The Lurking Place by Clarence Major

Author:Clarence Major [Major, Clarence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Manic D Press, Inc.
Published: 2021-11-03T07:00:00+00:00

IV

WHEN WE FINALLY ARRIVED BACK IN NEW YORK, it was eight o’clock at night. The transition from Mexico was sudden. It felt like one minute we were in the world of Puerto Vallarta with its dreamy slow pace and blue skies, and the ancient world of San Miguel de Allende with its high mountain air, and the next we were back home in New York where everything was at once familiar yet oddly new.

Somewhere in the building, somebody was playing Bob Marley’s song “Simmer Down,” from the Wailing Wailers album.

When I unlocked our apartment door, we were shocked. The place was a pigsty. It was filthier than a pigsty. There were empty wine bottles, cigarette butts, and empty beer cans everywhere. There were old pizza boxes, cake crumbs, crushed crackers, and used syringes with dried blood in them. I opened the refrigerator. It was empty. The floor was crusty with spilled soda pop, cheap wine, and beer. I had no idea what else. The bottoms of our shoes stuck to the floor when we tried to walk anywhere in the place. There were used condoms and dozens of used plastic cups thrown all around the floor. The cushion in one chair was burned black. The kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes and cooking pans and a skillet with old food caked in them. In the bathroom, the toilet bowl was black with scum and a pile of feces and paper. It was unflushable. Had I tried to flush it, all the mess would have spilled out onto the bathroom floor that was already dirty beyond belief. A leg was broken off one of my chairs. It was leaning sideways on three legs. My books and records were gone.

Sophia, with both hands pressed against her cheeks, said, “Who could live like this?!”

This was the mess that Agnes Ludovic left for us. It was clear that while we were gone, our apartment served as a shooting gallery for junkies. Agnes was herself obviously a strung-out junkie. That pretense of smoking occasional marijuana was such crap, and she evidently had had her junkie friends in here with her, and they were all shooting up, fornicating, eating, vomiting, and doing who knows what else.

I’d left our luggage out in the hallway with the door ajar, so we could watch it. I didn’t want to bring our luggage into this filth. Now we could hear the loud blasting of Bob Marley singing “Lonesome Feeling,” and the sound was coming from somewhere upstairs.

I immediately went upstairs to the apartment where Agnes and her roommate lived. I knocked and an elderly man with a scraggly beard opened the door. I was surprised. I told him my name. He said he was Reuben Quinn. It was clear that the music was coming from the apartment next to his.

I asked for Agnes. He said, “The two girls who used to live here, they’re gone. This is my apartment now.” He didn’t know how to contact them. He said,

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