he coughed one time, almost like the cough of a small child. Instantly, I smelled the cigarette smoke, and before I had a chance to anticipate the next second, to prepare myself, McTeal emerged right beside me. His feet were in beige slippers; his thigh, naked and hairy, swelled upward to a pair of white underwear that was apparently at least a size too small; and a large tee-shirt draped over his firm, rotund stomach. He held the burning cigarette up to his mouth, stepped closer to the glass door, and looked out over the balcony and into the night. Suddenly, the door slid open, and the cold air rush in around McTeal. He drew on the cigarette and then extended his arm beyond the threshold to tap his ashes onto the snowy floor of the balcony. All he had to do was slightly turn his head and look down over his left shoulder, for I was only an arm’s length away. I didn’t even have a moment to consider how I would react if he saw me because all at once his body began to move: a slight involuntary motion, the contraction of his chest and the tightening of his throat, in that brief instant just before a cough — but it might as well have been the explosion of a pistol — because startled and terrified, I lunged at him, pushing him out onto the balcony, where he simultaneously coughed and stumbled against the railing. As he quickly gathered himself, wheeling back around, I pulled the door closed and dropped the handle into the track. No sooner, McTeal threw himself up against the glass door, his chest smacking hard against it, almost as if he were a bird in flight that didn’t see its passage was obstructed.

Staggering back against the easy chair, I watched the bizarre and furious spectacle. Nothing in McTeal’s expression indicated that he was alarmed or afraid; he was simply angry. I could see the pocks in his face clearly now as his jaw appeared distended and his eyes turned to fierce slits behind his glasses.

He hissed, “I’m going to kill you.”

Without the door between us, I never would have been able to get this close, face-to-face, with the lunatic.

He kept wrapping the butt of his palm savagely against the glass. The entire door shook, as if ready to explode.

And he kept hissing, “I’m going to kill you.”

But I already knew that, so there was nothing for me to do but to leave him on the balcony. There was no way I could safely release him. I backed away, keeping my eyes on him, as he stood framed against the dark night with the snow falling around him. His ferocious expression didn’t change or soften by the slightest degree, not even when he must have realized — in the instant I started to turn my head away — that I was going to run out the front door.