This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us
Page 22
“Ursy, I promised I cared,” Zooey said. “And I do. You’re too young, and I’m wanted in too many states now.” She shrugged, pointing at the gap between them. “This is me caring about you.”
“No, it’s not!” Ursula countered, punching their leg in anger. “This is you discarding me, like you promised you wouldn’t do! It’s typical male writer bullshit—kicking the girl out when she opens her heart! So what—now I’m too young?! So the right thing to do all along was to kick me out into the street? You’re telling me Adrian did the right thing?!”
Zooey fell silent, choosing the next words really carefully. There was, at some point, a jerk toward the window, like a reflex, but she contained it. The smirk was gone.
“No, he didn’t do the right thing. He was only trying to spare himself this.”
She slid off the windowsill as gracefully as she could, and for a moment it seemed their bad leg was yielding, but it wasn’t. It was Zooey taking a knee, mismatched eyes level with Ursula’s, delivering the final speech point-blank at her face.
“I’ve seen your routine. You’re a tattered child raised in crime-paid luxury into whom life has smacked too many lessons too quickly, forcing you to grow a carapace of protective sass under which a soft heart yearns for love, and that’s a cliché grown-ups find annoying because deep down they wish they were like you. They wish—we wish we had that ingenuity, that resilience, that capacity for love, because we lost it long ago. You keep something precious under your carapace while people who look down on you are just empty shells, beaten by lives not necessarily harder than yours, grown cynical and materialistic since they decided it was easier to fling shit back at the world than try to stay clean, and now here you are, dazzling them. And they skulk through life clinging to Adrian’s doctrine, forgoing empathy and sensitivity, being hard-boiled and tweeting hate while they vampire the light from people like you, claiming that somebody will do it anyway, that you’re too good a thing to last. Because adults are fucked up: we are so toxic that we ruin good things just by thinking of them, so nihilistic we wouldn’t know what to do with your kindness, so hypocritical we think the right move is to kick you out into the street, to throw you to the wolves before someone thinks we are wolves ourselves. But nothing they do, Ursula Lyon, will wither you. On the contrary, you will thrive on their bullshit, like flowers do, and you’ll light up everything you touch; you will improve everyone’s story just by being there, whatever role you play, like you improved mine. You are smart, you are tough, you are honorable, and you are so kind you can see me through Adrian’s abuse and you can see Adrian through my insanity, and I can count on my hand the people who can do that, so there is no way I am ever discarding you. I will see you again, many times, and I will never let anyone push you out of my life. In fact, I would totally hug and kiss you right now if Adrian were not holding me with everything he has.”
Ursula chuckled at the last sentence, and she wiped a tear. It was the chuckle of ultimate truth, the smile of an actress right after the director says cut, the intimate joy of seeing the other’s soul naked and acknowledging yours is naked too.
They looked at each other, and they knew they would never be alone.
“Also, you know what?” Zooey said. “I think Danny was the femme fatale all along, because all he did was get in trouble and have me save his hot Mark Ruffalo ass all the…what?”
She saw Ursula’s eyes widen in shock.
URSULA: (Pointing.) There! Roadrunner!
ZOOEY: Oh my God where, WHERE?!
The second she turned, Ursula lurched forth and hugged her like a tiny sumo wrestler in love.
And that was it. Ursula squeezed all that temporary power and made sure that her last words were I love you I love you I love you I love you whispered a million times into Kimrean’s left ear. Then she planted a kiss on their cheek, let them go, and added: “Sorry, Adrian. Good-bye.”
Adrian stared at her blankly, the smirk and the mouth all gone. He sighed, nodded millimetrically to acknowledge the apology, and hoisted themselves up, flamingoing on the leg he could use. Zooey was too drunk to pilot. He hopped back onto the windowsill, opened the window, chucked out the crutches first, and jumped out.
* * *
—
They landed on the fire escape, and their legs failed to hold them up and they fell on the metal grille, but that held them up just a few seconds before standing straight again, tossing the crutches over the rail, releasing the ladder, and descending to street level.
Inside an open ambulance they found a neon-yellow vest, a shirt, and some boots. They put it all on over their gown; they were missing some pants, but from the waist up they could pass without being looked at thrice. They limped around the vehicle and climbed into the driver’s seat, quarreling between their teeth:
“Remember, perv—I drive. You hear me?”
“Okay.”
“I drive!”
“Okay.”
As they were torquing the key in the ignition, the shotgun door opened and a fat paramedic puffed on board, reading from a clipboard.
“Mission and 24th, motorbike crash, one nonresponsive—better step on it.”
He looked up from his orders right then. There was a second’s worth of silence, spruced up by the idle engine.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” He offered a hand; Kimrean accepted it. “Robert. Fancy, fifteen years on the job, never had a girl driver. Come on, show me what you can do.”
A smile like the San Andreas Fault split Kimrean’s face the second before flooring the gas.
About the Author
Edgar Cantero is a writer and cartoonist who was born in Barcelona in 1981. This Body’s Not Big Enough for Both of Us is his fifth novel and the third in English, after Meddling Kids and The Supernatural Enhancements.
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