Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  He clapped a hand over her mouth then and shoved her down on the bed.

  “Enough,” he said sharply.

  She bled down to whimperings within seconds and slowly the knocking on the door subsided and the person outside went away.

  He was sitting on top of her, still uncertain, she could see, of whether she would go crazy on him again. It was half-light on the border between night and day, a soft, rosy glow bathing the room, purifying his face, making it saintly in its rage. It took a moment for another piece of knowledge to trickle down into her consciousness, but it was there nibbling on the outer edges and she did not push it away. She wanted him and he most assuredly wanted her even in this most unlikely of moments.

  She reached up, wanting to stroke his face, to meld his features into tenderness and desire. “Love is like the Lion’s tooth,” she whispered.

  He caught her wrist in an iron grip.

  “Don’t mistake lust for something else,” he said harshly. “Is that poetry from one of his fine books yer quoting, did he read it to ye in bed, did ye whisper all the sweetnesses in his ears that ye did in mine?” His grip loosened a fraction and his free hand rubbed hard across his face. “Oh Christ help me that I should still want ye at a time like this, what sort of a man is that? What have ye made of me, woman?” He rolled away from her then and she knew she’d lost, that there was no way out of this now save telling him the truth and that she could not do.

  “I’ve a question,” he said wearily, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “Yes,” she said throat aching with all the words she couldn’t utter.

  “Why?” he asked, his hands fisted on his knees, breath still coming in uneven, ragged measures. “Why, when ye knew what it cost me to trust? I accepted ye with yer divided heart an’ all. I never asked where ye came from, because I figured ye were runnin’ away from yer past an’ I understood that. I knew what it was to have things ye couldn’t say anymore, things that had no words, pieces of me that were just gone but somehow with you I felt whole. I believed ye felt the same. Christ there is no fool like a fool in love, is there? Ye must have been havin’ a good laugh the whole time.” The line of his shoulders, broad and strong, trembled visibly and she had to restrain herself forcibly not to touch him.

  She shook her head mutely, but he merely snorted in derision.

  “I didn’t want to love ye, ye know, but I just fell, dropped right onto my damn knees, couldn’t stop myself even though I knew I was hurtin’ Pat. Maybe I deserved what I got.”

  He stood and took a long, shaking breath and then leaned down slowly, his eyes narrowed. “What the hell is this?” he asked.

  She peered over the side of the bed and saw to her consternation that the entire floor was elegantly carpeted in sheets and sheets of what looked like the composition for Viennese nocturnes but which upon more intent perusal, contained long scrolling swatches of Arabic.

  “What the hell are these?” Casey repeated, grabbing a corner of one sheet and holding it up in front of his face, where the last of the sun shone pinkly through it, revealing what a first glance had not—small, blocked letters of English, done in a very pale pencil.

  She made an abbreviated noise.

  “Never mind,” he said, “I don’t even want to know.”

  “Casey please I—I—” she faltered for she had been about to say she could explain and knew, watching the sheet of decoded Arabic drift gently back to the floor, that there was far too much she could not say. Things had rapidly accelerated past the point of explanations.

  “Get out,” he said grittily, “please get out.”

  She sat stiffly on the bed as he walked away, desperate to stop him, powerless to do so and whispered, “I love you,”’ to the slamming of the door.

  When Pat came home, some hours later, it was to a house gleaming and overwhelming with the scent of bleach. Pamela, when he looked through the open doorway of her bedroom, was piling clothes into a suitcase, the same battered, rose-patterned one she’d been clutching when she wandered into his life.

  “What’s happened?” he asked quietly

  “Your brother has asked me to leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he thinks I’m sleeping with Jamie,” she answered in a tight voice.

  “He what?” Pat said in confusion.

  “He found out about the abortion and that Jamie took me to England for it and he’s put two and two together and come up with a very tidy four.”

  “An’ ye didn’t tell him otherwise?” he asked in outright bewilderment.

  “No and nor will you, you know the consequences of the truth in this matter are worse even than what’s happened here today.”

  “Where are ye’ goin’?”

  She turned and he felt as if he’d been struck, so bald was the pain on her face. “Yes well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? I don’t know where to go, you and Casey are all the family I have in this world, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, we are,” Pat agreed firmly, “an’ yer not goin’ anywhere.”

  “Pat you can’t, you swore—”

  “Are ye sayin’ that it’s better to just walk out of here an’ never look back? He’ll not forgive this. He needs to know the truth. No,” he raised a hand to stall the protests he saw forming on her face. “All my life I’ve done what someone else told me was right, an’ tonight this one time, I’m doin’ what I know to be right.” He strode to the door, closing his ears to the frantic pleas behind him.

  Casey was where Pat had known he would be, only it was the fifth pub he checked not the first and he was intent on imbibing half the contents of the place and seducing two, not one, girls.

  Pat wasted no time on conversational preambles and was in fact gripped by a rage so red and consuming he’d the sense of standing firmly outside of himself and watching it happen from a safe distance.

  “Outside ye damn bastard,” he said.

  Casey narrowly missed choking on his Guinness and only just managed to sputter out, “What?”

  “I said outside, now,” Pat repeated grimly, steadily ignoring the stares they were beginning to draw.

  Casey laughed. “My little brother callin’ me out, never thought I’d live to see the day, don’t twist yerself up boy I know what this is about an’ I’d rather ye didn’t waste yer time, nor mine.” Casey turned his attention back to the blonde seated snugly beside him, coyly rubbing his thigh with her rough, red-nailed hand.

  “I’m not jokin’ an’ I’m not here as yer little brother, goddamn ye. Outside, I said,” he could feel his anger rising higher, starting a strange buzz in his head and making his feet feel as though they were nowhere near the floor.

  “Ladies,” Casey said with exaggerated charm, “excuse me fer a moment, my brother an’ I need to straighten a little matter out between us.” He stood and took Pat firmly by the arm.

  “I’m in company here an’ I’ve no wish to discuss her with ye at present.”

  “How can ye allow that girl to touch ye, when ye’ve an angel cryin’ her soul out at home?”

  “An angel, is it? An angel that’s been screwin’ Lord James Kirkpatrick fer the last year? An angel is it, that takes herself off to England with her lover to abort a baby? Ye don’t seem terrifically surprised by all this Pat, perhaps then ye’ll tell me, did she know was it his Lordship’s bastard or was the blighted thing mine?” Pat felt the first twinge of something other than fury at his brother. This was ripping Casey apart inside.

  “’Twas neither,” he answered quietly.

  “What?” Casey asked in a low, deadly tone. Pat knew the tone all too well, had seen his brother use it when severely tested to the limits of his monumental patience, had heard it as one hears the hiss of the cobra before it makes its fatal strike. He had never dreamed to have it directed at himself.

  “Was it yers then?” Cas
ey asked, a dark mask coming down and closing over his face. “Did ye lie with her as well, are ye only another of a long line that took his pleasure from her?”

  “I’ll say one thing for ye Casey, ye’ve a helluva nerve,” Pat said quite calmly before pulling back his left hand and letting fly a punch that sent his brother sprawling onto the floor, Guinness flying in great, lovely amber arcs to drop like bits of jewel amidst the shattered glass.

  “Have ye completely done yer fockin’ nut?” Casey yelled at him, still prone on the floor as Pat walked out of the bar, a small pulse of satisfaction thrumming through him in beat with the throbbing in his knuckles.

  There was a bruising rain pelting down outside, warm and full of wind though, a clean rain. He walked into it gratefully.

  “Stop!” He heard the yell behind him but kept on into the rain, blinded by night and as sensitive as a water rat in a subterranean tunnel. He could feel his brother before the hand even touched his shoulder and whirled fists at the ready, rage still pumping its purifying fires through his veins.

  “Jaysus, will ye put yer fists down, my head’s still reelin’ from the last blow.” Casey was, even in the dim light, already sporting a fat lip and a badly bruised cheek. Pat put down his fists warily, still ready in the balls of his feet to knock his brother into the pavement.

  “What the hell was that for?”

  “I never slept with her,” Pat said in a low, gritty voice.

  “Alright, that was the wrong thing to say an’ I’m sorry but Pat ye come in there callin’ her an angel and actin’ like a wronged husband, ye don’t know what she is man, ye don’t know how dangerous she is. The things I’ve told her, the things she knows an’ she’s been sleepin’ with that king on the hill himself an’ feedin’ ‘im God knows what from my lips to his goddamn ear.”

  Pat shook his head sadly, “Ye goddamn, dumb-arsed bastard ye can’t see the fockin’ forest fer the trees can ye? How can ye lie with her in yer arms an’ not know even the slightest bit of her?”

  “I know what ye think, an’ she had me fooled too, couldna’ see beyond the length of my cock as Da’ used to say, but I’m seein’ clear now an’ it’s a very ugly picture that’s shapin’ up.”

  “’Twasn’t Jamie’s baby, twasn’t yers, twasn’t mine,” he said quietly.

  “Yer not makin’ a damn bit of sense man,” Casey said in frustration.

  “She was raped man, raped an’ raped in every fockin’ way ye can think of that an animal can take a woman, she was taken. Raped by men who spit on her an’ stripped her naked on a train an’ made her do things that could drive a man mad just to think of it,” he hit out blindly at Casey’s chest and felt the thunk of flesh under his fist, “an’ if it drives a man mad to think of it, to remember the degradation an’ the smells an’ the sounds an’ the pure agony of her silence, if that can drive a man mad what the fock do ye suppose it does to the wee lass it happened to? What the fock do ye suppose my brother?” He lashed out again, a solid left that knocked Casey’s breath out. Casey fell to his knees, more from blow of words than his brother’s fist, Pat knew.

  “How Pat?” he asked in a flat tone.

  “On the night train back to Belfast, we’d been to a game an’ there was only us an’ the four of them in the car—”

  “Four?” Casey asked, some mute appeal in his words but Pat would not, could not spare him now.

  “Aye, four an’ they all took turns.”

  “An’ what did they do to ye, brother?” Casey asked, in that same flatly disturbing tone.

  “Made me watch, an’ broke a bone or two every time she didn’t do exactly as she was told, nearly killed me or so the doctor said, wish to Christ they had,” he finished softly.

  “So there was no car accident?” Casey asked.

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t ye tell me?”

  “I wanted to but she made us swear not to, if ye could have seen her, all bloody an’ bruised an’ all that mattered to her is that ye were not told. She was desperate to protect ye, said ye’d go mad from the knowing an’ she wouldn’t have that.”

  “So Jamie knows about this as well?”

  “Aye, ‘twas him that came an’ picked up the pieces after, got the doctor an’ likely saved my life an’ very likely Pamela’s sanity. She made him promise too, though he thought ye should know.”

  “An’ the pregnancy?”

  “Ye’d been away fer a month after an’ she said ye’d taken,” Pat faltered, eyes sliding away from his brother’s, “precautions to prevent such things,” he took a deep breath, “she was certain that it wasn’t yers.”

  “Oh Mary mother of God, all this time an’ she never let on, an’ the things I said to her Pat, I called her a whore an’ wiped her touch off as if she were poison. All this time an’ she’s come to my bed without turnin’ a hair when it must have been killin’ her inside, oh Christ what have I done?”

  “I don’t know my brother, I don’t know,” Pat said softly. “I think now though, ye should go home to her.”

  “Pat?” It was a question, more painful in its quiet tone than had the words been shouted.

  “No, ye go to her alone. I can’t come with ye.”

  “Yer not comin’ back, are ye?”

  “No, I can’t man an’ ye know the reasons why.”

  “Aye, I suppose I do,” Casey said tiredly, rubbing a mud-smeared hand across his face. “Patrick I want ye to know, I hold no blame against ye for this.”

  “I’d rather have ye kill me than forgive me right now,” Pat said wearily. “I cannot bear forgiveness just yet.”

  “Paddy—”

  “Don’t use that name on me,” Pat hissed, “it’s a child’s name an’ I’m not a child anymore.”

  “No,” Casey said quietly, “I don’t suppose ye are.”

  “Aye, well,” Pat replied and had one of those flashes of insight that tells you this moment will be yours forever, the sight of your brother kneeling in the rain, the relief of confession your own and the knowledge that you have burned your bridge to home and will never find a way to rebuild it. The knowledge was gone as fast as it had come and left him feeling only weary and old.

  “Get up off yer knees man an’ go home to her, she needs ye,” Pat said softly and then walked away into the night and the cleansing rain.

  “I stayed to be certain Pat was alright,” was all she said when he came home. She could have been at that moment, any one of a million women, stiffened by pain, shorn of innocence and ready to walk out into the dark arms of the world rather than be hurt one more time by someone she loved.

  She shouldered her bag defiantly and stood, a slim soldier, ready to do battle.

  “Darlin’ don’t,” Casey began, barely above a whisper, coming face to face with how badly he’d treated her only hours ago. That he had said their love was merely of the physical and how she might have interpreted that sickened him now. Something hot and malignant began to grow in his chest right then, something that choked off all the repentant words he had been about to speak, all the things that would redeem the dark, sweet hours spent in silence, wordless and gripping. How had he dared to believe that he could restore sanctity to those acts? How could he have been so blind as to not see the strain in her face, how she was thin with a tension that was unnatural. The ivory, the opals, the roses gone from her skin, leaving only those burning, aching eyes, no longer like emeralds but rather a sea of calm, a deceptive terrible calm that waited for the next drowning, the next suffocation.

  “Darlin’ I—” he began weakly, but stopped as she shook her head.

  “Please don’t,” she said, “I only stayed to be certain that you and Pat hadn’t come to blows, which,” she looked pointedly at his bruised and swollen face, “obviously you did.”

  “But darlin’ I didn’t know,” he said feeling a terrible weakness in
his knees that threatened to poleax him where he stood.

  “I know, but now you do and I can’t change that, I can’t keep things safe and tied up ever so neatly anymore.”

  “Ye should never have tried,” he said softly, fighting the desire to touch her hair, to smooth it back from her face, to comfort her with the caresses of childhood, comfort that could not touch her where she stood now.

  “ It was what I had left Casey, it was the only thing, what else was there to do?” she asked and sighing let her bag slip to the floor.

  “Ye don’t have to protect me from my ownself darlin’,” he said hoping that the bag on the floor meant what he thought it did.

  “Don’t I?” she asked with a grim little smile and then she put her hand to her face and said, “If you’ll excuse me,” and bolted for the sink.

  He held her hair back as she vomited, dampened a cloth and wiped down her face and neck, then rubbed her back as she retched over the chipped enamel for what seemed like a small eternity. When she was done, he sat her down on a chair while he rinsed the sink and found warm clean clothing for her. She resisted no more than a new baby might as he changed her damp and soiled clothes, brushed back her hair with sure, quick strokes and tied it with a bit of ribbon he’d found discarded in their room. Then he made a pot of tea and sat finally when it was ready, across from her, the aromatic fumes of the brew rising between them. He sighed and ran his hands roughly through his own hair.

  “Christ, a fockin’ pot of tea, I don’t know what possessed me to even make it.”

  “It’s what we do then, isn’t it? When there’s nothing else to be done and all else has failed, you make a fockin’ pot of tea.” She was smiling at him, a weary smile, but a smile nonetheless. “And actually I could do with a cup.”

  He poured some, willing his hands to remain steady, watched as she took a sip and then closing her eyes sighed and said, “well it won’t cure all the ills of the world, but it’s something.”

  “It’s not the ills of the world we’re dealin’ with here Pamela, it’s—”