* * *
Dusk falls early this time of year.
I drive over a small bridge, pass one of the large mills in town. The lights have been turned on, signaling the start of the night shift, and through myopic windowpanes blurred with sweat and filth, shadows, faceless and vague, submit in silence.
A rush of heat greets me as I enter our apartment. It is dark and quiet inside, and despite the neighborhood, I have always felt safe here. Our cat, Ralph, slinks from the bedroom and greets me with the perfect brand of unconditional love only animals truly possess. His friendship distracts me from a bottle in the cupboard. At least for a time.
I remove my coat, hang it on a hook just inside the door and take a seat at the kitchen table. Ralph hops into my lap, purrs with gleeful abandon.
Anna arrives what surely must be hours later. Through less than perfect vision I notice an empty bottle and glass on the table. I’ve no conscious memory of removing it from the cupboard, much less drinking it. “That’s never happened before,” I admit, unsure if the words were actually spoken.
My wife puts a bag of groceries next to the sink, has the good sense not to turn on a light and crouches down next to me. I feel her hands take mine. “How did the interview go?”
“Quite well,” I say, my tongue heavy and dry.
She knows I’m lying but smiles anyway. “Are you hungry?”
“No,” I tell her. “Is it still snowing out?”
“Mmmhmmm.”
“We should get a Christmas tree this year.”
Anna nods patiently. “We already have one, Richard. I got it yesterday, after work; remember? I decorated it just last night. It’s in the den, next to the television.”
I reach into my pocket and remove the small bag of peanuts I purchased earlier in the day. “I got you a present while I was out.”
Anna’s eyes blink at me through the darkness. “Let’s get you to bed,” she says softly. “We can talk in the morning.”
“But…this is important.”
“All right,” she sighs. “What have you got there?”
I hand her the wrinkled little bag. “Go on, open it.”
She calmly pours the contents into the palm of her hand, studies them as her eyes fill with tears. “My God.”
“Aren’t they beautiful?” I whisper.
“My…My God,” she says again.
“You see them…don’t you?”
The snow, reflecting moonbeams, casts peculiar shafts of red light through the kitchen. Among the peanuts in Anna’s hand is a pair of ruby earrings. They are still stained with blood, as Susan Pearson’s flesh had split when I tore them from her earlobes, yet nothing, not even the sudden memory of her dead, strangled body seems capable of diminishing the beauty of those sparkling droplets.
And somehow, that’s enough.
FORGET-ME-NOTS
The city lights swept across the high-gloss hood of the Benz like fleeing apparitions, or maybe rats seeking the security of darkness. Metal shrieked from the stereo, distracting us from the cold and altering the moment like only bloodcurdling rock and roll can. Hair blowing in the wind, top down, tools of addiction tucked neatly away beneath worn leather jackets and faded denim, we feigned control, ignoring the movement of others passing in colorful blurs—not even noticing us somehow—and shot through the streets like a missile.
Fay looked good behind the wheel, like she’d been born to drive somebody else’s ride. Long hair flying about like flames from an opaque fire, eyeliner smudged, the whites glistening against the chill, watery pools amidst a pallid complexion, set atop a classic nose and a sculpted chin, she slammed the shift and pounded the accelerator like it had done something to offend her. Then, just as quickly, she shot me that look, tossed her head back and laughed.
The neighborhood started to look familiar, and it was then that I realized she’d pulled onto Massachusetts Avenue, a long drag that cut right through the heart of Boston. Fitting somehow, since Fay, with complete lack of regard for streetlights, negotiated each intersection with surgical precision. I’d once lived in one of the seemingly identical three-story brownstones that flanked either side of the street; north and south separated by a series of narrow parks, monuments, and the occasional tree, lest city folk forget the world consisted of more than concrete and neon. But that all seemed long ago now, as if it had never existed in anything but dreams and distant memory.
As we hit the outskirts of Boston, turning on a dime and flying across the bridge into Cambridge, I still found myself wondering why Fay had chosen me. The party had been an open affair, the kind where the guest list was generated by handmade leaflets passed out on the street to people with the right (or wrong) look. Three years after I’d dropped out of college, walking away four months shy of my parents’ dream of an engineering degree and opting instead to spend my early twenties stoned, some heavily-pierced woman with a beehive gone mad had pushed the flyer into my hand, hovering over the lunch counter where I had spent my last five bucks on a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich. At first I dismissed it as the kind of rehab bullshit junkies always had thrown at them, but when I actually looked at it, I realized it advertised free food, booze, and God knows what else at an apartment in the Back Bay. Marlboro Street to be precise, one of the nicer neighborhoods in town and one I hadn’t ventured into in quite a long time.
Some performance artist and her companion, reaching out to the hip and dying in the city, solving everyone’s problems with expensive luncheon meats, private stock liquor, and a buffet table featuring whatever drug a loser like me could want. It seemed a long way from college dorms, sitting in a beanbag chair in the middle of that apartment, Tracy Chapman singing about revolution on the stereo, casualties of humanity milling about like an even more demented version of their parents’ suburban cocktail parties.
I would have left once I’d eaten and gotten high, but I’d exhausted all my options in terms of sleeping arrangements days before, and the prospect of spending another night in the park kept me in that beanbag. Suffering through a dissertation on the advantages of medical marijuana from an eel-thin guy with a shock of bleach-blond hair and teeth too large for his mouth, I tried to tune him out and listen instead to Tracy. At that moment, a joint was the only thing preventing me from telling the guy to fuck off if for no other reason than to make him stop talking.
And then Fay found me. Moving down an open staircase from the loft looking like some hippie chick gone bad, countless silver bracelets jingling, the heels of her boots clicking against the hardwood floors, black eyes staring right through me. One sleeve of her leather jacket had been pushed up past her right elbow in a deliberate attempt to showcase a blue barbed wire tattoo encircling her forearm and wrist. As she moved closer, slinking across the room, I noticed the hand below the tattoo seemed taut, fingers frozen and posed like a mannequin. While her complexion was pale, it seemed more an effect achieved by makeup and lack of sleep, but the flesh on that hand was different, deformed somehow, its appearance beyond her control.
“Are you as bored as I am?” she asked in a throaty voice, eyebrows raised.
I smiled, offered her my joint. She took it from me with her good hand, killed it in a single manic pull then dropped the roach to the floor and crushed it with the twist of her boot heel. I glanced around, looking to see if the hosts had seen what she’d done, but they were lost in a sea of ghouls. When I returned my gaze to her who-gives-a-shit expression, I thought I just might be in love, if only for a little while.
Once we’d hit the street, I followed along like a lost dog; hands stuffed into my jacket pockets and chin tucked against chest, suddenly infuriatingly sober in the chilly night air. Fay kept on, knowing full well that I wasn’t going anywhere she wasn’t, strolling along the darkened pavement until we came upon a Mercedes convertible. She stopped, hands on hips, head cocked, eyes stroking that car the same way mine had caressed her earlier. I knew she was going to steal it, but it wasn’t until she hiked
up her already too-short skirt, kicked in the window with one quick thrust, hot-wired the sonofabitch and put the top down that I realized she’d done this all before. She adjusted the radio, found a station loud enough to draw attention, then looked at me and patted the passenger seat with her bad hand, fingers perpetually curled and flopping lifelessly. “You coming?”
I felt myself slipping into the leather seat without even thinking about it. “Almost.”
She got my lame attempt at a joke—her eyes told me so—but her only response was to pull away from the curb with a screech of tires, a nearly maniacal laugh, and a total lack of fear the likes of which I had never before witnessed.
The vision of Cambridge brought me back to the present. The neighborhoods had gotten worse, the streets darker, as if nature had purposely attempted to better conceal them. Slowing her speed, Fay switched the radio off, turned onto a side avenue and rolled to a stop in front of a small two-story apartment building set back from the road on the far side of a vacant, garbage-strewn lot. Somewhere in the distance a dog’s howl transcended the usual din of the city, reminding me I knew just how the poor bastard felt. My eyes followed the lot, saw a lone car—a battered Ford sedan—parked in the sparse driveway alongside the building.
“I live on the top floor,” she said through a sigh.
I saw a faint light blinking through one of the windows facing the street. More than likely a television running in an otherwise dark room. “You got a roommate?”
She stepped out of the car, dug a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and rolled one between lips painted ruby red. “I live with my old man,” she said softly, her tone signaling vulnerability—however slight—for the first time.
I shrugged; I’d seen scenes like this before. “Your husband ok with me coming up?”
Her eyes locked on mine and widened in what appeared to be amusement, and I found myself wondering if they’d look the same with me inside her. “I meant my father.”
Chuckling, I turned and looked back at the building. “That’s a first. Not that it matters, but how old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Little old to be living with your father, no?”
“Don’t worry about it.” She flicked the cigarette away into darkness, nostrils trailing smoke, and strode toward the lot. “He’s not my real father.”
It wasn’t until we’d hobbled across the lot and entered the building that I realized the first floor had, at some earlier point, been a business. A door just off the tiny foyer stood partially open, revealing several large pieces of equipment draped in dusty and faded sheets, but Fay was already climbing the battered staircase, so I followed her without comment, eyes trained on her ass and swinging hips.
She unlocked the door with a key from an enormous ring, pushed it open and strolled in. I hesitated before I stepped into a living room, the floors scattered with old pizza boxes, empty beer bottles, and other debris. The unmistakable smells of urine and sweat were overwhelming, so I pretended to scratch my nose. An ancient television with the sound turned down sat atop a cart against one wall, images of Bette Davis in an old black and white movie cutting the darkness, shooting ghost-like images along the walls and providing the only light.
A man was slumped over in a threadbare recliner, a spent bottle of Canadian Club still clutched in one beefy hand, dangling over the arm and nearly touching the floor. The pale skin of his head, bald but for an unsuccessful attempt at a comb-over with what few strands of hair remained glistened in the sparse light, a few days of stubble darkening his bloated features. Barefoot, and dressed only in a tank top and boxer shorts, his enormous gut heaved with each snore-like breath, the only clue that he was still among the living.
“Meet Daddy,” Fay said, offering a wry smile.
I followed her through a kitchenette, the sink stacked with dishes and the wall above it sporting an enormous wooden crucifix draped in rosary beads. The floor was sticky, and squeaked beneath the rubber soles of my sneakers until we reached a hallway lit only by a small nightlight plugged into a socket along the baseboard. At her bedroom door she looked at me, hand poised above the knob. “You okay?”
I wasn’t, but nodded anyway, and followed her in.
A yellow light punched a hole in the darkness. I traced it to a small lamp on a nightstand next to the bed, and heard her close the door behind me. It smelled better in there—a bit musty but not like a public restroom in the dead of summer like the rest of the place—and I glanced around, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
Thick black curtains covered the two windows on the far wall and gave the room the feel of perpetual night. The bed, small and unmade—just a mattress and box spring with three pillows tossed near the head—sat between a nightstand and a bureau, both pieces worn and scarred. I noticed a closet to my left, the door closed, a portable stereo blocking its path; a fallen stack of CDs scattered about the floor amidst piles of empty cigarette packs.
I stayed near the door, trying to figure out what to do while Fay sat on the edge of the bed, crossed her legs and lit a cigarette, watching me the way a scientist studies glass slides under a microscope. Her dead hand rested in her lap, and for the first time I saw the scars she had attempted to conceal with the tattoo. I knew she’d caught me staring, but there was something about her wrist—real scars wrapped in fake barbed wire—I found riveting, and I found myself wondering how many times she’d had to answer the very question strolling through my mind.
She sighed, spirals of smoke circling her on their way to the ceiling. “Tell me…what makes you high?”
My hand was in my jacket pocket, suddenly revealing a small vile of coke I’d swiped from the buffet table at the party. I opened it, moved closer, and tapped out a line across the back of my hand. Surprised at how steady I was able to hold it, I watched as she leaned forward, eyes fixed on mine throughout, and gently licked the powder from my hand. Her tongue was warm and moist, a bit rough.
Sometimes lust comes quietly.
Fay closed her eyes, breathing deeply as the coke hit her system. I wet the tip of my finger and dipped it into the vile, then slid it between my lips and sucked it clean, my gums already numb as a familiar tingling feeling spread up into my eyes, giving the sensation of an eternal yawn.
Like a dream where all logic and sense is discarded, nothing else existed at that moment—we were alone in a dark universe, coming together, suddenly interlocked and in sync as if one writhing entity. Submissive at first, Fay soon became my equal, and eventually my superior, blinding me to all else but the warmth of her flesh and the need in her eyes.
She fucked me like an angry man. Like a rapist on a sadistic high, forcing me into realms I had never before experienced, she left me drained and lying on the sweat-drenched mattress, staring at watermarks on the ceiling.
Watermarks.
I became lucid in the quiet moments that followed, laying next to her, hoping to see satisfaction and peace in her eyes but finding only sorrow instead. On her stomach, with her head against a pillow, I gently placed her bad hand on my chest and allowed my eyes to follow the slick contours of her back, buttocks, and legs. I had seen the scars before but like an odd sound in the night you know you heard but choose to ignore, I had dismissed them, until now.
Even then I knew what had caused them; the circular scar tissue decorating her ass didn’t lie; though I wish it had. My fingertip brushed her ass, hesitating on each reminder of the violence she had endured. “Did he do this to you?”
She stared at me with the vacant look of a survivor. “How long have you been on the street?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“Only a few days now. I need to get my shit together and—”
“I spent four years on the street. Ran away from home when I was thirteen and was peddling my ass on corners within six months.”
I wasn’t certain I wanted to hear this, wasn’t certain I was still in love or lust, but I stroked her hair and stayed quiet.
“Daddy saved me from all that,” she continued. “That’s what he likes me to call him. We’ve been together eight years now, moved in when I was seventeen. I know it’s not much, but it’s a roof and four walls, food—usually—and somebody who gives a flying fuck if I’m alive, even if it is for all the wrong reasons.”
I wanted more coke, needed it, but didn’t move. “But he does this to you?”
“He has needs too,” she said. “I’m the outlet, like a possession really, but it’s a trade. He drinks a lot more than he used to, even closed the machine shop, so we live mostly on his welfare checks. When he’s like this—all fucked up on a binge—I can do what I want, go where I want…be who I want to be, understand?”
I took her bad hand in mine and traced the deep scars in her wrist with my fingertips. “What happened to your hand?”
“I was down in the shop one night and it got caught in one of the saws. Daddy rushed me to the hospital and they were able to reattach it surgically…but I have no feeling, and I can’t move it. It’s dead. There was never even any sense in going to therapy,” she said, her voice still monotone. “Sometimes I think death is like an actual entity, you know? Like a virus that gets inside you and slowly spreads. My hand is only the beginning.”
“Was it an accident?”
“That’s what we told them at the hospital.”
I dropped her hand and pushed myself up into a sitting position, eyes darting toward the closed door, wondering if the man in the outer room was still out cold. Swinging my feet around onto the floor, I snatched my boxers and slipped them on.
“Feel less vulnerable now?” she asked, bending her elbow and propping her head in the palm of her hand.
Fay was right. Stripped naked and lying in our sweat and come I had felt vulnerable. Now I felt fear, anger, disgust—too many emotions to focus on one specifically. I found my cigarettes and lit one with trembling hands. “You don’t have to live like this, Fay. Why don’t you just leave?”
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