Entropy in Bloom

by Jeremy Robert Johnson

  It works. He’s got his arm around me now, and my body sinks into his. I let my left breast push against his ribs. My T-shirt’s so thin he can’t avoid feeling my nipple harden. He doesn’t move away.

  My left hand moves toward his neck, fingers drifting into his hairline. My right hand drops down and brushes the inside of his thigh.

  With my head positioned like this I can actually watch him get stiff. Pavlov should have worked with men instead of dogs. They train easier.

  Then his left hand reaches down and lifts up my chin.

  His lips do not hesitate and mine are already open. This was a simple threshold to cross. Need is need. This is what people do. People that see death do this even more. A show of will, screaming at the ocean.

  Soon we’ve got our shirts off and I’m kissing his chest when he picks me up and tries to set me down in the other bed.

  The one Darry slept in last night.

  I scream. Like I’m being stabbed. Like the knife is twisting and pulling back out at wrong angles.

  I can’t. I can’t touch that bed. It’s the last place he slept. It’s the last place that I can picture Darry alive and peaceful and happy.

  Reeling from my scream, Brad almost drops me. I probably blasted him deaf in his left ear. He sets me down and backs away.

  “Jesus, Elloise. What’s going on?”

  Good question. And one with zero decent answers. I just shake my head from side to side, not acting upset anymore, but genuinely confused.

  I mean, if I really love Darry, why is Brad the Coroner shirtless in my hotel room? What makes touching Darry’s bed so wrong? Haven’t I already proven how little Darry meant to me?

  “Brad, my head’s all twisted up, and I don’t want you to go away, but I’d understand. I’m probably not a healthy person to be around, but I think I need someone to talk to, I mean, I’m sure I do. This has been the most messed-up day of my life . . . I’m not acting like myself and I’m not sure that I’d recognize who I am right now if I looked in the mirror. I can’t . . . I mean, I’m just going to take a shower for a little bit. Try to calm down. You’re welcome to stay . . . ”

  Before I finish the sentence he drops onto the bed where Darry’s luggage used to sit and picks up the remote control.

  He’s still hard, biding his time. When he asks, “Are you sure you’re okay to take a shower?” it seems like a courteous afterthought. Then I realize he’s probably afraid I’m going to carve a y-section down my forearms.

  “Yeah, I just need to relax for a moment. Sorry, this is weird. I’ll be back in a sec.”

  I lock the bathroom door behind me, knowing the sound of the bolt clicking over will keep him around, wondering if I’m ever coming back out or if he’ll be seeing me on his slab tomorrow.

  The shower runs hot, near-scalding, to where the steam is hard to breathe. My face pushes into the water until the full force of the shower is focused on the spot where my hairline starts, dead-center. A wish floats through my mind, that the water would turn to white light and bore into my head and wash this whole day away. The wish goes ungranted, leaving me with the steady, pulsing streams of heat coursing down my face.

  I wash myself with the credit card—sized bar of hotel soap that Darry had already unwrapped. The thought of his hands holding the same soap, rubbing it against his body, his warm, moving body, I can’t bear it.

  I block it out and turn the water temp up even hotter, to where my skin is turning beet-red on contact. The little fan in the ceiling can’t keep up with the steam. There’s a desert-hot fog bank in this bathroom I should never have known.

  I sit down in the tub and curl up at the back of it, letting the water blast against my shins and the top of my feet. Somehow, I sleep for a couple of minutes like this.

  I pop up out of my cat nap and for a second don’t remember where I am. Then I see the little soap in the corner of the tub and try to fall back asleep.

  No chance. Now I’m just bone-wet, and too hot, and ready to move past the reality of this day. Maybe Brad wants to lick me dry . . . .

  What? No, that doesn’t sound right. Who am I now, without Darry? I’ve got to get my head straight.

  I grasp the shower curtain in my hand, the new hotel plastic squeaking against my skin. I pull the curtain back and almost scream for a second time tonight.

  The steam on the mirror is not a steady sheet of moisture.

  There are lines where the condensation is thinner. These are lines I recognize from a hundred mornings with Darry, evenly drawn letters on the mirror spelling out these words:

  I Love Elloise.

  Pavlov should have studied men. Darry’s been writing the same thing on our bathroom mirror ever since we moved in together. He always left for work before me, always took a hot shower, always wrote this message.

  Even hundreds of miles away, he wrote these words.

  Even hundreds of miles away, I’m sure he meant them.

  It’s too much.

  I wrap myself in a towel and rush out of the bathroom, steam twirling behind me. Then I’m yelling at Brad, who’s watching music videos, probably unaware that he’s stroking his crotch with the palm of his left hand.

  “Get out. Get out. Go, please. Please get out of here.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “No, but I don’t want you here. I can’t have you here right now. This isn’t your place!” I hate my voice when it shakes like this.

  “Listen, Elloise, you’re obviously distraught. Maybe it’s better if I stay here, just for the night, to make sure . . . ”

  He still wants to get laid. If he really cared he wouldn’t have initiated that kiss, and right now he would be making eye contact, and he sure wouldn’t still have his left hand on his dick.

  “Fuck you, Brad. Get out.”

  He’s putting his shirt on and moving toward the door. He stops and turns back toward me with his eyebrows scrunched together like he’s never been so confused in his life. I know the look. I don’t want to hear his voice.

  “Go, Brad.”

  “I’m going, but I just want you to know . . . ”

  “Go.” I don’t want to hear this dejected little coroner telling me that I’m sick, or that I’m confused, or crazy, or anything. I just want to be alone. “Get out of here, Brad.”

  The spoiled bastard, he slams the door so hard that the corporate-approved watercolor painting by the entry falls off the wall. The frame breaks and there’s shattered glass on the carpet.

  I’m not cleaning it up. I hit the POWER button on the remote control by the bed stand and the television winks out.

  When I feel truly lost, truly afraid, I try to fall asleep as quickly as possible. I have to do this now.

  My towel drops to the floor. The A/C gives me instant goose-bumps.

  The bed Darry slept in last night is cold too, but I get in and pull the covers up to my shoulders and hope my body will warm the fabric.

  The smell of Darry’s skin is on the sheets, but each time I inhale it feels like the scent is fading.

  I’m breathing him away.

  And down below, between my legs, I can still feel my pulse.

  I let my fingers seek out my heartbeat. I open myself up under the disheveled sheets and feel drips of water running from my skin to the bed beneath me.

  I close my eyes, and now all I can see is Darry.

  Thoughts of warm ointment, a still bleeding tattoo, and I’m moaning.

  When I’m finished, I can feel tears tightening the skin of my face as they dry. The whole time, while my hips rolled and I remembered every sweet and every rough way Darry had ever touched me, I was crying and didn’t know it.

  I roll out of bed, slowly, and I’ve got hollow bones. I step around the shattered glass on the way to the bathroom.

  I run the shower and the sink as hot as I can and fill the room with steam, sheathing the mirror and every other surface in tiny droplets of water.

  Then there’s just my finger, tracing trails o
n glass for longer than I’ll ever remember.

  The Sleep of Judges

  I.

  Birthday parties at Pizza Playhouse were hell, but Julie was a great kid and Roger knew he’d do just about anything for her. At least their hosts had kept the pitchers of cheap beer flowing, and in the end that had been the only way to tolerate the keening screams of the children and the repetitive parental small talk. It definitely didn’t help that Roger and his wife Claire ended up at a party table with Abe Pearson, who wouldn’t shut up about the fence he’d built by hand on his family’s property. Fucking perfect Abe—who had four equally perfect little boys and a thriving dental practice and a real charmer of a wife—couldn’t stop talking about how he’d got a permit and cut down every tree he wanted to use for the project, and milled the boards, and pounded in every post for a half acre, all by himself.

  “Saved a bunch of money, I think, and it felt good to really work the project from beginning to end and watch it come to life. But I’ll tell you there were some sore mornings where I thought about calling in help. And my hands, well . . . ” and then Abe held up both of his palms to show off a topographic map of scars and calluses. “You probably know how that is from working over at Cumberton, right Roger?”

  “I’m not on the mill floor, actually. I work scheduling admin and help with our safety program. But most of our guys wear gloves.”

  “Oh, they’re missing out. Sure, it’s tough on you at first, but working with your bare hands you get a real sense of the wood, you know.”

  Roger drained half his frosty mug of beer in one gulp.

  Claire reached out and lightly set her hand on the side of Abe’s arm. “Looks like fence building’s a good workout, at least. What do you think, Rog? We could use a new fence.”

  “Sure,” Abe said, before Roger could even respond. “I could even help you get started, bud. Give you a couple tips and save you a few of my dumb mistakes.”

  “Oh, that’d be great!” said Claire. “Last time I asked Rog to build me something I got a planter bed with no bottom and the gophers destroyed our garden.” She laughed, then looked over at Roger with a smile and winked. Her hand was still on Abe’s arm.

  Roger drained the other half of his mug and slammed it down on the table. Abe and Claire jumped. “Yep. That planter sucked. I guess I didn’t get a sense of the goddamned wood.”

  He stood up, not sure if he felt more embarrassed or angry, and excused himself to go grab another piece of cake.

  Failing to locate any extra dessert—the kids had wiped out the entire chocolate-layered thing at locust-speed—he found a full pitcher of beer and poured himself another. He finally looked back over at Claire, who had moved to another table and was using a tiny plastic brush from the party gift bag to style Julie’s hair, and he realized that this was the same thing as ever—Claire was the fun, flirty, social one who tried to make something worthwhile out of these parties and that’s all it was and she was such a great mom. But still . . . . fucking Abe and his precious hand-made fence and Claire laughing at him with her hand on his huge arm.

  Another beer disappeared, and then it was finally time to go.

  The ride home was quiet—Julie was in a cake coma, and Claire stared ahead at the road. Roger was still thinking about how he could build a fucking amazing fence if he wanted to, if that was really what he wanted to devote his time to. But he didn’t need to do that, because he did a million other things for his family, and they knew that.

  They loved him.

  Regardless, every time he thought he’d calmed down, he pictured Claire’s hand on Abe’s arm again, and found himself wrapped up tight in the same bitter, halfway jealous vibes.

  He drained his water bottle on the drive home in an attempt to dilute the effects of his overindulgence at the party. Still, when Roger arrived at their house he was slightly more buzzed than he probably should have been, and he made it all the way past the living room and into the kitchen before his beer-lagged brain acknowledged the massive hole in the drywall where their flat-screen TV had been ripped away.

  Fucking goddamn.

  We got robbed.

  Panic. It hit instantly, alongside the heat-flush of a heart leaping into double-time.

  They could still be here. They could still be in our house.

  He turned toward Claire and little Julie, thankful they were exhausted and hadn’t yet made it up the walkway to the front door, which was still wide open. Claire had a batch of tin foil-wrapped pizza in her left hand and their sugar-crashed kiddo cradled on her other arm, half-asleep against her.

  Not safe. They’re not safe.

  Roger quickly took several long, urgent strides across the living room and out the door, covering the distance to his family, doing his best to look composed.

  “You have to go, babe. Now.”

  “What? I’m tired . . . ”

  “Now.” He leaned in and whispered. “We got robbed. Get back in the car. Take Julie down to your mom’s place. I’ll call when you guys can come back.”

  “Are you fucking with me?” Her eyes flashed, alert but suspicious. “Is this about that party thing? You’re just kidding around to freak me out, right?”

  Roger instantly regretted all the pranks he’d played on Julie over the years. He needed her to take him seriously at times like this, when there could be people with guns inside their house, somewhere, right that moment.

  “I’m not kidding. GO!” He yelled it. Too stern. A well of anger was boiling up inside him, mixing with fear, causing him to shake.

  “Daddy, what’s wrong?”

  Shit.

  “Nothing, Jules. There’s a little problem with the house.” They were moving back toward the car at least, heading in the right direction, even though it wasn’t fast enough for him. Roger imagined a man in a ski mask charging out over their foyer, hatchet in hand, ready to slaughter them all. He put his hand on the small of Claire’s back to speed her along. “You’re going to head to grandma’s for a special sleepover and I’ll call you when the house is all fixed up.”

  Claire played along. “Surprise, baby. It’s a sleepover party.”

  “A sleepover. Can I bring Mr. Grubbins?”

  “No, honey.” Roger opened the back door to load Julie into her car seat. “We can’t go into the house right now.”

  “But I need Mr. Grubb . . . ”

  Roger couldn’t stand the idea of dealing with a tantrum over a plush blue owl while someone might be escaping their backyard at that very moment with a laptop containing all of their unencrypted financial data. He went with a cheap counter-move.

  “Check it out, Jules. I’ve still got some of the Skittles you bought with your game tickets. You want tropical or regulars?” He tightened her seat belt while she pondered the question. Claire started the ignition and gave him a “Seriously, more sugar?” look that he did his best to brush off.

  It’s like she’s already forgotten our house has been robbed. Who cares about the goddamn sugar?

  He was wise enough to say nothing. He kissed Julie on the forehead, slid her some candy, and gave her a hug. “Have fun at the sleepover, baby.” He turned to Claire. “You’ll call and let me know you guys made it, yeah?”

  “Of course.” She sounded pissed, like this was his fault.

  “And I’ll call you once I have this figured out. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”

  Safe. Cute word—felt like an absurdity over Roger’s lips, but it seemed to give Claire a sense this was really happening. Her face softened.

  “Okay. Are you safe, though? Why don’t you get in and we’ll call 911 on the way and then they can let us know once they send somebody out?”

  She doesn’t think I can handle this myself. Why? Because I can’t build a planter? Jesus. That’s bullshit. She needs to know I can take care of us.

  Roger looked back at the house. He pictured strange men crawling in through the windows and across the bed where he slept with his wife and he had a sen
se of all that had been taken from his family. He wanted to look Claire in the eyes and say, “I’ve got this, babe. I’m going to head in and secure the place, and if anybody’s still in there I’ll fuck ’em up.”

  But she might not believe me. She needs to believe me. I can show her. I’ll handle this.

  So he lied: “I’ll wait out front for help. I promise. It’ll be fine.”

  And Claire believed him, and drove off into the night, leaving Roger with their broken home and the fresh wounds inflicted by strangers who’d claimed it as their own.

  ROGER COUNTED TO THREE hundred—enough time to ensure Claire wasn’t pulling back around the block—and then walked through the front door.

  He crept over to their kitchen and pulled their largest knife from the wood block.

  You know how to use that, pal? Or you just want to hand some career criminal an easier way to kill your dumb ass? Maybe Claire and Julie can come back and find your head’s been sawed off and stuffed in the dishwasher? Don’t be stupid. Get out. Call the cops.

  Roger held the blade out in front of him and did his best to not notice the way the steel blade vibrated along with his jackhammering heart.

  You should yell something. Let them know you’re here. They’ll go running. Do it for Claire. She trusted you, and now you’re back in the house playing Rambo like you’re not someone’s dad. Jesus.

  Roger sensed a new electricity in the air. The part of him that had a long history of diving deep on bad impulses was enjoying the idea of conflict. Something to make him feel vital, and strong. He imagined himself confronting a thief, driving his blade into the man’s guts and looking into his eyes as he bled out.

  They shouldn’t have fucked with me. They shouldn’t have threatened my family.

  The part of him that cared about making coffee for Claire in the morning and braiding his daughter’s hair thought: You’re only gassing yourself up because you know the robbers are already gone. What are you trying to prove? But that idea was quickly washed away by a haze of adrenaline and beer and forward motion.