by Alex Bell
Edwin bit the inside of his cheek, curled his free hand into a fist. This pain is not bad, he told himself. This is good pain. It was Carla’s once. Now it’s yours.
He breathed, and waited. Nothing left now but a throb. Slowly, carefully, he slid the point out of his flesh and pressed a towel to the wound. He was trembling, and that wouldn’t do.
Soon the blood will stop. Soon it will be nothing. You will go to the kitchen. Put some ice on it.
Then you can do the other ear.
*
Three days later, Lucas showed up.
At least, Edwin assumed this was Lucas. Had to be. Tall, handsome. Perfect dark hair, perfect dark suit. The kind of stubble one cultivates. He picked Carla up outside her building and the two of them walked up the street, together. At one point, Lucas took Carla’s hand. Edwin’s palm itched; he clenched his fist, dug his nails deep into the flesh.
The next day, Edwin followed them. Far enough behind not to be noticeable, not to hear anything they had to say. At the corner they kissed goodbye and Carla went up one street, Lucas down the other. Edwin went with Lucas.
Lucas worked at an advertising firm uptown. Huge building, chrome and glass. Carla was in advertising, too. Graphic design. She had a website and everything. That must’ve been how she’d met Lucas. That was how people like Carla always met people like Lucas.
The gleaming brass sign in the lobby told Edwin that Lucas’s surname was King. Of course it was. He had his own office, up on the twelfth floor. Edwin took the elevator. Soft music, velvet and wood.
A gentle chime and he was out. More velvet. More wood, darker now. A receptionist at a vast wooden desk. Guarding a locked door.
‘Can I help you?’ she said.
‘Mr. King works here?’ Edwin asked. There were business cards on the receptionist’s desk. LUCAS KING. The office phone number. And a cell phone number.
‘Yes,’ said the receptionist. ‘Are you here to see him?’
‘I’ve seen him,’ said Edwin. He grabbed a handful of cards and left.
*
Back on the street, he began to shake. Uncontrollable tremors, spidering up and down his limbs, all the way down to his bones. His flesh prickled, hungry for warmth.
‘Hello again!’ beamed the redheaded salesgirl as he pushed through the boutique doors.
He needed a coat, he told her. That one. The houndstooth.
‘I’m afraid we only have that one in women’s sizes.’
He looked at her. Really looked. Her hair, he thought, wasn’t really all that red. More like bronze. Burnished bronze.
‘Could you try it on?’ he asked. ‘It’s for my sister. She’s about your size.’
‘Oh,’ said the salesgirl, and smiled. ‘Sure.’ She slipped the coat on and walked ahead, pirouetting before him. The coat flared out around her hips, her thighs.
‘Your sister must be pretty grateful,’ she said. ‘I know I could never afford clothes like this.’
‘Actually,’ said Edwin, ‘she does a little better than me. She always has.’
The salesgirl rang the coat up and handed back his card with a smile. ‘I’m Sarah, by the way,’ she said. ‘Okay if I call you Edwin?’
‘My friends call me Carl,’ said Edwin.
*
‘What’s with the telescope?’ asked Sarah.
Edwin hung his coat on the hook and switched on the lamp. ‘It’s my job,’ he said. ‘Astronomy. Well, more of a hobby, really.’
Sarah oh’d. Swung the eyepiece up, peered through. ‘Hard to see any stars from here,’ she said. ‘All the smog in this city. Back in Wisconsin, you could see billions of them up there, every night. Didn’t even need a telescope.’ She looked up. ‘They were so close, I used to think I could touch them. I wanted to so badly.’
‘You wouldn’t want that,’ Edwin said. ‘They’d burn you up.’
He was behind her now. He could count the hairs on the nape of her neck. He hadn’t touched anyone in almost a year.
Sarah turned. Looked into his eyes. He didn’t like that, didn’t like her looking so close, so he shut his eyes and kissed her. Her lips were smooth and warm, the skin unchapped. She tasted of toothpaste and caramel.
‘Is there time?’ she whispered. ‘Your sister... ’
‘Not here tonight. On a date.’
He pulled her onto the bed, began stripping her down. She laughed and let him.
Once they were naked and she was on her hands and knees, he pulled the telescope level with the bed. ‘Look through this,’ he told her.
‘What?’ she giggled.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look through and tell me what you see. Tell me exactly what you see.’
‘Oh my God.’ But she looked.
‘It’s an apartment,’ she said. ‘It’s... Are those your plants? And those... ah... those are your... your posters, right? Why do they have all your stuff?’ She looked over her shoulder at him. He was kissing her neck now. Burying his face in her hair.
‘Keep watching,’ he said. ‘Keep talking.’
She kept watching. ‘There’s... there’s a man and a woman in there... Do you, do you know them?’
‘I know them. What are they doing?’
‘They’re... kissing, and... ’ She pulled away. ‘I shouldn’t be looking at this. Should I be looking at this?’
‘It’s fine. What are they doing?’
‘They’re... on the couch, and they’re... She’s got her top off, and... Jesus, what do you think they’re doing? Ah!’
He was in her now, moving in her, hands and mouth and nose full of her. Her hair was so bright, so bright. ‘Tell me.’
‘She’s on top,’ Sarah gasped. ‘She’s on top and she’s rocking back and forth. Back and forth. Fucking. They’re fucking. She’s fucking him, she’s arching back and she’s... She’s... ’
No more watching, no more words. They all came together.
*
Edwin lay on his back, arm over his eyes. He could feel Sarah watching him, could feel her growing harder, colder, with every passing moment.
‘You should probably go,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ said Sarah. Her voice was sharp, all edges. ‘Before your sister gets home. From her date. Right?’
Silence. ‘Right,’ said Edwin.
More silence. A breath, forced out between teeth. A weight off the bed and footsteps, and a slamming door, and silence again, real this time.
Edwin sat up. Leaned over and looked through the telescope. Carla’s apartment was dark. Pure dark. Not even a glimmer of light.
*
Two days later. The cafe again.
‘I know why you brought me here,’ Lucas said. ‘I know. You don’t want a scene, is that it? Don’t want me embarrassing you?’
Carla was shaking her head, murmuring something Edwin couldn’t hear.
‘Well, what was the other night all about, then?’ Lucas demanded. ‘Huh? Why’d you let me stay over if you already knew you wanted to dump me?’
‘I’m not dumping you,’ Carla said. ‘It’s not like that. Lucas, I just... I don’t want to move in with anyone, okay? I didn’t want to hurt you... ’
‘Hurt me? You can’t hurt me. You’ll only ever hurt yourself,’ Lucas said. But his voice was wavering.
Carla closed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Lucas, I really am. It’s nothing to do with you. I think I’m just... Look, when Mom died, I started thinking about her, about her life. I don’t want to do what she did. I’m looking for something different.’
‘Better.’
‘Different. I think I’m gonna be moving soon. I think... I think I’m gonna quit the agency.’
‘And me. You’re quitting me, too.’
Carla said nothing.
‘Well, fine.’ Lucas threw down his napkin and stood up. ‘Fine. You want your freedom, you got it. I’m fucking done.’
‘Lucas... ’
He waved her away and stalked out.
Edwin sat and
watched. His tea was cold, untouched. Carla sat five feet away, close enough to reach out to, to touch, to comfort. She was leaning on her elbows, eyes screwed shut. There were lines on her forehead he’d never noticed before.
He got up. Went to her. Went past her. Slipped into the bathroom, took out his cell phone and Lucas’s card. Dialed.
Five rings. A voice. Thick and struggling. ‘Lucas King.’
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?!’ Edwin screamed. His voice bounced back at him, off the mirrored walls. ‘You let her go! How could you let her go?!’
‘Who the hell is this?’
‘Don’t you understand? She’s special. You can’t just give her away, can’t just forget she exists, like she’s nothing. You gave her up! You fucking asshole, you gave her up!’
Lucas’s phone was dead long before Edwin had finished. Edwin stood there, listening into the quiet. Nothing to hear but electronic pulses. His own shuddering breath. He shut his eyes, watched the stars dance behind them, until the breath had slowed.
Carla was on her phone when he emerged. ‘... The hell are you talking about? I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t say... Oh, you know what, fuck you too.’ She hung up and pressed her hands into her eye sockets, hard enough to hurt. Edwin watched her, empty with hunger, craving her pain.
*
Lucas dropped off his key the next day. Edwin saw him do it. Tossed it in Carla’s mailbox on the ground floor and walked off, quickly, head bowed against the rain.
Edwin sat back, staring into the sky. His head was light, too light to hold a thought. He stood, grabbed a coat hanger, raced downstairs.
Across the street through the churning rain, and now he was at the mailbox, hanger unbent, scrabbling inside. Metal rattled metal. A weight on the end of the line. The key was on the end of the hanger. The key was in his hand.
He slipped inside and through the lobby, into the elevator, noticing nothing. Shaking. Shaking all the way down the hall. Shaking at her door. Shaking so hard he could barely fit the key in the lock.
The door swung open and he was inside.
The posters on the walls, Lichtenstein and Miro and Mondrian. The lush green plants on the windowsills. Her white wood desk, her black office chair. Patterned rugs and Post-It notes and her smell, her smell everywhere, haunting the house. Flowers and hazelnut and thick sweet pineapple.
All of it was real. None of it was real. Like wandering onto the set of a movie he’d seen a thousand times.
He took a step forward, two. Shut the door. He wanted to run his hands over everything, touch it all, take it all, plunge into her up to his elbows.
He touched her keyboard. The computer sprang to life. Lots of open windows. Here, a travel website, promising cheap rates to Venice; there, a half-finished, half-hearted sketch for what looked like a perfume ad. An email, abandoned mid-composition, containing only two sentences: ‘Hi, Pat. Your offer is enormously flattering, but after much consideration’.
He touched the mantelpiece, swept it free of dust. Framed photos. People he didn’t know in places he’d never been. And Carla, with two old people, a man and a woman. They looked just like her. Edwin stared at that one for a very long time. Stared into their eyes. Tried to picture himself there instead of Carla. The image blurred, refused to pull into focus. He replaced the photo, very carefully, and turned away.
Her bedroom. Rumpled white sheets; drawers gaping open. Stockings. Beige and black. Phantom limbs. He pulled one out and held it up to the light, pressed his face to it, stared out at the world through a shining black mesh. Sat down on the bed and took off his pants. Slid the stocking up his bare leg. It snagged once or twice on the hairs; snapped taut at the top of his thigh.
He opened the next drawer down. A tangle of lace and cotton, rainbow color. Her underwear.
Edwin slid his hands into the soft mass. Let his breath out, slow and hot. A single red pair of panties, brighter than the rest, edged in frills. Edwin held them up and gazed at them; went back to the bed, lay down in the sheets. Her smell was all around him. He pulled off his underwear, lay back and slid into hers. So soft. So soft and so warm.
Edwin lay there, watching the shadows of rain on the ceiling. Turned his head and looked out the window. Looked out and across the great divide and up at his apartment, his window. He was sitting there now. He was sitting there, watching himself. He lived here, and these were his clothes, this was his bed, his room, his apartment, and he was watching himself through a telescope. He was bright and shining and clean, a distant star in a universe far from here.
His hand slipped beneath the elastic, under the red. He was touching himself. He was in his bed and at the window, watching himself as he did it, inside her and inside her skin, touching and being touched and watching every touch given, every touch received. You have everything, he thought. Everything. No matter what I am, no matter what I have, you will always be more, always have more.
You even have me. You will always, always, always have me.
Lips stretched. Teeth bared. His cries wracked the empty air, heard by no one.
Quiet again. He watched the ceiling, her ceiling. The skies that belonged to her.
‘You have me,’ he said aloud. ‘You always did.’
You always will.
She was going away soon. Leaving. Venice, maybe. Parts unknown. He would go with her, because he had to, because she had him. She would take him with her. Just as she would take everything else she owned.
He was hers. Completely.
And it came to him then, stole inside, quiet as revelation: that was why she had to die.
*
Naked. Naked under the coat. The houndstooth coat. Just like hers. Exactly like hers. And the knife in the coat pocket was hers, taken straight from her kitchen. Gleaming silver, long and sharp.
She was crossing the street, ahead of him, against the lights, always against the lights. Cars dashed through the wet gloom. None of them touched her. Nothing ever touched her.
Her hair was so bright. She was so close. He was right behind her and she was so close.
Almost across the street now, at the very edge of the curb. The cars and the rain and her. He could touch her. Right at the edge.
‘Carla!’ he screamed. Her name. Spoken aloud, the very first time.
She turned. She turned and she saw him. Saw him.
Her eyes were his eyes. The color and width. The sweep of the lashes. The shadows beneath.
Her eyes.
A shriek of metal and an explosion in his skull. He was in the air. Weightless and bodiless, flying. Meeting the rain. Slapped down to Earth and into a shattered body, into splintered bones and useless meat and blood, endless blood. In his hair. His eyes. His mouth. He heard the car squeal to a halt. Slamming doors. Cries and shouts and running feet.
He tried to turn his head. His neck was a severed stalk. He gulped and gurgled and spat. Red copper, bubbling in his lungs.
And she was there. Her face, so white. Her eyes, like his. So big and so dark. All that hair, hanging down over him. A thick bronze screen. Hide me away. Hide me.
‘Oh my God,’ she was saying. Chanting. ‘Oh my God. Oh Jesus. Don’t move, okay? Don’t move. There’s an ambulance coming. You’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna be fine... ’
Her hand in his. So soft. So soft and so warm.
His other hand free. Close to his pocket. The knife still inside.
He lifted his hand. Fast. It hurt, oh, God, it hurt, but he had to. Had to do it.
Edwin cupped the back of Carla’s head and pulled her down. Pressed his lips to hers. Pressed hard enough to make her chapped skin crack. The blood began to flow, her blood, his blood, their blood. Slid down his throat. Warm and sweet. Flowers and hazelnut. Pineapple.
He let her go. She tore away, eyes huge, gasping for air. Wiping his blood from her lips.
Edwin smiled at her. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Now we have each other.’
She was staring at him. Her hair was wet, her skin, h
er eyes, and he realized she was crying. She was crying for him.
I wish I could do that, he thought.
And now she was falling away, her face and her eyes and her hair, falling far away from him, into a starless dark, and there were no more wishes left.
Gravy Soup
by
Simon Clark
I followed Gordon Clumsden into the cemetery at midnight. Gordon didn’t see me. I didn’t let him know I was there.
The church clock struck twelve. Solar-charged lanterns, which adorned some of the graves, painted headstones with a pale, silvery glow. A breeze ghosted through the trees – an eerie, rustling sound that made me picture dead men and women turning restlessly, their dry-as-dust burial clothes brushing the sides of their coffins.
I’d said goodnight to Gordon twenty minutes ago at the railway station. For some strange reason, instead of catching the train home, Gordon had waited until I’d exited the station and then he’d headed out here to the cemetery. I’d only noticed him by chance when I paused to collect some cash from an ATM. So, what made him venture into this secluded burial ground?
I soon guessed the answer. Six weeks ago, Ozzy Stambert had died. He was the founder of the Gymnasium Supper Club (Gordon and I were members). Ozzy had tirelessly searched for the best restaurants that served the most wonderful food – and the BIGGEST portions.
Gordon must miss our old friend terribly, I told myself. Rather than going home, Gordon’s visiting Ozzy’s grave. Realizing that my friend possessed such a sensitive nature moved me. Gordon took a path to where Ozzy had been buried near an iron fence. Beyond that fence were bushes and undergrowth. I didn’t venture any closer. Gordon’s privacy must be respected, I told myself. Yet, I didn’t leave, because something odd was starting to happen. In fact, Gordon was making that odd thing happen. What he did next perplexed me.
He skirted the mound of wilted flowers that marked the six week old grave of one Ozzy Stambert, gourmet and curry aficionado. Quickly, he leaned over the boundary fence, rooted there for a moment, then stood up straight, holding what appeared to be a metal pole. Some ten feet in length, it gleamed in the solar-charged lamps.