by Kristen Mae
Claire met my eyes and tilted her head toward the door, and I followed her out into the hallway. I was sure she didn’t want to stay in the apartment with Iris there, and I was dizzy with fear that she might leave me alone. I thought of how she’d drunkenly confessed that she loved me. How I’d just completely lost in front of her and maybe she thought of me differently now, maybe wouldn’t want to be close to me anymore.
I shut the door to the apartment.
“It would be awkward if I stayed,” she whispered. “She’s confused enough. And just because she’s grateful we helped her doesn’t mean she won’t tell people we’re sleeping together.”
“I don’t care if people know.” It was the truth; I didn’t care anymore. But neither did I want to tell her how much tonight had hurt me, far beyond anything that had happened with her. “Please,” I whispered, and I took her hands, knowing she would feel the panicked vibrations in mine. “Please don’t leave me alone.”
After a long pause, she sighed. “You’re right. I can’t leave you. I can’t.”
My body slackened as the tenuous restraint I’d been clinging to for the last half hour with Iris finally released. I hurried to the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed leaned over with my head between my legs. Panic barreled over me in waves, and though my heart raced out of control, I knew it was no use to try to fight it.
After a few minutes, I heard the click of the door as Claire closed it behind her, felt her hand on my back and the weight of her little body jostling the bed. She pulled me to her, and I welcomed her arms and legs around me. “Iris is okay. Asleep,” she whispered, her fingers combing the hair back from my forehead. Her worry for me was stenciled in silver moonlight across her face.
I sighed and the exhale came out like Morse code.
“You scare me,” she said.
“I scare myself.”
“No, wait,” she said. “I misspoke. I am in awe of you. That’s what I should have said. I am in awe of you.”
“I’m a killer.” I imagined my cupped hands filled with blood, saw the blood overflowing and erupting like a fountain, showering me, drowning me. Deep in my chest, a muscle spasmed.
“I am sure you did not kill him,” she whispered, dropping her contractions in that beautiful, cerebral way of hers. “You were so calm, and you acted so quickly. It was incredible, Hazel.”
“But scary.”
“The situation was scary. You were amazing.”
“And scary.”
“And maybe a little scary.”
We lay quiet for a few minutes until Claire said, “Do you want me to lie here with you, or do you want me to do things to make you feel good?”
I knew what she meant, and a wave of guilt and desire rippled through me, somehow more powerful after the terror of the evening. I wanted to forget the whole world for a little while. It didn’t feel right, though, to want her so suddenly, not on a night like this, not while our student, a battered rape victim, slumbered next door. But it didn’t matter; my cells could have detached from me and engulfed themselves in Claire of their own accord. Two more days. I shrugged, wanting her to understand, hoping she wouldn’t make me say it out loud. I didn’t want to be pushed anymore.
“Oh, Hazel.” She nuzzled my neck with her mouth, then turned me on my back and stretched her body over mine.
It was after midday when Claire returned with a bag of food from the market down the street. She’d ridden to the airport with Iris, who had worn a head scarf in case anyone was looking for her. I’d spent the morning glued to the tiny TV in my apartment, wringing my hands and watching for news reports that might involve me. Nothing.
We were sure there was some sort of ethical standard we were violating by keeping the rape and attack secret, but the code of women superseded that. Iris had wanted to keep it between us, so that’s what we did.
Claire and I sat together on the couch and slurp-ate the juiciest apricots either of us had ever tasted, the smacking sounds echoing through the quiet apartment as if to emphasize our unspoken need not to discuss the horror of the preceding night.
Finally, Claire mumbled with her mouth full, “We could still make it to Viareggio. Or put on hats and sunglasses and see if we can find some undiscovered churches around here.”
“I just want to be alone with you.” I’d given up on dignity; she might as well know how I felt. She took another bite of apricot, and I leaned over, brave with the impending loss, and sucked the sweet nectar off her chin.
She giggled. “But Hazel,” she said, still chewing, “don’t you think we have so much more to learn about the history of Lucca? I don’t think I ever found out what happened to Napoleon’s sister after he bequeathed the city to her.” Her eyes shone with mischief as she let more juice dribble out of her mouth.
I licked her lips, back and forth with my tongue, a strange and beautiful un-kiss.
“Oh, whoa.” She turned her head to take another bite of apricot and then gave me an expectant look, with one eyebrow cocked. I kissed her again and this time sucked the apricot out of her mouth, chewed it, and swallowed it.
“You are so nasty!” she said, laughing.
“You taught me to be nasty.”
She looked proud. “Yes, I did.”
I had an idea then, one that I was almost too shy to suggest, but we had so little time left, so little opportunity to explore one another, and the thought of spending the rest of my life regretting all the things I didn’t have a chance to do with Claire was more than I could stand. At least there could be this one little thing that I had been brave enough to propose. I buried my inhibition and forced the words out. “You want to get really nasty with the apricots?” My voice was tiny, less bold than I’d hoped it would be. But I’d said it.
“Oh, well, I figured that was where we were headed.” She stopped short and narrowed her eyes at me. “Wait. Like how gross?”
I laughed, trying not to ruin things with my embarrassment. “Like…smash it all over you and lick it off gross?”
“Oh Hazel, on our last day you’re coming up with this shit? Really?”
It took us a while to clean the living room floor of apricot. At least we’d thought to move the rug.
After, we showered and dressed in T-shirts (why bother with underwear anymore?), and Claire played her cello for me while I stretched out on the couch and let myself feel sad.
“Now you play me something,” she said. “You’ve never played just for me.”
I scrunched my nose, suddenly timid. Performing for Claire wouldn’t be like performing for an indifferent crowd.
“Come on, do it. For me.”
She knew I couldn’t say no to that. I rolled my eyes, but I took out my violin and began with the slow melody from Puccini’s Tosca, the one that always made me cry, the one that had inspired me to search for his Chrysanthemums quartet. When I’d played as much as I could remember of that, I noodled around until I fell upon the melody from Schindler’s List. Then I skipped to the haunting stacked chords and built in counterpoint of Bach’s Chaconne, the part that, when played correctly, made it sound as though two violins were playing at once. Next came a piece I’d played my freshman year of college, a gypsy piece by Sarasate that sounded terribly difficult but was easy on the fingers. I spun through some of the melodies from the Borodin quartet we’d played at our recital, and to be fair, touched on some of the Brahms and Ravel melodies from our previous performance, too. After a while I got bored with classical music and switched to music from old movies and popular shows: Annie, The Wizard of Oz, and Les Miserables. I lost myself in the music, using my own made-up strains to slide from one piece into the next, watching my fingers climb the strings while my bow crossed back and forth in my line of vision with watery fluidity. My playing wasn’t perfect—because I was playing by ear, I often had to improvise my way back to the correct notes—but I knew, and Claire knew, that this was part of the charm. It was the violinist’s version of humming.
I finished on a lullaby my mom used to sing to me when I was a kid. I wasn’t sure of its name, but it had been her favorite for lulling me to sleep when I was very little, and then she’d brought it back again after what had happened with Trey, in those months when I slept huddled in her arms.
“I’ve never heard anything like that before.” Claire was gazing at me with a wistful smile on her face. I blinked.
“Oh, please,” I said, putting my violin back in its case. But heat had already spread across my chest, neck and face—I would have been horrified if she hadn’t liked it.
“You really have no idea how people perceive you, Hazel. It is unbelievably sexy.”
I frowned. “Did you analyze me?”
“Yes.”
I was afraid to ask her to elaborate, but curiosity won out. “And?”
“I swear you were you doing it on purpose,” she said.
“Doing what on purpose?”
“Interweaving the pieces and composers that we’ve recently played with pieces that meant something to you from your past. You even played a lullaby. I bet it was something your mom sang to you. You are making connections between things that had an effect on you a long time ago and things you’re experiencing now. It’s very symbolic, isn’t it?”
“Okay,” I said, latching my case with a click. “Please stop. Please don’t do that anymore.” Was there a reason for the songs I’d chosen? My mind flashed to Iris, alone on her flight back to the States. I saw myself smashed in the dirt in the woods. On stage with my violin. Hitting pavement with flying, angry feet. Wedged against Oren like a cold brick. Melting and spreading under Claire, giving to her in a way I’d never given to anyone. She’d seen all the way into me, and I felt too exposed, too…known.
Her expression fell. “Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You’re right, I’ll stop.”
She stood and took my hand. We stood face to face, too close to be friends, but both sensing the wall that was about to spring up between us.
“There is something wrong with me,” I told her.
“I know,” she said, and brought my hands up to her lips. “Let’s just go to bed.”
THIRTY-ONE
There was Oren, his back toward the baggage claim carrousel, his eyes searching the shuffling crowd of travelers who’d just disembarked planes coming from all corners of the world. He saw Claire first and flinched a little. She was only a few feet from me, but light years away; somehow during the walk from the plane, where she’d read three books while leaning against me, we’d managed to separate and become two distinct travelers, each with a different destination.
“Hazel, my Hazel,” she’d said.
I glanced from Oren, who still had not seen me, to Claire, who would not look at me. My gut twisted with dread. I shifted my eyes back to Oren. He was looking at me now, but with a pained expression on his face, and I knew he’d seen me look over at Claire.
His shoulders rose with a fortifying breath. Oren, ever steady, always noble. I went to him and let him fold me in his arms. He felt very hard and very strong, and he smelled like home. Into my dirty hair he whispered, “I’m so glad you’re back.”
I tried to say, “Me too,” but my voice caught and I ended up clearing my throat instead.
We turned together to watch the bags whir by on the carrousel. I stole another look at Claire. She had found Mike and was kissing him passionately, standing on her tiptoes and squeezing her arms around his neck. In a rough, violent instant, my heart ripped to pieces. I wished her away, wished her dead, wished her a lifetime of unhappiness. I regretted it instantly, thinking such awful things about her, and was overcome with a sudden, terrible awareness that I would never, ever recover from losing her. I wished I could erase my memory—that I’d never met her at all. I had been so very wrong to think that it was only lust, that we were just having fun, that I could return to Oren and become myself again. I hated Claire for being able to do the things she’d done with me and then stumble into Mike’s arms as if all we’d experienced together was so easy for her to forget.
Oren spoke only once on the way home, when he woke me up at a gas station to ask if I needed to pee. In the bathroom, I looked at myself in the mirror, saw that I was somehow changed, and that it was far more than just my newly acquired Italian tan. I looked like someone who had held the world in her hands and then lost it. I said to my reflection, “Buongiorno, you dumb fucking whore.”
At home I unpacked right away and gave Oren the souvenirs I’d purchased for him, an Italian leather wallet and belt, and he smiled and hugged me. There had been many shirts I’d wanted to buy him, but he was too much of a nerd to wear any of the trendy Italian styles. He would have pretended to love them and then shoved them to the back of his drawer.
Oren asked if I wanted to order dinner in. He was treating me like delicate china; what would be the final bit of added pressure that would cause me to shatter into a thousand pieces?
“I think I ought to just go to bed, Oren.” I rested my palm on his chest for a moment before retreating to the bedroom, where the tears finally came.
Claire. I could see nothing but her, think of nothing but her. Her nakedness, the paleness of her inner thighs, the curve where her breast met her ribcage, her neck, the way she stretched her head back when I made her come. Claire with her arms flung around Mike’s neck, smiling as she kissed him, all but screaming, “See, Hazel? It was only temporary.” It felt like she’d poured gasoline on me and set me alight—like she’d put on a show on purpose, to hurt me. I tortured myself with images of her moaning and crying out under Mike’s muscled body until at last I fell asleep on a tear-soaked pillow.
Sometime in the night, I felt a body pressed against mine. For a quick, stupid moment, I thought it was Claire, and I turned, already on fire, already surrendering. Then I heard the whine of the neighbor’s dog. I was back at home, in the States, and the body beside me was Oren, snoring lightly.
I escaped to the living room with my pillow and blanket, idly thinking that we needed to figure out a solution for the neighbor’s stupid dog. I stretched out on the couch and closed my eyes, but my mind raced with image after image of Italy: the sturdy, ancient cathedrals, the rolling green hills with the bullet trees, the garden where I sat and cried. Claire’s creamy, agile limbs draped over me. Iris’s pale eyes seeking compassion. Me, splitting a man’s face open with a pot. I sat up and threw my legs over the side of the couch, breathing hard. The clock on the wall read 3:44 a.m.—already almost ten o’clock in Italy. I wasn’t tired in the least.
In the kitchen I detached my phone from its charger thinking I could play some word games for a little while, maybe make myself drowsy enough to fall back asleep. There was an email alert from Claire. I opened the message, my heart beat throbbing in my ears.
Hey, Hazel.
For the next few weeks until orchestra rehearsals start up again, I’m going to focus on volunteering at the hospital and reconnecting with Mike. As you can imagine, he is feeling a little neglected. I suppose you will want to do the same with Oren. What were we thinking, right? I did not expect to feel the way I feel about you. I will leave it at that, because I believe it would be unwise for us to encourage one another. I have a feeling you understand what I mean.
~Claire
It was about what I would expect from reasonable, logical Claire, but my heart hurt so much I couldn’t even cry. I have a feeling you understand what I mean. I went to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet, looking for some Nyquil to knock myself back into at least a semi-sleep. But there was nothing.
I wandered into my music room, running my fingers over my possessions, trying to remember what it used to feel like to be in this room, in this house. In this life. I found the drawings I’d done before leaving for Italy and pulled out the one of Claire. I’d captured that little gap between her front teeth perfectly. The curve of her cheeks, the gleam in her eyes, it was all exactly right. I held the drawing from the top with both hands and clos
ed my eyes, preparing to tear it right down the center. But I couldn’t rip up Claire’s face. I put it back on my desk, covered it with other papers, and then pulled it out again and left it sitting on top of the pile. A heaviness crept through me, squashing every fiber of me flat until I couldn’t feel anything but the terrible vacant space where Claire had been.
It was just after 4:30, not too early for a run. I went to the bedroom to change into running clothes and emerged five minutes later with my sneakers on and my headphones in.
The air was thick and wet, ten times denser than the air in Italy. Before I’d run a half mile, my clothes were saturated with sweat. I blasted rap music in my headphones, turned up the volume until the bass in my ears bordered on damaging, and ran until my phone alerted me that I’d run five miles. I paused, looked around, and felt the quiet of the morning in spite of the heavy beat thudding in my ears. The sun had not yet risen and I was completely alone. I decided to turn around before Oren woke up and began to worry. I hadn’t thought to leave him a note. Would he think I’d left him for Claire? He would be right to worry, but it didn’t matter; she wasn’t mine anymore.
By mile eight, my quadriceps felt like overcooked noodles. I knew I was overdoing it, but the pain in my body was a welcome if not entirely effective distraction from the ache in my chest. I wished I could run hard enough that my lungs would engulf my poor, shredded heart.
A few blocks from home, I pushed myself into a sprint, ignoring the spasms in my abs, the fire in my legs, the blisters breaking open on the bottoms of my sweating feet. How much pain could I take? I pumped my arms and commanded my limp legs to keep hammering the asphalt over and over and over until I hit my driveway and finally let my legs pinwheel to a clumsy stop. I threw up in the bushes by the front porch and spat until my mouth was mostly clean before going inside to bathe away the nastiness.