The Murder, Ethan Canter [debian ebook reader .txt] 📗

you’re thinking about nothing, or you’re thinking about ‘Nothing,’” she says coyly, with her hands adding quotation marks around the second nothing, then reaching for her wine, again, and smiling, pretending – more for everyone in the restaurant than herself, he thinks.
“C’mon, really, what are you thinking about?” she says.
He searches her face. She tightens her lips. He can see her clench her teeth and swallow – swallow down or back an unsafe emotion – an emotion no longer trusted in his hands. Her eyes dart – from the table, to him, to something behind him, and then to him again. She doesn’t avoid his eyes. She looks right at them, right into them, trying, he can tell, to evoke in him the man she remembers loving. He feels something shift. A softening in his brow maybe, or a tension falling from his shoulders – a sudden sense of room, of space, of air to breathe. But then it’s gone – gone, replaced, bullied. And again he just stares at her with glossy, absent eyes.
“You won’t take your coat off?” she says, and tries to smile.
“Why bother,” he says. “I’m just going to put it on again to leave.”
“You’re leaving?”
“No,” he says. “Not yet.”
Why do things change? he thinks. But he knows the answer. And he knows that answers don’t help when the things they answer don’t change. Answers are only as good as the changes they cause.
She’s hurt. Her face is tight. She drinks her wine just to finish it now. She refuses dessert. She even requests the bill. Part of him feels guilty. He’s disappointed her. He’s exposed her, and in public. It’s a passive violence, and he’s not proud – but too, he’s not ashamed enough to stop.
“Your hair looks nice,” he says.
She just looks at him.
“You’ve had it cut,” he adds.
Why does he like that look in her eyes, he wonders. It’s not weakness, but a kind of fragility – he can see her struggling, wanting to believe him and trying not to at the same time. If she’s a slave to anything it’s to her emotions, he thinks. Maybe that’s what I like – how powerless she is against her own feelings, and how well I know how to conduct them.
The waiter places the bill on the table.
“We’ll see the dessert menu now,” he says, catching the waiter’s arm.
She looks up at him. She looks tired. Maybe she’s going to cry. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a cigarette. He lights a match and holds it across the table for her. She stares at him with the cigarette between her lips and fingers. That struggle again, he thinks. She hesitates. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink. Finally she leans into the flame.
“I saw your article in the paper,” he says.
“Saw it or read it?” she says, trying to sound aloof.
“A bit of both,” he says.
The waiter places the dessert menus on the table.
“I’ll have the mousse,” he says, without looking at the menu, without taking his eyes off of her.
“Of course,” the waiter says. “And for Madame?”
“Brandy,” she says, pushing her jaw forward and sucking at her teeth.
“Very good,” the waiter says, gathering the menus.
“And a coffee,” he says.
“A coffee,” repeats the waiter, and walks away.
She takes a long drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke hard up into the air.
“Do you believe what you write before or after you’ve written it?” he says.
She smiles sarcastically and butts her cigarette out in the ashtray.
“You haven’t changed a bit, have you?” she says.
“I’m serious,” he says.
“Sure you are,” she says. “The same old game. You just can’t stop playing it, can you?”
The waiter places the dessert and drinks on the table. She rubs a bit of ash into the tablecloth with her finger. He leans back in his chair and watches the waiter.
“What do you think this generation’s gonna do to change the world?” he says to the waiter.
“For God’s sake,” she says, raising her hand to her face.
The waiter looks back and forth between them.
“Are you a family man?” he says, touching the waiter’s arm.
The waiter swallows, uncertain how to respond.
“Do you have a family?” he says slowly.
“Leave the poor man alone for God’s sake,” she says, reaching across the table and sharply removing his hand from the waiter’s arm. “Just go,” she says to the waiter.
“I wasn’t done,” he says, nearly snarling.
“Yeah, you’re done,” she says, and pushes her chair back from the table.
“Sit down,” he says.
“Don’t even think–”
“Sit down,” he repeats, his eyes glaring.
“You can’t tell me–”
“Sit down before I get up and make you sit down,” he says, his hands flat on the table.
She stares at him, half up off her seat. He stares back, and this time, finally, looks her in the eyes. He rubs his face with his hands and exhales a deep and labored breath. “Look, I...,” he says, staring down at the table. “I’m...I’m sorry. I...I didn’t mean that. Just please....” He looks up at her, his eyes nervous, his right hand molding his left. “Just please...sit down. Please.”
She sits down again. He takes a breath. He swallows. He attempts a smile.
“Thank you,” he says in a low whisper.
“My God, what’s happening to you?” she says, her eyes concerned, nearly trusting.
“I think...” he says, his eyes nervously darting around the restaurant. He leans in across the table. She leans in to meet him. He whispers, “I think someone’s trying to kill me.”

6
I’m a cruel man. I’m a sick man. He laughs to himself. I’m a vengeful man. A young girl stares at him on the train. Her dark hair is uncombed. Her eyes are soft, the flesh around them still puffy from sleep. He watches her too long. She turns away, looks out the window, but periodically steals a glance in his direction. Her fingers are long, thin, womanly. Her lips are pink without effort. Her skin makes his hands ache. I’m a desperate man. The train stops at a station. People leave. The whistle blows. The train resumes its course. The girl looks at him again. They’re alone in the car. This time it’s he that can’t hold the stare. He pretends to look at the watch he’s not wearing on his wrist. He tries to look out the window, but the train’s entered a tunnel. He catches a scent like sour orange and it makes his mouth water. He clenches his teeth. He looks up. The girl’s staring at him. Her lips glisten like rain. Her bare white knees pull his eyes down. She pushes herself forward on her seat. His eyes drag slowly up between her legs. His heart punches at the inside of his chest. His mouth goes dry. He grips the armrest like a man in a plane falling out of the sky. He swallows and follows the line of buttons up her shirt. She crosses her legs and digs the ball of her foot into the floor, pushing herself back against the seat. His knees rub hard against each other. She mouths something. He stops breathing. She closes her eyes. He remembers the light of the sun on a street when he was a boy. She shudders. His eyes water. The train stops. People enter. The girl grabs her bag, and leaving, turns to him with a melancholy smile as the doors close. The train jerks into motion. He watches her through the windows until she disappears out of sight. He stands and walks to her empty seat. The sour orange coats his mind. He breathes it in with an open mouth. Slowly, almost tenderly, he sets himself down and basks in the cradle of her lingering warmth. I’m a lost man. A lost man in a transience of moments that must be strung together, but that no longer make any sense to me. How do I move from one to the next? How does it happen? Who...who makes it happen? Do I? Does she? And what have I done? What haven’t I done? What could I have done? I don’t know anything anymore. He laughs to himself. I don’t even know if I don’t know anything. He opens his eyes. The gray rain trails across the window. Is that freedom, then? he wonders. Is that what they mean? Beyond knowing? Beyond not knowing? He closes his eyes again and breathes in the last of her scent.

7
At the end of the line a barren platform. Two station workers stand together, smoking. The air is still. The light from the sun seems, even feels, solid. It’s warmer than in the city. He buys a newspaper and carries it under his arm. The glare outside the station makes his eyes sting. He stands against a wall, for a moment, and looks. A taxi sits waiting in the distance. The driver’s asleep, the motor isn’t running. Through the windshield he sees the man, his head back and off to one side, his mouth hung open – nearly like a corpse, he thinks. He pushes his hands into his pockets and enters the town. If only I’d been born here, he thinks. If only I grew up and never left a place like this. I wouldn’t be in the way I am if I’d been born here. Or is that really true? he wonders. A car drives past. Has circumstance made my life what it is? Do I have any control, any say, any choice? He laughs to himself. It’s too late for that now – too late to dream of who I might have been if I weren’t what I am. Because I am – I am what I am. Looking up, past the row of little storefronts, past the flower boxes, past the clean and wide streets, looking separate like a cut out or cut free marionette, he sees the church on the hill.
The church is small, stone, some hundred years old. Thick, wooden doors. Arches. Inside – silent, cold, and damp. The scent of paraffin. Streaks of morning light through the high stained-glass windows slowly creep reds and blues and golds and yellows down the opposite wall. A white marble basin of Holy Water. He smiles to himself. Above the altar, the hanging crucifix meticulously carved to detail – the thorns, the wound, the nails pierced mercilessly through bone and flesh, and that look, in His eyes, of pious masochism. For a moment he sees the pews filled and the priest at the altar delivering his sermon, not unlike a madman releasing his incantations in the middle of a downtown street. The intoxication of word and gesture. His blood dripping from the cross, like tears, like rain, like semen. And the priest, his head back, his arms outstretched, baptizing himself in the blood of God. And in the pews, and against the walls, and pushing around the pillars so eyes can see, heat – the heat of a thousand candles, of a thousand mouths exhaling, the heat of a thousand pairs of hands reaching.
A small door in the wall to the left of the altar opens with a creak. The priest is tall and thin, his face long and heavy, his eyes sunken and tired. His walk is slow, methodical, arthritic – as though God were holding him by the shoulders and dragging him along.
“I want to confess, Father,” he says.
“I have not seen you before,” the priest says. “Why do you not confess in your own church?”
“My soul is heavy with sin, Father. Every breath is like a spear in my side. Shame keeps me from my own church. I should return to it, I know, you’re