Give Me Your Answer True

by Suanne Laqueur

  Contents

  Give Me Your Answer True

  Dedication

  Quotes

  In Broad Daylight

  Part 1 . What I Feel Has No Name

  In The Middle

  Partner Both Sides

  A Crime Of Passion

  Pompatus Of Love

  Positive I’m Dying

  Humble Invisibility

  Shipwreck

  Stories In My Head

  Blind And Stupid

  Courage To Be A Mess

  Pretty Princesses In Tutus

  An Open-Ended Pursuit

  Vested Interest

  Food And Friendship

  Gently Back To Yourself

  Part 2 . His Name Through Her Mind

  A Necklace Out Of Love

  He’s So Your Bitch

  I Can’t Breathe

  Something Under It

  Hungry For Evolution

  Us

  A House Like This

  Netsuke

  Across Three Generations

  Hibernation

  Part 3 . A Broken Little Brother

  Both Arms

  The Bus

  Turning All The Cheeks

  Water In The Desert

  Your Own Laws Of Gravity

  Parting Shot

  Deconstruct The Emotions

  Sugar Under Fire

  More Than I Wanted To Dance

  Lime And Mint

  In His Skin

  As A Mother

  Black Cake

  Part 4 . In The Dark

  Holding Your Thing

  Marrying Me

  Where Did You Go?

  Nobody Scars You But Me

  Get Up, Dais

  No Plan

  The Last Good Thing

  Sleep On It

  Dance With Me

  Part 5 . Withdrawal

  Psychomotor Retardation

  A Sapper’s Daughter

  Fontanels

  Certain Sacrifices

  It Was The Window

  Snow Globe

  Glass

  Chocolate

  Suicidal Ideation

  Part 6 . It Doesn’t Make You A Mystery

  Your Finest Hour

  Slightly Starving

  Getting Laid Properly

  Tiny Insights

  A Little Fever

  Farfar Och Farmor

  Not Bad, Marge

  That’s It, Too

  Part 7 . Out Of The Ashes

  A Lesson In Bleak

  The Report Of Gunfire

  In Parte Dextra

  Severed

  Native Son Makes Good

  Orchorale

  Fire, Flood Or Apocalypse

  Room 473

  Against Your Door

  First The Voice, Then The Heart

  Hopefully Ever After

  Nobler Things

  Elevator

  Lukewarm And Cremate

  Part 8 . Your Skin Is The Bravest Thing I’ve Ever Seen

  Seduced And Abandoned

  Shrine

  Ray Flowers

  Your Kind Of Fight

  The Head Won On A Bet

  Give Me Your Answer True

  Partner In A New Way

  Between Certainties And Doubts

  Sovereign

  Phantom Pain

  Part 9 . Your War Is Over, Dézi

  Guarded By An Ugly French Myth

  Chill Of The Refrigerator Door

  A Different Us

  What I Threw Away

  Come Back

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Copyright © 2015 by Suanne Laqueur

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Suanne Laqueur/Cathedral Rock Press

  Somers, New York

  www.suannelaqueur.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Design by Write.Dream.Repeat Book Design

  Give Me Your Answer True/ Suanne Laqueur. — 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1508985211

  For Julie,

  who always thanks me for dinner.

  “A human being with no daemon was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out: something unnatural and uncanny that belonged to the world of nightghasts, not the waking world of sense.”

  —Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

  “We come back from war changed.”

  —Joseph Bianco

  THE DAY DAWNED BORED and looking for trouble, and Daisy woke up needing to get high.

  Not a breath of air came in through the screened window of her room. The sunlight splashing across her bed was hot and sullen. Against her face, her boyfriend’s back was cool and damp. Erik ran like an engine through the night. His sleep generated a dry thrumming heat that broke like a fever when he awoke. The hair at the back of his head divided into small, wet sections.

  “What time is it?” he asked, his voice a croak.

  Eyeballs clanging in her head, Daisy twisted back to look at the clock on her bedside table. “Ten after seven.”

  They both kicked the twisted, crumpled sheets away from their legs. Turned pillows to the cool side, rolled and rearranged and fell back asleep.

  When Daisy awoke again, she knew the morning had slipped away and afternoon now closed around her room like an angry fist. Erik’s shoulders pushed back against her belly and chest. His skin had dried. His hand ran along her thigh.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  She looked. “Almost twelve-thirty.”

  “I need to turn that paper in by two.”

  Daisy set the back of her hand on her forehead, trying to think what she had to do in these last days of her college career. A couple of exams later in the week. Today, though, she needed…

  I need to get high.

  “God, I feel hungover,” Erik said. He wasn’t. Neither was she. They hadn’t gotten high in a week. No coke, no pot, no ecstasy. And since sex went hand-in-hand with substance, they hadn’t made love in the same amount of time.

  Daisy was ambivalent to the loss of physical intimacy. Her brain, however, was a howling dog, craving a fix.

  Erik crawled over her to get up. Daisy’s eyes slid along his body with a tired appreciation. He still worked out every day, but he wasn’t eating much lately. Wasn’t feeding the muscle. His chest and arms were defined but his ribs showed.

  He bent over, trawling the floor for his clothes. From the gold chain around his neck swung four small charms. A saint’s medal. A fish. A boat with his surname, Fiskare, engraved on its flat bottom. And a tiny pair of scissors. The necklace was an heirloom he was never without.

  He yawned as he dressed, tucking things in his pockets. He tugged on a shirt, ran hands through his dark blond hair. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Daisy to sit up so he could fold her in his arms.

  “You feel all right?” he asked.

  “I’m good,” she said, lying.

  They compared schedules to see where they overlapped but neither seemed to know what was going on. They left it with a vague reassurance they’d meet up at some point. Erik took her head in his hands and kissed her. Forehead. Each eyelid. Right cheek. Left. Then her mouth. Daisy curled her fingers around his left wrist, her thumb running along the daisy tattooed beneath
the heel of his hand.

  The fog lifted and she saw the golden beauty in his face, tasted the blend of tenderness and ferocity in his love. Her hand slid up the nape of his neck and she drew his forehead down on her shoulder.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love us.” He turned his head and breathed in deep against her neck.

  Then he left.

  Daisy laid in bed, listening to Erik’s footsteps thump down the stairs, followed by the slam of the screen door. She didn’t move.

  She’d missed ballet class this morning but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything anymore. She was defeated before she began. The day was a yawning chasm of danger and the only bridge across was getting high.

  When the need threatened to split her apart, she got up, dressed and pulled her hair back. She walked out into the hot May afternoon with a fistful of twenties, leaving her little apartment on Jay Street and walking around the corner to David Alto’s place.

  She went looking for it.

  Drugs, she insisted later. I went looking to get juiced. I didn’t go looking for sex.

  David was awake, wet-haired and wearing nothing but shorts. He used to be slightly chunky with bulky muscles. Now he seemed more whittled away than Erik. Not skin and bones but a slimness that came from stress and a drug-quelled appetite.

  It wasn’t unattractive.

  He didn’t seem surprised to see her. Squinting his bloodshot eyes against a ribbon of cigarette smoke, he batted her money away. “Wish I’d known you were coming, Marge. I already cut in.”

  “I want to roll anyway,” she said, irritated by the nickname, David’s version of her real name, Marguerite.

  “In broad daylight?” he said, grinning. “I thought you only got ecstatic at night.”

  “I need it now,” she said.

  “I know, I know.” His voice turned gentle and soothing. “It’s hard.”

  He searched a couple pairs of shorts and a jacket before he found his magic box, in this case an old Advil bottle with the label half-scrubbed away. Daisy’s palms started to sweat as he shook it like a maraca.

  She hated it.

  “Open your mouth, and close your eyes and you will get a big surprise,” he said.

  She stared at him.

  I hate you.

  Her eyes closed and her lips parted. The seconds squeezed by. His mouth pressed hers. A dart of his tongue, depositing an Ecstasy pill behind her bottom teeth.

  She planted her hand in his chest and pushed him away. “You’re an asshole,” she said, and swallowed.

  “Gotcha,” he said, still grinning.

  He sat on the couch, cutting the last bit of cocaine into a tiny line. Daisy sat a cushion away and put a foot on the coffee table. As she listened to the crisp sound of the razor’s edge on glass, the high began to roll over her scalp and trickle down the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, wondering who was the first person to refer to an ecstasy high as rolling.

  She opened her eyes. Her eyelids were thick. Numb tongue. Numb lips. The euphoria slid around her body like tectonic plates, locking her into place. Confidence across her shoulders, security bolstering her stomach, self-assuredness like a cape. Warm wonderful in her head. She was all right now.

  David sat back, sniffing and shivering.

  “God,” he said. “I love it and it hates me.”

  He laced his hands behind his head and shut his eyes a moment. Then he turned his head toward Daisy and his fingers moved in slow motion through the air. They touched the scars on her calf. Two raised vertical lines running from knee to ankle on both sides.

  “Do they hurt?” he asked.

  “Bits of them. This part here is numb. You could put a cigarette out on it. This part here is really sensitive, especially to hot and cold.”

  She had rolled all the way over. She was flying now, transfixed by her own voice.

  David’s fingers walked along her scar. “I dreamed about you last night.”

  “Oh?”

  He touched one of the sensitive parts and her skin twitched. Her long-sleeved T-shirt was too hot on her back and chest while the fan blew too cool on her legs.

  “Nothing special,” David said. “Just you lying in a pool of blood on the stage. Crying for me to make it stop. Make it stop, David, please make it stop.”

  He smiled at her startled expression. “That’s the only way I dream about you now. Doesn’t that suck, Marge? I can’t even dream about you. It’s like I’m not allowed anything good anymore.”

  She nodded, allowing him to touch her leg. He caressed the gunshot wound, a starburst pucker of skin above her left knee. She swallowed. Her throat was dry but her mouth was watering.

  “It’s almost over,” David said. “Nobody can wait to get the fuck out of here. Graduate and blow this joint. I feel like I want to go home, but I have nowhere to go. Only a few more weeks and everybody’s gonna scatter.”

  “We’ll stay in touch.” The high was crystallizing. Daisy’s thoughts were like ice.

  “No we won’t.” His palm pressed her scar, sliding up her thigh. The ice was getting sticky. “If Fish has any sense, he’ll get you as far away from here as he can.”

  Fish was Erik. His last name, Fiskare, meaning fisherman in Swedish.

  “You mean far away from you,” Daisy said. Sticky ice in her head. Strong hands on her legs. Nipples growing hard in her bra. A damp aching pulse beneath her skirt.

  It felt good.

  “I’d like to see anyone keep me away from you…”

  I should go.

  I’ll go.

  I’ll just feel it a little bit and I’ll go.

  Just a taste.

  “Just a taste,” David whispered. Her eyes flew open as her thoughts became sound. He pushed her skirt up. No doubt he could smell her. He’d found her out.

  “David, don’t.”

  “We’ll all scatter. You won’t see me again. Just give me my dreams back.” His fingers slid beneath the leg holes of her underwear. He was touching her. In places belonging only to Erik. This couldn’t happen. She was private property.

  She was so high.

  She was so hot. So aware of the heat and the cold.

  And numb.

  “I’m going,” she said, pressing her eyes shut and then open again. Sticky eyes. Trying to break out of her own skull.

  “Stay,” he said. “For a minute. You’re so soft. You’re the only soft, pretty thing I know anymore.”

  “I’ll leave you the cash,” she said through a thick, damp mouth.

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “I don’t have anything else to give.”

  He touched where she was wet. “You have everything I want.”

  Just a little taste.

  “I want it so bad…”

  His finger hooked the leg of her underwear and pulled it aside. The fan blew cool. She could smell his wet hair as his head dipped. His cheek brushed the inside of her thigh where the blood raced through her grafted artery. His tongue. Velvet. Soft. Wet. He was tasting her. That should be enough. She needed to go.

  She couldn’t move. Desire paralyzed her. His tongue. Oh, his tongue. Her pores screamed out for it. Her hands wanted to grab his head and push his mouth deeper. Harder. Feel his teeth. He’d be rough with her. He’d do anything for her. She only had to ask.

  I don’t care.

  It’s all going to scatter.

  David on his knees between her calves. The fingers of one hand sliding deep inside her. The fingers of the other reaching into the baggie on the coffee table and pinching a bit of sticky snow. Holding it to her nose. She breathed in sharp and quick.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “I know.” His fingers reached deeper. “Everyone hates me.”

  Hate was good. Pain was good. Erik wouldn’t fuck her hard anymore and lovemaking made them sick and afraid. She’d been numb since the last time. Now she was alive and on fire and wet and high. So high and sticky and ba
d. She didn’t care.

  “I hate what I am,” she said. The truth was delicious in her mouth. Her shoulders relaxed in liberated relief. Sitting on David’s ratty old couch, her skirt hiked up and her thighs open, high and slovenly with her scars on display and her true colors exposed. The stupid maw between her legs that had one job to do and blew it. A useless black vein of ugliness. Like the nothingness of the nightmares that had been haunting her since she was shot last year.

  Maybe her nightmares were her truth.

  I hate what’s dark in me.

  “Make it stop, David,” she whispered.

  His eyes flared wide. “Oh, honey,” he said, pulling her up in his arms. “I’d do anything.”

  The breeze from the ceiling fan blew on her face. She could taste herself in David’s mouth. See her ugly pain reflected in his eyes. She could let it out, let it spill and she didn’t care what he thought. Didn’t care if she pleased him or made him proud. He wasn’t hers to keep safe. Not hers to save. She hated him. His coke and his nastiness and sarcasm. David showing her how to roll high and come to pieces. Making her need it so bad, she’d fuck him to get it.

  They were up in his room now, a small tight room redolent with cigarette smoke, dirty laundry and an unmade bed. Not Erik’s oasis of neat, clean order. It was a hole. It smelled.

  “You’re gross,” she said.

  He kissed her but he tasted of her juice and cigarettes and she turned her mouth away. She took her own clothes off. If he thought he was getting the hot dancer’s body of his dreams, he was dead wrong. She was twenty-one years old and looked like a bony old woman. Scraped and bruised.

  An ugly, cowardly mess.

  He could have it.

  She pushed dirty clothes aside and lay down, waiting with an almost bored passion as he put a condom on.

  Take it. Take all this dark away.

  And if you can’t, then make it darker.

  Later, when she could bear to think about it, she recalled his smile. She remembered the lift of his cheekbones and the flash of his teeth in the dim light. David’s face in her hands while he was on top of her and inside her.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “Daisy…”

  She didn’t recognize her name. Didn’t recognize herself under this boy.

  David of all people. Strange.

  “You feel so good,” he said, his voice strangled with pleasure.

  She did? She couldn’t feel him at all.

  “Come on top of me,” he whispered. “I always wanted to see you up over me.”