by Mimi Cross
But this is a new low for me, so I don’t know if it will.
TOUCH
CATE
Dale Waters is sprawled on the couch, reading a book.
I hold up the CD.
“So you are a fan.”
“Actually, a friend gave it to me. But, yes, I’m a fan. Can we listen?”
“Your friend has good taste, but you know, I’ve heard it so many times, in the studio and all; we did so many mixes. But listen to it on your own, will you? Tell me what you think.”
I just stare at him. “Sure.”
“Thanks.”
I contemplate the two couches, then sit down next to him.
“So what’s with the tux?”
“Work.”
“Which is?”
“Besides gigs? Bartending. Your friend Dee used to work at the same place, waitressing.”
“I told you, she’s not my friend.”
“Should I ask why not?”
“If you want to.”
“I want to. Why aren’t you friends? Besides the obvious differences between you two.”
“You mean, like the fact that she’s kind of a bitch?”
“Whereas you seem pretty cool? Yeah.”
“She hates me, for one.”
“No way. How can that be?” His tone is teasing, but Dale’s eyes . . . they’re just so pretty, and right now the expression in them closely resembles real concern. It’s confusing.
I choose to respond to the teasing. “Ha-ha.”
“Not trying to be funny.” But he’s grinning now, as he gets up for another beer. “Okay, maybe a little funny, but you seem like a sweetheart, Katydid. Why would Dee wanna bite you?”
“I really don’t know. She’s going out with my best friend, so—”
“So she’s jealous.”
He puts on some music. The long lines of “Retrograde” fill the sparsely furnished space.
“You like James Blake?” I ask.
“I like this song.”
And that’s all it takes to get us talking hard and fast about music—indie, alternative, dream pop, rock.
Our tastes are remarkably similar, and suddenly, I’m glad there’s a late ferry.
It’s music, so my words come easily, and in another few minutes, I’m yammering on about seeing Rabbit Daggers in Brooklyn with Laurel.
“Brooklyn, huh? You go for hipsters, yeah?”
The question cracks me up, as it’s meant to, and when Dale comes over and takes my hand, I barely notice because I’m laughing so hard. He loops my arms around his neck, and in a minute we’re both laughing and dancing. He knows how to move like . . . mmm.
“What’d you say?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I laugh again. “Must be because you’re a musician.”
“What must be because I’m a musician?”
“You know.” I gesture to where his hips glide against mine. He just smiles.
I say, “I want to go again, to hear your band play.”
“You will. But right now . . . I want to play you, Katydid.” He gently pinches one of my arms, his thumb sliding off—on, off—to the steady rhythm of the bass line. The low sound thuds softly in my ears, careful tonal footsteps, warm and shadowy, wending their way inside of me . . .
“So show me where you fit . . .”
Dale stops, brings his hands to my waist, and dances me down the length of the room.
Now that we’re on the other side of the curtain, I can see back behind where it’s bunched against the wall, by the head of the bed. Instead of a bedside table, there’s a stack of amps, a couple of mic stands. Next to those are two bass guitars and the upright. Its deep honey-toned finish glows in the low light.
I say, “Can I touch it?”
“Touch anything you like.”
I pluck one of the strings and a low note rolls out. I scratch another with a fingernail—Zzz. Like the bottom strings on the guitar, it’s wound with metal.
“Will you play something for me?”
“I’d love to play something for you.” He nods at a guitar leaning against the far side of the bed. “But only if you play, too.”
Then he shuts off the music and takes the upright off its stand. He slides his fingers over the strings—that’s what it looks like anyway, just a simple, effortless movement—and a series of warm tones I can almost feel on my skin surround us.
He lifts his chin in the direction of the guitar. “Come on, girl. Show me what you got.”
And, in a minute, what I’ve got is his guitar in my arms.
Now I kneel on the bed, the guitar across my thighs.
He comes closer, bringing the bass.
With an instrument in my hands, I’m finally comfortable. This is how I’d imagined it: us swapping songs, me maybe asking, Do you know any musicians who might be into my ideas?
But instead, as he begins to play a slow ascending line, I just follow him. For each of his notes, I play a complementary chord. Only, while he goes up, I go down. And after a few minutes, it’s not clear who’s leading whom.
I’m not sure which one of us starts singing first—him I think, yeah—but I’m in right away. He throws out a line, and I toss something back, word upon word, till things start adding up. When we start stringing together phrases, I wobble back to where I’d left my bag, and get out my notebook.
He plays while I scribble. Says, “You’re the boss of the song—you lay it out.”
The part about love, I decide, is the chorus. “The way it repeats,” I say now. “It’s the chorus.”
“The way it repeats—makes it the outro. The chorus has to be stronger than that.”
“There’s nothing stronger than love. It’s the chorus.”
“There’s sex and death,” Dale says. He laughs, but I don’t.
I stand my ground. “You said I’m the boss of this song?”
“You’re the boss, you know why? ’Cause you care, more than me.”
Caring and bossing and everything now—it’s all beginning to run together.
My Mia move had worked, only at some point after I’d hurled, but before I’d learned about being the boss of a song, I’d decided that getting high would assist the creative process—nope—and made another trip to Dale’s white boat of a bathroom, where, in an “Oops! Meant to save half the packet, oh well, bottoms up!” moment, I did my entire last bump.
Now I set the guitar aside and stretch, my words stretching with me.
“I reeeally like the way you play, Dale Waters. I like your voice.”
“I like you.”
“I—like you, too.”
“Maybe we should take a break.”
“Maybe we should. Take a break.”
Then we’re both sitting on the bed. Or rather, I’m sitting. Dale’s lying down, hands behind his head, lanky frame sprawled across the white coverlet like city streets on a map.
He unclasps his hands and reaches up to touch my hair.
As if in protest, the wind blows a fierce gust against the row of windows.
My mood swings fast, the arc of an ax, blade edge burying with a thunk in some crepuscular part of my psyche. I shiver and cross my arms.
“How old are you, Katydid?”
My birthday isn’t till spring. I’ll be seventeen. “Old enough.” I lift my chin slightly.
Dale’s eyes glitter, darkening a shade as his gaze roves my face.
“Got a boyfriend?”
I look away from Dale’s curling black hair. His pretty sky eyes.
A bouquet of red roses dominates the desk. The wind rattles the windows. A petal drops from one of the roses. I study the abstract painting of the angel. The white and gold. The suggestion of wings.
Dale gets up, crosses to the windows. Opens one. Closes it. The sound of the wind quiets.
“You’re taking an awfully long time to answer me,” he says, climbing back onto the bed.
“You have a girlfriend.” I nod at the roses. Their edges are swi
rling prettily.
“Had.”
I arch an eyebrow. Look back to the flowers.
“Let me clarify. I ended it six months ago. Can’t help it if it’s not over for her.”
“Not over for her.”
The words seem to reverberate in my chest.
Outside, a heavy rain begins to fall. At the same time, I start to fall harder into the high.
Because that’s what K does. It doesn’t lift me. It lowers me. Lowers me down, into a dark, dreamy hole . . .
Dale Waters slides off the bed and kneels on the floor in front of me. He places his palms on the tops of my thighs and looks into my eyes.
My lower lip finds its way between my teeth.
With an index finger, he traces shapes on my legs. Circles. Squares. Triangles.
I close my eyes. Wish . . . he was David.
I need to leave.
But the thought is mist, sea spray from the water I crossed to get here, and the shapes are repeating, insistently. They’re letters. Words.
Kate. Katydid, he traces. His fingers press into my jeans.
“Katy, do you?” he asks. “Want to?”
My eyes flutter open. I do want to.
He draws an X. Draws an O. “I like you, Katydid.” The area his fingers traverse grows larger, expanding down, along my inner thighs.
We watch each other.
I, he traces, then he traces it again. I.
Now L, and again, L.
My breath quickens as he writes the whole thing, fast, on the top of my right thigh.
I like you.
He says, “Katy did. Katy does? Has Katy done it? I think . . . maybe not.”
I like you, he writes again. Then more slowly, he writes,
I
Want
You
He wipes it away, his palms rubbing the tops of my legs, down along the inside of them, up the outside. The pressure increases. His hands move to my hips, and I lean back, put my hands behind me for support, and lift them.
He stands, grabbing me behind my knees, yanking me toward him—
I hit his body hard. My legs wrap themselves around his waist. It’s not me; it’s my body.
I’m dissolving, like the powder did earlier, and I want to dissolve, into the netherworld of the drug, leave my body behind, with this boy.
Standing now, he leans over me, slides his hands beneath me, lifting me up.
I tilt my face, offering my lips.
His low laugh resonates in his chest as he climbs onto the bed with me in his arms. He hovers over me as he lays me down on my back. My legs are still wrapped around him, but now I release him and straighten them. He sinks down onto me, using one arm to bear his weight. His free hand comes up toward my neck, his fingers exploring my collarbone.
Then it’s one button, two . . . three buttons, four . . .
He grazes my lips with his, and another laugh hums in his throat as a soft moan escapes me, but finally—his mouth comes down on mine.
A sudden sharp thought pierces me, a momentary flare of light in a darkened room: this is wrong for so many reasons. But it feels right, so I don’t stop, even though I’m unsteady—here and not here. If I’d thought earlier that the ferry dock seemed far away, now it’s in another world. And home—home seems like a vanished world.
I tug at the waist of his jeans, and he pulls his mouth from mine, laughs out loud. Again, I moan—the sound just comes. He looks down at me. I swim up, into the blue pools of his eyes.
As I swim, I whisper. I whisper, “David.”
A breeze blows across the pools, rippling the surface.
“What did you say?”
I hesitate—bring my teeth to his jawline.
He gives me a gentle nudge. I drop back.
His brows draw down. But he’s not angry . . . I don’t think. “What did you say, Angel?”
But I’m slipping away into a dark whirlpool . . .
Then the boy, the boy above me—
Something’s not right.
“Huh,” he says.
I start to cry.
“Don’t cry. I’ve got you.”
I slide my hands up under the boy’s shirt—under David-but-not-David’s shirt—push it up, trace his ribs. When I duck down, bringing my mouth to one of his nipples, we turn into a tangle of limbs and clothes and jagged breaths. His mouth crushes mine.
We tumble over each other—
Till he pins me.
Says, “No.”
I say, “Yes.” The word is half moan, half cry. All want.
Then I feel his hips press hard against my pelvis, feel my own hips pressing back—
And I gasp in surprise as he bites me, gently, on the neck.
OBLIVION
CATE
Just before rolling off me and onto his side.
“Who’s David?” he inquires softly.
Then I feel the boy’s fingers on my face, wiping the wetness away. Wiping my tears.
“Cate?”
But I’m too far down. I don’t even know this guy’s name. Not anymore.
Something’s wrong.
The room has grown dark, too dark to see. The room—where am I?
The pleasurable, ecstatic feeling has given way to something else, some kind of panic. It buzzes through me. I want to get up. Want to go home. Only—
I can’t move. I try to say it. But my voice has disappeared into the darkness.
A face appears above mine. I blink up at it, at him. Do I know him? No. No, I don’t know this boy with empyrean eyes, tumbling night hair.
Especially now, as the black curls begin to move, become spiraling snakes.
The boy’s expression darkens, his pretty lips twisting. His laugh is a blade.
“This—this is why I never touch that Special K crap. Thought you were out.” His face is close to mine, his breath hot on my skin. “Come here.” His voice is deep as the ocean.
Then I feel his fingers fumbling with my shirt. I try to lift my hand to stop him—
But I’m immobile. Buried, in a blacked-out oblivion.
SHADOWS
DAVID
The bluish light on the closed laptop glows, then dims—glows, then dims—with silent, pulsing machine breath, indicating the computer is asleep. I lie on my bed, watching it.
Outside, the sky hangs over the land like a threat, the clouds dark-gray monstrosities shot through with a sickly yellowish color, like the light before a tornado. Snowdrifts lie in waves across the backyard, turning it to a silent white sea, stunned somehow into stillness.
Tammy comes in from the bathroom, and desire snakes through me, slithers on my skin.
I pull a small square packet from my bedside table drawer but don’t open it.
Playfully, she knocks the pillows over my face, nips the packet from my fingers with her teeth— climbs on top of me.
I let the pillows lie. Hear a crinkling tear. Feel her fingers on me.
A moment later she pushes the pillows aside.
I turn my head, avoiding her eyes. Watch our shadows on the wall.
She makes all the effort, and I let her. She’s so attentive, I feel a little sick.
When the ocher light fades, she whispers in my ear, “Where’ve you been? Why haven’t you called? This weekend, do you want to go to—”
Shh . . . the central heating kicks on, and I kiss her. I can’t talk to her. I hate liars.
Then, because I feel so bad, I make her feel good. So good she says, “I love you.”
I stroke her hair, can’t say the same. So instead I say, “You want me to do that again?”
CONCRETE
CATE
“What’s your emergency?” a woman’s voice asks calmly.
“Drugs. Drug overdose. No, wait. Car accident. I—I’ve been in a car accident.”
“Please give me your location.”
I look around the narrow alley with its crumbling walls. One side is a skinny redbrick building that leans sharply towa
rd me, about to fall. The air smells of urine and vomit, of fear.
“Some kind of urban hell,” I want to say. I name the nearest cross streets.
“We’re sending medical assistance. Please state your name.”
“Katydid.”
Laughter sounds behind me. I spin around.
The handsome snake-haired boy stands at the mouth of the alley. He holds up my phone.
“Hey! I was just using that, you can’t—”
“What you’re using is shit. Horseshit. Dumb shit. Animal drugs.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Don’t know yet.” He walks toward me.
I whirl as an ambulance screeches to a halt at the other end of the alley. Two white-jacketed men jump out. One goes around to the rear of the vehicle. The other hurries over to me, a small case in his hands.
The next few minutes are a blur of activity as the man checks my breathing, my pulse. He shouts something, and the other man comes running. The two EMTs are eerily familiar.
My stomach twists sickeningly. What’s wrong with me?
But then I know what’s wrong. I’m not supposed to be here.
“I have to go!” I shout to the boy.
At the same time, one of the techs hollers “Clear” and spins toward the boy— presses two pads to his chest. The snake boy jerks— falls to the ground.
Suddenly I know his name. Dale Waters.
“No!” I throw myself down on the ground next to him. “Why did you do that?”
The EMT kneels next to me. He’s holding an oxygen mask over the boy’s face.
When he pulls it away, I see that it’s Cal.
I freeze for a second.
When I unfreeze, there’s a guitar in my hands, a gorgeous classical guitar. Rosewood. Mahogany. I balance it on one knee. Play through some chords. My fingers love the buttery strings. Only instead of music—
A horrible banshee wail rips through the air.
With a cry, I raise the instrument over my head—
Bring it down hard on the concrete. The world is splinters and snapping strings.
And then it’s David who’s on the ground.
I lean over him and whisper, “Hang on.”
HORSES
CATE