Chapter 35
October 14
Thank You for Letting Me into Your Home
VERY EARLY in the morning, I was at my computer working on Murder While You Wait. I was working on a scene in which Rockwell Kingman killed the owner of a dry-cleaning establishment who had noticed blood on his clothing, and the point of the scene was supposed to be that in the course of committing this murder Kingman began losing his grip on himself, that the cool professionalism he had employed to separate himself from the truth about himself was dissolving, and he was beginning to recognize that he enjoyed killing. I wasn’t yet sure how he was going to react to this bit of self-discovery, what he would think of himself when he finally got a good look at himself.
As I wrote, I insinuated myself into the mind of Rockwell Kingman, as I would have done with any other character. I visualized the scene as he would see it, entered the moment as Kingman, did what he would do, thought what he would think, and felt what he would feel, and that turned out to be an emotional rush so strong, so exhilarating, thrilling, and ecstatic that I shoved myself back from the keyboard and out of the character of Rockwell Kingman and sat there, breathing hard, sweating, shaking. Sitting back, keeping a safe distance between myself and Rockwell Kingman, I read what I had written, and I found it so repugnant — not only the words but the person who had written them, me, and the corner of my mind where a Rockwell Kingman could be born and raised — that I felt a shame as physical as nausea. I went to the window, opened it, and stood in the cold air. I was sweating. I was shaking.
When I had myself under control again, I went back to the computer and read what was on the screen. It was disgusting, but it wasn’t badly written. It had the rough verve that the scene demanded. There really wouldn’t be any sense in throwing it away. All I really had to do was find some framing irony for it, some way of indicating to the reader that although I could write this gory stuff pretty well I had no taste for it and was doing it only for the money.
I was sitting there wondering how to achieve that effect when there came a hesitant rap-tap-tapping at my workroom door. I got up and opened it. Manuel Pedrera was standing there. He was violating the sanctity of our private space, and my first impulse was to point out to him that Albertine had most certainly made it clear that guests were not to enter our quarters, or indeed to ascend to the third level at all, without an invitation. She told everyone, and I’m sure she had made no exception in his case. I would have told him that, and I would have asked him to leave immediately, if he hadn’t had such a hangdog look. The poor guy had obviously come in need of my help. I couldn’t turn him away. To tell the truth, I was flattered.
“Ray!” I said, betraying nothing, I think, of the crise de l’âme that I had just endured. “You’re a little out of bounds here without an invitation, but come on in.”
“I was hoping you could help me,” he said.
“Sit down,” I said. He took the chair I indicated, an oak armchair facing my desk, and I left the computer to sit across from him, but the effect wasn’t quite right, so I got up and adjusted the venetian blinds. Ordinarily I keep the slats slanted upward in the morning, so that the light of the rising sun doesn’t reflect from the computer monitor, but I tilted them the other way, so that strong shadows fell in stripes across the desk.
“That’s better,” I said. I resumed my seat, clasped my hands, and leaned on the desk. “How’s the memoir coming?” I asked earnestly.
“It’s not,” he said. “I’ve still got nothing. I just can’t seem to come up with anything at all.”
“Really? Have you looked inside the outside? Have you sought the inner man? Have you knocked on your noggin and asked who’s hiding in there?”
“I tried.”
“Hmm. Let’s try something else then, just to get some ideas going.”
“Okay.”
“Close your eyes.”
“Right.”
“Can you picture yourself in a dry-cleaning establishment?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you behind the counter or in front of it?”
“In front.”
“Okay, so you’re a customer, not the cleaner.”
“I guess so.”
“So you won’t be writing Out, Out, Damn’d Spot: The Memoirs of a Dry Cleaner.”
“Guess not.”
“Do you have some garments with you to be cleaned?”
“I — um — yeah, I do. A couple of flannel shirts, and a pair of pants.”
“Okay. Let me be the cleaner for a minute. ‘You can have these by — oops, what’s this? I see you’ve got some stains here.’”
“Stains? What stains?”
“‘See? On this shirt, and on the pants leg here. What is that? It looks like blood.’”
“It can’t be blood.”
“‘I’ve been in this business for more than twenty years, and it sure looks like blood to me.’”
“It’s probably tomato juice.”
“‘Okay, okay. Mister, I don’t want any trouble. We’ll call it tomato juice. Better yet, I never saw any stains at all, okay?’”
“Good. Yeah. That’s fine.”
I leaned back in my chair and fixed Ray with the steely gaze of the professional memoirist. “Ray,” I said, “why were you trying to hide those stains?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Why are you now trying to hide the fact that you were trying to hide those stains?”
“I’m not.”
“Ray, I was there. I heard the man behind the counter — a man with more than twenty years in the business — identify those stains as blood.”
“I — I don’t know how they got there.”
“Let me ask you something, Ray.”
“Yeah?”
“Have you considered the possibility — I’m just tossing out ideas here — do you think it’s possible that you are — or let’s say that you were — or that you have been — a contract killer?”
“What?”
“A freelance assassin.”
“Huh?”
“A hit man.”
“Me?”
“Isn’t it possible, or couldn’t it be possible, that you have been trying to run away from your past, trying to forget it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Ah! But how would you know, Ray, since you’ve forgotten, or made yourself forget, repressed the memory of everything you’d rather not remember, like those stains on your flannel shirt and your pants.”
“That’s a point.”
“Work on that, Ray.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”
[to be continued]
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