by Nino Cipri
She shrugged. “We were so close.” Her voice sounded dull, and I didn’t know if she meant that she and I were close or that we had been so close to the end of the 101 nights when we fought.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that, about your sisters. And you know I don’t care how much you drink, not really.”
“I know,” she said. “But it’s not about that, is it? All this time, and you never really noticed anything wrong with me, did you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I said.
“I can’t feel anything when we have sex,” she said. “I don’t feel anything but bad anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“I used to feel things, here, with you. I used to feel good. And then … it kind of fell away, and I was just coming to help you. Maybe I used myself up.”
“I’ll help you,” I said. “I can do that for you. Like you’ve done for me.”
“I don’t think you can. You only ever thought about yourself and your brothers, really, like you’re the only ones under a curse. You only ever thought about what I could do for you—bring you cigarettes, get you off, set you free. Even tonight—you just worried about yourself, didn’t you? Did it ever cross your mind that I wasn’t here because … I had … because something had happened to me? You wouldn’t know how to help me.”
I tasted salt and realized that tears were running down my face. “Don’t leave me. I’ll learn.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I get to have that.” She was crying, too. “I’ve got to go.”
“Give me your phone number,” I said.
She shook her head. “It’s better, because you won’t get bored trying to help me when you can’t.”
“Did you get bored trying to help me?”
“You aren’t like me,” she said impatiently. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re kind of a jerk sometimes, but so’s everybody. I’m broken.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said.
But she left anyway.
I stared out into space for a few minutes after she left. There didn’t seem to be anywhere worth going.
After a little while Cynthia came over and stood in front of me with her arms folded. “Time to go, Jake,” she said quietly.
I shrugged.
“You can’t stay here any longer,” she told me. Then she poured me a glass of brandy. “On the house,” she told me. “To celebrate. Drink it and get out of here.”
I sipped the brandy. “Can I come back, some evenings?”
“Sure,” she said. “Any time, if you’ve got the money. And if you behave yourself.”
* * *
My brothers made good. They have good jobs, nice places to live. I stayed with them sometimes, one after another. I made myself enough money to drink.
“Plenty more pussy out there,” my second brother said to me, right before I decked him.
It wasn’t true anyway, not for me. It was like when she went away, something broke inside me. I saw other girls, girls who weren’t her, walking by, and I felt nothing. I only got hard if I was remembering her, and I felt that slipping away as well.
My fourth brother got me a job at his wife’s father’s office. The soles of my Docs had never healed after that last night, so I bought new shoes and threw the boots into the back of my closet. I cleaned myself up and, damn, if I didn’t look respectable. And older. I looked older.
My hands still shook, so I bought an electric razor.
My youngest brother approved. “Put it behind you,” he said. “Start over.”
But I remembered. I remembered nights when we danced on tongues of flame and angels, when the world opened up and was ours for the taking, when sparks shot through the air, when drumbeats were gasoline and I had a book of matches.
One night, Max was waiting for me at my sixth brother’s apartment when I came home from work, and the two of them were glowering at each other.
“Zach doesn’t think I should tell you,” said Max. “But fuck him. I found your girl.”
I went into the kitchen, took a beer out of the fridge, came back, and sat down between my brothers. “I don’t believe you, Max.”
He looked vaguely hurt. “It’s true.”
“How could you find her when I couldn’t?”
“Because you looked like a fucking nightmare when you were searching for her, pal. Seriously. Unshaven, you reeked of alcohol—you think any girl would tell you where her friend was? Now, me?” He gestured to himself. “I wear a suit. I’m well-spoken. Who wouldn’t talk to me?”
I glared at him.
“My girlfriend’s a senior at Barnard,” he said. “Her younger sister was at school with an Isabel, Isabel Goldman. Oldest of twelve, counting stepsisters and half-sisters. The rumor around school was that she tried to kill herself and her parents sent her to a mental hospital in Connecticut to get her away from her friends here—to get her away from you, I bet, even if they didn’t know who you were. They have a country house up there. So I looked into it for you. ‘Cause I’m a stand-up guy, no matter what you think of me. And it’s true. She’s there, no visitors, no correspondence except her parents. Pills and electroshock therapy.”
I didn’t feel anything I had expected to feel. I didn’t feel anything at all. “Tried to kill herself?” I repeated mechanically.
“Tried,” said Max, drinking my beer. I guessed Zach hadn’t offered him one. “One of her sisters called an ambulance; they pumped her stomach.”
“Look,” he continued. “You ask me, I think you should stay away from her and vice versa. I don’t think you’re good for each other. But do what you want. One piece of advice—if you go for her, get yourself together. Clean yourself the fuck up. Get your own place. Be a goddamn man already. She didn’t get you out so you could spend the rest of your life crashing on somebody’s couch.”
He tossed me a brochure, the kind of thing aimed at parents of troubled teens, soft focus and fake understanding, no edge to it. Not what someone like Isabel needed. Not what someone like me needed.
He finished my beer. “So don’t say I never did anything for you, Jake.” And then he left.
* * *
I thought about what someone like Isabel needed, what someone like me needed, and then I quit my job. I’d never liked it and I didn’t think I was any good at it; I was never entirely sure what it was. Max had said to get my own place. There was only one place I thought of as my own.
Cynthia didn’t look very surprised to see me. “What took you so long?” she asked.
I sat down and asked her for a shot of bourbon. When she brought it to me I sipped it. “I’m going to find her,” I said.
“She’s not here,” said Cynthia. “So you’re not off to a good start.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not good at starts.”
“This is not my problem,” she said.
“Come on,” I coaxed her. “Don’t you ever want to get out of here? Look at the sunlight? Go to the beach?”
“Are you asking me out?” she said. “Long walks on the beach?”
“I’m asking you for a job.”
She was silent for a full minute, and then she went down the bar to take care of other customers. When she came back, she drummed her fingers on the bar. “I miss going to the ballet.”
“Are you serious?”
She glared at me. She drummed her fingers on the bar again and then went away to wash some glasses. She came back and poured two more shots of bourbon. “You’ve got a decent ear. You can book the bands and take over a few nights.”
I gaped at her.
“What you want to say, Jake, is ‘thank you.’”
“Thank you.”
She rummaged behind the bar for a few minutes and came up with a set of keys. “You can start tomorrow night. I don’t need to train you, do I?”
“I think you’ve already done that.”
“Yes.” She slid the keys across the bar to me. “
There’s an apartment above the bar. I don’t live there.”
For a minute I wondered where she lived—what that even meant to someone like her. Then I said “thank you” again, just to make sure.
She nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I got up to go. “Oh,” she said. “Jake? Don’t drink all my fucking profits.”
* * *
I took Max’s car to Connecticut.
“Don’t blow out my speakers. And don’t stain my seats when you fuck your girlfriend,” he said, before he tossed me the keys.
“She probably won’t want to come back with me anyway,” I said.
He grinned at me. “What’re you talking about? She’s never been able to keep her hands off you, man.”
* * *
I saw Isabel in the center’s common room, and realized it was the first time I’d seen her without any trace of makeup. She didn’t look older or younger, just different. Maybe more tired than before.
When I took her hand it felt like the future had finally started, like everything in my life had been stalled, just waiting for her.
“They’ve fucked up my memory,” she said, and laughed a little, but not in a good way.
“Memory’s overrated,” I told her. “I’ve come to get you out.”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “I can get myself out. I’m over eighteen now. I can sign myself out any time I want.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
“Nowhere for me to go, really. Nowhere I want to go,” she said, and then paused. “Until now?”
I nodded. “I have a job,” I said. “I have a place. The apartment above the club.”
“That fucking club.” She laughed a little giddily, like she might cry. “You never really left, did you?”
I shook my head.
“Me neither.”
“I’ve got Max’s car parked outside,” I told her. “We could drive back to my place. We can stop partway and mess up Max’s seat cushions. If you want to, I mean.”
She grinned at me. “Then we should go, while I still remember who you are.”
“Who am I?” I asked her. I tried not to hold my breath waiting for her to tell me who I was, what I was to her.
“You’re an asshole, Jake,” she said, and stroked my face. “But I’ve missed you anyway.”
“I’m an asshole,” I agreed. “But I’m yours if you want me.”
“I want you,” she said. “I want you, but it’ll come back—you know that, right? You’ve got to understand that. It’ll take me again. I’ll never be cured. It’ll never be over. I’m not like you. You can go anywhere now. But it will always take me again.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“You can’t,” she said. “Aren’t you listening? You can’t keep me safe.”
“Then let it take you,” I said. “And I’ll bring you back. As many times as you need, I’ll come and bring you back. I won’t let it keep you.”
“You won’t get bored?” she asked anxiously.
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get bored. Maybe I’ll get bored and cranky and obnoxious and drink too much and throw up in the bathroom. But I’ll still come for you. As many times as you need.”
She took my hand and interlaced our fingers.
I could see the afternoon sun through the glass door, and I still wasn’t used to being out in daylight, even to seeing daylight. I still tensed up every time I walked out a front door, hunching over in anticipation of unbearable pain. But I looked over at Isabel, and saw that the hand I wasn’t holding was clenched in a fist, that she was flinching away from the sunlight and her face was twisted in something like fear. So I loosened my shoulders and put my arm around her waist.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “We’re going home. I’ve got the Glos’ ‘Blowout in the car and you can turn the volume up as loud as you want.”
“Thank God.” She smiled up at me. “The music in this place is shit.”
And together we walked right the fuck out that door.
* * *
The author would like to thank The So So Glos for being a generally awesome band, but in particular for the use of the lyrics to “We Got the Days.” She swears she wrote the first draft of this story before she ever saw them play.
About the Author
Veronica Schanoes is Assistant Professor in the department of English at Queens College - CUNY. Her fiction has appeared in Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons. Her novella, “Burning Girls,” published on Tor.com, is a finalist for the Nebula award. She lives in New York City. You can sign up for email updates here.
Copyright © 2015 by Veronica Schanoes
Art copyright © 2015 by Anna & Elena Balbusso
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
“Eliza, tell me your secret.”
Sometimes I’m cornered at parties by someone who’s been watching me from across the room as they drain their glass. They think I don’t know what’s been said about me.
Eliza’s odd looking but she has something, don’t you think? Une jolie laide. A French term meaning ugly-beautiful. Only the intelligentsia can insult you with panache.
I always know when they’re about to come over. It’s in the pause before they walk, as though they’re ordering their thoughts. Then they stride over, purposeful, through the throng of actors, journalists, and politicians, ignoring anyone who tries to engage them for fear of losing their nerve.
“Eliza, tell me your secret.”
“I’m a princess.”
Such a ridiculous thing to say and I surprise myself by using Kenny’s term for us, even though I am now forty-something and Kenny was twenty-four years ago. I edge past, scanning the crowd for Georgia, so I can tell her that I’ve had enough and am going home. Maybe she’ll come with me.
My interrogator doesn’t look convinced. Nor should they be. I’m not even called Eliza. My real name is Lola and I’m no princess. I’m a monster.
* * *
We, Kenny’s princesses, lived in a tower.
Kath, my mum, had a flat on the thirteenth floor of Laird Tower, in a northern town long past its prime. Two hundred and seventeen miles from London and twenty-four years ago. A whole world away, or it might as well be.
Ami, Kath’s younger sister, lived two floors down. Kath and I went round to see her the day that she came home from the hospital. She answered the door wearing a black velour tracksuit, the bottoms slung low on her hips. The top rose up to reveal the wrinkled skin that had been taut over her baby bump the day before.
“Hiya,” she opened the door wide to let us in.
Ami only spoke to Kath, never to me. She had a way of ignoring people that fascinated men and infuriated women.
Kath and I leant over the Moses basket.
“What a diamond,” Kath cooed.
She was right. Some new babies are wizened, but not Tallulah. She looked like something from the front of one of Kath’s knitting patterns. Perfect. I knew, even at that age, that I didn’t look like everyone else; flat nose with too much nostril exposed, small eyelids and small ears that were squashed against my skull. I felt a pang of jealousy.
“What’s her name, Ami?”
“Tallulah Rose.” Ami laid her head on Kath’s shoulder. “I wish you’d been there.”
“I wanted to be there too. I’m sorry, darling. There was nobody to mind Lola. And Mikey was with you.” Kath must have been genuinely sorry because normally she said Mikey�
�s name like she was sniffing sour milk. “Where is he now?”
“Out, wetting the baby’s head.”
Kath’s expression suggested that she thought he was doing more than toasting his newborn. He was always hanging around Ami. Just looking after you, like Kenny wants, he’d say, as if he was only doing his duty. Except now that there were shitty nappies to change and formula milk to prepare he was off, getting his end away.
Ami wasn’t quite ready to let Kath’s absence go.
“You could’ve left Lola with one of my friends.”
Ami knew better. Kath never let anyone look after me, not even her.
“Let’s not fight now, pet. You’re tired.”
Ami’s gaze was like being doused in ice water. It contained everything she couldn’t say to me. Fucking ugly, little runt. You’re always in the way.
“You must be starvin’. Let me get you a cuppa and a sandwich and then you can get some sleep.”
We stood and looked at the baby when Ami had gone to bed.
“Don’t get any ideas. You don’t want to be like your aunt, with a baby at sixteen. You don’t want to be like either of us.”
Kathy always spoke to me like I was twenty-four, not four.
Tallulah stirred and stretched, arms jerking outwards as if she was in freefall. She opened her eyes. There was no squinting or screaming.
“The little scrap’s going to need our help.”
Kath lifted her out and laid her on her knee for inspection. I put my nose against the soft spot on her skull. I fell in love with her right then.
“What do you wish for her?” Kath asked, smiling.
Chocolate. Barbies. A bike. A pet snake. Everything my childish heart could bestow.
* * *
Saturdays were for shopping. Kathy and I walked down Cathcart Street towards town. We’d pass a row of grimy Victorian mansions on our way that served as a reminder of once great wealth, now carved up into flats for social housing or filled with squatters who lay in their damp dens with needles in their arms.
After these were the terraces, joined by a network of alleyways that made for easy assaults and getaways. This model of housing was for the civic minded when everyone here had a trade, due to our proximity to the city of Liverpool. The ship-building yards lay empty, and the 1980s brought container ships that did away with the demand for dockers. The life inside spilled out into the sun; women sat on their steps in pyjama bottoms and vest tops, even though it was lunchtime. Fags in hand, they’d whisper to one another as Kathy passed, afraid to meet her gaze. A man wore just shorts, his pale beer belly pinking up in the sun. He saluted when he saw Kathy. She ignored him.