Frayed Read online

I let out a bitter laugh that wouldn’t stop. Other people scurried to their cars staring in terror, and a bottleneck was forming behind me. Nobody blared a horn though, and no one threw any insults. I grimaced at Trudy and thought about what kind of things she and Gray had discussed in group therapy, and what Cheyenne Califa had overheard or been told.

  “I want to go with you,” she said.

  I got out of the car and grabbed her by the shoulders. The wil to violence had me in its grips again and for a moment I thought I might lash out from sheer frustration. That laugh grew louder. It seemed to be coming from someone else, somebody I respected and looked up to and believed would save me from any enemy.

  “Are you going to hit me, Eddie?”

  I pressed her away and backed off a step. “No.”

  “Good, I’m glad to see you can stil control yourself.

  You’re not going to do anyone any good if you get in an accident in the middle of Broadway. Now, please, col ect yourself.”

  She was right, I had to force myself to think clearly.

  The police would be onto Gray but they’d be looking in al the wrong places. Staking out his ex-wives’

  places, maybe Monty’s office. He’d be out on the beach searching for a twenty-year-old grave where we’d buried most of our friendship and a fair amount of our sanity. Was it already too late for redemption?

  You could always hope that an angel, at least, might forgive you.

  “Get in,” I said.

  She did and I drove down through Central Park, across the east side town, and up the FDR to the Triboro Bridge, averting as much traffic as I could. It would be faster and easier to take the Expressway out to the east end of Long Island, to the wetlands and the spit where our fathers had left us to become men.

  Did I hate them for that? On sweaty nights I turned my face to the pil ow and could smel the stink of dog on me, thick as it had been on my grandfather. Cane.

  Trudy asked, “What was that first story cal ed?”

  “I don’t remember anymore.”

  It sounded like a lie even to myself, but it was the truth. I had never sold the story that Gray and I had dreamed up together. The day I smoked my first cigarette at fifteen I used it to light the corner of the pages and flushed the burning paper down the toilet.

  “You’re haunted by so much guilt. Why?” she asked.

  I liked the way she asked. Without guile or artful deception, a touch of whine in her voice. She sat with perfect posture, upright and knees tight. It was getting me horny again. I wondered how many of my problems would vanish if I just got laid a little more.

  “Have you done much evil in your life, Eddie?”

  “I know it’s your job to ask questions, but real y, don’t you think you should at least attempt to make them pertinent?”

  “I think this may be very pertinent in regard to your extreme sense of culpability and remorse.”

  Whenever I used words like ‘culpability’ in my fiction, the editors would circle it in blue pencil and put a slash through it. “Wel , let’s get our definitions clear first then. What do you consider evil? And what do you consider much?”

  “Let’s use the general y accepted terms.”

  “Accepted by whom?”

  “Society at large.”

  “You mean the norm. Except there is no norm.

  Everybody is just trying to stay out of the bin, except with the Clinic, where they’re doing whatever they can to stay in. Nobody above the age of three has a right not to feel guilty, doctor.” The back of my neck heated until I felt on fire. I drove wel , reflexes sharpened with manic energy, veering through traffic with a greater confidence than ever before. “By the way, where’d you learn to make brownies like that?”

  “Can we please stay focused on the issue?”

  “Of my evil? No, let’s not. How about Gray’s evil?

  He’s the one who just murdered a woman.”

  “I don’t believe that. There must be another explanation.”

  I was too stunned to speak for a moment. The naiveté of these people at a state-run psychiatric facility real y shook me up. I made a promise to myself that I’d write a letter to my congressman as soon as I had the final showdown with my homicidal best friend.

  The storm grew worse until the Expressway had smal rivers rushing down the exit ramps. I had to turn the windshield wipers up to high. I thought about Gray in some jacked car zipping along ahead of me. I knew he would be just as bolstered by the symbol of storm as I was, as if nature reflected the tempest of our spirits. God watched ringside.

  “You’re driving too fast,” she said.

  “I’m doing fine.”

  “Please, slow down. The roads are terribly wet.”

  “You want to get off here?”

  But she was right again. I had to regain control.

  Gray had loosened something inside me and whatever it was had to be snapped back into place, where it belonged. Soon.

  It took over an hour to get to the state park. Gray and I used to enjoy the train ride on the LIRR, those Sunday afternoons after church when we’d travel out this far from the city, alone or with our fathers, the back cars of the train nearly empty, and then we’d walk the mile from the station through the park and its wetlands and out to the Isle of Dogs.

  “It might not be safe,” I said.

  “He wouldn’t hurt me. He’s my patient.”

  “You mean your guest.”

  “Please don’t be contrary.”

  “Who me?”

  Because of the weather the park was empty. I rol ed into the main lot and got up as far as I could to the paths leading back into the woods and down to the inlet. There were no other vehicles in sight, but I could feel Gray skulking in the underbrush somewhere, smirking. I glanced over at Trudy and she was damn near smiling. She could sense him nearby as wel .

  “You’ve fal en for him, haven’t you? That’s why you’ve given him al this attention.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You real y think he could ever love you? He doesn’t love anybody. His first two wives kil ed themselves.

  Did he tel you that?”

  Her nostrils flared and she almost started to pout.

  Then she caught herself and stiffened in her seat. So Gray had kept some secrets after al . “Which direction is this isle?”

  “Fol ow me.”

  We got out and she reached to grab my hand, al owing me to tug her along as we made our way through the overgrown paths heading down to the sawgrass-covered shore. The pelting cold rain hurt but she didn’t make a sound. The woods grew thicker, the way more haphazard, as the ground shifted from pasture to rock and silt. A few hundred yards on it changed to black mud, and then to a near-swamp with eddying salt water and whirlpools that left behind crabs and occasional lobsters bucking across the stones. No wonder our fathers had loved it here so much. It duplicated nearly every aspect of nature, compacted into an area no larger than a couple of city blocks.

  The storm remained on top of us but seemed to be easing, abiding but expectant. Lightning bloomed behind the roiling silver clouds, and thunder grumbled like an annoyed old man. I hadn’t thought it through. I hadn’t dressed properly and I started to shiver badly.

  Just like when I was a kid, I made for a lousy nature boy. I bled from a dozen scratches and my clothes were ripped. My shoes were soggy with muck.

  I turned to see how Trudy was getting along and she was gone.

  “Oh shit.”

  I cal ed her name and retraced my steps through the brush but didn’t see her.

  It didn’t matter much.

  I already knew she wasn’t here to see Gray returned to the Clinic, but to save him from me. She loved him. Of course she did. Al women loved him.

  I kept moving through the woods, branches clawing at my forehead and clawing my arms. I felt like a kid again, ful of fear and conviction. I kept prowling along, waiting for Gray to step out into the middle of my path, looking stro
ng and impossible to defeat.

  We can only do what is given us to do. I bounced into rotting maple tree trunks and kept getting snarled in sticker bushes. The land broke wide in a series of hil ocks, with menacing stands of virgin pine that spread for miles across the other side of the park. I checked for footprints and saw none as I crossed the smal spit of sand and mud and weeds leading to the Isle of Dogs.

  This was it.

  Final y, we’ve come back to where our covenant was made.

  I moved in a fast crawling-crouch, ducking behind whatever bushes and stumps that I could, as the rising inlet waters heaved and rippled. I slowed and slid to my knees.

  Now I only had to wait for Gray to find me.

  I couldn’t help myself. I started writing.

  The tales were always there, imploring me to tel them. To put words to them, gut them out to the end. It had happened when my mother died and I held her hand in the hospital, taking my mind from the sterile, frigid room of her vainly struggling body and bringing myself elsewhere.

  So now I was tel ing myself the story of the Isle of Dogs, where two boys with imaginations too powerful for the constraints of their friendship decided to—

  Someone stepped out from behind a tree a dozen feet to my left. Our gazes flicked against each other so hard that it actual y brought my chin up. I sucked in air but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or yel or what.

  She did a slow walk from the other side of the weeds and kept her eyes so steadily on me that I let out a groan. Jesus Christ.

  It was Cheyenne Califa, the one Gray had strangled.

  11

  THE POOR TREATMENT OF DOGS,

  FLINCHING, PATTING OF THE HEAD

  Her powerful presence continued to exude that sense of strength. The madwoman from the Clinic who had been murdered by Gray, with his belt.

  Just as she did before, she got up close, doing a slow once-over of my face, taking in every angle and plane, staring so deeply into me that I nearly squirmed. As beautiful as she was I had to force myself not to back away. And then, with amazing speed and clarity, the pieces drew into place.

  She wore boots and a slicker. Her gold-flecked, dark eyes glittered with urgency. “Eddie, you have to listen to me—”

  I took her hand and squeezed it with a might that was part hate and part passion. She’d used me pretty goddamn wel for someone who’d only met me for five minutes during the hootenanny, while I was chowing down on some chicken parm. “Let me guess. You’re actual y Dr. Califa.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, lady.”

  “I’m sorry to have deceived you, Eddie.”

  “Yeah, everybody is. How did you find this place?”

  “During one of our later sessions, Gray gave me detailed instructions on how to find this area.”

  “You got here before me. How long have you been waiting?”

  “Hours.”

  “And Trudy was another guest who, ah, left the Clinic without permission?”

  “Yes, we’ve only just discovered she was missing.

  We tried to phone you, but—”

  I started laughing but stopped abruptly before I went too far with it. I had a habit of doing that more and more lately. “Yeah, I took it off the hook. She came to visit me while I was at the motel in Griffinsvil e too.”

  “I didn’t realize that. She must have left and returned again before anyone suspected she was gone from the grounds.”

  “Amazing, huh?” I growled, the rage coiling through me. “Considering security is so tight.”

  “She was voluntarily admitted, Eddie, she can leave anytime she wants.”

  My headache grew worse when I tried to track that. I wavered for a second and Cheyenne—Dr. Califa—

  moved to me and held me up, just as she’d done at the party. I was feeling used, and not in a good way, but I couldn’t tel by whom or for what objective. I pressed her away from me. “So he didn’t murder anybody.”

  “No.”

  “But since he was committed and escaped, you’re after him. Did you cal the police? Are they nearby?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hel not?”

  She pul ed her shoulders back and straightened.

  She showed a real sense of duty and purpose, pride and responsibility. I could barely restrain myself from kissing her. “I thought it best if I handled this myself.”

  “What?”

  “I think I can bring him back with a modicum of distress.”

  “Oh my Christ, you love him too.”

  Of course she did. Al women loved him.

  I fel back against a sticker bush, and the more it cut into me the harder I laughed. “You people are crazier than your inmates. And yeah, I cal ed them inmates, not guests.”

  “Eddie, I need you to tel me something.”

  “Wait. First I want to know...did a girl commit suicide by swal owing cigarette butts?”

  “Yes, it was a horrible tragedy.”

  “Then Howards lied.”

  “Yes. The matter is stil being investigated, and he’s up for a board of review hearing. He wasn’t about to discuss the situation with you. He knew you were a writer, and he may have believed you were a journalist as wel .”

  I didn’t know what to believe anymore, which was probably for the best. Treat every lie as if it was true and you don’t need to worry about it.

  There are times when your lust and love and the steaming mass of your loneliness and desires boils over and pours through your veins like the fire that ate away your first written story. I grabbed her by the shoulders and drew her to me, seeing the crazy beauty from the party, the prim psychiatrist who loved my best friend. The insane resentment had been there from the beginning and had never left.

  I mashed my lips against hers and moaned and felt no resistance or passion. It didn’t stop me. I pul ed open her slicker and flattened my hands against her breasts. She didn’t move away and didn’t encourage.

  The rain ran off her hood and poured down the sides of her head while she stared without expression. I pressed my cheek to hers and turned her face aside, and licked at the throbbing pulse of her throat as if I could pul her love from it. It felt as if I might be crying. I murdered a name I did not recognize. She patted my head like I was a dog and I flinched away.

  So now I was tel ing myself the story of the Isle of Dogs, where two boys with imaginations too powerful for the constraints of their friendship decided to create an angel from out of the burning summer sand.

  Where she stood—

  “Why is this place cal ed the—” she started to ask, but I’d had it with questions.

  “Why don’t you check with Howards? Or does he lie to you too? I already went through this with him. Or better yet, ask your boyfriend Gray. This is his sort of pil ow talk.”

  “Do it again. Tel me.”

  “In the summer people would bring their pets out here. The dogs would run out onto the spit during low tide and get stuck when the water came in.”

  “Who named it?”

  “We did, doctor.”

  “What did you do here?”

  “We buried something.”

  “What did you bury, Eddie?”

  “Maybe I buried Eddie.”

  “Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t be petulant.”

  “He’s never going to love you either, you know.”

  But none of them would ever believe that. Not his first two wives, who’d committed suicide, or Nola who ruined her flesh for him, or Trudy who left paradise to work his wil on me, or this one who was playing a ghost, with her own unfulfil ed needs.

  “Eddie, please—”

  Always saying my name, as if I might forget it or my place in the chain. I only existed to aid them in their quest to own Gray’s heart. Every one of them my own adversary in a way I didn’t want to think about.

  “We never knew her name,” I said. “We cal ed her Jazrael. The angel of our story. We kil ed and buried
her. In a muddy grave off the shore of a nameless inlet.”

  She didn’t accept that. “Didn’t you name it after yourself? Cane. Cane. That’s Italian for dog, isn’t it?

  Didn’t you name this isle after yourself?”

  “Maybe,” I told her. “Sure.”

  She repeated, “This is your place. What did you bury? Tel me.”

  “Ask him,” I said as Gray stepped forward through the trees. His teeth were bared.

  So were mine.

  12

  THE MOMENT WE’VE ALL BEEN

  WAITING FOR, NOT ENOUGH BLOOD,

  TOO MUCH SYMBOLISM

  Gray’s voice, thick with intent and rage and history, was no different from my own voice. Sometimes I couldn’t tel which one of us was speaking, we were so alike. “We loved her. Jazrael. She found us. She was ours, but we grew envious of each other. Do you know what that’s like?”

  Cheyenne Califa’s gorgeous face lit up like a high-powered lamp. She glowed there in the storm. Yes, she knew what it was like. Al that happiness in her features faded in an instant as Trudy slipped up behind Gray and placed an arm around his waist.

  He was stil talking. Or maybe it was me. “To hate the person you love most because you want to love somebody else even more? That’s what happened. It drove us insane.”

  The other one agreed.

  Cheyenne Califa—perhaps psychiatrist, perhaps deranged mental patient—her beautiful features ful of fear and passion and loss now, knowing that Gray could never be entirely hers even if she or someone else healed the shreds of his soul, looked down at the current of mud streaming past her feet.

  She real y didn’t understand him at al . She said,

  “You stil believe that loving the angel drove you...?”

  “Yes, damn it.”

  So now I was tel ing myself the story of the Isle of Dogs, where two boys with imaginations too powerful for the constraints of their friendship decided to create an angel from out of the burning summer sand.

  Where she stood before them, her wings of bril iant gold, and charged them to keep her secret. But the burden was too great, and eventual y they kil ed and buried her.

  But every story needs a twist. These boys were both crazy through no fault of their own or anyone else’s. You cannot put a reason to al your malfunctions. You can’t put a name to al your iniquities and depravity. You love and hate and fear the things you do without sense or logic. You can even murder without a reason. These boys only thought they were kil ing an angel of their own creation, but in reality...let’s