The Canal Read online

  Rescue came from the telephone. Wondrous, glorious rescue. Alan immediately dropped his utensils and hurried into the living room, spitting chicken into his hand.

  "Yes?"

  "Alan, it's Vincent."

  "Oh, Vincent."

  "...Yeah?"

  "I'm glad you called, that's all."

  "Well, I've got news."

  Alan listened.

  "I was out by the canal like you said. Crack of dawn. I get to the bridge, I go climbing along the banks, and I nearly stumble on top of some lady. She's out cold, been drinking or I don't know. Now see, I think she was here all last night and for who knows how long. I think we had squads of guys crawling all over this place, but she was a little too far downriver, none of them saw her. I barely did -- she blends in like, well she looks like some old garbage.

  "But get this, she was mumbling something about the bridge. Hard to know exactly what she was saying, but I definitely heard 'bridge.'"

  "And you think, what? She knows something? Might have seen something?"

  "Could be. Who knows. But still."

  "I want to know more, crucially," said Alan. Already, here was a result, the kind of tangible, concrete result that Joe, with his mystifying non-methods, couldn't deliver. "Have Womack bring her in. You stay out there and keep looking. I'll meet Womack at the station."

  Alan hung up. Barely a thought of leftovers to be found. He briskly yelled in the general direction of the kitchen, "There's a big thing. I have to run." And he was already out the door, throwing the unchewed morsel down the storm drain, already wishing he could have at least washed his hands first, because it would intensely bother him until he did, but on second thought there were sanitary wipes in the car, so he'd be okay, and he already had the car door unlocked, had the key in the ignition, the engine revving, when Susan called after him.

  She called his name quietly. Would Alan be home in time for dinner, she wanted to know. Because if so, would he be minding more chicken?

  *

  Repetition was supposed to be the key to perfection. In Susan's case, repetition took her cutlets to an opposite place -- each filet was a step backward from the last, a un-evolution. She was working her way toward the original mother filet, something so primal it would be unrecognizable to a modern palette.

  Why do it? She could tell that Alan took it personally, that he saw it as some kind of aggression on her part. But it was something else entirely. Because it seemed to Susan that wanting to be the best at something seemed so unoriginal. Susan had a mostly good husband, a good child, and she was secure, in spite of the fuss she made. She didn't have anything to prove. So why not fail at something? It was far more interesting, and in fact, it was liberating. In failure she could be her true self, free from the influence of expectation.

  Admittedly, she had may have laid it on a bit thick this morning. But sometimes it was so hard to make Alan listen. You literally had to have some sort of breakdown to get him to pay attention. Or more precisely, to get him to start paying attention to someone other than himself.

  Susan pulled Eugene to her chest and stood up, carrying him to his high chair and plugging him in. The child slouched, he'd slide right out through the bottom if you let him. The kid just didn't bother with gravity. Not that she blamed him. Who, at some point, didn't wish the rules would just get over themselves? Give us a break, gravity. Lay off, velocity. Time out, mass.

  Susan didn't mind Eugene's so-what posture, not the way Alan did. Eugene wasn't even a year old, so let the child have his fun. Those are a rare few years when you can be so careless -- go naked, defecate on a whim, suckle in public -- why deny anyone that? Susan even found it admirable...well, in children.

  But Alan, he just wasn't content to let Eugene be. Lately Alan had been hard at work compiling a series of educational tests -- meticulous, multi-page documents larded with arcane math and logic experiments. He argued that mastery of these tests should be an essential part of Eugene's immediate development, although clearly the child was too young. But this was typical of her husband, who tended to be excitable. It was a predisposition that she had recognized early in Alan -- the planning, the fastidiousness, the inability to leave anything to chance. Truthfully, it's what had made him most attractive to her. She saw how it drove him, and ultimately, how it would push him to excel. Although it tortured him too, at times. Most women, they would probably have a hard time dealing with someone like Alan. But not Susan. She appreciated his quirks, because in the end, they made Alan predictable. And what was predictable could be manipulated. She needed that.

  Susan began clearing the table, putting the uneaten chicken back into the bag. She'd give it to the old man, Mr. Zarella. Zarella was a project of hers, a lonely, destitute gentleman that she tended to worry about -- he was so skinny, his clothes so dirty, his hair so unwashed. Zarella lived alone on one of the bad streets by the river. She went there sometimes to give leftovers to some of the unfortunates who slept in doorways. Mr. Zarella was her favorite -- he at least had a home, although he didn't seem any better off for it.

  She collected the Lawnhill pamphlet and threw it in the trash. She wasn't seriously considering Lawnhill (she'd already picked Most Holy); she just wanted to remind Alan that he needed to take the dangers of his situation seriously. Not so much his situation, as in, he had a potentially dangerous job. But more so his overall situation as a man. Men were die'ers, plain and simple. When they weren't killing themselves they were killing each other, and being shrill about it. Men reminded Susan of certain attention-grabbing flowers that bloom for a week and then turn black overnight -- they serve their purpose, draw a crowd, and then are gone. Women were much more patient. Women were much more in league with life. And if you wanted to reduce it to something like childbirth, go ahead -- men with their negligible and superfluous seed, their role reduced to a selfish reflex, a seconds-long spasm, with a few cursory chromosomes being the grand result. Can you blame them for feeling inadequate? So of course it's men who wage war, with so little else to show for themselves. Now compare that to a mother's experience. We're talking a nine-month magnum opus, a hormone intensive evolutionary epic. She creates a child from her very own physical fabric. Talk about making your mark -- women knew a success that transcended time, that bridged eons, that tapped into the very lifeblood of the species itself.

  So women, they were life givers. Men were a means. And violent death was their destiny.

  It seemed hard for Alan to grasp this, to understand the inevitable crash and burn that was male-dom, one that was waiting for him despite all his manic effort. In fact, he seemed to confuse death with a promotion. They could be like that sometimes, men. So misguidedly confident, so blindly boastful. In fact, men were the biggest boasters around. Read some history -- men have packed it full of themselves. And what's history if not one big boast? The joke being that history is universal and accurate, when in fact it's little more than a neurotically documented experiment in testosterone.

  Susan uprooted Eugene from his chair

  "Does Eugene want to play?" she cooed. "Want to play with mah-mah? Mah-mah?"

  Recognition flickered in the child's eyes. She carried him into the living room and walked to the sliding glass door. The heat stunned back yard lay beyond. Eugene began to squirm, reaching dainty fingers toward the window. There was nothing her son loved more than being outdoors. Susan indulged him with morning and evening excursions, sometimes letting him stay outside the entire day when the weather was cooler.

  She kissed him on the nape of his neck and slid the door open. Stifling air seeped inside. Eugene burbled an excited string of gibberish, sounding like a drowning telephone. Bbbbblllinnng.

  "Eugene wants to go outside!"

  On the patio Eugene began to struggle in Susan's arms, frantically hammering at her with weakling blows, whirling his legs. Alan never partook in these outings; he never saw this side of Eugene. That was fine with Susan. These moments were for her alone.

 
She sat on a lawn chair and lay the child in her lap. She picked up Eugene's harness, which was slung over the arm. The harness was made for a small dog, fitting around the chest and front legs with an attachment for a leash at the back. As luck had it, Eugene was a perfect fit.

  "Lay quiet, Eugene. Lay quiet."

  At those words the child went completely still, his eyes wild, his heart racing, his whole body trembling.

  Susan wrapped the straps around her son. When the clasp on the back went click, Eugene erupted, twisting out of her hands, squealing. She kissed him once more on his elusive head and conveyed him to the lawn, grabbing the cord that dangled from an overhead tree and hooking it to the harness. The leash set-up was her idea, it allowed Eugene to play unsupervised in the yard for as long as he desired within a contained, safe range. Eugene had long since worn a circular dirt rut into the grass, around whose trail he prowled constantly.

  Susan finally deposited her son on the ground and laughed, only happiness on her mind. She loved being a mother. Eugene lunged into action, determined that today would be the day he'd finally reach the conclusion of that cursed round road. He crawled and crawled, making endless loops around his mother.

  >> CHAPTER FOUR <<<br />
  Fever ricocheted through Joe's skeleton, wobbling the marrow in its tubes. The hairs on his body stood as stiff as pines and the air filled with the smell of gunpowder. His gums throbbed, he tasted whisky, he heard the sound of God kissing. He dreamed.

  The bridge was there. The corpse was there, swinging from the bridge's exposed ribs. But there were worse things. Like the canal. It breathed -- Joe could feel the ground tremble, the slush and draw of deep currents through sluggish channels. Bubbles belched on the water's surface, the whole soup boiled, spitting froth, yellow steam leaping through the air like fire.

  His hand burned. His brain buckled.

  He was being watched. The sewer outlet -- black, unblinking, a cyclops eye wrapped in the sulfuric fog of a demon fart. There were other eyes within that eye. A predator's eyes. And they knew. They sensed his fear, savored it, as Joe stood frozen, the humid wind yanking at his coat...

  And then it was upon him. Lunging. This thing of heat and necrosis. Biting at his face, chewing on his skull. Ripping the skin free.

  *

  Joe jolted awake. He cracked his temple on the underside of a faucet spout. Dazed, he lay back down, resting his ear against something cold, a drain. He could hear the vacant whisper of cracked pipes and rushing toilets.

  He touched his face, feeling all the familiar cave-ins and sinkholes -- thankfully, everything was still there, still in its proper place. He cautiously opened his eyes. He was in a bathtub. His bathtub. It was spattered with retch. He could feel the stuff in his mouth, a bitter taste of himself. He reached up and got the water going. It poured on his face and hair, slipping around his neck, soaking into his coat. It was almost nice.

  The fever had flamed out. All that remained were the aftershocks, a full-body halitosis, and a general physical shame. Joe hauled himself up to the side of the tub's basin, giving the faucet a respectful berth, and peeked over the edge. His bathroom was a kind of cockroach Valhalla, where the biggest and strongest of the species enjoyed filth of the highest splendor. The sink was an ashtray and the toilet resembled a lunch counter soup kettle, an array of drippings hardened on its chin. The shower curtain -- half of it collapsed and broken free of the rings -- was tiger striped with black mildew. In lieu of towels on the rack there hung ribbons of toilet paper.

  Getting out of the tub proved tricky, the basin was slick with treacherous mold. There was some wobble, some drama. Until at last: resurrection. Joe -- upright and trembling on foal-fresh legs. He risked a journey to the medicine cabinet.

  Success.

  In the mirror Joe came face to face with a horrific apparition, something dragged from the bottom of a lake, its eyes weepy and crude. It was a sight he had seen on other mornings, too many to count -- always after a night on the job, after a date with the canal, trying to cure the city's more peculiar problems. He examined his hand. It was the color of raw meat where he'd touched the canal; the last remaining sign of infection.

  Joe washed his hands and then dried them on his coat. It was earlier than he expected. Joe's days were usually nights, his mornings came at the ends of afternoons. He now realized that he'd forgotten what a real morning was truly like. Crisp. Attentive. Alert. Worth avoiding.

  But he was done with sleeping. Done with dreams. And before his startled body could realize what was happening, and could voice some rather relevant disagreement, he was pushing away from the mirror, like an astronaut shoving off from the mother ship. He caromed out of the bathroom and off of walls, breezing past the meltdown of his bedroom, through the slum of his living room, and then made an easy leftward stumble into the kitchen.

  He went to work fumbling an empty soda can out of the sink, prying it from a dense archipelago of beer bottles and tuna tins. He filled it partway with tepid water, got the jar of coffee crystals from above the refrigerator and poured them in the can, then leaned against the countertop and drank, finishing in one draught. While chewing on the half-dissolved granules he brewed another can. He took his time with the third and managed to smoke a cigarette without vomiting.

  Last night, while his body was cooking itself from the inside and purging at will, his fever-whipped brain had wandered a bit too far afield. Joe sank deeper than usual. He got into some unnatural places, awoke some unnatural things. But the message was clear: the body under the bridge, that was just preamble. It was the part everybody would laugh about later, after a few beers, or around the coffee machine. It was going to be a pleasant memory compared to what was coming next.

  The sewer, that was probably where he should start. Fortunately the sewer didn't really bother him. The sewer was just a place. Maybe not as pleasant as other places, maybe it didn't have much condo potential, but a place was still a place. No, it was the other part that bothered him. The part with the teeth. The part about getting his face eaten off.

  Joe finished his cigarette and lit another. He had another coffee. He observed the cabinet above the sink, the one that was padlocked shut.

  He had known a woman once. She bought Christmas presents far in advance of December. Over the course of the year, from the 26th onward, she'd buy and wrap these presents and place them high atop the shelf in the bedroom closet. Sometimes, at her most infuriating, this woman kept those presents there even after Christmas had come and gone. Sometimes they stayed there for years. The mysterious and unopenable unknowable.

  At some point, Joe had begun doing this sort of thing too. To memories, mostly. Secrets. Sometimes he put them high on a shelf hidden deep in the scorched casserole he called a brain. Or, you could put them in a locked kitchen cupboard. The main difference being that Christmas was something you prayed would never come. Because if it did...

  Joe pulled on the cupboard door. The lock held true.

  He needed to leave. He needed to go to the office.

  *

  The police station was a newer building, built in the grand style of government dull. It was just another bunker where help got parsed out from behind steel doors and bulletproof glass. A crowd was gathering -- TV cameras were being deployed as reporters jostled for a prime spot close to a podium that had been set up on the entryway steps. Bridge murder was the talk of the day.

  Joe moved shyly along the edge of the crowd. He found an opening and moved quickly through -- he was up the steps and pushing through the station's double doors before anyone could notice.

  He walked into chaos. The small lobby was filled with a regiment of reporters, guys waving pencil and paper like sword and shield, shouting questions and laying siege to the poor Desk Sergeant, a normally stoic man who, in a red rage, was trying to forcibly throw them out.

  There was a frozen moment as the doors flapped shut behind Joe, and the reporters, in bird-like unison, turned to stare. An unspoken order wa
s passed from man to man, via face twitch and eyeball shiver.

  The nearest flank abruptly charged.

  "Detective Lombardi! Detective Lombardi!"

  "Any comments on the murder, Detective!"

  "Is it true what they say! Is it sex cannibals!"

  "A teen blood cult!"

  "Drifters on PCP!"

  "A serial killer with a flair for flesh! Can I quote you on that!"

  "Give us something, Lombardi. Off the record, promise!"

  "Where is the skin, Detective! Do you have it here! Is it in one piece or several! Shredded or intact! Was it worn, Detective! For the love of God -- WAS IT WORN!"

  There was too much excitement, too much commotion. Already Joe felt exhausted, his body depleted from the night before. The light hurt his eyes. The sound hurt his ears. But it was the Desk Sergeant who came to his rescue. The Desk Sergeant valiantly lunged into the fray, towering, grand, Norse, hip-checking indiscriminately, clearing a path. Joe hustled across the lobby and through a low swinging gate, where the reporters stopped short.

  "Aw, c'mon Lombardi! Give us something!"

  "People have a right to know!"

  Joe quickly ducked into the stairwell. He stood for a moment, still dizzy from exertion. It was quiet here, and safe. But in his weakened health, the stairs ahead seemed a ridiculous challenge, looming Himalayan in scope and magnitude. He began an unsteady ascent. Halfway up, wheezing, altitude-sick, he stopped to rest. This kind of thing, it didn't inspire confidence. It made Joe nervous to imagine what horrors must now inhabit this body of his -- a pair of lungs like charred eels, surely, like two carcinogenic sausages. Some bombed out kidneys, a landmined liver, a heart like a trembling, geriatric flea. Everything packed in black grease. Joe muttered a feeble half-prayer and turned again to the stairs.

  Finally, shivering and on the verge of implosion, Joe came teetering into the squad office. There was a patina of exhaustion specific to the place -- they had tried repainting the walls, replacing the furniture, but it hadn't helped. The paint had faded in minutes. The furniture was outdated the moment it came off the truck. The room was cramped with desks; Joe's was the one sagging under a blanket of coffee cups, sunflower-seeds, old newspapers, candy bar wrappers.