Quasi-fictionconstruction
The Splotch
The splotch started as a mere collection of tiny gray dots on the oatmeal-colored northernmost wall of Rick's Kip's Bay apartment. He noticed the splotch one April night while he was watching the Sci-Fi channel and eating a yellowtail handroll he picked up along with some other sushi from the new place on the corner. The splotch sat directly above the television, and at first glance, Rick thought it was a swarm of sugar ants. He stood up and walked over to investigate, and finding nothing living, he sat back down and figured that he just hadn't noticed the wall's imperfection before. He wasn't much for noticing things in the apartment. He'd resented it the moment he moved in, years ago, from the brownstone now occupied by his ex-wife, Kim.
A few days after Rick noticed the splotch, he was laid off from his job in the technology department of an investment bank, and because of this, was afforded a lot more time to look at the splotch, and thus, to realize that it was changing. A week after Rick stopped working, the splotch was the size of a quarter and had achieved a much darker color: it was now almost black. The following Monday, the splotch had grown to be about six inches at its widest point, and it was starting to have a slightly fuzzy texture. A curious wipe with a wet paper towel proved fruitless, as did a more aggressive wipe with a Clorox bleach cleaning towellette.
Rick called his landlord and left a message about the splotch. The landlord was an elderly Chinese man who was notoriously unavailable and unwilling to make repairs.
Rick's daughter Taylor, a high school sophomore, was going through a long goth phase that showed no sign of letting up. It secretly amused Rick that goth was still a phase kids could go through, because it made him feel less old, less like an uncool dad. He liked when Taylor listened to music he had loved in the late 80s as a young quasi-goth himself, though he and Taylor's mother had agreed to maintain a façade of disapproval for the whole thing. Taylor's mother had never gone through a goth phase and did not want Taylor to get into drugs, or to get pregnant, or to get a tattoo, or to decide against attending college. Taylor had already shown Rick her tattoo, which was on the inside of her left forearm: two teeth marks, in the style of a vampire, with a droplet of blood aiming towards her hand.
Taylor stayed with her father every other weekend. It had been this way for the past seven years. At the beginning, the arrangement had been awkward. Rick's apartment was spacious but a one-bedroom, and Taylor did not like sleeping on the sofabed in the living room. She complained about the sound the springs made every time she moved, and she complained about the noise from the street below and the scary shadows on the ceiling and the annoying light from the microwave clock in the kitchen. By the time she was eleven, they'd settled into a routine, and Taylor was allowed to have friends sleep over and to watch movies very late at night and to make messes she'd never be allowed to make in her mother's house. At sixteen, she drifted in and out, coming home late.
All of Taylor's boyfriends had that wormy look, lately: pale, sleepy-eyed, boneless-looking heads poking out of shapeless jackets covering slight shoulders. Taylor seemed to have a preference for, of all things, blond eyelashes. Rick could see her marrying an albino.
She came out of the bathroom wearing a towel and a lot of black eyeliner. She'd dyed her long hair black a few months ago, and the blond roots were starting to show. It gave the effect of a halo.
"Morning, kiddo."
"What up, Mister Daddo," she said in a tone somewhere between her sarcasm de rigueur and the silliness she'd had as a child. She sat down at the breakfast bar and began to shuffle a deck of cards Rick had left on the counter.
"I'm making pancakes."
"Put chocolate chips in mine."
"Of course."
She shuffled the cards again, this time, dropping most of them on the floor.
"Where'd you go last night?" Rick had heard Taylor come in around 1 am.
She rolled her eyes. "A big huge sex orgy. You wouldn't believe the things I did."
"Hmm. Where'd you go last night?"
"I sucked the dicks of New York's most esteemed businessmen and politicians. Everyone was wearing masks. I got paid seven thousand dollars."
"Only seven thousand?" Rick did his best never to show shock. Taylor was into attempting to shock him. It usually didn't work, so she had to try very hard. "I heard the going rate for that kind of gig was at least ten grand. You got robbed, kid. I'm disappointed."
"Ew, dad."
"You started it."
"You said gig."
"Here's your pancakes."
She took a bite, chewed, nodded, and placed her fork down. "Hey dad? What's going on with that wall?"
Rick bribed Taylor into spending the day helping him paint the wall with the splotch. It was a nice day--sunny, mid 70s--so they walked to the Home Depot on 23rd street and pored over little square samples of paint. They bought a pail of robin's egg blue and a pail of white primer for good measure. Five coats of paint later (primer, blue, primer, blue, blue), the splotch was darker than ever. There was something weird about its texture. It would not hold paint. Painting over it reminded Rick of trying to write with a water-based magic marker on a shiny plastic toy as a kid. The new color only served to display the splotch more elegantly. For a moment, Rick felt himself going crazy as he suspected he could hear it sigh happily in its new blue trappings.
The paint fumes were too much for Taylor, so she slept in the bedroom and Rick slept in the bathtub. He awoke in a cold, soggy mess of fabric. He'd turned the water on in his sleep.
Nine days later, and in the middle of an unseasonal heatwave, the splotch had become subtly but absolutely three-dimensional. Small bulbous orbs grew from it, leaning in every which direction. It was an inkblot card squared. Little blue flecks of paint interrupted the black now and then, as though to mock Rick for even trying to cover it up. It was now about three feet by four feet with a relief that varied from zero to almost an inch.
Rick left his landlord another message. This one had a more urgent tone. He knew he would not receive a call back, but keeping the landlord abreast of the splotch seemed like the thing to do.
He found an industrial hand-held sander for sale on Craigslist and took a cab to go pick it up from the out-of-the-way Queens factory that currently housed it. It was a big sander. Rick hadn't much experience with sanders--this was his first sander, and, he hoped, his last--but it seemed a lot bigger than a sander should be. It was over a hundred pounds and as he carried it up the stairs to his apartment, he could not fit his arms all the way around the fat square girth of its shiny white box. He hugged it like he'd hug a mauling bear, his arms numb and helpless. His back strained. His knees nearly buckled. Second landing. Two more flights of stairs. It had to be ninety seven degrees already, and it was only eleven in the morning.
"Need a hand?" The voice was female, light.
"Nope. I got it."
"That's one huge box all right."
"Yup." He grunted.
"What is it, a big TV?"
Rick felt himself losing the battle, so he set the box down and sat on it, wiping the sweat from his eyes. The female voice belonged to a chubby, pretty blond woman in her late thirties. She was leaning against the doorframe between the landing and the third floor hallway, wearing a red sundress and carrying a book and a glass of what looked to be iced tea. He tapped the image on the side. "Sander."
"Sander?" She leaned over and squinted to inspect.
He moved his arm back and forth in the air to demonstrate. "It sands."
"It's really big."
"Yup."
"So are you a carpenter or something?"
"Huh?"
"Sander…"
"Oh. Oh, no. I just have to sand my wall. "
"I didn't know people sanded walls."
"Yeah, well, it's kind of a last ditch effort."
She laughed, the way Rick had known some women do to hide their confusion, as though he had told an old joke, one that she had heard a million times. "I'm Aimee," she said. "Just moved in last week. Third floor." She nodded towards the hallway. "From Minnesota." She fanned herself with her book. "God, it's hot! And you are?"
"Rick." He paused and tried to figure out why she looked at him expectantly. "Oh. Fifth floor."
"The penthouse!" she exclaimed. "Rick in the penthouse! Fancy!"
"It's not really a penthouse. It's just the fifth floor."
"You sure you don't need a hand with that sander? I'm stronger than I look."
Rick thought Aimee looked plenty strong. "I'm sure. I'll be fine. Just taking a break."
"Well, okay. But when you're done, feel free to come stop by for some iced tea to cool down! Apartment 3-F."
"Sure thing," he said. "Thanks."
The sanding didn't go well. The splotch refused to be sanded. Instead of the sander sanding layers of splotch off the wall, the splotch tore layers of sandpaper off the sander. After a sweaty, angry hour of failure, Rick put down the sander, walked to the kitchen, and came back with his giant meat cleaver. He hacked it against the splotch repeatedly, swearing and yelling, sweat splattering from his forehead with every slam of the cleaver against the wall. Nothing happened. He dug his drill out of the closet, screwed in the largest bit, and tried to drill a hole through the splotch. The bit broke and the motor groaned. Rick thought of a different approach: he would carve the splotch entirely out of the wall and then bother with filling the hole later. He drilled twenty-six holes a few millimeters apart alongside the left edge of the splotch. He swept through the few connecting bits of wall with the meat cleaver. It seemed promising. He drilled more holes alongside the bottom edge, and the top edge, and the right edge. By now, it was six pm. An entire day gone. The splotch did not plop out of the wall the way it did in Rick's hopeful fantasy. It just remained there, newly framed by a messy square gashed into its surroundings. Rick's tv and bookshelf, which used to occupy the splotch's wall, seemed to gaze resentfully at the scene from their new home in the corner. Rick needed a break.
Apartment 3-F was a lot smaller than Rick's, but Aimee had obviously spent a great deal of time and care decorating the place. Everything matched. Everything had the sheen of newness and purposefulness usually seen in model homes.
"I'm so glad you came by," she said when she opened the door. "I haven't really gotten to meet anyone in the building yet! This will be great! Please come in!"
Rick apologized for his sweaty clothes, which he hadn't even thought about until he felt keenly out of place in Aimee's pristine apartment. He stood in the middle of the kitchen while Aimee pulled tumblers from the cupboard. She had shiny pots and pans hanging artfully from hooks over her stove. He looked around and crossed and uncrossed his toes inside his shoes.
"Sanding all day?" she asked, handing him a glass of the promised iced tea. She had changed her dress since the morning. Now she wore something sleeveless and blue with ruffles along the bottom.
"Actually, yes," he said. He didn't elaborate, hoping she would not ask any more questions about the sanding.
As though she could read his mind, Aimee smiled and sat down at her glass top kitchen table and motioned for Rick to sit as well. "I read all day. Read and drank iced tea on the roof deck. God, I love the roof deck. For me, that was the selling point of this building." She ran her hands through her hair and shook out her curls in a manner that Rick could not help but find fetching.
Rick said that he couldn't agree more about the roof deck, but he was lying, since he had been on the roof deck three times, all during the winter to watch Taylor make snowmen in the urban version of a backyard.
Less because they wanted to than because it seemed like the right thing to do, Rick and Aimee culminated the evening with sex on a tan microsuede divan. Aimee's flesh was curiously not pliant, as though her body were a tire filled with too much air. She fell asleep right afterwards, one leg on the divan and one leg bent to rest on the Oriental rug in a way that called to mind reclining ladies in baroque art. Rick found a pad of post-its and left a note saying he hoped they'd see each other again soon. He debated whether he meant this or whether he was going to make an effort to avoid running into her.
Back at his apartment, Rick was once again faced with the splotch, which looked shinier than it had earlier that day. Rick poked it with his finger and it was damp to the touch but not giving--less the flesh of a Seaworld dolphin and more the clamminess of a cement basement floor.
Once again, Rick drilled holes. He drilled the new holes exactly parallel to the previous holes. He drilled through drywall and studs. He slid the meat cleaver into the wall and tried to use it as a lever to pop out the splotch. It wouldn't budge. He picked up the sander again and sanded the wall all the way around the splotch, thinking that once that part of the wall was gone, he could slice the splotch off like the end of a piece of bread. He sanded and sanded and sanded until the air was thick and snowy with drywall dust and everything looked unreal.
He stopped sanding when the color of the diminishing wall turned from white to grey to black. "Oh, no," he said, though he was not customarily one to speak aloud to himself. He stepped back. The part of the splotch he could see was merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Only part of it had surfaced. The thing could very well run the length of the entire wall.
The next morning at 11am, a note sat on Rick's doormat. It was folded intricately, origami-like. Rick picked it up and pulled it apart, wincing and unable to decide if he regretted the previous night with Aimee. But the note was not from Aimee. The note read:
Dear Neighbor,
I am sorry to bother you. I live in the apartment below yours (4-B) and I want to ask you to please not perform house repairs late at night--the machine you used last night was quite loud, and the walls in this building are unfortunately thin. Again, sorry to bother. Feel free to stop by sometime to discuss!
OMAR
Rick cringed with embarrassment. He hadn't even considered the time. He'd stopped sanding around 3am.
It was a Taylor weekend. She'd come at 6, after school and after getting her things from her mother's house. That gave Rick a very small amount of time to clean up all the drywall from the living room, find some sort of sheet or curtain to hang over the splotch--he didn't want Taylor to see how bad it had gotten, or to see what her father had done to the wall--and to pick of some groceries. He decided he also had to buy Omar a six pack and to leave him a note of apology. It seemed like the right thing to do.
The drywall took hours to vacuum and dust away. Rick went through four vacuum cleaner bags. He had a dearth of sheets, so he pinned an old shower curtain over the splotch and the surrounding disaster. For good measure, he stuck duct tape alongside each edge. He could tell Taylor it was industrial art.
No. He couldn't.
The note he wrote to Omar said:
Hey Omar,
I got your note. I'm really sorry. I wasn't thinking and I didn't realize how late it was. Hope this makes it up to you. Sorry for being a jerk. It won't happen again.
Rick from the 5th floor.
He taped it to a six pack of Brooklyn Lager, but as Rick was placing it on Omar's doormat, Omar opened the door.
"Oh. Hey--" said Rick.
"Oh man, you must be the guy from the fifth floor?" Omar looked at the beer. "Aw, you didn't have to do that."
Omar was a little taller than Rick, maybe about five eleven. He had a mess of black curls and very straight teeth. He wore a variously stained tshirt that said "FBI Female Body Inspector." The sleeves were ripped off.
"It's not a big deal," said Rick, handing Omar the beer. "Anyway, sorry about the noise."
"Well, now I feel like a dick," Omar said. "And you know, I am a dick. I make noise late at night too sometimes. I'm always doing shit. I used a chainsaw a few nights ago on this piece I'm working on. That thing is so loud." He paused. "Seriously. I feel like a dick."
Rick couldn't tell if he was kidding. "Sorry."
"Well, at least come in and have one of these."
"I really can't. My daughter's coming later and I have to--"
"Yes you can. Come on. Won't take long."
"Wish I could, but--"
"You have to. Otherwise I'll still feel like a dick." He smiled at Rick and stepped aside, gesturing for him to come in.
Rick shrugged and went inside.
Omar's apartment had the same layout as Aimee's (albeit with an extra bedroom and a smaller kitchen), but had hardly any furniture. Canvases, paint, plastic tubing, plaster, chains, pieces of wood in various sizes, glue, paper mache heads, and--true to Omar's word--a small chainsaw were strewn about the floor. The living room had one sectional couch--amorphous black leather--and no coffee table or television or bookshelf or plants. What did it did have, though, was a splotch of its own.
Omar stood at the breakfast bar, opening two beers using the edge of the counter. Rick could not stop staring at the splotch. He figured out that it was on the same wall that his very own splotch was on. Omar's splotch was in a much earlier stage. It was not black yet--a medium grey--and it was about the size of a grown man's fist. It appeared to still only have two dimensions.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Go ahead," Omar said. He handed Rick a beer.
"What's that on your wall?"
Omar shook his head. "I have no idea. Dirt, I guess."
"Ever try to clean it off?"
Omar looked at him strangely. "Nah. It doesn't really bother me that much. Besides, it was here when I moved in."
"When did you move in?"
Omar squinted his eyes. "A few months ago. Right after I graduated." He smiled. "MFA in sculpture. The most useful degree ever."
Rick nodded. He paused, and then decided to do it. "Listen," he said. "I'm going to tell you something. See that on your wall there? That's why I was using power tools at 2am last night."
"Uh… okay."
"I have the same thing in my apartment. In the same place. Well, I did. Now it's a lot worse. And it's just insane, really insane, that you have the same thing. I wonder…"
"What do you mean it got worse."
Rick told him the whole story.
By four, they were up in Rick's apartment, drunk and with Omar's chainsaw. Omar hacked at the splotch from all angles, but to no avail. He examined the splotch closely, poking and prodding it. "This is so strange," he said. "This material. I just don't know."
"It's IN the wall," Rick said. "I'm afraid it might be some sort of living organism."
"Yes."
Another six pack later, and they noticed that the splotch had begun to emit a rank, musty odor. "Let's go back down to my apartment," Omar suggested. "I've got more beer."
"I've got to wait for my kid."
"Leave her a note. Tell her to come here. You don't want her with this thing anyway."
In Omar's apartment, they made a list of other possible ways to get rid of the splotch. Acid seemed like a possibility. A more powerful sander did not. Hacking off tiny pieces one at a time would be improbable. A strong laser might work. A few more beers later, Omar asked Rick about his daughter, and Rick told him about Taylor's birth, the time he lost her at Macy's when she was three, her goth phase, and the entire story of the divorce from Taylor's mother. Alcohol tended to make Rick long-winded and weepy, and when he started to cry, Omar moved closer to him and put his arm around him in comfort and Rick rested his head on Omar's shoulder and Omar patted him on the back with his other hand. Omar said "It will be okay, man" and his breath felt hot against Rick's neck and Rick felt drunk and confused and sad and helpless. He moved his head just a little bit and Omar tilted his face just a little bit and they were both breathing very hard and, as though he were performing an experiment, Rick did not pull back and sit up and mutter that he had to get going, even though he thought that perhaps he should do just that. Instead he stayed where he was and Omar ran his fingers through Rick's hair and at that exact moment in time, in that weird pocket where boundaries blur and definitions fade and the fact that everything is relative to everything else makes it seem as though all things and facts and events and times and people are all just rotating and revolving haphazardly in space like lost planets and that nothing is anchored to anything else so no action or inaction can be right or wrong or true or false--at that exact moment, while Omar was petting Rick's head and their faces were close enough together that it would have been possible for them to kiss each other, Taylor walked in.
"Well, Jesus Christ," she said.
Rick jumped back. "Taylor. I want you to meet our neighbor. My new friend, Omar."
Omar stood up and held out his hand. Taylor stepped forward and shook it.
"Dad. Your apartment is disgusting. I mean, it's really foul now. It smells. I don't want to stay with you. It's that bad."
"You went in?" Rick panicked. He had cleaned up the drywall mess earlier that morning, but he and Omar had made a brand new mess with the chainsaw.
"I dropped my stuff off and then came right down here like a good girl. I think I'm going to call mom and go back there, if that's all right. No offense."
Rick's head spun. Ten beers? Eleven beers? "But… but the custody agreement says--"
"Dad, what would the custody agreement say about your wall."
"Your mother is out of town this weekend. I'm not that stupid, kiddo. You cannot stay in her empty house. She'd kill me for allowing it."
"Watch me." Taylor turned to go. "No way am I sleeping in your creepy apartment."
"We can stay at a hotel," Rick said.
"Wait, wait," Omar said. "How about this. I have an extra bedroom. You can both stay here."
"I am not having a sleepover with my father's gay boyfriend!" Taylor yelled.
"He's not my boyfriend," Rick said, feeling weak.
"I'm going to sleep at Oriana's house tonight."
Rick suspected Oriana's house was code for a boy's house. But he didn't fight. "Okay. Let's go get your stuff."
Taylor was right. The apartment was rank. The smell was much worse than before. The splotch had now grown jagged points where once it had globules and the part that had been recessed behind the drywall before Rick had sanded it off now stuck out as much as the rest of the splotch. It took up nearly the entire wall, from floor to ceiling, and when examined from across the room, it appeared to quiver and undulate in an unsettlingly organic way.
Rick could not look away. Taylor gathered her belongings. He went closer. His inspection revealed a new addition to the splotch: maggots. Tiny, crawling, wiggling packs of maggots moving within the peaks and valleys of the splotch. They pooled forth from miniscule holes.
The smell had changed character. What was once an animal, musky smell had become chemical and too sweet. Sharp. It smelled of formaldehyde and burnt margarine and the type of nail polish remover Taylor's mother used to use. It was strong. Rick breathed and could taste the splotch in his mouth.
Taylor stomped into the room, holding all her bags. "Okay, I'm going," she said. "Sorry."
"I'm sorry," Rick said.
Taylor looked at him. "I can't believe you're gay. And you didn't even tell me. I'd tell you if I were gay."
"I'm not gay."
"You were totally making out with that guy."
"I was not." He didn't want to say that he was crying and that Omar had been comforting him. Somehow, that was worse.
"Whatever." She turned around and left. Rick walked around the perimeter of the apartment and opened all the windows. He put in another panicky call to the evasive landlord. He sat down on his couch and miserably wondered what he would do next.
Rick fell asleep on the couch, and woke up the next morning to three quick raps on the door. He walked over and peered out the peephole. Aimee, wearing a black bikini. She carried a pink tray of sugar cookies and had a pair of sunglasses on her head. He opened the door.
"Hey there," he said, trying his best to sound normal and casual and sane.
"Hey. I just baked some cookies and I thought I'd bring you up a few on my way to the roof deck." She cocked her head and smiled and Rick realized that she wanted to have sex again. He felt neutral on the subject.
"Well, wow. Thank you!" He took the tray and held it awkwardly. "I'd invite you in, but it's really kind of messy in here…"
"Oh, I don't mind a little mess," she said quickly. "And I've really been wanting to see the penthouse!"
"It's really very messy," he said again.
"Seriously, doesn't matter to me! I won't stay long."
He didn't know how to get out of it, so he reluctantly stepped aside and gestured Aimee inside.
"Very spacious!" she said. She walked to the kitchen, made admiring murmurs about the appliances and the granite breakfast bar, and then turned around to examine the living room.
Her face went from interest to confusion to disgust. She stepped a few feet closer to the splotch, and then backed away. "Oh… oh wow," she said.
"My wall needs to be repaired," Rick said. He tried to sound rueful, tsk-tsky about the landlord, but instead his voice sounded strained and helpless.
"Oh… wow, the smell," Aimee stepped back further. "What IS that? Oh, oh dear. I'm so sorry. I'm feeling kind of faint. How do you…" Aimee wobbled and her knees started to give out. Rick rushed forward to catch her, and, not wanting to prolong her misery by keeping her in the room with the splotch, carried her to his bedroom and laid her on his bed.
There was a pounding on the door. The peephole revealed a tiny, pointy-featured woman with black curls to her shoulders. She looked at her watch and shifted her weight from one denim clad leg to the other. It was his ex-wife, Taylor's mother. Kim.
"I thought you were out of town," Rick said, opening the door three inches.
She scrunched her mouth together in a way that tried to be a half smile. Rick always thought it made her look uncomfortable, constipated. Her real smile was lovely and extremely rare. "Trip was cancelled at the last minute."
He stood in the door staring at her, trying to translate the French phrase on her tshirt. She raised her eyebrows. "Oh," Rick said. Fuck, he thought. "Come in. Please." He stepped aside to let her pass him into the narrow hallway, cluttered with stacked newspapers and magazines and garbage bags of sanded drywall and paint..
"Oh, my," Kim said. "Remodeling?"
"Not really."
Kim stepped around the debris in the manner of a cat. "Tay asked me to pick up her cello. She said she forgot it, and Donald moved her lesson to Saturday this week.."
Tay. He'd loathed the name Taylor when Kim had insisted upon it. It sounded like something to name a puppy, or something a prostitute might call herself if her real name were something too serious like Elizabeth or Rachel or Katherine. And Tay was even worse.
"She went to stay with you last night?"
"Yes."
Rick didn't know what to say. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Oh."
"Don't worry about it." Kim patted him on the shoulder.
"Cello's in the bedroo--" he said, before remembering what else was in the bedroom. "Wait, don't--"
"Oh, my god!" Kim shrieked. He was too late. "I'm so, so, so, so sorry, excuse me," Kim said. Aimee's muted voice said something and Kim apologized again, shutting the door with exaggerated delicacy. She looked at him. "It's the middle of the day."
"So?"
Kim shook her head. "You know, Tay could have come to get her own cello. I'm not here for the cello. I'm here because I'm worried about you."
"What? Why?"
"Because--and she didn't want me to tell you this, but maybe you'll find it touching--our sixteen year old daughter is worried about you. She said you're not looking healthy, that there is something wrong with the apartment, that you aren't working--"
"Taylor's worried about ME? And she said this to YOU? Maybe you should be worried about HER. She's still seeing that what's-his-name, and you don't even know the half of--"
"--and she says you've been involved with some MAN? And now--" she pointed to the bedroom, pointedly ignoring his interruption--"there's a WOMAN sleeping in there in her underwear."
"That's Aimee. She's from the second floor. She brought over cookies and fainted. That's a bathing suit. She sunbathes. I--"
Kim held up her hand. "It's none of my business. You know you can do what you like with whomever you like." She emphasized the word "whomever." "You don't need to explain a thing." Kim turned around, as though to gather her thoughts, and then she saw the wall.
"Oh, my fucking god," she said. "Rick." She looked up and down the wall, her mouth opened with an amazement that Rick found irritating. She walked closer to it and leaned over to inspect it. She held her hand to her nose and turned away. "How…what…why…how did this happen?"
"I don't know," he shot back, suddenly filled with insurmountable rage. "It just happened. All sorts of crazy things happen to you when you're not a perfectly logical, obsessively organized, cold-hearted, anal-retentive asshole. You should try it sometime."
Kim closed her eyes and sighed in a way that made her seem fragile, weary, and old. "All right." Her voice wavered. "Please just go get the cello for me, so I can go."
On her way out, she looked at him sadly and said "I really think you should get the landlord here to fix your wall."
"Don't you think I tried that!?" he yelled after her.
Later, Omar laughed. "Anal retentive asshole? That's kind of redundant."
"Well, she is."
"So you slept with that woman who's always on the roof?"
"Yeah, once. Aimee. She's nice."
Omar sipped his beer. "I know. I slept with her too."
"No way!"
"I did. Also, speaking of things we have in common, I want to show you something." He stood up and walked over to the small splotch on his wall. "Look at this."
Rick looked. It was bigger and darker than the last time he'd seen it. "Uh oh," he said.
"Fuck." Omar picked up his keys from the kitchen counter. "What do you say we get out of this ridiculous building and continue our alcoholism at a bar for now."
"Yes."
Four bars later it was dark outside and Omar and Rick sat in a dark back booth. "Don't you care?" Rick said. "Yours is growing. It's going to get as bad as my apartment. You've got to do something now, while you still can."
Omar shook his head no. "I'm going to tell you a story. Really, more of a fable. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Once upon a time, there was a man who got put in prison by a strange and cruel dictator."
"What did he do??"
"That doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters."
"Okay, uh, he stole a loaf of bread."
"Okay."
"So the man was in prison, and he was blindfolded, and his captor handed him a cardboard box. His captor said, in this box there is a jigsaw puzzle. When you finish putting this puzzle together, you will be freed."
"Uh huh."
"So the man opened the box and started feeling the pieces, one at a time, and trying to fit them together. At some points, he wanted to know how many pieces the puzzle had, so he would have an idea of how long it would take him to finish this puzzle, blindfolded, and he considered counting the pieces, but he ultimately decided not to, because if there were too many, he would feel hopeless and not try as hard."
"So what happened to him?"
"He died before he finished the puzzle. But the point is, he chose not to know how hard his struggle would be. And that is how many people look at life. That is how I look at life."
"But sometimes you can't beat what you're up against unless you know enough about it."
"You really think we can learn anything about this thing in the wall? Really? Considering all the knowledge your experiments thus far have provided?" He made air quotes around the word "experiments."
Rick thought about it. "I guess not."
"Aha." Omar smiled. "Okay. Remember the day I met you?"
"Yes."
"Remember when we were in my apartment, right before you daughter came in, when you were upset about your ex-wife, and--"
"Yeah."
"There was a weird moment when you wanted me… to kiss you. Right?"
"No. Well, no, I don't know. There was a weird moment."
"There was. I wanted to, too. It's okay. I think of things like that as a suspension of reality. Just every so often… reality disappears for a second. And I sort of think of the thing in the wall like this, too."
"You think it will disappear?"
"No. I think it's not really in … reality. It sort of slipped through."
"You're drunk." Rick laughed.
"I am. And, it's late. We should go."
The apartment building had fire trucks and police cars in front of it and people stood outside. For a moment, Rick hoped that it was burning down, but he didn't see any smoke. Omar approached a police officer and asked what had happened.
"Suicide," the officer said. "Jumped from the roof."
"Who!?" Rick asked. He had a terrible feeling in his stomach.
"You residents of the building?"
"Yes." Rick dug out his drivers license and showed it to the officer.
"A lady who lived in the building, not for that long." He turned around. "What was her name?" he called to another officer. The other officer came over.
"Her name was Aimee Calderon."
"Oh god." Rick said. "Oh god."
Aimee had left a note taped to her door. It was still there when Rick and Omar traipsed up the stairs. It blamed New York City, the residents of the building, her family, her lack of love, her lack of friends, everything. Rick was relieved to not see himself mentioned by name. He wondered if he was the last man she'd fucked. On that afternoon when she fainted in his apartment, she'd left right after Kim, avoiding Rick's gaze and looking away from the splotch on her way out. Rick had watched her from the peephole and instead of going to the roof, she had walked downstairs.
"This building is poison," Rick said to Omar.
"Just your apartment," Omar replied. "Mine is still mostly okay."
"I think it made Aimee jump off the roof. I think there is something wrong with this building."
"I think Aimee would have jumped off any other roof the same. She was obviously a very unhappy person. I could tell from the first time we met. Don't tell me you couldn't tell too." They were at Omar's door. "You coming in? You can stay here if you like."
"Maybe I'll come back later. I've got to do a few things." Rick did not want to admit that he had a morbid curiosity about the state of the splotch.
The splotch now spread onto the ceiling and crept onto the floor. Webs formed between the cones and points and bulbs that poked forth. The maggots were still in full effect and now the whole thing emitted a slight though high-pitched whine. The odor had new notes of rotting meat, burning tires, menstrual blood, and sulfur. The formaldehyde was still the main smell. Rick's vision began to blur and he felt his limbs go numb. He knelt before the splotch and beseeched it. He did not beg it to go away. He begged for answers. He begged for explanations. He wanted to know why. ON his hands and knees, he inched closer and closer. He heard Omar knocking on the door and calling his name and opening the door and walking in the room. He reached his hand out and touched the splotch and grabbed it as tight as he could. He heard Omar say no, don't. He pitched himself foreward and full force and felt, as he sank into the splotch, that it was surprisingly sticky.
"Your kid is here!" Omar yelled.
"Dad, what are you doing!" Taylor screamed. She was crying. Omar held her. Rick could see everything in the whole room, even behind his head. He had been afforded omniscience.
"If you can't beat 'em, join'em," Rick said. Maggots crawled between his eyes and up his nose, and even as Omar and Taylor pulled him loose and wiped him off, he felt better.