Lynne Tillman - No Lease on Life

Clip, clop, clip, clop BANG.

Clip, clop, clip, clop BANG BANG.

Clip, clop, clip, clop BANG.

Clip, clop, clip, clop BANG BANG.

Whats that?

I dont know.

An Amish drive-by shooting.

They were just fucking around. They yelled and ran. They overturned all the garbage cans on her block. They were probably going to the park. They were methodical. They turned them over, one after another, and bellowed. They leaped around, up and down, and then one of them four males and a female threw a garbage can at a first-floor window. He missed. Then he and another guy aimed garbage cans at a car, which they hit. Any moron can hit a car with a garbage can.

Car alarms went off. No one could sleep. Windows opened wide. People hung out their windows. Their mouths hung open too. It was pathetic.

Elizabeth was looking out her window.

Everyone was asleep and in messed-up T-shirts or ratty robes, tied strangely at the waist. They all looked strangled. It was the middle of the night or the morning. It was hot. Only people with their air conditioners on ever slept through the night. Thats how the block divided in the summer, with A/C or without. It was pathetic.

Elizabeth wanted to kill them. Someone should kill them. She wanted to use a crossbow and steel arrow. Much easier to buy than a gun, entirely legal, no waiting period. But crossbows had just been on the news, and she suspected that everyone would be buying them, the way everyone suddenly bought red eyeglasses. Maybe she was too exhausted to be unique, but she would take severe satisfaction in shooting an arrow right into a guys head right through the middle of it, between his eyes or from one ear to the other. Hed look like a comic book character sporting that goofy toy parents bought for their kids years ago. Made them look like theyd had their skulls split in half.

Elizabeths arrow would be real, and shed murder the guy, and the instant before his death, hed be surprised, but still hed exhibit no remorse and shed feel no regret. The cops would be called. Shed be taken away. So what if she went to jail. Shed have the support of the neighborhood, the block anyway. She didnt have a record. How long would they keep her in. Eight years was the max. She wasnt sure why, but that figure occurred to her. Maybe because shed heard about a serial rapist whod been let out after eight years and hed mutilated one of his victims, left her to die. Thats cruel. Maybe shed be able to read in jail. She wondered if it was quiet in there. She wondered if the women were as noisy as the men or noisier or not noisy at all. There have been so few women in prison movies, she didnt know. Shed kill a white guy. Maybe hed even be in school or have a job, so his weekend, late-night marauding would be less likely to be described as driven or desperate. Her victim would be no deprived social misfit. Just a jerk, a prankster. She wasnt Bernhard Goetz, subway vigilante, going berserk and into overkill. Shed kill someone like herself, shed make a clean hit, have a clean and lucid, if angry, response. It would be a reaction, and, shed be called a reactionary. She could handle that, especially in jail, where other people wouldve done much worse things. More senseless anyway. Her reaction would be considered crazy, or she would be. Everyone she knew would think she was nuts and had overreacted. She could hear people saying that, see their mouths moving, and she felt like throwing up.

Everyone would know what it was about. Shed make sure of that. It was about being able to sleep through the night. Being able to turn down your covers and get into bed and not have to wake every hour and run to the window because someone was screaming, sitting on a stoop, screaming and laughing or blasting music and yelling. About nothing. It was always stupid stuff. But even if it was smart, shed hate it, hate them. Who cares then.

She couldnt sleep. She might as well stand by the window, vigilant about nothing. 911 didnt come unless you screamed Murder.

Some neighborhood morons who lived on the street, not bridge and tunnel or whatever, woke her the other night. They were on the church steps, playing stickball with glass bottles. Yelling every time a bottle shattered. It was 5 A.M. Elizabeth opened the window as wide as it would go, and stuck her head and body out. She watched one of the males saunter to the pile of beer bottles and choose one carefully. As if it mattered what kind of bottle he hit. Three females followed the play like despondent cheerleaders. Another male wound up, on the street mound, and pitched to the hitter. He missed. The bottle shattered. The hitter assumed the stance for another swing.

Elizabeth restrained herself from leaping onto the fire escape. She walked through the dark apartment, trying not to wake Roy. She phoned the precinct. The desk cop said hed send a car. Thirty minutes passed. They were still shrieking. Bottles crashed to the ground again end again Elizabeth called the precinct again. The precincts phone machine answered. At the end of the recorded message, the same cop picked up:

Fifth Precinct.

This is the woman who called before.

Yeah.

Theres been no car.

Yeah? You havent seen it? Cause I sent one.

I havent seen it. and Ive been standing here pretty much for the whole thirty minutes.

Yeah Well. I sent one.

Theyre still breaking bottles. I cant sleep.

Yeah. I asked for a car, but were a little busy this time of night Unfortunately.

Unfortunately. The cop sounded rueful. It was rueful. Having to call cops or be a cop. At least he hadnt lied. She hated being lied to. Except that she lied too. When Elizabeth phoned about an all-night party, a female cop said, Were sending a car. The car never came, the music kept blasting. Elizabeth took a pill. The party was for the Policemens Benevolent Association. In the basement of the church where a variety of morons often sat on the steps.

Now Elizabeth leaned out the window. Garbage was everywhere. Shed murder the guy. Shed murder him with an acute pleasure that might last only a second. It would thrill wildly in her body for an evanescent, unimportant moment, but it might be worth it. He was bouncing up and down now, rocking with laughter at how the cars window had shattered, how broken bottles were lying everywhere, how spilled garbage wantonly littered the sidewalk. It would rot and become fetid. It would rot and smell. She was rotting and rotten. She would smell when it came time for her to die.

The arrow would pierce his insignificant, preemie brain, and blood would spurt from the wound, the way it did in a Peckinpah movie, which is the only thing you remember about his movies, so it was a mistake to do it, not what she was intending, what Peckinpah did. A special effect is no legacy. Shed say her response was about shed say this when she was interviewed not hatred, but dignity and a social space, a civil space, actually a civilian space. Not a place where life is a series of unwanted incidents. A place where people could thrive without having to move to the country or a small city, to expire quietly from lack of interest. Shed wax romantic about what you could expect or hoped to get from other people, and what you didnt get. Shed call it respect. Everyone did.

You talk mostly about what youre not getting. Respect, sex, money, sleep. If you have it, you dont need to mention it. When you have it, youre bored if other people even bring it up. Of course, people with lots of money also think about it all the time and want more of it, were afraid of losing it, but they probably had the sense not to talk about wanting it in public.

The morons were spilling garbage on the church steps. They were proud. The wild ones, the wild morons. The mild ones. Roy called himself and his friend Joe the mild ones. Elizabeth laughed silently.