The Good Neighbor Read online

  “I know how to get rid of a bloody nose,” said Michael. “I’ve had plenty of practice, thanks to pricks like you. Jesus Christ, man, what’s the matter with you?”

  “C’mon, we were just messing around, right?” said Colt. “You know I wasn’t really trying to hurt you. Right?”

  “Coulda fooled me,” Michael snuffled. He sat up and spit bloody mucus into the fire. Then he lay down again, closing his eyes.

  “Appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything to Francie about it.

  I really am sorry.” Michael sighed.

  “Is it broken?” Colt asked. “I don’t think so.”

  “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

  “Why did you have to hit me at all?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Colt. “Look, if it makes you feel better, you can have a free shot at me. Go ahead. I won’t duck. Take a poke.”

  “Fuck you,” said Michael.

  Colt ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “It was just a game,” he said.

  “Some game.”

  Yeah, some game, came the voice again. Is that how I raised you? To hurt people for fun? Oh, yeah, you’re a big man, all right.

  Oh, shut up, Colt thought. Where do you get off? You didn’t raise me at all.

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  He left Michael lying on the floor and went back into the kitchen, where he paced back and forth between the counter and the op

  98 WILLIAM KOWALSKI

  posite wall. It had been months since his father ’s voice had trou bled him last, and he had dared to hope he was rid of it once and for all; but sheer willpower had never been enough to banish it completely.

  You didn’t have to hit him. You just wanted to, to show him how big and strong you are. Look at you, almost forty years old and still acting like a teenager! You might as well still be in high school!

  “Shut up!” Colt said, hands to his head. “He had it coming. He needed a little shake-up. I didn’t really hurt him.”

  No, you didn’t really hurt him. That’s why there’s blood all over your hands.

  Colt looked down, and saw that there was indeed a large, amor phous smear of Michael’s blood on the back of his right hand, from where he had punched him. He went to the sink and scrubbed it off under a stream of freezing water. He felt his tem ples; blood had caked there, too, where his hair was going gray. He must have been running his hands through his hair, something he did when he was worried. He wet his fingers and rubbed it away. Then he went to the mirror in the bathroom, checking to make sure it was all gone.

  “There,” he said to his reflection. “You happy? Now shut the fuck up. I don’t need any input from you.”

  The voice fell silent.

  Colt went back into the kitchen and leaned on the sink, rocking back and forth on the balls of his toes. He watched the snow swirl downward, the flakes as round and thick as quarters. He could see himself faintly in the glass, and he bared his teeth at himself in a mirthless grin.

  “It was a dark and stormy night,” he said.

  9‌

  The Chicken of Despair

  Parking between two antiquated pickup trucks in the supermar ket parking lot, Francie dashed through the automatic doors just

  ahead of a blast of cold air that made her long skirt swirl around her legs dramatically, something that always gave her the deli cious sensation of being a suicidal poet on the brink of despair. It was the whole reason she wore long skirts in the first place—most poets wore them, she imagined. Also, there was just something immensely perfect about the way a long skirt felt. You were ex posed and protected at the same time.

  The temperature had dropped at least fifteen degrees since they’d left the city that morning. Snowflakes had begun to fall in earnest, batting against cars and buildings and falling fractured to the earth. She imagined she could hear them colliding, like moths. A mousy-haired girl at the cash register looked up in alarm from her cuticles as Francie made her Gothic entrance, as if anyone who would brave weather like this was someone to fear.

  “We gotta close in five minutes,” said the girl. “We’re all gettin’ sent home early ’cause of the storm.”

  100 WILLIAM KOWALSKI

  “I’ll be quick, then,” said Francie. She smiled, to show that she didn’t take the store’s closing personally. The girl stared at her. Still smiling, Francie disentangled the last in a long line of carts and began whipping up and down the aisles, composing a dinner in her head as she went. She grabbed some red peppers, a giant pack of drumsticks, a bag of salad mix, carrots. Something about the weather had trickled deep into her, and she felt dark and de lightful. Big action on the horizon. In the car, on the way here, the eastern sky was so heavy and murderous that it seemed to absorb light from the rest of the world, sucking brightness into itself like a ravenous black hole. It was beautiful. Francie knew it would be months before she adjusted to the lack of buildings, to the imme diacy of the sky. She looked forward to this opening of herself. She was a winter blossom. She felt as though she’d been uncaged. Her heart fluttered free above the rice-and-foreign-food aisle like the dove released from the Ark, looking for that first hint of land. She was Francie Hart, and she lived in the country now. She could re ally say that.

  At the end of the aisle, she came up against a pharmacy counter. Next to the oversized bargain tubs of vitamin C and the herbal medications, a rack of condoms greeted her with polite au dacity, a phalanx of furled penises awaiting the call to action. A kind-looking older man, with a fringe of white hair that ran in a perfect circle from the top of his head to his chin, was doing what looked like closing-up things behind the counter. A pharmacist. He looked Amish, though Francie knew that was impossible. Amish people couldn’t work in pharmacies. Their religion forbade it. Mennonites could, though, the less strict ones anyway. Maybe that was what he was. A Mennonite pharmacist. Good heavens. What more surprises did this new country life hold?

  Francie stopped. Had she found her prescription, she could have had it filled right now. But she still didn’t know where it was. She was going to have to go back into the city and see her doctor again.

  The Good Neighbor

  101

  Wait. She wasn’t going to take them anymore, remember? Oh, right.

  That.

  No, actually the more she thought about that idea, the more in sane it seemed. Remember how bad things were before? she asked herself. Before you went on them? Is that how you want them to be again?

  This line of thought quelled her mood, and suddenly she was keenly aware that it was cold in the supermarket. Over the piped- in music that sounded as though it was filtered through aluminum foil, she could hear the wind tearing at the roof in fits and starts.

  “Excuse me,” Francie said timidly. “I wonder if you could help me?” “We’re closing,” said the Mennonite-looking man, but he didn’t ignore her. He simply stood there, smiling, and Francie felt en

  couraged to go on.

  “I really just had a question,” she said. “I . . . well, do you have any sort of a computer database thingie where you could type in my name and maybe get a copy of my prescription? I used to go to a place in New York, but I lost the actual paper and I don’t know where it is. I was sure I’d put it in my purse, but when I looked later it wasn’t there, and it wasn’t in the boxes with all my important papers either, and I . . . “ She trailed off, aware that she was babbling.

  “What was the name of your other pharmacy?” asked the man. She could see it in her mind, a small corner store on Seventh Avenue, made of red brick. The owner’s name was Bernie. He had a brother who’d retired to Orlando. The pharmacy was about a thousand years old, and it smelled horribly of some kind of ointment. Did it even have a name? If it did, she’d never

  known it.

  “I can’t remember,” said Francie. “I’m having a block.” She tried to laugh. “Don’t you just hate it when that happens? I’ve been there a million times and I never even thought to find ou
t what it was called.”

  102 WILLIAM KOWALSKI

  The man smiled understandingly and moved to his computer. “If you could just spell your last name for me,” he said, “I’ll see if you’re in our system.”

  “H-A-R-T. Hart,” said Francie. “First name, Francine.”

  She watched the pharmacist’s plump fingers as they dashed over the keyboard, and she wondered idly, as she was prone to do during in-between moments, what this man must think of his life. He probably got lots of people with things wrong with them coming to see him every day, she thought. Everything you could think of, from hemorrhoids to cancer. And there were probably plenty of people like her, too, the kind with problems you couldn’t see. Those would be the hardest to deal with, she decided. You could never tell with people like her when they were going to lose it. People who were crazy.

  “I’m sorry,” said the pharmacist. “You’re not in our database.” “I see,” said Francie. She felt pain in her fingers. She looked

  down to see that her knuckles were white around the handle of the shopping cart. “I see,” she said again, forcing herself to let go, gently. Her hands fell from the handle and hung at her sides, while a feeling she had not felt in many years, one she’d hoped never to feel again, began to peck at the underside of her lungs. It was like having a chicken trapped in her abdominal cavity, she thought. That was precisely how it felt when she became anxious. The pink pills were what fed the chicken. When it was sated, every thing was fine, and the chicken stayed quiet. But she had never failed to feed it before, not once in nine years, and she noted with alarm that the chicken was suddenly hungry. It hadn’t been fed in ages, and now it was thinking about making a break for it.

  She said quickly, “Well, is there any way you can . . . look, I’m out, and... I haven’t ever run out of... I’ve been taking these for a long time, you know? I thought I might try going off them, but I can see now that was a mistake. So it’s like, something bad might happen if I stop taking them. I don’t even know what would happen.” She laughed here, trying to make it sound like a joke.

  The Good Neighbor

  103

  The pharmacist smiled again, but not as broadly as before. He looked quickly at the telephone. Francie noticed this, and sud denly the chicken grew larger and more violent. She could actually feel its claws digging into her duodenum.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” said the man.

  Did men like him look at her and have grandfather fantasies? she wondered. Did they daydream about taking her shopping for granddaughter things and sending her checks at Christmas? Then she realized that that was an insane thought. Only a crazy person would think something like that. Grandfather fantasies, indeed.

  “I’m sure you know I can’t do anything without a prescription.

  What exactly is the name of the drug?” the man said.

  “Benedor,” said Francie, wild hope surging in her. Maybe he had some he could slip her! In a paper bag, through the back door!

  “Oh, no, definitely not with Benedor,” said the man. “That’s a psychoactive.”

  Her heart fell. “I know,” said Francie. “It’s just that . . . we just moved here from the city. Today, in fact. And I forgot to get my prescription filled before we left. I’ve run out. And I lost it, any way. I have no idea where it is.” Her voice had begun to tremble, she realized. She was repeating herself. She was going to cry. Oh, shit.

  “I’m really very sorry,” said the man. “I wish I could help. Can’t you just go see your doctor? Tomorrow, maybe?”

  “Oh, my God,” said Francie. “Oh, my God!”

  She said this because the chicken had just burst out of her, through her abdominal wall and out into the clean, white air of the supermarket. She was amazed the pharmacist couldn’t see it, or, if he could, why he didn’t say anything. It was covered in her blood and visceral matter, this chicken, and it strutted oddly along the tiles of the floor, its claws clacking wetly, tentative in the brave new world of reality. Francie put one hand on where she imagined the hole in herself to be and sank slowly to the floor. A poetess on the edge of the cliff. An actress, dying her best onstage

  104 WILLIAM KOWALSKI

  death. But this was real, or seemed to be, and it was no fun at all. “Ma’am?” said the pharmacist, leaning over the counter to look

  at her. “Are you all right?”

  Francie sat down, her legs spread out in front of her like a child. She watched dully as the chicken turned left and wan dered out of sight down the detergents-and-soaps aisle. She be gan to cry.

  “Ma’am?” The pharmacist had somehow appeared on the other side of the counter. Had he actually leapt over it? How heroic. A heroic Mennonite pharmacist. Francie felt his hands on her shoul ders, trying to comfort her. He was asking her grandfatherly ques tions. Are you sick? Do you need water? Do you need to lie down? She ignored him. The pain where the chicken had ex ploded out of her was unbearable. She couldn’t breathe.

  “What’s your phone number?” the pharmacist was asking her. He was holding her hand. She saw him looking at her wedding ring. “I’ll call your husband.”

  Francie sobbed. “I don’t know!” she said. “We don’t even have a phone!” She was going to have to live at the supermarket! She would never have the courage to leave it, not now. Not after the world had seen her weakness.

  “Come in the back and lie down,” said the pharmacist. “We’ll get you taken care of, my dear. Don’t you worry about a thing. Nothing at all is wrong.”

  “Yes, something is,” Francie said. She allowed herself to be helped to her feet and led by the hand, like a child, through the waist-high swinging doors of the pharmacy counter, into the em ployee break room. The pharmacist put her on the couch and took her shoes off. He brought her a glass of water.

  “Here you go,” he said.

  “Something is terribly wrong,” Francie told him, taking the glass. “Something has always been wrong. I’ve just never been able to figure out what it is.” She sipped carefully at the water, hoping it wouldn’t leak out of the hole in her middle. It would surely

  The Good Neighbor

  105

  cause a mess if it did. “That’s been the problem with me all along,” she told the pharmacist. “Only no one knows how to fix it.”

  “Just relax,” said the pharmacist.

  Francie let her head loll back slowly against the wall.

  You stupid, stupid man, she thought. You don’t know what you’re messing with.

  10‌

  Drink This to Make It Better

  Michael had retreated to a corner of the inner living room, separated by a wall from his marauding brother-in-law; and

  there he sat in semidarkness, sulking, waiting for his sister to come home. Colt sponged up some drops of blood from the floor that he’d discovered only after walking through them, assuaging his mild revulsion with the hope that this act of penance would partly absolve him of his violent sin. Darkness had fallen, and Francie wasn’t home yet. Now Colt paced before the fire, worry ing that something might have happened to her, worrying about what would happen to him when she returned. She was, he knew, going to be angry. When the headlights of the Camaro fi nally illuminated the driveway, it was with mixed emotions of relief and apprehension that he came to the door. He watched her get out of the car and mount the porch steps, bearing bags of groceries. At least two inches of snow had accumulated in the driveway. More was falling, whipped into miniature tornadoes by the ever-increasing wind.

  108 WILLIAM KOWALSKI

  “Jesus Christ,” Colt said, as she came into the foyer, “where have you been? I thought you were lost!”

  Francie didn’t answer. She pushed past him silently, heading straight for the kitchen.

  “What’s the matter? Is the car all right?” Colt asked, following her. “You didn’t have an accident, did you?”

  “Go check it yourself, if you’re so concerned,” said Francie. She put the groceries on the counter. Co
lt tailed her closely, suspi cious.

  “What happened?” he demanded. “Nothing happened.”

  “No. Something happened. I can tell. You seem . . . funny.”

  Francie was holding her coat tightly around her middle, as if to prevent her insides from leaking out. She was of two minds con cerning the hole through which the chicken had emerged: her ratio nal mind knew that it was a delusion, but her poet mind believed it was real, and at the moment the poet mind was winning the argu ment hands down.

  “Funny how?” she asked. “Milton Berle funny or Hannibal Lecter funny?”

  “I mean . . . weird.”

  “I’m fine, Coltrane.” She waited for him to go away, but he stayed, hovering in her face like an insistent prosecutor.

  “What do you have in your coat?” “Nothing.”

  “Open it. Let me see.”

  Abruptly she surrendered, as she always did, simply because it was the easiest way to be with him. Pushing her arms aside, he pulled her coat open and looked. She closed her eyes and waited.

  Colt frowned. “Is something bothering you? Inside?” “No. I just . . .” So he didn’t see it. So it wasn’t real. “What?”

  “I had a moment. That’s all.”

  Colt frowned, let go of her coat. He went to the counter and

  The Good Neighbor

  109

  began to unpack the groceries. Francie sagged against the counter, depleted.

  “A moment? What kind of moment?” “It’s nothing, Coltrane.”

  “Oh, I get it. Some kind of woman thing, is it?” he asked over his shoulder.