Requiem for the Fallen
Page 17
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The drowsy sun had cast an incandescent glow over the entire garden, so that the light lay as if it came from the ground up, birthing yellow streams of heat from the earth and illuminating everything. The roses and tree branches were sun-kissed, and Mona’s silhouette behind the breakfast room windows was a dark shadow that merely hinted at her hushed features. Tabitha thought that Mona’s hair glistened blacker in the evening light, like deep water. She saw Emmett come from behind her and gather her to himself. Together, they were a ghostly vision of long lost lovers, windswept and fleeting.
Tabs had spent the entire day in a dream. She stood in front of her closet for over an hour, just staring. Mona found her like that, and pulled a simple black shell and black skirt from the shuffle of cloth.
“Here,” she had said, handing Tabs the outfit with a half smile on her face, “before your brain cells burn out.”
Tabs had moved like a sleepwalker through her day, unable to think about anything except that evening, and all the heaviness that settled over it. She had left Mona’s early and went to a cellar bookstore, which opened underground like a vast cavern on two levels, the ground floor completely open to the second, which led the patrons around its walls on gridded floors with steel guiderails. She purchased two books, one on fallen angels and one on Russian fairy tales. She settled between the stacks and gazed at the bodies wandering under her on the floor below. The covers of the books on the shelves were like small paintings piercing the sea of grey and metal. She could see everyone that walked through the door, and concentrated little on her books.
Later, she returned to Mona’s and slept. The best way to pass the hours seemed to be to block them out with sleep, and she was exhausted from the morning, from the long walk to and from the bookstore, from constantly looking over her shoulder, thinking that if she were to bump into him on the street, it would somehow destroy whatever possibilities lay in the coming night.
Now in the muted evening’s light she waited, in the outfit that Mona had picked out, and reminded herself to breathe. She sat by her sorrowful lady and tried to gather air in her lungs where they kept filling with heavy weight. Her hair sparkled in dripping gold, and the heat cast the spicy scent of the perfume he had bought her from her neck, unworn in over a year.
She heard a clamor in the house and jumped up, only to sit back down again, exhausted, as Mona walked by the window with the phone in her hand, chatting away to someone or other. Tabs wanted to cry. This waiting was like waiting for death, it was slow and dreamlike, and terrifying. Somewhere, a neighbor was playing Tout Ce Sang Verse on the violin, filling the air with the soul of the city, its quiet magic at rest below the bougainvillea and cobblestones. Tabitha closed her eyes and allowed her heart to fall into its haunting melody, the vampire’s lullaby. She rested her head against the lady, two sets of faces waiting for release from the tormentor of wanting.
The breeze sent a shiver of leaves floating past, and they fell one by one, swirling around one another dizzy and graceful as notes. Their shells made a soft, crunching noise against the hard-packed floor, crushed underfoot. She turned just as the shadow materialized on the far wall, followed by an apparition of flesh & blood; living, breathing, here.
Tabitha shook as she stood, unable to move far, still resting one hand over the Lady’s smooth hip. He stood against a mirror of glass, his eyes barely discernable. His left arm bore the faint traces of healed scars, and in his hands he carried white roses wrapped in black ribbons. They faced each other in otherworldly stillness, each searching the other for that familiar pulse, that magnet pull.
Tabitha felt it instantly; if what she felt with James was a familiar relief of happiness, then this was delirium. This was finding home after watching the world burn; this was being reborn.
He placed the roses on a nearby bench and edged a few steps towards her.
“I thought I should bring something,” he murmured. He shook his head and the sadness in his eyes pierced bone.“Tabs,”
She bowed her head to the swelling in her heart. His voice warmed her blood. It was her dreams made real. How could she exist these next moments without running into his arms?
“Hey,” she replied. “How are you?” she asked, the words sticking in her throat.
“Um, I don’t know yet,” he said.
They both offered up a nervous glance at the other.
“Thank you for your letter,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
“I wanted to write you back, but there was too much I needed to say.”
His voice was calm, and he shifted his weight in the old, familiar way. He looked frustrated, the words all a rushing chaos of unsortable urgency, flooding his mouth.
She took a step towards him, her eyes never leaving his face.
“Aw, fuck it,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I…”
“I’m sorry about your arm,” she blurted. “I’m sorry for what I said that day. I was so angry, I-“
“No, don’t,” he said, reaching out a hand to silence her.
“Don’t be sorry. I damn well deserved it. I deserved everything you said,” he replied, the words coming easier now. “I need to explain to you, so much, so much shit.”
He leaned against the wall, weary, defeated.
“I’ll just start with that day, I guess. You were right. I brought that girl there to mess with your head. No, um, I actually need to back up farther than that.”
He looked around for a place to sit, rubbing his hands against his hips. He seemed burdened with the weight of what he had to say.
“For about the last two months that you were with me,” he continued, “I brought those girls back to the house because I knew you’d be there. It wasn’t enough, I mean, the point wasn’t just to be fucking someone; the point was I wanted you to see them. I wanted you to know.”
“Why?” she asked, wrapping an arm around her middle, as if that could somehow brace her against the hurt that was still all too vivid.
“Wait, just let me finish,” he said, flustered. “I’m getting there.”
She nodded.
“I brought them there because…I was just trying to get a fuckin’ rise out of you. You were always so calm about it. It drove me crazy because it was tearing me up inside. Being near you all the time and not being allowed to have you.”
He laughed.
“And the joke of it all was that it made me sick to touch them. They weren’t you,” he said, his eyes on her. “And when you finally told me that day, about how I had made you feel, I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it, I couldn’t understand it. I mean, every time you pulled away, and I know why you did it…” he said, hurrying to answer as he saw her mouth open in protest, “I get it now.”
“You do?”
“I’ve had over a year to think about it, about us. Yeah, I get it. Every time I thought about some fucker with his hands on you…I get it.”
Tabitha nodded, tearfully, while he pawed the ground with his foot and ran a hand rakishly through his hair.
“But it’s not the whole truth,” he continued. “I mean, James said it, and he was right; deep down I knew, what I was doing to you. You gotta understand, you scared the living shit out of me, Tabs. I didn’t want to need you as much as I did. I didn’t want to feel you changing me, changing who I was.”
Tabs searched the ground around her, stunned, trying to recall any time when she had actually felt this.
“I didn’t realize I was,” she said.
He tucked a piece of hair behind his ear.
“I need you to know that you did, Tabs,” he said low.
“What? What do you mean?”
“You changed me. And I’m not sorry that you did. I’m not sorry.”
He turned his face to the setting sun. The light around them
had deepened to a crimson orange. “There’s somethin’ else I gotta tell you,” he murmured.
“Okay.”
>
Tabs couldn’t help but feel the smallest crescent of hope resting against her heart. She fought against the sharpness pressing into her ribs, telling her that she would break into hollowed shards if this was, in fact, a prolonged goodbye.
“When you left…”
He put his hand up to shield his face.
“I couldn’t sit in a room where you had been. I couldn’t touch your clothes. I slept in your little cave down by the water. I curled up like a fuckin’ animal. And when I looked for you everywhere and couldn’t find you…”
His eyes were downcast, a hand swiping his eye.
“If I would have just given you what you wanted, what you deserved. I’m so sorry, Tabs.”
Tabs put her hand to her abdomen and leaned against the Lady, holding back the torrent that raged wildly beneath her skin.
“I love you,” he said.
Tabs’ breath rushed from her lungs, like she had held it in for thousands of years. She braced herself against the Lady and bent forwards.
“And if you tell me to go to hell, I’ll tell you it’s too late, because I’m there. I’ve always been there; except when I was with you. I need you to help me, Tabs,” he said, breaking. “I want it, to change. And I want to give you all that you wanted, all I held back from you. You’re my soul,” he said. “I’d be a shithead to think you could forgive me…“
He was nearly knocked back by the fury of silk and bone that rushed on him. Tabs ran and threw herself into his arms, wrapping her hands around his neck and grasping his hair in her hands, burying her face in his scent.
She cried a lament of relief, a message from one who was dead, and he held her, shocked and brokenhearted at the realization that his memory had not fully captured the agony of touching her, or the pain of her absence. He sighed with audible relief, and brushed back her hair from her face, drinking in her eyes, the feel of her skin, her breath.
“Ah, my girl!” he whispered, over and over again into her ear.
She pressed herself against him, wishing that she could die because no moment would ever be at sweet as this.
Her mouth found his, silencing the barrier broken between them. He held her face to his, pressing his tongue into her mouth, filling his head and hers with stars bursting against the blackness. He broke away, panting, holding her tightly in his hands.
“You don’t know how much I’ve missed you,” he said, his forehead touching hers. “I was fuckin dyin’ from wanting to touch you again, and talk with you. Ah, shit I’ve missed you.”
He ran his hands over her face, unable to believe that she was real. Tears slid down her cheeks. He brushed them away with his fingertips.
“I’ve spent every waking minute wanting this,” she said, drowning his mouth with hers.
Her fingers softly grazed the indents that ran along his arm and fanned out against his back as he pulled her to him with jealousy.
“Can you forgive me?” he whispered in her ear.
She broke away to look at him. His eyes drifted down, ashamed. She took his hand in hers and brought it to her heart.
“Tell me again,” she said.
His gaze met hers, questioning.
“Tell me again.”
“I love you,” he said.
His face nestling hers. His hands were shaking.
“I love you, Tabs. And I’m yours, if you’ll have me. If you can forgive me.”
She kissed his hands and held them to her.
“I forgave you before I ever got on that bus and left L.A. I forgave you even when I hated you, because I love you and I can’t stop. I loved you before I knew you. I’ll never stop.”
“Ah, you don’t know how badly I needed to hear that,” he said, resting his head on her shoulder.
He smiled, then broke away suddenly, searching in his pocket.
“I have something I want to give you.”
Still holding onto her hand, he brought out a small, wooden box. He opened it, revealing a ring of white gold. It was a miniature angelic figure. Her wings were mother of pearl. Her foot trampled upon a demon’s head. In her hand was a human heart, wrapped in roses. Tab’s head began to swim as he pulled her towards the stone bench and sat, below her.
“I want to put this on your finger,” he said.
He held up his own hand. It bore a silvery band, engraved with one word, Tabitha.
“I’m not promising you that it’ll be perfect, or that I even really know how the hell to do this. I don’t know where our paths are goin’. But I know that I need you…to live. I never want you to wonder again; I’m yours. Know that.”
Tabitha cried, laughing through her disbelief that this could be anything but a dream.
“That’s all I wanted. Take me home.”
She kissed him again, joyously, and he gathered her in his arms and swung her around. His face shone with the light of deliverance, his mended soul.
I will tell you it was hidden light
It was fire dripped down in the night garden
bare flesh stripped in the thorn bed
It was my fingers tangled in your black hair
Your heartbeat pounding in my ear, burning beneath you
It was your hunger pitted against mine
Twin hearts
Twin skins
My need echoed yours
Burning to possess all of you
Where your heart understood mine
I’ll tell you it was drunkenness
the rocking of your weight, heaven
It was your breath, beautiful darkness
Our tongues everywhere
It was my head tucked against your chest
You holding me like a child
Twin hearts
Twin Skins
My need echoed yours
Aching to possess all of you
Where your heart finally understood mine
The END