Lyla was calling me a couple times every day at this stage, and one night, about ten at night, she called me and said, “You know that guy on my floor I told you about, the one who stares at me, the one who keeps his fish tanks in the hall…? Well, he’s screaming right now and he’s completely unhinged and I’m frightened. I’m really scared, Stan. Can I come and stay with you tonight?”
And this time a lie did not immediately occur to me and there was a blank that seemed almost infinite although it probably only lasted for three seconds.
“Sorry, I would, but my place is a mess.”
“Come on, Stan. I’m telling you I’m in danger! What do you mean, the place is a mess? Do you think I care if your place is a mess? I just want to feel safe tonight.”
“Let me go online and try to find you a hotel,” I said, and she hung up. I called her back, but she didn’t pick up again.
Of course she’d be angry. Of course. I was being a complete asshole to my only human friend, and it was terrible to have to behave this way. When I called her again the following afternoon I quickly told her how sorry I was, how I understood how insulted she must have felt, and I basically apologized without explaining myself, and she said, “What’s going on? Are you married?”
“No, nothing like that,” I said.
“Then why are you so mysterious? It’s like trying to see somebody through tinted glass, and half the stuff you tell me sounds like fiction. You must be living with someone. You must have a lover.”
“No, no. No one,” I said.
“Why can’t I come to see you then?”
“It’s just—”
“Why won’t you be my friend?”
“Okay, Lyla. There is a person here. I admit it. I just didn’t want to talk about her but, if you have to know, it’s my sister. She’s a retarded person and she’s really really weird and she bites people and that’s why I can’t let you come into my house, okay? I’m really sorry, but that’s the truth, and that’s why I have to cook all my meat, so when she gets into it, she won’t eat it raw and drag it all around the place and get blood and spit all over the rugs. Otherwise, when I’m not home, she’ll eat all the meat, and basically anything edible she can find that’s raw, and she’ll leave me a huge mess, and she shits on the floor, and every day I come home and I have to clean it all up, the meat and the greasy turds, and that’s why I can’t let you come over here because it’s bedlam.”
“I believe that about as much as I believe you’re a hit man,” she said, and she hung up on me again.
It was that same night, at least I think it was, when I was awakened by the sound of a saxophone coming through the wall. I had no idea what time it was but I’d gone to bed past midnight so I knew it was hella late, and it annoyed me at first, but as I lay there I started to get into my neighbor’s playing which ebbed and flowed and winded its way through a fairly complex melody. The big lunk wasn’t so bad actually. I liked that he wasn’t the sort of player who felt he had to play a hundred notes all at once, which I always thought was the big cliché with the saxophone. He had a mellow open sound, and it was sad and pretty, and there was an Arabian sort of flavor to it, I thought, and it occurred to me that Ali wasn’t on the bed for once and I was able to roll over onto my other side, but why was there a light on? I raised up on my elbow to see.
She was lying on the couch on her back, her tail flopped over one arm and her head propped up on the other one. There was a book balanced on her banded yellow stomach, and she was holding it open between her big, stumpy claws. It was a hardcover book with its title spelled out in flower petals and she appeared to be reading it. I can’t remember what happened after that. I must’ve fallen back to sleep, but in the morning I found the book in the cardboard box with all of Mom and Dad’s other books from Tennessee. It was at the top of the pile, face down, and now I could see that the cover had a picture of a raven-haired, bare-shouldered woman in a long yellow gown, locked in an embrace with a Tarzan-like hombre naked to the waist, and it was called Lavish Love by Clarissa Nightingale. That made me laugh, and straightaway I started calling Ali, Sappy-gator, and for a couple of days I kidded her relentlessly. “Hey, Sappy-gator, it’s time for din-din!” I’d say before I tossed her a hen. I kept teasing her, but she only looked at me blankly.
Not only did I not know how engrossed I'd become with this story, but, since I suddenly needed to know if alligators truly ever laid on their backs, I found myself down a rabbit hole where I immediately learned that, they have the capacity to smell a drop of blood in ten gallons of water. Fascinating information I can't wait to use the next time alligators come up in conversation. Thanks!
Can't believe we're only getting one more part. 😢