Inappropriate Behavior: Stories (19 page)

“I know, Charlie,” she said, crossing her legs in the tight black skirt she wore. “And for what, really?”

“I'm sending your brother the hospital bill.”

“Good idea,” said the lumberjack.

“So, Molly,” I said. “You setting this guy up for some of your Jesus talk?”

“I'm not really into Jesus that much anymore, Charlie,” she said. “I realized that you'd been hemming me in, spiritually, with your narrow world view. It's so constricting. I'm going further back. Old Testament, Zoroastrianism. It pulls everything together for me.”

“That, and the Buddha,” said the lumberjack, wagging a fat, red-haired finger. They clinked their bottles together and smiled.

“I'm all about taking from everything, Charlie,” said Molly as I reeled with hate. “You really helped me to see that with your darkness and your patriarchal instincts. I was cutting myself off from joy. Now, I've got the East, the West, pre-Christian, even pre-Hebrew. I'm for beauty and kindness now, Charlie. Oh, Ridley,” she turned to the lumberjack. “Tell Charlie what you were saying about William James.”

“Ridley?” I said.

“In his seminal text,
The Varieties of Religious Experience
, William James—”

“Your name is Ridley?”

“So?”

Molly put her hand on his arm. “Tell him about William James, honey.”

Ridley began again. “In his seminal text,
The Varieties of Religious Experience
, William James posits that Man labors under a misapprehension of the religious paradox and the dichotomy of the natural—”

“So this is it, huh, Molly?” I said. “This is the deal. I can't even come into my own bar anymore?”

“How absurd, Charlie. Ridley is sitting here trying to tell you something interesting. We've had our troubles, you and I, but I'm including you. It's not an either/or thing.” She made a slashing motion with her hand. “It's an
and
thing.” She brought her slash-hand into a plump and lovely fist. The other hand held her beer. “Ridley even has a theory that Jesus may have been Chinese.”

“The other night, Molly,” I said as Ridley rose slowly from his stool, “I threw you out of my apartment. I knew it would mean I'd have no furniture. I knew it might even mean a beating from your idiot brother. But I didn't think it would make me feel anything but glad you were gone. Now it does. I feel something, Molly. Before I was just tired of you. Now I truly hate you.”

Ridley took a swing but I was ready, ducking it and giving Molly the full force of his lumberjack left. She tumbled from the chair, and Ridley was stupefied for a moment, couldn't decide whether to render her aid or come after me. It was all the time I needed to head for the door, my cracked ribs knifing in my side.

When I got home I opened the fridge, glad to see they'd at least left the beer. I opened one and the pop of the can echoed tinnily against the bare textured walls. I pressed the can against one swollen eye, and with the other I looked around for a moment.
Then I went back to the fridge, grabbed the rest of the six-pack by the plastic rings, and went outside to my car. At Target I bought a few pairs of jeans and some shirts, underwear, socks, just enough until I figured out how to get my stuff back from Ray. I was planning to buy a chair, but the furniture at Target was both cheap and overpriced. Instead I went by the lawn and garden section and bought a patio set, one of those plastic tables with the green and white umbrella in the middle and the four plastic white chairs. This one even had a rotating tray you could attach to the umbrella, about halfway up, for holding munchies and such, to conserve table space. On the way home I stopped at QuikTrip and spent my last twenty dollars on beer.

When I got home, I set to assembling my patio set in the living room, but the umbrella was too tall to open all the way. I took a couple of beers from the fridge and went next door to Dick Kohler's apartment.

“What the hell happened to you?” Dick said, standing in the porch-lit doorway, his back to the dark apartment inside, taking the beer I offered.

“Got the hell beat out of me the other day by Molly's brother.”

“I wondered what all the fuss was.”

“What did it sound like?”

“Like you were getting the hell beat out of you.”

“Got a hacksaw, Dick?” I said.

“What you got to hack, Charlie?”

“Aluminum pole, about like this,” I said, my thumb and finger together.

“Can I come?”

“Sure, Dick.”

He went away for a moment, back into his dark apartment. Dick was forty and small, single, also out of work, always home and the home always dim, if not dark. He was a good neighbor, I guess, quiet, always up for a beer if you brought one, had tools. He was also, quite probably, the world's leading amateur authority on St. Louis sports. Inside his apartment, Dick had
bookshelves filled with every media guide, every history, every program and yearbook, every statistic for every team.

“Ray did this, huh?” Dick said, returning from the gloom with a hacksaw and his can of Busch.

“With a little help from his friends.”

“Ray'd hit you, if he could catch you,” Dick said. “I remember the Bills game in '98, he hit Doug Flutie so hard it looked like he just swallowed him up. His only sack that year.”

He handed me the hacksaw.

“But he was too slow,” Dick said. “Best he ever ran was a 5.4 forty. That was in '95, rookie year. He just got slower after that.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I was trying to outquick them, but they sort of triangulated me.”

“He's doing real well with those gyms of his.”

“Hmmm,” I said.

“And I hear he's opening a restaurant, family-type place. St. Louis needs more of that.”

“Hmmm,” I said.

“Home cooking, but healthy,” Dick said.

“Let's go,” I said.

The pole sawed easily, and I cut a foot or so off the bottom and gave the umbrella plenty of room to spread.

“That's fine, Charlie,” Dick said, taking a seat in one of my new plastic chairs. “It's sort of elegant, in fact.”

“It'll do,” I said, attaching the plastic tray and giving it an easy spin.

We sat in the new chairs for a moment or two, silent, sipping our beers in the greenish glow the umbrella gave to the overhead light. We looked up at each other when we heard the tires screech outside.

And in came Ray with the same two guys from before, the three of them wearing matching black polyester sweat suits emblazoned with
Nehemiah 6:9
in a red and fiery font.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Ray said. “I'm gonna rip your fucking head off.”

“Ray Sizemore!
” Dick said, standing from his chair and backing toward the wall. “Thirty-two solo tackles in 1996, sixty-one assists, two sacks. Thirty-one solo tackles in 1997, fifty-six assists, two sacks, one interception. Returned it for a touchdown against Dallas. I saw you hit Doug Flutie in 1998—”

“Easy, Dick,” I said. “There's just a misunderstanding here.”

“Bullshit,” said Ray. “And I had three sacks in '96.”

“Well, factually—” Dick began, but Ray cut him off.

“What the hell is this?” he said, pointing at my patio set.

“What does it look like?” I said. “It's a pagoda, Ray. A temple to the shit your sister made of my life.”

“You punched my sister in the face.”

“Not me,” I said, still sitting in my plastic chair, but slowly reaching for the hacksaw where it leaned against the table leg. “It's Ridley you want.”

“Ridley?” Ray said.

“Ridley,” I said. “Big guy, lumberjack, red hair.”

“Lumberjack?”

“Pragmatist.”

“Fuck you,” Ray said. The two men with him looked down for a moment, closed-eyed, sheepish. “I told you to stay away from her, and then here she comes home tonight with a black eye talking about Vishnu and Chinese Jesus.”

“There was the sack against San Francisco,” Dick said, “and the one against the Saints. That was a good one, Mr. Sizemore.”

“I sacked Mike Tomczak in the Steelers game.”

“Oh, sure,” Dick said. “That was preseason. I was talking about official stats.”

“I sacked Steve Bono in the preseason. The Pittsburgh game was regular season.”

“Is there going to be another beating here or not?” I said, my hand now firmly on the hacksaw's handle. I was starting to sweat some, ready to get this over with. I couldn't let them beat me up again. If they did, I was pretty sure I'd die.

“You better believe it,” Ray said, and the three of them started for me before one of the other guys stopped.

“Should we beat this one up, too?” he asked, pointing to Dick, who lost all color in his face, who put his hands up in front of his chest as if to say, No, no thanks, none for me.

“Go ahead,” Ray said. “But then come back over and help us with this one.” Dick managed a little groan.

I let them get almost on top of me before I drew the saw. I plunged it straight into the goon's crotch, drew it back and forth hard, could feel the teeth tear through the cloth and into flesh and something harder still, like gristle or bone.

It wasn't until I released the saw that I heard him scream. He fell over into a compact polyester ball on the floor, and then he screamed again and the blood came, lots of it. The goon who was going to work on Dick came to the aid of his friend, and Dick sprinted from the apartment, shouting something about unrealized potential and concrete feet. Ray simply stood there and looked at the scene for a moment, a long moment, before he spoke.

“Jesus, Charlie,” he finally said. “I mean, my
God.
”

The hacksaw was still in the goon's crotch. He'd roll away from help, then thrash his locked-together legs as a muscular set, then roll up again screaming, “No, no, no!” as his friend tried to pull the hacksaw free. I picked up the only other weapon I could find, the foot or so of aluminum pipe I'd cut off the bottom of the umbrella pole. I made a move at Ray with it, and he backed up, dodging it, putting his hands up much as Dick had done, before bending down near his fallen colleague and saying, “Stop . . . shit . . .
enough.
”

“Get him the hell out of here, then,” I said.

“I mean,
Jesus
, Charlie,” Ray said. “That was a little much, don't you think?” The man on my floor screamed, “No!”

“We need to call an ambulance,” the other guy said. “He's going to bleed to death right here on the floor.”

“It used to be you could get in a fight and just go home afterward,” Ray said now, lost in the philosophy of what had happened, unable, it seemed, to act. “This is just so . . .
excessive.
”

“We got to get him out of here,” said the other guy.

“I'm dying,” said the bleeding man, his first coherent statement.

“Oh, no you're not,” said Ray, who then kneeled and raised this enormous man almost effortlessly. Ray began to shout, “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me! I can do all things in Him who strengthens me!”

Ray got the man into a fireman's carry, blood now streaming down the shoulder of Ray's black sweat suit.

“I can do
all things
in Him who strengthens
me,
” Ray bellowed once more beneath the man's weight. Then he spun toward the door, then ran for it, the hacksaw still gleaming red from between the bleeding man's soaked and ruined thighs.

After I heard them drive away, I went to Dick's apartment, to check on him, yes, but also to borrow a mop, a bucket, a scrub brush, anything I could use to get the evidence off my floor. I saw Ray's footprints all down the steps, shining black and wet in the parking lot floodlights. I knocked at Dick's door.

“I'm checking,” he shouted from the inside. “I'm looking it up. I'm sure you're right!”

“Dick, it's me. It's Charlie. They're gone.”

“I think you killed him, Charlie,” Dick said from just behind the door. I hadn't wanted to. I just knew I couldn't take another beating. All I'd wanted was to get myself out of a relationship that, mere months before, I'd hoped would never end. All I wanted was to get back to work, get my life straight again, find another girl, maybe not as beautiful as Molly, sure, but sane, or saner at least. All I'd wanted was to cut down some on the drinking, and a lot on the trouble, and to try to feel like myself again, and now I'd ended up killing someone, and I'd go to jail for a long time, maybe forever, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had no money, no way to run, nowhere to run to, and running would only make it all look worse. The only thing
I could do was try to make it all look better, clean up the blood, wait for the cops to come, and try to explain the whole thing.