Pretty Broken Things

by Melissa Marr

  What I do remember is red. There was red. And wet. And pain.

  “Tess?” Michael is talking, maybe he was talking before this, too.

  I tuck my hand into the fold of his arm. “The first time you see a dead girl it changes things.”

  I can tell him that much.

  Maybe I can find a way to share enough to feel absolved, but not so much that I cannot atone, maybe I can let it drift away. The memories. The sins. All of it.

  His steps lose their rhythm. “Oh?”

  I nod. “They’re not all the same, but they’re always memorable.”

  “Dead girls?”

  “Yes.”

  He tenses so slightly that I wouldn’t notice if not for the way my hand holds his arm. It’s not until we meander along Frenchman Street that he asks, “Have you seen a lot of dead people?”

  I shrug.

  “Was it a job?”

  “No.”

  I lead him past the crowd spilling out of the Apple Barrel. Music reaches out of the tiny bar like a hand trying to pull me in. I rarely resist. It’s one of the safest ways to forget myself, especially in a city with music in her bones.

  That’s why we’re in the Marigny.

  I’ve woken on the stoops of so many houses here. People know me here. They know that I am not always safe. Bringing Michael here is also a bad idea because of the tourists that find their way to the Marigny. They have their phones and cameras, and sometimes they are the biggest threats I face. My photo. My exposure. I look different now, just another lost soul in a city made up of the lost

  But he is someone who will be photographed.

  I did bad things. I had to do them, or I’d be dead. But they were still bad. I am still a bad person.

  “It wasn’t a job.” I pause to watch a tarot reader new to the street. There are several who set up here, but she’s not the regular girl. I watch her light her incense stick, listen to the jangle of her many bracelets.

  “So . . .” He clears his throat. “Do you mean—”

  “I know what you want.” I step in front of him. “I knew when you walked in. I probably knew years ago when I fucked you after a signing in Savannah.”

  “No. We didn't . . . we couldn't. I’d have remembered you, your tattoos. That tattoo especially.” He frowns and motions to my back.

  “Of your words? I got that one after we fucked.” I look past him to where a drunk is hassling one of the guys whose stoop I’ve shared. I realize that it was Richmond, not Savannah where I met Michael the first time. Or maybe it was neither. Facts are fluid. I know Michael was in my bed before New Orleans. The rest is fluid.

  “Stay here.” I wade into the street where the drunk has just knocked over the man whose name I can’t recall.

  I force myself to pretend I can’t see Michael watching me.

  “Back up.” I hold my hand out to the drunk. He smells like piss.

  The two men both look at me. The one I know is higher than anyone ought to be. Whatever he’s on right now has him unable to defend himself. I don’t ask. I don’t care. He’s rescued me. Names aren’t what matter sometimes. Actions are.

  He still remembers my name, though. “Tessie!”

  “Tess,” I correct. “I’m Tess now.”

  He grins. “I’m always Lucas.”

  I see Michael still standing in the street watching us. He’s not with me. He’s not a part of this place or moment, but I know he’ll steal it for his book. He’ll offer the shell of it, the pieces from the outside. That’s all his sort can do. It sparks the edge of the anger I was already feeling, anger that the drunk hassling Lucas provoked first.

  I step between the two men. “You need to back off.”

  The drunk laughs, but Lucas steps onto the sidewalk.

  “Don’t laugh at Tessie,” Lucas warns. I hear fear in here, but he smiles a drunken smile at me. “It’s okay, Tessie. He don’t mean me no harm.” He glances at the other drunk. “Right, man?”

  “You spilled my whole fucking cup of beer. You owe me a drink.” The man reaches past me and shoves his palm into Lucas' shoulder.

  I slap his hand away and glance at Lucas, who shrugs.

  “Plenty of bars.” I gesture to Frenchman Street, a mass of bars, not neon nightmares like Bourbon Street but plenty of options for both a broke drunk and a discerning one.

  The drunk folds his arms in the way of the belligerent and stupid. “Who the fuck are—”

  “It’s okay,” Lucas steps back and drops his arm around my shoulder. “It’s okay, Tessie.”

  “Well, Tessie can butt the fuck out or buy me a beer.”

  “Tess,” I repeat, but I’m not feeling so much like Tess right now.

  Tessie is caged. The Klonapin helps, but I don’t remember how many I’ve had today. I try to do better at that, at keeping track of my pills now, but Michael’s attempts to stare into the parts of me underneath the now unravel me more than I like. Tessie is in there, under the layers that I’ve added to become Tess.

  I reach into my bag for the bottle of Klonopin.

  Lucas reaches into his pockets too, pulling out a few crumpled bills and coins. “I’ll buy him one. It’s okay.” He sounds more nervous by the moment. “You don’t have to do anything. It’s okay. It’s okay.” He starts crooning the words. “It’s all okay here, Tessie.”

  I realize that he knows more than either of us want him to. He didn’t think I was reaching for pills; he thought I was going for a weapon. He knows what I am, knows things that aren’t okay to speak.

  Would he tell? Is he a threat? No one believes people like Lucas. Still, it’s one thing for me to tell Michael bits and pieces of what I am, who I once was, but I control my story. I define myself. No one, no man, will ever define me again.

  “I’m Tess.”

  “Don’t mean no thing, girl.” Lucas straightens up, sounding clearer for a moment.

  Strangers, drunk tourists who’ve found their way down here and locals who know me, are taking notice. Attention isn’t good.

  “Lucas don’t share no ghosts.” He pats his chest, over his heart, twice.

  I nod. I want to believe him. I want to apologize.

  And I want to slit his throat. I want to feel safe, but the answer isn’t Klonapin tonight. There are things that a woman does to keep safe, things that maybe aren’t right, but they still need to be done.

  I let go of the pill bottle and pull a twenty out of my wallet. I hand it to Lucas. “Go. Get of here.”

  It’s enough money for both of them to get drunker--or it’s enough to take a bus. I’m guessing that Lucas will use it to buy beer, but he could run if he wanted.

  “It’s not your fault, Tessie,” Lucas says.

  They walk away, and I have to tell myself that no one listens to the mad and drunk. No one would listen to Lucas. Plus, he shared his stoop with we. I shouldn’t hurt a man who shared his stoop.

  He knows things though. Knowing means talking, and talking means he’s choosing whether or not I’m not safe. It gives him power over me.

  I hope he takes the money and buys a bus ticket. I want to be okay. I want to be Tess now.

  I’m still standing in the street when Michael joins me.

  “What was that?”

  I shake my head.

  “Tess?”

  “He spilled his beer,” I manage to say. It’s all I can say. There are too many other words twisting in my throat. I feel like I’m choking on them.

  “Okay . . .”

  “Sometimes I need to do things,” I offer. It’s truth. It’s been a truth for a long time. It is now and always true. “I want to be safe, Michael. Sometimes that’s everything.”

  And I see the flicker of something far from monstrous in his expression. He might want my story. He might want my body. Right now, though, in this instant, Michael cares.

  If he knew the things that Lucas knew, would he still look at me like I was a lost girl in need of a hero? If he knew that I wanted to find Lucas' stoo
p tonight to make sure he didn’t spill my secrets, would he still pull me into his arms as he just did?

  The questions are unanswered, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

  “Come on.” He leads me to music, puts a drink in my hand, and wraps his arms around me.

  I dance in the frame of Michael’s arms. His idea of dancing is the occasional sway of the perpetually awkward upper-class man. He can’t let go of his boundaries, even here, even in a city with sin in her very bones and beams.

  “Are you okay?” he asks between sets. “Earlier in the street . . .”

  “Lucas let me share his stoop.”

  “The bum?”

  “I was having a bad time. He watched me so I could sleep.”

  “At your house?”

  “No, on his porch, Michael. I don’t let people into my house.”

  Letting strangers into the space where you bed down is asking for trouble. Letting people carry your secrets is asking for exposure.

  My gaze darts to the door. I can’t help thinking of Lucas. He knows enough of my secrets that he is a risk. No one listens to the ravings of the drunk or mad, but Lucas listened to me more than I realized he had.

  Now I need to fix it.

  I need to get Michael out of here and handle Lucas.

  7

  Michael

  After we drink, after Tess dances, after we return to my rented flat and fuck, I watch her dress by the light that slips through the drapes. The windows here are as tall as doors, with exterior shutters that span the height of them. The shutters, drapes, and windows are all flung open now. It seems peculiar to me, but Tess likes them open. Even when she’s naked, she prefers that the shutters and curtains are open.

  My agent would have fits if she knew.

  My family would threaten me.

  It’s my livelihood though, my reputation, my money. My grandmother could go to her lawyers and deny me my trust fund, but I think she’s also the only one who would be amused by my indiscretions. She knows more than my mother realizes, and she takes pleasure in my inappropriate choices. I think she may have been far less modest in her youth than my family pretends.

  “I can’t stay.” Tess announces it abruptly, as if I couldn’t figure that out. She’s dressed almost as soon as she stands.

  Unlike most women who seem to believe that a cuddle is more important than the sex itself, Tess has no patience for affectionate touches.

  It’s one of the things I appreciate about her, but it sets me off kilter all the same. There aren’t many times in my life where I’ve felt like the one with no power, but watching her refuse to look at me prickles the vestiges of childhood’s tattered baggage. It’s not the sort of thing that even my overpriced therapist would’ve bothered with when I used to drag myself across Manhattan to her office. I wouldn’t say I have abandonment issues, but I’m human. No one likes feeling discarded, and I’m simply not used to it.

  “Do you have a pet to feed?”

  She pauses, pulling her hair over her shoulder and braiding it silently. There’s an expression she gets, as if she’s trying to figure out a puzzle. Whatever is wrong with Tess—and there is far more broken than even she might realize—there is an awareness that she must mimic a functional person. That’s what it is though: mimicry.

  “I like animals.” She smiles. There’s something helpless about her when she’s like this. It’s the side of her that the bartender sees, the part that makes people warn me to be kind to her. I must resist getting too drawn in by it.

  “Me too,” I lie. I couldn’t care less about animals, unless they’re seasoned and on my plate. “But neither of us have any, so there’s no reason you couldn’t stay here.”

  Tess laughs like so many women at too many parties in my life. It’s disingenuous enough to set my teeth on edge. For all of the vulnerability in her, Tess also has a condescension that is familiar—and in that moment I know one of her secrets.

  “You came from money.” I realize it’s true even before I see the worry that flashes on her face when I say it. Tess doesn’t admit I’ve gleaned a detail she’d rather I hadn’t. Nothing more than a tightening around her eyes and lips tells me that she’s upset by my epiphany. Instead, Tess saunters toward me with a sway in her hips that I will describe as rolling in the book.

  The real Tess isn’t the character I need. She’s too brittle, too close to fractures. The fictional version will need to have softer edges to sell the sparrow image I have of her character. The real Tess has the sort of talons that call to mind something more dangerous. Right now, they are glinting.

  She leans in and trails those talons over my stomach in a way that shouldn’t frighten me, but does.

  “Goodbye, Michael.”

  I’ve noticed that it’s always a vaguely hopeful phrase when she says it, as if she’s trying to make every exit a permanent one.

  “Goodnight.”

  She presses her lips tighter together, straining the smile she’s offered, but she flutters her fingers at me.

  Definitely from money.

  The door falls shut with a click.

  I wait.

  Three. Two. One.

  The press of her palm on the door as she makes sure it’s closed is the last of her presence. In this, and in so much more, Tess is a creature of habits. I collect them to piece together the story she thinks I won’t get out of her silences and evasions. She’s comfortable with being seen even while mid-sex-act, but she also has a pathological need to check security of doors. She needs to inspect the corners of rooms, light the spaces where unwanted surprises could lurk. She may not speak it, but at some point, she’s felt unsafe in her home.

  Tess looks for faces in the shadows. Not in restaurants. Not in the street. The places where most women I’ve known would seek out threats are not where Tess expects danger to wait. She keeps a light on in the bathroom. Earlier I turned it off to watch her reaction. It’s back on now. It took all of six minutes before she had to find an excuse to do so.

  I stare at the light and wonder at the possibilities for a plot.

  Sometimes I don’t think any secrets she reveals will be as complicated as the scenarios I imagine when my fictional Tess blends into the details of the real Tess. Was there an attacker? Is she running from a rapist that targeted college girls in her small liberal arts school? Did she walk into the darkened room and find him there? I laugh at the camp of that idea. It’s been done too often, too many ways.

  I grab my trousers and get dressed. The second drawer of the bureau holds the notebook where I’ve been jotting down my notes and passages. It’s a strange truth that sometimes writers just know when we’re holding something special in our hands. It doesn’t mean we’ll be able to pull it off, but it does mean that we know there’s gold in the dirt where we’re burrowing our fingers.

  Tess is gold.

  I don’t skim the parts already written in my notebook. Not tonight. I want to capture the unvarnished truths from the cracks in Tess’ defenses. I want to contain her in the clean, white pages so later I can dress her up like those paper dolls my sister had when we were children. As time passes, I’ll add the costumes, the cut-out dresses of a woman who will carry my name back up to the top.

  The scratch of nib on paper is a comforting sound in the quiet of my temporary home. I can hear the voices of tourists in the streets of the French Quarter, the too sharp laugh of drunk women. They look in through the still-open windows, but it bothers me as it didn’t when Tess was astride me. Writing is more intimate than fucking. It might not be my soul I’m trying to ascribe to paper, but it is still the bones and breath of a real person contained by the ink in these pages.

  I close the notebook before I get up to close the drapes and shove the book back into the drawer. It nestles between carefully folded undershirts. The city is too hot for so many layers of clothing, at least for me. I see Southern gentleman—or those playing at being old South aristocracy—with their pressed shirts over undershirts
, with vests and ties and hats. Some wear a suit coat too. A few add the eccentricities of cane or antique jewelry. They add a strange false elegance to the city, much like the dripping vines and ornate ironwork. The surface of the place, the pieces caught in old photographs and tourist brochures, zero in on the timeless grace of the Crescent City.

  They don’t include the drunken women in their sharp heeled shoes or the pervasive stench of vomit and piss that steams and rises in the morning sun every day. That’s the heart of this city, though: filth and the consequences of bad decisions. I don’t know why I bothered with any other city. New Orleans is beautiful and dark, simmering with jewels that look enticing in the flickering gas lights that are still used in the French Quarter, but her feet are mired in things we try to wash away every morning.

  They come back. All the dark things come back.

  Tess’ secrets will come back, too.

  8

  Tess

  There is nothing wrong with sex. There is nothing wrong with Michael. He's a perfectly serviceable lover. If I thought sex would ease my stress though, I'd still be selling my ass on Bourbon Street. Every buttoned-up-too-tight man wants a woman they wouldn't ever bring home. They fuck us, and then they return to their tedious lives, safe and oblivious, and for years, I have benefitted from their need to take a stroll in a world they can't even truly imagine.

  Sex is a thin bandage on a seeping wound, for me. It doesn't make me forget my problems. Talking doesn’t fix them. Drinking doesn’t. Sex doesn’t.

  Running hasn’t really fixed my problems, either.

  But I’m alive. That is something.

  And it’s something I won’t let anyone take away from me—which means I must deal with the reality that Lucas knows things he ought not.

  I should die for my mistakes. I remember red, remember gurgling sounds. Tessie is the person I try not to be. She's a woman who loved a man who turned out to be a monster.