craw.
She lived on the top floor. The foot of the stairwell touched a unit in which I heard people yelling and crying with the deep, rich pain of loss. Their pain
hurt
to hear. But in a way that shamed me, I knew their cries would create distraction, should I need it. On the second floor I went to the apartment just below Catherine’s and touched my ear to the door.
Absolute quiet. No newscasters. No laugh tracks to the misadventures of Chandler, Phoebe, Ross and Joey. No talk radio. Just the shade-still heartbeat of a vacant living space.
I’d cased Catherine’s building over these last few months of my existence, waiting for the people below her to go on vacation before calling her. It wouldn’t do for the
thud
of her body and what it would leak through floor and ceiling to alarm anybody. Evan’s death taught me how troublesome neighbours can be.
I took it as divine providence when the people below moved out, letting the turn of events melt on my tongue as a Catholic would a Communion wafer. I made an appointment with the building manager to view the apartment while Catherine was at work, and asked for an application to fill out in private. While he was gone, I unlocked the window closest to the drainpipe that ran down the southeast corner of the building. If Catherine made an aria of our reunion, I could shimmy down the pipe outside her window and hide in the vacant apartment, assuming I didn’t shatter my limbs on the alley below trying to get in, and so let floating bits of marrow join my tumours in their revolt against my body.
I climbed the stairs, drawn by Catherine’s siren-call she didn’t know was hers, because its notes were so deeply buried in the self-love at the core of her being—the self-love that punished her body for its disobedience in not bending to her focus-group-defined will. The tantric urgency in my flesh was changed by her song as I became the killer she sought: the stalking lover, the thing of myth that drew its strength from the voyeurism and narcissism of women such as Catherine, who make pretty and vicarious myths of empowerment and melodrama out of the plight of women who truly are stalked. Women such as Catherine . . . who longingly see victimhood as an opportunity for personal growth, to shine through adversity, and so perhaps meet a smoky-dark and handsome cop/protector. Victimhood wormed in their imagination as a chance, like multiple sclerosis or cancer or spinal injury or any other dramatically severe illness worthy of a made-for-TV movie, to
will
yourself to become better than you were, to not let adversity beat you, and so spit in the face of the truly stricken and afflicted.
I reached Catherine’s door. I knocked on the barrier that my passage through would finalize the bestowment of power, the vindictive actualization, I had begun by
watching
.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Dean.”
Who else?
I heard the rattle, the clank, the rumble of locks being undone. Catherine’s protective barrier against all evil in the world. The throwing of locks was precise as the
noh
-play rigid dinners and conversations and lovemaking we’d shared, for the
door
was not the barrier that made her feel safe, but her control over it, her mastery of it through the manipulation of locks and bolts from one state to another.
She opened the door, relinquishing her control, admitting me to the imaginary safe space of her home as a mythic being that, like monsters out of folklore, can only harm upon being invited in.
When I saw her, my resolve to kill her faltered. She smiled the way people smile only for dear friends. She kissed my cheek, and it felt so very nice. I thought of Sarah, how we’d reconciled. Maybe Catherine and I could end on good terms. My mythic state, coursing within me, flowed into a warmth I could share with her, that could call from our hearts what had been good between us and save it, like a small thing pulled from a burning home. Maybe with understanding, not blood, we
She lived on the top floor. The foot of the stairwell touched a unit in which I heard people yelling and crying with the deep, rich pain of loss. Their pain
hurt
to hear. But in a way that shamed me, I knew their cries would create distraction, should I need it. On the second floor I went to the apartment just below Catherine’s and touched my ear to the door.
Absolute quiet. No newscasters. No laugh tracks to the misadventures of Chandler, Phoebe, Ross and Joey. No talk radio. Just the shade-still heartbeat of a vacant living space.
I’d cased Catherine’s building over these last few months of my existence, waiting for the people below her to go on vacation before calling her. It wouldn’t do for the
thud
of her body and what it would leak through floor and ceiling to alarm anybody. Evan’s death taught me how troublesome neighbours can be.
I took it as divine providence when the people below moved out, letting the turn of events melt on my tongue as a Catholic would a Communion wafer. I made an appointment with the building manager to view the apartment while Catherine was at work, and asked for an application to fill out in private. While he was gone, I unlocked the window closest to the drainpipe that ran down the southeast corner of the building. If Catherine made an aria of our reunion, I could shimmy down the pipe outside her window and hide in the vacant apartment, assuming I didn’t shatter my limbs on the alley below trying to get in, and so let floating bits of marrow join my tumours in their revolt against my body.
I climbed the stairs, drawn by Catherine’s siren-call she didn’t know was hers, because its notes were so deeply buried in the self-love at the core of her being—the self-love that punished her body for its disobedience in not bending to her focus-group-defined will. The tantric urgency in my flesh was changed by her song as I became the killer she sought: the stalking lover, the thing of myth that drew its strength from the voyeurism and narcissism of women such as Catherine, who make pretty and vicarious myths of empowerment and melodrama out of the plight of women who truly are stalked. Women such as Catherine . . . who longingly see victimhood as an opportunity for personal growth, to shine through adversity, and so perhaps meet a smoky-dark and handsome cop/protector. Victimhood wormed in their imagination as a chance, like multiple sclerosis or cancer or spinal injury or any other dramatically severe illness worthy of a made-for-TV movie, to
will
yourself to become better than you were, to not let adversity beat you, and so spit in the face of the truly stricken and afflicted.
I reached Catherine’s door. I knocked on the barrier that my passage through would finalize the bestowment of power, the vindictive actualization, I had begun by
watching
.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Dean.”
Who else?
I heard the rattle, the clank, the rumble of locks being undone. Catherine’s protective barrier against all evil in the world. The throwing of locks was precise as the
noh
-play rigid dinners and conversations and lovemaking we’d shared, for the
door
was not the barrier that made her feel safe, but her control over it, her mastery of it through the manipulation of locks and bolts from one state to another.
She opened the door, relinquishing her control, admitting me to the imaginary safe space of her home as a mythic being that, like monsters out of folklore, can only harm upon being invited in.
When I saw her, my resolve to kill her faltered. She smiled the way people smile only for dear friends. She kissed my cheek, and it felt so very nice. I thought of Sarah, how we’d reconciled. Maybe Catherine and I could end on good terms. My mythic state, coursing within me, flowed into a warmth I could share with her, that could call from our hearts what had been good between us and save it, like a small thing pulled from a burning home. Maybe with understanding, not blood, we
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