by Gemma Files
Beck lowered his eyes, raised them. Gave me a stare, stretched long and level. Contemplative, almost.
“This is the last time I ever talk to you directly, David,” he said finally. “Ever. Unless I’m reading you your rights.”
“I know.”
A sigh. “The murderer’s name is Luther Louvin. He’s been with them for five months. Herson said they all knew what he was going to do—knew it long before he did it. Apparently, he talked about it all the time.”
“And natch, they didn’t feel this meant they had to do anything to stop him.”
“Herson said, and I quote: Love comes the way it comes. All its forms are equally valid.”
An echo in his voice, almost familiar. Four years ago, he would have given me that crooked smile—shared insight acknowledged, the whole partner thing at work. But not now.
Never now.
Love comes the way it comes.
“But you . . . don’t share that view.”
“You know I don’t.”
The barely-veiled implication: And both of us know why.
Then, briskly: “I don’t have a lot of time, so here’s the rest. Herson only said one other thing, that if I couldn’t understand why they gave Louvin shelter, then I didn’t know what real love was. The kind of love that’s the purest expression of who you are.” A pause. “But that I would . . . and soon.”
“He said that.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I guess—” slowly—“you probably wouldn’t believe me, if I told you that was a threat.”
This time, Beck really did smile: All thin and straight, these days—not wry, so much, as bitter. Replying, with deceptive ease: “It wouldn’t surprise me. Although, to be fair, the only person who’s ever threatened me with love . . . is you, David.”
Fever, rising fresh. Glass cough shattering on impact, lodging deep; black ice splinters of night air in the back of my throat, unmelted. Beck saw, and opened the car door. He sat down, gun still kept on me—one-handed, so he could turn the key. The ignition roared, caught.
But before he could shut it, I said, quickly: “Beck—I won’t say ‘I love you’ any more, okay? ’Cause I know you don’t believe me. But what I did—to you—”
“Yes?”
His dark stare, waiting for some kind of easy answer. The name of the puzzle: Human evil. The proof: His rapist ex-partner, drunk and crazy, straining to explain why he broke every bond of trust imaginable—to make it all clear and clean, somehow. Wash it away with a few choice words, if nothing else.
Trying. And failing miserably.
“Like Herson says: ‘It’s just . . . the way I am’.”
Beck shut the car door in my face. Then rolled the window down, just a crack—enough to be heard through. And replied: “Then that’s a pity, David. Because I always wanted to think you were something more.”
* * *
The Cyprians say Love, capital “L,” is whatever you make of it—is you, to the infinite. You outside of you, loving someone like you love yourself; more than, actually.
In my case, it’d have to be.
I wish you love, Detective.
Real love.
Love the way you are.
Love, my emotional brain tumor. Love, my habit, my jones. My uncontrollable urge. My will to power. Love, my unscratched itch—my addiction, with all the word entails:
Ecstasy, mania, withdrawal. My suicide in progress.
I couldn’t have love soft and sweet if I tried—I know, believe me, because I have. I really have.
And suffering Christ! Just look what happened then.
* * *
Valentine’s Day night, four years ago: Rang the doorbell twice, three times. Beck answered on four. Had his pyjamas on already, 1950s slippers like my old man used to wear—sitting around the house, drinking beer till he passed out. Before he ate his gun, and we found out his pension wouldn’t even cover our utility bills.
“David,” Beck said, squinting out at me through the screen—more puzzled than anything else. “It’s very late.”
Not cold, not then. Cold would come later.
With me just nodding, moronically. Panting, so hard I could barely shape the words:
“Back there, with Mrs. Silas—that made you pretty sick, huh? Not too moral, right?”
Gently: “You’re drunk, David. Go home and sleep it off.”
The way his lips moved as he said it—oh, my. Those devil lips that know so well the art of lying . . .
Singing in my head, my groin. Georgia above the belt. Blood below, hissing—pure red/black, just like in the Temple, washing up on an endless tide.
“I did it for you,” I told him, “like I always do. The stuff you won’t. The dirty work, to keep you clean. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“Go home, David. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
His tongue, flickering—oh my, God damn.
And the words rising through me, voicing themselves for the very first time ever. The first, and worst, time.
“I love you, Beck. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
And did I see a little revulsion in his eyes, perhaps? A little bit of fear, even then? Surprise, at any rate.
Repeating, simply:
“Tomorrow.”
Already shutting the door, firmly, stopping just shy of an outright slam. I stuck my foot in the jamb; barely felt the impact, as it rebounded.
“No,” I said. “Tonight.”
My head still singing: Give me your lips, the lips you only let me borrow . . .
My first punch caught him where jaw meets cheek, smashing his glasses like paper: The wire-rimmed frame slicing deep, embedding itself into the flesh and sticking there, a proverbial knife through butter. I picked him up bodily, threw him inside—he went down kicking, but couldn’t find enough purchase to break himself free. One hand shoved down his pyjama pants, found the elastic, ripped, groped for my fly; I kept the other over his mouth while I kneed him in the chest, winding him before he had a chance to really scream.
. . . love me tonight, and let the devil take tomorrow . . .
And when I finally got his leg up high enough to cram myself inside, all he gave was a weird little shriek of outrage—before biting down on the web of skin between my thumb and forefinger, so hard and deep it seemed to explode with a gush of capillary-fed blood.
. . . I know that I must have your kiss although it dooms me, though it consumes me . . .
Jesus, it makes me sick just to remember. Sick at how good it felt. How good it still feels. My secret love for Beck made sudden, awful flesh, through dead Mrs. Silas’ gift—a torch song dream whipped high and hot, let loose to burn down the whole waking world.
Love, this candy-coated, bright red lie that killed my life.
Love, my very own personal . . .
. . . kiss of fire.
* * *
In the alley now, watching the Temple’s red windows flicker; breathing deep for the last of Beck’s exhaust, the only thing of his I’ll ever have again. Left two uniforms on stake-out in front, but I could get by them blind, never mind just drunk. I spent a year waiting for them to resurface, another casing this dump, before I finally gave up on the idea of revenge: Long as Mrs. Silas is still dead, I’m fucked no matter what happens to Herson and the rest. As well I know. Nothing they can threaten me with anymore, them or their Goddess.
But Beck’s a whole ‘nother subject, even going by that bitch Aphrodite’s rules—and that’s where the Temple fell down, back when they taught Mrs. Silas how to work this spell of theirs on poor, dumb, shield-wearing assholes such as myself.
They took it all, everything—all except the one thing that makes me capable of doing what I’m gonna do.
A shed out back. Fuel cans, for the Temple g
enerator. Easy to carry. Easy to set in clusters around the walls, run a trail from pile to pile. Easy to soak myself and walk on in, stinking—Herson’s smelled me drunk before, though never on gas.
“Just wanted to tell you freaks you were right all along,” I’ll say. “’Cause the fact is, I never loved anything till you put this thing on me. Not even myself.”
Singing along, silently, in the gathering red/black dark of my head:
Just like a torch, you set the soul within me burning . . . I must go on along this road of no returning . . .
After which, I think I’ll give Herson a smile—give them all one, just like the day we picked up Mrs. Silas. Wide, and sweet, and waaay too happy to be anything but real bad news.
Saying: “But I do know what love is, real love. Now.”
And then, right then . . .
. . . though it burns me and it turns me into ashes . . .
. . . is when I’ll light the match.
The Diarist
DAY ONE. STARTING small. I went to your driveway, just before dawn, and picked out eighteen uneven white stones from the area falling under your car’s shadow. One for every letter of your full name. Took them home, made the sign of the Cross reversed on their dusty skins in stolen gasoline—my own personal brand of unholy water. With eyes, lips, flesh between nail and finger, back of my throat all burning, breathing out fresh curse with each inverse word: Thee baptize I, Holy Ghost and Son, the Father, of Name the in.
The water was already boiling when I dropped them in. No salt necessary.
When it was all gone, I wrapped the stones in a clean dishcloth, put them back in my purse and walked six blocks down to the nearest sewage drain, which I was pretty sure would count as a river. Assuming the original recipe allowed at least some metaphoric leeway for we poor, unfortunate, city-dwelling practitioners of the Craft.
Then I went home again, and wrote this down.
* * *
Calling you. Calling you back. Leaving messages. Waiting for replies to said messages, replies that never come. Doing research, in between dialing; the same facts, mainly, barring some slight referential variations.
My books list at least thirty different methods of extracting payment from people who break their promises. At the rate I’m going, I probably could do two a day. Maybe more.
The next time you don’t answer the phone, I’m going to make sure it’s because you can’t.
* * *
Day Two. Quartering lemons in the kitchen with my black-handled knife, each one coming apart with a sudden spurt, like acid-soaked yellow hearts. Skewering them with pins and leaving them to shrivel. I’m learning the lessons my mother never taught me, the secret lore of housewives—what a surprising amount of mischief you can actually do, without ever having to leave the kitchen.
Afterward, I scoured the cupboards beneath the sink for as many poisonous substances as I could find, took them out to the garage, tied a scarf around my face and mixed them up together in an empty bleach bottle. Added paste, two boxes’ worth. Ripped up my largest pile of “disposable paper products.”
It took every letter I’ve written to you since the breakup, all those returned-to-sender vows of eternal devotion, to contrive a passable papier-mache likeness. Which I then left to dry, already rotting in on itself, until tomorrow’s bonfire.
* * *
“Depression is anger turned inward.” That’s what Dr. Abbott used to tell me. Or, as my mother once put it: “Depression is when you’re already in mourning over a part of yourself you know you’re going to have to kill.”
Some 1800s-era French murderess used to call keeping a diary “writing my novel.” It’s a phrase I particularly like, because it implies being able to choose how your story will end.
This litany of curses. This literary stigmata.
I told you, more than once, how far I’d go for you, if you required it of me.
But I’ll bet you never thought I would go this far.
* * *
Day Three. I took a photo of you and me, cut it in half. Stuck your half under the dripping kitchen faucet.
Dug up the old barbecue pit, set the head in the garage on fire, and watched it burn to goo.
As of tomorrow, I’m going to start getting a little more elaborate on your ass. Throwing out some old-style hurt your way, just like the good books say—and I quote:
Make an image in his name who you would hurt or kill, of new virgin wax; under the right armpit place a swallow’s heart, and the liver under the left; hand about the neck a new needle threaded with new thread; place the hand where the foot is, and the foot where the hand is, and the head facing down; write the name of the party on its face, and on his or her ribs these words: Allif, casyl, zaze, hit, mel, meltat.
Then string it up by a thread and lightly stroke it, with a single damp finger. That slow, cool touch on your back, your side. That indefinite shiver.
Feel that sweat? Your face, moistening. In a day, it’ll be wet.
In a month, it’ll be gone.
* * *
You tell me you think you probably never loved me quite as much as I loved you. You tell me you did love me, but you don’t any more. You tell me you don’t want to hurt me. But how can I believe you?
Because if you could just wake up one day and know you didn’t love me, then everything I thought was love was actually a lie. Which means everything else could be a lie, too. Everything you say now. Anything you ever said.
And how did you really think I’d feel, after you’d made your confession?
Because however little I was loved, it was always good enough for me. Back then.
Before I knew any better.
* * *
Day Four, Five, Six. Day Seven. Day Eight.
Day Nine, and counting.
Imagine for a moment, if you will, the difficulties, the sheer and simple effort of what I undertake for you. I mean, dough in a box on your window-sill, sure; boiling a lock of hair carefully collected from your barber’s floor, no particular problem. (And did that keep you up at night? Yes? No?)
Oh, good.
But anyway: So you light a candle at midnight, and then break it with a hammer. So you light another, and bury it. Weave more hair into a bird’s nest. Scrape a growing branch, and introduce the hair into it; watch, as the bark covers it over.
Try writing swear-words on consecrated wafers and feeding them to a toad, sometimes. Try burying that, alive.
I bury bottles and vials along paths we used to walk, knowing that where your foot touches them, disease will sprout. I bury an old glove I found in the back of the closet, stiff with the dust of your absence, and wait for it to rot. Drive rusty nails into your footprints. Shove hairballs from the neighbor’s cat under your porch steps.
I contemplate breaking in one morning after you’ve run out of the house without flushing, late for an early class, and thrusting a red-hot soldering iron into your toilet.
In a magazine ad for condoms, I found a couple who look enough like you and her to qualify, and I cut them out, tore the picture down the middle. I gave her part to the only demon I could find—that perpetually drunk and crazy guy on the corner of Church and Wellesley. The other I keep safe, inside my pillow.
It gives me dreams, which I then send to you.
I sow dragon’s teeth. I seed the clouds. I plow my broken heart in secret, in silence.
See what grows.
* * *
Here is how it works, then, for those who wonder:
Magic, white or black, operates on a principle of sympathy. You make an image, identify it with the person (usually by giving it that person’s name), then destroy it. Fast or slow.
Patience and impatience, running in tandem. One action wears the wall between us away. The other cauterizes it. Dulls and dims your understanding of the wo
und’s fatal nature, so it takes that much longer for you to die.
And the other part is, the person has to know. Which is why I’m writing you this at all.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.
* * *
Day Ten. Of what month? My TV’s broken, and all the paper boxes I saw today were empty.
I go to bed, early or late. I get up, early or late. I open my eyes in grey darkness, a pall so dim it almost qualifies as light. The clock is just another liar, and every hour is the same.
I’m so tired.
Guess I’ll just have to take a key to my palm, jagged edge down, and cut myself a whole new lifeline.
* * *
By the way: I hope she breaks your heart. I hope you break hers. And then I hope the two of you sit around thinking about it, all the time. Crying for no known reason at your place of work. Ringing in items with everyone watching. Because don’t fool yourself—you did it once, you can do it again, and somebody else can do it to you.
So don’t you ever, don’t you ever tell yourself again you’re just the nicest little boy in the world.
That’s two cherries you broke on me, you weak motherfucker.
* * *
Day Eleven.
My mother called this morning. I could feel it, somewhere in my stomach, the way cats always know when it’s going to rain. But I couldn’t call her back, because I’ve forgotten where I hid the phone.
Spent the day sticking flowers full of pins and lighting black candles, letting them melt down into malleable puddles of wax. I fumigated the house with all the evil odors of Mars, with sulphur and asafoetida. Staple-gunning yet more copies of that condom ad to my walls, torn so that your face no longer points toward her. Saying:
Usor, dilapidatore, tentatore, seignatore, devoratore, concitore et seductore—all ye ministers and companions, I direct, conjure, constrain and command ye to fulfil this behest willingly, namely straightaway to consecrate this image, which is to be done by (insert name here) in the name of (insert name here), and that as the face of the one is contrary to the other, so the same may never more look one upon another.
