Notice

by Heather Lewis

  And that she couldn’t? That she hadn’t been able and that nobody would’ve? And that she’d gone about it all wrong? That all of it between us had been terribly wrong from the first? None of this changed that she was first. I’d never be able to take that from her. Whether I spent the rest of my life loving or hating her, she’d always have me that way. Be the one who’d first had me. The closest I’d come.

  Thirty-One

  And maybe Beth had helped me because in the following days I found something killed my taste for it all. Not for that particular slumber, but for the little ways I’d tried to find it without admitting to it. I’d no pull to parking lots or bars, no interest it seemed.

  I began living in a quiet way. I did this suddenly. But at the same time, I’d slipped so silently into it, I might never have noticed. Except, lately, this type of thing was all I did notice.

  I’d like to say I used Ingrid’s money, which was still there, and moved far away. I’d like to say I started over in this very concrete way, but that’s not what happened.

  I never did see Ingrid again. But I couldn’t stop seeing Beth. I couldn’t face losing her. Not when it seemed I was losing everything else.

  We didn’t have sex anymore, though. We didn’t decide this or talk about it, we just simply stopped. And we didn’t talk about having done this, or anything else that’d come before, or between us.

  Things with her became conventional. Not in the way I’d wanted, but banal. She began to help me in rudimentary ways. Helped me get another job.

  My life began to take this ordinary shape. But I had to work hard to keep it that way. To keep myself from seeping over these outlines, bleeding through them.

  I made some friends at work. The kind you go have a drink with, which we did one night some months later at another bar, not that one I’d formerly frequented.

  We were sitting on stools, laughing and talking engrossed in this way when Jeremy came in. I stood up when he stopped next to me, when he ordered his drink first, and then said hello to me.

  I said something I don’t remember, some kind of greeting and he put his hand on my ass in the most casual of ways, was telling me I looked good.

  This probably all appeared pretty normal, and I could almost believe it was, except for the feeling I had, which was the same turned-on terror they’d left me with. That and the little vial he wore round his neck. It had a tight silver chain through the cap and this piece of me suspended there in sickly green fluid.

  He took his drink and moved on. And the way he did this left me near to believing I wouldn’t have gone with him if he’d asked me to. But I was too aware of his not having asked. And aware, too, that I had my hand in my pocket, fingering that bullet, which I carried everywhere with me now.

  And so when one of the girls from the office nudged me and said, “Who’s that?” in the way that means he’s so good-looking, I was slow to respond and they all took this as me mooning over him.

  I stood there while they teased me. I played along and then waited out the rest of the evening because I didn’t want to leave the place alone.

  We all said good night out in the parking lot, and I found myself still distracted – looking for familiar cars, checking inside mine before I got in. I did this despite knowing that Jeremy was finished with me – that all of them were.

  I went home knowing I wasn’t finished with them, had only been pretending to be. And I went into my apartment, which was the same one, knowing I wasn’t finished with Beth either, with that ancient thing she’d let loose in me. That it wasn’t gone but was lying dormant. I had the urge to call her and with this deadness inside knowing not to.

  I carried that deadness to bed with me. And I carried with it a knowledge I’d had all along. That I should’ve died that night – it’d been the best chance I’d had so far. And that I hadn’t? Hadn’t taken it? It wasn’t the relief or comfort I believed it ought to be. It was only a postponement of some kind. A cruel kind of cheat, pressing me to decide it myself.

  I’d been left with two courses: do it myself, or undo the things that had put the desire in me to begin with. And it still smarted to see what I’d been up to for years. To see my life – pretty much all of it – as simply about finding someone who’d do me in, do me in for me. Especially it stung because I’d clung tight to an idea of myself as someone who wanted so much to stay alive. Saw myself cheating death, not it cheating me.

  And so I lay in my bed, humbled and discouraged because I knew I wasn’t up to offing myself, and I couldn’t see a way to start toward the other passage.

  I knew Beth had been an attempt. But right now this only reminded me I wasn’t capable. She’d shown me what I had to face, but then made me see I was nowhere near ready to. That looking at a little bit of it pushed me back to needing to die. I’d seen it this time. I hadn’t been able not to. And while this maybe should’ve felt like progress, maybe was progress, it seemed more like loss.

  And so, with it too soon for doing things differently and too late to do them the same, all I could do was stay in this stasis, unable to live in the way I had for so long to give a life all about looking for death while pretending survival. But not yet able to live any way else.

  That familiar heaviness crept into my limbs as I thought these things. It began to take me over, and then turn me over, until I lay mostly on my stomach with the pillows pulled close and me huddled into them.

  The blackness came behind the heaviness. Came on comforting and big as always. But not deathly. Not exactly. Not for tonight at least. And this let me believe I could maybe just dip into it. For little bits of time. Go to it without that eerie pull to stay and, in this way, maybe get some rest. Get some actual sleep that might start me mending.

  So I went to it, greedy as always. But, even with that slumber taking me over, and then taking me under, I knew that leviathan thing slept this same darkness. Lay with me, too. Resting, biding its time.