AMADIS, OR: THE INTENTIONAL KILLING OF A
SELF
by Patrick Martens
He
met Amadis on his fifty-third birthday in a bar owned by his greatest friend, a
man he knew little about. He had
arrived early to claim his comfort on an open stool and nip his scotch before
the crowd developed and she stood behind him and talked in rapid Spanish to her
friend, the curvy Latina in the tight skirt whose features were concealed by
brickyard cosmetics. The man was
engaged in intermittent conversation with his greatest friend, who left every
few moments to fill an order but always came back to listen.
"As
long as I'm alive I'll never be able to figure why he did what he did," he
said as his fingers scratched the snowy whiskers hiding the thin layer of fat
under his chin. "The ol' boy
was clumsy, he'd fallen hundreds of times before and always landed on his
feet. Never suffered. Never broke a bone. Never seemed to hurt himself."
Raf
held up his index finger and walked away to fill an order. He came back and said, "Sounds
like what you think it was. When a
cat falls, he'll never land on his side or his back. Always the legs.
But this was no common fall.
Top of the porch rail to the ground...how far is that?"
"Say
twelve, thirteen feet."
"And
his head was mangled?"
"It
was horrible. Like—"
"For
him to fall and land like that—"
Here Raf paused and drew his lips up over his bucked teeth. "Hank. I'm sorry he did such a thing to you on purpose."
"Goddamn
cancer." He downed the final
two fingers in his glass and set it down heavily. "He knew it, too.
Goddamn to hell that cancer."
As
Raf filled his glass once more, she was there, her arm and breast touching him
as she pressed between stools to order another round of margaritas with her
high and feminine accent of Cuban Spanish. While Raf busied himself, her thin and long and mildly
acne-scarred face opened to Hank and her eyes found the television mounted in
the corner.
He
leaned back with one arm propped against the bar's edge and let his gaze take in
her course and crimped hair, black and hanging loose around her shoulders, the
lilting eyebrows poised gently over brown eyes, sinuous nose hovering above the
dimpled flesh that ran over her boastful and brimming lips, with a soft cleft
in her chin to accentuate it all.
Here was a woman, very young yet a woman nonetheless, who sent immediate
pulses through his head and body and he was excited by her, was excited to know
more about her and hold her and speak softly to her and lay in bed with her.
He
saw and ignored the small diamond protecting her left hand.
She
noticed him and smiled coyly, lips sealed, her dimples lifting and tightening
her cherub-like cheeks, and he softened his granite face with a smile in
return.
"Beware
the margaritas here," he said.
"The barkeep doesn't follow rules well, tends to throw twice as
much tequila in as the boss would like."
"Oh,
really?" Her eyes returned
momentarily to the television behind his head. "Then he is a good and generous man who deserves the
tip I'll give him."
Raf
was back with her margaritas, his face glowing from hearing her words.
"You
see, Raf?" said the man on his birthday. "It works like a charm. Don't forget that I'm in for twenty percent of anything you
earn. My thanks for talking you up."
He
looked back and saw that her smile had broadened to reveal faultless
teeth.
"You
have a lovely smile. You should do
it as often as you can. The world
would be better for it."
His
words rallied to triumph over the television and her attention was now his
completely, even as her friend in the tight skirt spoke softly into her
ear. She listened, then leaned
into him to speak over the music that was now louder and forced them to
intimacy.
"My
girlfriend says she heard it was your birthday today."
He
said, "Your friend is mistaken, but I see once again I am the subject of
the rumor mill." He took her
margarita from the bar and lifted it under his nose and sniffed. "But let's imagine it is my
birthday. And yours as well. We should drink and sing and laugh
together and behave like beasts.
What's say?" He drank
from her glass and offered his scotch to her in return.
Blood
rushed to her dark cheeks as she took his glass and sniffed it as he had. Then, timidly, she sipped. The sting of the virile alcohol
stiffened her features.
"Oh," she said brightly, downplaying the shock of the flavor,
"I like it!"
* * * * * *
The
moon dilated and threatened to burst, then contracted as weeks passed to
resemble the fine tip of a claw teetering precariously overhead. Tonight it lingered gracefully over a
house that was the least imposing in a neighborhood cut into the hills and a
bedroom rested on stilts to look out over a distant ocean that lapped
rhythmically against the boundaries of the magnificent city. Tonight the hills were quiet,
distinctly pronouncing the whirr of an oscillating fan as it worked to
evaporate the sweat from the sheets and from their bodies.
He
lay in bed, thinking of nothing, yet in moments his head was filled with
thoughts of everything. He thought
of the family that was now gone and of the family that never was. His mind recalled places he had been
and traipsed through notions of all he had not done. He mined through a tormented knowledge of emotions felt yet never
returned. These thoughts were
leaden and caused a great pressure in his head and, after the acts he had just
labored through, he found them to be ridiculous and didn't care to waste time
pondering them. He distractedly
threw his arm up and scratched at the wall.
"Ohhhh,"
Amadis drawled quietly, meditatively.
"Four is a wonderful number, don't you think? I haven't had four of them ever. Never like that." Her right hand flopped onto his chest,
desperate to touch him but lacking strength to be controlled.
She
rolled her head to him. "You
know why I like you, Henry? I can
call you that name, yah? It's
okay?" He did not answer but
only continued to run the callused tip of his strumming finger over the
wall. "It's because you are
tall and handsome and intelligent and old and funny and white. And you've never been married and have
no children. You, you just don't exist. I'm glad I found you.
You're like a prime piece of oceanfront real estate." She giggled, illumined by her own
radiance.
He
laughed and quit his scratching and wrapped his index finger around hers in
appreciation. His ego was properly
inflated. "You think I'm
funny?"
"Oh,
yes! Mostly...mostly not
intentionally, but you do make me laugh."
"I
need to be funny again. I used to
be pretty good at it." He
thrust his legs out and rose, heading for the toilet. "Is he funny?" he called behind him.
"Who?"
"Your
man." The water ran cold from
the tap and he wet his hair with it.
"Hmmm?"
Frustration
in her tone answered him from the bedroom. "Deaf tall handsome white man! I said I don't want to talk about
him."
He
toweled off his head and returned to find her pouting, arms folded in juvenile
defiance, sitting up in a mound of pillows. "Okay. We
can do that."
Feeling
masculine and impulsively wanting to prove himself to her, he reached under the
bed and withdrew something small and heavy and wrapped in cloth. He grasped one end of the cloth and
unwrapped the bulk with a single quick and fluid motion and a handgun fell and
landed in his other hand. Amadis
sat up and stared, her energy recouped.
"It's
a Beretta, nine millimeter. Have
you ever handled one before?"
"Nooo..." She was entranced completely by the
force in his hand, by the smell of oil and by the gleam that defied even a
darkened room. "Wait,
no. I did a small one once, a,
what are they? A twenty-two?"
He
removed the full magazine and ejected the round that sat ready in the chamber
and handed it to her. "It's
unloaded now. Yes, a twenty-two is
a small caliber. This has more
power."
The
heavy steel dwarfed her delicate hands and she aimed at the dresser and
pretended to aim and shoot.
"Ay! I feel masculine
with all of this sweat and violence.
Oh, I like it, Henry!"
He
took the gun from her and loaded and wrapped it. "I keep another in the hutch by the front door as
well. It's a forty-five and will
stop a raging elephant if a raging elephant ever comes barreling through the
wall. We'll go try them out one
day."
Her
eyes coursed with life. "Oh,
yes! Yes, please, we must!
Tomorrow!"
He
crawled back into bed with her and held her from behind. "If you're good, we might. But only if you're good."
Her
look to him was wild and seductive and she was then very good.
* * * * * *
They
continued to see each other intermittently and summer changed to autumn and to
winter and to spring and then was summer again. Unlike the previous summer, the heat now came swiftly,
unexpectedly, and caused him to sweat when he woke and sweat through the
afternoon and sweat long after nightfall.
Even in the early months of the season, there was no respite from
swelter and sweat.
He
continued to spend his inheritance in reckless and wanton ways; the house had
been the only gift afforded by his Mother's wealth that would prove to be the
effect of wise investment. He
breezed through days buying computer accessories and television enhancements
and motorcycles and fine guitars and stereo components and rare vinyl
records. His liquor cabinet was in
a constant state of plenish and replenish with the utmost in quality. On the spur of Amadis's whim, he began
collecting unusual and ugly Cuban artifacts from the mid-nineteenth century,
expensive items that were valuable to precious few.
He
was content only when it came to his libido. No woman had ever done for him what Amadis did and the only
pleasure in his life was found in his lust for her. She was adventurous and did things to him that she claimed
she had never done for any man and it was the confidence and passion he
displayed during the physical act that muted her inhibitions and opened her up
to imagination and trial and caused her to become childlike in abandoning her
restraints. With each passing
encounter came his belief that it could not possibly get any better.
Thoughts
of danger or depravity never crossed his mind when violating the moral
battlefields of their illicit and illegal affair. As a young man, he believed that messing with a woman
belonging to another was inherently conducive to death, yet he felt no
conscious threat in his relations with her. His own conscience was crystallized with the thought that he
was doing no wrong, harming no one, sinning against no law, and distorting no
truth. The rest he left up to
her.
On
the first day of August she lay naked on his couch, half-listening to a record
she had found of compositions by Manuel Corona, a trovadore who sang with
guitars and clarinets and trumpets, haunting tunes that made her long for her
childhood and fed the illusions of her literary imagination. While listening, she spoke quietly,
intimately into the telephone to the mate who was thousands of miles away,
traveling once again to hawk his product to strangers in different climes. Hank gave her no privacy; he sat and
smoked a short Fuentes Gran Reserve in the corner and listened, cleansing his
mouth between songs with bourbon, neat.
Many
minutes passed and still she spoke, now covering her lips with a hand to mute
the affection in her words. Hank
extinguished the remaining nub of his cigar and finished off the drink but was
too tired to make another. He had
studied the details of the room a multitude of times and was reminded each time
that he was bored by it all.
He
rose and pulled the needle from the spinning record that had been thip-thip-thipping since it had come to its end minutes ago. He turned it over and put the needle
back and the haunting opening flamenco of Longina oozed from the speakers. He looked at her and smiled but she paid no attention, only
flipped her body over on the couch to reveal her finely-crafted breech.
His
eyes drifted over the life of the room, over her and her silken legs and up
over her buttocks and along her spine, then floated over the custom-made couch
and the clumps of feline fur that lay under it, just visible, and continued
around the walls to the heads of elk and caribou and bobcat that hung stuffed
over the fireplace, and finally settled on the drapes surrounding the large
window. He stared at the drapes
for a long while.
The
music was affecting and he bent to the receiver and doubled the volume. Amadis looked up, eyebrows arched in
question and worry, and motioned alarmingly for him to turn it off. He responded by further increasing the
volume and let the man singing penetrate his soul. He joined in loudly with his chopped Spanish accented with
Midwestern brogue:
Por ese cuerpo
orlado de belleza
tus ojos soñadores
y tu rostro angelical...
Amadis
stirred to her feet and was shouting into the phone, "No, no! It's the stereo! It's gone crazy...I can't get the
volume to work! Ay, no! I...I'll call you back!" and she
hung up and threw the phone on the couch and kicked the stereo receiver with
her bare toes until it shut off completely and she turned her eyes to him and
he read in them fear and anger and concern. He cradled her ears and kissed her lips.
"What
are you doing?" she cried, pulling away.
"Kissing
you."
"Ay! You men, you are impossible!" She went back to her phone and studied
it. "I need to call him
back. But how will I explain
that?" She threw her back
against the couch and exhaled loudly.
"I don't know...."
"Where
is he this week?" Hank went
to the couch and sat with her.
"He
said Atlantic coast, but he's probably in bed with a whore."
"Why
do you say things like that so often?" Then, "Why are you with him?"
Frustration
lined her eyes and she assassinated him with both, then looked away. "Because you won't have me."
"Will
you call him back?"
"Later. Not now. He sounded not normal the whole time. He was distracted, sick maybe. He kept asking silly questions. Anyway, I'm tired of talking to him
now. Henry!" Her tone changed in an instant and she
looked around the room, alarmed.
"Where is the vase?"
"Which
one?"
"What
do you mean, 'which one?' The one
you bought last month. For the
collection!"
"I
gave it to Christophe, my neighbor's kid.
He has an air rifle and I gave it to him to shoot at because I thought
it would make a magnificent sound when shot. It did. He let
me have a few plicks at it, too.
It was all great fun."
"Ay,
no! But it cost you thousands, why
would you, you stupid silly man?
You are white, you are not supposed to be stupid!"
Hank
chuckled yet his face revealed no joy.
"It was a very expensive target, wasn't it?"
"No! It was mine! You said you bought it for me!" Her fist struck his arm with little
force and bounced off.
"I
bought it for the collection."
She
hit him again. "For the
collection for me!" And again she struck, harder but with
little effect against the burl of his flesh.
His hand lashed and caught her
wrist. It appeared as the arm of
an infant in his giant grasp. His
features very suddenly contorted with deep-rooted fury and she was frightened
as he rose and lifted her off the couch and dragged her by the wrist onto the
floor. His grip did not ease and
he pulled her to her knees and leaned over and kissed her savagely and she
returned it, fearful and excited and trembling.
Mahogany
is a hard wood and is not good for aging knees, so he lay her face-down on the
floor and straddled her. This time
around they did not make love, it was beastly and heavy and base. It was performed with little skill and
there was no love present. His
right hand groped her to the rhythm of his pelvis and his left hand slithered
into the thick mane of black curls and pulled her head back to reveal a wetness
where her lips had been passionate against the density of the floor.
He
leaned his head into hers and growled breathlessly into her ear, "You. You, damn you. Goddamn you for what you are."
He
could feel his own heart slamming into her back as a mad timpani pounding
through Thus Spoke Zarathustra and his
sweat began to pool in the small of her back. His mind was ablaze with thoughts of nothing, the empty,
gaping, rusted sparks of ideas and memories that rush through the subconscious
of a person deep into the animalistic rage of letting go. His mother was there, recently dead, as
was his father and sister and grandparents and certain friends from years past,
all long dead. The cat he had been
raised with purred through and the birds that woke him with dawn each morning
chirped and cooed into his ears from within. Plans for the rest of the afternoon were settled but then
floated away into the lost confines of his thoughts. Nothing made sense, yet nothing mattered. He felt nothing and yet was able to
maintain the patterns of physical self.
He
thought suddenly of his one true love.
She
was there and he tried to make her go away as he had so many times before but
was unable, as always. She
appeared as she had when he first knew her, an image reflecting all that could
be right and good and noble. Her
lips parted as if to whisper some profound statement, a secret only for his
ears, but she instead smiled with lips sealed and eyes full of a love she had
never felt and his heart settled into a calming patter despite the strenuous
actions of his archaic body.
A torrent of air escaped his lungs and caused him to groan hotly and
painfully into the side of Amadis's neck and the world spun and settled into
dust around him and the howling of the coyotes in the surrounding hills cried
through the windows that were no longer there and rushed into his head as a
radiant chorus of life and loss and unendurable sorrow and his soaring and
escaping ghost was rushed back to consciousness with the fanfare of a swift and
violent eruption as the front door sailed past their heads and a sea of
splintered wood rained and stuck and settled in the sweat covering their bodies
and soaking their hair. Amadis
screamed and her whole body convulsed in a spastic seizure that rejected his
body and threw him over on his hip.
He heard her voice trill and bleat a name foreign to him, a man's name,
and he saw legs standing, trembling, in the openness that had been sealed a
moment ago and he heard the familiar and dangerous sound of metal on metal
pumping awkwardly, chuck-chunking to
life, and something small and hard bounced heavily and rolled over the mahogany
boards. He wanted to look up but
was prevented by a magnificent roar which deafened him and sent a shock of air
to assault his naked body and his eyes snapped shut and his mind was cleared of
all sensible and operative thought as the wood of the floorboards to his left
disgorged in a slew of shards that flew at and impaled and stung his exposed
flesh. He lay prone and kept his
eyes closed and ignored the hutch that was within reach and
she
was there with him
and
he heard another chuck-chunk and heard a
soft and hollow sound and his nostrils took in a rush of stale and pungent air
and he opened his eyes to see the dull blackness of a hollow pipe staring at
his face and Amadis continued to scream, only now more vigorously, and then
there was another great rush of air and a thunder assaulted his ears and then
there was
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