Once we have our cones, we leave to walk around the block, because I am done dealing with humanity. We are at the far side of the block when I notice that Xtian has stopped, is staring at the sidewalk. I turn and see a hopscotch grid. She asks what it is.
“You have no idea what hopscotch is?” I ask.
“I’ve led a sheltered life.”
I squat down and trace the lines, try to remember the rules. I have never played, just watched. And that was a lifetime ago.
“You throw a stone and you have to hop to it, with one or two feet—” I break off, wondering what I must look like, babbling like an old man in a gray thrift store suit, my waistline probably too high. Gray hair, gray eyes. I feel for a moment as if I am falling apart right there. A scarecrow disintegrating in the wind.
“Probably easier to do than talk about,” I say. Like many things.
“Well then, show me,” she says, idly trailing an outstretched hand through a rosemary bush nearby, bringing it to her nose delicately.
“You really want me to show you?” I ask, struggling against gravity. And there is chalk on my hands, chalk in my mouth from the heartburn tablet I have just taken.
“Yes,” she says. “Teach me, oh master.”
I do not remember the rules, but then I am used to making up my own. She will never know the difference. I look around. No one is watching. I do not know why it matters, but it does.
I pick up a stone.
• • •
To Edison’s credit, he really tried to be ordinary. Tried to fake it until he made it, to mangle the old saying. He hated it, but he tried to be something of a father, or at least a better partner. At least some of the time he was doing it for me, but mostly I think it was for himself. He was trying to put his past behind him, trying to forget and failing. And like Nick, I think he was trying to spin his own lie. To convince himself that what he’d done was for the best. Maybe to convince me, too.
He put on a good face, but I saw through it. I knew something was nagging at him, beneath the surface, and occasionally it would erupt. He was second-guessing himself. He was wondering if he should have let me die. And sometimes I wondered too.
Between the time Edison took me out of Nick’s place, and the time he noticed I was alive, I must have woken up at least a few times. But if I did, that moment is lost now, along with so many other things. But I do remember the final time. The first time, in many ways.
There was darkness, then light. Red. A metallic slam, like a coffin lid. The trunk. And then a lifting in the pit of my stomach as he picked me up. I opened my eyes, and the world spun. For a moment I probably thought I was back in the restaurant. There was blood in my mouth, in my hair. Scabs opened, painfully, everywhere. My hands clenched tight, but there were no coins to drop this time. Everything was gone. Long ago.
“Da—” I mumbled. Or maybe it was more like “Ungh—” I can’t decide which is more poetic.
Edison quickly shifted me off of his shoulder and cradled me in his arms. I looked up into his eyes. And he looked into mine.
“Well,” he said, impassive. “This changes things.”
There were trees and a shovel and a hole, but all that was forgotten as he walked briskly around the side of the car and laid me down in back. After that there was just movement, no way to tell time or place. Eventually we arrived somewhere bright, somewhere with other cars, and he picked me up and carried me in, and I was surprised to discover there were no nurses or doctors, no bright lights, no smell of hospital. I looked around as he set me on the bed and shut the motel room door, and then I remembered who I was with, and I was surprised I had been surprised. Where else would I be but alone with him? Where else could he take me, except nowhere? Nowhere.
He called who he could, called in favors, reminded people of all he’d done—and he had done quite a lot—and strange, quiet people came and took care of me. And over the next few months, I recovered. As much as I could. There were some things I wasn’t getting back.
I knew then and I know now that what happened to me was not at all important any more. I was no longer the person those things had happened to. The past couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t let it. All that mattered was this: I survived, and because I survived, I got… Stronger? Maybe, but more than that. It wasn’t any coming-of-age bullshit—that’s a terrible myth. Becoming is a process, just like aging and just as unavoidable. But it added to me. It made me more me.
How can I regret that?
Sinking Feeling
11/05/16
The bouncer looks Xtian up and down, and I immediately regret giving in to her on this, no matter how stir crazy the two of us have been these past months. He checks her license three times, looking for some sign that it is a fake. It is as real as any piece of plastic—the record that it is based on is the fake, and he has no way of knowing that, especially since with the way she is dressed and made up tonight she looks far older than I am comfortable with. He could turn her away, regardless. Both of us. All of us. This is his prerogative, his small shred of power in this world. But he does not care. We are not trouble.
Yet, at least.
She skitters past and heads downstairs without waiting for me. I step up in line and reach for my wallet, but the bouncer declines to check my ID. Old man. Right, I get it.
The club is packed wall to wall with black and blue, half the crowd decked out in the latest fashion trends—which oddly resembles something from my youth—and the other half opting instead for the jeans and T-shirt route. There is lots of plaid, of course. This is Seattle.
At least several of the females in the room are less dressed than Xtian is, and another several seem to be younger than she is, all of which is good; I would rather she fall into some middle ground than be an extreme. The sheep are packed shoulder to shoulder, and the reek of unwashed crevices sours my nose. It is too hot, too crowded.
The opening act is already onstage, which means not only is it impossible to see anyone clearly (Xtian is probably the only one in the crowd not holding an iThing up over her head to record the event), but it is also nigh-impossible to hear anything. Conversation is out, unless you happen to be standing right on top of someone. Which is tempting, but I do not want to get blood on my shoes.
I sneak a glance over my shoulder and get my back to the bar as quickly as possible, snagging a stool. A good spot, right under a vent, an oasis of cool in a sea of swelter.
I order a Diet Coke from the guy behind the bar and turn to look for Xtian. Instead, a woman nearby catches my eye and thinks I am looking at her. She is far too old for this place. Like me. I unconsciously raise an eyebrow, noting as I do that hers seem artificial, painted on. She smiles and looks me up and down. I find this disturbing and turn away. Instead, out of the corner of my eye, I can see her move closer. I sense this will be painful.
• • •
She’s beautiful, I thought, watching her dance. Not Edison’s new beau, but a different woman, all in brown. Brown leather over a dark brown calf-length skirt, slit up to her thighs with black electrical tape over her stockings, some sort of loose fishnet weave in a pattern I’d never seen. I wanted them. I wanted her boots, too, brown and leather and ankle-height, showing off her perfect video game calves. And her arms: wrapped in brown, fingerless gloves that matched her curly brown hair. She moved and twisted like a snake, powerful and confident, with little flashes of her bare belly emerging from under the brown scales. Fearless.
Could I be that? Like that? Unafraid, free? I stared and stared. And just then she turned and for a moment we locked eyes, and I immediately got self-conscious and turned to look for Edison. Because of course I did. He was talking to a vampiress at the bar as she applied a fresh coat of lipstick using the back of a cigarette lighter as a mirror. No doubt he loathed her vanity. I could see the disgust in his eyes.
I headed over, not sure if I was saving him from her, or vice versa. Edison just barely acknowledged me as I walked up and listened.
&
nbsp; “No, I’m not voting on Tuesday,” he yelled, competing with the music.
“What? Why not?” the woman shouted back.
“It’s a pointless gesture. I’m opposed to anything where people act in unison and think they’re making some sort of point, whether it’s pulling a lever or waving their hands or chanting to some invisible sky person. Prayer, the Sieg Heil pledge—”
“Pledge?” she asked, not smart enough to just drop it.
“The one of allegiance, yes. Indoctrinating children before they have a chance to decide for themselves? Civic baptism. A four-year-old does not know what ‘one nation under god, indivisible’ means, but you make him say it every day and he gets brainwashed. Listen to a song every day and it gets stuck in your head. It’s just … crowd control, at best.”
The bartender, who had also been listening, rolled his eyes and moved away to wipe something with a sodden rag as the woman finally began to realize she’d picked the wrong guy.
“Whatcha talking bout?” I asked, too loudly, the music cutting out just then as the opening act left the stage to mild applause. The woman turned and looked at me, surprised I had crept up.
“Hypocrisy,” said Edison. “Empty motions without meaning, done only for the benefit of the others who are doing it for the benefit of others. Like Halloween masks and flag pins. A shell of makeup with no substance underneath. Lies built upon lies. It’s all just misdirection. Like this pointless FBI investigation …”
As he continued on, the woman looked at me, then at Edison. I don’t know if she saw an insane old man and his daughter or some businessman with a high-paid, underage escort, but in either case, she curled up her lip and with a look of disgust walked away. Mission accomplished.
• • •
Xtian smiles as she mounts the barstool, pulls her left leg up and lays her head on her knee. Her dark skirt slides up her leg, and I catch an unfortunate glimpse of upper thigh. The sort of thing that should make me feel suddenly and awkwardly young, but here, now, only serves to remind me how old I really am. I look away and I wonder if she does this intentionally to make me look away. A way of controlling me.
There is a shift around us, then, the house music filling in a gap. People begin to move about in different patterns. The bar becomes more crowded. Yet we do not give up our seats. There is still ice in my glass. I am still a customer.
“Old girlfriend of yours?” asks Xtian.
“No,” I say, not biting.
She stares past my left shoulder, watching some girl in brown leather dance with the mirror. The woman moves like a sheet flapping in the wind, fluid then crisp. Xtian has a look in her eyes but I do not know how to read it. Does she need a mother figure? A sister? A friend? Is she gay? How would I handle that? Probably better than some other alternatives, I suppose. There are books. I could read them. I assume there is some correlation with abuse at a young age. Perhaps something to do with the lack of a strong father figure. I wonder if I count.
No.
“Did you ever have a girlfriend?” she asks.
“Once,” I say, regretting it immediately.
“What was she like?”
“She asked too many questions and I killed her,” I say.
Xtian sticks her tongue out at me and is quiet for a while.
“She was blonde,” I say after a while, unprompted. “Pale. Wispy and terse.”
“Can you speak like a human instead of a thesaurus for a change?”
“Brief. Ephemeral. Transient. It did not last long. We were young, and it was school, and it quickly moved from foolish pseudo-romance to tentative, awkward friendship. Every moment of it felt artificial and forced, and from there it was a quick, steep downhill slide to acquaintance, the sort of lingering thing that hangs on for years after you part ways and everyone thinks they will stay in touch but they never do.”
“So in English, you broke up?”
“It was broken from the start; there was nothing more to break.”
I sip at my Diet Coke, trying to avoid remembering, failing.
“What was it like?” she asks.
“Dating?”
“No,” she says. “High school.”
The lights begin to dim, and the air conditioning kicks on overhead.
“I never said it was high school,” I reply.
She wrinkles her lip in a half-smirk, perhaps knowingly.
“All school is fascist karaoke,” I say quickly, to avoid further questions. “Forced to perform on stage, recite someone else’s words. Be happy I did not waste your time.”
“And on that note,” she says, standing.
“Something I said?”
“Something I drank. I gotta pee.”
The lights go out, and she goes with them. And just before it goes dark, I catch a glimpse of the cow lady, heading for the bathroom, too. I have no reason to think it, but I suddenly feel like something is terribly wrong, like something terrible is about to happen here. Sometimes the terrible is because of me, and sometimes it is in spite of me. In either case, it is a certainty.
• • •
Entering the bathroom was like walking into a ball of cotton, the music from the main room muffled, replaced by a dull thud within the walls, vibrating pipes and my guts. It was pretty nasty inside: mirror smudged with what I hoped was lipstick, the toilet seat askew, a puddle of something unidentifiable on the floor. I decided to risk it. Nature called. I was just getting started when the music swelled and faded, followed by the sound of boots on the filthy floor, heading my way. By the time I realized the stall had no latch it was too late. The door was yanked open, and the lady in brown suddenly had a better view of certain parts of me than I did.
“Oops,” she said. Someone truly embarrassed would have turned away, but she smiled and asked, “Mind if I join you?” It took me a full five seconds of awkward silence to realize she was kidding. By which point she had already worked to address my ignorance.
“Sorry. Bad joke,” she said, shutting the door and heading for the mirror to groom. Her heels clacked on the floor, tic tac toe, as she paced, danced to the beat through the walls. I wasn’t nearly done, but there was no way my shy bladder was going to cooperate any further, so I flushed the toilet and rushed out of the stall, immediately slipping in something I hoped was water but was probably not, and falling right on my ass.
“Hey, you alright?” asked the woman. I don’t know what she thought—that I was in danger, that I had an abusive boyfriend, that I couldn’t pee while she was in the same room—but whatever it was, I sensed it was genuine.
She smiled. And then she reached out a strange hand, a beautiful, graceful, kind hand.
• • •
“Hey,” I say, covering the distance in three steps.
The woman turns, hand dropping away from Xtian’s face, or maybe throat. I cannot tell and I do not care. She is not expecting it when I land a fist beneath her left ear, a perfect brachial strike, hard enough to knock her feet out from under her on the slick floor. Her cheek strikes the porcelain and something cracks that is not the sink, and she falls heavily and does not move any more. There is some amount of blood.
Xtian is frozen. I kneel before her, calmly.
“You alright?” I ask.
She glares at me. Angry?
“Why did you do that?” she shouts, shoving me away. “What did she do?”
“She was …” But was she? In retrospect, probably not. No threat at all.
Oh well. Spilled milk.
“She wasn’t doing anything,” Xtian says, standing. “She was being nice. What the fuck!”
“Nice is a fantasy,” I say. “Everyone is after something.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you ever again.”
“Xtian …”
She pushes again, trying to run past me, and it happens. It just happens.
• • •
He had hit me before, of course. Training. Punched, tripped, hurt. Attempted to kill. Left for dea
d. Left to be tortured. He had killed in front of me, had made me kill, had done horrible things. But all of that was somehow in that single moment acceptable. It was a collective nothing compared to that shocking slap across my cheek.
Tag, I was it.
I stumbled backward, tripped over the brown lady and nearly fell but caught myself at the last moment, lowered my center of gravity and fell to my knees instead. It hurt like hell, but I was damned if I was going to show it just then. He had crossed a line. I stood back up and, without taking my eyes off of him, walked straight towards the door, daring him to stop me. Wisely, he stood aside, and I kept right on walking, straight out into the too-cool night air. Wanting distance between me and him, between me and her. But especially him.
He caught up with me two blocks away.
“Xtian,” he said, voice neutral. I was anything but.
“God damn you,” I said turning to face him.
“What?” he said, looking confused.
“Why can’t we be just normal, just, like normal people. Just leave all that shit behind. No, you had to ruin it. You are a fucking ruiner. You ruined my life.”
He reached out, but I backed away. By the look on his face I could tell that to him this was just one more day, that the woman he’d killed was just another bit of trash, and her death didn’t mean a thing to anyone, not really. Why did one person matter when he’d killed thousands? What did one day matter? Why did I care?
And which was worse: that I cared, or that I could understand not caring?
“Xtian …”
“And that. Stop. It’s Christian. Stop. Stop saying it like that. It’s a fake shitty name.”
“You are fake. We’re fake. It’s all name tags and credit card numbers and mirrors, Xtian.”
“Well I don’t want to be Xtian anymore. Or Edith. Or—” I had forgotten who I was supposed to be that night, stammering as I clawed around my pockets for the fake ID.
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