How so?

Degree. Other things too but mainly degree. Death is a different degree. Murder is death amplified and pinpointed. Big focused death. Big but not sloppy. What else?

It has to hurt, I said. Pain implies the actual. There has to be an implication of the actual to engender fear. Fear and the frisson that heralds it are ultimately why the checks get signed. That’s why it’s a good idea to knock them out, chloroform them or something.

Good.

Who writes the scripts?

It depends — sometimes the victim, sometimes Cornelius, sometimes me or the others.

What’s up with those others anyway?

She didn’t answer. Instead she pulled out a gun, placed it against my forehead, and pulled the trigger.

This is a story about murder — Mr. Kindt’s, several other people’s, my own. My own just about blew my eardrums out, scared the shit out of me, and stained my shirt paint-pellet red. The sound was so loud it slammed me back into my seat, and I just watched her as she stood, dropped a note in my lap, and, still holding the gun, which she lifted, menacingly, as if the other chambers had real bullets in them, when the waitress and one of the customers started moving toward her, walked out the door. It was only after I had wiped some of the fake blood off my face and, assuring the waitress and manager that I was all right and that, no, I wasn’t going to wait to talk to the police, left myself, that I opened up the note. It read, “Round two is tonight at three o’clock,” and gave an address on St. Mark’s Place.

FOURTEEN

It was so strange to see my aunt sitting beside my bed, her great fat face simultaneously beaming and anxious, that I sat up, swung my bare legs over the side of the bed, and clapped her on the arm. This felt so good that I leaned forward and clapped her on the side of the head.

Go and tell them I need a shot, tell them that, then we can talk, I said.

My aunt shook her fat head, stood, walked a little way toward the door, looked back at me, and said, you’re a schmuck, Henry boy, you always were, and was gone.

A minute later she was back. She came at me so fast all I had time to do was start to raise my arm before she had slapped me, good and hard like the old days, across my face.

Jesus, Aunt Lulu, I said.

I’ll give you a shot, boy, you little schmuck, she said.

She raised her hand like she was going to slap me again but instead sat down, and after a couple of seconds the beaming, anxious look was back on her face.

Where you been, Henry? You left me, she said.

I shrugged.

I been worried, Henry.

I didn’t say anything.

So now you live in boxes on the street. Now you do bad, bad things and you hit your aunt when she isn’t looking out for it.

I’m sorry, Aunt Lulu.

Yeah, you better be sorry, Henry. I’m your aunt. I’m your Goddamn aunt, and I raised you, Henry. You’re the one who put an end to that. You’re the one with the special way of saying thank you. Don’t forget it.

I am sorry, I said.

She reached out one of her big fat hands and touched my knee with it. I suppressed a shudder.

I’m sorry too, boy, she said.

Why did you come, Aunt Lulu? I said.

She pulled her hand back and, though her eyes were still shining, frowned.

You know anything about these buildings falling down?

They didn’t just fall, Aunt Lulu.

She smiled. Extremely brightly.

Call me Mother, like you used to when you were little, she said.

I didn’t answer. I thought of her sitting slumped at the kitchen table, barely moving, that last time, her long, greasy hair covering her face. I thought of her in her dirty blue housedress feeding the cats, kicking the cats, washing the cats. Then I thought about buildings, buildings all over the city, falling down.

The hospital called you, Aunt Lulu? I said.

I told them I’m not paying a cent for any of this. I’m not paying a damn red nickel for you to live in a box and piss on the street and do bad things to people. I got nothing to do with it.

They can’t make you pay anything, Aunt Lulu.

I’m not, boy. Believe me. I’ve got bills.

We sat there. My aunt’s big fat face was beet red and she was breathing hard and I thought she might lean forward and slap me again, maybe pull the old spoon out of her bag and apply it medicinally to my skin, but somehow she was still beaming, like a smiling virus had infected her face.

I heard from that girl, she said.

What girl?

You tell her not to call me. Not ever. I got nothing to say to such as her. She was too fancy for you, Henry boy. The whole world you fell out of was too fancy.

Wait, who called you?

Aunt Lulu didn’t answer. Instead she smiled hard, winked at me, and began mumbling. As she was mumbling, Mr. Kindt poked his head in the door and gestured for me to come over. I pointed at Aunt Lulu. He threw his shoulders back, dropped his head, and began moving his lips and prancing around. I slipped out of bed. Mr. Kindt was waiting for me in the hallway.

My aunt, I said.

Ah, said Mr. Kindt. Well, I’m very sorry to interrupt. I just stopped by to see if you were interested in having a smoke. I was just sitting in my room remembering my Plato and thinking about justice and right conduct and so forth. I thought you might be interested in discussing it.

Well, any other time, I said, pointing back into my room, where Aunt Lulu was still sitting by the bed, still mumbling.

Of course, said Mr. Kindt. I suspect you are very happy to see her. What is her name?

Lulu.

That’s interesting.

I raised my eyebrows, flared my lips a little, and started back into the room.

One just wonders where all the wreckage gets piled, he said, where the dump trucks of history, as it were, unload the corpses they have accumulated, that they will keep accumulating. Right conduct or wrong, when a just or unjust man helps a friend or harms an enemy, the end result, if it is in any way remarkable, ends up in the dump truck. Everything else gets ground under the wheels.

That’s a little grim, I said, pausing at the door.

Oh, but it is grim, Henry, Mr. Kindt said. It’s very grim.

I squeezed Mr. Kindt’s arm, smiled apologetically, and went back into the room. I managed to slip back into my bed without disturbing Aunt Lulu. It was strange to see her sitting there, strange and somehow reassuring. It was part of our curious fate, Mr. Kindt had said to me that very afternoon, that we should so readily keep company with our most resilient horrors.

As I thought about this and looked at her, a familiar image came to mind, of Aunt Lulu and a friend playing pinochle. It was the week of Halloween and I was sitting on the little rocker in the corner looking at them through the poorly cut rubber eyeholes of a Creature from the Black Lagoon mask. My face stung. It was also hot. Every now and then I would growl and lift my arms. They both had on smeared costume makeup. Neither of them spoke. Earlier they had sent me out into the backyard with a trowel to “dig for the devil.” A cracked Coke bottle lay dripping in the middle of the floor where my father had thrown it. Before he left, for good as it turned out, he had come out to the backyard, taken the trowel from me, and told me first that he was going to go try to find my mother and second about a soda shop in the Bronx where ice-cold Coke ran nonstop out of a spigot attached to the wall.

I yawned, leaned back against my pillows, looked at the clock: Job wouldn’t be back for a while. Aunt Lulu was still mumbling. She had once attended a church that encouraged its members to speak in tongues. She had not forced me to attend, but she had tried to teach me the proper technique. I went around the house after her lesson talking with my tongue sticking out. When I spoke in tongues to her, she pinched my ear and told me it wasn’t something that was supposed to be done casually. Mumbling was fine though. There was a good deal of it around our household. Aunt Lulu liked to mumble to her cats. She also liked to sit in the kitchen, slightly hunched forward, and mumble to herself. Like she was doing now. Like she had been doing that day when I had stood in the doorway and, well aware that she had poured enough vodka and orange juice down her throat onto the palmful of Halcion she swallowed every day to take out a small stegosaurus, watched her head droop slowly downward toward her plate of macaroni and cheese.