It’s because they’re gone.
In their place, ragged wounds. Dark, bloody holes.
Bile floods my mouth.
“You uncorked her like a fucking bottle of Chardonnay,” the sponsor says, chuckling.
I fall to the floor in a quivering heap and the vomit rushes out of me in a torrent. Even in the poor light, I can see how dark it is, how thick. I can taste the copper. I can taste the blood.
“Her blood was the only place left to get alcohol at this late hour,” the sponsor says, and I jerk away from him. He is standing beside me now, looming over me. I can’t run. The strength has left me. I am overcome with horror, with shame. He pats my head like a master will a loyal hound. “You drank it all, drained the bottle. Just like always.”
I start to shake my head, the tears rushing in to blind me against what I have done, what he, what we have done, and he grabs my hair.
“Closing time,” says the sponsor, and rams my face into the locker beside the bed hard enough to shatter the door.
✽✽✽
“Hey, buddy, I said we’re closing. Time to get gone.”
I raise my head from the bar and open my eyes. Only one of them obeys. The other is swollen shut. A fight, probably. My face is all cuts and bruises. My face is a rubber mask that has tightened in the heat. My skull feels as if someone has filled it with broken glass.
“Hey,” I say to the bartender, waving a hand to get his attention. He’s at the far end of the bar, sweeping up, a big man, all hair and gut and attitude. “What happened to me?” I indicate my face and the bloodstains on my shirt.
“Fucked if I know,” he says gruffly. “You came in here like that. Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d make your exit.”
“Bottle for the road?”
He sighs. “You got no money, remember? Spotted you your last round because you looked like you had a bad night, but I’m all out of charity and I’d like to get home sometime tonight, so, if you please, vaminos.”
I push away from the bar and all the sites of pain register in my brain at once, as if I’m a human Christmas tree. I’ve gotta stop. I don’t know where I am. I barely know who I am, and this has happened once too often. Tomorrow. A familiar chorus, comforting it its bold insincerity. Tomorrow I’ll make the change.
“What time is it?” I ask the barkeep.
“Almost three.”
“Okay.” I slide off the stool and almost collapse in a heap. “Sorry, sorry.”
My path to the door is uneven, as if the tavern is aboard a listing ship. Outside, the air is cold, and I shiver, squint against the emptiness of the night. The stars look like glints in the eyes of predators. My chest aches. My stomach is full of acid. My mouth tastes as if I have been sucking on pennies. I look at my watch and find only a pale band of skin where it used to be. Must have lost it, or, more likely, sold it. Doesn’t matter because time doesn’t matter.
On an otherwise deserted street, a cab cruises by, and I raise an arm and give it a limp wave. I’m surprised when he stops, and hurry into the car, glad to be in out of the cold, which has sobered me, but not nearly enough, and not for long. The leather seat is cold on the backs of my legs. My head throbs.
“Where you going?” asks the driver. He’s of ethnic descent and seems tired of me already. That’s okay. He can join the fucking club.
“Nearest open bar.”
The driver gives me a sigh and a shrug. “Sunday morning. No place open now.”
I sit back and appraise him. I can smell his aftershave. It is not unpleasant. He turns around to look at me, thick eyebrows raised questioningly.
“Liquor store then.”
“Buddy, no liquor store open now.”
I glance longingly back at the bar. The outside lights go off, plunging us into darkness, but not before I catch sight of the figuring standing there on the sidewalk. He doesn’t want me to get out of the cab. Doesn’t want me to leave. For him, for us, the night has just begun. I feel a flutter of panic in my stomach. Or is it excitement?
“Do you have anything to drink?” I ask the cab driver and he looks at me as if I’m mad.
Of course he won’t have anything, but it never hurts to check.
“Sir, I must ask you to leave now. I have to make money, ok?”
The driver is growing restless, cautious.
I don’t move.
Can’t.
The cab driver has no drink, but he has money. And that will do for now, because I need to find somewhere to be, need to find a part of the city that lives after dark, just like I do. And that kind of living comes with a price. Sometimes it’s cash, sometimes a watch, sometimes it’s blood. Whatever it takes to satisfy the need.
“Mister, please? I need to go now, you understand?”
I am hit with the sudden urge to ask the driver to bring me home, but I don’t know where that is. I know where it should be, where I belong and with whom, but that life seems so very far away, so unattainable. For now, at least. The sponsor promises it is something we can work up to.
Outside the car, the sponsor lights a cigarette, and rotates his free hand, indicating his impatience. Get on with it.
“I understand.”
There is plenty of darkness still left and we are still alive.
And so
goddamn
thirsty.
THE NO ONE: A RHYME
SOMEWHERE THERE’S A dripping
Somewhere there’s a sigh
Someone told me come here
No one told me why
Upstairs there’s a scratching
Of nails against the floor
Upstairs there’s a weeping
The trying of a door
Downstairs there’s a cellar
Downstairs there’s a voice
Muttering of sins and deeds
And how it had no choice
Outside there is nothing
Outside’s already gone
Inside I am waiting
Inside I am wrong
In here there is darkness
In which I know I’ll die
In here I’m the no one
Who wouldn’t tell me why
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR FROM ME
IN THE END, DESPITE THE PERPETUAL ADMONISHMENTS of her dead mother, Amantha, as she had innumerable times before, made her decision based not on logic but aesthetic appeal. This time, however, it was not just the guy’s good looks, but his name which prompted her to quit chewing her lower lip in indecision and finally hit the reply button after an hour of scrolling through his pictures and analyzing his profile. His name was August Windham.
August, she marveled. She had never encountered anyone with that name before. There was Augustus McCrae, the ill-fated hero of Lonesome Dove, her favorite novel, but that was a fictional character. August Windham. It sounded almost regal, and though wild dogs would never have dragged such an admission out of her, she couldn’t help imagining how both names would look on wedding invites: August and Amantha. Thus, despite her dear departed, if still overbearing mother’s chastisement that she was being typically foolish and impulsive, she wrote the mysterious Mr. August an email expressing interest, and once it was sent, spent the better part of the next two hours cleaning her apartment and feigning calm. Six times she reordered the throw pillows on her couch. She ran the dishwasher twice even though it had only been a quarter full to begin with. She made her bed and then wrecked it just to make it again. Her extensive library of books got a dusting. Finally, she closed her eyes and took a breath and told herself she was being childish (her mother’s disembodied voice concurred) as if the promise of a date had somehow forced her to regress to the cute idiocy of her teens.
To ground herself, she went to the mirror over the bathroom sink.
Her reflection showed bright blue eyes sparkling with hope and excitement, cheeks flushed, her not-quite-full lips spreading into a pleased smile that showed white and almost even teeth. A hand flew to her mouth to c
onceal the pleasure. She was embarrassing herself, but really, what was so wrong about having a little fun? Her fifty-third birthday was just around the corner—December 18th, to be precise—and if she wanted to send a harmless little “I like you” message off into the ether, perhaps in the fragile hope that the very handsome Mr. August might see it and decide she was worth chasing, then why the hell not? She was a grown woman, and yes, she could admit that there was some validity to her mother’s claims that she was given to folly when it came to matters of the heart, but wasn’t everyone? Dating was a lottery, nowadays more than ever before, but at least it came with a chance to win, whereas being alone was a loser’s game. Of course, there was a problem with that analogy too, for hadn’t both of her marriages taught her that being alone can sometimes be the better and happier option? Or, in the case of her first marriage, the safer option?
She rolled her eyes at her reflection. “I’m human,” she said, indignantly. “And humans make mistakes. It’s part of what we are, and I have more than earned the right to make mine, when and however I wish.”
She ran a hand through her wavy auburn hair, turned her head this way and that, admiring. Though some had claimed that her angular face and high cheekbones gave her a severe look, she knew she looked good for her age and, if her mother had been any indication, would continue to look good well into her dotage.
“Yes, dear, but I used my years much more wisely than you have.”
Amantha straightened her back, pushed her breasts forward, and raised her chin. “That,” she told her mother indignantly, “is a matter of opinion.”
All composure fled when her computer chimed to indicate a message received.
One last look at herself in the silvered glass, as if the sender of that email might somehow be able to see, and worse, judge her through the screen, and she hurried back into the living room, all nerves.
It’s probably just an email from the book club, she told herself, heart pounding in her chest. Or Judith from the library letting me know they have the new Caroline Kepnes book in.
But it was none of these things.
As she sat down at the computer, she saw against the background of an Italian villa in summer (her dream escape), the little blue envelope flashing in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. It was from PerfectMatch.com. The subject line read: “Re: Hello, Mr. August.”
Breath held, the cold winter light through the tall window behind her creating a dark likeness of herself on the computer screen, she opened the email.
His response read:
Hi Amantha (what a great name!):
Thank you for your message. I must admit it was much more eloquent than I have come to expect on this site. And thanks too for the kind words about my pictures. I’m the worst person to judge what I look like and, combined with my lack of talent with a camera, I worried that they come across as forced or just foolish. On the subject, I am quite taken with your pictures, the quality of which put mine to shame. Clearly you know what you’re doing, and you look terrific in them. I particularly liked the one of you on the park bench in the fall. Is that Highbanks? Something about autumn colors makes me warm inside.
Anyway, rather than prattle on, let me say that yes, I am very interested in chatting with you and maybe getting to know each other better. I know too that sites such as these present very real dangers and risks for people, so I’m all for doing whatever I can to assure you of my legitimacy and sincerity. While it’s easy to say so, you have nothing to fear from me. Ultimately, I think it would be great to meet you in person, but for now, I am quite happy to know more about you.
I’m glad you got in touch. I noticed your picture before but was a little too shy to pull the trigger. I’m happy you had no such qualms ☺.
Hope to talk soon.
Yours,
August
Amantha read the letter at least two dozen times and studied the half dozen or so pictures of her new flame before she clapped her hands together, rose from her seat and danced her way through the apartment. Always, when she felt most alone, she wished she had a cat or a dog, or even a bird with whom to share such joyous occasions, but now that hardly seemed to matter. The girls in the book club would be thrilled for her, even if they forever operated at a remove from her notion of friendship. Their elation would be tempered by the same distance Amantha had felt from women her whole life without ever knowing its genesis.
“It’s because you’re odd,” her dead mother chimed in. “And they have never once thought you weren’t making it up.” As usual, she sounded bored, pious, possessed as she had been in life of an unwavering certainty that the nature of all things was no more and no less than she said they were. “I’m sorry, but it’s true. You dress strange, you act strange, you are strange, and normal people don’t know what to do with that. They will be happy for you, sure, because they are nice people. They will also wait for the inevitable heartbreak when it all falls to pieces as it always does and brace themselves for your unique way of dealing with sorrow, which is of course, oddly. I often blamed myself for that, wondered what I could have done differently, but in the end, I cleansed myself of blame once I came to believe that you are the way you are because you simply decided you wanted to be.”
Mid-pirouette, Amantha shook her head and closed her eyes. “Say whatever you want, Mother. You can’t take away from how I’m feeling. Not today. Maybe not ever again.”
“That’s fine, dear. Mind me when I say this new euphoria will hardly last very long.”
“Says you.”
“More than me have said it. You’re strange. Compulsively drawn to impossibilities.”
“Shut up, Mother. For once just shut up.”
Amantha blew air through her lips and headed for the computer desk, a cheap if elegant pine affair with a duo of drawers and sturdy, curved legs. Gingerly, so as not to disturb the contents, she slid open the left-side drawer. Inside, arranged end to end so they made a perfect triangle, were three cigarettes. Pall Malls. All that remained of a habit that had ended up escalating a hereditary blood pressure problem resulting in a week in hospital for what she had suspected was a heart attack. It wasn’t. The doctor, in his infuriatingly condescending tone, had told her it was a panic attack, but that quitting was always a good idea if she wanted to live longer. She had held onto these last three cigarettes strictly for celebrations that required more than her customary dancing and defiance of her mother. In the center of the triangle was a red Bic lighter. She freed it and then removed one of the cigarettes. Breaking the triangle pained her on a deeper level than she’d expected, even though she felt it justified. It was not guilt at indulging in something that was bad for her health (and had killed her father) or undoing over a year of abstinence. No, it was simply the act of changing the shape that had sat there in darkness, untouched and unviolated for so long. It felt like wanton destruction of a carefully organized construct. It felt like she should have left it alone, because the triangle, even though she had created it, wanted to be the shape it was.
She screwed the cigarette between her lips and lit up. “Sorry,” she said, but reminded herself that all it would take to make the shape whole again would be to replace the missing cigarette, something she resolved to do on her next trip to the store. But this presented another problem. The store didn’t sell single cigarettes. She would have to buy a pack, and if she bought a pack then she would have to figure out something to do with all those other cigarettes. She wouldn’t smoke them. Throwing them away would feel like a waste. Give them away? Wouldn’t that be assisting someone else in harmful behavior?
She was getting annoyed, and that wasn’t good. Plus, it was hardly the time. Cigarette clamped between her teeth, the smoke curdling in her throat, she waggled her mouse to wake up her computer screen, and, smiling, began to type a response to Mr. August Windham.
✽✽✽
“You know nothing about this man,” her mother said.
“Neither do you,” Amantha
snapped, irritated that the dress she had bought seemed snugger now than it had in the changing room back at the store. Her breasts were hardly big enough to cause obstruction, and yet she found the material hung oddly from them, as if she had purchased the dress solely because it created an overhang from her chest to hide her stomach. And while her stomach was hardly supermodel flat, nor was she ashamed of it. Certainly, it wasn’t something she felt warranted concealment and she didn’t care to give that impression. Flushed, she shimmied out of the dress and, hands on hips, red dress lying on the floor like a felled and bloody ghost, she inspected herself in the bedroom mirror.
“You’re getting pudgy, just like all the women on your father’s side of the family,” said her mother.
“Oh, shut up. Even death hasn’t cured you of your jealousy and bitterness. Doesn’t it ever get old?”
But she knew her mother was right, knew that the voice was simply her own impression of her mother’s disapproval, which meant that she was admitting her own flaws and insecurities to herself. Projecting such thoughts onto the face of another made them easier to bear, easier to deny, and over time it made the voice real. Sometimes, she thought it might be more real than her own.
“You’re going to spend all this time fretting about getting those small tits and big hips into a dress you knew back at the store wouldn’t work, all so you can impress some stranger who’ll probably turn out at worst to be a rapist, and at best, another in a long line of your failures.”
Angrily, Amantha bent down and yanked her dress up off the floor. Like blood through a vein, she worried herself through the outfit and emerged out the other side surer than ever that it would not only fit, but look devastatingly good on her. Briefly, she closed her eyes and smoothed her hands over the bigger wrinkles in the material, focusing on the areas around her breasts, belly and hips, as if she could, simply by wishing it so, mold them into the shape dictated by the label on the dress, the same shape the mirror in the store had claimed she already was.
We Live Inside Your Eyes Page 13