Lynne Tillman - No Lease on Life

Clip, clop, clip, clop — BANG.

Clip, clop, clip, clop — BANG BANG.

Clip, clop, clip, clop — BANG.

Clip, clop, clip, clop — BANG BANG.

What’s that?

I don’t know.

An Amish drive-by shooting.

They were just fucking around. They yelled and ran. They overturned all the garbage cans on her block. They were probably going to the park. They were methodical. They turned them over, one after another, and bellowed. They leaped around, up and down, and then one of them — four males and a female — threw a garbage can at a first-floor window. He missed. Then he and another guy aimed garbage cans at a car, which they hit. Any moron can hit a car with a garbage can.

Car alarms went off. No one could sleep. Windows opened wide. People hung out their windows. Their mouths hung open too. It was pathetic.

Elizabeth was looking out her window.

Everyone was asleep and in messed-up T-shirts or ratty robes, tied strangely at the waist. They all looked strangled. It was the middle of the night or the morning. It was hot. Only people with their air conditioners on ever slept through the night. That’s how the block divided in the summer, with A/C or without. It was pathetic.

Elizabeth wanted to kill them. Someone should kill them. She wanted to use a crossbow and steel arrow. Much easier to buy than a gun, entirely legal, no waiting period. But crossbows had just been on the news, and she suspected that everyone would be buying them, the way everyone suddenly bought red eyeglasses. Maybe she was too exhausted to be unique, but she would take severe satisfaction in shooting an arrow right into a guy’s head — right through the middle of it, between his eyes or from one ear to the other. He’d look like a comic book character sporting that goofy toy parents bought for their kids years ago. Made them look like they’d had their skulls split in half.

Elizabeth’s arrow would be real, and she’d murder the guy, and the instant before his death, he’d be surprised, but still he’d exhibit no remorse and she’d feel no regret. The cops would be called. She’d be taken away. So what if she went to jail. She’d have the support of the neighborhood, the block anyway. She didn’t have a record. How long would they keep her in. Eight years was the max. She wasn’t sure why, but that figure occurred to her. Maybe because she’d heard about a serial rapist who’d been let out after eight years and he’d mutilated one of his victims, left her to die. That’s cruel. Maybe she’d be able to read in jail. She wondered if it was quiet in there. She wondered if the women were as noisy as the men or noisier or not noisy at all. There have been so few women in prison movies, she didn’t know. She’d kill a white guy. Maybe he’d even be in school or have a job, so his weekend, late-night marauding would be less likely to be described as driven or desperate. Her victim would be no deprived social misfit. Just a jerk, a prankster. She wasn’t Bernhard Goetz, subway vigilante, going berserk and into overkill. She’d kill someone like herself, she’d make a clean hit, have a clean and lucid, if angry, response. It would be a reaction, and, she’d be called a reactionary. She could handle that, especially in jail, where other people would’ve done much worse things. More senseless anyway. Her reaction would be considered crazy, or she would be. Everyone she knew would think she was nuts and had overreacted. She could hear people saying that, see their mouths moving, and she felt like throwing up.

Everyone would know what it was about. She’d make sure of that. It was about being able to sleep through the night. Being able to turn down your covers and get into bed and not have to wake every hour and run to the window because someone was screaming, sitting on a stoop, screaming and laughing or blasting music and yelling. About nothing. It was always stupid stuff. But even if it was smart, she’d hate it, hate them. Who cares then.

She couldn’t sleep. She might as well stand by the window, vigilant about nothing. 911 didn’t come unless you screamed Murder.

Some neighborhood morons who lived on the street, not bridge and tunnel or whatever, woke her the other night. They were on the church steps, playing stickball with glass bottles. Yelling every time a bottle shattered. It was 5 A.M. Elizabeth opened the window as wide as it would go, and stuck her head and body out. She watched one of the males saunter to the pile of beer bottles and choose one carefully. As if it mattered what kind of bottle he hit. Three females followed the play like despondent cheerleaders. Another male wound up, on the street mound, and pitched to the hitter. He missed. The bottle shattered. The hitter assumed the stance for another swing.

Elizabeth restrained herself from leaping onto the fire escape. She walked through the dark apartment, trying not to wake Roy. She phoned the precinct. The desk cop said he’d send a car. Thirty minutes passed. They were still shrieking. Bottles crashed to the ground again end again Elizabeth called the precinct again. The precinct’s phone machine answered. At the end of the recorded message, the same cop picked up:

— Fifth Precinct.

— This is the woman who called before.

— Yeah.

— There’s been no car.

— Yeah? You haven’t seen it? ’Cause I sent one.

— I haven’t seen it. and I’ve been standing here pretty much for the whole thirty minutes.

— Yeah… Well. I sent one.

— They’re still breaking bottles. I can’t sleep.

— Yeah. I asked for a car, but we’re a little busy this time of night… Unfortunately.

Unfortunately. The cop sounded rueful. It was rueful. Having to call cops or be a cop. At least he hadn’t lied. She hated being lied to. Except that she lied too. When Elizabeth phoned about an all-night party, a female cop said, We’re sending a car. The car never came, the music kept blasting. Elizabeth took a pill. The party was for the Policemen’s Benevolent Association. In the basement of the church where a variety of morons often sat on the steps.

Now Elizabeth leaned out the window. Garbage was everywhere. She’d murder the guy. She’d murder him with an acute pleasure that might last only a second. It would thrill wildly in her body for an evanescent, unimportant moment, but it might be worth it. He was bouncing up and down now, rocking with laughter at how the car’s window had shattered, how broken bottles were lying everywhere, how spilled garbage wantonly littered the sidewalk. It would rot and become fetid. It would rot and smell. She was rotting and rotten. She would smell when it came time for her to die.

The arrow would pierce his insignificant, preemie brain, and blood would spurt from the wound, the way it did in a Peckinpah movie, which is the only thing you remember about his movies, so it was a mistake to do it, not what she was intending, what Peckinpah did. A special effect is no legacy. She’d say her response was about — she’d say this when she was interviewed — not hatred, but dignity and a social space, a civil space, actually a civilian space. Not a place where life is a series of unwanted incidents. A place where people could thrive without having to move to the country or a small city, to expire quietly from lack of interest. She’d wax romantic about what you could expect or hoped to get from other people, and what you didn’t get. She’d call it respect. Everyone did.

You talk mostly about what you’re not getting. Respect, sex, money, sleep. If you have it, you don’t need to mention it. When you have it, you’re bored if other people even bring it up. Of course, people with lots of money also think about it all the time and want more of it, were afraid of losing it, but they probably had the sense not to talk about wanting it in public.