Double Dexter Page 14

  A’s refusal to work seemed to make him madder than anything else; he wrote passionately about responsibility and the fact that not doing your Fair Share was just plain Evil. That led him to a series of observations about Society in general and the “assholes” who refused to “follow the rules like the rest of us have to.” From there he rambled on into several tedious rants about Justice, and people getting what they deserved, and his apparent belief that the world would be a much better place if only everyone in it was more like him. Altogether, it was a portrait of someone with anger-management issues, low self-esteem, and a growing frustration with a world that refused to acknowledge his sterling qualities.

  I read more. I hit a section of a half dozen entries in which he went on at great length about growing problems with “A”—and I really did sympathize, but why couldn’t he use real names? It would make things so much easier. But, of course, then he would have used my name, too, so I guess it balanced out. I worked forward through the blogs. They were all the same sort of grouchy, self-involved drivel, until I came to an entry headed, “Snap!” I recognized the date at the top; it was the day after my rendezvous with Valentine. I stopped scanning and began to read.

  So it was just too much with “A,” just one bitchy crack too many about how I couldn’t even make decent money, which is a laugh since she can’t make ANY. But it’s like, no, you’re the man, you’re supposed to. And I look at her sitting there in a house where I pay the bills, and I buy the groceries, and she doesn’t do shit! She won’t even clean up properly! And I look at her and I don’t see lazy and bitchy anymore, I see Evil with a capital E, and I know I can’t take any more of this shit without doing something about it and I have to get out before I do it. So I take her Honda, just to piss her off, and I drive around for a while, just chewing on my teeth and trying to think. And after maybe an hour, I’m up in the Grove and all I got is a sore jaw and a nearly empty gas tank. I really need to just sit somewhere and think what to do, like maybe Peacock Park or someplace, but it’s raining, so I circle back south. The closer I get to home, the madder I get, and when I turn on Old Cutler some asshole in a new Beemer cuts me off. And I think, That’s it, that fucking does it, and I can almost hear something go snap inside. And I put the pedal down and go after him, and it’s like, Dude, wake up: He’s in a new Beemer and you’re in a beat-to-shit old Honda. And he’s totally gone in about three seconds, and I’m even madder. I turn down the street where I thought he went, and there’s no sign. And I cruise for a few minutes, thinking, What the hell, maybe I’ll get lucky. But there’s nothing. He’s totally gone.

  And then I see this house. It’s totally trashed, another foreclosed place. Some dumb asshole ripping off the bank and raising the rates for the rest of us. I slow down and look, because there’s an old Chevy kind of hidden in the carport, like he’s still in there, living for free, while I bust my ass making payments.

  I park the car, and I go around to the side door by the carport, and I slip inside. I don’t know what I was thinking or what I would have done, but I know I was pissed off. And I hear something in the next room, and I sneak to the doorway and peek—

  The counter. There’s a hand lying there. A human hand.

  But it’s not attached to anything. This doesn’t make sense.

  And right next to it that’s a foot, also not attached. And other parts, too, and oh holy shit that’s the head right there on top, eyes wide-open and looking right at me and all I can do is stare back—

  And something moves and I see this guy standing there, totally calm, just cleaning up and looking like no big deal, another day at the office. And he starts to turn toward me—and I see his face—

  The Priest used to try to scare us with these pictures of the Devil. Horns and red face and evil stare—but this guy is scarier, because he’s just so fucking ordinary-looking and real but so totally fucking evil and really, really happy about that, and about being there with this chopped-up body.

  And now he’s turning to look at me—

  It’s too much. Something just popped and I was in the car and hauling ass out of there before I even knew I was moving. And I’m almost all the way home before I think, Why didn’t I do something? Even if it was only just calling the cops? It pisses me off to think I’m being a wuss, like maybe they’re all right about me being nothing but a fucking shadow. I should have done something. I should still do something.

  But what?

  In a very strange way, it was fascinating to read a description of Dark Dexter at play. A little creepy, perhaps, and not very flattering— “Ordinary-looking”? Moi? Surely not. But other than that, it wasn’t terribly helpful in providing clues to the blogger’s identity.

  I moved on to the later blogs. One of them described seeing me in the grocery store—the Publix nearest to my house, no less—and how he had slipped out of the store like a shadow and watched from his car as I came out with my groceries. And two blogs later he described our encounter that morning on the on-ramp to the Palmetto Expressway in his usual riveting prose:

  I was just crawling along in the usual bullshit morning traffic, going to my stupid fucking temp job, and driving “A”’s car to save on gas, and I’m looking at the cars around me, and boom—I see that profile again. It’s him, no fucking question, totally him. Just sitting there in his shitty little car like all the other wage slaves, just totally normal. And I can’t make it mean anything, because everything around me is so fucking normal, like it is every day, but there’s that face in a car right next to me, that same face I still see in my head surrounded by chopped-up body parts, and it’s right there in traffic waiting to get up on the Palmetto.…

  And my brain is frozen, I can’t think, and I’m staring, I guess thinking, like, Is he going to do something? I mean, flames shooting out, or make a cloud of bats come out or something? And I can see it when he all of a sudden knows I am watching, and his head starts to turn toward me, just like that night in the house, and the same thing happens—I totally panic and hit the gas and I am gone before I even know what I am doing. And I think about it later, really, really pissed that I ran like that again—because I am not a fucking nothing and I know I should do something, but I was out of there before I could even think, which is totally not the real me.

  And I think, So, okay, what is the real me? And I realize I don’t know. Because I have been pushing it away for so long, trying to make people happy with a fake version—the Priest, and my teachers, and “A,” and even the asshole boss at my stupid temp job, who doesn’t know an algorithm from his asshole, and he’s telling me about data mapping, the prick. Even him, all of them—I try harder to make them happy than I try to be Me, and that makes me think about who I am for a long fucking time, the whole rest of the drive to work.

  Okay, who am I? Make a list: First, I admit it; most people don’t notice me. Second, I believe in following the rules, and it really pisses me off when nobody else does. Really good with computers. Eat healthy, stay fit. Um …

  Is that it?

  I mean, shouldn’t there be more? There’s not even enough to add up to anything except another wage slave so dumb I even pay my taxes.

  And I think about Him. The guy with the knife.

  Because it sure looks like he knows who He is. And he’s being it.

  And another thought hits me, and I wonder: Am I really running from Him because I am scared of Him?

  Or am I maybe more scared of what He makes me think about doing?

  Fascinating stuff, all of it, but if he was half as smart as he seemed to think he was, he actually should be running from me. Because I could not remember ever wanting so badly to see someone taped to a table.

  There was a great deal more, a new entry every few days. But before I could read any more I heard a clatter behind me. I reflexively brought my computer back to its home screen as Vince Masuoka came in, and the workday lurched off the blocks and onto its well-worn path of toil and drudgery. But through that whole long d
ay I could think of nothing except that same awful, first sentence in the blog in my in-box. “And now I know your name.” Somebody knew who and what I was, and whoever they were they were not kind and gentle and wanting only to reward my anonymous good works with flowers and the thanks of a grateful nation. At any moment he might attack, or decide to expose me so that my entire carefully crafted, beautifully fulfilling life would crash and burn and it would be Dexter Down the Drain.

  Whoever he was, he knew my name. And I had no idea who he was, or what he was going to do about it.

  THIRTEEN

  THE THOUGHT STAYED WITH ME ALL DAY, AND THEN ALL the way home. After all, it was a fairly important subject, at least to me: the impending end of all that was Me, and Me completely helpless to stop it. I was barely aware of the rush-hour traffic and hardly noticed that I had made it home somehow, apparently on automatic pilot. And I am sure that many things happened when I arrived—there was probably some kind of interaction with the family, and a meal of some sort, and then an hour or so of sitting on the couch watching television. But I have no memory of any of it, not even of Lily Anne. My entire mind was focused on that one terrible thought: Dexter was Doomed, and there was no wiggle room.

  I went to bed, my brain still churning, and somehow I managed a few hours of sleep. But at work the next day, it was even harder to maintain my disguise of cheerful and geeky competence. Nothing actually went wrong; no one shot at me or tried to put me in leg irons, but I felt cold breath on the back of my neck. At any moment my Shadowy Friend might decide it was time to stop dithering and Drop the Dime on Dexter, and here I was at work in the lion’s den, the one place that would make it as easy as possible to slip the cuffs on my wrists and lead me away to Old Sparky.

  But the day dragged on and nobody came for me. And then the next day followed, just like it was supposed to do, and still there was no howling of hounds in the distance, no heavy knock on my door, no jangle of chains in the hall. Everything around me stayed perfectly, maddeningly normal, no matter how hard I stared around me in complete ditherhood.

  It would have been natural to expect that any move to take me down would be led by an enthusiastic Sergeant Doakes, but even he showed no sign of closing in, and there had been no repeat of the ominous encounter when I found him at my computer. I saw him glaring at me from a distance once or twice, and I had moments of paranoia when I was sure he knew—but he did nothing except watch me with his normal venom, just like always, which was no more than background radiation. Even Camilla Figg refrained from spilling more coffee on me. In fact, for several long and weary days, I didn’t bump into Camilla at all. I overheard Vince teasing her about a new boyfriend, and the bright scarlet of her blush when it was mentioned seemed to indicate that it was true. Not all that interesting to me, but at least she was no longer sneaking up on me with dangerous beverages.

  But somebody actually was sneaking up on me, and I could feel him circling around out there, staying downwind but moving closer all the time. And yet, I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I found no evidence that there was even anything to see or hear, no sign that anybody at work or at home had any sinister interest in me at all. Everyone else continued to treat me with the same casual disregard they always had, totally oblivious to my profound anxiety. All my coworkers and family members seemed remarkably, annoyingly contented. In fact, happiness blossomed all around me like flowers in the spring; but there was no joy in Mudville, for Mighty Dexter was about to strike out, and I knew it. The heavy feet of Armageddon were tiptoeing up behind me and at any moment they would crash into my spine and it would all be over.

  But it is a truism of life that no matter how much we are suffering, nobody else cares—generally speaking, nobody even notices. And so even though I was spending all my time waiting for the abrupt end to absolutely everything, life went on around me; and as if to rub my nose in my own misery, life seemed to turn strangely jolly for everybody but me. Everyone else in Miami suddenly and mysteriously filled up with offensive good cheer. Even my brother, Brian, seemed infected by the dreadful light-headed jolliness that plagued the rest of the city. I knew this because when I got home on the third night after reading Shadowblog, Brian’s car was parked in front of the house, and he himself was waiting for me inside, on the couch.

  “Hello, brother,” he said, flashing me his terrible fake smile.

  For a moment, Brian’s presence made no sense, because his routine was to come to our house for dinner every Friday night, and here he was on my couch on a Thursday night. And my badly damaged mental process was so completely occupied with my Shadow that I could not quite accept that Brian was really here, and I just blinked at him stupidly for several seconds.

  “It’s not Friday,” I finally blurted, which seemed almost logical to me, but apparently he found it amusing, because his smile grew two sizes.

  “That’s quite true,” he said, and before he could go on Rita rushed in with Lily Anne in one hand and a grocery bag clutched in the other.

  “Oh, you’re home,” she said, which in my opinion topped my remark to Brian for obviousness. She dropped the grocery bag beside the couch, and to my great disappointment I saw that it contained a heap of papers instead of dinner. “Brian has a list,” she said, smiling fondly at my brother.

  But before I could learn what kind of list and why I should care, Astor’s voice came down the hall, loud enough to crack glass. “Mom!” she yelled. “I can’t find my shoes!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous— You just had them on— Here, Dexter,” Rita said, thrusting Lily Anne at me and hurrying down the hall, presumably to keep Astor from yelling again and cracking the house’s foundation.

  I settled into the easy chair with Lily Anne and looked inquiringly at Brian. “Of course, it’s always good to see you,” I said, and he nodded, “but why are you here today? Instead of Friday.”

  “Oh, I’ll be here Friday, too, I’m sure,” he said.

  “Wonderful news,” I said. “But why?”

  “Your lovely wife,” he said, tilting his head down the hall toward Rita, probably to make sure I knew he meant Rita and not one of my other lovely wives, “Rita, has enlisted me to help you search for a new house.”

  “Oh,” I said, and I remembered that she had said something about this recently—but, of course, it had slipped my mind, since I was dwelling so selfishly on my one little problem of being on the verge of death and dishonor. “Well,” I said, more to fill the silence than anything else, and Brian agreed.

  “Yes,” he said. “No time like the present.”

  Before I could come up with a matching cliché, Rita stormed back into the room, still talking to Astor over her shoulder. “The sneakers are perfectly fine; just put them on; Cody, come on!” she said, picking up her purse from the coffee table. “Let’s go, everybody!”

  And so, swept along in the wake of Hurricane Rita, we went.

  I really and truly did not want to go house hunting, not now, not when my entire world was creaking in preparation for falling apart. The only thing I wanted to hunt was my Witness, and I could not do that from the backseat of Brian’s SUV. But I didn’t see any choice. I had to go along and pretend to be interested in comparative lanais and relative shrubbery, while the whole time I could think of nothing but the vastly unpleasant fate that was certain to be circling closer and closer with every four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath ranch house we crawled through.

  And we spent the next evening after work, and that whole long weekend, and then the first half of the following week riding around in Brian’s SUV and looking at foreclosed houses in our area. My frustration and anxiety grew and ate away at me, and the houses we looked at seemed to be ominous symbols of my coming desolation. Every one of them was abandoned, with ragged shrubbery and lawns gone to weeds. They were all dark, too, their power shut off, and they seemed to loom over their forsaken yards like a bad memory. But they were all available cheap through Brian’s connections from his new job, and Rita tore into eac
h one of them with a savage intensity that my brother seemed to find soothing. And in truth, even though I kept looking over my shoulder, physically as well as mentally, Rita made the process so frantic and all-consuming that I began to experience long periods of time when I forgot about my Shadow—sometimes five or six minutes at a stretch.

  Even Cody and Astor got into the spirit of things. They would wander wide-eyed through the desolation of each abandoned house, staring into the empty rooms and marveling that such opulent emptiness might soon be all theirs. Astor would stand in the center of some pale blue bedroom with holes kicked in the walls, and she would stare up at the ceiling and murmur, “My room. My room.” And then Rita would hustle in and herd everyone back out to the car, spewing out staccato monologues about this being “the wrong school district, and the tax base is way too high—the neighborhood has a zoning change on appeal, and the whole house needs to be rewired and repiped,” and Brian would smile with genuine synthetic delight and drive us to the next house on his list.

  And as Rita found brand-new and increasingly absurd objections to each house we looked at, the novelty wore off. Brian’s smile grew thinner and more patently phony, and I began to get very annoyed every time we climbed into his car to see one more house. Cody and Astor, too, seemed to feel that the whole thing was keeping them away from their Wii far too long, and why couldn’t we just pick a nice big house with a pool and be done with it?