He walked to the window, the sound all around him. He touched the pane of glass and felt the vibration of sound, and then he closed his eyes and tried to read the sound with the tips of his fingers, like a blind man. The music was very loud, and within the music, like a bleak hollow core, he felt lonely and deserted.
I’ll never break it, he thought. I’m kidding myself. I’ll never break it, and I know it. I died a long time ago, and now I’m just going through the motions. I died a long while back, and I slammed my own coffin lid shut the day I hocked my horn, and you don’t come back from the dead.
He looked down at the street, feeling more misery than he had ever known. There seemed nothing left, nothing whatever. He was alone in a vast directionless land, and he was lost, and there was nothing left for him anywhere, because now that he knew he wanted to break the habit, he knew with equal conviction that he would never break it. And knowing this, he stared down at the street, thinking, I am dead, I am a dead man.
He saw the people below him, moving on the sidewalk, and the new thought popped into his mind.
Why not?
If I am already dead, then why not, why not?
It must be nice to be really dead.
The apartment reverberated with sound now, and he wondered about the stillness of death, was it really as still as they pretended it was, could anything really be that still, so quiet that there was no sound whatever, not the sound of breathing, not the sound of a pin dropping, not the sound of a feather shifting, an empty soundless space of white, soft white.
They put you in the ground, he thought.
Of course, they put you in the ground, and there’s the rub. There are dead people on your right and on your left, and sometimes even above you, but if death is quiet and peaceful and non-feeling, then what difference does it make where they bury you or with whom? And even if there are people you don’t like, there are people you don’t like in life as well, so what difference does it make if only you can lay down and rest, and get rid of all the aches and pains, and the burning eyes, and the vomiting — and the wanting.
And you can kick the habit then, all right.
You can kick it because death is the Big Fix, the fix you never come down from. Christ, but dead men are lucky. They can have a platter of hoss right in front of them and a mile-high syringe, but they won’t be tempted, they’ll be only content. God, what is it like to be content? Can you be content that way? If you are dead, really dead, not the death of drug addiction, but really, really dead, does everything else stop? Is there just a hush, and a softness, and a restful peace you have never known before?
Oh, God, it must be terrific!
Oh, God, if I could only...
A knock sounded on the door. The knock annoyed him, and he frowned, and then he shouted over the noise of the record player, “Who is it?”
He heard a muffled answer from the other side of the door, but the voice made no sense.
“What do you want?” he shouted, becoming angrier. He crossed the room and went to the door, and then he shouted, “Who is it?” at the wood.
“Mr. Donato?”
“He’s not here,” Andy said. “Go away!”
“I want to talk to him,” the voice insisted.
“Just a minute, just a minute,” he said impatiently. He unlocked the door then and opened it.
A frumpy woman was standing outside the door. She wore a faded housedress and old house slippers. Her hair hung loosely on her forehead, as if it had been placed on her head haphazardly, like an old brown felt hat. She looked Andy over from head to toe and said, “Where’s Mr. Donato?”
“He’s not here,” Andy said. “What do you want?”
“Who are you?” the woman asked.
“I’m his friend. What do you want?”
“I’m the landlady here,” the woman said. “What are you doing in Mr. Donato’s apartment?”
“I came to burglarize it,” Andy snapped, and when he saw the woman’s mouth pop open, he quickly added, “I told you I’m a friend of his. I’m staying with him for a few days.”
“Are you the one what’s playing the records?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“Don’t you have no sense? Person can’t hardly hear herself think. Turn it off.”
“What for?”
“Or turn it down, either one. I got tenants who are still asleep.”
“It’s time they were up,” Andy said. He stared at her for several seconds, becoming very angry now, resenting her intrusion and her petty tyranny. “I like it loud.”
“Now look here, young man,” the landlady shouted over the roar of the record player, “I’ve never had no trouble with Mr. Donato, and I don’t expect none from his friends. Now go in there and turn it down.”
“Maybe you didn’t understand me,” Andy said tightly. “I said I like it loud.”
“Well! Of all the—!” The landlady put her hands on her wide hips. Her face turned red, and she stared at Andy silently for several moments. Andy stared back coldly.
“Turn it down!” she said finally, spacing the words with cold even precision.
“Go to hell, you fat bitch!” Andy said, and he began to close the door in her face.
The landlady shoved the door back with a heavy arm. Her brows shot down like angry falcons. Her eyes blazed. “I’ll turn it down myself, snotnose!” she shouted, and she started into the room. Andy took her arm and swung her around.
“Stay out of here,” he said. “Keep your nose out of here.”
“Let go of me!” the landlady screamed.
Andy shoved her back through the open doorway. “Go back downstairs and hit the bottle, you hag,” he said, and then he slammed the door.
“I’m calling the police!” she shouted. “You wait and see! I’m calling the police!”
“Call them!” he yelled at the closed door. He locked it and thought, Go ahead, call them. You rotten fat water sack! What are you trying to do, take even the records from me? Haven’t you stripped enough from me already? What more do you want? Can’t I even listen to music? Are you denying me that, too? What more do you want from me? What more?
Oh, Jesus, what’s the use?
What’s the use of even trying, why don’t I just...
Why don’t I...
If...
Yes, but...
He made up his mind in the flash of an instant.
It was almost as if he had been debating it all his life, and now he made up his mind, and he knew just what he was going to do, and he felt suddenly glad because in the directionless waste there had been presented a direction, a goal, and he hurried now to fulfill that goal.
He went into the bathroom, again as if the means had been decided a long, long time ago. He went directly to the medicine chest and opened it. He found Bud’s razor, and he opened it and removed the single-edge blade, and he stood with the blade in his fingers for a long time, staring at its sharp cutting edge.
He looked up into the mirror over the sink then, staring at his reflection.
Yellow skin, yellow skin. Look at it. Jesus, look at it.
He shook his head and then held out his wrist. The skin on his arm was a pale yellow, everything turning yellow, it didn’t pay, it didn’t pay.
He didn’t want to get blood all over the floor.
He at least owed that to Bud. So where? Over the toilet bowl? Over the sink?
He threw back the shower curtain. Yes. Yes, that was the ticket. Turn on the shower, not too hot, not too cold, put the wrist under it, and then slash it. The water washes the blood down the drain, and everything is clean that way, and you don’t even realize you’re bleeding.