Knockout (7 page)

“What would it cost me to sit in your room and listen to Erica walk above me?” he asked.

The skin under Harley's left eye was ringed purple and one of his nostrils was swollen shut, but he'd already heeded my advice and shaved off his beard. I could tell that the skin underneath it hadn't seen sunlight in a long time. His forehead and nose were leathery while the rest of his face had a grayish, waxy look.

“How about twenty bucks an hour?” I said.

I didn't expect to get this amount, but Harley dug into his wallet and pulled out forty bucks without complaint. I cleared off a recliner for him and he sat down. He pulled a six-pack from his bag and held out a can to me.

It didn't seem worth it to me, to pay to interact with his wife in such a limited way, sometimes not at all, but Harley didn't seem to mind. He kept stopping by, a couple times a week, sitting in my recliner while his ex-wife walked overhead.

One morning, I woke up to Erica staring down at me from the hole in my ceiling. Her legs were dangling into my room. She kicked them back and forth and then she crossed her calves, one over the other. She massaged her right calf with her big toe, slowly kneading it. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks.

“Is that you I heard crying the other night?” she asked.

It was me, but it wasn't really crying. A couple of nights ago I'd gotten home and found that Jayhole had turned all the furniture in my room upside down. My bed, my desk, my jewelry table, everything. What came out of my mouth then was more of a low-pitched wail. There were hardly any tears at all.

I wondered how long Erica had been watching me sleep. I'd started to sleepwalk recently. A few weeks ago Jayhole had found me in the kitchen spreading mustard all over my chest. Another time I woke up sitting on top of our refrigerator, naked and hunched over like a gargoyle. I suspected it might be a side effect of the aphrodisiac but hell if I was going to stop taking it.

“Maybe I could help you with Jayhole,” Erica said. “Stop him from bullying you.”

“I don't think that's a good idea,” I told her.

The last time I'd tried to escape from Jayhole was the time he beardtied me to the door handle of his van and drove off around our neighborhood. I kept up with him for a block before I fell, but he kept dragging me for another block to teach me a lesson.
I knew by now that it was better to laugh off his jokes, to play along, to not try to escape. Maybe one of us would die soon and maybe that person would be Jayhole.

“I know you stole Caruso's aphrodisiac,” Erica told me. “I saw you eating some of it.”

I thought about the sex dream I had last night. How I got swallowed by a whale, but how there was a woman with large floppy breasts inside of the whale and then how we ended up screwing right on top of the whale's tongue. It was wet and exciting. These sex dreams were the only thing keeping me sane right now. There was no way I was giving this aphrodisiac back.

“I don't know what you think you saw,” I told Erica, “but I don't have the aphrodisiac.”

Erica moved her legs out of the hole. A few seconds later a ladder slid down into my room. She climbed down the rungs and walked over to my mini fridge. She took out the Tupperware container of aphrodisiac and swallowed a spoonful of it and then scrambled back up the ladder. I was too shocked to do anything about it.

“Thanks!” she yelled down.

I heard Erica moaning a little while later. She hadn't put the rug over the top of the hole to muffle the sound at all. I could hear everything clearly, which I thought was pretty neighborly of her.

T
he next day Caruso and Erica got into a huge fight. I'd just returned home after I'd shoplifted some fancy grass-fed steaks from the co-op. I took the aluminum tentpole from the kitchen and pushed the area rug away from the hole so I could hear them better.

“Where were you last night while I was deejaying the Rosales wedding?” Caruso asked her.

“I told you already,” Erica said. “Jill and I went shopping.”

“That's sounds like fun,” he said, “except I called Jill and she told me she hasn't seen you in a month.”

“You checked up on me?” Erica said.

“Now we're even,” Caruso told her.

“Fuck if we're even,” Erica said, “we're never going to be even.”

Sometimes during their fights, Erica mentioned something hurtful that Caruso had done to her recently, some mysterious and horrible thing, but she never mentioned exactly what that thing was. All I knew is that she wasn't going to probably forgive or forget whatever it was anytime soon.

“Jesus Christ,” Caruso said. “Can't we ever just move on? Haven't I done enough penance?”

Erica yelled “No!” and threw a vase at him. The vase shattered against the wall and a river of water and glass cascaded through the hole in my ceiling and onto my floor.

“I can smell the aphrodisiac on your breath,” Caruso yelled. “Were you the one who stole it? To use with someone else?”

Caruso rifled through the drawers of their apartment, dumping their contents out. Erica picked up a coffee cup and threw it at him. It smashed apart and some of the coffee started to drip down into my room.

“You don't know what the fuck you are talking about,” Erica yelled. “You don't know the first goddamn thing.”

Soon Caruso ran down the front stairs, got into his car, and drove off. After he was gone, Erica's legs slid down into the hole in my ceiling. I was busy sweeping up the chards from the vase.

“Can you believe that shit?” she asked. “Can you believe he's so controlling?”

Erica slid her ladder down into my room. I watched her legs as she descended the rungs. Had her calves gotten more buxom over
the last few days? Was she doing toe raises to pump them up? She stepped off the last rung and went over and opened the door of my mini fridge and took another spoonful of the aphrodisiac and swallowed it. This time, instead of immediately climbing back up the ladder, she took another spoonful and carried it across the room and put it up to my lips.

“This is a one-time thing,” she said, pushing me down onto my bed and straddling me.

W
hen Harley stopped by later that day I was busy making Erica a pendant. It had a smaller heart inside a bigger heart. There were some small pink stones filling the smaller heart. The pendant was meant to be worn below the knee and above the ankle. I called it a calflet. It was one of the most sensual pieces of jewelry I'd ever made and I was excited to see Erica's reaction to it when I draped it over her mid-leg.

“It smells like sex in here,” Harley said.

I felt a little guilty about what had happened between Erica and I, but not enough to tell Harley. Erica had been a generous lover, letting me run my tongue over her calves for a very long time and she hadn't looked at me like I was a creep when I finished. She told me that I shouldn't fall in love with her, but I was having a hard time doing anything but.

“That's just Stabby,” I told Harley. “It's his glands.”

Harley sat down in my desk chair. He'd brought a cooler full of beer with him and he passed one to me. We clinked bottles in a toast.

“To love,” Harley said.

“It's great, isn't it?” I said.

While we sat there Caruso and Erica started to yell at each other again. Caruso was asking her where the aphrodisiac was and Erica was denying she had it.

“They've been fighting like that a lot lately,” I said.

Obviously Harley enjoyed hearing this. I was happy too, thinking about how Caruso would probably storm off after their fight and then how Harley would leave and then how Erica would slide her legs down the hole into my room. After we made love we'd open a bottle of wine and fry up a few grass-fed steaks.

Soon though, the fighting between Caruso and Erica softened and we heard giggling. After that, soul music began to flow out of Caruso's speakers and we heard some lusty laughter and then Erica began to lightly moan over the bumping of the bass and then Caruso began to grunt in an erotic way and next there was some skin on skin flapping sounds that coincided with the rhythm of the soul music and then the moaning and grunting got louder and the skin slapping sounds got more urgent.

Harley covered up his ears. I wanted to do that too, but I thought if did it might give away the fact I'd slept with Erica so I just listened to each one of Caruso's thrusts like it was no big deal, like I didn't care one bit.

When Caruso and Erica finished, I motioned to Harley that he could uncover his ears. Except they weren't actually done. There was a short period of rest but then Caruso put on a different record with heavier bass and quicker drumbeats and then everything started up again, the moaning, the flapping, even louder than before.

“I'm going to get some fresh air,” Harley told me, but I could tell he was done for today, that he might not come back ever again.

I tried to distract myself from the noise upstairs by dusting, but it was hard to concentrate. It sounded like Caruso and Erica were boning right next to my ear. It was also hard to listen to them because it sounded like Erica was having much more fun fucking Caruso than she'd had fucking me. I looked up into the hole to see if I could see any sex shadows or stray feet, but every
time I looked up a bunch of plaster dust fell into my eyes.

Soon Jayhole stopped by my room to see what the racket was. While Jayhole and I stood there, we heard a cracking sound. When I looked up I saw that a hairline crack on the ceiling had grown into a small chasm. It was growing wider with each one of Caruso's thrusts.

“Move!” Jayhole yelled as he pulled me under the doorjamb as the ceiling collapsed and Erica and Caruso fell through the air and landed on my floor with a loud thump.

Jayhole and I waded through the mess of wood and plaster. Erica had some cuts on her face, but she looked all right. She'd been riding on top of Caruso and hadn't taken the brunt of the fall. Caruso didn't look good. He was just lying there, his mouth open, his neck twisted in a strange way, blood trickling out of his ear.

“That doesn't look good,” Jayhole said. “That doesn't look good at all.”

IV

T
he next night Erica knocked on my door. Her face was bruised and one of her feet was in a walking boot. I'd spent most of the day returning my room back to normal, carting the plaster and lath to the garbage can. It was still a mess but I cleared a spot for her on my recliner.

“Caruso's awake now,” she told me. “But both of his legs are broken and his neck is all messed up.”

Erica walked back into her bedroom. I heard her pull the covers over her head.

While she was sleeping, I got the ladder from the garage and I snuck into her apartment. I didn't want to do anything too
creepy, so I just sat by her bedside watching her breathe in and out. After I'd had enough of that, I tied the calflet onto her leg and climbed back down into my room.

T
he next morning Jayhole needed me to run a couple of errands for him. While I was out, he went into my room and dumped out a bag of marshmallows on my rug. It was a hot day and they melted into the shag.

“That's going to be really hard to clean up,” Jayhole cackled. “Way harder than I thought. Wow. Sorry.”

In the last few days, Jayhole had given up on the idea to start his own bounty hunting business. No one would lend him the start-up money.

“The universe is trying to tell me something,” he said. “I was deaf to it for a while, but now I can hear what it is saying.”

I wondered if I should quit making jewelry too. At the swap meet last weekend, no one had even stopped by my table to look at what I was selling. Was this the universe telling me something too? If no one really cares what you make, what's the point of working so damn hard on it?

I picked at some of the marshmallow slurry in my rug with a fork. When I tried to pull it out it left a bald spot. The rug was ruined and I rolled it up and hauled it out to the garbage.

“That sucks,” Erica said from upstairs. “That's not cool to do that kind of shit to another human being.”

Erica had just showered and her wet hair hung around her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of shorts and the calflet was draped enticingly over her leg.

“Thanks for the gift,” she said, pointing to her calflet, “but I told you the other day was a one-time thing, okay?”

“Maybe you could let our one-time thing be a two-time thing or four- or nine-time thing?” I asked.

“How about I help you get revenge on Jayhole instead?” she asked.

“I don't think you can help with that,” I said. “I don't think anyone can.”

“I can help you,” she said. “Caruso left me some information I can use.”

I shook my head no. “Let's just leave well enough alone,” I said.

“Has Harley been coming over?” Erica asked. “Was he in your room before the ceiling fell?”

“He comes over to listen to you walk around above him,” I said.

When I told her this, I noticed a softening around Erica's eyes. Her mouth curled into a quick smile. I could tell she was remembering something good that Harley had done for her once. I could tell she was rooting around in her file of Harley memories and she was wondering if whatever had gone wrong between them could be patched up.

“That sounds like something he would do,” she said.

L
ater that day, Harley knocked on my door. Erica had gone to the hospital to visit Caruso.

“She's not here,” I told him. “She might not be back for a while.”

Harley held out two twenties.

“I'll chance it,” Harley said.

I went and walked around my neighborhood for about an hour to give Harley some privacy. When I got back to my room, Erica's ladder was lying on my floor and my bed sheets were twisted and half of the aphrodisiac was gone. There was a padded envelope sitting on top of Stabby's cage. I opened it and two pairs of panties fell out on the floor.