Tiny Crimes Read online

  12

  nobody checks their

  voicemails anymore not

  even detectives

  Sasha Fletcher

  Monday, 9:12 a.m., 00:52

  Jimmy, it’s your girl. The one at the desk whom you pay a living wage. This is what could be known as a wake-up call if we were the sort of people who relied upon others to remind us of our tasks. I am aware this is funny seeing as my job partly entails me reminding you of various things and, to a certain extent, scheduling your life for you. The thing about that is that yesterday, Jim, note the shift to the more formal “Jim” here, it’s meant to indicate a certain disdain here, Jim, yesterday you alerted me that you would be looking into an incident involving a certain woman who I refuse to name, due to the fact that she has not, as yet, bothered

  13

  to pay for the one thousand billable hours on file. Life isn’t free, Jim, and neither are the services of this office! Plus she tried to murder you fifteen times. Not that I’m counting. Anyway. The ghosts say hi. You know which ones.

  Monday, 9 p.m., 00:03

  Jim, you saved my life once and now you’re responsible for it.

  Tuesday, 1:23 a.m., 00:02

  Jim, I got that backward I’m sorry.

  Tuesday, 3:03 p.m., 00:58

  Jim, I had a date yesterday. I can’t tell if it went well. I can’t tell much sometimes these days. You know that feeling, the one wherein the world is just not a thing you can find to be navigable? And how, by the world, I mean everything outside of you? The ways in which other people, in which other things, in which all others in toto, are not and will never be you? Or of a part with you? In your more romantic moments, Jim, you’d assure me that this was fine. That we’re all flailing about blindly in the darkness, looking for a light switch, or a human connection. Just some signal in the dark.

  Sasha Fletcher

  14

  You’d tell me, Jim, that, well . . . Jim I’m sorry. I’m a bit high right now. In the office. It’s essentially three o’clock on a Tuesday. One woman was in about a diamond. It turned out to be where you’d expect. A husband came in, for reasons unknown, with a check that cleared, and in a fashion I’d call timely. We’re out of coffee. Don’t worry though. Outside the door of the room I’m in it says, We’re on the case. So. It’s handled.

  Thursday, 1:45 p.m., 00:46

  Jimmy, come home, it’s Thursday. Yesterday the fellow with the buffalo chicken wraps was downstairs. I got one for you, but then I ate it, because we both know they have to be eaten fresh. I saw that man I told you about again. It was as though a light shone down upon us from beyond. I held his hands in mine and asked him if he’d fuck me in the bathroom. He did. You can’t trust a man who wouldn’t do a thing like that if you asked him, Jim. I will either burn him in effigy or have dinner with him, later, tonight. If he tries a single thing without my asking, I will put one in his kneecap. When you hear this, if you do not smile in appreciation, then I hope you never come back, Jim. I hope you stay wherever the fuck you are. There is a pile of clues here just waiting for you if you’d only bother to look for them. I swear to God.

  nobody checks their voicemails anymore ...

  15

  Sunday, 12:10 p.m., 00:32

  Jim, it’s Sunday. I made that man stake out your apartment with me. I wore a wig. I gave him a fake mustache, and I intend to make him keep it. Jim, you haven’t been home, or to work. I know this because I have got my ways. It’s why you hired me. I burned sage around your door. I feel like there’re some fucked-to-death ghosts in your life, Jim. But I feel like you’re maybe okay with this. I feel like maybe letting them eat your heart out is what you need. I feel like for some reason you’re the kind of person who could need a thing like that. Why in the world that could be, I would not say.

  Sunday, 11:50 p.m., 00:53

  Jim, when I was a girl, were I ever a girl, I went by Rebecca. I was the kind of girl a boy’d swim across a lake and run through a meadow at dusk for, a boy who’d break curfew just to smell the kind of promise a girl like me contained. I was, those summers, a promise. I was made of the kind of stuff you beat your heart off to. I dreamed of a boy, the kind who’d swim across a lake and emerge, his curls dripping with water soon to dry in the sun before it fades, running through a meadow, needing me like air. I called him Bob, in my heart. Bob and Becca I carved, gently, somewhere I never thought

  Sasha Fletcher

  16

  anyone’d see, and they never did. Jim, we’ve all known what it’s like to imagine longing, but that doesn’t prepare us for longing. Our imaginations are fucked machines, Jim. And it’s beautiful. Today there was a woman, and she wept. I could not say why, as she did not herself tell me. More tomorrow, as that’s what it’s there for.

  Tuesday, 10:10 a.m., 00:26

  What in the hell, Jim. Three women have lost their husbands and would like you to find them. One young boy is wondering about his father. A fortune, untold, waits, obscured, by uncountable troubles. The police have shot four people today for, as far as I can tell, breathing. I have taken it upon us to investigate. The office took a vote this morning. It was me and the ghosts in favor, and the opposition has yet to return our calls. That’s the news from here, Jimmy boy. All else forthcoming.

  nobody checks their voicemails anymore ...

  17

  Give Me Strength

  Karen Heuler

  I first saw the patient Julie B. about a year ago, after her tests came in. She behaved as all newly diagnosed patients do—a blurt, a start, some protests of error. She felt fine; she felt well; I must be mistaken.

  I’m an expert on the disease, you see. I like it because it has the most interesting range of side effects. It can manifest itself in contradictory signs and symptoms, some of them metaphorical, some of them physical. Seeing a new patient is like opening a new book.

  “What did you say it was?” my new patient asked.

  “It’s commonly known as Writer’s Scourge.”

  “I’m a writer.”

  I nodded. “My patients usually are.”

  She shuddered. “What will happen to me?”

  19

  “What kind of writing do you do?”

  “Mysteries. I write mysteries. Cozies, you know; sort of pastoral.”

  Ah, good, I thought; I’d already had locked-door writers and police procedurals. The first one, by the way, went through a period of misapplying punctuation; for a while he lost all semicolons. I gave him a round of my experimental drug and he got them back. I gave him a placebo and he lost them again.

  A lot of them have minor symptoms, you see; they have trouble with printing or they can’t think up titles; but some of the really bad ones lose their endings. They just stop somewhere in a book or story and that’s it. It’s no use trying to coax them through it; they no longer understand what endings are all about. I had dinner with one of them just last month; he drinks a lot now because he feels uneasy but can’t really say why. I kept trying to provoke his memory, saying things like, “And I remember a book you wrote where it was a knife of ice that was used as the weapon, do you remember that?” He got a faraway look. “Ice,” he said. “I don’t get it.” Sad, really; he was writing books with crimes he couldn’t solve.

  Mostly they don’t even know what their deficit is. Once it sets in fully, you see, they can’t understand that anything has changed. “All I do is write,” they say, “and no one will publish me! I don’t understand it! I used to be big!”

  Karen Heuler

  20

  I tell them they’ll be big again. I lie. I tell them anything I like. Some of them I give my special medicine to; some of them I don’t. I am interested in the development of disease, especially diseases that can twist and turn like a soap opera. At the last minute, if I choose, I can give them my medicine, which I call Strength, you see, because it lifts them up again. They sit up straight and write again, as if nothing h
ad ever gone wrong.

  Oh yes, of course, my patient Julie B.

  “What are you working on?” I asked.

  “A woman’s throat is slit in a bed-and-breakfast that used to be a country home. It is slit by a long thin piece of paper, though everyone thinks it’s a razor. I thought it was very clever: murder by paper cut.”

  I looked at her fingers, which had thin angry cuts on them. It had already started.

  A lot of times the disease itself is an homage to someone the patients admire—say, they begin to gamble or get seizures because they adore Dostoyevsky. Or they might move to Russia; many writers just move somewhere and we never know why. They make typos and move to Romania instead of Rome, Miami instead of Milan.

  But that wasn’t Julie B. I mentioned my cure. Experimental, I said; still in early tests, not for anyone at her stage.

  She sucked on a paper cut. “What’s going to happen to me?” she finally groaned, clutching her head.

  “I’d like you to keep a record,” I said with a great deal of

  Give Me Strength

  21

  encouragement. “Keep a list of things you can remember each day—good titles, enticing phrases, character names, possible plots. Write them down each day. The list will keep getting shorter, but it won’t bother you. That’s a blessing, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t feel blessed,” she grumped.

  I gave her an appointment once a week.

  When she came I went over her list, which she worked on dutifully. It was always neatly typed and proofread. She started with paragraphs, then sentences, then items such as:

  Are any insects poisonous?

  John is the name of the hero.

  Avoid sentence fragments.

  Corpses are dead.

  She became increasingly haunted; her shoulders were bowed and sometimes she almost panted in fright. “Give me Strength,” she said. “I feel so weak.”

  I shook my head internally. She wasn’t bad enough, if she remembered that.

  Finally one day she came in with:

  Main character is evil.

  Murder everywhere.

  Chapters have a space at the top.

  Someone is after me.

  Karen Heuler

  22

  I placed that list on top of the others. I was sure it would be the last.

  After that, things went downhill rapidly. She began to wear shawls and got a persecuted look. “Something is about to happen,” she whispered, rolling her eyes, keeping her back to the wall. Less than a year and she’d come to this! She stood in the doorway, moving her body in agitation while her feet remained planted. She was very thin, and wrapped a scarf around her neck.

  “He crept behind me and pulled my head back,” she said hoarsely. “And then he cut from ear to ear.”

  I had to sigh with pleasure. She was driven mad with premonition some days; on others she was fatally absorbed by what had happened to her. She was no longer a writer, I could see. She had become one of her own characters; she was living as the character she would have written would have lived. And died, of course.

  I became enamored of her flitting eyes, the tremor in her voice, the gentle pulse upon her neck. I could have given her Strength, but I never did. I never did.

  Give Me Strength

  23

  El lúser

  Yuri Herrera

  La mesa del feo malora brincó al ser golpeada por el portafolios del modesto catrín. La limonada sobre la mesa pegó a su vez un brinco milimétrico, se desplomó y el líquido se vertió sobre las rodillas de aquél. Modesto catrín era pesado pero como enclenque, y parecía de temperamento nervioso. Feo malora era calvo y orejón, más alto y más pesado que el otro, pero como fornido. Se levantó de su silla a velocidad media, lo que hizo pensar que estaba sosiego, sin embargo un segundo después le dio una pequeña bofetada a modesto catrín, sin mucha fuerza pero sonora.

  —¿Qué te pasa, pendejito? ¿qué-te-pasa-qué-

  te-PÁ-sa?

  24

  The Luser

  Yuri Herrera

  Translated by Lisa Dillman

  The ugly thug’s table jolted when struck by the diffident spiff’s briefcase. The lemonade on the table, in turn, gave its own miniature jolt, toppling, and liquid poured onto the former’s knees. Diffident spiff was stocky but kind of wimpy, and seemed the nervous type. Ugly thug was bald and big eared, taller and stockier, but kind of brawny. He rose from his chair at average speed, which made it seem he was unperturbed, yet a second later gave diffident spiff a little slap—not too hard but loud.

  “What’s your problem, you little prick? What’s-your-problem-what’s-your-prob-lem?”

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  Acercó su frente a la de modesto catrín, sin llegar a tocarla, y desde su lado izquierdo disparó una bofetada con la mano entera. Modesto catrín trastabilló sobre su lado izquierdo y debió agarrarse de una silla para no caer.

  Hasta ahí, la escena era emocionante y apenas incómoda, en todo caso asunto de alguien más. Pero feo malora soltó otra bofetada, artera, de arriba abajo, de esas mitad mejilla-mitad oreja que arden y aturden, y modesto catrín cayó al suelo.

  —Ahora, así te me vas a la cocina, les dices que te pongan una limonada en la espalda, y me la traes, papito.

  Y, créase o no, ahí, en el suelo, lo abofeteó otra vez.

  A mí, de redentor que me esculquen, si quisiera salvar vidas usaría traje de baño; sin embargo, como alguien para quien esto es un oficio, creo que la violencia tiene su lugar y medida. Y aquel espectáculo era puro capricho que me estaba estropeando los molletes. Me levanté de mi asiento y dirigí mi diestra hacia la parte de atrás del pantalón para coger la pistola. Pero entonces feo malora hizo la seña secreta que identifica a los miembros de la organización; no de esa en la que chambeo y que me da fama y me da de comer, sino de La Organización. El doble parpadeo seguido de un breve rasquido detrás de la oreja izquierda. Volví a sentarme. Feo malora se fue detrás de modesto catrín en su camino a la cocina, propinándole puntapiés en el trasero. Entonces sucedió lo impensable. Modesto catrín me miró y, a continuación, también él hizo la seña secreta.

  Yuri Herrera

  26

  He brought his forehead in to meet diffident spiff’s, without actually touching it, and delivered a whole-hand slap from the left. Diffident spiff stumbled leftward and had to grab hold of a chair to keep from falling.

  Up to that point, the scene was exciting and only slightly uncomfortable, besides it was someone else’s business. But ugly thug fired off another slap, calculated, downward, one of those half-cheek-half-ear smacks that sting and stun, and diffident spiff fell to the floor.

  “Now, just like that, you go to the kitchen, and you tell them to put a lemonade on your back, and you bring it back to me, papi.”

  And, believe it or not, there, on the floor, he slapped him once more.

  Well, I’m no savior, so when you need one don’t look my way; if I wanted to save lives I’d be in swim trunks, but as someone who does this for a job, I think violence has its place and scale. And this little display was a pure conceit that was ruining my morning molletes. So I got up and slipped my right hand in the back of my pants to grab my gun. But then ugly thug gave the secret sign identifying members of the organization, not the one I work for, which gives me my reputation and the food on my table, but “The Organization.” A double-blink followed by a quick scratch behind the right ear. I sat back down. Ugly thug trailed after diffident spiff on his way to the kitchen, delivering little

  The Luser

  27

  Todo miembro de La Organización sabe que ella está por encima de cualquier otra lealtad, y que en cuanto un Hermano se identifica no se le puede hacer daño; pero ahí, frente a mis ojos, un Hermano estaba humillando a otro. Perplejo y alebrestado, empuñé mi pistola y la amartillé bajo la mesa. Esto no debía estar sucediendo. Resolví que el error era mío, que yo había visto
mal y sólo uno de ellos había hecho la seña secreta.

  Pero cuál. Tenía razones para identificarme con cualquiera de los dos. Aunque modesto catrín era más el tipo de hombre que hacía parte de La Organización, feo malora podría ser la clase de Hermano que cumplía funciones de músculo (categoría a la yo pertenecía, mal que me supiera). Éste era el momento en el que debía solicitar una confirmación. Me aclaré la garganta una vez, hice una pausa, y luego tres veces seguidas.

  Feo malora se volvió a mirarme, no con curiosidad ni temor, fue una mirada de reconocimiento; pero no respondió a mi segunda señal. Modesto catrín, en cambio, chasqueó la lengua dos veces seguidas, luego otra. No me quedaba opción, me levanté y apunté hacia feo malora, pero en el último instante la duda me impidió jalar del gatillo, levanté la pistola y le pegué con la cacha en la sien. Feo malora se desplomó, levanté del suelo a modesto catrín, consideré con melancolía mi desayuno, y salimos.

  Al cabo de un par de cuadras de silencio, modesto catrín recuperó el aliento y dijo, acercándose a mi oído:

  —Hay algo que tiene qué explicarme.

  Yuri Herrera

  28

  kicks to his backside. Then the unthinkable occurred. Diffident spiff looked at me and, immediately thereafter, he too gave the secret sign.