Chapter 12 Clean
Clean
“Alessandra?” Nash says, quietly. Then: “Alessandra!”
He shakes her. No signs of life. He leans his ear next to her mouth, hoping to feel her breath. Nothing. He grabs her wrist and takes her pulse. There is none.
“Oh, God, oh, dear God.”
Nash starts crying. He doesn’t try to hold it back. He lets it flow.
But his sadness quickly turns into panic.
He stands up. He starts pacing, his eyes on Alessandra the whole time.
He mumbles to himself. It’s like he’s praying.
He takes out his phone. It looks and sounds like he presses two numbers—but then he stops. He thinks, he thinks, he thinks. He puts his phone back in his pocket.
His panic turns into determination. He looks like a man ready to take care of business.
He walks out of the bedroom.
The motion-activated camera cuts off.
I click the next video file, which I haven’t seen yet. The video starts when Nash comes back in the room, dragging the yellow vinyl shower curtain from our bathroom. He lays the shower curtain flat on the carpet, spreading the whole thing out. He pulls Alessandra’s body onto one end of the curtain.
He looks like he’s going to throw up. He waits. He lets it pass.
Nash rolls the body up inside the curtain, as if he’s wrapping the most gruesome burrito ever. Once he’s done, Alessandra’s rolled-up body is lying parallel to Nash’s bed, her head resting near the spot that was damp, which I noticed earlier.
Nash stands up again and paces, once more keeping his eyes on Alessandra’s lifeless body. He thinks, he thinks, he thinks.
He kneels down next to the body. He stares at it. He just sits there for about fifteen minutes, rocking back and forth, mumbling to himself. Occasionally, I hear him say, “Oh, my God.”
He eventually gets up, picks up the body, and leaves the bedroom with it.
Next video file: Nash comes back in the room and notices a blood stain on the carpet. He walks out.
Next video file: He returns with cleaning supplies: a bucket of water, a spray bottle of cleaning solution, a few scrubbing pads. And for the next twenty minutes or so, he cleans, all while choking back tears and vomit.
Despite his emotional state, he does a surprisingly good job.
He leaves with the cleaning supplies.
Next video file: Nash comes back in, changes into a new set of clothes, and stands to assess the state of the room. He looks satisfied—well, as satisfied as he can be for a guy who just killed his girlfriend.
Then, he scrunches up his face, like he’s thinking deeply about something or he realizes something important.
He slowly tilts his head up until he’s looking at the smoke alarm in his room, the smoke alarm where my spy cam is.
In other words, because he’s looking at the smoke alarm, that means he’s looking directly into my hidden camera. It’s like he’s looking directly at me.
It’s unclear whether he’s figured out there’s a camera there or if he’s just thinking about something else.
There’s a gentle knock on my bedroom door.
I slam my laptop shut.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hey, it’s Oscar. Victor had to take a piss, so we came in. We tried knocking on your front door for a long time, but you didn’t answer. Sorry, man.”
I stay in my chair. “How’d you get in the house?”
“Your brother let us in.”
I sit here, frozen. I don’t know what to think, how to feel, what to do.
“Hey, Hunter,” says Oscar, “you okay?”
I don’t answer.
“Hey, what time you wanna go to the Verizon store tomorrow?” Oscar asks. “I told Victor to come with us because his cousin works there, and if you need to get a new phone she can get us a discount.”
I don’t respond.
“Hey, Hunter, you and me: we cool, right?”
I don’t say anything back.
Then, I hear Victor: “Dónde está Hunter?”
Oscar: “In his room.”
Victor: “Y por qué no sale?”
Oscar: “He’s sick or something.”
Victor: “Seguro se quedó con los cojones llenos de leche.”
Victor laughs.
Oscar: “It’s not like that. I think there’s something wrong with him.”
Victor: “Asere, está así porque se quedó en esa.”
Then Victor speaks, this time louder. “Hey, Hunter, I know how you feeling, man. You get all excited that you gonna bang your girl. And then she get all I-don’t-know, and you got a load all backed up. Sucks to be a guy, man. ‘Cause women got all the power when it comes to banging.”
After a silence, Oscar says, “Let’s go.”
Victor: “Bye, Hunter.”
Oscar: “See you, bro.”
I hear them walk down the stairs.
After waiting a few moments, I open the bottom drawer of my desk.
In it is an old survival knife, the kind that folds open and shut, that my brother gave me as a birthday present when I was in middle school, back when we were still kind of close and back when my family would go camping together every few months.
The knife is now unfolded in front of me, the blade gleaming.
Nash told me during a camping trip, while holding the closed knife in the palm of his hand: “When you’re out in the wild, every guy needs a good knife. They have so many uses. They’re not just for killing. You can use them for making fire, for preparing food, even for first aid.”
He unfolded the sharp blade.
“But,” Nash chuckled, his teeth glinting in the moonlight, “they’re mainly just for killing.”