Limerence: Book Three of The Cure (Omnibus Edition)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  “When did you get married?” I ask.

  She sighs audibly. “April Fools’ Day.”

  “Was it as much a joke to him as it was to you?”

  Her eyebrows arch. “That was a surprisingly nasty question from someone who isn’t meant to feel anything.”

  “I don’t feel nothing. I feel plenty of things.”

  She doesn’t respond to that.

  “I didn’t mean to be nasty. I was trying … to make a joke, I suppose. In very poor taste.”

  “My marriage isn’t a joke.”

  I feel flushed at the expression in her eyes. I think I’m embarrassed, actually. “Sorry.”

  She doesn’t contradict my need to apologize so obviously she thinks I should have. “Oh dear. This is going poorly.”

  Josephine Luquet snorts. “Everything these days goes quite poorly for me. I can’t seem to have a conversation with anyone that doesn’t result in me wounding them.”

  We walk in silence for a while. The moon is almost full.

  “Oh, Dave Townsend,” she sighs. “How extraordinary you are. How infuriating.” Then she adds, “Your poor family.”

  “I’ll try not to take offense to that.”

  Unfazed, she replies, “You can’t take offense. You’re cured.”

  “I could pretend.”

  “Who would that benefit?”

  “A great deal of people.” I stop and she stops. “You mimic. You make them think you’re the same as you used to be.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s hurtful to them if we’re not, and it doesn’t cost us anything to pretend.”

  She starts walking and I hurry to keep up. We reach the tunnel entrance – a covered knoll you have to be very perceptive to find. Before I climb down she says, “For the record, no one thinks you’re the same as you used to be.”

  “For the record, they have no idea how different I really am.”

  *

  Josi’s class is interesting. It’s obviously her first since she returned. Her kids are jittery with nervous excitement. They pepper her with questions, none of which she answers. After about ten minutes of unceasing demands she stops them with a hand and says, “This is a history class. I don’t have time to waste on personal stuff.”

  “Then we want to know about the love cure,” Henrietta announces, to much agreement.

  “Yeah, what the hell is that about?”

  “They can’t actually do it, can they?”

  “Of course they can’t.”

  “Well, they managed the others, so why not this?”

  Josi waits for the hubbub to die down. “Yes, the government is planning to administer a cure for love.”

  There’s an eruption of horror. A lot of bullshits and hows and no ways.

  “Romantic love, or all love?”

  “All, I assume.”

  “Why?” a beautiful boy with the face of an angel asks. I’m still learning their names and I can’t remember his.

  Josi’s eyes go to him. She folds her arms and settles deeper into her chair. “There’s a long history of diagnosing love and its symptoms as a disease, Alo. Particularly the limerence of love.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Limerence is romantic love. Desperate, aching, shivering, can’t think, can’t eat, can’t sleep love. It’s the obsessive demanding part of love that turns us into slaves.”

  “That’s not real,” a boy called Lawrence says.

  “Of course it is!” a tiny girl named Georgie hisses, who looks no older than about eight.

  “Why?” Josi asks Lawrence.

  “It fades.”

  “Is that your experience of it?”

  He colors and a few of the kids snigger.

  “I’m not criticizing you, I’m genuinely asking for your experience.”

  Lawrence shakes his head. “I haven’t had one – I’m a dude.”

  There is a chorus of groans at that.

  Josephine frowns and I see the ghost of irritation in her face. “I don’t have time for gender stereotypes or sexism. You know better.”

  His smirk is wiped clear. “Sorry.”

  “Why is the ability to last indefinitely the only determinate of truth?” Josi asks them. “If I felt angry yesterday but I don’t today, does that mean that yesterday’s anger wasn’t real?”

  “Love is different,” Henrietta says.

  “How?”

  “It’s bigger then anger. It’s a state of being, not a feeling.”

  Josi looks intrigued by the general noises of agreement. “So what about people who fall out of love?”

  “Well, maybe it wasn’t real to begin with,” Henrietta replies confidently. “Maybe that was limerence.”

  The kids agree.

  Josi considers it. Her eyes look so strange in this light. One is almost lost in shadow, the other glittering like no eye I’ve seen. I have a sudden image of her and my brother meeting, and I think I could understand how the unflappable, unreachable Luke Townsend might fall under her spell.

  She says, “Even stars die. The brightest stars burn for millions of years. They burn with unfathomable energy, and then one day they turn supernova. They throb and swell and they claim energy from everything around them. When they explode they let off a burst of energy so catastrophic that they suck in everything in their radius. We can see this energy from earth with our naked eyes even though it’s billions of light years away. And then they’re gone.” She pauses, licks her lips absently. Her eyes go up to the roof of the silo, where dozens of holes look like stars. “A life is finite,” she says softly. “We burn very brightly and then we die, just like stars do, only much more quickly. Just because something ends doesn’t mean it’s any less real, or any less important.” She stands and adds, “Everything ends. Even love.”

  The worst part is that on her way out she walks straight past Luke, who has been leaning against the door and has heard the whole thing.

  Once I would have known exactly what to do to make him feel better. Now I can’t think of a thing. I can only stand here looking at his destroyed eyes and hearing the upset voices of the teenagers behind me.

  *

  Tonight I see the guitar.

  I’m helping Dad build a new door for the food pantry (which is gratifyingly un-empty) when I see it sitting in the corner. It’s just the handle poking out from behind a mess of plastic tarp. But I know it. This wooden thing made up the most significant portion of my life, after all.

  I cross to it and unearth it from the chaos. It’s a lightweight creature from a long while ago, battered and not well shaped. But it’s a guitar. I perch myself on the side of a bench and start tuning it, my fingers knowing what to do without my mind having to help.

  After I have it as close to tuned as possible I look up to see Dad staring at me. There are tears in his eyes and I immediately regret touching the instrument.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  He shakes his head quickly. “Please. Can you play?”

  I consider it. This might hurt them more than it helps, implying I feel more than I do. Music has a way of doing that. I don’t want them to expect things from me that I can’t deliver, not for myself, but because it will inevitably result in their pain. But in the end Dad’s face is so desperately hopeful that I figure music can never be harmful, not as I know it. So I nod.

  *

  Luke

  I return from a full shift on the farm to the never-ending task of kneading dough for bread. Even with meat and vegetables coming in, mouths are hungry and there’s never, ever enough bread. Most days I feel pretty pleased with myself over the industrial-sized cooking area we managed to build and ventilate.

  The kids corner me in the kitchen as I’m kneading. Six of them. Lawrence, Alo, Henrietta, Georgie, Coin and Teddy. There’s something tense between them and none of them seem to want to speak first.

  “If you won’t talk, get kneading.”

  None of them move to help.

 
“What’s wrong?” I direct my question at Lawrence because he’s always the talker.

  He hesitates. “Josi. We had a class earlier.”

  My stomach tightens. I was there.

  “She’s not herself,” Henrietta says.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Georgie asks. “Where did she go?”

  “And how’d she get all those wounds and stuff?” Alo asks. “Was she on a mission?”

  “Was she with you in the Blood lab?” Coin asks.

  “Nobody’s telling us anything!” Lawrence bursts. “She’s our friend and we deserve to know.”

  I knead and think, knead and think. Their concern makes my chest ache. “She wasn’t with me. And she wasn’t on a mission. Something happened to her and she can’t talk about it.”

  “But you can!”

  “I don’t know what it is.” That quiets them. I don’t think they ever imagined I might not have the answer. “She can’t speak about what happened,” I repeat. Knead, knead, knead. Put your whole body into it. Don’t think, that’s your problem. More kneading, less thinking. “Something hurt her. Or someone. And when you get hurt badly enough you have to change or you get broken. So whatever she is now, however she is, that’s how she’s survived. Be glad of it.”

  I see Teddy duck his head and in the flash of candlelight tears glisten in his eyes. Frustrated, he storms out. I know he thinks it’s his fault, or maybe just feels more closely connected to it because he was there in her ear when she got taken.

  “Will she get better?” Georgie asks in a whisper.

  “How should he know?” Henrietta snaps. “Nobody knows.” She’s angry, they all are. And frightened.

  It startles me when Lawrence steps forward and puts his arms gruffly around me. It startles me so much that I cry a little. Just a few tears, one sobbing breath. Then I push him away and impatiently dash at my eyes. Return to kneading.

  “She’s alright,” I promise. “She loves you.”

  “She said love ends,” Georgie says through her own tears.

  “She didn’t mean it.”

  “She’s strong,” Coin agrees pleadingly. “She changed but she didn’t get broken, right?”

  I nod but I’m not sure it’s so simple. I used to think it was, but now I don’t think being broken is the only way to perish. I think surviving can sometimes cause it too. I think enduring can.

  “I want to kill whoever hurt her,” Alo says in that painfully intense way of his.

  I meet his blue eyes. “If I ever find out who it was,” I tell him, “you won’t get the chance.”

  That’s when we all hear it. The solitary notes of a guitar.

  Coin makes a sound of pain, as though someone has stabbed him in the guts. He spins toward the sound. The last person to play that guitar was his girlfriend before she died.

  And as we all listen I know. I know exactly who’s playing the plaintively plucked notes through the tunnels with so much talent.

  Something ruptures inside me and I sink to my knees.

  I feel Alo and Henrietta reach for me. I feel their hands on my shoulders but I’m listening to a sound I never thought I’d hear again, not until I died.

  I lurch to my feet and follow the sound into the dining room. Other people are gathering. Mom and Dad are there. Listening as my brother plays the guitar.

  It’s a folk song, one he wrote when he was eighteen. A bluesy raw thing. He lifts his voice and sings. A voice I know, one I’ve heard in my dreams. That scratchy soulful beautiful voice.

  I waved to you,

  I called to you,

  I sang to you,

  but you were facing

  the glory of the sunset

  and didn’t know.

  I cover my face. It’s found something inside me I didn’t think was there. Something old, from long ago. A part of me I forgot. How is he able to do it? Play like he used to, with the same heart, the same feeling?

  When I open my eyes it’s to see Josi listening from the other side of the room. To see that Dave is singing to her. And to realize that he did this for her. She smiles a little, a painful sort of smile, and then she leaves.

  I wished you’d go,

  I wished you small,

  I hoped you silent

  I watched you fall.

  Now I wait,

  I’ll wait, my love,

  Oh I’ll wait for your true night.

  He sings to her departing form, and then he finds me in the crowd and shrugs and smiles as though he did his best, and then he sings the rest of his song to me. And anything that was missing between us has returned. Even if he doesn’t yet know it.

  *

  Dave reaches the end of the song but before he can play another Coin storms over and wrenches the instrument from his hands. “This isn’t yours!”

  Dave immediately raises his hands in supplication.

  “Coin—” Lawrence tries, but something has unsettled deep within Coin. The boy sends a fist hard into Dave’s mouth.

  I’m moving by the time it lands, dashing across the space to help Lawrence pull his friend off my brother.

  “Easy, easy,” I tell the struggling boy. Tears flood his eyes and the guitar has fallen to the floor. Coin wrestles himself out of my hands to crouch over it and gather it to his chest.

  “Don’t you fucking touch it,” he snarls at Dave, then sprints away with the instrument.

  Dave is still sitting exactly where he was, only now he has a hand lifted to his bleeding lip. Into the remaining silence he says, “Sorry.”

  It seems so absurd for him to be apologizing that none of us know what to say in return.

  *

  Josephine

  I hear it happen because I’m listening from within the next tunnel. There’s a scuffle and Coin’s upset voice and then he goes running past with the guitar and instead of following I let him go. I would have followed, once. But now I can’t be under the ground that long. I’ve reached my limit and have to head for the ladders.

  On a whim I change direction and wind my way to the cliff opening. There lies the sea, unchanged. As beautiful as it was four billion years ago.

  I haven’t been here since Malia’s burial. Before that, my wedding. Those days seem very long ago. A different lifetime, a different version of me.

  I suppose I got what I wanted, didn’t I? Parallel universes, alternate Josephines. For some childish, greedy reason I dreamed of those other lives running alongside mine and I wanted to know what they were, I wanted to be in those alternate lives, little knowing the one I had was perfect. What kind of monster lives a life of deep wealth and longs for something else? What kind of person knows a profound, life-shaping love, and would risk desiring a universe in which that might not exist?

  A sociopath, that’s who.

  Regardless, I opened Pandora’s box. I can’t go back.

  So I lift my fingers to my mouth and I let out a long, piercing whistle.

  *

  October 1st, 2067

  Josephine

  We walk the snow-covered forest silently. Well, they do. I walk it quite loudly.

  “Medusa, I’ve decided you used to be married to Washington. You’re childhood sweethearts. Your families took holidays in exotic places and you spent the whole time sneaking off to make out. But then you, Medusa, had a scholarship to veterinary school and a quick path to becoming the world’s most famous snake charmer. You even took up playing the bansuri, and snake charmers from the farthest reaches of the world came to see you work your magic, astonished when you turned even the most steely-eyed of fans into stone. But Washington, starlet that he was, had become rather successful in his own right: winning George Washington lookalike competitions, of course.”

  I look at my audience to see if they’re appreciating the genius of their backstories, but no such luck. Washington and Medusa walk with their usual animal grace, eyes and ears peeled for threats or food, utterly ignoring their chatty prisoner.

  “So Washington started
touring the world with his act, and you didn’t see each other for years. But one day you wound up at an international fair in India, for the biggest celebs in the world. You were seducing your snakes, Medusa, and Washington was walking around looking leaderly, and your eyes caught across the tacky conference room and you knew. Damn the reporters and the fans. Damn the paparazzi. Damn all those who said a mythical snake charmer and an impersonator of sixteenth-century founding fathers couldn’t be together. Damn them!”

  They walk on. At least I’m amusing myself.

  That stops being the case very soon.

  Normally I’m tied by a rope and tugged along when my pace falls. But since the blizzard they’ve stopped tying me up and allowed me to walk without bindings. This means, however, that as I unwittingly slow, Astro Boy pushes me from behind. And it isn’t a hard poke, or a violent shove. It’s hardly a push at all. He places his hand on my spine and ushers me forward in a way that seems almost, almost gentle.

  It startles something inside me, something deep and feral. I turn and smash my fist into his face, then thrust my knee into his guts. He hits the ground hard but the others are already on me like a great big pileup, throwing their bodies on mine and pinning me to the ground.

  “Get off!” I snarl. “You fuckers! Don’t you dare touch me! I’ve had enough!”

  I don’t want their hands on me – I can’t stand it. I struggle wildly until something connects so hard with my cheek that the world spins.

  When next I become aware, they’re no longer on top of me but staring down from above, all six of them. The sky inside the circle of their heads is a gray white; the tall trees reach so high. As I lie here looking at this spectacle, light, tender snow begins to fall.

  A sound leaves me. “What’s going on?” I beg. “What do you want with me?”

  Instead of answering they lift me to my feet and gently bid me to follow the rest of their kind.

  *

  October 13th, 2067

  Josephine

  My crisps have run out. If I dare to touch my abdomen I can feel my ribcage jutting out much farther than it used to. My body is more like it was in the last years of the blood moon, when it was being fed upon from the inside. It’s eating itself, and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll last without proper food.