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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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Out of the Haze
Veda Nayak
Yeah, I came back to kill her. But it wasn’t because I’m evil or that I have a sick mind or a religious frenzy or something retarded like that. These damn authors are always coming up with such stupid shit.
I first met her in the hotel. The Hotel Triumph. Two letters in the sign had blinked out, and it now read Hoe Triumph. A seedy place, like all the joints I had stayed in during twenty years of beating the road.
The guy behind the desk was old, but he had these sharp, beady kind of eyes. Like squirrels, only more ratty. He twitched. I don’t like people who twitch. He looked at me, and he looked at my dusty bag. The one that held the insurance papers and my camera. ‘Fitty’fi’ bucks a pop.’ he said. And his cheek twitched.
I dug out my wallet. I had exactly sixty dollars in there, most of it in crumpled bills. All my cash was in my other wallet. You didn’t want to pay by card or show a wad of cash at a place like this.
It’s all the same. No matter where you go. The town has a different name; maybe the people got a little more twang to their speech. But they still curl up at night, in their mortgaged beds in their mortgaged house living their mortgaged lives – and just before they fall asleep they have that same momentary pang of despair. Just what difference did I make today? Absolutely none. They fight for their existence and agonize over Jenny Aniston’s love life, but damn me to hell if the world wouldn’t still move and the clocks still tick if they were to just fade away. As they start to think of who would miss them, sleep slithers up, and they awake to another meaningless day. It’s all the same.
I trudged over to the elevator. There was a handwritten sign hanging to it by one yellowed piece of cello tape. Temporarily out of order.
She was lounging near the potted plant at the base of the stairs.
She looked me up and down, with a curl to her lip. I knew what she saw, and it didn’t please me any more than it did her. She was attractive. Beyond attractive, really. She was young, but her eyes were old. So old that I flinched when I looked into them. She was the kind of girl you just had to bend over and ream. None of that foreplay crap. You’d have to fuck her up the ass, just to teach her some respect. She ignited that in you.
I feel old. Every morning when I look into the mirror. It’s not about the lines on your face, but the way you stand, the way you walk. When I drudge out of these dumps and head into the unmerciful sunlight, toward my beat-up Plymouth, wearing my cheap suit and carrying my dusty bag, I feel old. Old and tired, though the day has hardly begun. I’m always tired. Not even my camera can relieve me, like it used to. Jaded, I’m sure they call people like me, but it’s more than that. It’s the haze. I awake before my alarm goes off and I stare up at the ceiling and I think to myself: what now? And what makes me feel so old and tired is that I know. I know what then. And I swing myself out of bed and get to it.
She asked me if I had a cigarette. I said yes, and lit it for her. As I bent close to her I could smell her unwashed hair, the deo-spray she used, the jalapenos she had eaten not too long ago. It turned me on. That smell, more than anything else. I think my eyes brightened. I knew how this would play out, but I wasn’t as tired any more.
She looked up at me. ‘Long day, huh.’
‘Yeah.’ I set down my bag and decided I would have a smoke, too.
We smoked in silence for a while. ‘So what do you do anyway, pops?’ she sounded like she didn’t really care, but I answered her anyway.
‘I sell insurance.’
I could see the beady-eyed guy looking over at us and twitching. He wore a smirk, as if to say – you ain’t the first geezer to be led by his cock, and you won’t be the last. I can’t tell if it was right then that I knew what I was going to do, but I was aware of a little voice warning me that he had registered us together, and that I’d have to work around that.
‘I’m tryin’ to get back to New York.’ She said.
‘You live there?’ I asked, even though I knew what she was going to say.
‘My mum’s up there,’ she said. ‘Ain’t seen her in a long time. Figure I’ll go back home, get a job or somethin’.’
‘Good, good.’ I muttered. Took another drag.
She smoked the cancer stick down to the filter, then pitched it into the plant, blowing smoke out of her pinched nostrils. ‘Got twenty bucks you can spare to help me out?’ She looked straight at me, and there was that sly all-knowing look in her eye.
‘No.’ I said. I didn’t leer at her or anything that clichéd. Same script, different players. No need to dramatize it. ‘But I’ve put aside twenty-five for extra expenses on this trip. I’ll give it to you for a night’s fucking.’
Maybe that was a bit rude. Maybe by implying she was for sale I had blown it. But it meant little to me. If she walked away, I was out one cigarette.
She looked at me with something like surprise in her eyes. Like she knew I had guessed her game and was wondering why I was playing it. Then the cocky look returned. She knew why.
‘Give me another smoke.’
‘No.’
She looked surprised again. The look on my face didn’t change as I picked up my bag. I turned and started walking up the stairs.
‘Yo, pops.’ She called.
I stopped.
She looked up at me. ‘Fifty.’
I kept walking up the stairs.
She climbed three steps. ‘Fifty and you’ll have a night like never before.’
I didn’t look back. ‘I said twenty-five.’
She cursed me, then followed me up the stairs.
Everyone has a routine. So did I. I’d get up to my room, take off my dusty clothes. Place the bag under my bed. If there was a TV, I’d sit on the edge of the bed and watch it, feeling my bony ribs rise and fall. Then I would open the side pouch of my bag and get out the picture and the story. Spin the hot water tap and leave it running. I liked the water steaming hot. I’d tape the worn, well handled picture and story to the mirror as the bathroom fogged up around me. I had ripped both out of a porn mag years ago. I knew the story by heart, and every line of the picture was etched into my head. Still, routine is religion, and pay per view costs too much these days. I’d look at the picture and read the story and start masturbating. I’d always cum at the same point in the story. Where he makes her suck his cock after he has reamed her ass. I don’t know why. I think it may make me a sick person. I don’t care.
I found my room, unlocked it. She walked in after me and sat down on the bed. I knew she had been in here before. From my bag I withdrew a locking bar, which ensured the door would stay shut. Short of smashing the door around it, you couldn’t get in. I couldn’t keep the nasty smirk off my face as I began to take off my clothes. I can’t be sure, but I think her face fell just a little bit.
‘Straight to business, honey?’ she asked caustically. ‘I want a smoke.’
‘And I want a shower, but I’m going to screw you instead.’ I kicked my pants away.
‘Why don’t you get that shower, and I’ll have my smoke.’
‘Why don’t you stop talking.’ I couldn’t help being mean to her, but if this was going to play out, I wanted at least a part of my money’s worth.
She stared stonily at me for several seconds, then she began shrugging out of her clothes.
My heart rate shot up as her firm breasts tumbled out. She wriggled out of her tight jeans, and her voice was mocking. ‘Grab your rubber and come get it, pops.’
I didn’t carry condoms anymore. I had given up on getting lucky a long time ago. I told her so and she balked. ‘Not without a rubber.’ She insisted.
‘Works for me.’ I said as I walked over to her. She gave me some head – her skill belied her age – then I told her to turn over. She started hedging. ‘I’m not gonna let you do that to me.’ she said.
‘All right.’ I said. ‘Thanks for the free blow job, close the door on your way out.’
She scowled up at me. I think she was really starting to hate me. I had a feeling she would enjoy ripping me off. She got on her hands and knees on the bed, and I fucked her just like I had wanted to when I first saw her. She took it with not more than a few grunts. Nothing remarkable about that, really. It was then that I began to think seriously about killing her.
I could still call the whole thing off. Give her the money and kick her out. But I couldn’t. I was out of the haze, I was flying. You need to understand that I’m not a villain or anything. I wasn’t repressed as a kid, my father didn’t abuse me (well, he did kick me around, but that was perfectly normal in my neck of the woods), I have no desire to hurt people. It’s just about feeling alive. When you live in the haze, and every day is the same as the last, its all about that spark. I wanted to know if, by extinguishing her miserable, sordid little life, I could be released from that despair. Could this bitch free me?
I made her suck me off after I had fucked her. She pulled a disgusted face (bet she didn’t see herself doing this when she had started her little game downstairs), and she hated me then, with all the strength of her dirty little soul. And I hated her, too. She was so alive, this damn slut, with her know-it-all smirk and cunning, malicious eyes.
We hated each other.
She was going to rob me; I was going to kill her.
I went into the bathroom. She heard the water running and dressed hurriedly. And pulled my bag out from under the bed. Through the crack in the door, I watched her sift through it. Quickly but efficiently.
She found my camera. I felt a dull flash of anger as she put it around her neck. That camera had been through a lot with me. She found the album with my pictures, and flipped through it to see if I had left any bills between the pages. I heard her laugh scornfully as she looked at the snapshots, and I really wanted to break her neck.
She took my camera, my other wallet and my watch. I think she expected to find more, but she was disappointed. Serves you right, I thought viciously.
She gathered the loot up, flipped a finger in the bathroom door’s direction, and took off.
I leaped out of the bathroom as soon as I heard the door close. I had a towel around my waist, but if I ran out into the hall dressed as I was, I would stick out like a redneck in Manhattan. My bag was open on the bed, and I dragged out a pair of jeans, which I struggled into as fast as I could. I snatched up a T-shirt and dashed at the door, yanking it over my head.
I was just in time to see her vanish around the L in the hallway, toward the stairs. The pain in her rear slowed her down a good deal, I dare say. I followed her. I heard her cheap heels click-clacking up the stairs, and I counted till I heard a landing door slam.
I was grimly satisfied. She did have a lair in this sordid place, as I had suspected.
I found myself on the fifth floor. I peeked through the small window set in the stairs access door and saw my slut unlock and enter a room.
Room 516.
I went back to my room. Waited fifteen minutes, then called the front desk. Said my stuff had been stolen, and I wanted the police brought in. The cops were most unhelpful. They’d probably get a cut out of my three thousand dollar camera.
The camera wasn’t a smart thing for a struggling salesman to carry. But it was more than just a camera to me. It was my window to the world, my glimpse of a sane world that made sense. What I saw through the lens was free of the haze.
I left the hotel the next morning, leaving a forwarding number in case my stuff showed up. The clerk twitched and pocketed my card. I knew I’d never receive a call.
I had this author friend who tried for the longest time to get a novel published before he gave up and started pounding the road. He tried selling short stories too, and he used to tell me, ‘Bernie, I just don’t get it. I mean; look at all the crap that does sell. Eclectic rubbish is all. Some random mumblings, weird ass shit that has no pointÉI mean, doesn’t anyone believe in telling a straight forward goddamn story any more? One that actually goes somewhere and tells you something! Is telling a story really that outdated?’
I got in my Plymouth and drove. I think I even managed some sales, but I was more excited than ever in my life. For those glorious hours the haze was but a memory.
In the glove compartment I had a gun. It was a small thing, just a .22, and I knew I wasn’t going to use it on her, but I loaded it and stuck it in my pocket anyway.
I checked into another flea bag hotel fifty miles away, then drove back after midnight, and parked three blocks away. Paid a buck fifty for a night’s parking, and set off on foot. I had bought a tall cane, and used it to pull down the rickety fire escape ladder. I climbed up to the third floor. The entrance wasn’t wired, and I had left it unlocked before I had left. It was still unlocked.
My heart was pounding, my face was flushed, my hands were trembling. I stuck them in my pocket and felt them sweat as I walked nonchalantly toward the stairwell. At this hour no one was out and about. Up to the fifth floor, and I could hardly contain my excitement. I knew it was stupid, but I had to.
I stopped in the stairwell and masturbated. I spilled onto my hand almost as soon as I began jerking myself.
I had never been more alive. In that second I thought I could write one of those eclectic short stories my author buddy hated so much, about the excitement of the hunt.
I know this sounds weird. Perhaps you’ve already labeled me as a sicko. But if you’ve felt the haze, felt the despair, maybe you can understand. I could only imagine what it would be like after she was dead. I would never see the haze again. I wouldn’t have to kill again, either. Once would be enough. Once the haze was gone it would take another twenty years to come back, and by then, hopefully, I would be long dead.
I paused as my hand touched the door handle. I was here now, but just how was I going to get into her room without creating a commotion? I hadn’t thought about this at all, and as I did, I could feel myself deflate. There was no way to do it. I couldn’t pick locks, I was not ready to try and shoulder her door down.
It was then that I realized what I had been about to do. Murder her. Take her life. The gravity of what I was about to do hit me. I sank to the floor as all my bones seemed to turn to jelly.
I curse my life all the time, but I’m smart enough to know it could be a whole lot worse. I have my freedom. Freedom is so important. Without it a man would go insane in no time.
There was the ex-wife in Nevada. I could go and see her. She always said I was distant. I could transfer out to Nevada, start a new beatÉmaybe try with her again. I was up for retirement benefits in two years. I put my head in my hands, suddenly thankful this realization had come to me before I had done something which would have screwed my life forever.
Footsteps were coming up the stairs. I looked up and there she was. My slut. Staring at me with her jaw open. Rather unattractively.
I stood up slowly.
She had my camera.
I couldn’t go to Nevada without my camera.
