Mark Dunn - American Decameron

Russell closed his eyes. He wanted this night to be over. He tried to think of anything that might relax him. He remembered the last man he had engaged in the night. The man had been an especially timid fellow and there was a pitiful dog-like whimper to his voice that sometimes, when Russell was alone, he liked to try to emulate. Russell wished that he’d had some way to record those pathetic, yet thoroughly entertaining pleadings from his victims, so that he could listen to them over and over again the way one replays a favorite record.

“Please don’t kill me.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, milquetoast. Your life is in your own hands. Beg or die. Beg or die, little man.”

“ Russell? ”

Russell opened his eyes. At that same moment the lamp on the little table between the two single beds clicked on. Bud was sitting up in bed. He had Russell’s notebook.

“What is this?” Bud was holding the notebook by one corner as if he were pinching the tail of a dead rat.

“Just some of my scribblings. May I have it?”

“Why do you write this stuff?”

“The better question is, why are you in possession of something that doesn’t belong to you?” Russell grabbed for the book but Bud jerked it out of reach.

“This is twisted shit.”

“You had no business reading it.”

“Does my sister know that you write this kind of stuff?”

“No. And why don’t you be a good little brother and not tell her? Look, my head is killing me. Give me the book and let’s go to sleep.”

Bud shook his head. “Is this for a movie? Are you writing a movie script?”

“Yeah. I’m writing a movie script,” said Russell with sere sarcasm.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe whatever you want to.”

“I found the notebook under your mattress. I found this —” Bud pulled the revolver out from under his pillow. “—stuffed in the back of your suitcase. What are you doing bringing a loaded gun into my parents’ house?”

Russell didn’t have an answer. Even if he could concoct some halfway plausible explanation, his head was too cloudy to be able to deliver it successfully. He was caught. He had to fess up. Maybe the kid was like him. Maybe Bud had an interesting dark side of his own. Some people did. Sometimes Russell thought that maybe everybody did. He remembered the old man he had stopped near the lake in Euclid. Right behind a noisy polka palace. “Beg for your life,” he had told the man, whom he feared at first was too intoxicated to effectively play the game. But the man was sober. Cold sober. “Go ahead and kill me, hoodlum,” the old man spat. “I was about to drown myself in the lake anyway. You’ll save me the trouble.” Russell had ended the encounter with a few murmured epithets. “I should have obliged him,” he thought as he walked away. Then he laughed to himself. “‘Hurt me! Hurt me!’ cried the masochist. ‘ No !’ returned the sadist with a leer.”

“I’m not going to ask you again,” said Bud in a voice suddenly devoid of all youthful innocence.

“I use the gun, Bud. I put the muzzle to people’s heads and I make them think that I’m going to kill them. It’s a game I play.”

“Why do you play this game?”

“It excites me. Aren’t there things that excite you ? Things that you keep to yourself? Everybody has their dark corners, their little pockets of depravity.”

The gun had been resting on Bud’s palm. Now he took it into a proper grip so that he could aim it at Russell’s head.

“Have you ever killed anybody with this gun?” asked Bud.

“Not with that gun or any other gun. I just told you: it’s only a game.”

“If it’s just a game, why is the gun loaded?”

“It heightens the stakes. It makes it more exciting.” Russell swallowed. “Is that what you want to do, Bud? Do you want to play the game with me ?”

“I don’t want you marrying my sister. I don’t want you to even see my sister again. You need to be put into a padded room.”

Russell licked his lips nervously. “I’ve thought that myself, on occasion.”

“All those people out there. I’ve read in your little book what you make them say. They’re going to carry this around with them for the rest of their lives.”

“You’re very perceptive for a kid.”

“I’m not a kid. I’m a freshman at Carnegie Mellon.”

“All right. Point taken. Just — could you just point that thing away from me?”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to shoot me.”

“But I’m not like you, Russell — or should I call you ‘Stark Raving Lunatic’?”

“You can call me whatever you want to. And I’ve come to the conclusion that you are in no way whatsoever like me.”

“That’s right,” said Bud. “ You never pull the trigger.” Bud fired. The discharge was loud and seemed to shake the walls of the small bedroom. “ I just did.”

The bullet lodged in Russell’s left arm. There was a great deal of blood for Trudy (who assumed full responsibility for the mess) to have to clean up. It took a long time to get Russell to the hospital on account of the severe weather.

Trudy later confessed to her parents and to Bud that she had no idea that the man she thought she loved was a…was a…

“Was a stark raving lunatic,” said Mrs. House helpfully. She was sitting with her daughter, running loving, maternal fingers through her hair.

“As insane as he was,” said Mr. House, “at least he never killed anybody. So far as we know.”

Everyone agreed with a nod. The House family was gathered around the fireplace drinking cocoa. The storm had finally let up. The Thanksgiving Blizzard of 1950 had come to an end. The long dig-out was about to begin.

“Did you mean to shoot him, Bud?” asked Trudy of her quiet and reflective brother.

“In that moment I did. I guess your lunatic boyfriend was right. We’ve all got a little something screwy about us. For example: I put several hundred dollars on Ohio State.”

Mr. House nodded sympathetically. “I did too, son. I did too.”

“It was hard going there at first.”

“To Mrs. Lyttle’s apartment, you mean?”

“That’s right. But over time I got used to it. Would you like another Ladyfinger?”

“No, no. One hand is my limit. I really must be off. Sometimes I say that to Arthur and he goes, ‘ Must be? Why, Pearl, you’ve been ‘off’ since the day I met you.’ Did James ever talk to you like that?”

“Not very often. I think he was afraid that since I wasn’t able to see his face I wouldn’t know when he was kidding. But I could always tell by the tone of his voice. Shall I see you to the door?”

“‘See you to the door.’ Do you say that to all your guests?”

“The ones who might think it funny.”

“I’ll let myself out, honey.” Pearl Patz kissed her blind friend Leonora Touliatos on her forehead. “Oh, and I’d stop going over there if I were you. I still don’t see how a person could ever get used to something like that.”

“It’s not her fault. It’s very hard to censor a parrot, Pearl — especially one that was once owned by a salty-tongued merchant marine.”

“But honey, don’t you still cringe to hear all that potty talk?”

“A little, yes, but I really do like Nancy Lyttle. We’ve spent some very nice evenings together.”

Pearl took her coat from the back of a chair near Leonora’s front door. There was an antique mirror by the door, for which Leonora had no use now that her son Tim was off at college, but Pearl leaned into it to check for bits of pecan in her teeth, which might have taken up residence there from the pecan coffee cake her friend Leonora had served with the tea. Her panties had bunched up a little, and she pulled at the elastic, appreciating the convenience of having a blind friend who would not be aware of such rude adjustments to her person.