dancing on the edge jessica hollander There is always the moon and the fucking wet grass. If one were gone I wouldn’t notice the other, but with both I can’t get them out of my head. It rains too much in Detroit. There are puddles on the lawn that never go away. I would go down the street to the bar on the corner, but I can see the moon from my window and I know the kind of grass that’s below. Right now I’m looking at the moon, the big shiny ball, perfect and full tonight. It’s beautiful and I hate it. If I had a gun I’d shoot it from the sky and bury it in the yard. My dad said to me about a month ago, “Listen, Ed. Get a job during the day like the rest of us. Who do you think you are running around at all hours of the night?” “I’m batman, dad.” He clutched his fat chest like he was having a heart attack. He loves to be dramatic. I kept my arms crossed and watched him fall off his chair to the floor. “I’m out of here,” I told him. At 11:30 I have to leave even though I still see the moon in the sky. Outside, the grass is damp, of course. I eye it and stick to the sidewalk, buttoning my navy blue jacket. I’m late to work but Don doesn’t care. He says it’s just me and him tonight and I’m in charge of the cameras. The funny thing is nobody’s broken in over the ten years I’ve worked here. I don’t even have a good idea of what goes on in this place during the day and it annoys the hell out of me when someone tries to tell me. Once I heard my boss tell a new guy that we were protecting information here. You see, that’s exactly why I didn’t want to know. I never thought I’d spend half my adult life guarding words and graphs on glowing green computer screens. But watching the monitors, that’s a shit job. Nobody stays awake long staring at empty corridors and deserted doorways. Most of the guys liked to sleep, but I hate sleeping when it’s dark. I always wake up cold. I have a dream. It’s about Susan. She’s lying naked in some huge bed with black sheets. She’s laughing at me with her big beautiful mouth. I try telling her to stop but my lips are glued shut and the more I try to talk the worse it gets until I know my whole face will roll back and stick to the skull behind my teeth. Her mouth is like a giant open pitcher. It’s why I love her, why I can’t stop thinking about her. Her laugh echoes in my ears like the squawking of a giant crow. When I wake up I’m freezing. I look at the timer on one of the screens and see I slept for an hour. It’s quiet in the security room, so quiet I can still hear the crow echoing around my head, bumping into my brain. There’s movement on one of the screens and because I’m groggy and sore from sleeping with my head on the desk, I think it’s a girl with dark hair and a large purple mouth. But then I see it’s some guy in leather with a bruised face. His arms are like twigs hanging from his shoulder blades, touching his body only at the elbows. My boss stands next to him, his fat arms and chest covered in a navy blazer and his puffy white fingers oozing out the cuffs. The bruised man reaches into his pocket and hands Don something, and I’m feeling excited just to have something to watch, something to take my mind off the dream. Once the man leaves I follow my boss on the blinking screens as he makes his way through the building. He’s coming toward me. I turn around and see him taking up the doorframe with his thick arms across his chest. “Disregard what you saw on the camera there, Ed.” I scratch my head. “Maybe.” This gets him mad. His nostrils flare and his fat stomach heaves up and down. “What the hell kind of answer is that?” “Well. It depends on what you got.” His face loses a bit of its red quality. “Alright,” he whispers, walking around the desk. From his pocket he pulls five white pills and displays them in his open palm. His eyes are gleaming when he puts one in his mouth, and so I take another from his sticky hand and swallow it along with him. “Thanks,” I say. He nods and winks before walking down the hall again. I turn back to my screens. They’re all empty. I drum my fingers on the desk, dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum. It’s been a year since she left, two years since we met. Still, I remember things were different before Susan. I worked the day shift and slept at night, dated a nice girl and visited my parents once a week. I glance at the screens again and there’s nothing. I realize I haven’t talked to my dad much this year. Jumping from my chair, I pace the tiny room, looking the whole time at the screens. And I want something to happen tonight because otherwise I’ll start thinking about her again. My mom died of a stroke a week before I met Susan. All week I’d seen friends and family and gone to dusty cemeteries and empty churches. I hadn’t slept and my eyes were dried out like raisins. I was in the bar down the street from my apartment with the girl I was dating when a buddy from high school came in with Susan. It’s not that I thought Susan was a hooker, but there was something dangerous about her that immediately attracted me. She wore a short black skirt and her dark hair looked frizzed and burnt and slept on. She had a gorgeous mouth, the size of my fist. Blood raced to my fingertips when they headed to our table. “I’m sorry about your mom,” my friend said. “Thanks, man.” Susan looked at me, her eyebrows low. “What happened?” “She passed away last week.” “I’m sorry.” She leaned across the table and took my hand. Her skin was dry and rough, the tips of her fingers chewed and torn. All night I watched her, searching her dirty brown eyes. She came from Charleston with a friend, who a week ago had a baby and told her she had to move out. She loved being outside more than anything and wanted to know if there were any good campsites around here. We laughed and told her she’d freeze if she stayed outside through a winter. She had thousands of plans for inventions, like inflatable tires for cars to limit theft. “They’d deflate when you park,” she said, “and then your key in the door would activate the air pumps and in seconds they’d rise to full-sized tires again.” She talked about life and people and planets and animals. No one else I knew had the kinds of ideas she had. Over the next few weeks I noticed her around, near the bar and walking along the streets by my apartment. Finally I invited her upstairs and we sat across from each other, me leaning forward from the couch and her relaxed with her short legs crossed in an easy chair. “Tell me about your mom’s death,” she said. “Did she suffer long?” “She was in a coma for two days.” “Wow.” Her eyes were huge. “There wasn’t much hope she’d come out of it. They said she’d have brain damage if she did.” “Was the funeral open casket?” “Yeah.” “What...did she look like?” “I don’t know. Like she was in an invisible ice cube. I brushed her hand, just to see. It was freezing.” We were both silent awhile and Susan seemed focused on something. Then she turned back to me. “I’ve been thinking...It might be a little cold to move to a campsite, you know, since it’s almost October.” “You can move in here.” “Really? Because the restaurant I work for is right down the street.” “Yeah, no problem.” “I’ll pay rent. And you know, it will just be until I find something else.” “Stay as long as you want.” She moved toward the couch and put her arms around me; she kissed me with her lovely mouth, her too big, awful mouth. I didn’t realize how Susan and her mouth would always eat away at me, whenever I had a second to think. I want to get out of this office and walk around because it’s too hot and I’m suffocating. It’s impossible to fall asleep in front of the screens again because my senses are sharper than ever. The room and monitors shine. The floor under my feet is a smooth rock and Don’s heavy footsteps vibrate in the hall like thunder. I’m dancing on the edge of a plate and trying not to fall. I’m on top of an invisible table watching the clouds come in. Don fills the door and I can’t see past him. My forehead’s soaked. “How you doing, Ed?” “Fine,” I say and shove my hands in my armpits. “Fine,” I shrug. “You want to be on patrol for awhile?” “Yes. Well, sure. Whatever you want.” “Check inside and out, alright?” “OK.” He moves into the office and I squeeze past him. The halls are dimmer than the security room and I stay close to the walls. Usually I take the elevator to the first floor, but tonight I’ve got too much energy and I take the stairs. I already know I’ll walk inside the building first because I want to avoid the moon and the grass as long as possible. The first floor is dimmer than the second. There’s a hallway I usually just glance down, but tonight I decide to check it out. It’s long and narrow and at the end there’s another hallway that angles off to the left. This hall’s smaller and darker, and I realize something smells rotten. Like food stuck in a garbage disposal that hasn’t been emptied in weeks. It gets stronger the further I go and the air feels heavy, like a thick fog’s settled in this part of the building. I take out my flashlight. The light’s small and spread out, like ink bleeding across wet paper. I’m breathing as little as possible because the smell is making me sick. The hall comes to an end and I turn around. I decide the smell is coming from inside the wall. Something died in there. The dampness in this part of the building’s making it worse, and I’m not sure why no one would notice and take care of it. But I know now it’s up to me. Holding the flashlight close to each wall, I try to find where the smell’s the strongest. I put my nose inches from the drywall and breathe as I walk back and forth down the hall. Maybe the smell will stay with me forever, it’ll cling to my nose and throat and I’ll never breathe fresh air again. After twenty minutes I know I’m getting close. I have it narrowed down to a five feet spread of wall. “Ed, what the hell are you doing?” I look toward the voice and there’s a weak circle of light coming down the hall. As it gets closer I’m reminded of the moon and my chest fills with dread. “What do you mean?” I squint and hold up my hand until Don’s in front of me. “I saw you on the monitor down here with your face pressed against the wall.” I look at him awhile. “Don’t you smell it?” “What are you talking about?” “Something died in this wall,” I point beside me. Don’s silent for a moment. His nose twitches. The smell’s so overpowering I think I’m going to faint. “Look, I’ve got to get back to the security room.” He looks nervous now. “Go back to your rounds, OK?” I shine my flashlight on his back and watch him walk away. Then I turn it along the edge of the ceiling and spot a small red light. The camera. Quickly, I switch the flashlight off and lay it at my feet next to the spot I decide the smell’s coming from. As I follow my boss through the hall and watch his massive body disappear around the corner, I think about my dad: how much I love him, how much I hate him, and how just like Don, he’s always tried to tell me what to do. After my mom died we still had breakfast together once a week, we met at a diner by his house, and he was eating out so often he gained over fifty pounds. I didn’t know how to deal with this new grossness. I told him he needed to eat healthier. He said, “You don’t know a damn thing.” I said, “I know you look disgusting.” We argued until he admitted vegetables reminded him of mom and made him depressed. Then he coughed and coughed until his face turned red. I changed the subject. We had no idea how to communicate without her. At breakfast one morning he asked what the hell I saw in that crazy girl Susan. I covered my face behind a menu. “She’s not crazy.” “Every time I see her she’s either crying or giving me the finger.” “It’s you, you know, you have strange effects on people, you make them emotional.” “Oh, you think it’s my fault she’s crying and giving me the finger? I’m just saying she’ll make you miserable.” He pulled the menu from me. “Hey.” “I want to make sure you’re listening. I know about these things.” “What are you talking about?” “I have a friend who lives by you. He says he sees her all the time walking around the house without any clothes on. She leaves the windows wide open!” “I’ll tell her to close them.” “He says he sees her on the street with strange men, some of them three times her age, some of them look homeless. Who the hell is this girl?” “Maybe your friend should mind his own business.” I stood from the table. “Calm down. I just want you to think about what you’re getting involved in, about who you’re getting involved with.” I slammed my fist on the table. Silverware jumped and clanked and two of my knuckles burst open. I looked at my bleeding hand and at my dad. His fat hands flew to his neck and I walked away without turning back There’s a maintenance room on the other side of the building. The whole floor’s thick with fog and makes it difficult to see. But it doesn’t matter, I know where I’m going. I fumble with my ring of keys and open the door; I look around for an ax but there’s no ax. I grab a large hammer instead and a dusty black sweatshirt that’s shoved on one of the shelves. Wrapping the hammer in the sweatshirt, I duck back into the hall, hoping it takes Don awhile to get to the security room on the second floor. As I walk through the building, my heart’s beating fast and I don’t care if I get in trouble for what I’m about to do. I haven’t done something this important since the night in the stairwell of my apartment building, chasing after Susan. “My mind’s made up,” she yelled, dragging herself up by the handrail. “What’s wrong with you?” She wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t want you to love me anymore.” Then she screamed, “Stop loving me!” I grabbed her wrist and she wrestled free, lunging further up the staircase. Something like the universe pumped through my body, a prickly rush I’d never felt before. I ran after her onto the roof and tackled her on the concrete. Lying on top of her back I could feel her breathing beneath me, up and down, up and down. Whenever I looked up I could see the moon ahead of me. That was before I hated it, before I hated everything. I reach the dark hall and take my hammer in one hand, throwing the sweatshirt over the camera with the other. I turn on my flashlight and place it near the opposite wall so it’s shining where I’m going to hit. And then I transfer to the wall this picture I have in my head of the moon and the wet grass that night everything went wrong, and I swing the hammer violently, denting and cracking the drywall over and over. Finally there’s a hole. I pull large pieces of drywall away and peer into the hollow space with my flashlight. The smell’s so strong it burns my lungs. There it is on the floor. A dead rat. The glassy eyes look shocked in the light and I wonder if it’s cold like my mom, perfect and still in the funeral home. But before I get emotional I think about Susan again, how I caught something from her when we were living together, a disease really, a sickness. After her attempted suicide our apartment filled with art like garbage smeared across canvas. We listened to heavy metal and grunge bands, making love to Nirvana and Metallica. She collected half-dead plants in our living room and didn’t throw them out when they died and began to rot. “This is what’s real,” she cried, holding the broken black leaves. “Can’t you see that?” I watched her from the couch. “I want to be ugly, be ugly, be ugly, ugly, ugly,” she chanted around the apartment. “You’ll never be ugly,” I told her. “Fuck you,” she said. “I will too be ugly. I’ll be so ugly even you won’t be able to love me anymore.” “It’ll never happen.” But in a way I wanted her ugly. I wanted her face smeared with dirt, her hair greasy and matted, her lips chapped, blood on her knuckles, her fingernails broken. Roll on the ground and come to me. Kiss me before you brush your teeth, throw away your perfume, your deodorant, your soap. I’ll love you when you’re homeless, when you wear rags and eat out of the dumpster. We’ll dance in the middle of the street breathing each other’s pollution. “Ed, what the hell are you still doing down here-” I turn to see my boss beside me. His eyes bulge and he’s looking at the hole. “There’s a rat.” “What the fuck did you do?” I look at him in the little bit of light, his double chin and saggy skin. He looks disgusting and beautiful staring at the hole. Dropping my flashlight on the ground, I reach over and take his head in mine. He turns easily and looks surprised as I hold onto his giant face and kiss him. He pulls away and stumbles backward. I wonder if he can see how happy I am, if my eyes are shining the way they feel they are. “Leave the rat where it is.” He wipes his lips and spits on the ground. “Get back to your rounds, and take that damn sweatshirt off the camera. I don’t want to see you back here looking at that thing.” I take the sweatshirt down as he turns and leaves. I’m realizing how much I love my job and love my boss, and how I should visit my dad more often whether I hate him or not because who knows how much longer he’ll be alive or how long I’ll be alive. For a minute I think about putting the sweatshirt over the rat, but I decide it’s too lovely to cover up. I position my flashlight on top of the sweatshirt across the hall so it’s a spotlight shining right on the hole. I want it to be easy for people to find tomorrow. I make myself step away. Frowning, I walk down the hall toward the light and prepare to exit the building. It’s freezing outside, much too cold for a human being, and I know winter’s coming early this year. I walk quickly along the sidewalk and focus on my route, shoving my hands in the pockets of my uniform. I sniffle in the cold. Everything past the hedges is blurry to me, but I can see the dark sky and the condensation on every single blade of grass. Maybe I wouldn’t mind the night so much if it wasn’t for the moon. Glowing so gloriously through the dark, it mocks me. It’s laughing at me like Susan’s terrifically large mouth, cutting through everything: the sky, the trees, the building, my skin, my soul. It rots and vibrates morosely in my stomach. Worst of all it shines on the wet grass, where it wants me to stand. It’s watching and waiting. Susan was vicious. I know why she cheated and it wasn’t because I was mean to her or yelled at her or because she loved someone else. “Am I ugly to you now, am I ugly now?” she sang with a strange smile. I found them in our bed and the guy ran away. Throwing clothes at Susan, I forced her down the stairs, pushing her while she struggled to get dressed. I could tell she was getting a rush from it. She hadn’t been so excited in months. We were on the grass in front of our apartment. It had been raining all day, but now it was night and the clouds were gone, leaving the moon wide and exposed. Susan was half-naked and jumping around in front of me, her eyes glowing and mouth open. She breathed loudly and asked if she was ugly yet. The ground was soft, the grass wet, and the moon a giant spotlight pointed directly at us. I hit her. I punched her in the mouth and she fell to the ground. She rolled around on the wet grass like a kid in the sun. When she finally stood up, the spots she rolled over were flat and dark and probably dead. Her face looked shiny and wet, and blades of grass stuck to her skin and dark hair. Dirt and grass stains colored her pale body; a deep cut ran across her bottom lip and red blood poured out, making her mouth look bigger than before. I spit on the ground beside her. She opened her eyes and her beautiful mouth as wide as they could go, and she laughed. She laughed and laughed and stumbled toward the sidewalk. I had this crazy urge to put my arms around her, to kiss her bloody lips and stop the sound echoing around the street. “Susan you bitch!” I heard myself yell. She laughed louder and walked down the street, swerving and hobbling like a broken animal. The moon shone only on me. Come see the world’s most betrayed man! Come see the greatest loser, the woman abuser! Come kids, see what you don’t want to be when you grow up! And the worst part was I couldn’t move. I was glued to the lawn, exposed for everyone to come and see. Standing cold in my security uniform and blinking on the sidewalk, I remember that night like it was yesterday. I’m worked up from my memory and trying to get a hold of myself, when I realize someone in black is huddled by an entrance in the courtyard. He starts jiggling the door handle. Pausing to rub his arms in the cold, he attacks the door again, more vigorously. It hits me: this fucker’s trying to break into the building. I run across the wet grass toward him. I grab his neck under my elbow and shove him to the ground. He holds up his hands. The moon’s shining on me, laughing and laughing, and the wet grass is sharp as usual. I kneel on his stomach and punch him in the face. I punch him again and there’s a cracking sound. I punch him again and again. I want him ugly, uglier, hideous. His eyes are closed and I keep hitting him. Blood runs down his cheeks and over my knuckles. The moon, the moon, the moon, it’s in my eyes, it’s blinding me. Maybe I would hit him forever, until the skin peels away to expose the bones and red mess below. But two heavy hands lift me backwards and I land sprawled on the grass across from the thin, bloody man. My boss stands over me. I try to scramble up and he pushes me back down. The moisture from the grass runs through the threads of my pants. I stay on the ground and look across at what I’ve done; dark spots beneath the drug dealer, blood on the manicured lawn. I want to explain to Don: it’s being outside and how it’s so cold. It’s the moon and the fucking wet grass. It’s the way the lawn shines in the moonlight and reflects up. I can’t control myself. Seeing the guy and hearing him moan, watching my fat boss lean over and try to help him up, I remember the morning after Susan left and the pain I felt. I remember my father pulling along the curb in the early light and walking to where I stood. He said a friend who lived around here heard yelling and saw me standing like a statue on the wet grass under the moon. “What the hell happened?” he asked. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He grabbed my elbow and ignored the blood on my hands. “Alright. Come on, I’ll buy you breakfast.” I didn’t pull away. With the sun coming up I felt weak and shaded my face against it. Numbness surrounded me as I walked with him to the car. How could I have realized the scene would return, each and every night outside my apartment? How could I have known the way she’d haunt me? On the wet grass outside my work I feel a haze leaving. The fog is fading away into reality; the plate falls off the table and breaks. And I know I’ve got to do something tonight. “Don,” I say. “Look, Ed, it’s going to be alright.” He props the skinny drug dealer up with his arm. “Ronnie, the kid’s stuffed with E. He didn’t know who you were.” He turns to me. “Now get out of here, I’ll take care of this.” He gently rocks the moaning man in his arms. I rise slowly, my head pounding and shaking the world. As I begin to jog the other way, my boss yells, “Take next week off! I don’t want to see your ugly face around here for awhile!” Before I go home I duck back inside the building and head toward the maintenance closet. I know I’ll need a shovel. It’s 4:30 in the morning. I’m walking through the dark streets in my security uniform, carrying a shovel. I wipe my hands on my pants but the blood’s dry and stays where it is. Soon I’ll be back at my apartment and I’m getting prepared for the sight. Every time I see the lawn I see the ugliness, and I know: this is what she wanted. She wanted me ugly so I’d make her uglier. I reach my apartment complex and look at the lawn. The grass is dark green and shining wickedly in the moonlight. Standing on the edge of it, I glare at the moon for awhile, but I know there’s nothing I can do about that. I position my shovel at one corner of the sparkling lawn and begin to dig. Pushing the shovel deep into the damp ground, I lift the grass and dirt to my waist. I turn the shovel over and let the contents fall back down, flipped, with grass on the bottom and dirt on top. I work fast. The smell of soggy dirt fills the air and my nose and lungs soak it up, reminding me of the rat, the rotting dead rat. I move back and forth in neat, straight lines, as though I’m mowing the lawn, turning the front of my apartment building into a giant rectangle of dirt. I wipe my forehead and take off my jacket. Every noise on the street rings violently in my ears and I’m clinging to the shovel, hoping I’m not interrupted before it’s done. They’d have to pry it from my hands to get me to quit. I don’t stop until every blade of grass is buried under the dirt. Loose gravel and huge brown holes are all that’s left. The lawn looks like a huge, freshly-filled grave. I stand looking at the dark yard with my arms crossed. The sun is just beginning to rise behind my back and I feel like I’ve defeated a ghost. My breathing slows. I’m wondering how long I’ll stand here, because at the moment there’s no where else I’d rather be. I don’t know how much time passes before a car pulls up behind me. Without looking I know it’s my dad. I feel him walk beside me. “So who’s this friend you have that’s always watching me.” “It’s none of your business.” We stand next to each other, breathing and looking at the graveyard of a lawn. “I miss mom,” I say. “I know. Me too.”