I hurled again. And again. And one more time, the spasms attacking me from every corner, thumping into me like angry fists, cutting into my lungs, my ears, my glands.
Another puke.
And then I fell on the ground of the stinking male bathroom cubicle.
And I fought back tears.
You see, I never loved Tatiana. And Tatiana never loved me. But there is something that needs to be understood most clearly about our “arrangement” (to call it a “relationship” would be stretching it most wildly.)
We’d needed each other. In some exotic, twisted, incomprehensible way, we’d needed each other’s presence to get through whatever it was we were going through. And that’s all that needs to be said about it. In the middle of it all, we’d...needed one other.
A human interest story. Go figure.
Now I see this. Back then I didn’t. Back then I was too enturmoiled by my own worries, my own thoughts, my own sorrows.
Back then, she and I were just “fucking.” But you never “just fuck” anyone. It always means something. And if you “fuck” them again, and again, and again, you know it means more than a mere something.
So, in the bathroom of the ninth floor of Smith and Jameson, sitting in a damp and urine-stinking bathroom, I was filled with a sorrow I would never be able to explain to anyone, because no one would ever understand it. I am explaining it to you now. And can only wish that you do.
And then there was the sudden thought of Blaze. A mad attack against my mind. Blaze. Why hadn’t she called me? Where was she? And what had she been doing at Tatiana’s place!
I got up, wiped my mouth with water and splashed some on my face. I took out my phone and tried Blaze again. Nothing. I waited for the elevator, calm enough now to realize I didn’t need to “run away” from anything and so charge down over twenty flights of stairs. I called Vikki, no answer. I called Skate.
He answered.
“Skate, what’s up with Blaze?”
“Huh?”
“Blaze, Skate! What’s up with her? Have you heard from her?” My voice was frantic. Skate’s was oddly withdrawn.
“Uhm, yeah, yeah, sure, she’s, uhm, hanging out with Vikki.”
“Skate, what was she doing at Tatiana’s place when she died?”
Silence. The elevator arrived and I stepped in.
“Skate!”
He cleared his throat. “So, you know already.”
“Yes I know! What’s—”
“Deck, come over to Vikki’s place.”
“Wh— Is Blaze there?”
“Deck, my man, I can’t—”
“OF COURSE YOU DAMN WELL CAN! YOU AND I BEEN FRIENDS FOR OVER TEN YEARS!”
Silence. He cleared his throat.
“Skate, I will kill you, homes. If you’re hiding something—”
Calmly, reassuringly, he said, “Deck, chill. She, uhm... She took it hard. She’s...with us. She’s zoned out a little. Talking on the phone won’t be good. Just...get over here. And don’t drive like a maniac.”
I drove like a maniac.
And I got over there.
When I made it up to Vikki’s apartment and opened the door, I saw Blaze. She was pallid, sitting on the couch, hair sticking to her skin. She had a cashmere sweater on. She fidgeted with her hands and looked dead-straight at the TV.
The TV was off.
Skate and Vikki sat at the kitchen counter.
They didn’t say anything, didn’t try and stop me from barging in. Skate had a beer in his hand, Vikki a steaming mug of something that was probably coffee.
I was heaving with hard breaths.
I took a step forward toward Blaze. She turned her head slightly toward me. When her eyes looked at me they were the eyes of a dead person. She’d been crying, they were swollen. But mostly she just looked like she was elsewhere. It looked, almost, as if she didn’t recognize me. As if she was stuck in some episode of Lost and was somewhere on an island wondering if I was one of “The Others.”
Recognition slowly crept over her. Then her top lip trembled briefly. Her left eye twitched. The lip trembled again. She tilted her head slightly left, and started saying, “Oh”—tremble tremble tremble—“Deck, baby...”
She broke out in tears.
-2-
Blaze Ryleigh
It had been only a few days since...Tatiana...had taken her life. And in that time, all had been black. In my mind, all was gone. Hope was gone. Love was gone. Happiness...was gone.
The appearance of her body after the firefighters had busted down the door had been too close to the bone. Too close to...that other girl. Too close to Savannah Lopez. My heart, my soul-sister. My best friend.
It had been too much: The view of Tatiana’s clammy hand on her chest, her sweating breast glistening out from her robe which had slid down, her lifeless eyes as they had looked up at the ceiling, but, worst of all, that smile. She was smiling. Despite the desolate view of this lifeless sack in her robe with her tawdry left tit pointing up at the sky as if it were waiting to be licked, she...was smiling.
Like Savva had smiled.
Why do they smile!
I fell on the ground. The voices around me landed on deaf ears and became mumbles, groans and slow-motion calls under murky water. I heard nothing, felt nothing, saw...nothing.
At one point, I realized I was crying, because wetness had fallen on my arm. I heard screams, muffled, dead screams, and after a while I found out they were my screams.
Catatonic, I would be told later.
Someone grabbed me. And through the murk, the haze, and the confusion which was Ground Zero, I heard words and voices.
“...your friend...”
“...we’re sorry...”
“...pulse, nothing. Vital signs...”
“...over...a note?...she choked...too late...”
Then arms grabbed me, and I saw yellow, perhaps. I was lifted off the ground, coffee was thrust in my hand. “...drink this...”
“...about your friend...”
“...she OK?...”
“...catatonic, sir...must’ve been a friend...”
But I wasn’t. I wasn’t her friend. I wasn’t. Savva. Poor Savva. And that smile, that horrid smile...
All at once I felt food climb up inside me.
“...miss, you OK?... She’s gonna hurl! Bring her—”
And then I did, into a bag which appeared miraculously in front of me, held by the man in yellow clothes with the yellow helmet and an ax by his side. FDNY, they’re good guys. They’re good guys. Yes. They saved me when Dino Moretti threw that Molotov in my building. And they were there at nine-eleven and they’re good guys, yes. Safe. Yes. Good guys. FDNY. This man. This man. Good guy. Good guy. Savva. But there’s a yellow uniform here. Good guys. Yes.
Good guys.
I held the man’s arm, clutched it firmly, felt the hard material under my fingers. Held on for dear life.
“...OK, ma’am...OK...I’m here...any friends?”
I didn’t understand him, so I held him. Slowly I was moved from the apartment entrance, moved away from the tragedy on the carpet.
The last thing I noticed before being helped (carried?) away was the shattered expression of an EMT, a slow shake of his head, and his hand extending over the robe and covering Tatiana’s exposed breast. To give her some dignity, I thought.
And then I cried. I held the Good Guy’s body and cried and realized only then that I was being half-dragged, half assisted, half-guided to the elevator. Down the elevator. Into the lobby. People talking, pointing, whispering behind open palms, red and blue lights, my feet dragging...
Flash!
And then Vikki. Vikki was there, outside the stately entrance, she was there, eyes black from tears from worry for me, and a wash of relief as she saw me. She reached out her hands. I saw her lips make the word, Blaze! But an officer stopped her, held her back. She fought him. We were moving closer, me and my Good Guy in yellow. He guided me through the door. An
d when I got outside, both noise and cold crashed against me like a train.
It was freezing.
And it was loud.
People chattering, wind roaring, walkie-talkies, police officers, Flash!, Flash!, Flash!—I felt like I was being punched, but Good Guy in Yellow eased me into Vikki’s hands, and her arms went around me, and my chest split into a hundred pieces. I broke apart. All I was aware of now was the sheer cold on my back, Vikki’s arms holding me tight, and the roll and tumble of my chest as I gasped and shook and wept for things that I thought I had dealt with, that I thought were long gone, but weren’t. I gasped and wept and cried...for my long-dead best friend. And for how she had also smiled.
And how she didn’t deserve to smile.
-3-
Days went by, pictures stayed glued to the front of my mind like a board pasted up against my head.
Her. Him. And death.
Vikki fed me, took care of me, hugged me, let me cry, let me live it all again as if I hadn’t lived it all before.
It never goes away, I realized. It lingers and hurts and stings...forever. And what makes it easier is simply not going through it alone.
For that, I was grateful to have Vikki hugging me, holding me, keeping me away from the booze because “Vodka is no good when you are suffering. Only when you are in a good mood! If you drink when you are sad you become an addict!” So she fed me OJ, lots of OJ, and tons of coffee.
I ate little, but she made sure I ate something.
I didn’t know why I felt this way, what was happening to me. In some cobwebbed part of my aware mind I figured it was a reminder of what had happened to Savva, but I wasn’t sure of this. All I knew was that I felt sick to my stomach, that part of my body hurt (actually physically ached!), and that I missed Declan.
I missed him so much.
And I want to be with him. I want to be with him no matter what because a part of my mind—something!—is telling me I shouldn’t, telling me I’m wrong for him and that death follows me like moths to light, and so I must.
The negative words (call them voices in my head if you must) were like electronic cow-whips, difficult to resist, difficult to go against, impossible to shut off. It felt like resisting someone’s actual grip on my shoulders. The words (voices) told me: Let him go, Blaze. You lose everyone you love. Everyone! So let him go.
And I drank coffee. And Vikki hugged me.
And I clenched my teeth and waited patiently for him to arrive back from his training camp.
Every day worse.
Every day, the voices louder.
Every day, me sinking deeper and deeper into a world of my own, a world which was dark, cobwebbed, moist and dank. And terribly alone.
When he did return, the voices, the electric charges against my body telling me to leave him forever!, were unbearable. He stood at the door, large and powerful and heaving with furious breath, and the voices punched my chest. I felt weak. I felt afraid.
I felt...gone.
But I know I love him. And I knew, in that moment, that if I ever did lose him, I would lose him knowing that I’d made the best of every moment I’d had with him. Every microscopic iota of a moment with him!
I would live every moment with Declan Cox, from now and into eternity, as if it were my last.
And that thought, crystal-clear in its clarification of everything I had done wrong in being with him before, made me tremble. Made me question.
Made me wake up.
And so I said, “Oh, Deck, baby.” And I cried.
I needed him.
I need him now.
We need each other. Life is only worth living with one other.
-4-
Declan Cox
I took a step toward her, stretched out my arms. I got on my knees and held her. Her limp body fell on mine. I heard a sigh from Vikki or Skate behind me, some shuffling. But mostly I just heard wild and gasping sobs from Blaze in my ear. Sobs of confused pain, mixed up emotions, relief mixed with tragedy. Sobs of having seen and been around too much death in her lifetime.
I remembered my pops, the gruesome way in which he died in front of my eyes. I remembered Ma, her final days, the degradation she suffered, and the final flatline. I remembered Blaze telling me about her best friend Savva. Most of all, I remembered looking at Xavier’s half-head with her at the morgue, the aghast look on her face.
Too much death. It’s just too much death, I thought.
I believe that a person, faced with death and made to look at it over and over again, is reminded too much and too frequently about the frailty of life. So long as people don’t die, you think you’ll live forever. But, like a macabre ad for Afterlife Calling Cards, the constant repetition of death around you, leaves you with the solid certainty that it exists. And that no one gets away from it. No matter how much you love them, how much you care for them. When it comes, it comes. And then it’s over.
Blaze is too young, too good, too caring to have seen so much of it so soon.
I hold her. Her entire body shudders and breaks in my arms. Her tears wet my neck and ear and cheek. She weeps and cries and doesn’t stop. Just gasps, wails and even punches my back. And I just hold her, let her get it all out.
I hear Vikki and Skate step out, hear them telling us they’ll be gone awhile. Machine-gun pakapakapaka sounds spatter against the balcony doors and I catch from the corner of my eyes that it’s started hailing. Blaze’s chest thumps in spasmodic rhythm to the clack-tatatatatat of the sudden storm. Thunder breaks and lightning smacks the windows and Blaze’s body starts with fright and her heart pounds even harder now against mine. The noise is deafening. She strokes my hair, grabs clumps of it in her hands, shakes and shivers and then slowly moves away.
Her eyes are swollen. Her bottom lip can’t hold itself up. We touch foreheads. She tries to speak, but can’t. She shakes her head. Her brow presses painfully against mine. I run my hands through her pixie hair, ease them down to around her shoulders. We stay like that, here on the couch, her knees around my waist, me knelt down in front of her. She starts to rock back and forth, presses against me. Thunder cracks and pelts outside like an intergalactic ax splitting wood. Electric fire sings down from the skies and washes Blaze’s pale face in frightening blue light.
Her green eyes glow.
She looks at me with a deathly glare. She clutches my hair, pulls me to her so that my brow aches from the pressure.
When she says the next thing to me, I don’t hear it because the crack of detonating thunder is suddenly deafening. But that ghostly light just before it snapped, lit up her red lips like the lips of a sorceress, made them ghostly white and lusciously clear in their demand. Her lips said this: Make love to me tonight. And then I heard, “I need you.”
I hold her hair in return, clutching it as well, pulling on it so hard I can feel her pain for her. She doesn’t flinch. Her red-rimmed eyes stay glued to mine as if this is her final request, her last plea before expiring.
But now, when she talks, I do hear. I both hear and feel her, because every sweating word is uttered while her fingers knead my hair and pull at me with lustful urgency. Her trembling lips momentarily stayed, she says: “I need you. I need you now. I’ve needed you for days. I need you like I need life. I need you, Deck.” Her fingers grapple and pull and twist. Her eyes tremble, her chin quivers. “Please, baby. I need you. I need us. I need life. I need—”
“You have me. You have me, baby.”
“—your hands. I need us to be OK.”
“We’re OK, Blaze. I swear to you. I swear it.”
“I need us to bury the past, to forgive each other. Life is short, sweetie.” Here, she collapses again. The words come in spurts, but tears pour and her chin fights to remain still. “Life is—life is so goddamned short, baby. And—and—and I already lost four years with you and—”
“I know. I know.” My resolve to stay firm is fading. Because she’s speaking sooth here. She’s laying things bare, forgetting the deta
ils, the bickerings, the mistakes, the lies, the pain, forgetting everything that is so fucking unimportant!
Death puts things in perspective.
Things are in perspective for me now. Completely in perspective. “I need you too, Blaze.”
We talk at the same time, declaring our love and telling each other we’re sorry but meaning it so profoundly that the words seem to somehow quench a war that’s been raging in our minds since we first saw each other again. I tell her I love her, that I need her. My hands grapple with her. My need for her to understand what she means to me becomes so desperate that my mouth moves closer, as if the only way to really make her feel the words is for her to feel my lips on hers.
Thunder snaps. White light washes over us and it brings a giddy nervousness into my chest, as if even this moment could be the end of us.
The Universe speaking...
She tells me she loves me in return, that she saw how important it is to grab the moment, carpe motherfuckin diem, baby. “I love you so much, Deck. I love you”—she kisses me, wraps her arms around my neck. Her tongue goes inside me and feels me. My hands move around her back and I’m desperate, desperate for her. My feet scuffle with the carpet, trying to lift my body up from its knees so I can taste more of her, lift her sweater off and not stop kissing her while doing it—
I say, “I love you”—kiss—“so much, so much”—taste—“I just want to—”
I push up against her, lifting onto my feet. I push her down on the couch. I fall between her, desperately kissing and wanting her and not being able to have her fast enough. My hands argue with her sweater, lift it from the bottom and she wriggles and twists and arches her back so that I can slide it off her. All the while our lips hunt, fight, cut us inside as our teeth clash and smash and...
Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three) Page 36
