Kiburn Chase: A Vignette
His wife had wrapped her hands around him in the curtain-drawn carolina-blue dark
A childhood in Sicily. Now the corpulent hotel manager, as he was walking through the hall of the third floor, came to a cracked door through which a strained voice, a man’s, came. When the war had broken out he had gained forty pounds, not a daisy in sight. But he had never fallen in love, and later he had quit the police, desperate for the disreputable establishments he had visited as a young man in Prague. The man who was holding the gun was sweating and shaking, and the one he was pointing it at was standing at the foot of the bed. His wife had wrapped her hands around him in the curtain-drawn carolina-blue dark. The curtains had flowers but there were no daisies which were the manager’s favorite because they had been Mary’s favorite a long time ago. Wrapped her arms around him and her wavy hair spreading like slick kelp. A farm boy had been in the dry doorway biting his pink lip, looking out at the immaculate rain and thinking how close it was. His hair was slicked back and his face did not move. When John had been expelled he took his car and a couple of friends and they had a celebration. But the man would not beg for his life. And the manager’s swollen fingers, which suggested heart disease, pressed together in distress. The man looked at the other dumbly but saintly, like he knew nothing, like Jesus must have stared at Herod, he thought. John remembered many years ago before he was married, when he was still traveling the country alone, he stumbled into a diner at midnight trying to order an omelette sweating and pale and the owners had cared for him three days before he had just gotten up and walked away. That was parenthood: taking care of someone who did not love you, but might one day, or might not. They were in the alley behind the bar and he was lying to her for the last time. The man would not beg and he was grinding his teeth together as if he was trying to shatter them. He had thought that that life was over but here it was again up to his ankles, brown and watery and rancid. He fired the gun and the manager flinched away, and the latter remembered the deserted apartment building at night and the gun held at his chin and his breath hot into the cold air, how hot it was. The man’s corpse fell back onto the mattress, his legs sticking out obscenely. But in a few moments he got up. “Nothing to worry about,” he said, looking at the other man reassuringly. “It’s just a scratch, just a flesh wound.” Taking his hat from atop the dresser, he walked out of the room, with a polite nod to the spying manager who was now revealed. John and the manager stared at each other through the doorway in dread.
