Which wasn’t at all how she’d intended to spend that evening.
What she’d planned, what she’d expected, was nothing more than a home-cooked dinner with Jim, followed by a movie—a romantic comedy she hoped, if she could sway him from yet another action movie—with some cuddling on the couch while they watched. Which would lead to more than just cuddling, and mean, as usual, they’d never get to see the end of that movie. Which was the way she liked it. Or if not, well, liked their long-established routine, at least gotten used to it in a way that was oddly comfortable.
All of which should have had her asleep by then, but instead, there she was—her muscles sore and growing even more so from the incident which had occurred earlier—as she paced after midnight under fluorescent lights along a wall of skulls and sea serpents, of butterflies and flames, considering, rejecting, wondering which symbol the long-simmering confrontation that had brought her there called for.
She’d been cleaning up from the meal she’d prepared after a long day of work as a court reporter—clearing the table, bagging the leftovers for the next day’s lunch she’d planned to tote along, scraping the dishes before sliding them into the washer—when she happened to look over at Jim—
Jim who’d done nothing all day but hang around her place and play video games since his own apartment was a sty—
Jim who hadn’t bothered looking for a job in months—
Jim who never thought to ask if she needed help—
Jim who wasn’t even that good in bed—
And thought …
No.
No more.
It wasn’t any one thing which had planted that thought there.
It was just … time.
It was just … enough.
So she’d asked him what she’d never dared ask him before, to make a choice. To come over by her side and help—or go home.
And then he’d said what he’d never dared say before—or not said, really, because he only laughed … and somehow things got physical.
Somehow.
Just like the somehow which had gotten her to the tattoo parlor.
She’d found herself hurling that final plate in her hands like a frisbee, which rained peas as it whizzed by Jim’s head before shattering against a closet door (though perhaps it had ricocheted off one of his ears first, she was no longer sure, it was all a blur by then), after which he stopped laughing. And then was up, pinning her arms to her sides. Soon they were bouncing off the walls, the glass over her family photos cracking as the frames dropped to the hardwood floors, the two of them continuing to ricochet until she heard a crack, followed by Jim’s scream.
Seeing him hug his oddly angled hand to his chest, she knew she once would have been quick to check on that wrist. She would have knelt to bandage it, covering it with kisses as she did so. But instead, she took the pause created by the moment of his shock and pain and uncertainty as a chance to push him out into the hallway.
He didn’t resist her, whimpering as she pelted him, shepherded him, and through the peephole of her front door she could see him limp down the stairwell, not bothering to wait for an elevator.
After he was gone, she looked out her apartment window (the one through which he would later fall), and once she saw him down below stumbling toward the subway, she headed for the streets herself—though she, feeling calmer than she had in a long while, felt no need to rush, and waited for that elevator—in search of what she did not know, and eventually ended up inside a tattoo parlor she’d previously often walked by on her way to and from the courthouse, but had never entered.
It was time she went in, she thought.
Time to say—that was then, this is now.
Time to draw a line between.
So she moved through the shop, staring at the orchids and eagles on the walls, the hearts and hummingbirds, the devils, the imps, and the angels, seeking an image which spoke to her.
Finally, less (or so it felt) because the design was perfect than because a demarcation was demanded that night, she made up her mind.
“I’ll take that one,” she said.
She didn’t mind the pain.
She’d grown used to the pain.
“You got … a crescent moon?” said Jim, whom she was surprised to see had, even with his fracture, circled around and followed her and been waiting outside the tattoo parlor until the session was done. And yet, suddenly knowing him better in that instant than she had known him before, realized …
No. She shouldn’t have been surprised. He wasn’t going to let things end that easily.
His wrist, unattended to, was swollen and red. Her throat was slightly swollen as well, beneath the protective layer of plastic wrap which the tattoo artist had applied once he was satisfied. She liked the way it felt. It told her a change had begun.
“Go away,” she said, as she turned and walked back to her building, tightening her scarf around the open collar of her jacket to prevent him from continuing to see what the needles had pierced along her throat. He was undeserving. He was undeserving of it all.
“It’s a cliché,” he said.
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re being foolish. Go home. It’s over.”
“You’re a cliché,” he said.
“Leave me alone,” she said.
But he wouldn’t. He didn’t. She didn’t care. Because he would.
She didn’t know why. And she didn’t know why she knew. But she knew.
He followed her all the way back to her building, back up the stairs, and back to her third-floor apartment—her apartment again now, hers alone, no more sleepovers, no friends with benefits—and back through the doorway out of which she’d pushed him.
Allowing him to think her calm, she let him follow over the threshold.
But once they were inside, once none but him could see, she reached for her anger, and spun to unleash it on him, only … not so fast that she could avoid his good hand, the one with fingers which could still crush, from encircling her throat, his palm pressed against the moon she’d had inked there.
She winced as he pushed her, he pulled her, and knew she couldn’t escape that hand through force alone. She wasn’t that strong. At least, not yet.
So she dropped to her knees, and then to her back, pulling him down on top of her. He maintained his grip as they fell, instinctively tried to steady himself with his other hand as they hit the floor, and wailed as he landed on his broken wrist, a wail which couldn’t entirely cover the ugly sound of bone grinding on bone.
She wriggled from beneath the weight of him, and he recovered enough to make a weak grab for her with his good hand. She dodged him, and kicked out, scraping his right cheek with the toe of one shoe, catching his nose with her other heel. She felt an odd pride as she sensed it crunch, a feeling better than any she’d felt during the time they’d spent on the couch with him watching movies which were only an excuse for what would come after.
He dropped back, but only for a moment. Then he was on his feet, and roared with an intensity he’d never before achieved but she’d always suspected he could. He flung himself at her, his good arm outstretched, the other hanging by his side, his wrist twisted even worse than it had been earlier. She spun quickly out of his way as he lurched once more for her throat, but all his fingers caught was her scarf. The tug at her throat as he lost his balance and hit the window almost pulled her after, but the fabric snapped free as his weight shattered the glass.
And then he was gone.
She steadied herself, took a moment, and stepped to the window, where she stuck her head out cautiously through the jagged shards which remained in the frame. Down on the sidewalk, he was on his back, her scarf still tight in his fist.
She touched her fingers to her throat, felt the now-shredded plastic which had been spread across her fresh tattoo, wondered what he h
ad done to what she had done, and knew—a crescent moon could never be enough, not any more, to honor what had occurred that night.
If only Jim hadn’t laughed when she’d asked him to put down the controller, to get up off the couch, to help.
But he had.
~
The police treated her much better than she expected, considering all the horror stories she’d heard about situations like these. What happened to women after a crime was so often a second crime, a bigger crime. It occurred to her that maybe the reason she was being believed was due to one of the officers recognizing her thanks to her job at the courthouse.
But maybe it was instead because, as she calmly told them the events of that night, talking with words similar to those she’d often heard while typing away at her job, she could barely speak above a whisper after what Jim’s good hand had done to her throat.
Or maybe it was because they could see the bruising across her body as it began to rise. She felt a tenderness, a swelling there when she touched it, and imagined some of that had to be evident, even to those not inside her skin.
As they questioned her, there was still another surprise—even though Jim wasn’t moving when she’d peered down at him earlier, it turned out he hadn’t died from his tumble out their window—a fall from the third floor is only sometimes fatal—though it would be awhile before he was awake and the doctors could fully diagnose the extent of his injuries.
And yet one more surprise—
She found herself thinking a darker thought than she’d ever thought before, than she’d ever thought it possible for her to think.
She remembered the day she’d first visited this building with the agent, and it occurred to her—if only she had rented the other available apartment she’d seen, the one up on the sixth floor, rather than this one, the evening would have ended quite differently. As she considered that memory, weighed that choice made by an earlier Amanda, she realized—she wouldn’t have minded that.
That was the biggest surprise of all.
Eventually, once the EMTs had finished checking her over, once she’d refused to be taken to the hospital, and once the officers seemed satisfied with her multiple repetitions of what Jim had done, what Jim had said, they all left her alone. And once the landlord was done installing plywood over the broken glass, because no glazier was able to make a house call at that time of night, she finally allowed herself to look in the mirror.
She could almost make out four fingertips there on one side of her throat, and on the other side, the impression of Jim’s thumb. And in the center, where his palm would have pressed against her, pushed her back in order to pull her forward … the moon, weeping blood.
Weeping her blood.
She knew with a certainty then that she would be going back to the tattoo parlor.
And she also knew then why.
~
Amanda postponed that return until the bruising around her neck was at the height of its garishness, producing colors she’d never worn on her skin before. Up until then, up until that night, what bruising she’d borne had never been visible.
But that didn’t mean the bruising hadn’t been there. She knew that. She guessed she’d always known that.
The artist who’d wielded the needle the previous week was horrified once she’d unbuttoned her shirt—more, she hoped, because of what Jim had done to her neck than what he’d done to the man’s carefully pricked moon—but whether it was the former, or whether it was the latter, he led her to his table in the back under the lights with a level of concern she found soothing.
There, after he studied what Jim had done to his work of the previous week, explained to her what he’d need to do to repair it, and asked more than once what had happened, she told him that the why of it shouldn’t matter to him, because it didn’t matter to her—she was letting that go, and planned to talk of it no more, not with him, not with anyone—and explained what she needed him to do for her in addition to any repairs.
It wouldn’t be easy, he told her. He didn’t like the idea, he said. He preferred working with a clean canvas. And to be honest, he wasn’t even sure if it would work.
He leaned in to her then, and she could tell why—he was worried that she’d been drinking.
“I know what I want,” she said firmly. “And what I want is this.”
So he sighed, and he shrugged, and he went ahead and did what she asked.
~
Not that it was anyone’s fault, but it was several weeks before her coworkers at the courthouse noticed what she had done. This cluelessness didn’t bother her. She preferred it that way, had planned it that way. Yes, she’d changed, but she wanted them to see the change only, and not the evidence of that transformation taking place.
On that day, the day she let it be known what had blossomed around her neck, the day she allowed them to notice, she chose to wear a V-neck blouse, a new one she’d bought just for that day, as opposed to the usual high-necked blouses they and she had been used to.
She knew they’d at last picked up on the change in her because the loud talk that usually went on uninterrupted as she passed through the halls of the courthouse had been replaced by a specific sort of whisper, and not at all the same sort of whisper which had greeted her when she first returned, because though she had said nothing of that night, people talked.
Her coworker, Mina, who was usually assigned to the courtroom across the hall, was the first one to speak to her about it directly, near the end of one long day when they sat across from each other in the cafeteria. Mina tore open four sugar packets and dumped them into her coffee. Amanda drank hers black.
“What happened?” asked Mina, eyes wide at what she saw around Amanda’s neck. “Did Jim do that? I didn’t … I didn’t realize.”
“Jim?” said Amanda, asking herself as she answered Mina. “I guess he did. But don’t worry. Jim will never bother me again.”
“Good. If only you’d told me. If only I’d known.”
“There was nothing to tell.”
And really, up until that night, there wasn’t. At least not that could have been seen with the naked eye.
“To be honest, I always thought you could do better,” said Mina, leaning in and whispering. “Still, I never thought he was capable of something like that.”
Mina gestured to Amanda’s throat, and to the colors that stretched from one side of her neck to the other. Amanda pulled her collar even further open so Mina could better see the garish swatch of purples and reds and blues. A lawyer who sat at a nearby table glanced in her direction and then quickly looked away.
“I’m so sorry,” said Mina.
“Don’t be.”
And that was as much as anyone seemed willing to say to her about the change, and as much as she was willing to say, too, until that evening, after work, when she joined Mina and the rest of her coworkers for drinks, something which during her first months at the courthouse she’d rarely done, and then not at all in the year since she’d gotten together with Jim.
She was sitting at the bar with Mina, talking about which judges gave them the creeps, and which only made them laugh, and bemoaning that little could be done about it, when the bartender surprised her with a drink. Amanda followed the tilt of his head to the far end of the bar, and saw the man—his hair flat, his mustache futile, his ego inflated—who’d sent the glass her way. She tried to decide whether to smile at the man. Or even nod.
It was a first for her. She couldn’t remember anyone having done it before, even on the nights she’d dared to go out. She took it as proof both of her change, and that someone else could see that change.
But he couldn’t see all of it. None of them could.
“Well,” said Mina, rising off her stool. “I don’t think you need me here to cheer you up anymore.”
“Wait,” said Amanda, putting
her hand around the glass which had been delivered, still uncertain whether to pull it closer or push it away.
“Have fun,” said Mina. “You’ll do fine. You deserve it.”
She dropped a few bills on the counter and walked off. Before Amanda could even call after her, the man who’d bought her that drink slid onto Mina’s stool, closing the distance between them more quickly than she could have imagined. He pointed at her glass like a man who was too used to pointing at things.
“You looked like a woman who needed another drink,” he said.
“What makes you say that?” she said. “I wasn’t done with this one.”
She moved her hand over to the drink she’d been working on, raised it to her lips, sipped, then held it in midair, twirling the liquid between them.
She noticed a twitch around his eyes, could tell he was struggling then to not lower his gaze to her neck, which she imagined she’d magnified through the curve of her glass. She did smile then, less at him than at all the men in her life to whom she’d wanted to say, hey, eyes up here, but had been unable to do so. He noted that smile, misread that smile, and leaned in so close he could have drunk from her glass himself.
“I would never let anyone else do that to you,” he whispered.
Up until then, she was going to thank him for the offer of the drink, but demur, and follow Mina out the door. But his final words made her pause.
Did he mean what she thought he meant?
Did she hear what he’d wanted her to hear, or only what Jim had now made her realize all men were saying?
Anyone … else.
“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked.
Oh, he did.
~
There was a bouquet of roses by her door when the two of them got off the elevator on her floor. She walked slowly toward them, her fist tight around her keys so that some protruded between her knuckles, and kicked it down the hall as she’d done with all the others. It shed petals as it tumbled, a trail of petals that led to her door.
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