"The 'Man-Wolf'"

-I've read a whole lot of detective stories and novels, and I've seen a lot of television shows and movies about crime, and there's something I've noticed in about seventy percent of them; let's call it a trend, or maybe like an artistic way to distract readers.

I noticed I had been rolling the orange coffee cup she had given me between my hands for some time, and I stopped rolling it. The handle was pointing in her direction. I said, What've you noticed?

She smiled. She thought she saw I was suddenly paying some attention because she'd seen me stop my cup-rolling. Why was she talking about this? She said, continuing, You're not supposed to notice it, but if you read backwards--something it's wrong to do, I know--and watch the person who turns out to be the murderer, you notice that he--or she--doesn't even appear to be at all affected by the murder. They're always cool as cucumbers. They never slip up or act nervous. The author makes it that way because we're not supposed to think the murderer is the murderer; they're supposed to be the last person you'd think of. So they can't act like they did the murder. But really, how could someone be a murderer and manage to act like a completely normal person? If I was a murderer--which I'm not--I couldn't possibly be sitting here talk so normally to you. I'd be plagued with guilt. And I can tell you can't be the murderer, because you stopped rolling your cup. If you were the murderer you'd never do something so suspicious. You're guilty-seeming. So it's not you.

-Ah, I said, but what you're talking about is only in stories. In real life it's different, isn't it? Guilty people act guiltily in real life, and that's what you're using for your frame of comparison, right? If in real life guilty people didn't act guilty then you wouldn't have been able to see how in those detective stories there's all kinds of fakery, now could you?

She smiled again, sheepishly. I guess you're right, she said. She pointed out on her fingers: one, two: There's the real world, and there's the false world; and it's mostly the real world that's the decider for the false world: to make its falseness invisible; so that the false world looks real even though it isn't. That's what, verisimilitude? Yeah but on the other hand sometimes the false world affects the true world, don't you think? (She had entwined her fingers and put her elbows on her kitchen table and put her chin on top of her entwined fingers.) I've heard it said that Shakespeare's soliloquies actually created the concepts we use to describe the inner life. Like, our whole idea of coming-to-a-decision is straight from those plays. We wouldn't be able to decide stuff if it wasn't for Shakespeare. You ever hear that?

-No, never heard that one. I don't even know if I really get it, at least not today. Maybe some other time. So anyway, does the rent include utilities?

She looked around the kitchen, smiling with all her teeth out, before her eyes settled on the gas stove. Yes, she said. It has to be. There's really no way to split the costs, so I don't do that here. I just charge you the rent straight out and you can do what you want.... You're not planning any scientific experiments using electricity or natural gas, are you?

-I'm no scientist. I'm no experimenter. I have a computer and a stereo, that's about it. I like the gas, though. You can cook better with it.

-Yeah, it's good. Do you do a lot of cooking?

-Some--you know, I have to eat and all. I guess we'll somehow be sharing this kitchen?

She gestured to the shelves behind her and to the pots and pans and plates and cups and mugs there. You can use whatever you want. Just wash the stuff when you're done. Do you have any stuff of your own?

-I have some. Not much ... four plates. A big saucepan, a stew pot. Just a box of stuff. Old stuff mostly.

-Sounds good. So what brings you specifically here? Why did you pick my house?

Instead of saying Yours was the second one I circled and I never go with the first circle, I said The location is good, and the cost is okay.

I watched her. She had yellow hair. Did I like yellow hair? I couldn't bring to mind any yellow-haired people I'd known. I must have seen them before, even talked to them before, but I guessed I'd never really been close to one. She was waiting for me to say something. I said, Who moved out?

She rolled her eyes. She said, It was a girl named Henrietta. We didn't get along like I'd wanted to.

-Didn't do the dishes?

-Wasn't that. I just never warmed up to her. She was ... aloof. Don't think I'm Miss Congeniality or anything, but I think you have to make some kind of an effort to get along with other people. Maybe she drank too much leady water or something. I'm looking for someone who's a bit more normal than that. Do you think you're relatable enough for me?

I was tired and had a bit of a headache. Had I been gritting my teeth? I said, I think I get along with other people okay. I had a pretty normal family. That is to say, when I got to be of age I wanted to leave. Perfectly normal. Then about a month ago things went a bit haywire for me and I moved back into their den, and now I want to move out again. So I've got everything in boxes still. I'm ready to move again.

She nodded again. She said, I guess, if you want, do you want to see the rest of the house?

-Sure, okay.

As we both stood up I asked her, So when did your father buy this house?

-He didn't buy it actually. It was his grandfather's house. My grandfather built this house.

-No way!

-Yes, he built it all. It's changed a lot over the years, but really very slowly. I'll give you the whole tour. C'mon down here, into the basement. These stairs aren't the original stairs. My father put them in. Tore out the old ones. I was little then. I was afraid of the basement. I guess they should be replaced again someday. Do you know carpentry and stuff? You can see the basement's not as big as the upstairs. That's 'cause the kitchen was added later. I guess someday someone industrious--my son or someone, ha-ha--could dig out the space under the kitchen. I don't think that would be very hard to do, do you? There could be a whole other room there. Then the basement would be really big. A whole apartment for someone. It's just old junk down here, and the furnace. C'mere, check this out. Yeah: it's just a dirt floor back there. It seems that getting back there behind the furnace to put down cement turned out to be such a pain for dad that he decided to leave it for later, and that later never seemed to come. Just dirt. Who knows what's under there? Maybe some spinster great-aunt of mine, ha-ha. Sorry, I had a morbid mind. There's nothing wrong with me otherwise. I'm thirty, how old are you?

-I'm twenty-eight.

-Ah, younger than me. Interesting. Well, not that interesting, I mean everybody's got to have an age, don't they? And yours is twenty-eight, and mine is thirty. You could be, like, a brother of mine.

I said, Have you thought of putting a washroom down here? I think you could.

-That's interesting, I've never thought of that. The kitchen pipes are right overhead. A whole bathroom could be built if we dug that part out. Well, interesting. Okay. Here, c'mon. Up the stairs. Kitchen again of course.

I said, So this has been your house your whole life?

She said, Yeah. I've never lived anywhere else.

-That's pretty rare in this day and age. I've never met anyone like that.

-The last tenant said that too. Henrietta. Thing is, it's a pretty small house. No-one's ever wanted to buy it. It was hard when my father was in the hospital. I was his only ... offspring. I'd come home to a kind of a nothing from the hospital.... But I knew it would all be mine soon. He was terminal, you know? And I knew the costs of a house, and so I knew I had to get some roomie. I've had three already, you'll be my fourth.

We were in the kitchen again. She was pretty. I didn't know what kind of a job she had but I figured it wasn't terribly interesting. (If her job had been interesting she wouldn't have been spending so much time with me.) She said, Oh well, and filled the kettle with water and put the kettle on the burner and turned on the gas.

-I'm going to make tea.

-It's a nice table here. How many room are there?

Quickly: Three bedrooms. I use one for my study. So there's just one free.

-Your other roomies: were the men or women?

-Ah. If you move in, it'll be alternating: girl boy girl boy.

I wandered into the living room. There was a good supply of novels in there. Are these all your books?

-No, she called. I've got loads more upstairs. Is that what you meant or. As I said, a lot of crime novels.

-Who's your favourites in the crime novel stories?

-I'm rather British. I have to say it's Agatha Christie and the writers like her. Dorothy Sayers, Patricia Highsmith.

-Isn't she American?

-Yes, but she seems British to me, I don't know. What about you, what do you read?

-I don't read much.

-Oh.

-I only know about Patricia Highsmith because of that movie Matt Damon was in. I looked her up. Never read anything through.

-Oh. Okay.

-...Do you spend a lot of time in here?

-Not really, no.

-Would you like a television in here? I have a television. A little one.

-I suppose so. So all your stuff is at your parent's house?

-Well.... At their den, yes.

I heard her pouring water. She asked, What do you mean?

-My parents have a den, they don't have a house.

-What are they, bears?

-No, not bears. They're wolves.

It was time for me to go back into the kitchen. She was putting the kettle back on the stove. Ah. So your parents are wolves, are they?

I sat down and spoke very seriously. Yes, my parents are wolves. I myself am a kind of a wolf. My genes, so I've been told, are hybrids. I look like a person and everything else about me is person-like; I'm a freak.

-That's not possible.

-Yes it is. People have twenty-three sets of genes, and wolves have twenty-five. Most species, you know, are only a little different from other species. So it happens sometimes that there's flaws. You know, like human woman giving birth to other animals. You've heard of things like that, right?

-Well, yeah. Not recently though. Old medical myths and stuff. Fairy tales.

-So it happens on the other side too. And it happens more often than you think.

She wasn't believing me at all. So your parents, she said, When you come home--or to the den--, they aren't at all upset that their kid is a ... human?

-They're used to it. I'm still their kid. They know me. We can't have conversations, but still they're very loving. We're kith and we're kin.

-Okay, so. How'd you leave them?

-A group of boy scouts found me and took me in. That's why I'm so honest.

Here she raised an eyebrow really high. I waited a couple beats before saying, Okay, okay, I'm kidding you. All made up. My parents' den is in an ordinary house. I was just going on and on.

She laughed.

-I knew it. I knew it. Crazy story. Did you just make that up?

-Just out of nowhere.

-Pretty clever. But I have to say that if you were a wolf? a wolf-man? I wouldn't mind that much. I like interesting people. Maybe some day you'll find out surprising stuff about me.

-Oh yeah?

-Yeah. You know, right? I've lived in this house only. Isn't that a bit weird?

-Yes, it's a bit weird.

-So. There you go.

-I had you going for a bit. I've found that people naturally think anything is the truth, at least initially.

-I don't think that's true.

-Case in point. You must have taken what I said as a positive statement initially, before not believing it. You must have--in some way--believed my statement that people naturally think anything is the truth before you could think that it is not true that people naturally think anything is the truth.

-Maybe. But really that's just a kind of playing with words you're doing, isn't it?

-I think it means more than that. But anyway moving along you said you were going to show me the rest of the house.

She shook her head in a quick whiplash. Yes, let's go. What do you think of the living room?

-It's nice. Could be a cozy place.

-Let me show you upstairs, other than the room for let. Because you've seen that.

I followed her down the narrow hall and up the stairs. The banister was a nice dark oak, probably the original banister it was. The stairs themselves were carpeted in dark blue. She had a nice ass. At the top of the stairs she turned to see me looking at her face.

-The bathroom. The only bathroom, unfortunately.

I peeked in. A toilet, a sink, and a bathtub. A mirror over the sink, slightly open to reveal aspirin, a pink razor, and a spool of floss.

-It looks good enough, I said.

-Okay, and here's what I call my office. You can only have a quick peek!

I quickly peeked into her office. A desk and a computer, another shelf of books (cheap pocket sizes), and a wooden chair. On the wall hung a framed reproduction of Toulouse-Lautrec's poster for the Moulin Rouge Concert Bal. I had seen enough for I never expected to ever again step foot inside the room.

-There's my peek, I said.

-And down here is my bedroom. There's not much to it. Look.

She opened the door. A neatly-made bed (blue goose-embroidered covering), a shelf over it with mementoes and a trophy (for archery I later discovered), two framed posters of what appeared to be French outdoor café scenes, a roll-top desk (closed) with a dusty fake tiffany lamp on top, a small television set on a severe wooden chair. There was also a little cd miniplayer on a table alongside a pitiably small collection of disks. And I thought: all these things that will not be here in a relative blink of an eye, soon to be broken, dissolved, returned to the atoms and molecules from whence they came, are now cherished, taken for granted, or despised by the woman who, atoms and all, stood behind me, radiating avidly. She said, That's all there is to it. Nothing to hide here.

I said, I think it all looks quite fine. Are you expecting me to find hidden things?

-I don't think you could if you tried. Do you play loud music? Do you have over a lot of friends at one time?

-Not in any crazy way. No, I can't say you'll even notice me after a couple days.

She chuckled saying, I don't want you to be completely invisible. I like to be friends with the people who live with me. It works better that way.

-I can't see any of this being a problem.

-Would you like a drink? Beer or something?

-No, I don't drink.

-You don't drink?

-I never really got the feel for it. And I don't like the ... feeling of the stuff. Loss of control. I don't mind drunks though.

-Neither do I! But a little buzz I like.

-I'm not going to mind at all. Consider me a part of the family, girl. I'm not here to judge you. Have a good time with whatever. I won't object. I'm happy here; I'll be in a happy place.

She laughed out loud--she LOL'd--then, completely disarmed. She said, Okay, so, there, that's the whole place. I think: let's go down again.

Something was bothering her.

I followed her down the stairs. She was quiet going down. At the bottom of the stairs she turned to me and she looked at me and said, Did you leave the front door open?

I said, quite truthfully, I didn't touch the door.

She wrung her little hands. She said, Have you seen the cat? Troubadour?

-I haven't seen any cat. You have a cat here?

She went to the open front door and leaned out. Cool October. She said, She's not supposed to get out. Did you see her?

-I didn't see anything.

-Ah geez ah geez. Where is she? Troubadour, Troubadour! Come and help me.

I went up behind her. Your cat's got away?

-She's out.

She threw her hands up comically melodramatically. Can you go to the back door, see if she's there?

-Cats don't like me much.

I went back into the house looking for some kind of a back door, back into the kitchen, where there was in fact a door. Knowing it was all useless I opened it and leaned out and said, Troubadour.

She called out, Do you see her? to me.

-No.

-Go out in the yard, look around up in the tree and everything. I found her up in that tree once.

I went outside, crunching through the sad leaves. There was nothing in the tree, not even a leaf. The tree was decidedly empty. I don't like cats any more than they like me. Too stringy, I find. To keep up appearances I went to the end of the yard (which wasn't far) and then noticing a thin walkway proceeded down it to the front of the house. There was another door there, at the bottom of a trio of steps, undoubtedly to the basement. It was something to keep in mind. Then I was out at the street and looked up to where the homeowner was standing on the porch. She looked at me and I shrugged.

-Where to next? I asked.

She sighed.

-I guess I shouldn't be panicking so quickly. Maybe she'll find her way back soon enough.

-Cats are like that, or so I understand. They can smell their own houses. Like we can see colours they can't see, they can smell things we can't smell.

Had I given too much away there?

I continued, She'll be back, I'm sure of it. Let's go back inside.

I went up onto the porch and touched her lightly to make her go inside. She obeyed my touch and I followed her back into the kitchen. I went to close the door because I hadn't closed it when I'd gone out, saying, Troubadour, huh?

-Do you like the name?

-It's a good name. Maybe not for a relative, but.

She laughed a little. She was lightening up. I figured the cat would come back after I left so everything was in order and I had to leave as soon as possible because she had to get her cat back.

She said, So I dunno. What do you think?

-About living here?

-Yeah. What do you think?

-I could live here. It's convenient for me. What do you think?

She shrugged a little.

-I don't see why not. Beginning of November?

-That's next week.

-Yeah.

-I'm pretty much ready to go any time. So, sure.

-Okay. Can I get first and last?

-That's the usual thing, sure. I can being some checks by tomorrow.

-Okay, great! In the afternoon?

-I'll be by in the afternoon.

Soon after that I left.

Down at the street I looked back at the house. Memorizing it. Seeing the number of it and memorizing it. What's a bit of rent compared to the value of a roll-top desk? Those books would fetch some cash too.

I can easily get all my stuff into that car near the den. Maybe get rid of the car after. Abandon it somewhere.

Imagine it, a basement with a dirt floor. So convenient! Everyone needs a place to bury bones and bits that can't be digested.

There's a cat there. I wonder if that's Troubadour. I wonder if she'll go back to the house. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't; even if they do, they never return for long. They hate me, that's all there is to it. In any case, I don't hate cats. As pets they could be fine. Do I want pets?

Here kitty kitty. Here kitty kitty.