Atheists Who Kneel and Pray

by Tarryn Fisher

  “Two years,” I said.

  “That’s a long time.”

  “It feels more like two months.” I nodded. “But that’s how it is when you have a good thing, yeah?”

  She looked away and took a sip of her drink. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Oh yeah. A breakup. I remembered the day in the tea shop when she spilled her guts to a British stranger.

  “How have you been doing with that?”

  She shrugged.

  “Do you and David live together?”

  “Practically,” I said. “Though we keep our separate places.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Funny, two years together and you still haven’t moved in.”

  “People don’t need to live together to be together,” I said. “We like our space.”

  She smiled. It was a condescending smile, not sweet or friendly. I spoke girl like a fucking boss, you know?

  “When I’m in love I can’t stand to be apart from the person. He’s like a drug. Pure addiction.” She looked up at the ceiling like she was having an orgasm and lightly touched her neck. I wondered what it was like to be that kind of addicted to a human being. I looked over at David who was watching Petra with a glazed look in his eyes. I removed my hand from his crotch, annoyed.

  David gave me a disappointed look and turned back to Mr. LA.

  “It must be a whole thing to date a musician,” she said, softly. “Being on the other end of all that passion and creativity. Being someone’s muse.”

  My eyes needed to roll, they asked to roll, but I kept them focused on Petra. Steady, girls. I wanted to tell her that I’d evaluated her and knew what ran through her psychological veins.

  You want to be someone’s what-if, I told her in my mind. Be beautiful enough and important enough to inspire someone who had actual talent. It was more of a glamorous job than being the artist.

  “I see him as David,” I told her. “The artist is part of the person, not the total sum of them.”

  Petra looked perplexed. “You must not be an artist.” She smiled faintly.

  She was playing games with me, trying to make me think I wasn’t right for him. I was heated, fidgety in my anger. The LA couple was sliding out of the booth, bidding us farewell. I moved my sharp response away from her and said a mechanical goodbye. Petra’s words were ringing in my ears. I wasn’t the angry type. It took a bit to rile me up—get under my skin— but her flippant insinuation that I don’t understand him pricked a rather large nerve. David put his arm around my waist, but I was stiff and uncomfortable as I watched the LA couple walk toward the doors. I was so distracted I hadn’t even learned their names.

  “Do you want to stay for another drink or go to my place so I can fuck you?” he asked, quietly.

  I looked over my shoulder, at Petra. She was staring at us, and I was sure she’d heard him. I decided to make the most of it.

  “Let’s go fuck,” I said and then kissed his neck.

  I could see the goose bumps erupt across his skin. We said goodbye and slid from our places at the table. When we walked out his arm was still firmly positioned around me.

  When we got to his place I settled myself on the sofa while he went to the kitchen. When he came back he was carrying a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

  “What are we celebrating?” I asked.

  “Our two-year anniversary.”

  I felt myself flush with embarrassment. “Oh, you heard that, did you?”

  “Well, I was sitting right next to you.”

  “Supposed to be talking to your fancy LA producers, not eavesdropping!” I laughed.

  He set the champagne and glasses on the floor and sat down next to me.

  “She was showing a little too much interest in you. I needed to set her straight.”

  “With a lie?” He was smiling which sort of lightened the situation, but I was still annoyed at being called out.

  “I figured she might avert her eyes if she knew we were two years deep,” I said, plucking on a string that was hanging from my shirt.

  David pulled me onto his lap so that I was straddling him.

  “What did you say about deep?”

  His voice was gruff, it made me soft and pliable. I pressed my forehead against his and moved my hips so that I was grinding against him. David moaned into my neck and grabbed my waist to help.

  “You aren’t attracted to her, are you?” I asked.

  “Who, Yara? Why are you asking me this right now?”

  I stopped moving and his eyes snapped open.

  “Petra,” I said. “The Suicide Girl.”

  He groaned. “I’m attracted to you.”

  I moved a little and he perked up like he was in the clear.

  “And who else?”

  He stood up, lifting me with him and started walking toward the bedroom. “I have it bad for Courtney Love…”

  I pushed away from his chest and tried to wriggle out of his arms.

  “That’s bloody foul,” I said.

  “Just kidding, English! Seriously. You’re the one who brought up Suicide Girls.”

  I decided to let it go. For now, because he was laying me down on the bed and kissing my thighs.

  The next time I saw Petra it was in my territory—the hollow ting of freshly washed glasses, the smell of orange rinds, and the chatter of people who were momentarily happy, their real miseries forgotten in the company of friends and food. A good place, a safe place. I was bartending on a Friday night, lifting warm glasses from their drying racks and shelving them. I didn’t usually work Fridays, but the guys were playing a show in Bainbridge and I’d picked up the extra shift to stay busy.

  I’d moved into David’s condo the month before, as he’d appealed to my finances, saying it was a smart move to live with him and save money. I thought that was a smart move on his part. Petra came in with a group of friends, each of them carrying a brightly wrapped parcel in their hands. A birthday party, but for whom? They sat in the dining room in earshot of the bar. I strained my ears to hear them. And speak they did. Petra’s tongue was loose and liberated by the strong drinks I was making.

  It was her birthday and she was talking about David. I could make out the excitement in her voice even over the din of the Friday night crowd.

  “You just…you have to see him to know how talented he is.”

  “I guess we’ll see tonight,” a male voice said. I could hear the mocking in his voice.

  “Petra’s boyfriend,” someone else laughed. “She wishes,” someone else called out. I heard them all laugh, including Petra who didn’t deny it.

  I winced, walked to the opposite side of the bar so I couldn’t hear any more of it. I’d not been in this position before where a woman was actively pursuing the man I was seeing. Her worship of him made me feel untethered. I didn’t know how to react or respond. David would blow it off if I told him. Men did that, treated female fawning like it wasn’t a thing, like a woman couldn’t lure them away with cunning and pussy. They could. I’d done it myself a time or two.

  Since Petra had arrived in David’s life I’d taken to buying lingerie. I’d never felt the need to prop up my tits, decorate my ass with lace and ribbons until a much prettier, much more self-assured woman came along. And now the frilly garments were a spreading disease in David’s condo, filling drawers and hanging on doors, littering the bedroom floor in blacks, pale pinks, and deep oxblood. Every time I put one on, I felt cheapened. David didn’t pay much attention to any of it. He liked what was underneath the lace and silk. He’d push them aside, pull them off without looking. He wanted the warm soft skin, and yet I kept buying them, a shield against other women. I was sexy, I was kinky, I was the type of girl who got trussed up to have sex. It became so bad that on my birthday David handed me a box. Inside was a lilac nightie cocooned in floral tissue paper. I wanted to cry when I saw it. Another nightie, another stupid, uncomfortable nightie.

  “Do you like it?” David asked. “I know you like t
hat sort of thing…”

  That sort of thing. He thought the nighties were about me. Love for him thrived inside of me, his willingness to buy ridiculous getups because he thought I enjoyed them. I held it close to my chest, nodding.

  Petra’s friends all knew about her infatuation with David. They were going to his show after dinner, the show I was missing because I had chosen to work. I pulled off my apron and set it on the counter, then I went to find my manager. I’d feign illness, I’d tell him I’d been wanting to vomit all night and that if he didn’t let me go I’d…

  He let me leave. I was out of there before Petra and her friends had finished their dinners and watched her unwrap her presents. It was wrong what I was doing. But, I needed to see for myself. I thought about wearing a costume, something to hide my face—a wig perhaps, but it seemed so contrived and silly. So, I went as myself and waited near the bar which was as far away from the stage as you could get.

  They arrived after me, pierced and tattooed, roots in need of dyeing. Petra moved toward the stage while her friends went to the bar to get drinks. Birthday princess. I watched them order a round of shots and carry the little cups to their boyfriend-stealing queen. What had been in those brightly colored packages? Lingerie…? Lipstick…?

  David set down his guitar and pulled the mic stand up to a stool. One leg propped on a rung of the stool, he spoke while lowering the mic, telling jokes to make the audience laugh. I smiled despite myself. He was good, he was getting better every day.

  “We have someone special in the crowd today,” he said.

  I was roped, looking around like everyone else. Would we know the someone special if we saw them? He’d not said anything to me about there being a special guest watching the show tonight. Someone opened a door nearby and fresh air rushed in, light fingers over my heated skin. I closed my eyes for a minute wishing I’d not come, feeling foolish about my paranoia. It was me David loved, me David came home to every night. There would always be women who’d lock their affections on him.

  Musicians were the gods that gave melody to pain, summed it up in rhyme and rhythm. It was easy to feel connected to the person who strummed, or keyed, or sang recognition into your existence. And it was easier to believe they wrote songs just for you. This is mine, they’re singing about what’s mine. How much more extreme did this feeling become when the person singing your pain looked like David Lisey?

  I opened my eyes trying to guess which song was next, what he’d play for the special guest he forgot to tell me about. When he sat on the stool something intimate would be played. His only instrument would be his voice and sometimes his guitar. But his guitar sat neatly beside him as he spoke into the mic, searching the audience with his eyes.

  “Someone special,” he said. And then my flesh crawled, my head spun.

  “Where are you, Petra? Happy Birthday. Let’s all sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to my friend, Petra.”

  The crowd erupted in a badly timed, badly chorused version of the birthday song while Petra rocked happily in front of the stage, staring up at David adoringly. Her friends wrapped their arms around her shoulders, taking videos on their phones. I moved toward the door, my head bowed, my heart hammering. When I was free of the club I took deep gulping breaths of air, but I couldn’t get enough; my lungs felt small and shallow. I walked to the corner of the street, then turned around and went back to the club. I’d stepped in a big wad of gum and my shoes stuck to the sidewalk leaving webby trails of pink. I’d go backstage, wait for the show to be over, and confront David.

  How had he known it was her birthday, or that she was coming? Did they text each other? Did he see her in the day while I was at work? Did she come over to the condo? I turned around at the last moment, requesting an Uber. In two minutes I was tucking my legs into the tight space behind the driver’s seat, asking to be taken to the ferry. I was a passive aggressive coward. That sort of thing clung to your flesh like a smell, rot turned inside out. People could sense it on you; it caused them to be distrustful. It was hard to make friends when you had the smell, hard to keep them when you did make them. You held back from them and they held back from you, an even trade of nothingness. It was a wonder David ever got past it, but now he was there, in the middle, unaffected.

  The condo was dark when I got back. Usually David left the light on in the kitchen when we weren’t home. He said it was depressing to come back to a dark house. But, this time he’d turned it off before he left. I wondered if it was an omen. I changed out of the jeans and shirt I was wearing and back into my uniform. David texted me an hour later and said he was on his way home. He never stayed out with the guys anymore, who went for drinks after. He came home to me, tired and sweaty, smiling so big I couldn’t help smiling myself.

  When he walked in the door, I was counting my tips in the kitchen. I hadn’t turned on the light, I wanted to see what he’d say.

  “Why is it so dark in here?” he said.

  “You forgot to leave the light on.”

  My voice sounded accusing but it wasn’t because of the light, it was because of Petra and the birthday song he sang to her.

  “Did I?” he said. “A mistake.”

  He kissed me on my temple and I could smell the cigarette smoke in his hair and on his jacket. Could I smell Petra? Had she hugged him before he left, said thank you for the song? I breathed deeply trying to smell the truth, but there was only David.

  “How was the show?” I asked.

  “Great.”

  He moved over to sort through the mail, distracted. I waited for him to say more, tell me that Petra and her friends had shown up on her birthday, but he didn’t. Weren’t we the couple who shared things about our day, our observations? Hadn’t we texted or come home many times to say to each other: “I saw Ferdinand walking down the street today. He looked rough…” or “That girl, Ginger, the weird one who comes to every show, she was at the gelato shop today; she ordered carrot gelato.”

  We were information sharers, conspirators, psychoanalyzers of our friends, so why then wouldn’t he tell me that he saw Petra, that he sang her a song?

  Something had changed.

  I did a lot of drugs in high school. Everything depressed me: the dull brown bricks of the school building, the white walls of the flat I shared with my mother, the way the girls at my school left the top button open on their uniforms to draw attention to what they would later feed their babies with. We were no different than animals, pursuing little nests and little families. Preening, pretending to be something we were not to draw a mate, tits pushed forward, lips wet with gloss. Drugs softened the harshness of the world, put a blanket over my senses.

  One of my teachers, Miss Mills, saw me strung out in the hallway once and pulled me into an empty classroom to tell me that I had a bright future ahead of me and I was on the fast track to ruining my life. She was the sort that wore her dull brown hair in a low pony every day and looked forward to weekends so she could use her label maker. Her fingernails were always painted, a sign of too much time on your hands. My own fingernails held chipped black polish, bitten down to the quick. In my opinion, she’d already ruined her life, so who was she to judge mine? I’d peeked into her classroom one morning to see if my friend Violet was in there, and I’d seen her bent over her desk shoving biscuits into her mouth. Not even homemade, the kind out of the tin. I used drugs, she used biscuits, practically the same thing. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, I blew her off, laughed in her face.

  Nobody said the right things about drugs to kids; the lingo was stale and the arrow dull. Drugs were for right now, right here. When you’re told that you’re going to ruin your life you aren’t in the place to be thinking about the rest of your life. Does it even exist? Maybe you were not excited about the rest of your life because what you’d lived so far had been absolute shit. You just can’t threaten kids with their futures when they don’t understand the gravity of time. I’d stopped doing drugs when I’d come to terms with the world. I h
ad a professor in university that told me that the spectrums of pain were meant to be felt and that they were beautiful in their own way because they caused change. At first, I’d been appalled—who wanted to experience pain? And then I’d thought of all the girls I’d gone to high school with. The ones from the good, wholesome families. They’d already begun the process of setting up families for themselves. In ten years they’d have an identity crisis. They’d be so tightly wrapped up in their husbands and children they’d not know who they were. They’d experience their own pain. My pain had already caused me change, I knew who I was and what I wanted because of it. I made peace with having a bad mother, and not having a father, and I stopped the whole “this isn’t fair” mentality, which caused me to medicate. Sure, life wasn’t fair. A complete no-brainer when you weren’t being a narcissist. But, doing drugs wasn’t going to change my world. Acceptance was. I’d decided I wanted to feel the full spectrum. But, that didn’t include men. Men could make you hurt harder than your parents, or friends, or anything else could. I’d hold them at arm’s length. My drug was wanderlust. I got high by starting over. We always had a drug. We could replace one with another, but humans were addicts.

  “Yara…Yara…?”

  “Yes?” I was at the window watching the rain fall over the water.

  “Sometimes it’s like your body is here, but you’re not,” David said.

  I smiled. “That’s exactly it.”

  “Where do you go?” he asked.

  He came up behind me and kissed the spot behind my ear. I shivered. His warm lips conjured up dirty thoughts no matter where we were or what we were doing. His lips knew how to do things.

  “I used to do a lot of drugs,” I told him. “Now I do you. And sometimes I think about that.”

  He laughed into my neck, the spicy smell of him all around me.

  “Does this life bore you? Living together, the familiarity?” He started to dig his fingers into my ribs in an attempt to tickle me. I wriggled out of his grip and turned to face him.