live with what it says. Maybe you'll be good enough to tell me now what's true and what isn't. Mike, you've tied yourself up into all kinds of knots trying to make a mystery of this thing. It's garbage, as you know. Some little mystery, all neat and cute. But there's a real mystery here. An enormous mystery. When I say I feel homicidal, I'm not lying. On the night she died my feelings were what they always were. Devoted, and secure. But now... Mike, this is what happened: A woman fell out of a clear blue sky. And you know something? I wish I 'had' killed her. I want to say: Book me. Take me away. Chop my head off. I wish I had killed her. Open and shut. And no holes. Because that's better than what I'm looking at.
If you peered in now, through the meshed glass, it wouldn't seem such a strange way for things to end, in this room. Glimpsing this scene, a murder police would nod his head, and sigh, and move on.
Suspect and interrogator have joined hands on the table. Both are shedding tears.
I shed tears for him and tears for her. And also tears for myself I shed. Because of the things I've done to other people in this room. And because of the things this room has done to me. It's pulled me into every kind of funny shape and size. It has left a coating on my body, everywhere, even inside, like the coating I used to expect to see, some mornings, all over my tongue.
March 14
'I'slept late and was woken around noon by another delivery from Colonel Tom. A dozen red roses—'with thanks, apologies, and love.' Also a sealed binder. Expedited, and very probably edited, by Colonel Tom, this was the autopsy report. I'd seen the movie. Now I had to read the review.
It took a couple of pots of coffee and half a package of cigarettes before I could swim free of the liver haze that had come down on me during the night, like gruel. I showered also. And it must have been close to two before I sat myself down on the couch in my terrycloth bathrobe. I have this tape I like that Tobe made up for me: Eight different versions of 'Night Train.' Oscar Peterson, Georgie Fame, Mose Allison, James Brown. We think of it as a kind of hymn to the low rent. The rent's nothing: I mean, you don't notice it. You notice the night train but you don't notice the rent. So I had that playing, softly, in the corner, as I wrenched at the red tape. Spend ten years fucked up, spend ten years blowing on your ice cream, and you're going to have a ten-year hangover (with another twenty-some waiting in line). Which is not to say that I wasn't feeling all the extra from the day before. I felt fat and butter-colored, and already sweaty or still damp from the bathroom haze.
'Haec est corpus'. This is the body: Jennifer, your height was five-ten, your weight 141.
Your stomach contained a fully digested meal of scrambled eggs, lox, and bagels, and another meal, only partly digested, of lasagne.
Lividity was only where it ought to have been. No one moved your body. No one arranged you.
Blowback. On your right hand and forearm were found microscopic particles of blood and tissue. We call this 'blowback'.
Too, your right hand had undergone cadaveric spasm. Or spontaneous, and temporary, rigor mortis. The curve of the trigger and the patterning of the butt were embedded in your flesh. That's how tight you gripped.
Jennifer, you killed yourself.
It's down.
March 16
At CID, people aren't talking about it. Like we took a beating on this one. But everyone now knows for sure that Jennifer Rockwell committed a crime on the night of March fourth.
If she'd slid into the car and driven a hundred miles due south to the state line, then she could have died innocent. In our city, though, what she did was a crime. It's a crime. The perfect crime, as always, in a way. She didn't escape detection.
If you peered in now, through the meshed glass, it wouldn't seem such a strange way for things to end, in this room. Glimpsing this scene, a murder police would nod his head, and sigh, and move on.
Suspect and interrogator have joined hands on the table. Both are shedding tears.
I shed tears for him and tears for her. And also tears for myself I shed. Because of the things I've done to other people in this room. And because of the things this room has done to me. It's pulled me into every kind of funny shape and size. It has left a coating on my body, everywhere, even inside, like the coating I used to expect to see, some mornings, all over my tongue.
March 14
'I'slept late and was woken around noon by another delivery from Colonel Tom. A dozen red roses—'with thanks, apologies, and love.' Also a sealed binder. Expedited, and very probably edited, by Colonel Tom, this was the autopsy report. I'd seen the movie. Now I had to read the review.
It took a couple of pots of coffee and half a package of cigarettes before I could swim free of the liver haze that had come down on me during the night, like gruel. I showered also. And it must have been close to two before I sat myself down on the couch in my terrycloth bathrobe. I have this tape I like that Tobe made up for me: Eight different versions of 'Night Train.' Oscar Peterson, Georgie Fame, Mose Allison, James Brown. We think of it as a kind of hymn to the low rent. The rent's nothing: I mean, you don't notice it. You notice the night train but you don't notice the rent. So I had that playing, softly, in the corner, as I wrenched at the red tape. Spend ten years fucked up, spend ten years blowing on your ice cream, and you're going to have a ten-year hangover (with another twenty-some waiting in line). Which is not to say that I wasn't feeling all the extra from the day before. I felt fat and butter-colored, and already sweaty or still damp from the bathroom haze.
'Haec est corpus'. This is the body: Jennifer, your height was five-ten, your weight 141.
Your stomach contained a fully digested meal of scrambled eggs, lox, and bagels, and another meal, only partly digested, of lasagne.
Lividity was only where it ought to have been. No one moved your body. No one arranged you.
Blowback. On your right hand and forearm were found microscopic particles of blood and tissue. We call this 'blowback'.
Too, your right hand had undergone cadaveric spasm. Or spontaneous, and temporary, rigor mortis. The curve of the trigger and the patterning of the butt were embedded in your flesh. That's how tight you gripped.
Jennifer, you killed yourself.
It's down.
March 16
At CID, people aren't talking about it. Like we took a beating on this one. But everyone now knows for sure that Jennifer Rockwell committed a crime on the night of March fourth.
If she'd slid into the car and driven a hundred miles due south to the state line, then she could have died innocent. In our city, though, what she did was a crime. It's a crime. The perfect crime, as always, in a way. She didn't escape detection.
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