by 19
–I know it's awful, she said, setting the lamp on the tiny counterspace beside the kitchen sink.
–It's not awful. It's like a nest. Like a home, a real home, he said, and meant it. He liked it. It was exactly like her–a lot better than it had to be.
The problem was that he had to sit down, or fall down. Soon.
–Mary...
–Oh, God. I'm sorry. Come here, she said, and maneuvered him over to the bed. He collapsed, gratefully. There was an ivory slip lying across the pillows. She snatched it, blushing, and stuffed it into a crumbling dresser wedged into a corner beside the bathroom. There was a black lace scarf covering the top of it, spread with a collection of jewelry boxes and a ceramic unicorn and a half-empty bottle of red wine.
She poked around in the jewelry box and handed him two blue pills, and the wine bottle. –Are these your last two? he asked her.
–No, she said, lying. –Take them.
He couldn't argue. He took them, and she went into the kitchen, seeming uncomfortable, or something. He tried to read her mind, and what he saw there made him a little amused and a little sad. –If you give me time for these to kick in, I'll go back to the truck, he told her.
She turned to him, trying to look confused. She only succeeding in looking guilty.
–Why?
–Mar. We cannot both sleep here.
–You're not going back to the truck. And that's it, she said.
Well. He was impressed. He fully expected her to punch him in the jaw if he so much as twitched in the direction of the door.
–I've got a sleeping bag. I'll sleep over here in the kitchen, she said.
–I'll sleep over there, he told her.
–No.
Deadlock. He thought about it. –We could both sleep over here.
Her face went very still. He had to grind his teeth to keep from grinning. –I'll sleep in the sleeping bag. On top of the covers, he added.
She didn't say anything. She was pretending to be searching for something in one of the peeling cabinets.
–Mar.
–That's almost the Latin for ocean, what you keep calling me, she said, coming back to the bed with two wineglasses. And she sat down beside him.
The morphine covered him in snow, drew a soft veil over his pain and his awkwardness. They talked about Waiting for Godot and how annoying it was to get eyeliner in your eye and Dylan Thomas, about tornadoes and their favorite alcoholic drinks and their worst and best acid trips.
He found himself thinking, happy, am I happy, is this happy? and no matter how he ran away from this terrifying thought he found himself staring straight into it again. An inescapable mirror.
He drifted awake before dawn.
He lay absolutely still, afraid to even breathe too deeply.
He was lying on his back, still in the sleeping bag. She was under the covers, separated from him by a wall of blankets. She had curled up close to him in her sleep. Her head was on his shoulder, her hair tangled against his neck, one arm across his chest with the fingers loosely closed. Other than that she was sleeping in an enthusiastic sort of sprawl, all long legs, eating most of the space. Deer, he thought again.
The sky was just beginning to lighten outside, and he could see her face painted silverblue, her mouth like a child's mouth, her weight impossibly small against him.
For going on three days now, they had been together, and the maelstrom of gratitude for those three days made him close his eyes for a long time.
He managed to move the arm she wasn't lying on. Touched her wrist, her fingers, the line of her forehead, because there was no one to see him do it, because the only thing in him bigger than his gratitude was his greed.
She didn't move.
He kissed her just above her hairline, fingers memorizing her lightly, and watched her sleep.
(12)
The knocking on the door woke them both up.
There was frantic struggling, and she managed to elbow him hard. –Hide! she hissed at him.
He was stuck in the sleeping bag, his back still at a dull roar. It was such a wrong-feeling, glassy pain. –Where?
–Just be quiet! she mouthed at him. She threw the blanket over him, even his face, and he felt her throw pillows over that. He had the insane urge to burst out laughing, thinking, She’s disguising me as furniture. I hope my feet aren't sticking out.
He held his breath and wondered what he had done to deserve this fascinating adventure.
He heard her get up, open the door, and he heard a male voice saying something unintelligible. Then, her footsteps again, and she uncovered him. –It's okay. It's Spectre.
–I slept in this sleeping bag, he told Spectre over her shoulder, squinting at the blades of sunlight smashing in through the open door. –I promise.
Spectre was giving him an amused look. –I believe you.
–Really, he said, and remembered Shakespeare saying something about protesting too much, and shut up.
–I brought you this, Spectre told him, dropping something heavy into his lap.
It was his bag. The stupid frayed olive-green thing patched with his own ugly huge stitches in fishing line, filled to bursting with most of his clothes. –Thanks. That would have been a problem, he said.
–I found the truck. The battery was stone cold dead. I'm guessing, eh, light on in the glove box or something, Spectre added. –Hopefully, not the alternator. We jumped it. It's about a minute's walk away..
–You're a saint, he said.
Spectre waved that away. –I figured you didn't want to wear short sleeves to that revival. They freak about tattoos. There's something in Leviticus about it. Makeup, fine, just not red. And no ink.
–I'll keep that in mind, he said. Mary was giving him a pleading look for some reason. He didn't know what she wanted. It was too early for telepathy. –Are you going? he asked Spectre.
Spectre laughed. –Are you kidding? They hate me. I'm illegitimate and I run a safe house. Are you coming back tonight?
–Yes, he said.
Mary gritted her teeth at him behind Spectre. Now he was utterly confused. And he couldn't try and signal anything back to her with Spectre looking.
–I'll leave you wicked heathens alone, then, Spectre said, grinning, and tipping his straw hat. –See you later. 'Bye, Mary, he told her, poking her in the shoulder on his way out.
–I will give you anything if you close that door, he told Mary, sitting up. Did he always have to wake up feeling like he'd been in a war? Was that really necessary?
She closed it. And she tossed him his sunglasses. –You should get dressed. It's almost noon and I think they already started.
The shower actually worked, and produced really hot water. It performed miracles on his back. He put on the only long-sleeved shirt he owned, a black dress shirt with annoying buttons and an annoying collar and annoying cuffs at the wrists. He had to wear the same black jeans. The only other things in his bag were either skirts or leather.
She was putting on makeup when he came out of the bathroom. It was bigger than seemed possible in there. In fact, they could have both–
–I like that dress, he told her, interrupting himself. It was dark gray, with long sleeves and a princess waist.
–It isn't black, but they'll deal with it, she said.
He offered her his arm when she was ready. She wasn't sure how to do that. He showed her, smoothed his hand over her hair just to touch her. –Anything I should keep in mind? Rules?
–No profanity. No kissing. No drugs. And please don't get in a fight.
He made an over-the-top sigh. –This is going to be one boring party.
–I'll be there, she said, sounding shy, as if someone else had told her that was her line.
–Damn. You just won. Again.
–Ha.
He was terrified of crowds.
Not just any crowd. This crowd. This crowd made Lucretia's evil little party look like a love-in.
The tent was a spr
awling white tumor, and the singing pouring out of it made his skin crawl. They weren't even bothering to stay in tune. They were yelling and screaming about Jesus and anointing and healing, and he knew this kind of party, too.
Mary felt him wince. –Are you all right?
He had stopped, in the middle of the dirt trail that passed for Main Street. The scattered trailers and shacks on either side were empty. The windows of one little general store were boarded up, like bandaged eyes, and JESUS SAVES was painted there in purple.
Everyone in town was imprisoned in that tent.
He had read somewhere about a beast with a thousand eyes, a thousand hands. That beast was crouching in the tent ahead, and it could see him. He felt small, tiny, microscopic. And he could see the real him reflected in the beast's myriad eyes.
–Hey, she said, shaking his arm, gently.
He shook his head, made a little fake smile for her. He was clutching at her hand, hard enough to hurt her. He stopped, patted her fingers. –Sorry. I just don't like huge crowds of b...of people.
–Do you want to go back?
She was looking up, worried, desperate to please him. Suddenly, all her words, all her actions seemed to fit together in his mind.
She, cared how he felt, what he wanted, what he was thinking.
He wanted to say to her, don't care about me. Don't do that to yourself. He didn't, because he wanted, this. All this. Even the parts he had no business wanting. Especially the parts he had no business wanting.
It showed in his eyes, this revelation. She couldn't see it. Sunglasses.
–I like you, he told her, his soul encoded in his voice. –And no, I don't want to go back. Immediately a bad heavy thing happened to his lips, his tongue. –Wait. That's a lie. I do want to go back, very badly, but I...I need to go forward.
She smiled at him, hesitantly. –I'm with you, she offered. –We can leave whenever you want.
No. I have never had any choices, he thought.
They stepped inside the tent. There was a crooked aisle with human walls. At the end of the tunnel of beast was a preacher in a gleaming white suit, shouting and gesturing, nearly drowned out by his ravenous flock.
I'm gonna get me Jesus, he thought. He snapped open a compartment in one of his rings, extracted a Valium, and swallowed it. He made no attempt to hide it from her. She made a gesture at him with her lower lip and her eyebrows, and he gave her an innocent sunny look and mouthed the word kiss. –Nobody saw, he said, in the low strange voice that only worked in crowds, and was only audible to the one you were speaking to.
–Be more careful, she transmitted back. He nodded. He was being careful. She had no idea how careful he was being.
–Who is that? he asked, staring at the corrupt thing ahead of them. They were moving forward still, with him leading them. The people in their path moved aside without realizing they were doing so. If Mary noticed it, she didn't say anything.
–His name is Elijah. He's Aaron's...
–Flunky?
She nodded. She was very pale, and her beautiful mouth was crumpled into one thin line.
There were two empty seats–or spaces in front of folding chairs, since no one was sitting–in the second row from the front. On the aisle. She had to notice that was too strange. She only stepped in beside him. He made sure she was on the outside. He wanted to tell her, if anything happens, run. He couldn't. He was pretty sure she already knew that.
Elijah was deeply tanned, with sleek silver hair that he wore in a truly ludicrous comb-over. He was waving his arms over his head. The cufflinks in his white dress shirt glittered like broken teeth. Diamonds. Jesus. Exactly, he thought, and had to cover his mouth briefly.
Hey, and the holy ghost will COME DOWN HERE and BRING us the ANOINTING! Can I get a praise God?? and TODAY THERE WILL BE HEALING HERE, BLESS GOD!
He was suddenly, unbearably sure that they were as obvious and inappropriate as tourists in China. He and Mary both were just, standing there enduring the sermon and not clapping, not screaming, not swaying back and forth and muttering idiotic gibberish and not crying and not falling for this.
He looked around, as surreptitiously as he could.
They weren't the only ones not behaving like cavemen in front of a Zippo. Far from it. There were many who were just standing, looking disgusted, scared, bored, sad. They all seemed to be in a little shell of invisibility. The devout ignored them.
They think everyone is doing it, because everyone is supposed to. And they're not looking around like I am. They aren't looking at anything but him. That man.
He looked at Elijah, looked into Elijah, this strange loud preacher. He saw a dark cold heart like a lost planet, covered in tinsel, in glitter, in makeup, rotting and chemical underneath the illusion.
He shivered. Freezing. Again. In the middle of the desert.
In the belly of the beast. He was, and he knew it. He was deafened by its heartbeat, choking on the scent of it. The air was hot and dry and dusty, already drawn in by too many lungs. It smelled of desperation.
–Mary, be with me, he said under his breath, and she didn't hear him. She was there anyway, warm and real beside him. He looked at her, into her, to cleanse his mind. He saw a soft human heart wound up in the blurred shadow of a bird with oceancolored eyes.
She looked at him then, just a glance.
She had felt him looking into her.
That made it all right.
–He's going to heal my boy, said a parchment man at his left elbow.
He turned, saw a withered sun-leathered face lit up by delusion, old eyes brimming with tears. He closed his eyes and looked at red darkness, turned and looked at Mary again. She seemed disturbed, as if she were lost in her own thoughts, and didn't like what she was finding there. He touched her shoulder, and she turned and smiled at him, just wearing the expression for his benefit.
These sick plastic people. He pretended to adjust the cuff of his sleeve to touch the ink under the skin of his wrist.
And I want all of you that have come here today for healing to come down here and BE healed, hallelujah...somebody come help me pray...
Help him pray? How? Cue cards?
The imp of the perverse, the urge, to go down there, to let this faker of an idiot touch him, to burn these lying hands with his true skin.
Two men and one woman came up to surround Elijah like bodyguards. The men were praying fervently, silently, shaking. The woman was perhaps forty with the face of a woman three times that, and the bleached-white hair of a whore. She was waving her hands over her head. Her nails were long, the same purple as Lucretia's dress.
People were moving forward, crying, waving like the white-haired hag, men, women, children, some limping, some bandaged, one or two in wheelchairs, some just people with no visible plague, except whatever damage was making them actually walk closer to Elijah, walk right into the evil bleeding off of that man in dark thick waves.
Elijah was raising his hands, gold rings gleaming, and he laid them on the forehead of a young woman with short red hair, Joan of Arc hair. She shuddered as though struck by lightning, and crumpled into the arms of Elijah's two lieutenants.
His heart was trying to tear a hole in his throat, trying to shatter his spine. –Mary, he said, louder than he should have, frantic. She held his hand, eyes still on the spectacle.
He was pressing his other hand to his chest, his mouth too wet, as if he were about to be ill. –I have to get out of here.
–We can't, she told him, and he turned and saw that she was right. The aisle had vanished, replaced by a current of bodies pouring towards the pulpit.
He was having one of the worst panic attacks of his life.
He watched. He had no choice. He was holding her hand too hard, and she was clutching back just as tightly.
It was like being caught in a hurricane.
If any of them looked at us, would they mistake our fear for faith?
Are any of them thinking this same thing, rig
ht this instant?
He tried to imagine Spectre in a place like this, that boy with his mind's eye open as wide and raw as a wound. He was almost certain it would have killed him. No wonder he didn't ever come to Calvary. He would be like a rose in a cesspool here, with his straw hat and rainbow colors. He would drown.
How could she stand it? How could Mary live in a place like this?
How would he?
Fuck. You did NOT just have that thought.
It was too late. He had.
He was having other thoughts, too. Thoughts about that bastard Elijah, about how he was almost looking forward to meeting Aaron.
They were falling left and right, arms spread out like a backwards swan dive. Elijah was reciting a silly litany–the holy ghost is showing me a cancer, a cancer in this woman's arm, it looks like a snake biting her...come out of that woman, thou evilness! the power of Christ compels you!
The Exorcist. That idiot had just quoted The Exorcist. Well, yeah, that was from some ancient Catholic book, but that idiot was clearly thinking of The Exorcist. He could hear the thought as clearly as if the combover were a speaker playing the dialogue. Nobody else seemed to notice. He looked at Mary again to see if she'd caught it. She was still looking forward, still looking troubled.
The crowd seemed to be thinning. At his height he could see over just about everyone. With a little leaning he found out why. The prayer assistants–there were at least ten of them, now–were leading the newly healed out through the back of the tent, through a flap that was obscured by a banner that had something from Lamentations embroidered on it. Sometimes they were dragging them. He spotted one of them holding a heavyset young man in an elbow lock.
And then, Elijah made a mistake.
There was a teenager, a boy that looked vaguely Mexican or perhaps Native American, short and muscled with a shaved head and a mustache and a loose-fitting jumpsuit, and he was standing waiting to be touched. Elijah was prattling on, no longer even looking his parishioners in the eye. He put his hands on the boy's forehead and shoved him backwards, hard enough to make him stumble, and immediately moved on, and lunged towards an elderly fat woman who was carrying a black lace parasol.