Displacement by Michael Marano Page A

to scrape loose the vocal cords that had cut me so many times.
    Arterial spray painted the windshield; steam from his sundered throat filled the car with summer-moist humidity. I nearly retched with the sweet-copper stink of blood and the booze on his breath. Yet I felt a strength, a satisfaction that I at last had power over him, as I’d once gained power through violence as a kid so long ago. Keene made noises like a pig makes as the butcher’s knife slides. I thought he tried to speak, then realized what bubbled from his sauna-warm throat was laughter. This pleased me. Irony unshared can be flat and lifeless.
    In a few moments, the flow of steam from his split double-chins stopped. But I thought I still heard laughter, like the soft giggle of a child.
    I took his billfold, careful to rip the buttons of his coat as I groped into his suit jacket. I took his watch, careful to mark its passing with scratches on his wrist. I broke his ring finger, where his thick gold wedding band was. I don’t know why he wore it. He did nothing but call his ex-wife a cunt.
    Then I got out of there. I took off the thin vinyl jacket, like a raincoat, that I wore over my parka. I’d bought the jacket at a hardware store out of town . . . it was what some companies require workers to wear when they spray pesticides. Keene’s blood had dribbled off it in streaks. I let it drop to the ground, then took a plastic garbage bag from under my coat and wrapped it.
    I rubbed out my prints in the snow, invisible to the ice-caked security cameras mounted on the lampposts, invisible to any who might see me, blending into shadow as a wilderness-hardened killer, the kind invoked in banal myth-novels by the short-hand “crazy vet” or “rogue agent”—a creature forged of cultural guilt for the betrayal of ex-soldiers. The power of that figure didn’t let my cancer-riddled body know thirst in the cold, dry air, didn’t allow me to shiver, or feel weak. I threw the bag in a trash can by a Burger King, took a bus home.
    No one gave me a second glance.
    —Did you think Keene’s death was funny?
    Doctor Johansson’s voice took a clarity from inside the patch of light that seemed to have become still within the bank of cloud-dark shade.
    —No, Doctor. I don’t think death is funny.
    Doctor Johansson set down his pipe, leaned back, hands behind his head. It was a position I’d have taken myself, if it weren’t for my shackled arms and legs; the metal links were silver-shiny against the orange jump-suit I wore. The jumpsuit had no belts, buckles, laces. Silly precaution. I wouldn’t hurt anybody. Yet, like the hunter’s costume I wore the night Keene died, my vestments had iconic value I welcomed, despite my aching shoulders. The metal chair the links looped through was very uncomfortable, too. Yet if this throne were meant to accompany the ceremonial robes I wore, so be it.
    —And you were able to forgive Keene?
    —There’s something tragic about a drunk. Maybe that’s why so many clowns look like tramps. Keene never looked so pathetic as he did when he bled.
    —How did this allow you to forgive yourself?
    —I realized I pitied this boozer whose life had turned to shit. And that’s why I took his abuse. On some level, I knew he couldn’t help it.
    —But you don’t regret killing him.
    —If I hadn’t killed him, I wouldn’t have this insight, and he wouldn’t be at peace. Forgiveness is part of the Justice I sought. Justice comes from art, and art works on many levels. The forgiveness of the deaths, for the victims and for me, is just one level of this art.
    —Art is subjective. So is Justice. And in this context, so is forgiveness. If each of those you kill can’t understand what you’ve done, then your service to Justice is one-sided.
    I admired his lifting my rhetoric, to throw it back to me. I’d like to see what a linguist would think of the transcript of this day’s session, because it seemed that Doctor Johansson was,