Where Did You Sleep Last Night

by Lynn Crosbie

  “You’re my best friend,” I say. “You’re a good kitty.”

  He leaves for a minute. Someone is laughing, but she stops.

  Alarms are going off, the cords and cups are pulled, and I am bound like a spring roll and carried slowly through the snow squalls, the raging battle, and the suddenly gelatinous sides of Big Mountain.

  “There’s a poster of him in the garbage!” someone says.

  “Dibs,” the mean nurse says caustically.

  “I FELL OFF the Empire State Building,” I say.

  The light has burst: I see everything, but darkly.

  A man strokes my hair, and I remember him playing a Horowitz record — Scriabin, I think — and making me noodles we will eat at the table, limp tulips in a jug and fresh, warm bread.

  “We held hands under the table,” I tell him.

  “My life was mostly beautiful.”

  He puts his hand in mine.

  “My life, too,” he says.

  Beauty bows like a matador in a whirlwind of roses.

  “WE ARE LEAVING,” he tells me.

  The needle is still in my hand.

  “I’m blind?” I say, and he says that I am not.

  “It’s just dark,” he says.

  “Sadness?” I say.

  “That’s me,” he says, clasping my hand.

  “I want to go home,” I say, and he says that we are almost there.

  He says, “Mercy,” and his voice sounds so tired, I must ask him the same thing all the time.

  I THINK I am in a hotel bar, in Nassau.

  I am very happy, of course, but worried. What if he can’t find me?

  “Oh, it’s such a perfect day,” I start to sing, in case he is upset.

  The bartender leans in and says, “Hang in there.”

  Then she takes me with her, somewhere farther than sleep and filled with light.

  I AM PATTING some big animal’s warm head.

  “He’s here,” she says, and leaves.

  He lifts me up and carries me — he always carries me, I remember.

  There is a metal click, and the tick-tick of dog feet on linoleum.

  Then he is carrying me so carefully I feel like an egg, and lays me down. There is a slap of cold air and tires squealing as someone yells, “Hey!” and he says, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you,” with a sob in his throat that I catch.

  It is a frog that will sleep on our pillow.

  “I trust you,” I say, and fall asleep

  Soon, there are the same lines and wires and pulsing machines.

  But where I am smells like us.

  FORTY-ONE

  I FORMULATE INFINITY, AND STORE IT DEEP INSIDE OF ME / CELINE

  This is a story about two goofballs who took Andrew Marvell literally.

  They wanted everything, and they got everything they wanted.

  But, after squeezing the universe into a sticky blue and green ball and eating it, they got sick.

  And angered the sun by making it run all the time. “I’ll blast you both,” it thought, stroking its flavescent moustache.

  It could have killed them. Burns would cover one hundred percent of their internal organs: an MRI would reveal black bunches of cherries, fried slices of papaya and pink grapefruit; soft, baked apples and fuzzy brown peaches.

  But its temper passed quickly and the sun fell in love with them instead.

  “Yum,” it says when they move past him. Or, “Hellooo!”

  They never fail to wave back.

  When she got sick, the sun stopped.

  Long enough to make a difference: the event was discerned by ecstatic astronomers.

  “It is the spring of 2015;” they write in ledgers or on laptops. They tattoo the words on their hands, and draw sequences of girls in shortie robes clinging to massive, jewelled crosses.

  “What has stricken the sun?”

  I AM READING late at night, holding her wrist.

  Her pulse is weak and distant.

  I will die when she does; I will swallow her last breath.

  I call Monotone and ask everyone to get on the call.

  “If anyone says brand or rebrand, I’m hanging up,” I say.

  “I want you to take all the money we will make for you and find a place for our dog when we die. A house with servants and bowls of liver snaps and, oh, whatever he likes.

  “I’m sending you the songs we finished. I want you to release them with some well-placed articles — I’m attaching some personal shots of us.

  “You know how to spin this.

  “Otherwise, just cremate us and leave us in the woods near the cottage.

  “Rip the cottage apart and tear it down to the nailheads.

  “Don’t leave a trail.”

  They don’t ask questions. All they say is, “No probs.”

  I HAVE NEVER prayed, but now, each time I leave her side, I do.

  “Dear God, save her,” I say.

  And when I tell her exactly what I did to Page, I beg for forgiveness.

  And feel the freighted silence of someone thinking things over, weighing their answer carefully.

  She is, alternately, hot and cold. I bring Baggies of ice, washcloths, and her quilt.

  It is only missing one square.

  I cut a section from the hospital gown I won’t let her wear — I had someone call Karl Lagerfeld, and replaced it with a red batiste gown with embroidery on the back ties and slit collar — and from the shirt I throw on every morning.

  It says, “HI, HOW ARE YOU?”

  Using a loose blanket stitch, I sew “YOU” onto the rough cotton square, finishing the quilt.

  I shake it over her when she shivers, and all of its lucent colours, and she, light the room.

  “You’re like a firefly in a jar,” I say, holding her cold hand.

  She squeezes mine and I fall asleep with my head bent to hers: when we meet in dreams, she runs to me, bares her breast, and peels back the skin to show me her small, frantic heart.

  I LEAVE IL Delicioso on for her.

  One day, he is kissing his dead wife, Esmerelda.

  The love of his life: she looks rosy, florid even.

  “Is this a flashback?” I ask the nurse.

  “No,” she says shortly.

  “But she perished in the garment factory. The one that he later bought and destroyed.”

  He is crying huge globules and saying, “Sabía que ibas a volver, mi único amor.”

  The nurse looks at me skeptically.

  “Usted me llamó de vuelta, mi querida,” Esmerelda says, her face lacquered with tears.

  “Watch and learn,” the nurse says, getting comfortable on the chair beside Ev, who is sleeping, and smiling so sweetly.

  I HIRED BARBARA, the nurse, the day I kidnapped Evelyn: she is the only one I interviewed who looked at her, not me.

  “I’m clean,” I tell her. And I am.

  “But it’s hard,” I say, expecting sympathy.

  “Tell her how hard it is,” she says.

  That is the name of the song I wrote that night.

  The one in the Heineken commercial that takes place on the USS Midway, the one with the chorus,

  Tell her it’s hard for you, when the pounding in her head is black and blue.

  I start sleeping with her, against Barbara’s objections.

  Like everything’s normal.

  “Who are you?” she says, as I bump up against her and grind.

  “Oh,” she says.

  Oh.

  “YOU KILLED HIM,” she says in the middle of the night.

  She sounds forlorn.

  “I did it for you,” I say.

  “Really?” she says diffidently.

  “Of cours
e,” I say, but I am lying.

  That night, and on so many nights, I see him; I see his face changing as he recognizes who I am.

  “My mother would fuck guys right beside me,” he said. “Then get stoned and leave me there, on her bed, for days.”

  “That’s sad,” I said before I lowered the machete.

  It happened really fast.

  He said, “I thought we were friends.”

  And then he said nothing at all.

  When I think of him, I am putting the machete down, and shaking his hand.

  “I’m just so mad at you,” I say.

  I can see his bruised, extended ribs and the piss-soaked towel tossed over him, I hold him and marvel that he can carry so much desolation, I hold him and he stops crying.

  SHE HAS MANAGED to wrap a scarf around her neck, a square of pink chiffon.

  Matching baby-doll pyjamas, marabou slippers.

  There is no way that I love her, she says, and recites a list of everyone who was ever mean to her, all of which proves, due to the sheer volume, how detestable she is.

  “Or that people are repulsive,” I say.

  “But that isn’t true,” she says. “I love everyone.”

  Her words are pulled through the room by a tiny zeppelin before the pilot aims for the wall and dies in the explosion.

  I think of all the suicides holding hands in a paper chain, and feel those scissors coming for me.

  She isn’t getting better

  It’s possible that I don’t exist anyway.

  Still, she can’t keep her hands off me.

  That’s something. But it’s not enough.

  ALSO, COLOMBIAN DEATH Squad’s “Boss Twerp” is in the top ten and climbing, according to Monotone and the million emails and calls I get.

  W magazine uses one of our personal pictures on its cover: a black-and-white shot that Avalon took and sent to us with the subject line “Lookit the babys.”

  We are sleeping naked on the lawn, soaked in moonlight, curved towards each other: our skin is shadowed with hundreds of serrated white pine needles.

  Our fingers touch.

  The feature article is called “The Damage Done,” and it mourns us again as if we are already dead.

  THE ARTICLE IS right.

  Barbara calls me a “cocksucker” when I tell her to leave, and I almost smile.

  I write a note: “I was never any good, or good for her. It’s my fault that she’s like this now.

  “But I will always love her.

  “The legal documents are on the dresser. Please feed the dog right away.

  “I didn’t kill her but I didn’t save her either.”

  I START TO fill a cardboard box, write an inventory.

  “Silver rattle, puppy collar, Jackie Wilson 45, windup Chewbacca, old pale blue radio, postcards of Twenty-third Street, scapula w/BVM dressed as a blueberry, rubber baby with diamond eyes, rubies and black pearls, three words excised from the ‘Cyclops Episode’ of Ulysses, one white petrified wasp, ceramic gala apple, glued-together plate segment of white-blond hair, bloody kerchief, ramen noodles, heart-printed panties, the smell of Jicky, by Guerlain.”

  Realize there is too much and leave the box by the trash. I get the rifle and lie down with her.

  “Who are you?” she says, and blood seeps from her mouth.

  This is how the world ends.

  FORTY-TWO

  I LOVE TO LOVE YOU BABY

  He is hanging on to me and whimpering.

  It is upsetting the dog.

  I am dying and he won’t help me.

  I soften, as he holds me tighter. He is exciting to me, even now.

  Freak.

  “FREAK,” SHE SAYS, in her tight black dress and leather wimple.

  She hands me her cigarette, and I take a deep drag.

  I feel my pain shoot like an arrow through the smoke rings.

  The black shutters fall off my eyes and I see the Cause of Our Joy. She is wearing a wreath of sea lavender, and zapping me with this star-shaped, tinfoil wand.

  “Oh fuck, you should see how good you look now,” she says.

  I am scared to look.

  “Don’t ask,” she says as I open my mouth, wondering if I died, or if she is a dream.

  “Just wake up and you’re welcome.”

  “Why?”

  “Look at him,” she says.

  He is walking barefoot in the snow, leaving bloody footprints, calling me.

  “I love him,” she says. “So I am letting him go.”

  “Like in the ‘Desiderata’?”

  “Bitch,” she says. Then, “Say it with me.”

  I say that I love him, look up, and he is asleep beside me, holding a gun.

  I crawl down the length of the bed.

  His feet are blue with cold.

  WHEN HE WAKES up, I am sitting on the edge of the bed, in a head scarf, robe, and sunglasses.

  The gun is in the trash.

  “Come with me,” I say.

  I run a cold shower and push him in: he watches through the clear discs in the curtain.

  I strip and show him the tattoo that covers my shoulders, of Speck rescuing us in the woods: beyond us, the livid colours swirl into gunfire and night.

  “I met the Queen of Heaven,” I say. “I can see everything.”

  I step under the spray and then my hair fans around my immaculate body, curving at my waist; my lashes flatten into thick spokes around my sunset-violet eyes; my lips are bee-stung — the dying bees have fallen on the bath mat, bloated, and at peace.

  “She’s so beautiful,” I say wistfully.

  He looks at me, and for a second his eyes darken.

  They are pitch-black, like a shark breaching in the midnight sea.

  Breaching, then diving back into the still water — he closes then opens his eyes again, and now they reflect the morning sky and I fall into the brilliant blue that I love so much.

  “Yes, but now there’s only you,” he says. Moving forward, he falls to his knees, and kisses me, his hand moving in a question mark across the space where the idea of life kicks his hand.

  In the mirror, we are so vibrant, the colours peel the cream-coloured paper from the walls.

  WE MAKE IT out of the shower, and onto the bed.

  Speck grunts at us, and we tell him to shove over.

  There are so many questions, but there is time to answer them. Or not. Whatever we like.

  “I may be dead,” he says, rubbing hot, peachy oil on my back.

  “I may be making you up,” I say, teasing him with a string of beads.

  “This feels real,” he says after sliding into me, and, ignoring my muffled answer, he pulls out and sprays me with evidence.

  WHEN NIGHT FALLS, I slip away and look in the bathroom mirror.

  I see her, flickering in my eyes, and, clasping my hands together, I thank her, and say goodbye.

  When I come back into the room, I see him, lying on his back as the morning sun rolls down his body like the lid of a sardine can.

  The room is divided in two. On the other side is my old bedroom.

  Inside, a miserable girl appears to be making out with a piece of paper.

  My heart goes out to her, my wretched heart.

  “I am making this up, it can’t be true,” I say.

  “Not again,” he says, as he wakes. “Stop this,” he says, frowning as the light passes over his face and the miracle brazenly reveals itself.

  There are new, deep lines on his forehead, a few crows have stepped around his eyes.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Old man. I missed your birthday?”

  “And?” He leaves the room, excited.

  I kneel
by the bed, slide out the chest, unlock it, and flip to the end of the Cross biography:

  After renewing their wedding vows in Venice Beach in front of his family, and a few friends (with Speck acting as the ring-bearer), they honeymooned in Niagara Falls —

  I hear him throwing things around downstairs and read quickly:

  Evelyn and Celine, who are still, occasionally, Mike and Mindy, and still deeply in love or “Double-whipped,” as they say, dedicated Colombian Death Squad’s Hellbilly cover of “Redemption Song” to “Page Marlowe, with love,” and whenever they perform it, they are known to —

  I kiss the book, and slide it into the box, knowing I will never touch it again.

  I have just nudged the chest back when he bursts in, carrying a ring box and an astonishing ceramic sculpture of Billy Ocean.

  “Flip the switch,” he says, and “Suddenly” weeps through its pixilated lips.

  “Wake up, suddenly —”

  “It’s our anniversary,” I say, holding him and Ocean. “I forgot,” I tell him, and his smug look assures me that he was counting on this.

  And then, the velvet box: inside is a new memory of me, a soaking wet Amazon, punctured with stars.

  “How did —” I almost ask, and then I remember not to look back, but to find the light in him, and in me.

  He is bent over me, eyes filled with me, hands all over me.

  “This is really happening,” he says, carefully removing my nightgown.

  “This is our gift,” he says faintly, against my neck.

  I realize, rapidly, that there will be more fights, more confusion and pain.

  And more love and sex and senseless fucking beauty. “I’m so close,” he says.

  “Me too,” I say, and I hear his heart beat four to the floor as I tear into twenty-three orgasms and the speakers throb this perfect verity, “I love to love you baby,” as we blow up, collect ourselves, and start over.

  FORTY-THREE

  IN BLOOM

  February 20, 2013

  Dear Kurt,

  You died before I was born, and I still can’t get over you.

  I love you; and the hole that you left in the world lets in so much filth, it’s hard to breathe.

  I don’t want to live anymore.

  When I die, I hope to find something waiting for me on the other side.