The world is a vampire; It sucked you dry.
Now you’re doing the same to me.
(Somewhere my twin is walking in sun or splashing in rain;
Meanwhile I can feel myself aging like the portrait of Dorian Gray.)
Every day from the same chair I feel your eyes watching me,
Demanding things without your speaking to ask.
Even when I try to sleep, I can’t get away from you;
You bump into something on your moonlit walk to the kitchen.
I open my eyes and there you are,
Floating through the room like Hamlet’s ghost.
Yes, at night- magically- you’re able to find your own food.
In the daylight hours, you’re content to rely on everyone else.
Where is the father I grew up loving?
How could you have let this happen to us?
We used to play cards and argue about religion.
Now mostly our conversations revolve around your pills and shots.
(How did you ever end up taking so many pills?
Sometimes I have to look out the kitchen window
To see if it’s morning or night so I can tell what pills
You’re supposed to be taking. They all run together.)
We took long walks together, played volleyball Saturday nights.
(You were rarely a gracious winner or loser;
I hate playing on either team.)
Now mostly you sit and I catch you staring into space.
Sometimes you’re listening to an audiobook
Then again sometimes you’re not.
Don’t you ever get bored sitting there
And wonder what life looks like from the couch?
Do you want to go try Voodoo Donuts with bacon?
Don’t you ever just miss yourself?
I’m researching alternative medicine to cure you
And behavior modification.
Trying to get why I care so damned much,
When you don’t care enough
To stand up
To walk across the living room
To see where the bicyclists go when they’re past the window,
Beyond the edge of the world
That exists in your chair.
Posts Tagged ‘diabetic
“I thought you didn’t know this guy. I thought you only talked to him once.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s the senselessness of the whole thing. One day you’re talking to a man about good and evil and Saul and David and the next day you find out someone cut his head off. The fathers go out to get food for their chicks and they come back to discover a bird ate them and it was a waste of time.” One of the little boys looked at their table and giggled. His mother, following his eyes, tapped his cheeseburger sternly.
“Okay, you’re scaring mothers and children and you’re starting to sound like Jeff. I’m not saying it isn’t hard to find out someone you knew has been murdered and I’m not saying you’re wrong to be angry or even scared about all this. But let’s figure out who did it so you can feel at least a little satisfaction on that count.” They chewed and swallowed in silence. KC declared that was the way, presumably answering an unheard question regarding his preference, he liked it. The little girl tussled with her older brother over a French fry. Their father said something low and decisive. The girl slumped back against the booth. “I can see why your family was disappointed because even when you’re not paying any attention to what you’re saying you still come up with something that makes sense.”
“I’m not sure if I’ve been complimented or insulted. What are you talking about?”
“Justification for killing someone.”
“Yeah?”
“In our society we usually accept that there are certain situations that excuse killing someone.”
“If they break into your house?”
“Yeah, in some places. There’s also self-defense.”
“Aaron Whittaker had a migraine and he was lying on the floor. I heard him sit up and if you’d heard the agony he was in you couldn’t be convinced he was capable of hurting anyone.”
“Or protecting someone,” Buzz continued.
“There again, I don’t see how Aaron could have been a danger to anybody. The man was in extreme pain. He couldn’t even reach up to the desk to get his own thermos of coffee.”
“And you’re sure it was sincere?”
“I don’t know. Can you fake a migraine? Women have been accused of faking things but I’ve always heard there was a purpose to what they did. What would be the benefit of holing up in a dark room and lying on the floor if you weren’t actually sick? I guess we could check with people who knew him and find out whether he actually suffered from migraines. Maybe Mari would tell you something if you promise her enough.”
“She’s someone else’s problem right now and I’m willing to keep it that way. Besides, everything we’ve seen so far has been consistent with the reality that he was suffering a migraine. He was in the dark, he was lying down, he was drinking coffee, he made disturbing noises when he tried to sit up, and he hadn’t eaten much all day.”
“Wait a minute, how do you know that?”
“Stomach contents report.”
“Could the migraine have been brought on by low blood sugar?”
“I’d have to check into it but my gut instinct says that even if it could be this one wasn’t.”
“Why?”
“He’d been diabetic for years, I’m guessing here, and he knew how important it was to keep his blood sugar stable.”
“Yeah, but cream cheese and cranberries and chocolate aren’t exactly low in sugar. Is that what you’d expect somebody to be eating if they wanted things to be stable?”
“No, but people who are diabetic do screwy things sometimes. I knew a girl who used to wash down Godiva chocolates with champagne.”
“Hold on. He said something about maybe having to excuse himself to throw up.”
“He was probably hoping he would. Migraine affects the nausea center of the brain. Sometimes the only thing that helps is to throw up.”
“So, we can assume he hadn’t already thrown up or he would have been feeling better?” The family was leaving now and as they were passing Clement’s table, the smaller of the boys mimed making himself vomit. His mother swatted him with the hand not holding the tray of garbage.
“You’re thinking that if he had been able to eat something earlier in the day and then he’d thrown it up the only thing left would be whatever he ate after he threw up.”
“Right. Which would be the cranberries and cream cheese.”
“I think it’s going to be pretty tough to figure out whether or not he threw up. ‘You can’t dust for vomit’ as they said in Spinal Tap.”
“How long does it take to digest cream cheese? Or cranberries?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’ve got another question you probably can answer.”
“Yeah?”
“Who called it in?”
“What?”
“Who called 911? Who called the police or whoever and said ‘Hey, I found a dead body in this office’? Was it one of the cleaning people?”
“Tanner’s looking a little anxious up there. You wanna see if they have anything that passes for coffee?”
“Sure.” He came back empty-handed to hear Buzz signing off a phone call. “Tanner says they do but since we seem like we’re okay he wouldn’t recommend it. Vicky suggested a frozen mocha dessert type thing.”
“God help me. You might be wondering who that was on the phone.”
“Not really but if you want to tell me.”
“The person who called it in was Dolores only she’s not calling herself Dolores anymore.”
“What?”
“Patience, my good man. All will be revealed. She didn’t show up for work for two days but she did call in on the second day and say she was very sorry but she was having some drug problems and she planned to go into rehab so please don’t fire her. When they did sit down and talk with her in person she had a very interesting story to tell indeed. Before we talk with her, however, we need to pay a visit to my old friend Dr. Phillips.”
“The coroner?”
“Yep. He has an interesting story too.”
“We don’t have hanging in this state.”
“Well, being lit up like a Christmas tree then.”
“Or the electric chair.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got no intention of dying for something I didn’t do and I don’t want to talk any more about it until I talk to my lawyer and he talks to somebody with the clout to keep me out of this.”
“Where is your lawyer? I can’t imagine what he was thinking letting you come in here and shoot your mouth off.”
“I told him I didn’t need him to come with me. He wanted to but I told him he didn’t need to because I was just going to be having a talk with my old friend Clement.”
“Then as soon as you saw I was gonna be here too you should have called him and had him come in.”
“Yeah, I should have. ‘Woulda shoulda coulda’ as my mother always says. But I didn’t. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t say anything I can’t deny later. I didn’t say anything you can hold me to. The only thing I said for sure is that I did not kill Aaron Whittaker. I don’t like the way this conversation is going and since I’m not under arrest and I have other things I’d like to do today, I would like to get the hell out of here.”
Buzz knocked on the wall beside the door and Mari was let out. Clement saw a gray-haired man come forward and take her arm. “She’ll probably get everything she wants,” Buzz said, when the door was closed.
“Why? How can you promise to keep her out of it when she might be the one who killed Aaron?”
“Because she’s right that the ultimate cause of death was determined to be decapitation.”
“But let’s say she really did do something before the other person came in and cut his head off. What if she did something that made it easier for them to decapitate him?”
“She’s an accessory.”
“What if she thought she killed him or thought she’d left him to die then someone else came along?”
“And finished the job.”
“Yeah, and she didn’t know anything about that until somebody told her. What if as far as she was concerned Aaron was dead or nearly dead?”
“That’s an interesting idea. If there’s any truth to what you’re saying then she must have been awfully surprised when they hauled her off the bus and brought her back and it wasn’t in cuffs.”
“How could she have done it? What’s a way she could kill him without really killing him?”
“Now, you’re confusing me. I gotta ask Sylvia something. You wanna wait out here in a nicer chair in a room that actually has windows?”
“Yeah, that’d be good.”
The two men went into the larger room and Clement selected a chair and a magazine. Buzz walked over to Sylvia’s desk. “Do we have the toxicology report on Aaron Whittaker? Also stomach contents?”
“It’s right here.” Sylvia shifted some papers on her desk and pulled a brown folder from the pile.
“Thanks.” Buzz walked back to where Clement was sitting. He opened the folder and scanned the reports. “She didn’t poison him.”
“The report says that?”
“In so many words. The tox screen was negative on all known drugs and poisons.”
“Damn.”
“Stomach contents consisted of some walnuts, some cranberries, some cream cheese, and bits of a chocolate covered espresso bean.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“You know, in a way that makes sense.”
“How?”
“Aaron told me he had a migraine. It’s a little weird that he was in his office instead of home or somewhere more comfortable but maybe this was the place he felt the most at home. Or maybe it came on pretty quickly and he didn’t feel able to drive anywhere else.”
“My aunt had migraines that would lay her out. She couldn’t talk, she couldn’t eat, she couldn’t walk. The only thing that helped her feel better was puking.”
“Hey! You said your aunt couldn’t eat.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“So, Aaron Whittaker was diabetic. What do you suppose would happen to someone who was diabetic and who was unable to eat regularly?”
“Obviously their blood sugar would drop.”
“If it gets low enough you go into a coma, right?”
“Yeah. Are you wondering where the walnuts come in?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I’m also wondering how someone who couldn’t drive ended up with cranberries and cream cheese in his stomach.”
“And a chocolate covered espresso bean.”
“That too.”
“There’s another thing I’ve been wondering about.”
“Can we talk about it over some coffee and a BLT?”
“Sure. I’m picking the place this time.”
“Any place but Anna’s.”
“What?”
“Hey, I’m all for cleanliness but I like a little flavor in my food even if it does mean swatting a few flies.”
“You’re a cretin.”
“Yeah, it’s healthier that way.”
He took him back to Brad and Vicky and the A&W. Except it wasn’t Brad today; it was a red-headed kid named Tanner who was even less ept than Brad. Vicky, who was in charge for the moment, supervised the making of three BLTs before one passed her muster. Both men ordered root beer floats and Clement rocked Buzz by asking for a large Coney Island.
“I can’t believe you frequent a place like this. I can’t believe you’d eat something like that especially when it was made by him.”
“I’m sure, it’s okay; Vicky kept a close eye on him.”
“Oh ho, so you’re a regular.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I came out here the other day after I had lunch at the school. I was hoping some real food would help me recover from the sloppy Joe I’d had at lunch but then I didn’t have the nerve to put any fast food on top of it.”
“Which explains how you knew the employees’ names but not why you’re sitting there with a giant Coney.”
“Let’s say I was feeling nostalgic.”
“Yeah?”
“We used to go to A&W on road trips when I was a kid.”
“You still see your family?”
“No. We aren’t what you might call close.”
“What happened? Are you the black sheep of the family?”
“You know what? I think it’s a little early in our relationship for you to be psychoanalyzing me. Usually that kind of thing doesn’t happen until two people have slept together which you and I aren’t gonna. I wouldn’t say I was the black sheep, I would say people were disappointed. They thought I was smart and they thought I was probably gonna do great things with my life and make the world a better place for all living things and it didn’t happen. I haven’t made the world a better place and what I do is sell chicken strips that are generally acknowledged to be nasty.”
“How do you feel about selling nasty chicken strips?” Buzz was smiling. “You said you had another question about Aaron Whittaker. You’ve done your part; I’m sitting here with a BLT. Fire away.”
“How did he get there? I didn’t see a car in the lot when I drove up around eight.”
“He could have walked over. He didn’t live far from the office. That’s probably one of the reasons he chose the new complex when he moved the office from downtown.”
“It used to be downtown?”
“Yes, when Whittaker’s father started the business it was right near the center of town. That was partly so customers could find him and partly because at that time that’s all the town there was. A few years ago the powers that be determined the old building could be more useful as condos and everybody had to go. Aaron decided to take advantage of the situation by moving into the new complex which was a medium walk from his home.”
“He couldn’t have walked there after the migraine started, right?”
“It depends on how they are for him. Judging from everything you’ve told me, I’d say he wouldn’t have done much walking if he could avoid it.”
“That means he went to the office before the migraine got really bad. Why? I mean, yeah it was dark there and quiet but why go to the office.”
“Not a place I would choose or many other people would for that matter. But, like you said, it was dark and quiet. It had familiar and comforting things in it, stuff that had belonged to his dad. Mostly, I’m guessing, it was the idea that it was a controlled environment. Nobody knew he was there or expected to see him there so he could be left to recover without anyone bothering him.”
“Right. Just me and Mari and whoever cut off his head with a shovel. Did you guys find out what those rocks were?”
“Some ochre, some malachite, and we’re still working on the blue one. Nothing worth killing anyone over.”
“Isn’t it funny how we say that?”
“What?”
“’Nothing worth killing anyone over’. Like if he’d had different rocks in his office there would be justification for his being dead now. Like there’s a good reason for killing someone, for cutting their head off with a shovel.” Brad and Vicky had competed an order for a family of five and they slid the trays across the counter towards them. Each parent picked up a tray and the mother gathered the children around her and urged them, duck-like, to a table on the far side of the restaurant.
You watch all the TV shows on how to get in shape.
You criticize the girls who’d look pregnant if they ate a grape
Hold down one end of the sofa like you was Jabba the Hut.
You say I could lose a couple more inches offa my butt.
You are a batter-dipped, chicken-fried, fat-filled hypocrite.
Man, you must be crazy and I’m getting tired of it.
You tell us all to shake a leg
When all you do is sit.
You are a batter-dipped and chicken-fried fat-filled hypocrite.
Now you’re diabetic- triglycerides off the scale.
The drawstring on your PJs would fit a baby whale.
About two hundred pounds a-riding on your size 7 shoes.
Pick up the phone and say “Hello”
The Biggest Loser’s looking for you.
You are a batter-dipped, chicken-fried, fat-filled hypocrite.
Man, you must be crazy and I’m getting tired of it.
You tell us all to shake a leg
When all you do is sit.
You are a batter-dipped and chicken-fried fat-filled hypocrite.
“Well, you can sure tell who your supposed friends are and who’s being paid to talk to you. My lawyer was here hours ago. Where were you? Out eating lunch? You know what I had for lunch?” They were sitting in a light-blue room the size of a guest bedroom. Clement and Buzz were on one side of the table, Jeff was across from them. All three of them had coffee and Jeff’s agitation, the slight tremor in his hands, and the half-dozen paper cups empty and discarded at his feet clearly showed this was not his first of the day. Buzz nodded at Clement.
“Yeah, funny thing about that, Jeff, because we wanted to talk to you about food. Well, food and Aaron.”
Jeff thumped the table and some of the coffee sloshed from his cup. “I’m tired of talking about Aaron. Do you realize all I’ve done all day is talk about Aaron? I’ve never talked about anybody so much in my life. And, like I said before, where the hell were you? Where’s Mari?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she okay? Is she dead somewhere too?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, don’t you think somebody ought to find out? Like maybe me since I’m her boyfriend? I am still her boyfriend, right?”
“Yes. If you haven’t heard from her then just assume everything’s okay between the two of you.”
“Oh no no. You know better than that. Even you know better than that. You can’t just assume that because a woman hasn’t said there’s something wrong then there’s nothing wrong.”
Buzz leaned forward. “Jeff, I understand you’re probably very tired of talking about Aaron Whittaker-“
“You got that right.”
“But we need to talk about him a little more. Just a little and then we’ll leave you alone and we’ll put some people to work looking for your girlfriend.”
“I don’t want some people to go looking for her. I need to do the looking because I’m the one that knows her. She’s my girlfriend. I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t do anything while I’m in here. I can’t find Mari. I can’t sell any chicken strips. Who am I kidding? I wasn’t selling chicken strips anyway. My life is a black abyss and it’s just spiraling downwards.” He sat down at the table again, folded his arms and laid his head down on them. Buzz nodded at Clement.
“Jeff, I know you wanna get out of here but the thing is right now this is the safest place for you to be.”
“Oh yeah, and why is that?” Jeff lifted his head and glared at Clement.
“Well, to put it bluntly, they think you killed Aaron. You said you were in his office-“ He held up a hand to quiet Jeff and continued, “I know what you’re gonna say, ‘he was alive’. That means you were probably the last person to see him that way except for the person who killed him.”
“I didn’t see him alive or dead because I wasn’t in his office last night.”
“Your car was spotted in the parking lot about ten,” Buzz said.
“Yeah, I went over there. I parked in the parking lot. I walked around the building.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought about how I felt when I told you we didn’t have to worry about the pictures and the truth is I felt really good. I thought maybe I actually could go over and talk to him and ask him to leave us alone.”
“You didn’t like him still talking to Mari all the time, you were the last one in his office and you could easily have made a copy of the key before you gave one to me.”
“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even go in. I started to go in but everything was dark and I got scared and left.”
“I hear you but you being there at ten makes you the likeliest suspect. What you also have to understand is that makes you the likeliest target.”
“Target for what?”
Buzz stood up, walked to the wall, and walked back to the table. “Let’s assume you didn’t kill Aaron Whittaker.”
“Yeah, let’s assume that since it happens to be true.”
“If you didn’t kill him then somebody else did since even someone with a migraine would have a hard time committing suicide by decapitating himself with a shovel.”
“Right.”
“As long as we’re focusing on you then the person who really killed him thinks they’re gonna be okay.”
“And if they think they’re gonna be okay then they’ll go out and do something stupid and then you can catch them. I watch TV, ya know. There’s a problem with your plan though.”
“Jeff is right. There is a problem.”
“Thank you, Clement. I thought maybe having lunch with this guy made you go clear over to the other side.”
“Shut up, Jeff. The problem is something like that only works if the person who was murdered got killed for the insurance. They figure someone else got busted for the crime and they wait a little while and think they’re home free and then they start spending the money and bam!” Clement hit the table and Jeff startled. “But there’s no indication anybody killed Aaron for the insurance. We don’t even know if he had insurance. We don’t even know why anyone killed him or would want to kill him.”
“That brings us back to you,” Buzz said. “You’re the only one with a motive. A bunch of people- definitely more than I’d like- had the opportunity and the means was right there in the office. You are the only one who’d be better off because you wouldn’t have to worry about sharing or losing your girlfriend.”
“But I wasn’t worried. She’d been talking to Aaron all along so why would I get worried and kill him now?”
“Wait a minute! We don’t know if there was any insurance but there is somebody who might have had a reason to kill him for money.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t know about any-“
Clement stood up and leaned over to Buzz. “I’ve got an idea but if I just spring it on Jeff without giving him any warning first he’ll come unglued.”
“What are you guys talking about?”
“Is there any way you can leave us alone for just a minute and then come back in? Maybe get us some more coffee?”
“You’re that sure about him?” Clement nodded. Buzz sighed and said, “I could use another cup right about now. Anybody else?”
“I might have had enough,” Jeff said.
“I second that. My eyeballs are about to start floating.”
“All right, coffee for one.”
Clement sat down at the table and Jeff grabbed his arm. “Where’s Mari?”
“I told you I don’t know.”
“Do you know why she left?”
“I don’t know anything except Buzz is gonna come back in a minute and I’m going to have to tell him something you don’t want to hear.”
“It’s about Mari, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You think she killed Aaron.”
“I don’t think anything. I’ve got no idea if she killed him or if she didn’t.”
“How can you say that? You know her. You’ve been with us for hours. You can’t tell me that in all the time we spent together you saw anything that would make you think she’d cut someone’s head off with a shovel. She’s not even that big.”
“You can do anything if you get enough leverage. If there really was money involved that’s even more reason.” Buzz had returned with his coffee.
“I don’t want to believe that Mari killed him any more than you do but if you didn’t kill him and she had a good reason then we have to look at everything.”
Buzz sat down and sipped his coffee. “Tell me about this money. It’s not insurance?”
“Mari, wouldn’t get any insurance. They weren’t even together any more.”
“No, this isn’t guaranteed like that; it’s more of a gamble than anything. Jeff, you remember the pieces of paper we’ve been finding?”
“Yeah, there was one of a beehive and one of a cat and then the one I found yesterday.”
“Right. When I had lunch with those two boys yesterday the older one explained what we were looking at.”
“How did he do that?”
“Because he’s a really smart kid who’s insufficiently challenged. If I ever get out of here I’m gonna go see his teacher and the principal and maybe we can get things fixed. Anyway, he explained what was on the paper and he told me about something called the Millennium Prize.”
“What the hell is that?”
Buzz whistled. “It’s a million dollars and international fame.”
“For doing what?”
“Solving one of the six math problems on the list.”
“Math problems? Like what?”
Clement reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper folded lengthwise. “Proving or disproving the hypothesis that all nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function have a real part of ½.”
“And you think Mari had something to do with that?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no way in hell.”
“She’s the one who was working on the other things we found. Those pieces of paper were notes she jotted down.”
“She got those from Aaron Whittaker. She had to have gotten them from him.”
“Why?”
“Because Mari wasn’t that smart. She isn’t that smart. I guess I should watch how I say things. After all, I’m already in here for one murder.”
“How do you know she wasn’t very smart? Did you ask her?”
“Did I ask her? I didn’t have to ask her. If it wasn’t on Oprah, Dr. Phil, or ‘Entertainment Tonight’, she didn’t know about it. She could barely walk and carry on a conversation at the same time. I told you how she nearly blinded me with the perfume.”
“You just knew, huh? Or maybe you assumed like everybody assumed Aaron was married. He wasn’t, by the way.”
“Okay, so he wasn’t really married. Why am I on trial here?”
“There were no pictures either, Jeff.”
“Okay.”
“Well, if you knew there weren’t any pictures how come you spent so much time trying to get me to go in and get them back?”
“I didn’t say I knew there weren’t any pictures. You just told me there weren’t any pictures and I said, ‘Okay’ as in ‘That’s very interesting. Thank you for enlightening me. When can I get the hell out of here?’ Like that.”
Buzz turned his chair around and straddled it. “I understand this may be a hard thing for you to think about but is there any way you can imagine- no matter how dense you think she may be- your girlfriend killing Aaron Whittaker?”
“No, of course not.”
“Not for a million dollars?”
“No! She wasn’t very smart but she wasn’t stupid enough to think she could get away with murder.”
“Jeff, did you know Aaron was a diabetic?”
“No. How the hell would I know that?”
“Mari told you what TV shows he liked and when he got his hair cut so I thought maybe she told you that too.”
“Well, she didn’t.”
Buzz stood and put his palms on the table. “Did she tell you he was afraid of needles?”
“No, she didn’t. Where is this coming from? Why does it matter if he was diabetic and afraid of needles? Did somebody take a big syringe in first and scare him to death before they cut off his head?”
“Not that we know of but we’re checking into everything.” Buzz looked at his watch then at Clement. “You’ve got another appointment this afternoon, don’t you?”
“What is it? Are you meeting Mari? You really do know where she is?”
“No, it’s not with Mari and I really don’t know where she is. Buzz here is going to get some people to help us find her though.”
“Absolutely. The more I hear about her the more I can’t wait to sit down for a chat with her myself.”
“I can’t believe you think she’d kill Aaron. She had no reason to kill him. She didn’t care about money.”
“Jeff, look. In order to get in and kill him the person had to either have a key or be somebody he knew well enough to let in or to leave the door open and tell them to come in. Mr. Gomez the custodial supervisor and his people had a key. Dolores worked down the hall and she had a key. I had a key that I got from you. Mari had made a copy from the original. Maybe you made a copy before you gave the one to me.”
“Mari gave the copy to me and I-“
Buzz put his hands over his ears. “This is something I don’t need to hear right now. I have a couple of things to check into and I think you two should get some rest.”
Jeff held his hand out to Clement who shook it then allowed himself to be pulled into a hug. “You’ll find Mari?”
“I’ll try.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“I hear you.”
“You’ll come back?”
“As often as they’ll let me.” Jeff extended his hand to Buzz who also shook it but did not embrace him. Buzz knocked on the wall and two of the men left by one door and the third by a different one.
Mouthfeel 