King of Joy

by Richard Chiem

  Corvus says, He died a couple of years ago too.

  The rubber seal makes a sucking sound as Amber pulls open the refrigerator door and, for a moment, it does this thing and takes over her mind. A moment of peace flurries, puffing cold air, a nothing noise. A cloud in her face. She whispers, Shut the fuck up. Amber peeks her head inside and pulls out an unexpected bottle of champagne. Someone left this here, she says. She wiggles the bottle and dips her shoulders, dancing. Her hips, too. She apologizes for being stoned, her first of many apologies for being stoned, smiling and showing gums.

  Amber’s face is a little bruised, some slight swelling shows on her cheekbones, but she’s less damaged than Corvus imagined she would be after what Tim did to her. At any part of your life, a slightly out of the ordinary shock is all it takes to unnerve you from your everyday genius, Corvus thinks, the comfort gets sucked out of your routine like air in a vacuum, the core where your courage comes from grows cold and isolated in an instant, not quite useless, not quite present. Corvus studies the details and little things. Amber has a high tolerance for pain and her untouched peace of mind seems to be as though from another place, from a whole new scary way to relate to someone.

  Corvus asks, Are you scared? About Tim?

  Amber takes a drag, puckers her lips, and shakes her head no. I would rather talk about you right now. She uncorks the champagne and licks the overflowing fizz with a smile. The sounds of hip-hop from the small radio dull her senses, the beats and bass waterfalling in repetition. The drugs fog the foreground.

  We can talk about whatever you want to talk about, or not talk about, I don’t care, sweetheart.

  Corvus says, I don’t feel like moving.

  We can just talk.

  The dog lies on his side, his legs dead to the world. His tail whips sometimes from deep REM sleep.

  Corvus smiles and says, This is strong. She pinches the last of the burning roach and leans her head back. Dying embers disappear. Smoke and sweet aroma. Amber watches from the dark, the only light in the room is the television, which takes a long time to come into full picture.

  Amber puts in a videotape marked CORVUS.

  Corvus says, I really hated my whole life before I met Perry. My husband, his name was Perry. And I could, I could feel what he meant to me, our bizarre connection, almost right, right when I met him.

  Amber stares at the paused Corvus on the TV screen, an image from just a couple of years ago, a static white line like a lightning bolt staggers across her face, and without turning her head around, Amber says, Go ahead, honey. I’m listening, I’m listening.

  CHAPTER 5

  I keep everything that horrifies me a secret. I pretend that everyone around me is having the worst day of their life. These are etiquettes I practice to weave in and out of the world. I wait in lines in public and lament my past lives. To the woman standing next to me at the bus stop, the lonely cashier at the food co-op, the crowd on the street that pours around me: I imagine you’re having the absolute worst day and I won’t mess with you. I won’t add to your day. I see everyone with the sun in their eyes and I look back at them.

  Corvus stretches out in the hallway. She’s wearing a new black dress under my sweater that’s hers, lying on the floor, full body stretch. The dress is off the shoulder, the floor is wall-to-wall carpet. I have been away and we have been apart and because we are hard, sad people, I feel fragile when I come into the room. Seeing Corvus brings me immediately home, our inner lives come to life. We shut the blinds. Smoke. Fuck. Smoke. Drink. Fuck. Smoke. Perfect cartwheels in bed. Champagne and serial television.

  My usual anger: it opens like a flower and evaporates and vacates. Corvus reaches for me and we go to our desired stupor.

  She says, Fuck me numb. The day keeps tearing at me.

  With words half in me, I can’t quite trace my steps once I get home, and I leave my mind with Corvus. I still wonder. I keep going. I keep going, I keep going.

  She whispers in my ear, I admire the way you whittle. All the way down.

  Tape recorder clicks off.

  DEAD BLACK ELMS ARE PILED ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE construction site. The few yards on the other side of the chain-link fence used to be forest and old growth and it’s now bleak-ass shit, torn-down trees, blocks of concrete, and dug-up earth ruptured for another parking garage, soon to be the tallest one in the city. Corvus keeps a wad of paper in her jacket pocket and walks through the excavated grounds, weaving through the giant equipment, ducking through the hole in the fence underneath the NO TRESPASSING sign. She scratches her back on the fence, ignoring the slight sting from the wet steel. Grimacing, she crushes wads of paper until they’re nothing in her pocket. Her bad habit, if she has to name one, is twisting the fabric of whatever she’s wearing tightly inside her clenched fists when some shit has gone down. She remembers telling Michelle, When shit goes down and I feel this pressure, I don’t even notice that I do it. I just start crushing things in my hands.

  When Corvus can’t sleep in the middle of the night, she likes to sneak out of the house and walk to her high school, feeling like a fourteen-year-old loser, seeking comfort in empty classrooms and hallways. She likes the acoustics of being alone at school. Having no other place to escape to, the quiet feels more quiet. No one bothers her here.

  Her insomnia is worse during the full moon, which Corvus watches in the sky as she makes her way up the school steps. The door, close to the gym, has an old bent lock, and Corvus lowers her shoulders and pushes hard through. It makes a loud clunk sound and then nothing, everything’s okay. She walks a couple of laps in the hallways close to the gym lockers, having a desire to run away from home forever, before she hears something.

  Following a not too distant cry, Corvus runs down the hallway, pink in the face. She can see all the stars through the big glass windows and her mind is quiet. The school walls give off a comforting chill, an almost hum. The little, tiny sound Corvus hears is a meow—she is almost certain—and she tries to pinpoint where it is coming from. She runs past all her normal classrooms: AP History, Advanced Chemistry, Sad Rooms Forever. Walls of lockers and trophy cases and bulletin boards.

  A calico kitten with a white face is trapped inside a vending machine, her spotted paws tapping the inside of the glass, its jaw opening wider and wider with each cry. The kitten is trapped behind the HH latch, the salted pretzels. Corvus runs over so quickly she drops her bag, unaware of her hand covering her mouth. She says, Poor furry baby! Her hand on the other side of the glass, shadowing the paw.

  She presses HH and unzips her book bag.

  Walking the stone path home through the cemetery, she knows most of the names engraved here by heart. She likes some gravestones more than others, she likes some of the names more than others, and she has her favorites. She imagines the lives of all the names here when she gets the chance to be alone and away from everything.

  Corvus whispers, Kitty, I wanted to die today but instead I took a walk. I took a walk and kept walking for a long time and then I got a little lost, I think. I read all these gravestones. She kisses the cat’s ears while the thing purrs. Corvus yawns and shakes from the cold in the glow of the moon; her breath puffs visibly in the air. She says, Let’s run away together. Corvus meows and says, You and me. Let’s run away together, Kitty.

  Corvus gasps, I fucking can’t. She says, I fucking can’t, barely getting any air. Her first ever panic attack. Her legs are paper.

  With some of her belly exposed, flat on her back on the floor, Michelle reads from a thick textbook: The brain keeps developing and developing and thus forming throughout an entire lifespan. Michelle looks up from the page, snaps the book closed, and says, So you’re a new person all the time.

  Petting the cat, conscious only of her own little world, it takes a soft moment before Corvus sees Michelle is staring. She smiles and says, The word develops makes me think of breasts. The brain develops like boobs for an entire lifespan.

  Michelle cackles and pedals her
feet, fondling her own breasts in mime, and the kitten torpedoes out the door for no good reason. The door rattles and a little draft comes through. The girls laugh and shiver in unison, tears swelling in their eyes as they come down from their high.

  Corvus looks where the door is ajar and says, I have a bad feeling about the kitty. I feel like something really bad is going to happen to the kitty.

  Michelle takes another hit from the pipe and in a haze says, It’s kind of scary but I was feeling the exact same way. She looks toward the hallway as though something were creeping by on the other side of the wall. She says, Like that cat is totally going to die.

  On her forearm, Corvus sometimes writes phrases she likes or something from the day. Tonight, the words are burnt childhood photos.

  Michelle takes another hit, holds in her breath, and her eyes water more. She moves her mouth like a goldfish, talking while trying to hold her breath. She asks, So, are you coming to my party?

  Corvus says, You know what I always say. No cute boys, no party.

  Yeah, you suck, Michelle says. You never come to my parties.

  I don’t want to come because people suck. High school kids suck, Corvus says, smiling.

  Michelle catches a glance of Corvus’s forearm and reads what it says. She says, I didn’t see any baby pictures of you downstairs.

  Corvus makes the words heavier with a black pen and answers, My mom burned them when she was hammered one night. There’s not one left.

  She almost carves her arm with ink.

  Michelle watches carefully, holding her breath, as Corvus deepens her tattoo. There’s even a little blood.

  There are moments Corvus can feel a shift happening. Where does all the good go? Michelle flicks her cigarette into heavy rain, waves goodbye, and leaves through the back door. Corvus can hear her mom’s rusty truck pulling into the garage, and the engine dies; the headlights illuminate the carpet hairs from beneath the door, then black. Without knowing what possesses her to do so, Corvus quickly rushes to turn off all the lights and hides behind the curtains; her hurried breathing brings her pulse pounding to her ears. When she tries to calm herself down, she says, There is no center, there is no center, over and over again. There is no center ever.

  Her drenched mother stumbles in the front door with a strong wind, and little things flutter in the house, magazine pages and opened letters. A gigantic man almost twice her mother’s size follows her in. He shuts the door gently behind him and whispers something into her ear. She says, No, laughing. My daughter is asleep, and James is at the casino.

  She shakes her hips, swaying backwards, and hoarse-voiced says, I’m all yours.

  Keep your body still, the man says, locking the door behind him, and he touches the light switch.

  He says, The lights are off. They take swigs from the flask chained to his belt.

  Corvus paces her breathing from the dark shadow of the curtain. She stands there like she is never leaving the curtain, like she has become part of the house, like she is changed forever. She watches her mother and the giant embrace and kiss before racing each other for the bedroom upstairs. Listening to their footsteps, it dawns on Corvus anew how horrible her mother is, how this keeps shocking her enough to care. Their moans fill the house, sounds bleeding through the thin walls, and Corvus remains stiff among the curtains.

  When she finally leaves the curtains, she walks to the ever-playing radio in her room right at the moment the phone rings. Just past midnight. My Bloody Valentine. The kitten looks dead asleep in the space between her bed and the wall. The phone reads, PAPA.

  Corvus answers, When are you coming home?

  What? His voice is warbled.

  Corvus can hear slot machines in the background. A little louder she says, When are you coming home? You haven’t even left the lobby.

  He takes his time, taking a drag from his cigarette, and watches anonymous women drift across the room, a sea of lights, bells, and chimes.

  Corvus says, Papa.

  I lost another ten thousand, he says. His breaths are tense and measured.

  He says, I think this time I’m going to die, I’m so stressed out, baby. Papa doesn’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do.

  Black markets. Hired killers. Orca whales. Idle times, little moments to herself, can drift her mind to strange, comforting places. Imagined worlds and perfect self-movies. If only Corvus could be an actor playing herself in a movie, she thinks. Perhaps then things would become more manageable: the terrain would be known, life all-encompassing would be her choosing, her challenging role to play. It would all be just a game, for real. Everything would be easier, death would end the movie.

  Corvus, after hanging up the phone call with her father, lets the air eat at her from all over. There is a ringing in her ears, a buzzing on her skin. Fuck, she says. Fuck me.

  Without packing a bag, she runs out the back door to Michelle’s house. The door slams. The rain is freezing but running down the middle of the road feels transformative. She feels more alive, more present; the air has a charge. The rain behind Corvus seems to be falling from all directions, endless droplets bouncing high from the dark pavement and parked cars.

  Michelle answers the door immediately. She can’t see Corvus’s eyes, can’t tell if she’s happy or sad, crying or drenched.

  I thought you said you weren’t coming to the party, says Michelle. Something fragile in her shakes from the breeze and the pleasant surprise. Just having Corvus there in front of her has always silently delighted Michelle, and she smiles in flashes every time Corvus makes her way back to her. Corvus is breathing hard, her face hidden inside her black hood. There is a mouth there.

  Smiling to her gums, Michelle says, You said, No cute boys, no party.

  Corvus asks, Can I ask a huge favor?

  Of course.

  Corvus asks, Can I bum a cigarette?

  Michelle reaches for her back pockets, opens the door wider, and fishes for her lighter. The music, vibrating the walls inside, is hypnotic, so melodic. Boys in baseball caps and polo shirts walk up and down the hallway, girls in baseball caps and high-top sneakers sit and smoke on the steps. Michelle hands Corvus her last cigarette. She asks, Are you crying?

  No, Corvus says, shaking her head. It’s raining.

  Someone hands Corvus a Polaroid—it’s a photo of herself she doesn’t recognize—and the boy who gives it to her is the chubbiest at the party. The photo feels like a gift from a nightmare, something she should not be holding. It’s scary to see you made it through a night you don’t remember. The feeling is like eyeing a speeding car rush past you, missing you by an inch or a second. There is a ringing in her ears still, her face bright and damp. Outside, the rain slackens, and trees push against the windows of the tall Victorian house.

  He’s the quietest boy at the party but he’s polite, Corvus can tell that he’s polite. He waits with his head down and doesn’t say anything; he hands her a red plastic cup of water.

  It is a Polaroid of her biting a knife with an unknown hand cupping her breast outside her tank top. In the photo, her eyes are closed, and she looks more at peace than she has been recently.

  She feels a tingling on her neck and the turbulence of the dryer in its final spin against her back. She’s wearing Michelle’s old Slayer T-shirt, which is stretched at the chest, waiting for her clothes to dry in a nook by the stairs away from the party. A small birthmark on her chest shows above her camisole underneath: it looks like a crescent moon. Corvus likes this boy almost immediately and she arches her back, watching where he stares.

  She imagines having larger breasts than she does. Corvus says, Thank you. I don’t remember this. She shakes the Polaroid like it’s developing.

  He looks up at her and sticks out his hand and says, Perry, my name is Perry. That’s my hand.

  It is, says her voice.

  No, I mean that’s my hand in the photo.

  She says, This is you?

  Corvus
looks at the photo again and looks at his hand and says, I don’t remember this at all, Perry. She doesn’t reach to shake his hand.

  Perry appears shocked to hear his own name. His face glows, and he stands a little straighter.

  Perry nods and says, I’m sorry, I think you were really drunk. And sad about something but you wouldn’t say. You stuck out a knife toward me and asked me to take a picture. You yelled for my hand.

  Corvus whispers, Jesus. I’m sorry.

  Perry hands her a joint and says, No, I’m sorry, and walks away to the other end of the party, into the cloud of smoke and dim neon. The dance floor lights up downstairs. Corvus watches Perry join the others, a sea of dark bobbing heads, young bodies.

  A bedroom door is flung open and Michelle walks out, her skirt rolled to her waist. There is blood on her knuckles as she smiles and walks up to Corvus. Michelle says, Hey.

  A boy with a bloody nose runs out of the room looking upset, holding his baseball cap in one hand. He nearly falls on his face scrambling away.

  Michelle sits next to Corvus on the stairs and Corvus can see Michelle’s clothes are nearly ruined, there are little tears here and there. Michelle says, I lost a button.

  Corvus asks, What happened to that guy? She eyes a small trail of blood on the carpet.

  Asshole kept telling me to smile so I told him to smile, says Michelle, her voice sounding hollow and far away. Michelle takes the Polaroid from Corvus’s grip. She asks, Did you say hi to Perry?

  Did you see this happen?

  Michelle starts cackling, leaning her head against Corvus’s chest and collarbone.

  Michelle says, You don’t remember? The other night. You pulled a knife on that guy and ordered him around. It was funny as shit.

  Corvus asks, What else happened?

  You did another shot of tequila and told him you liked him a lot. Michelle’s eyes look as though she is about to faint. She says, You told him to get you high the next time you see him.