It was one of those foggy nights in New York City, where very few people were seen on the streets. Yuri was out walking Grizzly, his 3 foot long Sussix Spaniel, during a lightly drizzling night in autumn around Central Park’s giant reservoir, a massive man-made lake. The dense rain that was pouring down did not deter two joggers who grazed by Yuri as he slowly waited for Grizzly to finish decorating his favorite oak tree. Yuri had just written himself into a dead-end, and decided to walk his favorite companion, hoping that, as it usually did, his walk would give him a solution which would help him write his way out of the road-block that he had set up for himself.
Yuri was an average mystery writer, writing nearly a book every couple of years, not really top-quality stuff, but good enough to entertain most people who bought his novels, and certainly good enough to get by on a decent living in New York City. He lived a modest life, too—which really helped him financially. Having recently let go of his artistic dreams of writing serious fiction, Yuri was slowly writing away his life in solitude; which Yuri didn’t really mind all that much. He was one of those solitary types—never met his publisher, and sent all of his manuscripts in by mail signed under a pseudonym—acclaim wasn’t something he longed for.
Yuri’s detective, Rottensberg, was on the verge of solving a high-profile kidnapping case, when the woman being searched for suddenly showed up in Rottensberg’s apartment with a .38 pointed at the surprised detective. Not only did it baffle the detective, but it thrilled him to no end, for the answer to his puzzle had just quite surprisingly walked into his room, in classic form: a tall blonde in red lipstick, with emerald eyes, fluttering long black eyelashes, and slender legs in black sheath stockings—which Rottensberg saw because Yuri was sure to have made one of her legs protrude through her long beige rain-coat. Yuri was just as stunned as Rottensberg, when he decided to have his blonde manifest in Rottensberg’s lower-east side dwelling—after what was now a chase through, four cities, two continents, and seven different suspects—all of whom had their own sub-plots.
“Maybe I ought to just shoot my old gumshoe here and then and just be done with it,” thought Yuri—wishing fiction could be so simple.
Frustrated, Yuri decided to take his mind off the novel, as he began to watch Grizzly look for more spots to decorate. Grizzly’s tail, though, was hunched beneath his furry little bum, which really brought Yuri’s spirits down. He walked with Grizzly for another ten minutes, thinking about, nothing really, just thoughts beginning to go somewhere, ending up nowhere, or, usually, ending in obscure and odd questions that his mind never really answered—where, disappointed, he’d forget everything he had just thought of and begin the process anew. He walked like this until his mind was finally ready to relent and he was able to be absorbed by the familiar scenery of colorful autumn trees whose wet leaves were falling and twirling in the breeze, squirrels running around gathering chestnuts for the upcoming winter, repetitive, oval water ripples being dazzled by the shower of rain drops, a few tireless joggers running circles around the lake, and a bland grey New York skyline cutting into the park like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
It took Yuri a total of 40 minutes to walk around the entire lake, where, finally, he was ready to go home and take a nice warm bubble-bath with Grizzly—which he knew Grizzly hated to do, and which Yuri enjoyed precisely on account of his dog’s growls and adorable anger—when, suddenly, his eyes were mesmerized by a character, he believed, he could only be hallucinating.
She stood under a small orange umbrella, shaped like a lampshade, in a synthetic dark-purple rain-coat—leaning against a black-metal railing as she gazed out across the dark, dotted lake, following with her eyes a gliding blue heron, who looked marvelous against the red, yellow and orange trees. Yuri must have been standing in the same spot a good thirty seconds before he took a breath or moved a muscle, until he was slowly led by Grizzly’s wagging tail towards the woman’s behind for a friendly sniff.
Startled, the woman apprehensively turned around. But seeing such a cute, wet dog, enamored with her tush, she couldn’t help but laugh and bend down to pet Grizzly, who was more than happy to slobber all over her hands with his doggy kisses. Yuri, taken aback by the whole scene, was standing agape watching it all unfold before his wide-open eyes. Before he had a chance to make sure whether or not his senses deceived him, the woman stood back up, exclaiming,
“What a beautiful dog!”
Unable to say anything, Yuri could only stare into the woman’s eyes as he attempted to match them up with what he remembered from seventeen years ago. “It can’t be… can it?” thought he.
The woman’s animated expression, quickly turned to befuddlement, as she too began looking at Yuri in a very curious and inquisitive manner.
“Alexandra? Wow… Alex, uhm… wow… I don’t know what to say… How have you been . . . after all these years?” asked Yuri while stroking the back of his head with his left hand and holding Grizzly’s leash firmly with his right.
The woman gave a faint, ironic smile, which having caught herself doing, she quickly changed to the reserved manner that she normally carried around, and said, shrugging her shoulders, “I’ve been alright, I guess. Quite a surprise . . .” She bent her head inquisitively, the way Grizzly bends his head when he doesn’t understand what Yuri wants of him.
Yuri quickly picked up on this and said, “It’s me . . . Yuri!” a bit too excitedly, “Do you really not remember? The boy who . . . loved you once.”
Quickly abashed, Yuri, was more amazed than the woman at what he had just uttered. She looked quite lost as she lowered her eyes and stared at the ground, then to her left, to her right, anywhere but at Yuri. Yuri tried to think quickly in order to ease the embarrassing situation he had just created.
“Sorry. Well, you know. . . one of those long lost teenage romances,” he said nonchalantly, “That is, if you recall who I am,” he went on with melancholy in his voice.
“I think so… Sure, of course, how silly of me…Yur…Yuri?.. Yes… We met that night. The Village Parade, right?”
“Yes… that was me, the one night we met…”
“I’m sorry about all that, Yuri. I had no idea…you felt so strongly?”
“Yes, I was quite mad about you, actually… but… but what can you do? I’ve broken my fair share of hearts… so in the end… I don’t know… it’s been a very long time. So how are you these days? And what are you doing here? Out all alone like this—waiting for someone?” he quickly changed the subject.
“No. It’s just one of those evenings, you know?”
“Yes… I know…”
“I just had to get out of the apartment, needed some air, and it’s such a beautiful day. I’m a sucker for the rain.”
Yuri faintly smiled, “I think we all are.”
“You have an absolutely lovely dog,” Alex said, “What’s his name? Yes you, Oh, yes joo, ohh hoho, yes, yes…”
“I call him, Grizzly.”
“Ah!. . . . How typical, Yuri. I guess, you’re the same cynic you were 20 years ago?”
“20 years! Has it really been that long? A whole lifetime… Yes, Alex, I guess, I’m that same cynic you remember… but, you never gave me a chance to show you the romance I have with the world.”
“Romance you have with the world, Yuri?”
“I did fall for you, didn’t I?”
Tightening her cheeks, Alex scoffed, “You only spent a day with me, Yuri.”
Looking down, hurt, he looked at Grizzly, and remarked softly, “You only gave me a day. But all of our conversations on the phone and online? Did they mean nothing? All those hours we spent…well…you remember…”
Alex was, sadly reminiscing now. “No. You know they didn’t mean . . . nothing. I never met anyone quite like you. I’m sorry… I’m sorry life turned out like this.”
“Don’t apologize. Please don’t. Why don’t we get some coffee… get ourselves out of the rain? It’s getting chilly now, and the winds picking up.”
“O.k. I’d love to catch up… maybe even start a new romance? Hmmm?..”
Yuri noticed her inviting smile and raised eyebrow beneath her bright orange umbrella, and could not help but feel his youthful flame beginning to burn in his heart again. The old feeling of wanting to just hold her forever, protect her from the world, again rushed back to him with all of its fury. Having matured a little, just a little, he was able to smile and offer his arm, which Alex gently tossed aside and said, “Not yet,” laughingly.
“I see… you haven’t changed your stubborn ways,” Yuri laughed. “But I’m shocked, Alex, you mean to tell me you’ve yet to marry?” Yuri asked with hints of irony in his voice.
“My life has been very rocky Yuri. Rocky and stormy, when it has come to relationships…but exciting. I may never get married, then again…… I don’t know… But enough about me. What about you?” she asked with a curious glare emanating from her luscious green eyes. Staring into her glimmering green eyes was like being lost in an enchanted forest, thought Yuri.
“Me? Oh…” Yuri responded half-consciously, “Well… I was married for a few years……she left me for some banker.”
“Ah. I’m sorry I asked…”
“Don’t be… I don’t dwell on it much—I was relieved actually. I didn’t love her deeply enough. I think she sensed it. And I think she was right to leave.”
“Is that when you got Grizzly”? asked Alex with a teasing glint in her eye.
“Ah. Yea… As a matter of fact, that is when I got Grizzly.”
“Hmm… You’ve always been interesting . . . and predictable, Yuri,” she laughed.
“Listen, Alex, the only place to get coffee around here, other than a Starbucks, is Benton’s Café, and they don’t let me come in there with Grizzly…you know how they are around here…always afraid of getting fined for a . . . what do you call it again?”
“Sanitary violation?”
“Yea, that. So would you mind if we had coffee at my place? I can make you a cappuccino that I know will knock your socks off,” he winked. “What do you say? Or if that’s awkward…”
“No, that’s fine. I don’t mind at all. Sounds good actually. Do you live far from here?”
“Just three blocks east of here. And don’t worry, I haven’t turned into an axe murderer or anything … well, not in real-life, anyhow.”
“What do you mean…not in real-life?”
“Well…” Yuri hesitated, not wanting to tell her, “I write mystery novels for a living—and that was an antagonist in one of my novels.”
“Well, I’ll be… not surprising though… you always wanted to be a writer. Let me guess, he kills teenage girls, somewhere in suburbia?” She asked half-what smugly.
“Well…close. He picks them up at nightclubs, and then kills them in his apartment on the lower east-side.”
“Aha! Of course, how could it be otherwise?” she said triumphantly.
“Alright, alright.” Yuri scratched his head and said, “Just don’t get on my case… I’ve tried to stay sane as best I could…can I really help it if I have to sublimate some of my anger into art?”
“Art? Art! Yuri? Really, is a mystery novel really art?”
“Well, it’s certainly no Nabokov, but it’s definitely art; all literature is art. It’s creating life…through a technical, subjective medium… It may not be great art, or art that will last millennia, but yes, it is art. It has to be. What else can it be?”
“Well, what does it say about the world, your mystery novel about an axe murderer out on a rampage killing teenage girls that he picks up in nightclubs! What statement does it make? What does it change? …I mean, common, Yuri. There’s a big difference between commercial fiction and literature… I think.”
“I don’t believe that art has to say anything about the world, Alex. I think most art is a world in-itself.” Yuri paused, gathering his thoughts. “We’re simply only able to read it’s significance through our own signs, language, metaphors, objectified representations, you know? To create a fictional world, I have to re-arrange the objects of this one in a completely unique way, but in a way that corresponds just enough to be understood by the one reading it. It nevertheless is a different world, suspended in . . . thought, or some type of meta-physical, ontological realm.”
“Oh, great! We’re starting it again…just like old times, huh Yuri?”
“Yes. Apparently people don’t change all that much, do they?” he asked, while giving Alex a sly look as they crossed 5th.
“I guess it all depends on how deeply life has affected them.”
“Mmm…”
They both thought about Alex’s revelation for half of the next block. When, suddenly, Patricia Kaas was heard moaning some tune in French—it was Alex’s cell, and it brought them out of their philosophical endeavor. Looking at the number, Alex apologized and said she had to take this call.
“Hi, Karine.”
. . . . . .
“Karine? Are you o.k.?”
. . . . . .
“Karine, what happened?”
. . . . . . .
“Please, just tell me. Why are you so upset?
. . . . . . .
“Karine! I can hear it in your voice honey. What’s wrong?”
. . . . . . .
“Karine, whatever it is, it’ll be o.k. You know you can count on me. You know we’ve always been there for each other, please tell me—what happened?”
. . . . . . .
“What! O.k., honey, I’ll be right there. Don’t move sweetie. Don’t do anything! Did you call the police?”
. . . . . . .
“Don’t worry honey. You’ll be o.k. I’ll be right over, I’m on my way right now.”
“THAT MOTHERFUCKER! I’ll fucking rip his balls off and feed them to him!”
“I have to go. I’m sor—”
“What happened?” interrupted Yuri, though he already guessed.
“Some piece of—God! Shit! . . . raped my best friend.
She turned as red as the moon above their heads, and frantically looked left and right for a taxi, nearly falling in the process.
“A million taxis in this city and you can’t find one when you need one!” Alex cried. Grizzly, started to bark and howl at a black poodle in a yellow rain-coat across the stree; at the same moment the wind grew so strong that it knocked over a garbage-can on the corner of Park.
“Common, Alex. My car is parked two blocks up. Let me drive you.”
“Alright, fine, let’s go. Goddamn-it!”
They hastily walked down to 3rd, and quickly hopped into Yuri’s grey Mini. Yuri drove off like the Tasmanian Devil through the wet and foggy streets of Manhattan, as Alex gave him directions where to go. First, it was through the stream of yellow taxis up 2nd, for some reason they were all heading downtown, and as always, once Yuri cut one off, two mad taxis behind him zigzagged ahead of him—all honking like there was no tomorrow; then, nearly with no warning at all, Yuri made a sharp right on 28th, due to Alex’s late call—an urgent shriek not to miss the turn—nearly hitting a biker chasing a hopeless yellow light in the process.
When they frantically drove past NYU, they managed to notice a lot more vibrancy in the streets, a lot more than they witnessed uptown: packs and packs of collegians were walking around; being the beginning of autumn, the semester was in its infancy, hence the city was fresh and exciting to all of the out-of-borough and out-of-state kids—even though it was a rainy, Wednesday night.
Finally making it to the west-side, Yuri raced his grey Mini into the Holland tunnel, bypassing a few edgy stockbrokers and accountants in the process; but the tunnel was absolutely jam-packed. “Shit!” cried Alex.
“Poor baby, she’s so sweet, but. . . she was so hysterical on the phone, you know? I wouldn’t know the first thing of what to do if something of that nature happened to me . . . and she’s so vulnerable, she’s not like me, Yuri, she’s really not. And this damn traffic. I don’t know what she’ll do after something like this. How can you men be such filthy animals!” she exclaimed further, glaring at Yuri, making him feel a deep responsibility for the vileness of all men across the world.
The silence of the next twenty minutes was the most accusatory silence Yuri had ever experienced in his thirty-five years of existence. He began to recollect the Newsday article he had read several years ago, where he had learned the horrific details of a kidnapped, 15 year old girl, a freshman from Stuyvesant high school, who was held by two fat, middle-aged men in an oubliette that they built in their murky backyard out on Staten Island. Although Yuri wasn’t horrified by every piece of bad-news that he read about in the papers—the constant bombardment had nearly immunized him—this one took a heavy toll on Yuri for the details about what the two men had done to the girl paralleled exactly what one of his characters had done to a 15 year old girl in one of his recent novels. To Yuri’s mind, the details were too exact to be anything but a copycat murder. The girl’s body had even been mutilated and distributed to the seagulls on the Hudson river—exactly what Yuri’s serial killer had done.
To be sure, Yuri had gone above all practical literary concerns to make his antagonist as vile as he could make him to the naked eye. His book, undoubtedly, went to great lengths to convey the hideousness of such an action—be it even that Yuri could not condemn these actions on the plane of rational, moral arguments. But he nevertheless felt assured that he would evoke enough pathos from his readers to have them condemn his antagonist. The juxtaposition alone, of such a vile, carnal beast, with Yuri’s justice seeking, existentially angst-ridden, detective—a man mixed from Dostoevsky’s Porfiry Petrovitch (the detective from Crime and Punishment) and Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov, even little bits of Yuri himself, was surly, assumed Yuri, an effective, though subtle enough contrast to demonstrate that the author was unquestionably on the side of the detective. Not the killer.
Nevertheless, Yuri had great regrets about some of the chapters he had written. His killer, with the precision of a cold, calculating intellectual, made such philosophic arguments in justification of his actions, that Yuri had triumphantly felt that not even Raskolnikov himself could match. But to Yuri, this was art, this was abstract, theory, argumentation, brought to life within an artificial construction—it all takes place in the sphere of a book—Yuri’s, and the reader’s, artificial realm of pure imagination. He could not foresee, he would not foresee, his thoughts actually producing tangible consequences in the “real” world. Or if he did, all he expected from the hoi polloi that read him, was to be entertained, to sublimate their own vicious energy in the sphere of his words, and at the very best, be so horrified by their own emotional responses that they would change their moral attitudes. Yuri meant to change the world, for the better.
Sixty thousand dollars later, a book was published and a real, flesh and bone human being was tortured and fed to the seagulls hovering around the green stench of the Hudson river, the same river he was now trapped beneath. Yuri would not think of it. He could not, and would not. No. He wouldn’t. Nor would he ever write crime novels or art of this nature ever again. Instead, he only charted the waters of mediocre mystery fiction, high-stake kidnapping thrillers, full of action, full of movement, without any absurd philosophy or morality. Ironically, the dead girl didn’t really haunt Yuri the way Raskolnikov’s victims haunted Raskolnikov. He was left to contemplate his own existence, free from moral pangs—just like the killer in his book. Yuri could only come to conclude that, being that it was him who had written such a character in the first place, it only stood to reason that some of his own traits were unconsciously written into his antagonist. Indeed, he could not deny that his intellect held many, if not all, of the same opinions his killer held. Yet, it was Yuri’s heart that ultimately tipped the balance in favor of decency and authentic moral outrage, or so Yuri claimed.
“Have I been deceiving myself?” Yuri asked. “Am I guilty—do I feel guilty?” “Even irrespective of my intentions?” “Am I guilty?” but Yuri knew the answer with dreadful clarity—no thought boomed louder than the thousands of needles piercing his heart.
Yuri thought of all the porn he downloaded, and enjoyed, of women and girls being raped. No matter what justifications Yuri placed on his actions, whether it was him exploring his primitive nature, or man’s primitive nature, whether it was him doing research—to see the faces of those brutes as they raped the screaming and crying girls, cringe in satisfactory, gorilla-like physiognomies, full of grimaces, hatred, lust, power, and—violence!—Yuri could not exonerate himself. Had he not seen the same face reflected in his computer screen when he jerked off to the girl being raped in some hotel room? No! Yuri was just as guilty.
“It’s too hot in here!” exclaimed Alex. “Can you even see anything out of the windows—all of this wretched humidity!”
Yuri nodded, and opened the windows, (the air conditioner was only producing hot air, but opening the windows made things worse). The city’s hot fumes and insipid, non-stop honking, burst into the grey Mini, force feeding Alex and Yuri gusts of dusty wind which was far hotter than the air inside, not to even mention, terribly polluted by the exhaust fumes of the hundreds of cars stuck in the dreary yellow tunnel. They were in a hopeless situation. The only thing to do was to sit and wait away the minutes, if not hours, which would surly and certainly, pass.
Yuri’s thoughts had made him nauseous, and he began to feel trapped—he had gone out for a walk in the park to clear his mind, and here he was stuck in the Holland tunnel, glued to a black, sticky leather seat, beside a woman that stirred so many contradictory emotions in him at one and the same time that he dared not attempt to sort them out just then. And the guilt—the guilt that Alex’s presence made him feel, was unbearable! “How can I go to witness such a horrific scene waiting for me at Karine’s? How will I be able to bare such a scene? Isn’t a male presence the last thing that is needed there? I just went out for a walk, I wasn’t a part of this damn world!—I was writing a book—I was living in the world of my imagination—how is it that so suddenly, and so harshly, the concrete of existence came crashing down on me? How the fuck did this happen!” boomed Yuri’s furious thoughts to an echoing silent mind.
“I can’t stand this waiting! Does the radio work?” exclaimed Alex.
“No, it’s all static in the tunnel. I’m sorry,” Yuri calmly replied.
“Do you have any CDs you can put on?” asked Alex anxiously.
Yuri looked toward the glove compartment and tried to remember what CD’s he had in the car. He didn’t remember because he didn’t drive much, he usually preferred to travel by subway. It was always more stimulating for his imagination to ride those aluminum serpents, as he called them; many of the characters he would write about were loosely based on people he had seen swimming in the bile. As a matter of fact, all his killers and victims were found below, and all of his secondary, minor characters, were people he had seen above ground or people he personally knew. He attributed this to some Jungian theory of archetypes, but he didn’t really understand his unconscious as well as he thought.
“I don’t remember what I have in the car—take a look in the glove compartment,” said Yuri.
Alex opened-up the compartment to find within, a tape-recorder, [i]The Castle[/i] by Kafka, a bag of doggy treats, and a few black plastic CD cases. “Let’s see, Wagner, Miles Davis, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and… Vivaldi. . . nothing’s right, Yuri,” Alex said with a sigh as she put the CD’s back into the compartment and then slouched deep into the black-leather chair.
Yuri sighed, too. “Maybe you should call her, see how she’s holding up?” asked Yuri.
“I’ve already tried. My cell doesn’t work in the tunnel.”
Yuri sighed once more.
So they waited and waited. Yuri, fidgeting around in his seat, trying to free himself from the sweaty glue that bound him to the black-leather. Alex, nervously shaking her left leg as she spun around and around her cell-phone in her right hand. And Grizzly, sitting in the back, anxiously panting with his long pink tongue sticking out, waiting for Yuri to grace him with some water.
“It’s cold one minute, humid the next! New York weather is utterly unpredictable, like a cancer. . . like everything else in life,” muttered Yuri, half to himself, half to Alex.
Alex made no response. She made a circle in the window by rubbing away the thick dew which covered the glass of the stranded automobile as if someone painted it with cold white frosting.
“That’s not true, Yuri, and you know it. The world is unfortunately all too predictable.”
Yuri had predicted that that was what Alex would reply. His own mind was working against him.
Another dense silence had fallen upon the car, permeating throughout like a deadly dose of narcotics being injected into one’s blood, steadily rushing through even the tiniest of capillaries.
Nothing but rows and rows of red lights could be seen ahead. They spent forty long, impatient, minutes waiting in the humid tunnel.
Yuri didn’t try to figure out what he was doing there. He no longer bothered to deal with such unanswerable questions. He took life as it came; he opposed little. Potentially, everything was material for a book. It was his job to embrace drama.
“Besides,” thought Yuri, “What good will all this serve my mystery? Mmm… Maybe. . . well. . . hold on here, maybe the blonde has had an existential realization? Hmm… Yes… She had staged her own kidnapping . . . but why? why? hmm… to. . . become world renowned? She wanted fame? That’s it! Being rich and beautiful didn’t satisfy her, for what did that mean if no one knew about her—what did it mean if so few people envied her? Yes. . . Yes. . . But she deceived herself, right? And she realized it.”
“Reading about herself in the papers, the ludicrous and exaggerated reports about her life, brought her no joy. It wasn’t even her that she read about—so few things were true. One paper even got her date of birth wrong. What was fact? What was fiction? The celebrity she read about, wasn’t her. She was a fraud, even though she thought herself to be a media-sculptor, an artist. Maybe, now she doesn’t want to even return to her life as she had initially planned when she first concocted her plot? Indeed… she doesn’t. A bleak existential realization—and she doesn’t know what to do now. She doesn’t know who she is anymore. And she doesn’t know how to extricate herself from this media circus that she has created. Of course, she can’t show herself in public, as her face is all over the papers and television. Does she kill herself?” Yuri asked himself out loud. “No. She’s not that type of character; she’s too resolute, too stubborn to die.”
“She likes the excitement of the chase, though. Manipulating the police, stumping Rottensberg—in fact, she’s become obsessed with him. She feels he’s the only person who truly understands her. She likes the way he has handled the media. How? How did he handle the media? Better leave that for later. I need a pen or tape-recorder before I forget all this.”
“Alex, I know this must seem absolutely horrid, but I just solved the problem I was having with my novel, and I wonder if you would mind if I . . . well—”
“I understand. Here,” she roughly held up the tape-recorder to his mouth, “don’t let me stop you; Heaven only knows when we’ll get out of this wretched tunnel!”
Yuri took the tape-recorder with his pale hand from her tanned, delicate fingers, turned it on, and immediately began speaking in a very precise manner, “Scene: Rottenberg’s apt.—Blonde stands with a gun pointed at detective. When they get into conversation: the blonde confesses to Rottensberg that she staged the kidnapping for fame and attention, but ever since she’s had an existential realization—not in those words, she’s not an intellectual. . . though keep in mind, she is smart, crafty, and a very quick thinker—she uncovers Sartrean self-deception in her actions, and seeks to find authenticity, in her own way. She needs Rottensberg’s help, she. . . needs advice—she’s unsure of how to extricate herself from her predicament. Hmmm… it might be interesting to have her be in love with the detective. Leave subtle action clues. Should they have sex? No . . . definitely not. But do lead the reader to believe they will . . . build suspense. I think Rottensberg secretly loves her as well. Is this a cliché, though? Probably.”
“It is, but it might be interesting,” Alex chimed in.
Yuri nodded and continued speaking: “Maybe, she’s lost her sanity. She is completely obsessed with Rottensberg, but he views her as a pitiful woman in need of psychiatric treatment. Maybe the plot develops in this manner. . . and the Blonde ultimately kills him? Then I’ll switch point of view, with having killed off my main character three quarters into the book. Hmm… That would make for a good twist.”
“It would,” repeated Alex.
“But then what would I do,” continued Yuri, “what would I explore next?” Yuri asked himself, “I don’t even know her name yet.” At this point Yuri sighed and paused. But knowing that he had not yet exhausted his muse, he resumed, “If she kills him. . . she has to make it look like the kidnappers did it. That would take up quite a few pages. Then, I’ll write about the media frenzy that ensues, from the (amused?) perspective of the Blonde. Why not? Right?”
R20;Sure, she’s lost her sanity—so wouldn’t that be a typical reaction of a mad-woman?” asked Alex.
Turning off the tape-recorder, Yuri slowly turned to Alex, and replied, “Not nessecarlly. To be amused at this stage, might be precisely the reaction of a sane person. The readers will certainly be amused, and sometimes it’s good to have them share the feelings of the character they’re following. But I’m not sure if that is the case here. Some readers, will undoubtedly fall in love with the blonde—they will relate to her, while others, will be repelled by her actions. All, in fact, will be shocked—for my character Rottensberg, despite his name—it’s not final yet—was a very sympathetic character. Anyone reading the book would have been cheering for him to solve the case successfully. Having had the woman who Rottensberg had devoted so much effort to, so much of his mental energy and passion to—not to even mention the mental energy the reader has spent and the sympathy they probably developed toward him—shoot the guy, well, that might very well just leave a sour sentiment in many of my readers, don’t you think? My job, as the author, then, it would seem, is to make her as unsympathetic as possible, distant even. But there is a risk in doing that.”
“
She is the main character now. And I don’t want to ostracize my readers from the main character. Also, frankly, I’m a clever author. Please pardon myself for saying so, but I am. I want my readers to be emotionally confused, to be unsure as to whether they like her or hate her, for that makes her all the more interesting.”
“Of course. I see. Yes, that is more interesting. I would want to know more about her, more about what she does, just to know what I think about her—to make up my mind. Go on. What happens next? After the media frenzy following your murdered detective. What happens then,” asked Alex.
“Well, I don’t know yet,” Yuri said with a chuckle. “I’m in the middle of writing the thing!—but now I’m just as curious as you are. And that to me, means the book is developing well, for I want to know what happens next as much as anyone else.”
“So, common then, we’ve been stuck here for an hour—go ahead, write. I’m listening; I need to take my mind off poor Karine anyway—it hurts too much,” said Alex, with her voice cracking at the end of the sentence as if it fell into some bottomless pit; the poor thing looked like she was about to burst into tears, thought Yuri, but she quickly restored her composure. “Your story . . . has given me a momentary release from this wretched world.”
Yuri reflected on this remark, paused for several seconds, then added, “Which is the purpose of art, I suppose.”
“No, Yuri,” slowly replied Alex. “It is a function of art, but not the purpose. Maybe, you’re right about art not needing a purpose, but if it has one, then it must be more than taking someone out of their existential burdens! I must believe that. Otherwise, I may as well play video games or read fashion magazines all my life—they produce the same result. But art, I’m sure you would agree, is more than that. It makes some kind of statement. It illustrates an idea, maybe, Yuri, I don’t know, but maybe, art is the medium used to test those ideas—test them safely.”
As Alex spoke this last statement, Yuri felt a shudder go up and down his spine. He knew too well what can happen when art decides to safely test ideas in the fields of the imagination. Somebody pulls out all the weeds and plants them in Nature’s garden. It had been done to him. It had been done to Kubrick. What she said was bullshit and he knew it. Yet he didn’t know of a way to convince her. Her argument sounded too sound, it sounded too true—as all dangerous ideas sound, Yuri noted to himself.
“What about Kubrick’s film, A Clockwork Orange? or the book it was based on? Many copycat crimes were committed in England after their release. Wasn’t Kubrick, or Anthony Burgess, at least, in part, responsible? Had they not tested their ideas in the realm of art, those crimes would never have occurred.”
“That’s not their fault, Yuri. How can you say such a thing? That’s like . . . like saying Einstein is responsible for the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Which is bullshit. We both know, if anyone is responsible, it’s Truman, who gave the orders.”
“And the pilots?”
“Them too. But to a lesser degree…”
“I don’t buy it, Alex. They’re all equally responsible. No one is innocent in this world. No one is spared. We’re all guilty.”
“That’s absurd! Guilty? Guilty is the one who acts on the ideas, not the one who creates them. I bet you’re holding Marx responsible for the horrors committed in the Bolshevik Revolution? The hell you are! His ideas may have influenced the revolution, hell, he cried revolution! but the Reds who pulled the triggers into the lineups were ultimately responsible. They are guilty. No one else.”
Yuri was not convinced, but it didn’t matter now. They had at last reached the end of the tunnel. Unsure of what the delay was, they were now moving at a relatively reasonable pace; the excitement of the 15 mile an hour movement made them both forget the subject of conversation.
“Where do I get off?” inquired Yuri.
“Make a right on Daisy Blvd.”
It was a barren street. All the stores were closed, except for one bright deli emanating white phlorescent light on a corner of Daisy. The streets looked deserted, shop shutters were marked with red and black graffiti, and glittering beer bottles and broken glass were seen all over the black asphalt. Yuri could only think of how absurdly the tunnel had just spit him out into this grumbling town. He dreaded every minute of it, and absorbed everything in order to write about it when he got back to his apartment. Alex checked her cell-phone.
“Eleven missed calls! Jesus!” Alex exclaimed. She quickly dialed Karine’s number . . . no answer.
“Common! Why doesn’t she pick up?”
“Maybe she’s in the shower,” Yuri replied.
“Shower!? Oh for god sakes! Wait! A message!”
Alex dialed her voicemail. Yuri heard a faint voice through the receiver say, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry? What is she sorry about? Yuri, can’t you drive any faster! Dammit!”
Grizzly started barking in the background.
“Quiet!” shouted Yuri at Grizzly as he sped up to 75 miles an hour—it was all rows of shining green blurs ahead of him, violently oscillating traffic lights swinging back and forth thanks to the torrential wind. “Woof! Woof! ArrrrhhoooOF!
“Make a right at the next light, Yuri,” shouted Alex. Having made the screeching right nearly spiraling out into a Ford pick-up heading in the opposite direction, Yuri regained control of his grey Mini and inwardly yelled “Wheee haaaa ahhhhoooooo!” as he was in absolute ecstasy. His heart hadn’t beat so fast since he was in seventh grade when Gabby, his absolute love of the world, came up to him, tapped his shoulder, and said, “Hey.” A crush might have caused him to forget the English language, but the fervent honking of a mad New Jersey driver, with his glaring headlight-beams half-blinding Yuri was simply no challenge for the maverick that he had become within the span of eighty minutes.
“O.k., the building on the corner is hers. There! There’s a spot.”
After having squeezed his grey Mini into a space between a jagged-brown Toyota and an old silver Chrysler, Yuri’s body seemed heavier than the rotten copper of the Statue of Liberty.
“I don’t know if you should come, Yuri.” Alex said hastily. “Thank you for the ride. . . maybe we’ll see each other on more favorable circumstances?”
“Maybe I should walk you to her door? Yes, I’ll walk you to her door. I don’t like this neighborhood.”
Leaving Grizzly in the car, Yuri and Alex walked through the pale-green, steal door, with bits of paint falling off into a poorly lit lobby. There was no elevator in the building, so they took the stairs. Karine lived on the second floor, all the way at the end of a narrow hall. The whole place had a stench of moist, rotting wood about it. Alex rang Karine’s buzzer four times.
No answer. No answer. No answer. “Yuri. . . I’m worried. Let’s knock the door down.”
Yuri slammed his foot against the door three times, until the lock ripped out of the wall and tiny sharp pieces of wood flew into the apartment as the door violently swung open. Alex rushed in first, yelling, “Karine! Honey where are you? Karine!”
Alex quickly rushed through the living-room, the small kitchenette, and into the bedroom—empty. Rushing back to the living-room, Yuri saw Alex run panicly across the room to, what Yuri assumed, was the bathroom.
“Karine!!”
Yuri’s curiosity got the best of him, for he unconsciously crossed the living-room and walked up to the bathroom door.
Just before he had a chance to take a glance into the bathroom, Alex gave a horrible wail—Ahhh!—a shrieking sound so infuriating to Yuri’s being that it seemed to cut through the very core of his soul—a sound Yuri thought could only be heard in horror films. It was, terrible! “Karine!” Alex shrieked, again.
The first thing Yuri noticed was the puddle of blood-red water on the pale-green tiles, then an open medicine bottle with little round, white pills at the edge of Alex’s heal. As he looked more to his right, a silver glint hit Yuri’s eye—in it’s intensity the sliver beam of light seemed to prick Yuri’s left eye as if a needle struck it—Yuri made out a small razor—then he saw Karine’s wrist and arm hanging over an edge of the paper-white ceramic bathtub—all cut up as if her arm had been caught-up in some giant paper shredder—before Yuri could make out anything else, Alex turned around and exclaimed, “Call 9-11! Now!—What are you waiting for!?”
“Is she alive?” asked Yuri.
“I DON’T KNOW!” Alex cried and began to sob. “Karine! It’ll be ok sweetie, hang on!”
Yuri went into the living room and picked up the phone that was on the wall by the entrance to the kitchenette.
“What’s the address?”
Alex yelled the address to Yuri, who relayed it to the 9-11 operator on the other end. Yuri demanded to know how long it would take for an ambulance to arrive, but all the operator said was: “Help will be there shortly.” Yuri didn’t like the situation, at all.
But he didn’t budge from the living-room. He didn’t know what was keeping him from taking another look, he already called for an ambulance, Alex, surly knew what to do, if there was anything else to do, so what else could he do but helplessly wait? Karine’s life was in the hands of the paramedics—he had played his role, why look at her body?
Yuri knew this was exactly the kind of situation that would make for good writing, so he really could not understand his own cowardice and apprehension. Perhaps it was still that uncanny sense of guilt that he felt for Karine—he was still not quite over Alex’s accusation; if only he knew where to place his rage, but he didn’t. He let his inner sore boil within—either it would transform itself into an ulcer or he would use it as a catalyst for his fiction. This rage had to go somewhere, it was an energy, a force, and all energy in the universe transforms or explodes. It has no other choice. When enough pent up energy is forced into some area—more precisely, somewhere beneath Yuri’s left rib—it will first implode, then, explode. That was Yuri’s secret to writing; some painted, others cooked, Yuri wrote.
But what really kept Yuri from going back to the bathroom, he now understood, was the expression of utter despair upon Alex’s face. He couldn’t bare to look again at that beautiful face, cringe and contort in such revulsion and rage—pure chaotic torment—a writhing flurry of emotions—a twisting and vomiting soul, with her body as its excrement.
“Yuri!” cried Alex, “Help me take her out of the bathtub.”
“Ah, good thinking,” Yuri thought, unsure as to why that had not occurred to him first.
He walked into the bathroom and picked up Karine’s naked body out of the tub, who seemed to still be breathing and, he felt, had a faint pulse, by wrapping his arms around her stomach, right beneath her bruised breasts. As he did this he noticed black and blue finger marks all over her neck and shoulder blades—apparently this animal had choked her as he used her breasts for punching bags and forced himself into her soft flesh.
Yuri carried Karine’s pale and bruised flesh, onto a purple, micro-fiber divan that was in the middle of the living room. Alex had already covered Karine’s arms with cotton, peach-colored bath-towels, and Yuri was quite relieved that Karine still seemed to be alive. After putting Karine down, Yuri took a few steps back and gave a half-sympathetic, half-gloomy look at Alex, who stood staring at Karine while biting her finger nails. There was nothing more in the world that Yuri wanted to do then to hold Alex close to him in an attempt to warm her soul with his flesh. But the wall between them was impenetrable, the space between them, the distance, the psychological time, the scene, the agonizing presence of helpless Karine, was too much. Yuri felt like Thor was standing before him, pounding at his chest with some enormous, concrete hammer.
It had been at least ten minutes since Yuri spoke with the 9-11 operator, and still the ambulance had not arrived. During that time Alex was debating with herself whether or not she should force Karine to vomit, as she was unsure of whether that would cause Karine to choke. Yuri was afraid of doing anything; he anxiously paced up and down the living-room, casting nervous looks beyond the purple window curtains through the rusty-red fire-escape onto the dark, empty, street below.
When the paramedics finally arrived, Yuri noticed for the first time that Karine’s face looked livid and that she was foaming at the mouth. He also noticed that it was a very gentle face, young, with looks of innocence about it, a face that seemed to be unhampered by the lines of time which usually imprint themselves on the body. She almost looked child-like, thought Yuri.
The paramedics were a bit intense, though they seemed calm, focused, but just a little too robotic thought Yuri. One was a bulk, tall, black man, with a rugged beard and very gentle eyes, and the other was a pale, scraggy young kid, with a stupid-looking goatee on his chin. The black one went over to Karine, took her pulse and blood pressure, while the pale, scraggy one, came up to Yuri and sheepishly asked him what medications she had taken. Yuri went into the bathroom and brought the scraggy kid back the medicine bottle. Karine apparently swallowed nearly half a bottle of Xanax.
Upon hearing this, the black paramedic glanced at Alex, understood the anxiety she was feeling, and said: “She’ll be ok. Don’t worry. But we need to get her to a hospital as soon as possible to pump her stomach.” Alex wasn’t able to verbally respond, but she nodded her head in approval of what the paramedic had said. The two paramedics strapped Karine onto an orange stretcher, and began rolling the stretcher toward the door. Alex walked beside Karine’s body, holding her right arm. She had completely forgotten about Yuri’s existence. Yuri stood in the same spot by the window, watching them all leave.
Yuri felt faint, but to his relief, he noticed a pack of Marlboro lights lying on the glass, coffee-table in front of the purple, micro-fiber divan. Yuri took a cigarette out, picked up a box of matches which was laying next to a metallic ash-tray on the glass coffee-table and found that there was one match left. After three tries, Yuri managed to light the match on the fourth, where he was finally able to relieve some of his anxiety with a nice thick puff of smoke. Then he exhaled, and sat down on the divan which was facing the window with the purple curtains.
Now Yuri had a chance to look around the apartment, which he noticed had a very warm feeling about it. There were many paintings on the dark-green walls, which hung above dozens of plants which were placed every few feet apart on little tables against the walls. Most of the paintings were of nature scenes, and of quite good quality, thought Yuri. Glancing at the kitchenette, which took up the right, far-end corner of the living room, Yuri noticed very child-like drawings of flowers, scotch-taped to the refrigerator. Yuri nearly giggled at the innocence of the art, at its pure naïveté. Karine certainly didn’t pay for this place by painting or drawing, asserted Yuri to himself. But, after a few more pulls on his cigarette, a new thought occurred to him. Taking another glance at the refrigerator, Yuri realized that these drawings weren’t drawn by Karine—they were drawn by a child. Yuri was one-hundred percent sure, these were the drawings of a kid.
Puzzled, Yuri ashed his cigarette, stood up, and walked toward the refrigerator for a closer inspection. Looking at a drawing of a sitting cat, Yuri noticed the name Roger signed at the bottom. Shudders swept up and down Yuri’s back. He turned around, and called the name, “Roger?” But there was no answer. He decided to check the bedroom, just in case. Walking in, Yuri found it stripped of any human presence. There was just a blue teddy-bear lying on the king-sized bed. Yuri picked up the teddy-bear and walked back to the living-room. He stood with the teddy-bear in his left hand and the cigarette in his right, puffing occasionally, trying to order things out in his head.
“Achoo!”
The End