by Mona Awad
“Max.”
“She told me to go.”
“What?”
“After you left. She told me to go. She said she wanted to be alone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She never asked me to leave before. I didn’t understand what I’d said or done. She just said, go. So I left. Walked away, gave her some space. But then I had this feeling. This sick, sick feeling. So I ran back here.”
He’s still staring at the swan. Whose white body is burning my vision. Whose white body is so very still.
“Max, please. I don’t understand what’s happening. Tell me what’s happening.”
I turn his shoulders around to face me and it’s like propping up a toy you want to play with, a sad cheap doll who refuses to go along with the story. I shake him and I shake him and I shake him while I say and say his name and still his head hangs down. I recall my mother shaking me like this. How many times she shook me like this when I was a child, when I was a teen. Samantha. Please. Listen to me. Stop this, okay? This has to stop. You need to stop pretending.
A sick feeling. A sick, sick feeling.
With my hands, I raise his head up to meet my gaze.
“Max.” His face in my hands is so smooth and small and light. My palms tingle.
“Please. Tell me. Where’s Ava?”
But even as I ask I know the answer. The answer is the dark chill rising in me. The answer is in his face, which is staring at the swan with such love. Like she is cherry blossoms falling. Serious moonlight. Light shivering on green leaves. The answer is my mother’s voice suddenly flooding my ears, calling my name wearily, worriedly, scoldingly, Samantha. The answer is in the scent of green tea and wet leaf still hanging here and there in the air faintly, so faintly, rising from the body like a wish made. The answer is the white feathers still being blown softly, so softly, around the room by the breeze from the open window. Blowing softly through her hair like white feathers whenever they caught the light. The breeze is my lover, Smackie. Meet my lover, the breeze. Blowing softly through her hair like white feathers, blowing around her face the last time she smiled at me with love, always with love.
The answer is my own heart. Which is caving in.
* * *
—
A bench by the pond’s edge. Last spring. Early morning. I’m sitting here watching a swan turn circles in the sludge. Just left the Lion’s house. Didn’t intend to come here. But you know when your feet just walk you to a place? Black clothes sticking to my body. Hands empty and open at my sides. Empty and emptied. Alone, alone, alone. Watching the swan, alone too, morning light on its white feathers as it glides along the dark water like a dream, I wish it was all a dream. Wish I could erase the night. Fill it with something else. Someone.
Someone’s sitting here beside me on the bench. Suddenly there.
A woman. Right beside me on the bench. Smiling like we’re already deep friends.
Hey, do you have a light?
Black silk dress, black mesh gloves. Eyes a different color, one blue one brown, gazing at me through a fishnet veil. Platinum hair like white feathers when they catch the light.
When I hand her the lighter, she smiles, thanks me.
I watch her light up and smoke. I could watch her smoke forever.
Samantha, says someone, calling my name from far, far away. Fuck off. Go away whoever you are. I want to talk to this woman, smoking beside me, smiling beside me, tilting her head up to the light.
“You look familiar,” I say to her. “Have we met before?”
She turns to me. Her smile is like light on my face. Light shivering on green leaves.
“I think maybe we have.”
Something in her voice. A certain music in it. Very specific. Instantly familiar. Do you know the music I mean? Like it’s not just a sound but a place. A place I think I’ve been before. Where I could live forever. There is air and light in it. There are windows and doors. It is inside and it is outside. It’s a hand. Soft. Firm. Open. Have I held it before?
I look out at the pond now. Empty. Just lily pads floating on a still surface.
Samantha!
Now we’re on the roof, she and I, dancing. Tango music playing softly to drown out the Mexican music next door. It’s the hour between the dog and the wolf. We’ve consumed so much of a cocktail that is probably poison, but fuck it, what a way to go. Rocking in each other’s arms. Between us, a beautiful man we made of air. And we’re laughing, because we’re a shitshow at the leading and following thing. But fuck that too. Because I’m so, so happy. Here. With you. I’m afraid to even close my eyes in case—
Samantha!
My mother. Standing in the garden below. Looking up at me on the roof. Arms crossed. Shaking her head. What is she doing here?
Samantha, listen to me, please. You need to stop. Stop letting your imagination run away with you. Whatever. She’s said to this to me before. All my life.
I always nodded yes. Okay. Listening. Stopping. But I wasn’t listening, I wasn’t stopping. Because we were already running away again, me and my imagination. We were holding hands on the edge of the cliff by the North Sea, we were high, high up in a redwood tree, we were on a train to Paris, we were blue-lipped in the river trying to swim to India. Or we were just fucking running. Down a steep and endless hill, she and I, holding hands. She was a great girl-shaped forest. She was a thing on fire. Her hand was leaves and smoke and snow and flesh all at once. We were running away together down a curving dirt road, through a dipping valley of grass, by a rushing mud-colored river, into an even greater forest, or we were just running who knows where? No idea. Didn’t care. But I was excited. My life could change. And I wasn’t alone anymore.
And now? Now we are tangoing on the roof.
She reaches out and brushes my hair away from my face with her hand of black mesh.
“Tell me the story of how we met, Smackie,” she’s asking me again.
Her touch is as cool as water on my skin. I close my eyes, press against her as we dance.
“I think it was early morning.”
Though my eyes are closed, I can feel her nodding. Yes.
“I think I was sitting by the pond. On a bench, alone.”
Yes.
“I came to watch the swan on the water—”
“Except there was no swan that morning, remember?” she fills in.
I open my eyes to look at her. Still smiling light on my face. Hair like white feathers.
Samantha, my mother says now, sadly, shaking and shaking her head. Looking up, up, up at where I’m tangoing in the blue hour with a woman I conjured from a swan. Like I’m a cat that has scrambled up yet another tall tree from which I now refuse to come down. But this time it’s different. Her face says, this is different. This is the tallest one I’ve ever climbed. This is the farthest I’ve ever traveled from the ground. This is the deepest I’ve ever retreated into the golden-green leaves she knows I love so. She shakes her head at me from where she stands on the firm ground, to where I am wavering high, high in the branches. Dancing on my rickety roof. I look at this woman swaying in my arms. Slightly taller than I am. Who feels as real as the earth itself. Not something I conjured out of loneliness and a bird circling a pond. Because how could I not have known?
You’re real, I tell this woman. Aren’t you?
She looks at me as if considering this. Then she smiles. Reaches out with a hand of flesh and fire and snow and air. Strokes my hair. Smackie. I close my eyes.
And then she’s gone.
The roof and the evening light are gone.
I’m in a pool of blood staring at a swan with an ax in its back. The room is dark and empty. No bed. No chair. No carpet. No curtains. No music. No lamps. Just a floor of an abandoned house and the moon coming in red and full through a barred window with a crack
in the glass. Just me and Max on a concrete floor covered with dark blood. More blood than is possible to come out of a bird.
I look at the bird’s long snakelike neck. Dark glassy eyes wide open. The smell of green tea, wet leaf hangs in the room so faintly now.
I stare at bare walls, at the single suitcase on the floor, my dark clothes tumbling out of it like a spilled secret, my musty sleeping bag in the corner, my open notebook facedown on top of it. A lady-shaped lamp I rescued from the dorm dumpster beside a coffee mug I stole from the English department lounge that says A Room of One’s Own.
“Ava.” My voice echoes in the unfinished room. Off the cheaply insulated walls of wood. Nothing but rusted pipes and beams and hanging wire above my head.
I look at Max beside me, swimming in his anarchy trench coat. I stare at his face. The knives and the wolf have fallen away like so much costume makeup. His features no longer shift, no longer recall transcendent moments or former lovers. His face is simply my face. Undisguised at last. Familiar as mud. Punched in with grief. Rage. Suddenly, I want to kill him. This thing I made out of hate and love and air and one fucking animal. There’s an ax right there. The handle slightly curved, cherry colored. And then I know it wasn’t him. I see it now, the pinky white hand that clutched it. Small and delicately fingered, trained in piano. Calloused from violin. Nails painted the color of natural poisons. I can picture it. See her spindly egret arms raised above the silver crown of her head. The Duchess, growing taller in that moment. Stretching into the monstrous thing she truly is beneath her fairy clothes, the ax poised and wavering over Ava’s turned back.
Ava’s back.
Ava.
Before I can even move, before I can even think, Max reaches out, takes the ax from her back, and charges out of the room.
37.
I follow him in the predawn dark. A man carrying a bloodied ax in his fist, walking the streets with singular intention. Walking, I know exactly where, to exactly which lacquered front door. His destination is in my blood. His intention is in my heart.
You would think someone would stop him. You would think someone would stop me chasing a man with a bloodied ax. But no one does. We may as well be invisible as we make our way from the west side to the east side, him charging ahead always, me running after. A blood-splotched pair racing through a city that for once I am relieved has barely any streetlights. Me calling his name. Him not answering. I don’t think he even hears me over the rage and sorrow in his own heart. Or if he does, no time for that. No fucking time or eye for anything but the task at hand. And what is the task at hand? You know.
I didn’t realize how tall or broad he was, truly. I really didn’t.
I didn’t realize how thorny and monstrous his shadow. Really.
Until I see him standing before the ornate gate that leads to the tulip-lined path that leads to the stone steps that leads to the Duchess’s front door.
Staring at her house with all the hate I have in my heart.
Staring at her house with all the loss I have in my heart.
Staring at her ridiculous house with a rage and sorrow that floods our blood, is bottomless, is far too big for her front door.
Only one thing to do, really.
Only one thing that can be done, really.
Justice. Vengeance. Very simple. Easy. We’ve seen them do it a thousand times, have we not? Just one swing—one!—and off with their—
“Max.”
He turns to me as if called out of a dream. Like he’s forgotten I was even there or who I am.
I look at her bland house, the mundane lawn brimming with carefully clipped bushes. Her dumb car shining in the moonlit driveway.
“We can’t.”
You know this. You know we can’t.
I expect him to nod. Of course we can’t. But he just looks at me like he doesn’t understand my words, or doesn’t care. Fuck that. He charges through the gate, the ax raised in his hand.
“Max! Stop! Please! Look, this is all my fault.”
He turns back. “What?”
“Ava.” Just saying her name breaks something in my voice, in both of us. Makes our eyes sting so that we’re looking at each other through water.
“I told her about you.”
“Told her about me?”
“Before I left. That’s why she made you leave. It’s my fault. All of this.”
“What did you tell her about me?”
I hear the break in his voice as surely I heard it in mine. I recall her on the roof yesterday gazing at me, then at Max, then at me. The laughing lightness suddenly leaving her face.
“Everything. Who you are.”
“Who I am,” he repeats softly. I can hear almost a smile in his words, drowning in sorrow.
“Why? Why did you tell her, Samantha?” His voice now wavering as mine is wavering, his body swaying slightly now, as mine is swaying, as if we’re about to dance. I close my eyes.
You know why.
Say it.
“Because I loved her. I loved her too.”
Loved. I open my eyes and he looks at me like he’s been punched. Lowers the ax. Sinks to his knees in a bed of the Duchess’s dirt, her overly pruned flowers.
“Max.”
But he just sits there. Looking at the mown grass.
Soft tango music playing, wafting from an open window like a scent. Reaching its fingers toward us.
“Max, please let’s get out of here.”
I reach down and touch his shoulder. But it’s useless. He may as well be stone.
A light goes on in the living room. Through the window, I see them inside. Just their heads and necks lit golden from above, making their hair appear that same shiny nonshade. I see a fishnet veil on Cupcake. A fishnet veil on Creepy Doll. They must have torn it in half to share, Bunny. Mesh gloves on the hands of Vignette, who is covering her mouth in what appears to be a laugh. And feathers. A barrette of white feathers in the tresses of the Duchess. Who is wearing a black silk dress I’ve seen before. Saw just yesterday. On the roof. When she looked at me for the last time with her different-colored eyes and smiled.
Of course I’ll still be here. Where would I even go?
And just like that, I pick up the ax. Tuck it in my coat like I’ve seen Creepy Doll do a hundred times. Like it’s a wallet, lip gloss, her house keys. Whatevs, girl. And with a steady, panther-footed grace, I walk up to her front door. Which they’ve left unlocked. Of course. For him.
* * *
—
At the sound of my heavy footsteps in the corridor they begin calling his names. Tristan? Icarus? Byron? Hud?
When I enter the living room with the ax tucked away in my coat, they fall silent. Look surprised, very surprised, to see me. Scared, maybe? Difficult to tell their expressions through their veils. Ava’s veils. They remain seated in their semicircle on the suede couch. They appear to be having some sort of predawn cocktail party. Champagne flutes all around.
“Samantha, I must say this is a surprise.”
“Such a surprise.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Cupcake spits. “Where’s Byron?”
Vignette just blinks at me. Adjusts her mesh gloves on her wrist. She’s wearing black. They all are. Vintage-style dresses in slim cuts. Each one the lesser sister of the black silk dress that the Duchess is wearing, the one I know so well, that knocks the breath out of my lungs to see closer up. I can smell the rain and green tea perfume from here. My knees begin to buckle slightly. My vision feels seared. This can be quick. This can be very quick. Just one swing and—
“Samantha, we sense you’re very . . . upset? About something? We can only imagine what it must be since, of course, our imaginations have limits, but go on, tell us. We’re all ears.”
The Duchess looks at me. Well? The Warren girl version of a gypsy
giving me the death stare on the Paris metro. Her smile like a hate bouquet above her sea of black silk. I stare back at her from across the rattling train, my hand on the ax.
Only one thing to do, really.
Only one thing that can be done, really.
“Why? Why did you do it?”
My words hang there in the dustless air of the golden-lit room.
“What are you even talking about, Samantha?”
“Samantha, we’re afraid we really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
They’re going to make me say it.
“You killed her. I know you killed her.”
They stare at me, and this time I do not look away. I stare at them until my eyes water, my hand on the ax, getting slippery in my hot fingers. But I do not dare to blink. For a moment I think they are going to hang their heads in shame. Wake from the nightmare of themselves. Become graduate students again, the sensible creatures they must once have been. Instead, they side-eye each other through their makeshift veils and then take pointed, slow sips of their champagne.
“Samantha,” the Duchess says, arranging her features into a hasty origami of false sympathy. Shaking her head. “This is all just so sad, it’s actually embarrassing.”
“So embarrassing,” says Creepy Doll.
“For you,” Cupcake clarifies. “Is Byron with you, by the way?”
Vignette glares at me in a glazed way. Bored-horny. Borny, as she would say. Where the fuck is Hud?
“Tragically humiliating, really,” the Duchess says, employing Fosco’s pregnant pause. “Don’t you think?” Her stolen black silk dress gleams under the golden light, so ill fitting.
“How could you?” I say. But my voice doesn’t sound like a threat, it sounds broken, torn up. A felled thing. “How could you do that to her?”
The Duchess smiles sadly. Vignette yawns. Cupcake and Creepy Doll glower at me through their veils. “Us?”
“What about what you did, Samantha?”
“Going back and forth between us and your companion or whatever like a little fucking waffler.”