Thy Neighbor Read online

  Mrs. Bloom doubled over, slapping her thighs. I struck the table and threw back my head. It must have been a minute straight we were like that, tears rolling down both our faces, our breaths coming in gasps and great heaves of silent laughter.

  “You do perfect imitation,” she hooted finally.

  “Yeah, well, I ought to. I had to listen to it all day. Jesus. You know, she gave me one of those recorders at one point, too, but I just used it to play pranks on my teachers and friends, and then I lost interest and threw it in a drawer and forgot about it. I probably still have it somewhere.”

  “Not Robin,” said Mrs. Bloom, the evenness coming back into her voice. “Heavens, she carried that thing everywhere, I can tell you. Recording everything—dinner conversations, her own thoughts, the cat purring. Everything. It drove me crazy after a while. I had to take it away from her for a day or two just to get her to run around outside and get some exercise.”

  She chuckled wistfully, her eyes clouding with memory.

  “But, oh, Nick, it really was her salvation. Her absolute salvation.”

  And so she was mine. Mrs. Anita Olga Ivanova Bloom. Was my salvation.

  Or do I overstate? Was she instead my goad? My gadfly? My lost soul’s mate for an evening? Whatever.

  I was there, it must have been, until midnight. Finally we said good night.

  “You are welcome here, Nick,” she said as we parted. “Anytime.”

  She paused deliberately, then added:

  “But only if you want to. Only then.”

  And I was so grateful to her for that last bit, which she emphasized and meant. In other words, don’t add me to your guilt trip. Come if you want, I’ll be glad to see you, but don’t bother if a dragging case of the shoulds comes into it.

  “I don’t want anything to do with shoulds,” she’d said. “I’ve damn well had enough of those.”

  As I was turning up the lawn, she shouted, “Oh, and Nick— If you’re ever polite to me again, I’ll slap you. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I said, heels together, saluting.

  * * *

  You were the bright spot in her mistake.

  Well, well.

  People say the darnedest things.

  Could she have known what that would mean to me? Or did it just come out that way because Mrs. Bloom had a folksy way with words and always believed the best about people?

  No matter.

  It was a pretty thought, and I held on to it.

  I sucked it like a placebo. Like some blameless vital sugar pill placed blindly on my tongue.

  And it worked for a while just the same, because I believed so damned hard that it would.

  14

  I told Monica about my visit with Mrs. Bloom.

  She kept saying, “I can’t believe you went over there.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know. But I’m so glad I did.”

  I hadn’t seen Monica in a while, longer than usual. I’d been preoccupied, what with Miriam, then Dorris, then Dave, and finally Mrs. B. I hadn’t been watching my monitors as much, either, with the exception of the nightly check-in with Eric. But even that had been whittled down to a few peeks at lockdown. Just enough to get the count, how many days clean, and to get the gist of his disgrace.

  What had Monica been doing all this time? When she called, especially after a hiatus like this, I always wondered what made her call. How did she decide it was time? Did she consider it at all? Or was it just cycles of the moon, or her hormones, or the need to feed?

  Her life beyond these walls was unknown to me, and I suppose I had kept it that way, not wanting to know, not wanting to complicate or debase the delights of fucking a stranger.

  But my desire to know was getting stronger, and had only increased since our last encounter, our fight, which had not really been a fight between Monica and me, but rather a fight between me and myself about whether I did or did not want to know this woman and whether the growing sense that I was falling in love with her was being fed or stifled by how little I knew.

  For me, love had always been built on ignorance, on what I did not know and could at first only dimly perceive. This was true of people as well as places and things. Sometimes all three at once. The act of love itself was an act of the imagination, a brightening and furnishing and peopling of sets that were dark. Love was the lights coming on. But they were my lights. They were my scenes and my lines and my voices, too. My show, all made up and directed, my arm grinding at the back of the toy box, manically and musically and beguilingly to its own tune.

  Until what?

  Until weariness set in.

  And then the disillusion, the inevitable heartbreak of recalling, of seeing as if for the first time, that it was always just you there playing by yourself in the dark.

  But that was the sustaining hope, wasn’t it? The fantasy of creation? The great leap. Athena from the head of Zeus. Galatea from Pygmalion’s hands. Wanting your thoughts, your characters, your representations to come alive, to live, grow, and think for themselves. To talk back and, eventually—the best prize of all—to turn and love you in return.

  I had reached that point.

  I wanted Monica to come alive for me, to exist independently. And then I wanted her to come to me and relinquish her independence willingly out of love.

  * * *

  Okay. So start with existence. The what, the where, the who, the how, and so on. What did she do with herself? Did she have a job? How did she get money? Where did she sleep? Who the fuck was she?

  I’d never even known where she lived. She’d claimed not to live anywhere, but what did that mean? Was she off in the woods in a cardboard box? Was she squatting in some kid’s tree house? Or was she fucking the night watchman at an office park and sleeping on the chairman’s couch?

  “I stay,” was the most she’d ever said. “And then I leave. I’m a gypsy. I don’t believe in property.”

  “You don’t believe in property?” I said. “What? As in, you’re a communist?”

  “No—” She laughed. “It’s not that I’m against ownership across the board. I mean that I don’t trust it personally, that I can’t tie myself to things.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “It’s a lifestyle choice, not a political conviction.”

  “But what does that even mean?”

  “It means that I’ve only got one foot on the earth. To own, you have to be on all fours. You’re a beast of burden, which is fine for some people, fine for most people, but not for me. I can’t do it. I won’t. And renting is almost as bad. I can’t do that, either.”

  “Really? That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe, but it’s how I am.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. I get the ownership thing, sort of, but what’s so wrong with renting?”

  “It involves a contract, and contracts are chains.”

  “Chains? Now you really do sound like Karl Marx.”

  She laughed, shaking her head. “No.”

  “Contracts are obligations,” I said. “Nothing more. Just tethers, and tethers are good things. They give us something to hold on to.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “They give us something that can hold on to us, and I can’t have that. Every time you sign your name you tie a knot, and before you know it you’re in a net.”

  “Yes, a safety net.”

  “No. A trap.”

  I sighed, frustrated.

  “Trap or not, you can’t get along in today’s world without ever signing your name. It’s impossible.”

  “No, it’s not. Just unconventional. Maybe a little impractical, but I get along. Actually, I don’t even have a signature.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I don’t.
I don’t need one. I don’t want one.”

  “So what? You do everything in cash and you’ve got a piggy bank? Or is it a wad under the mattress?”

  “A coffee can, a ziplock. Whatever’s handy.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Dead serious.”

  “You have no address, no ID. No driver’s license, no social security number? Nothing?”

  “Nothing. As far as the official world’s concerned, I don’t exist.”

  “Jesus,” I said, only half joking. “Are you wanted or something? Am I harboring a fugitive?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose you are. ‘Fugitive’ is a good word for what I am, but not the kind you mean. Anyway, you only entertain me for a few hours at a time, and you’ve done so without realizing, so I don’t think it really counts as harboring.”

  “Oh, I entertain you, do I?”

  “Yes, of course you do, in many senses of the word, some of which are offensive to me, or would be if I cared to object. But this is all for your own amusement as much as mine, and”—she coughed fakely—“edification, too.”

  “Mortification is more like it.”

  “Anyway, you shouldn’t worry. I’m untraceable.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. Such a nice quality in a girlfriend.”

  “Oops. Careful, sly. You’re slipping.” She smiled coyly. “You said girlfriend.”

  “So?”

  “So am I your girlfriend now?”

  “Theoretically.”

  “Ah. Well. That’s all right then. You had me worried there for a second. Girlfriend has the stink of ownership about it. But theoretical? That’s not bad. I don’t mind theoretical at all.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it,” I said, though I wasn’t glad in the least. “You’re every guy’s dream girl. All the benefits, none of the strings.”

  “Tethers, Nick. Tethers. Keep it straight.”

  “Right, right. My mistake.”

  I laughed hollowly.

  Theoretically. Mistake.

  Not exactly words to get your dick hard, but what was I going to do? I wasn’t wild about untraceable, either. Illegal is what it really meant. You couldn’t be untraceable without breaking the law, even if you were independently wealthy, and Monica wasn’t—I didn’t think. Anyway, she’d exist on paper somewhere if that were the case, and there’d still be the snag of tax evasion. Monica wasn’t the type. Not acquisitive—she’d just said as much. If there’d been an inheritance, she’d have ditched it. Besides, if she was keeping her money in a coffee can, she couldn’t have that much of it, unless she was banking for herself, like some minor drug lord with pallets of bundled cash piled high in mini storage.

  Not likely.

  Money was coming from somewhere, some way. Trickling in. And I wanted to know how.

  “So how do you support yourself?” I asked forcefully. “I doubt you’re waiting tables under the table.”

  “Cute,” she said.

  “I’m serious. How do you make enough money to float, or whatever it is you do? You have to have pocket change.”

  “True,” she said cryptically.

  “So?”

  “So it’s none of your business.”

  “Maybe it isn’t, but tell me anyway. I want to know.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on. You owe me one difficult disclosure, remember? Sealed with a kiss.”

  “This isn’t difficult. It’s private.”

  “Yeah, well, in your mind that’s the same thing. So spill it.”

  “Look, it’s really not very interesting, and by telling you I’d be compromising my—” She broke off, searching for the word. “My coworkers.”

  “Coworkers? Wow. Now there’s a euphemism if I’ve ever heard one. Don’t you mean pimp or partners in crime or something?”

  “Fine. My partners, if you like, except that that implies a formality that doesn’t exist between us. We’re not bound and we’re not equals.”

  “What are you then?”

  “Traders, I guess you’d say. We trade.”

  “Trade, huh? Interesting. Well, we know you’re not in banking, so I guess that leaves—what?—call girl taking . . . or giving it out in trade? Or are you on the barter system? Will flex for food.”

  She clucked her tongue.

  “You really are such an ass. Fine. Here it is. I steal. Okay? I steal. Satisfied?”

  “You steal?” I said, patronizingly. “I see. Well, I almost guessed. Just a bit too far right on the left wing. Not communist. Anarchist.”

  “Oh, please. There is no ist. I told you. It’s not political.”

  “Exactly. No rule, no rules.”

  “No, no. It’s exactly the opposite—I need the rules in order to break them. Without a system, there’d be nothing to cheat. And that’s what I do, okay? I cheat the system.”

  “That’s intelligent of you. Most anarchists miss that fatal flaw in their platform. If everybody did it, there’d be no game. Not everyone can be a parasite, after all. There has to be a host.”

  “I’m not a parasite.”

  “Uh, yes you are.”

  “The host is bloated and rotting anyway, so who’s to complain?”

  “Not me, certainly. But I am curious how you’re able to do it.”

  “What do you mean, able?”

  “How do you do it? How do you steal exactly?”

  “Very simply. I go into a store. I take. I leave.”

  “You shoplift?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not just for yourself.”

  “Well, sometimes, if I need something special, but usually I pay for the small things. Not worth the risk to steal those. It’s the bigger things, the more valuable things I go for.”

  “Like?”

  “Like clothing, CDs, the higher-end stuff at vitamin shops and drugstores.”

  “Please tell me you’re not stealing Sudafed?”

  “You can’t anymore. It’s behind the counter. But no, I’m not.”

  “Did you ever?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s something, anyway. So what do you do with this stuff once you have it?”

  “I told you. I trade.”

  “Dare I ask with whom?”

  “Dare I ask? Please, Nick. Drop the daddy act, okay? You’re not so clean. In fact, as it happens, I believe you know the guy.”

  This caught me off guard.

  “I know your fence?”

  “My fence? Are you for real? You watch way too much TV, Nick. No, I believe you know my partner.”

  “All right, your partner. Who is this guy you trade with?”

  She paused to let me sift through the possibles. Dave? Not Dave again, surely. Please not Dave. What about J.R.? No, Gruber would kill him. Some numbskull at the Swan then? Some faceless Facebook friend? No clue.

  “Does the name Damian sound familiar?” she said at last.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  And fuck.

  I thought.

  And said nothing.

  “I take it from your face,” she said, “that you know him. But then, I knew that already, so let’s drop the inquisition, shall we?”

  “He told you about me?”

  “No. Of course he didn’t.”

  “Then how?”

  “You called once when Damian and I were meeting.”

  “But he never says my name. Especially not on the phone.”

  “Yes, I know that. I work with him, too, remember? He sounded strange on the phone that time, different, more formal, so I sneaked a look at his cell later and saw you on the recent calls.”

 
“Later? So you’re ‘entertaining’ him, too, then, I take it?”

  “Jesus, Nick. Get a grip, will you? No, I am not.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, because you’re paranoid and massively insecure.”

  “And you’re a career criminal,” I blurted. “Or are you going to maintain that you’re actually the one proverbial honest thief out there?”

  “I’m not going to maintain anything. I don’t have to.”

  She glared at me.

  That much was true. She didn’t have to maintain anything, least of all me, or us, and the prospect of that sundering, I realized, had come all the way around in the course of only a few months from being the expected and unremarkable collateral damage of fuck-buddying to being a crippling loss that scared the fight and the sass right out of me. She was alive all right, and talking back, my gimcrack creation, but would she stand or run?

  That would depend on what she knew.

  “So he never told you about me?” I asked, my voice scarred with fear.

  “No. I told you, no. He never told me anything.”

  “And you never asked?”

  “No. Why would I? He doesn’t know that you and I know each other, and he sure as hell doesn’t know that I snooped around in his phone.”

  “So why didn’t you ask me about him?” I asked.

  “Because I respect your privacy. What you do on your own time is your own affair.”

  “You mean like you respected Damian’s privacy?”

  “That’s different. He’s different. I have to protect myself. I’ve had to learn that the hard way. I had a weird feeling. I had to know.”

  “So what do you know?”

  “Just that you know Damian. That’s all.”

  “Really? You had to know, and that’s all you know? I don’t believe you.”

  “Fine. Take it or leave it, Nick. That’s all I know, and it’s all I want to know.”

  She stood up.

  “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. This conversation is over.”

  She shied past me at the door and I didn’t move to stop her. It was the only time she’d ever left without touching me, without that tacit promise of return, and all I could think of was that word ‘untraceable,’ a word that sounds exotic and fantastic and desirable until you need, and then it sounds tinny and sharp, like the pin being pulled from a grenade.