Among the Dead and Dreaming

by Samuel Ligon

  She cleared her throat. “This is so embarrassing,” she said.

  I ran my hand up and down her back.

  “I’m wondering about a loan,” she finally said.

  I felt the air seeping out of me. “Money?” I said.

  “I’m sorry to bring this up,” she said. “There’s a timing issue, though. That’s why. Oh, God. It’s just—I didn’t know this was going to happen with us.”

  Her skin against my skin, all the places our skin met. Sort of clammy and rubbery.

  “How much” I said, sickening myself by calculating how much she might be worth. I had six grand in the bank.

  “Thirty-five thousand,” she said.

  I laughed.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “It is,” I said. “Why do you think I could come up with that kind of money.”

  “All those rich people at Friday’s lunch. Cynthia’s family. I don’t know. There’s no one else I can go to.”

  She was watching me closely, but she seemed patient, too. Like she could wait.

  “What’s it for?” I said, and she pulled away and sat up.

  “I have to get Alina,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “But when do you need this money?”

  “Thursday,” she said. “Late.”

  She started to dress. So did I.

  “Two days?” I said.

  “I have to get Alina,” she said.

  “I can’t put my hands on that kind of cash that fast.”

  “I bet you can,” she said.

  “No, I can’t,” I said.

  “But what about someone—”

  “Impossible,” I said, and we looked at each other and away. It seemed like there was nothing between us anymore and no way to get back whatever we’d had. We walked to her car, and she surprised me by kissing me out front on the driveway.

  When she pulled away, she said, “I don’t want you to think—”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “—that I planned this or something. I didn’t know this was going to happen between us.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t want to help.”

  “It’s just money.”

  “But I don’t have it.”

  “This guy’s coming after me,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I have to get Alina,” she said, a look on her face I hadn’t seen before, sort of naked and vulnerable, almost pleading, but something else woven around it, too, toughness or control, like she was fighting with herself and not quite containing whatever she was trying to conceal.

  “What guy?” I said, and she said, “I have to get Alina. We can talk tomorrow.”

  “What guy?” I said.

  “Forget it,” she said, and I said, “I want to know.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  She kissed me again and I kissed her back. I watched her pull away.

  Thirty-five grand wasn’t the problem. The timing was the problem. And what if she took the money and ran, all her stories about running and whatever was chasing her that she wouldn’t reveal—probably this asshole guy she’d mentioned. Liz would find a way to float the loan, as long as I took care of Kara Tomlinson, which I wasn’t going to do. Because I was done with all that. I had another beer, wondering who Nikki owed and why. Maybe I’d help her even if she was going to run. I didn’t want to believe every human interaction was nothing more than a transaction.

  “You should help her because you can,” my mother would have said. “Not because you expect something in return.”

  But I didn’t think people worked that way.

  Everyone wanted something—Cynthia and Liz and Nikki and Kara. But with Kara it had been so easy, finally. David Lambert wanted something. Then Kara wanted something. Then Lambert wanted something else. All of it finally resolved itself with money. But I could hardly believe Nikki was like the rest. Maybe Cynthia had been right about babies being generators of something larger—the only good in this world, at least until they grew up. I poured another shot and toasted Cynthia and the dead baby. And Nikki. God. Nikki.

  22

  Alina

  When I was little she’d take me everywhere, to dinners and parties, and I’d sleep in some room and wake to her carrying me, pretending to sleep as she buckled me in, pretending to sleep all the way home so she’d have to unbuckle me and carry me inside, where I’d wake and ask if I could sleep with her, which she always let me do. But I’m too big for that now and I wouldn’t want to be carried anyway.

  I told Ashley about Kyle coming to Interlochen, how that was supposed to happen tomorrow, which she can’t believe, until I make her believe, and then I confess that I was maybe even a little in love with him. She’s seen him before, too, and she’s like, “Oh, my God. Did your mom know he was coming?” And I’m like, “As if,” and tell her how my mother was just using him for money for Interlochen, which we both think is so sick and typical. Ashley’s mom and dad split up when she was little, and her mom got a fur coat from some guido almost immediately after her dad moved into the city, exactly like my mom already making a play for Cynthia’s husband, or whoever he is, that Mark guy. We lay in her room talking late, my ears perking up at any car door slamming on the street, wishing I could just stay here forever.

  “What did he look like?” Ashley asked. “When he was dead.”

  We’d been quiet a long time.

  “The same,” I said. “Sort of. I kissed him.”

  I started crying, because I should have kissed him—because they wouldn’t let me do that and the casket was closed—but also because of everything. We talk a little more, before rolling over to sleep, but I can’t sleep because I’m waiting.

  Then she’s rustling me in her beautiful blue dress, perfume around her, smoke and liquor, petting me and rubbing my back and up under my hair on my neck, the secret place she touches me, saying, “Come on, baby. We have to go home.”

  I roll over like I’m asleep. Like I’m four years old and need to be carried. But I don’t want to be carried. I just want her to leave me alone. She pulls me up and half carries me downstairs into another hot night, puts me in the front seat and fills the car with her liquor and perfume smells. I keep my eyes closed tight, thinking, Kyle.

  Burke

  “I don’t do backdoor,” Cinnamon says. “I told you that.”

  I’ve got her tied spread eagle on the bed, face down.

  I’ve got some massage oil I’ve been rubbing into her skin, and a tube of lube I picked up at the pharmacy. I rub the oil over her shoulders, strong, but fragile, too, rub her long, golden back and down to her ass and up, then more lube on my fingertip, and she says it again, only a little sharper.

  “I don’t like that, Steve,” she says, Steve being who she thinks I am.

  When I don’t answer, she tries to twist her head toward me, but she can’t see a thing because my necktie’s wrapped around her as a blindfold.

  “Steve!” she says. More sharpness.

  I massage the backs of her knees, her calves.

  “Did you hear me?” she says.

  “It’s okay, Nikki,” I whisper. “I heard you.”

  “I’m not Nikki,” she says.

  “Shh,” I say, thinking, You’re whoever I say you are.

  Hating her for that denial.

  I pour more oil in my hand, rub her thighs and hips, back up to her shoulders and down to her ass, all of it mine, and back up and down, kneading her ass, my hands slick with the oil.

  “Come on,” she says. “Let’s do it.”

  “Shh,” I say. “We will.”

  I keep rubbing, finding the movement she likes, the pressure, working my thumb up and circling and she clenches and says, “I told you, Steve. I don’t do that,” but I ignore her—she’
s tied down tight—working my thumb around—she starts to buck—“I’ll scream, motherfucker,” but she knows what she owes and I’ve been as gentle as can be and I push my thumb in and she screams and I hit her above her ear, hard, a sort of chopping blow, and tell her to shut the fuck up. All this massage oil, all this lube, it’s not like I’m trying to dry fuck her.

  “One more sound,” I tell her, “and I’ll kill you.”

  I could too, everything she’s done to me.

  I wrap my hands around her throat as I push against her.

  “You gonna be quiet?” I whisper.

  She nods.

  “I don’t want to hurt you unless I have to.”

  She nods.

  “If you scream again, I’ll kill you.”

  I let my hands loose, but I’m watchful, ready if she makes a sound.

  “You need a little more lube down there?”

  She nods.

  “Now, isn’t this nice,” I say.

  She nods, and I say, “Say it,” and she says, “Yes.”

  It’s the resistance that gets you in trouble, fighting the hand.

  “I want you to feel yourself letting go,” I tell her.

  We’re joined and she’s given up fight, and I’m glad she’s not going to make me hurt her, that she’s finally and completely surrendered to my will. She’s a smart girl, and beautiful. And I don’t have a thing against whores. Just know your place is my way of thinking. Just pay what you owe.

  23

  Kyle

  The best times on the beach are early morning or just before night, when time disappears, just you and your feet and the sand and the tide and Nikki and Alina and everyone sort of free for a minute as the light fades or comes on in the morning, the wind swirling and the waves unfolding, keeping their endless count, just you and the ones you love up against it, before anyone gets hurt yet or ever has, part of this gigantic movement, this beautiful dream, the beautiful empty enormity.

  Jessica

  At first I was just happy to be alive, not even torn up, and it’s probably an opportunity cost, but it’s never happened to me before, not even close. Part of me wants to tell Armand, so he can track the motherfucker down and give him a serious beating or worse—not that there’s a mark on me—and part of me wants my own revenge, tying him down and shoving a gun up his ass.

  But you’re alive, I keep telling myself, because for a long time I didn’t think I was going to make it. Not just him clubbing me with his fist or choking me, pulling my head back by my hair. But the way he talked all the way through it, soothing me it felt like at the same time he was raping me, the necktie so tight around my eyes I couldn’t see anything, not even at the edges. And how he talked after, rubbing my shoulders and down my back, making me swallow a pill, rubbing my throat like you would a dog’s, making me hit from the vodka, still tied and blindfolded, and then slapping my ass, hard and then harder and then harder and harder until he started in on me again, whispering in my ear, “Gentle,” and smearing lube all over me, “It’s not gonna end ‘til you cum, Nikki,” rubbing me with oil and sticking it back in. I tried not to move the wrong way, certain he was going to kill me, Steve saying, “I can’t hear you, Nikki.” He wrapped his hands around my throat. “Should I, Nikki? Or shouldn’t I?” and I tried to make the sounds he wanted, groaning, moaning, all these porn shit sounds, faking it as hard as I could, until he finally came and lay his dead weight on top of me for what felt like a long, long time.

  “I ain’t got AIDS,” he whispered, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He got off me and moved around the room.

  I tried to focus on my breathing and nothing else. Just air filling my lungs.

  “Everything’s gonna be okay,” he said. “You wanna drink?”

  I shook my head, still blindfolded, still tied down.

  “Come on,” he said, and I said, “Okay,” and he fed me more vodka, the liquor running down my face onto the bed.

  “I’m gonna give you another oxycontin,” he said, “to help you sleep.”

  I lay as still as I could, waiting for him to kill me, the lube drying as I tried to take myself out of my body tied to the bed.

  “Open your mouth,” he said.

  He rubbed my gums with his finger, smearing what I hoped was crushed oxycontin and not poison around my mouth. I tried to spit it out, to dribble it as I heard him walk to the bathroom, praying he hadn’t fed me enough for an overdose.

  “You’re a good girl,” he said. “Smart. That’s what I like.”

  I heard him pick something up. Put it down. A gun? A knife?

  “I’m leaving twelve hundred on the table,” he said. “That about right?”

  He put his hand on my shoulder, rubbed the base of my neck.

  “I’ll be checking on you,” he said. “I’ll be back. I’m going to set this alarm so you know when to get up. Okay?”

  I started to shiver.

  “You all right?” He kept rubbing my neck, my skin waiting for him to clamp down and start choking. He pulled the blanket over me and that’s when I thought he was going to shoot me in the head, standing over me like that, patting my back.

  “You’ve got to settle down,” he said, and then I thought he’d kill me if I didn’t stop shaking, to make me stop. But I couldn’t.

  He got on the bed and wrapped his arms around my body still tied down.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered.

  He rubbed his hands over my back and ass and legs over the blanket, but that just made it worse, and I was trying so hard to stop.

  “Look,” he whispered. “You’ve got to stop this shaking.”

  “Maybe if you could get me some water,” I said, because I thought if he just got off me I’d be able to stop.

  “Just like a little kid,” he said.

  I heard the tap run in the bathroom. He put the cup to my mouth, but my head was turned sideways so that most of the water spilled onto the bed.

  “That’s just going to make you colder,” he said. “Let me get another blanket.”

  I heard him at the closet. “Ain’t one,” he said. “But this bedspread should do.”

  I felt another blanket cover me.

  “Lie still and rest,” he said. “You can get up when the alarm goes off, or maybe I’ll be back before then. Maybe I’ll be back in an hour or so. Or fifteen minutes. Maybe we’ll go out for breakfast.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “All right then,” he said. And finally: “Goodnight now,” and I said goodnight, and he kissed my cheek and stood somewhere above me, maybe trying to decide if he was going to kill me. I heard the door open and close and him walking away. And then I lay as still as I could for what felt like a long time, telling myself I was hardly even hurt at all if he didn’t come back and kill me.

  I thought I’d count to a thousand until I moved, wondering if he was maybe still there watching me. Distant sounds came from other parts of the building, a humming, a muffled shriek of laughter. I was certain nobody was in the room, but I kept counting, and each time I came close to my number, I added another hundred, starting to feel myself alive and really lucky, trying not to let other feelings come until I was safe out of there and could make a decision about how I was and what I should do.

  The drugs made a cocoon around me, and I kept counting, remembering that guy killing girls a few years back, Joel something, all those girls he killed. I thought of Steve calling me Nikki and suddenly knew it was him that killed her, but then I wasn’t sure. Because even though he was such a motherfucker, toying with my life like he did, he seemed careful all the way through not to hurt me. That made me hate him more than anything, as if he’d tried to steal a piece of my hatred. But then I thought of Nikki and how I could have ended up like her, or all the girls Joel what’s his name killed, and I knew today wasn
’t just another day. I was alive. I tried to think of how I could hold onto that feeling and cherish my life and not take one more second for granted. The fucker. As if he’d given me that. But then I knew I’d given it to myself.

  Burke

  Too many rodents is the problem, like Dallas or Houston, rats in a cage fighting and clawing and eating each other alive. Even at four in the morning, there’s people crawling my ass to pass, racing to their heart attacks, while I toodle along, not letting them turn me into a rodent, innocent—and that’s the thing of it—because I ain’t done nothing. I’m sort of suspended between not doing nothing and doing it, looking forward to letting Cash rest, but at this moment just pure and clean, the air soft with the smell of day coming on, and my duffel in the trunk with my mother’s gun, no way for a cop to gain access because there’s nothing on me to warrant a look, no blood from Cinnamon because none was drawn. And it feels good to think of her future waiting to unfold—her life given back—while I drive into tomorrow. There’s a freedom in it, too, driving when most everyone’s asleep. Like you might be on your way to discover something, which, of course I am. Relief, too—that Cinnamon’s still asleep, for instance, and that even if she does call the cops, there’s no way for them to find me.

  I drive around feeling my freedom, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, until the rodents get thick and I head back toward the city and a new motel, something near the airport where it won’t raise suspicion to check in so early. Part of me regrets I won’t be able to see Cinnamon after the business with Nikki gets put to rest. Then I wonder if maybe I can, her and me ending up on an island somewhere, having drinks on the sand, Cinnamon understanding it was all Nikki’s fault, that I was tracking my brother’s killer, Cinnamon forgiving me once she knows the whole story, me just sorry I couldn’t tell the truth earlier: “But I didn’t know you,” I’d tell her. “That’s why I couldn’t tell it straight up from the start. And I’m sorry for what I done, even if I never hurt you and paid more than double and made you cum time and again.”