Noah's Turn (10 page)

He knew he was going to need alcohol to get him through the coming days and picked up a forty-ounce bottle of Absolut at his local liquor store. The cashiers and customers all seemed strangely passive to him, as if they were moving in slow motion. He wondered if he appeared jumpy to them, hyperactive, out of sync with the normal rhythm of things, and whether this was giving something away. He tried to appear relaxed and
smiled in response to the cashier's comments, but his smiles seemed to come at the wrong time, either too soon or too late. He started to sweat and wanted to get out and into the night.

Once outside he headed for the closest side street. This would be a detour on his route home but would also be dark and unpopulated. Once off the main strip, he unscrewed the top of the Absolut bottle and gulped down at least four ounces without taking the bottle from its plastic bag. He screwed the top back on, then remembered his bloody clothing. He wrapped the bottle in his gym shorts and stuffed the bloodied T-shirt and jacket into the plastic bag and tied it tight. When he passed the first public trash bin with a door flap, he stuffed the bag in and kept going. He stopped twice more for gulps from the bottle and arrived home feeling numb.

He thought of turning on the TV news but then decided to wait for the morning. He poured himself three or four more ounces and sat on the edge of his bed with only one thought in his mind: there was no turning back. The chill he felt was, he thought, what people must feel when they are told by their doctor that they have a serious chronic disease, that they have diabetes, or a kidney disease which will require
dialysis for the rest of their lives, or that they have non-Hodgkin's lymphoma “but it's treatable.” You live with it, he thought, that's what you do. Noah finished his drink, kicked off his shoes and curled up under his covers without taking off his clothes. He tried to imagine what his demeanour would be in his first conversations about the “horrific murder” and wondered whether he could express the necessary shock. He then fell asleep thinking that though his mother was dead, he was alive and that would make her feel good.

Noah didn't wake up until after eleven the next morning, when the phone rang that long-distance double ring. He didn't answer it. He lay on his back, staring straight up, and came to consciousness as if the events of the night before had been written on the ceiling then let go and crashed onto his face. The phone rang again with the long-distance ring. He picked it up. It was his cousin James from London. His “colonial mate” had just called with the news. After a few obligatory words of condolence for the loss of Noah's old friend, James soon slipped into a chipper, gossipy desire for more gory
details, which made it unnecessary for Noah to feign any shock or sorrow.

“I was supposed to meet him for squash last night. When he didn't show up I went home thinking he had forgotten until I heard the news.”

“God, you were supposed to meet him last night?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck. It could have fucking been you too if you had been with him.”

“Maybe.”

“Fucking Christ, man. I don't think I've ever known anyone even vaguely who's been murdered. A couple of suicides, but not this kind of thing. Fucking hacked to death. It sounds like fucking Rwanda. Do they know how many did it or who or why?”

“No idea. It's all like a bad dream.”

“Do me a favour and give us a call if you hear any more interesting stuff. This could even be a sex thing. Was he gay?”

“No. But he had just left his wife for a younger woman.”

“Fuck me. Hell has no fury like a woman scorned, mate. If I were a betting man I'd put my money on the wife. I hope I didn't wake you.”

“No.”

“Stay in touch. It was great seeing you at the farm. We should get together more often. You should come to London.”

“I might do that.”

“Take care of yourself. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

They hung up. Noah thought that he played that quite well. He now saw what his near future looked like—lies, deception, performances. Say as little as possible and be consistent. Don't get tripped up. That was the key.

He had to gather his thoughts. He unplugged his phone. There was a knock at his door. Not a ring from the street bell—this was someone in the building. This is how the police must do it, he thought.

Noah calmed down as well as he could and went to the door. The cops were quicker than he thought. He opened the door, and there was the father of his Italian landlord. “We have to turn off the water for maybe an hour,” he said with his rough Italian accent.

Why didn't the Italians who came here bring those fabulous accents of Marcello Mastroianni and all the Fellini characters? Noah thought.

“It's the boiler.”

“Can I take a shower?”

“Now?” he said looking at his watch as if there was an official shower time for all people.

“I was thinking about it.”

“In cold water,” the old man laughed. “Give us an hour. Two tops.”

“No problem.” Noah wanted to say “No problemo,” since he likely would never again in his life have this perfect opportunity for it, but declined. He closed the door and thought that he wasn't a hunted animal. In fact, most people in the world weren't even aware of McEwen's death.

Noah was nervous about watching TV news coverage of the killing. He had no idea how he would react. He was the star of the story, albeit the mystery star. His first reaction was an unexpected detachment. It was the news as always, and he watched it as if he had no part in it. His name wasn't mentioned. The first speculations over who might do such a thing didn't come close to describing a person like himself. As the story
continued with its lurid detail, a self-satisfied smugness set in. He realized how those who capitalize on these events with their analysis and speculation consistently get it wrong. How each creates a self-serving narrative out of disconnected and messy facts. After all, stories sell; messy facts don't. Noah remembered how he had felt watching live as the second plane on 9/11 hit the second World Trade Center Tower. The slicing impact of the plane entering the building had hit him in the gut. He, like everyone else watching on TV, understood that those on the plane were instantly dead. This was a narrative he had been prepared for and feared every time he flew. But the buildings' collapse was different. He was not prepared for the consequences of that one. He had been in hundreds of apartment and office towers and had never imagined what he was looking at on this day. It was a spectacular image, and when the buildings went down it wasn't thousands of people dying in front of his eyes as much as it was a mind-blowing spectacle. He couldn't imagine the people inside. There wasn't yet a human narrative for this image, and without a narrative there was no emotional connection. In the McEwen case, which didn't happen live on TV, there was time for the news to manufacture its own narrative.

The police investigator in charge of the case “could not imagine the kind of mind that would perform such a horrific act.”

“You can't imagine him?” Noah asked aloud. “He's like you and me. Two arms, two legs, likes to get laid and can't pay his bills. Welcome to the land of the unimaginable, asshole.”

A guest psychologist claimed that “the number of seemingly unprovoked blows from behind with a weapon like a machete could indicate a person with a psychotic major depression, or PMD, which affects 0.3 per cent of the population. Many of these people experience delusions. For example, a person with PMD may kill another person because he or she believes that person is the devil.”

“And what if I had a moment of fucking cosmic clarity—not a delusion, but the polar opposite? That's a narrative you can't sell, right, fuckhead!” Noah yelled at the TV. He clicked it off and flopped back onto his bed. He thought about the horrors he had seen on TV and how they were turned into “stories” that the audience would buy. A 747 heading to Singapore crashes and kills hundreds on board. The TV shots of screaming and grieving relatives at the airport waiting to hear
the names of loved ones lost. What we never see, Noah thought, is the woman in that crowd at the airport saying to the TV camera that her husband was on a business trip with his secretary and he was screwing her and they both had died on that flight and “I couldn't be happier.” Noah was sure that this had happened at some time somewhere but had never reached our living rooms. He thought about many things except the crime he had committed and that he was guilty of murder.

He pulled the covers up to his chin and stared at the ceiling and thought that if he stayed just like this in bed, no one would ever get to him. He fell asleep.

Noah woke up three hours later with a thought already buzzing in his head. It had passed over from his dream to his waking world. He didn't want to open his eyes. He didn't want to return to consciousness. The thought went back to the TV shrink and his clinical definition of psychosis. Noah had always imagined the gap between sanity and insanity to be a vast no-man's land like the complex of walls and wire and cameras and searchlights and electric current that divided Cold War East and West
Berlin. But now he realized that the gap was no wider than a chalk mark that could be crossed with a forehand tennis stroke. Sanity and insanity, he now thought, lived cheek by jowl and allowed those on either side to pass freely without questions or papers. In Noah's case, all it took was a decision to cross the line. It was simply a matter of will.

Curled up in his bed, the murder had no moral context for Noah. It was, for him, the result of his action rather than inaction. That was its sum total. He had made a decision and jumped in. His mind wandered to his childhood on the dock of the family cottage and how his cousins would dive or leap into the cold water in the morning and he would take forever to lower himself in down the ladder, feet, knees, thighs, stomach. “Just jump in!” the others screamed. He had jumped in.

Noah decided to contact the police about his squash date with McEwen. They would most likely come to him, but he thought it better to volunteer. After all, he had left two phone messages on McEwen's voice mail to show his innocence regarding McEwen's absence. He
called the police station closest to the university and was connected to the detective in charge of the investigation who asked Noah to come in for an interview.