The Kingdom of Heaven

by 19

  She saw him looking at her, and crossed the tiny room. This miniscule trailer, out in this ruined desert. It was the closest thing to home either of them had ever known.

  She took his hands in hers, and he almost pushed her away, certain he would shatter at her touch. He barely felt her hands, except for a sensation of softness, cold.

  –Do you want to take a shower?

  The banality of that was breaking his heart.

  He tried to stand up. Nothing changed. He looked up at her, into her eyes for the first time that morning. – I can't.

  She leaned down and kissed him, stopping them both. He was drowning in her, their mouths tangling together, and he put his hands on her stomach, over the tight swollen miracle there, and she covered his hands with her own.

  I can't do this, he thought. I can't leave this. He imagined a microscopic heartbeat under his fingers, dark clusters of future eyes under transparent skin, staring unblinking into wet warm darkness.

  And then her lips were gone, the smell of her hair was gone, and she was pulling him to his feet, the four steps across the trailer to the tiny bathroom. He had to lean on her, his arm pressing too hard into her narrow shoulders, and she did not stumble, did not complain.

  She's carrying all three of us, he thought. How did she ever get so strong?

  He only stood there, with piss-warm water beating down on him. She watched him, her hair dripping in her eyes, arms crossed over her swollen breasts. He kept his back to her, his face and his fingertips pressed against the cool damp tiles. He could still see her.

  Love will tear us apart. He could hear Ian Curtis, that bleak hopeless angel's voice, and he turned to her at the same moment she opened her arms to him, and he fell to his knees with his face pressed into her stomach, sobbing, and the words were spilling out of him, too fast and sharp for him to hold them back.

  –My favorite color. You have to tell him, do you remember it?

  –Blue, she whispered to him. She was crying too, they both were. The shower made it invisible, but he could feel it through her skin.

  –The photograph, he was saying. The one from the airplane, the one where there's an angel in the clouds. It's in that envelope in the top drawer. I want him to have it, I want you to give it to him.

  –Yes, she said, trying to put her fingertips against his lips to stop him from killing them both.

  –You have to. You have to tell him...about me, about what I'm like. About this.

  –Stop it, she said, begging him. Her hands were moving over him, slick and wet, smoothing off sweat and dust, tangling through the wreck of his hair.

  He closed his eyes. He hadn't wanted to fall asleep.

  He had wanted to spend all of their last night making love to her, without words, telling her with his lips, his eyes, his hands. He had wanted to fuck her hard and slow and completely, one more time, to make sure she wouldn't forget.

  She cupped his chin, tilted his face back to shave him. Razor, scraping over his cheeks, his upper lip, the cup of bone just above his eyes. Still no eyebrows. For Spectre.

  He kept his head still. His lips were still moving. He was sure it wasn't even words anymore.

  He submitted to being scrubbed dry with a threadbare towel, and stood awkward and silent while she moved around him, finding clothes. He held up his limbs obediently, like a child, like a doll, and let her dress him.

  What would she do? Afterward

  There was a trailer on the outskirts of town, a battered, rusted, lopsided thing where a terrible woman lived, a woman with parchment hands and a leather face and a terrible yellow smile. Hanging from the wooden skeleton of what had been this woman's porch was a rusted coathanger, dangling from a piece of frayed twine, the only sign she needed to advertise her obscene trade.

  No. She wouldn't.

  Not to the last thing he could leave her, a fragment of his flesh and blood and bone. Their son.

  He knew it would be a son.

  She put the corset around his waist, pulled the laces tightly, with the quick merciless snap she knew he loved. It had once been hers. He had inherited it, when it would only fit his stick-figure frame, when she had given it up in frustration almost a month ago. He could still hear her saying, half-joking, You wear it. And he had. He was glad to have it now, holding him up, snug and close against ribs and spine, holding insides in and the outside out with a wall of metal stays and black satin.

  He stepped into his pants and let her pull them up. He was hard even before she adjusted him gently to zip them. Both of them pretended not to notice it. It was too late for that, now.

  She was buttoning his shirt, her fingers gentle against his throat, his wrists, and he caught up her hands and kissed the palms of them. It was not a gesture of thanks, and there was little of kindness in it. She pressed her hands against his mouth for just a little too long after the kiss was over.

  He stumbled away from her, hearing her rummaging around behind him for her own clothes. He made it over to the tiny dressing table and picked up a black eyeliner pencil. He stared at it, vaguely, trying to remember the trick of canceling the space between hand and eye.

  He managed it finally, and had his left eye half finished when she said, –Could you help me?

  He looked in the mirror at her, behind him, and the pencil snapped in his hand, smearing makeup the color of oil on his fingers. –I'm sorry, he began, fumbling, near tears over this small accident.

  She took his hands, found a tissue–women had that magic, the ability to conjure tissues out of air–and wiped off the kohl. –It's all right, she told him, touching his cheek, and turned around, guiding his hands to her back.

  He struggled with it, this beautiful black dress he had bought her, with tiny black glittering buttons from neck to waist. He closed the last one, and before he could stop himself he said, –You shouldn't wear this.

  She turned back to him, and now, of all the times, her eyes were bright, wet. –Don't you like it?

  –It's beautiful. You're beautiful, he told her, hoarse and choking on demon tears. –It's just...I don't know how you'll get it off.

  He tore himself away from her, violently, and found himself face to face with the mirror again, powerless to turn away from the face that stared back at him, accusing, one whiteblue eye painted, one hazel eye bare. His mismatched evil eye.

  –I won't, she said behind him, crying. –I won't take it off. Not ever.

  He closed his eyes. He knew that she meant it. It terrified him. That he would leave her trapped in this funeral dress, until her belly swelled enough to split the seams. He saw her, lying alone and too small in their bed, gasping and sweating and sobbing, pushing their son into this bleached empty world with that dress bunched up around her hips.

  He covered his face with his hands.

  She pushed him down into the fragile chair, turned him to face her. She picked up the broken pencil, tilted his face towards her again, closing his eyes with a brush of her fingertips.

  This was making love, with wax and paint and pigment. She put his mask on him, soft textures brushing his eyelids, his cheeks, his lips. She did it slowly, and he was so grateful for that he was afraid he would stop breathing. And he knew, even before the caress of bone-white powder and the soft kiss she gave him, that she had done it right, that she had colored him fierce and unrepentant.

  He turned to the mirror.

  Now, the face he saw was his own.

  She pushed him to the foot of the bed, and he watched her painting her own face. He was trying to memorize her, the violet shadow at the crook of her elbow, the serpent line of her back under the black teeth of buttons, the quick, agonized motions of her fingertips as she sketched her own mask.

  And she put on the halo, the tinsel halo from her Halloween costume. That was so beautiful it was breaking his heart all over again, into pieces so small he didn't know how they all kept beating.

  She was finished, and she turned to him, and their eyes wound together again. So, he
re we are. It's come to this.

  He thought she meant to embrace him, and he had half-raised his hands when he saw she was moving away from him, into the bathroom. She came out again, and when he saw what she had in her hands the mask nearly shattered.

  She understands. She does.

  At that moment, he knew. He could do this. He could.

  She was holding a transparent plastic oval bottle, the label dark with grease, the snap-up lid a pink-beige like a child's palms.

  She knelt in front of him, tears streaking through the cadaver-pale powder, and she pulled his feet into her lap and poured oil into her cupped hands.

  Baby oil. The last time they had used it had been for anal sex, which he had persuaded her into by alternating deep wet kisses and whispered promises of gentleness and excruciating pleasure.

  Almost a year ago. Before he had thought about babies. Before he had thought about the word anointing.

  She stroked it along the tops of his feet, along the arches, between his toes, keeping her eyes knotted into his. Brown, painted with ink, with long black lashes, like the eyes of a unicorn he had seen in a poster in a forgotten head-shop. Which of his eyes was she looking at?

  She closed her hands tight around his ankles, squeezed hard enough to remind him of shackles and to let him know that this was an embrace. She staggered up to her feet, tearing her eyes free of his. Her foot struck the bottle, and it dripped two slick drops onto the colorless vinyl floor. He leaned over and set it upright, snapped the cap closed. The baby might need it. Later.

  She put his boots on him, and he tensed his feet, feeling the squish of oil, and she pulled the laces tight and double-knotted them. Of course. Couldn't have the witch tripping over his shoelaces. He almost laughed at that. Knowing what such an ugly sound would do to her kept him from it.

  She kept her hands resting on his boots and looked up at him. Don't, he wanted to plead, helpless.

  –Do you have to? I mean–

  He shook his head at her, pulled her close. She felt unfamiliar against him, the curves of her body subtly altered in unknown ways. He was beginning it already, constructing distance where once there had been none.

  He stood up, and she went behind him. Her hands came up, around his back, and the feathers brushed his cheeks. Her necklace, her favorite necklace, a collar of vertical black plumes that looked like something David Bowie might wear.

  –Are you sure?

  She nodded, her forehead against his back.

  He looked into the mirror one more time. This picture. This, to remember himself by.

  They were already outside. He had known they would be, but he hadn't imagined the noise, myriad voices, the shuffling of footsteps, the rustling of heavy clothes.

  She put his hat on him–a strange, tall pilgrim hat Spectre had given him out of his crazy hat collection. He'd almost forgotten it. She kept her hand at the small of his back to steady him.

  He thought of the face in the mirror, and his hand closed around the doorknob, and he straightened his back and flung it open.

  They were silent, abruptly. He made his face imperious, filled his eyes with burning contempt. He looked at each of them, every one of them.

  Luke and his blue companion were there, standing distant and sad, with Spectre just behind them. and he knew that only he could see them. Jordan and Zillah were near the back of the huddled crowd, and neither one of them looked back at him, or even tried to meet his eyes.

  Too much? he thought, furious and grieving. You didn't have to come here. And I didn't hear you saying much to defend me either, back when your support just might have mattered.

  That wasn't fair, and he knew it. He didn't care.

  He stood there and let them take it all in. Take a good look. I want every fucking one of you paying attention. This is what you fear. Am I what you expected? What you hoped for?

  He stepped down, Mary's hand groping for his. Having him down at eye level–or close to, anyway, since he towered above most of them–seemed to renew their courage, or at least their hatred. The shouting, the jeers began again almost immediately. He felt her cringe against him.

  He felt something brush his free hand, tiny fingers twining around his. He looked down, startled. A little girl, painted, wound in a funeral dress two sizes too big for her.

  Rachel. With confusion, and fear, in her newly made face.

  Her hand in his was like the bones of a bird.

  He stepped forward again, surrounded now. His knees were weak. Mary slipped her arm around his waist, and the jackals closed in around them.

  say it, why don't you

  leave her here, and her pregnant? what kind of monster are

  repent! don't you know this is your last chance to

  satan has blinded you! satan is inside you!

  –jesus Christ –

  –forgiveness –

  –salvation –

  –forgiveness –

  –repent –

  –always knew, i always knew that you were, you –

  It all ran together, into a litany of accusations, and the scuffling friction of footsteps in the white-hot sand, and the yellow blaze of the sun, and a dark heavy drum pounding underneath it all.

  Why am I doing this? Why? Do I really think this will prove anything? Teach them anything? They're beyond that! This is madness!

  Two words. All he had to do was say two words.

  They'd hurt him, of course, in the interest of purifying him utterly, probably quite badly, but on the other side of it all he would go home. Teach Rachel to spell bird and laugh and galaxy. Hold Mary's hands, stroke her hair, help her breathe when their baby came into the world.

  No. That would prove something. Would I ever know myself in the mirror again, if I became that kind of example?

  He turned to look at his lover. She tried to give him a brave smile, and mouthed I love you. Or maybe she'd said it out loud, and he hadn't been able to hear her over them.

  Two words. Why should he have to prove anything? Why did it have to be him? And why did it have to be like this?

  The words were aching on his tongue, pounding at his teeth, a heavy sharp temptation, and the sun was a white dagger slashing up at him from the sand, snapping grit and inferno air into his eyes, his lungs, and he couldn't breathe couldn't breathe and

  He fell.

  He dragged Mary down with him, and she kept him from hitting the ground, cradled him close across her knees, stroking his hair.

  –Isn't this enough? she asked him, crying. –Don't you know I will still love you if you don't do this? Just say it. They'll let us go, they will...

  He looked up, past her angel's face, into thousands of scornful impatient eyes. –No. They won't. They never will. This is already done. I was born into this.

  That was it, wasn't it? To serve in heaven, or to...

  Rachel tugged at his hand, looking down at him with eyes that were much too old for her face. –Did you hurt yourself?

  Yes, I've hurt myself very badly. One might even call this a suicide. That's what they'll tell themselves, anyway.

  He groped through the thick air for her with one shaking hand, brushed her hair back from her worried little face. –Remember what you see here today, he said.

  She nodded, not understanding.

  –Remember. Tell your children.

  –I will.

  –Promise me.

  –I promise, she whispered, sad, even though she didn't really know why.

  His reflection was in front of him, in the air. He struggled up to his knees, clawing hair out of his face, looking into his own eyes.

  He thought, I repent nothing.

  He bared his teeth, and stood up, and pulled Mary up, and walked on, staring straight ahead. Rachel took his hand again, and gave him back his hat.

  He put it on, and started walking. This time, he was leading them.

  He could just see the crosses, over the next dune. Not that. Otherwise he would have been carrying the da
mn thing already. And they wouldn't have used that for the likes of him anyway, too dignified. He knew his sentence, and the almighty cross had nothing to do with it.

  They were stopping, ahead of him, crowding into a half-circle in front of a broken wall of sandstone. So soon?

  He drew in a deep breath.

  They moved aside, to let him pass. Mary stopped, just at the edge of the invisible edge of the circle. The last few steps, he had to take alone.

  He could feel her willing him to look at her.

  He didn't.

  He glanced once at Rachel, thinking, remember.

  Then, he let them go, and stepped forward. His feet were still slick with oil, still burning with the ghost of her touch.

  Two steps. Four. Eight.

  He turned to face them.

  A sea of faces. Jordan and Zillah, frozen. Both of them had faces flooded with tears.

  Mary, grieving, frozen too. Rachel, looking up at the others, confused and frightened. Some faces he might have known, have loved, in another world, a better world. The others a blur of painted hatred, righteous indignation, triumph, hunger. Vultures, dressed in Sunday best funeral black.

  The scene was too bright, too sharp, as vivid as if it had been electroplated. It left the ghost of itself in angles and edges, etched behind his eyelids.

  There would be no reading of sentence or prayer, no last rites, no last rights. Nothing so trite or dramatic, not here. There was no need. They all knew why he was there, why they all were there. He could see the same song in each pair of eyes, the same grateful prayer–thank God it isn't me.

  Not this time.

  An unspoken signal passed through them. One person bent, then another. Then a silent ritual as each knelt and picked up a stone. He saw a young man near the front with long colorless hair and one black glove pick up a chunk of sandstone, then discard it in favor of a heavier piece.

  Where first? His temple? Fingers? Ribs? Collarbone? His face? Did it matter? Had it ever mattered? Had anything ever mattered, if it was all spiraling down to this?