by Lindy Zart
He paused before the dryer with his back to her. “I understand your reservations. I have them as well. I am a monster with poison living inside me. One wrong touch, one innocent mistake, and someone else is compromised.”
The breath she exhaled was ragged and profound, unseen parts of her hurting for Harrison, for the way he saw himself. Monster. Beth flinched from the word, and what it implied. How could he think of himself that way? He was no more a monster than she.
“Don’t call yourself that,” she told him, her voice quaking around the words she almost didn’t say.
Harrison looked to the side and down, a bitter smile caressing his mouth.
“You know it isn’t that easily contracted.”
“I don’t know anything.” Harrison turned back to the dryer. He closed the door and started the dryer. The clothes thumped around inside as the machine hummed. He faced her and crossed his arms. “You say you know it isn’t easily contracted and yet you act like it is. Why should I think differently?”
“People react negatively to things they don’t understand.” Beth’s voice was quiet, a silent apology for her actions clear in her tone, if he wanted to hear it.
“People react negatively to things that can harm them,” Harrison corrected.
“Tell me how you got it,” she implored. “Tell me what you thought, how you felt, how others acted around you. Tell me everything.”
“No.”
“You have to, Harrison,” Beth insisted, the unknown bottled up inside her and scratching to be discovered. It seemed as if she was on a panicked, frustrated quest with no positive outcome. Even so, she couldn’t abandon it—just in case there was a positive outcome. “Not because I want to know about it, but because I need to know about you. I need to understand what you’re going through. Please tell me.”
When he looked back, his expression indifferent, Beth continued, “You can’t really expect me to be here with you when you won’t divulge any of what you’re going through to me. It isn’t fair of you, and it isn’t fair to you.”
Tainted humor flared to life on his features, casting the facial bones in derision. “I see. You want me to dig out my heart for my benefit. Thank you for your selflessness. I appreciate it. Truly.”
Irritation thinned her lips and brought heat to her cheeks. “It might be good for you to talk about it with someone. Do you have anyone to talk to?”
“Didn’t you see the line of concerned people standing outside the front door?”
“Fine,” she said, determination adding rigidity to her tone.
Harrison dropped his arms and straightened. “Fine?”
Beth nodded and turned to leave the laundry room. “Fine. If you won’t talk to me, I won’t be here anymore. I can’t write about someone who won’t tell me anything about them. I didn’t say the information had to go in the book, but I need to know it, for me.”
“Go ahead and sue me,” she called over her shoulder. The hallway was fading away, the door and her exit out of Harrison’s life getting closer. Don’t let me leave, give me a reason to stay. I want to stay. Why do I want to stay? I need to stay. Beth’s heartbeat was too hard, the forceful beat of it making her dizzy and disoriented.
“You won’t get anything out of it—I’m broke. But you knew that, didn’t you? Glad one of us gets to know something about the other.” The hook where her jacket hung was less than two feet away, and she could feel the growing chill of her departure. It was wrong, bitter with all that should be and might not. Stop me. Stop me, Harrison. Stop me!
Harrison caught up to her as she was reaching for her jacket. She held her breath to keep from letting out a loud sigh. Beth’s pulse was mad with fear and hope, and she pressed a palm to her flushed cheek. His hand lightly touched her shoulder, but it was enough to make her halt all movement. There was power in him, even now, even fissured as he was. It could be it was there now more than ever because it had to be.
He slowly turned her around; the face he showed her was awash with contrition. He released his hold as soon as she faced him. “You’re asking something of me I’m not sure I’m ready to give, now or ever. Not even my parents, the two people in the world who unconditionally love me, know what it’s been like for me.”
“Tell me,” she whispered.
The weight of a frown tipped down the corners of his mouth, and he shook his head, his movements at odds with his next words. Disbelief, and maybe a hint of resignation, coated them. “You make me want to tell you.”
Beth’s eyebrows lifted in surprise at the admission.
Light splintered through the dark of the man before her, only for an instant, only long enough to steal the air from her lungs and shove wonder inside her in its place. Beth couldn’t breathe. She didn’t fight it, relaxing into the allure of secrets, promises, a plane where thoughts had no purpose, and the only ability given was to feel.
Harrison stared directly at her as he said, “You’re the one I want to tell my story to. Not the one for the book—the real story.”
THE SKIES ON the other side of the windowpane turned grim as he talked, the dim light of the lamps in the reading room creating an intimate setting. Although it had stopped at some point during the day, with the current pace of the snow, it didn’t seem like it had. Thick and heavy, it dropped from above to coat below, turning their immediate vicinity into stark whiteness trickled through with gray.
“A little over five years I got really sick, rundown. It was like a never-ending cold or flu, and I was told it was most likely due to stress, and to take better care of myself.” Harrison looked at the end table beside his chair, the hardness of his jaw belying the calm tone of his voice. “Except I didn’t get better. I went back to the doctor. They ran more tests.”
Beth’s throat was tight. She wanted to tell him to stop talking, naïvely thinking that if she didn’t hear him confirm what she knew to be truth, there was a chance it wasn’t.
“I didn’t believe them at first.” Harrison made a bitter sound. “I told them to redo the tests. I got second, and third, and fourth opinions. Eventually, I didn’t have any other choice but to believe it. I could only deny it for so long. And then it came down to how I contracted it.”
Harrison clenched his fingers, his eyes down. “I don’t have any tattoos, I’ve never done drugs, haven’t had any blood transfusions, and the only person I had unprotected sex with was Nina.”
He looked up, hollow-eyed. “She had HIV before I knew her, and she never told me.”
A draft swept through the room, freezing Beth. She tried to inhale and it came out sounding choked. Frozen, she was frozen in the glare of his twisted story, a fairytale gone wrong, a life altered by a single choice.
“One sentence. One sentence could have made all the difference. It was so pointless, so easily avoidable,” he whispered, his eyes on his fingers as he put them in a steeple, an absentminded prayer, and curled them inward, breaking the unspoken entreaty.
Harrison dropped his hands, and his gaze went with them. “Nina had a drug problem when she was younger. When we started dating, she told me about her former addiction with heroine, and how she fought it. She told me that secret as if it was the only one she kept, and I stupidly believed her. She was good at hiding things,” he said in a whisper.
“She forgot to tell me how she shared needles, and from doing so, contracted HIV. Somehow, she forgot about that secret.” He closed his eyes, his shoulders hunched. “People think they are invincible until they are shown they’re not. I thought I was.”
When the silence grew, shouting out its disquiet, he opened his eyes. “I hated her. For years, I hated her. She tried to apologize, and I was too bitter, too angry—I couldn’t even stand the sound of her voice. The sight of her made me sick.” Harrison looked up, bleakness stamped into the set of his shoulders. “Now I just feel…numb. A while back my dad told me she isn’t doing well, that it’s progressed to AIDS. When I found out, I felt empty.”
Harrison stared a
t the floor and said, “I feel nothing.”
Beth swallowed, her voice muted. She had no words of comfort, and if she attempted any, they would be insufficient. All the thoughts she had were silent, too many to try to navigate through. Harrison needed this moment to himself, and she gave it to him. She didn’t talk until the murky haze slid from his eyes and he blinked at her.
“Were you sick a lot?” Her eyes followed the purple path beneath his. They told a story of tiredness even if Harrison never mentioned it. “Are you still?”
“It was a guessing game at first, trying to find out what drugs worked and which ones didn’t. I tried multiple antiretroviral medications, and reacted badly to a lot of them, but it’s stabilized for now. I check in with my doctor regularly, and for now, I’m as good as can be expected. I don’t have the energy I used to have, and I’m tired a lot. I get dizzy, like you saw.”
“You’ve had it for five years,” she commented, because she didn’t know what else to say, and that was something she could say without overwhelming emotion grabbing hold of her and twisting her up like metal wrapped around steel. Five years with HIV, and how many more until it turned into AIDS? If it did. Harrison’s life was surrounded by ‘ifs’.
“Five long years,” he affirmed.
Beth held the blanket draped over her shoulders closer to her body, warmth evading her as Harrison confessed words that had to cut his throat as they were produced. “What have those five years been like?”
“Oh, you know, lollipops and sunbeams.”
She trained her gaze on the coffee table, wondering how she would be if it were her with the disease. Beth rubbed her chilled arms through the blanket. She didn’t think she would be handling it as well as Harrison. He’d had time to adapt, but how did a person really adapt to that?
A caricature of a smile lifted half of his mouth when she raised her eyes, and it was a taint against his pale skin. “The rumors have been hard, the outward shunning has probably been the worst. My sexuality was attacked, I was accused of using needles myself. After they found out, people I’d known for years acted scared of me, or like they didn’t know me.”
Memories shattered him as she watched, Beth a silent bystander to a tragedy.
“I could see contempt in their eyes, blame for something I did nothing to contract. I resigned from playing football. I could have kept playing, but I felt like a pariah. A drop of blood and it would have been a threat to anyone in contact. I didn’t want to make others uneasy, and I didn’t need to feel worse than I already did.”
Harrison glanced up at her. “For a long time, I felt hopeless, like I was always swimming toward something I knew I wouldn’t reach, just as I knew I would eventually drown.”
It was easy to remain unaffected by death when it kept its distance. Beth had never dealt with loss firsthand, not to this extent. Any family members who were gone had been so before she could recall, or she’d only distantly known. A person could feel sad about another’s misfortune, but it passed, because it wasn’t their world that was directly affected by loss.
But when a person was face to face with it, like Beth was, it was impossible to stay apathetic. A whisper of death touched her life, told her someone she knew could be taken at some too-early point, and it shot her mind through with fear, and her heart with sorrow.
It didn’t go away. It didn’t heal.
It stayed, staring her in the face, watching her through Harrison’s eyes. She looked at Harrison’s face and felt her chest tighten with the thought that one day in the near future he might no longer be. Beth blinked her eyes, but still they filled with tears, overflowing and trickling down her cheeks.
Harrison leaned forward. “Why are you crying?”
“Because it makes me sad.”
“Don’t waste your sadness on me. There are far worse sorrows worthy of your tears.”
“How can you say that?” she asked in a wobbly voice, brushing away warm tears to allow room for more.
“You’re sad because you’re just learning about it. It’s all new to you.” He offered the hint of a smile. “I’ve had years to come to terms with it. I’m not sad anymore.”
“I didn’t realize you could move past the sadness.”
“I suppose I could have chosen to not, but what would that get me? Nothing good. Sometimes I get sad, but I fight it. I’ve had a good life, I can still have the rest of one, even as compromised as it may be.” Harrison looked at her. “I’m not scared to die, Beth. And I said all my goodbyes years ago. I made my peace.”
“Now what? Now you just wait?”
He shrugged, showing her a side of himself that was softer, less harsh. As if her tears had the power to release the true man from his black tower of solitude. “I’m not waiting. I’m…convalescing.”
“That means to recover.”
“Yes.” Harrison smiled faintly. “My body may be slowly breaking down, but my mind is flourishing.”
“But I don’t—I don’t understand. You don’t see anyone. You don’t go anywhere. You don’t do anything. It’s like you’re living half a life. You have this big house and it’s filled with nothing. Why?”
Harrison leaned forward, his eyes on the floor. “I don’t need things, Beth. Things are just that—things. I have my thoughts, and my memories. I have what I need.”
“You also have family. Why aren’t you with them? You don’t seem happy.”
Two pale eyebrows lifted along with his gaze. “Don’t I? What you perceive with your eyes isn’t always what’s there.”
He stood and approached the couch, sitting beside her but careful to keep space between them. Beth turned her upper half to face him, her lips parted in question. The tears, hot and damp, froze on her cheeks—dried by the heat his proximity produced in her. Harrison moved closer, his eyes stayed by hers.
Beth tensed, her fingers curling into the soft fabric of the blanket. She didn’t know what he intended to do, but her pulse quickened in anticipation, not alarm. He leaned forward as if to kiss her, but angled his mouth away at the last instant. Her chest lifted and lowered from the might of her emotions.
He put his mouth near her ear, and his voice was a caress, deep and thick with emotion. “Sometimes, Beth, you have to look with your mind.” Sitting back, Harrison tapped her head. “You have to look deeper than what is shown on the surface.” His eyes dropped. “You have to see with your heart.”
“Can I—” Beth reached out a shaking hand to him, knowing she shouldn’t. Knowing he’d pull back. “Can I hug you?”
“Why?” The word was short, one syllable and yet chopped in two around his exhalation.
“I don’t know. I just—I want to,” she answered, letting her hand drop to her lap. Her fingers longed to touch him, to give him comfort. Beth wanted him to know she wasn’t repulsed by him, that she didn’t see him as a monster. She wanted to let him know he wasn’t alone.
“You act like I’m going to expire before you. I’m not going to die in the next few months. You’re safe.” Harrison sat with his back to the couch and his eyes on the bookcase across the room.
“I could have twenty more years.” He turned his head and regarded her. “I could have thirty. Stop thinking about my death. It’s forbidden until it’s actually here.”
Beth snorted, but when he didn’t relinquish eye contact, she nodded.
Harrison got up and she shot to her feet as well, her nerves unreliable and spastic. She fidgeted with the blanket, and then pulled it from her frame, quickly folding and setting it on the back of the couch. When that was done, she watched Harrison, taking in his fiery hair and fearsome eyes. He stood still, unyielding, thoughts flittering across his features as he examined her. Harrison looked at Beth like he was deciding something about her.
“I, um, I should get going,” she explained when he gave her an inquiring look. “It’s…” Beth turned to the clock and gasped. “It’s after six.”
Panic spun her in a half-circle and she fled from the room
, blinking her eyes at the darkness she hadn’t been aware was creeping up on them. Beth was on the schedule to bartend at eight that night at The Lucky Coin. That didn’t give her much time to get home—especially with the weather—eat something, and shower. She sped toward the laundry room, flinging off the pants and shimmying into her jeans. Her hands trembled with the thought of being late for work, prolonging her clumsy attempts to fold the pants. Grabbing her socks from the dryer, she quickly exchanged Harrison’s for hers.
Jogging into the foyer, Beth shoved her feet into her boots, put on her coat, and flung open the door with the intention of wiping the snow off the car and letting it warm up for a few minutes before leaving. Icy air blasted her face and stole her breaths, snow rushing toward her. She muttered a curse. Black and white met her gaze, stinging enough to cause her eyes to water, and she squinted against the elements. The SUV was barely visible, a mound of an unidentifiable object beneath layers of packed white substance, and it was still coming.
“I wouldn’t advise driving home in that. The plows won’t go by until it has stopped, and the driveway will be not be addressed until morning.”
She slammed shut the door and turned to look at Harrison. The havoc outside was jarring in comparison to the quiet inside the house. “I have to. I’m supposed to work tonight. I should have been paying better attention to what was going on outside.” Instead of paying such avid attention to you.
“Call them, tell them you’re stranded outside of town. I’m sure they’ll understand.”
Ozzy wouldn’t understand, and he’d be the second person to know after she talked to one of his parents. Whether or not it was the smartest decision, she could see him being adamant about coming to get her. Ozzy couldn’t know where she was, let alone risk his safety to come to her rescue in the tumultuous weather. He also couldn’t know about Harrison, or his anonymity would be compromised.
