“Maybe she is and that’s why.”
“Do you think I should visit her?”
“Katerina, if the woman closed herself to the world, why would she want your company. You are the world.” She blushes, taking it as a compliment. I mean that she is noisy and phony and almost concrete like at times.
We stay quiet for a while, eating in peace. A man in a tuxedo plays piano next to our table.
“Oh!” She cries.
“Jesus, calm down.”
“You know her! From high school!”
“I met a lot of girls in high school.” I tell her.
“Yes, yes, but she had a crush on you!”
“A lot of girls had crushes on me, Katerina.”
“No, no, I remember when I told you about… About the thing I had with a girl you said you knew exactly who I was talking about.”
“This is why you think you ought to visit her.” I laugh, “She was your lesbian lover.”
She looks offended. “She was my friend, I liked her.”
“Don’t be sentimental.”
My wife waves her fingers at a waiter and he pours her more champagne that she promptly drinks in a swift sway. When she speaks again her hands are trembling,
“I used to paint my lips red for her.”
the alligator
This guy is trying to get me hot, I tell him to watch it but, the way he’s looking at me, like he’s just waiting to punch my face, I know he won’t back down. Will is rolling a cigarette a couple of feet from us like this has nothing to do with him.
“What do you do, do you just, sit here and,” The guy is stuttering with rage “What, do you think she’s waiting for you?”
“It is none of your concern.”
“Right, right...” He smirks. “You know, I remember when she stopped loving you. We all thought you two would end up together. Didn’t we Will? I bet you thought so as well and that’s why you are here.”
“You don’t say.”
“But do you want to know what she told me the last time we saw each other?”
“Sure.”
“There are between fifty to seventy five trillion cells in the body, she said. Individual cells have a finite lifespan and, when they die off, they are replaced with new cells, she said. I’m clean, she said.”
I couldn’t help but smile. She would say something like that.
I wished she had said it to me.
“You call me pathetic yet you sit here” He continued, “Two streets away from her house and rejoice because you think you’re the reason she’s like this. You think you’re making her wait for you, that she’s looking out of her window for you, that’s what you think, I can see right through you, motherfucker.”
Will grabbed his chest. “Easy now,”
“No,” I rolled my eyes like I was completely above all of this. “Let him.”
“The truth is she’s not waiting for you. Didn’t you hear me? She wants to be alone.”
“And I respect that unlike you.”
“Respect!” he laughed, “You used her, treated her like trash”.
“You don’t know a thing about my relationship with her.”
People had this opinion because she talked about us, often drunk and crying, about the things I did, and I kept quiet. Truth is we weren’t together. She was in love with me and I loved her in a different way. My actions may have caused her pain but she wasn’t my girlfriend. She knew me; she knew the things I was capable of. She knew me better than anyone else; she was my best friend. This kid, I know, five or six years younger than me, came into my life and called bullshit to this well constructed façade I had spent my early twenties creating. I couldn’t take it. I loved her, I did, and I always hoped she believed that, at least that. But I couldn’t give her what she wanted and we wanted completely different things; she wanted to live as honestly as she possibly could, I wanted to be someone else, and I’ve always wanted to be something but myself.
Shortly after we met I told her about a good friend whom I hadn’t seen in years. I told her about that guy and she was so moved, those young huge eyes shinning, with the possibility that such thing could happen to our friendship as well. And it did, of course it did. And I know it hurt her but was I obligated to have her in my life? She did know me but I realized her hope was clouding that knowledge; she wanted so badly for me to be good that she forgot the piece of shit person I had always been. I don’t know, maybe she believed she was above the ones I treated badly.
Without her around I could be whatever and whomever I wanted to be. There was no guilt. A week before I got married we fucked and I collapsed on her chest as she caressed my hair and I don’t know what it meant for her but for me it was goodbye.
We barely saw each other after that. A year or so later we ran into each other, did some tequila shots, and she kissed me and I told her about my guilt and she said “I want it,” like fuck you for even being alive.
How could she be my one if I couldn’t fool her?
the suit
I got an e-mail saying there was going to be an intervention for this girl I used to know, it didn’t say what sort of intervention it was, probably drugs or alcohol related, by the memories we shared, it just said they were calling out the lovers she had liked, which reminded me of another e-mail, one she had written to me directly, about a dream she had where all her lovers where swimming around her bedroom like fishes.
I didn’t respond to either of those e-mails. I’m a busy guy.
the dreamer
I arrive early, eager to be the one to lead the troops, but as I cross the road to her street there’s already a group of people outside her house. I shake the hands of those I recognize, “Thank you for coming” I say. Will is leaning against the building’s door with crossed arms like a guard.
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever agreed to.” He sighs.
“I bet that isn’t true,” I chuckle awkwardly “This is good. This is what she needs.”
“Is it? I wonder if what she needs is to be up there alone with her records.”
“That is no way of living and you know it.”
“Do you think these people are here because they love her?”
“Of course!” Surely not as strongly as I love her but how couldn’t they love her.
“I think you are all here to feed on her a little more. Like fucking mosquitos trying to suck her dry of her blood.”
I ignore his comment and point at an unfamiliar guy, “Who’s that?”
“How should I know.”
“She did have a big heart…”
Will laughs, “Our queen of crushing.”
“Does she know we’re coming?”
“Of course.”
I rub my eyes with both hands, “That is not how an intervention works, Will! She shouldn’t see it coming!”
“You are very tiring, you know that? I’m going up.”
“Wait. Aren’t we all?”
“No, I’m going alone. I’m not letting a bunch of cunts invade my friend’s home because the cuntest of them all thinks that’s what she needs.”
“What should I do in the meantime?”
“I don’t know, entertain, reminisce, find your conscience and get these people away from here, it’s your call.”
He takes a key out of his pocket and opens the door and closes it behind him and just like that I find myself cut out from her life again.
the knight
“You look beautiful,” I tell her. She’s wearing a pale blue summer dress; her hair is clean in a ponytail secured by a ribbon on top of her head, a pair of princess like shoes on her feet.
“Do you want them in here?”
“No.”
“Should I go as well?”
“No.”
I lock the door.
“Why me?”
“Because you were honest.” She takes my hand in hers.
We plug the speakers and take them to the windows.
/>
“You’re a good person, Will.”
“Am I?”
She nods with an infant smile, “You were to me.”
The wind is cold, it blows her skirt, and we laugh out loud with ease.
the alligator
As we stand in the street, like the idiots we are, she opens her windows and looks down at us, like a queen she has always been. She doesn’t look unhappy or sick or in need of help of any kind. Will is close behind her, he gives her a cigarette, I swear she lights it with only her fingers. My neck cracks. “Is she going to do a speech or something?” A woman in front of me asks. “This is the weirdest thing,” Someone behind me says. Who are these people? Did they even meet her? She’s strange and terrifying and wonderful and suddenly there are loud guitars and frantic drums and a raspy voice almost screaming and some of us look around searching for a source others realize almost instantly it’s coming from her house. I laugh maniacally. She’s waving at us from her tower and Will is looking directly at me and laughing as well. This is her way of telling us to fuck off.
The speakers on the window, with a song that tells us exactly what she’s feeling, remind me of that fire scene in Six Feet Under and I know, I know, she’s thinking the same thing and with that certainty I walk away.
Nothing has changed between us.
It never will.
None of us need saving.
her
It’s a half moon. The night is hot on my skin. Will helped me change the hinges on the door and now it actually closes without a problem. I oil them weekly just to be sure. He is the only one who still comes around, with cigarette leaves and vegetables he grows in his own garden, although not as often as when he thought I was, I don’t know, suicidal. Most days it’s just me and my Walkmen records, the ground bellow and the empty sky. Exactly how I wanted. I don’t wait for a thing, nor a person or death; I simply live in my world free of poisonous relationships, on the 138th street, my little house of savages, like the witch I’ve always wanted to be.
“We will carry on,” I sing.
“Don’t worry about me,” I sing.
“We can’t be beat,” I sing.
About the author
Natacha Cutler is a girl and a feminist. She suffers from a panic disorder and agoraphobia and lives with her grandmother in a tiny Portuguese village. She’s currently dating a communist. She mostly reads fan fiction about homosexual werewolves.
Connect with the author
Hi! Thank you so much for reading my first tiny book. I hope you have enjoyed it and can’t wait to share more stories with you guys. I keep an inspirational blog, for my writings, and you are more than welcome to drop me a line. Stay excellent!
Blog: https://ceaseroundedfury.tumblr.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Cover art: https://finishform.tumblr.com
SHORT STORIES vol i Page 3
