The Killing Circle

Once I’m finished, I cut nails, hair, shave. Shower. Scour every inch of skin with cleansers reserved for kitchen use only. Bleach the bathroom.

Then do it all again. And again.

What do I remember now, only minutes after it’s done? Bits and pieces. So to speak. The protective walls already going up in my brain. They won’t hold, of course. Not forever, and not entirely. But you’d be surprised. You keep the worst of it at bay and you can still pour yourself a drink, look in the mirror and recall your own name.

Let’s just say that cutting up a ballcap and doing the same to a woman’s body are two different things. The tools required, the time, what it leaves behind. It’s just different.

And after the mopping, the bleaching, the wiping for toe prints on the concrete floor, I’m still left with six yard-waste bags.

I smoke the rest of the pack.

Today is recycling day. The truck arrives early on my street, usually just after eight. A little over an hour from now. The collectors who work this neighbourhood are used to the sight of me dashing out at their approach, barefoot and in boxer shorts, frantically hauling out the compost I’d forgotten to take to the curb the night before. Every time, they let me apologize for the delay and watch as I insist on swinging the bags into the back myself. Once I’m done, they pull the switch that compacts the load into the truck’s hold. Then they’re gone.

And today, they’ll be taking Petra with them.

28

I suppose it’s the guilt over what I did out back in the shed, the ratcheting worry of it being discovered— whatever the reason, I end up staying in all the next day punishing myself. A steady infliction of the most hideous domestic torture: I watch TV.

Not that I don’t try reading first. Sniffing at the opening of the latest Philip Roth (too sharp), sampling a random page of Borges (too fanciful), then a re-taste of Patricia Highsmith (too much like real life, or at least my real life). It seems likely I will never read again. I feel like the Burgess Meredith bookworm character in that Twilight Zone episode who, finding himself the last man alive on earth and prepared to finally savour all the works of literature he’d yet to get around to, sits down on the library steps only to have his specs fall off and shatter into a thousand pieces. That’s one nerd’s version of hell for you. And here is mine.

Not since I was paid to do so have I settled in for a full day with the early-morning Born Agains, followed by the afternoon Chatty Cathys, the primetime autopsies, all capped off with the soulless hours of miracle diet pills, phone sex lines, get-rich-quick infomercials. This, I realize now, was likely my true vocation all along. Not the life of one who writes or even writes about books, but a malingering lowbrow who wrongly thinks he deserves better. No wonder, when his life decides to assume the shape of literature, it isn’t a novel of ideas, but a chronicle of murder and suspicion. The kind of thing I always felt I was too good to actually read, but am now being forced to live. A bloody page-turner.

On the positive side, it appears I’ve gotten away with it. No phone calls from the city’s sanitation department inquiring about blue limbs punched out the side of compost bags, no neighbours coming by to complain about my screeching away with a rotary saw in the middle of the night. Petra will turn up some day, she’ll have to. But it wasn’t yesterday, and it wasn’t today. And even when she does show herself, a week, a year, half a lifetime from now, there’s no evidence to connect her to me. I likely won’t be around for it anyway. If the Sandman’s goal is to kill off everyone in the Kensington Circle one by one, he’s almost finished. I’d put my money on me being the only one left alive. And he’s already made it clear he knows where I live.

So now I wait for him down here in the Crypt, glancing up at any movement outside the basement windows, thinking every skulking cat or fast-food wrapper blown down the walkway are his boots passing by. He is waiting for me to come outside, and if I refuse, he will come for me here. I won’t hear him enter. He’ll find me in this very chair, the remote clutched in my hand. And he’ll do what he’ll do.

I wonder if he’ll let me see who he is before he does.

All at once there’s a collision of noise: the ringing of the doorbell, the sock-hop opening theme of Happy Days, the journal I’d been scratching in leaping to the floor. It’s morning. A sandy light spills into the basement through the storm-drain windows.

I must be awake. Can you smell how bad you smell in your sleep?

The doorbell rings again. I’m tucking in my shirt as I climb the stairs, all the while wondering why I’m bothering to make myself presentable to the Sandman. For this is how he’s decided to make his entrance. Not at night, but on a listless July morning with the clouds holding the heat over the city like a vast canopy of wool.

There’s the shape of a man, tall and long-armed, standing on the other side of the front door’s side windows. And I’m going to the door with no further prompting than another musical push of the bell—Shave and a haircut, five cents!—clicking the bolt lock open and turning the handle.

Ramsay offers one of his vaguely cruel, ironic smiles. He’s in a good mood.

“You want some coffee?”

“I’m trying to cut down,” he says. “But you know, I think I will.”

I give him his coffee and warn him it’s hot. But he wraps his hand around the sides of the mug and takes a thirsty gulp.

“Can’t get hot enough for me,” he says.

By now Ramsay has walked over to the sliding doors and is looking out at the day. Then, so deliberately I can only assume he wants me to notice, he lowers his eyes from the sky to the shed in the back yard.

“So are you going to put the cuffs on, or do we just walk out of here?” I say, slapping both hands on the counter.

“You think I’m here to arrest you?”

“Yes.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“What are you doing here? Because I’ve got some important Beverly Hillbillies re-runs to get back to.”

When he puts his mug down on the counter I see that it’s empty, while mine, still steaming, sits next to his.

“I’m here to tell you we found him,” he says.

“Found him?”

“Arrested him this morning.”

“I’m not following you.”

“The Sandman,” Ramsay says. “The fellow who killed your writing circle friends. He’s ours.”

By now I’m leaning against the fridge door to remain standing.

“Who is it?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve thought it was everyone. Even you.”

“In my experience, the first choice is usually the right one.”

“William.”

“Congratulations.”

“And now you have him?”

“He’ll be arraigned later this morning. It’s why I have to run in a minute. Always like to be there for the