Small Apartments (9 page)

“You don’t say,” said Burt. “About what time was that?”

“Just after ten,” said Mr. Allspice.

“Pretty late to be packing,” offered Burt.

Mr. Allspice lit another cigarette and offered one to Burt. He took it.

“He said he was moving to Switzerland. Switzerland! I told him, good riddance to bad rubbish. That’s why I thought you might be the new tenant. I don’t know whether to believe that fool or not. For four years it’s been like that. Say, you didn’t take my
Buffalo News
by chance, did you Mr… . what was the name again, some sort of fruit?”

“Walnut. Burt Walnut. No sir, I didn’t touch your newspaper.”

“Walnut? That is an unfortunate name. I don’t touch the things myself, break out in hives. Anyway, that fat man-child probably took it—or the dope fiend upstairs. No disrespect to Albert, but he did rent to some real losers. Can you imagine? Moving to Switzerland. That boy has probably never been out of Buffalo!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Burt Walnut, his face obscured by a mist of blue smoke. “I got a feeling he’s at least been as far south as Lackawanna.”

T
HE DOCTOR IN
the mental hospital infirmary had Bernard laid out on a steel table, covered up to his neck by a white bed sheet. Franklin sat on a metal stool beside his brother’s head. They were alone. The smell of Bernard’s dead body was different from the smell of Mr. Olivetti’s, though they had been dead for nearly the exact amount of time. Bernard smelled more … sanitary. Franklin was cold in just a
T
-shirt, shorts and sandals. This is my brother Bernard, thought Franklin. I am now officially alone in the world.

“I didn’t know you were sick. Or that you were free to come and go as you pleased,” said Franklin. “Why didn’t you come visit me? Why didn’t you talk to me?” Franklin fiddled with the corner of the sheet that covered his dead brother and rubbed the tender bump on his head.

“I’ve been busy, too, Bernard. I murdered my landlord. I didn’t mean to do it. How it all began would be funny if it wasn’t so terrible. Mr. Olivetti, that’s my landlord, whom you might have met if you ever visited me, came over yesterday morning and wanted the rent. It was almost a month overdue, like it always is, and I didn’t have it. I never have it. So he wanted me to do the thing for him. The thing he always wants me to do for him.

“Now Bernard, you know I like girls. I love girls. I loved the girls you used to bring home to our apartment on Ashland. And I especially love teenage girls. I’ve loved them even before I was a teenager, remember? Remember Rebecca DeLeggio from Grover Cleveland Elementary? In high school, when she became your steady girlfriend, you don’t want to know what I did while I was alone and thinking about her in the bubble bath. And Mr. Olivetti must have liked girls too. He was married to one for forty years and they had a daughter together. I don’t know what sort of relationship he had with his wife, but it couldn’t have been much to speak of.

“Yesterday morning he was in a bad mood and a hurry. He was working on some plumbing or something. He said it was giving him a ‘pain in the balls.’ He didn’t want to argue about the rent, he just wanted me to do my business and be done with it. ‘Hurry it up,’ he said. ‘I have to fix a drip in that pothead’s sink.’ So I did, Bernard. I did. I got down on my knees, pulled out that dirty guinea’s fat cock and worked it like an ice cream cone that was melting in my hands.

“Do you know what I think about when I’m doing that, Bernard? I’ll bet you could guess. I think about Switzerland. I imagine that what I’m really blowing is my mighty alphorn as I stand atop a rugged Alpine peak overlooking a Swiss lake. The green hills, they stretch out to the mountains. And the mountains, they disappear into the clouds. Bernard, it must be the closest thing to Heaven on earth.

“Yesterday morning I made a decision. As I knelt on the floor in front of that farting monster, I decided I couldn’t live that way anymore. I decided I had to make a change and I had to make it right away. I have always been afraid that Switzerland could never be the place I dream it is. The real Switzerland—the place—with its people and its buildings and its red dirt could never equal my expectations. It could never resemble the vision I have built in my mind since I was a boy. I know that. I’m not a fool. But whatever it is, whatever reality it has to offer, it’s better than the hell I endure here in Buffalo. I’m a loser, Bernard. A nobody. I’m a fat, forty-one-year-old footnote. I either need to change my circumstances, or get busy dying.

“So, I made this decision. I decided from that moment on that my life would be different. I mustered all my courage and all my adrenaline and I stood up.

“Bernard, you will not believe what happened next.

“As I rose to my feet, Mr. Olivetti rocked backwards and, like a catapult, threw his head forward and sneezed. He sneezed! His fat chin struck me square in the middle of my head. It was like I’d been walloped with a Louisville Slugger. I fell straight backwards onto my rear. I was seeing tiny star-bursts and a rainbow of spots. The collision sent Mr. Olivetti spinning around on his toes until he collapsed onto his back in front of me. His mouth was full of blood and he was mumbling curses at me in Italian. I could tell he was in a lot of pain.

“I scrambled to my knees beside him, ‘Are you all right?’ I said. His speech was laboured. He was having trouble moving his jaw, and spit out what looked like a tooth. ‘I can’t move my arms or legs,’ he mumbled. There was panic in his eyes. ‘What the fuck did you do? You fat fairy. What have you done to me?’

“I said I was sorry, over and over again—’I’m sorry, it was an accident. It’s just that I made this decision and …’

“Then his voice took on this sinister tone. ‘You’re fucked you sonofabitch. I hope you know that. You’re not getting away with this. If I die, you’re going to fucking fry.’ He was staring right at me, Bernard. Then he began coughing and gasping for each breath. ‘Sweet Jesus what did you do to me?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to die—not yet. I can’t let you get away with this. I’m going to start screaming until that old buzzard next door comes over to find out what’s going on. You’re going to jail, you cocksucker. You’re going to be sucking cocks for the rest of your miserable life.’ Mr. Olivetti started laughing and coughing. He wore a tremendous grin as he considered my fate. Laughing and coughing. It was horrible, Bernard.

“I turned away from him. I couldn’t bear to look at him. I knew what I had to do. I picked up my alphorn by the skinny end and twisted my clenched fists tighter and tighter around the boned wood. I didn’t believe I could do it. I thought about how many times I would have to hit him before he would be dead. I couldn’t bear the thought of it, but I knew I had to kill him, Bernard. I had no other choice.

“The coughing and laughing stopped. I loosened my grip on the alphorn and turned back towards Mr. Olivetti. He was dead. You should have seen the frozen look on his face, Bernard. He was grinning ear-to-ear and his eyes were as big as dinner plates. His last worldly thought was painted on his face: the thought of me going to jail for the rest of my life.”

Franklin chuckled at the memory of it. Then he laughed some more. Then he buried his head in his brother’s chest and cried like a baby.

He sobbed for several minutes. When he was finished he wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his
T
-shirt, removed the white #10 envelope from his pocket, and tore it open. Onto Bernard’s chest he dumped three fingernail clippings and a small metal key with a rubber grip. He picked up the key and examined it from the end of his nose. It looked like a roller skate key.

“More surprises, Bernard?”

The key had a number engraved inside the window of the rubber grip, 131. It’s not a safe-deposit box key, thought Franklin. It’s too big and garish for that. Maybe it’s a locker key. He tried mentally sliding the key into an assortment of lockers: the airport, the train station, the bus depot, the
YMCA
. Christ, it could be the key to a locker just about anywhere “What is this, Bernard? This is what you left for me? A guessing game?”

He sat twirling the miniature key between his stubby fingers. “The bowling alley,” said Franklin, nodding his head. The nearest bowling alley was only two blocks north of the Psychiatric Centre on Elmwood Avenue. Franklin recalled Sally Baker saying that Bernard took a walk every morning and returned at lunchtime. Bernard loved to bowl. With a bowling alley so close it was a good guess that that was where he spent his mornings. “What have you got stashed down at the bowling alley, Bernard?”

I
T WAS A SLOW
Wednesday afternoon at the We-Never-Close, Open 24 Hours convenience store and Tommy Balls’ high had worn off. He was sitting on a stool behind the counter, eating free beef jerky and scratching off instant lottery tickets, two of the job’s few perks. Tommy reached inside his backpack and pulled out the paperback copy of
Am I Crazy?
by Dr. Sage Mennox. The inscription on the title page read: For Thomas, May you find wisdom in these pages and forever avoid the Road to Crazy. Mom. He fanned through it several times, stopping at random pages to read:

“Amen to that, Doc,” said Tommy Balls. He closed the book and set it by the register.

Tommy had goals in life, he just thought smoking dope was fun. He wasn’t doing it to impress anyone; he mostly smoked alone. And he wasn’t doing it to upset his mother, although that was an added bonus. The fact was he enjoyed it. It made him feel good. So what if I enjoy instant gratification, isn’t that what this modern world is all about? he thought. Isn’t that just a result of our convenience-based society? From the beginning of time, life has been about gratification and convenience. From the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel to this Open 2-4 store on Forest Avenue in Buffalo. Call it survival or call it convenience, as far as he was concerned the two were interchangeable. Life rewards those who know what they want and take it, he thought. Life is a food chain. The big fish eat the little fish and it’s never the other way around. Besides, he thought, I’m only twenty-four years old, I have a lifetime ahead of me to accomplish my goals.

While Tommy was lost in his reverie two gangly white youths, no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, entered the store. They both had eyes that looked like they had been rinsed in chlorine then replaced in their sockets. The tall one checked the mirrors at the end of each aisle while the short one stayed at the door. When the tall one was satisfied the store was empty he pulled a 9mm handgun from the back of his droopy pants and put it in Tommy’s face. Tommy nearly fell off his stool. The room was spinning. There was something he was supposed to remember to do. What was he supposed to do? The thief was screaming at him. He looks like a little boy, thought Tommy, except for some curly stubble at the end of his chin and his violet eyes. He’s baked! He’s stoned out of his mind! Oh God, don’t look at him, Tommy thought. You don’t want to know what he looks like. Tommy glanced at the door. The short kid had his hands hidden inside the square pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. Look away, Tommy! His eyes darted back to the tall kid with the violet eyes. What is this kid screaming? The thief’s voice was coming through to Tommy’s ears like gibberish being screamed into a metal drum. Tommy banged opened the register. He grabbed cash in fistfuls and dumped it on the counter. He yanked the plastic organizer out of the drawer and pulled out the cheques and twenty-dollar bills. The thief scooped it all off the counter with his free hand and stuffed it in his jeans pocket.