by Joshua Furst
“With what color?”
“Uh—” Her sarcastic expression floated right past him. “Black.”
As soon as she left the place, she ripped the gauze off and assessed the damage. The moth filled up a roughly two-inch square of skin. She hated it already. The borders were so crisp, the wings so symmetrical, even the inflamed skin around the tattoo had an appalling elegance. The antibiotic lubricant the guy had rubbed into it just made it look worse, glossy and new. She did exactly what he'd told her not to: rubbed her thumb vigorously across his work, vandalized it, smudged it, pressed the ink across the lines he'd so carefully stayed within until she started to bleed.
I should have told him to tattoo my face, she thought, I should have asked for something bigger. She imagined her whole body haphazardly covered in ink, misshapen blue and black smears, maybe some yellow too—she'd be one big bruise, one big internal hemorrhage. A blot on this world. One day she'd catch herself in a car window and see she was a person she didn't recognize. Her body itself would be a kind of protest against everything that she hated.
Or maybe just a protest against me.
They were on the sidewalk, Cheryl, Devin and Trent, scaring up change for a bottle of Thunderbird, old-man wine, wine for Native Americans. They liked to drink it sometimes for the novelty, the romance of it. They were in a playful mood. Their sign this time said BEER FUND.
Some young guy walking past, a U of M student, Tevas and shorts and a faded red t-shirt that proclaimed his ironic fidelity to RC Cola, cut a wide arc around their outpost. Contempt rose off him like gasoline fumes. He made it around them without saying a word, but waiting for the light to turn at the corner of Fourth Street, he looked up at the sky and slapped himself a couple times on the leg. He shook his head. He turned, hesitated and stalked back to them.
“You people are a bunch of leeches, you know that?”
“And you're a fucking zombie,” said Trent.
“I mean it. You're everything that's wrong with this country.”
There was a chuckle. “Oh, are we? And what are you?”
“I'm—” The guy stopped.
“A fascist?”
“I'm—no, see? That's why you kids piss me off so much. I bet you don't even know what a fascist is.”
Another chuckle. “Sure we do. You.”
“You know what the problem with people like you is? You make it more difficult for other people who actually care about what's wrong with this country to do anything about it. You're a bunch of selfish kids, pissed off at Mommy and Daddy.”
“And you're a fucking fascist who thinks those do-gooder organizations are gonna do something to solve anything. You want to get into this? We can get into this. I read the Internet. I read the fucking paper. You want to know the percentages? You want to talk about what these fucking legitimate organizations really do? Fucking Meals on Wheels. You ever heard of a tax break? You ever heard of complacency? Middle-class guilt? Governmental—”
“You know what? Forget it. I don't know why I …” The guy ran a hand through his sandy hair. He shook his head. His contempt was gone. In its place was pity, and this was maybe the gravest of his mistakes.
As he turned his back and wandered away, a chunk of broken cinder block sailed after him. “You're the fucking problem, asshole fascist.” It hit him in the shoulder, inches from his head, and it wasn't Devin, it wasn't Trent, who threw it.
It was—no.
I can't look.
I don't want to see this.
You think, when you've crawled through dark places and survived, that the things you've learned might be transferable. They're not, though. They're not. They're just useless memories clinging like grit to the crevices of your brain, grinding and chafing and tearing you up. They don't help you. They don't help anyone. All they do is fill you with dread.
I FIGURED IT OUT, EVENTUALLY. Cheryl wasn't guiding the voices toward me, Robert was. Like an electric conductor, a Tesla machine, he drew the souls toward himself from all over the city, focused them and then bounced them back in my direction. Their murmuring rose in both volume and pitch whenever he was around.
The clothes piled around me in Cheryl's room could only filter the voices so much. The buffer they created was full of holes. What I needed was a solid airtight wall, more layers, closer to my skin. I needed to wrap myself completely in Cheryl, to climb into her clothes and disappear inside her, but I understood that this wasn't possible, not with her so far away.
And then in that way solutions have of appearing as soon as you finally give up on finding them, I knew what to do. I slid open the double bolts on Cheryl's door and peered through the crack.
No Robert, nowhere.
I tiptoed out.
He was home, though, I knew—the voices had grown stronger over the past hour and blocked out even the faint glow of Cheryl's hair—but where he was exactly, and what he was doing to manipulate my mind, I had no idea.
In the hall the voices flicked past me like whips. Help me. Save me. Where's your light? Help me see. Shine your light. It's so dark. Each one cleaving, scraping, pressing its mark on me. Slowly, with wary steps, I made my way through them, keeping my mouth shut so they couldn't jump in.
The door to the master bedroom was open, the bedside lamp on. Steeling my face, narrowing my vision, I lunged past it.
The voices were pounding me now like hailstones, threatening, hissing like raccoons. He'd sent them to distract me. To keep me occupied while he and whoever it was he'd enlisted—the police? Dr. Rahajafeeli? Yeah, him, it would have to be him—worked out their plan to trap Cheryl and me.
“Julia?”
A glance—he was sitting on the foot of the bed, his thin talon feet hidden inside sheer black socks—and I forged on. The linen closet was just a few feet further. It contained something I needed.
“Julia?”
The voices swirled so fast here that they stung my eyes. Tears streamed from the corners. I was blind. But when I squeezed the knob on the closet door, they faded slightly. Brass. It's a conductor. It took what little defense I had against him and magnified it.
“Can we talk for a second?” He was next to me, leaning on the doorway, his one leg bent like a crane's across the other. The rest of his body was—I don't know. I refused to look at him. “What are you doing?”
The tiniest gesture of refusal, that's all I would give him. I couldn't speak, couldn't open my mouth, not with the voices trying to get in.
“What are you being so secretive about?”
I shook my head, a warning.
“Julia, please. You have to let me help you. What happened to us talking things out together?”
Then he squinted at me. His silence was as threatening as his speech. I had the sense that he was gathering his forces—that's why the voices had grown so muffled. He'd pulled them into himself. That's what he was doing. And once he'd turned them into something hard and ruthless and quick, he was going to hurl them at me through the doorknob. Brass was a conductor, but not for me—he was the one who controlled the energy. I suddenly remembered the studded belt Cheryl had started wearing low on her hips that year; were those studs made of brass? Yes, I thought, yes, they were. And who'd bought that belt? It hadn't been me. Was she wearing it now? Was that why I couldn't find her? I wondered what kind of stories Robert had told her during the three months I'd been away. What absurd ideas had he installed in her head? Maybe the belt was one of the tools he used to beam messages to her and drive her away from me.
Terror gave me strength and I yanked again, releasing the knob quickly as the door swung open. The sewing kit was in the back corner of the third shelf, behind the guest towels, past the washcloths. Cradling it tight to my chest, I turned on Robert. He was giving me that look that always meant trouble, like somehow I was trying to wound him. I shook my head, kept my mouth clamped shut.
“Julia.” The way he kept saying my name, like he was afraid to upset me, it was disconcerting, like he was invoking
something hidden inside me, trying to take it away.
“STOOOOOOOOP!” Once my mouth opened, I couldn't shut it again.
And suddenly he had his arms around me, his hands clasped behind my back, flexing, squeezing as tight as he could. “Calmdown-calmdowncalmdown,” he said.
When I bit his shoulder, I could feel his muscle fighting back under the tight knit of his oxford.
“Julia. Calm down. Now.” His voice was clipped. Dictatorial.
“Let me go!” I screamed. “Stop torturing me!”
The more I fought against him, the tighter his grip became. I made myself limp and sank out of his grasp, onto my knees, then further, onto my back. I flailed there.
He said it again: “Julia.” Crouching in front of me, he struggled to make himself look like he cared, held his palms out in front of his body, as though I were a dog he could lull into trusting him. “Okay? I'm not gonna hurt you.”
I spat at him.
“You're not taking your pills, are you? Julia? Are you? You, really, you need to take your pills.” He said this with the same soothing tone of voice I remembered him using all those years ago when he'd agreed to help me manage without them. I was beginning now to understand what that word, manage, meant to him.
“You're trying to kill me,” I said.
He kept on going, not even a flinch. “If you take your meds—Julia, look at me.”
Grabbing me by the chin, he held my head straight.
“If you take your meds, things will be a lot easier.” The skin on his face was thin and translucent. I could see his skull through it.
Once, a long time ago, he'd known just how to be around me. He'd loved me. He'd been on my side. But that Robert was gone. Now, he was a man who hid behind obscure threats. Things will be easier. What things? And for whom?
“What things?” I asked.
“Things, Julia. Everything. Your life.”
I searched his face for what he was hiding, but all I could find were crow's-feet—and inside his eye sockets, mirrors, shiny, silver, my face reflected back at me. How'd I get so haggard? When'd I get so tired? What had he done to make me so exhausted? The voices. That's what it was. But now, weirdly, as though he'd been reading my thoughts, they'd vanished. “Where'd they go?” I said. “What did you do with them?”
“With what?”
“You know what.”
Pinching his eyes, he said, “No, Julia, I don't. I really don't. Not if you don't tell me.”
“The people!” I shouted. “Don't pretend you don't understand what I'm saying! I'm not crazy! I know what you're up to! What did you do with the goddamn people?!”
Then he broke. He broke and he cried and instead of reflecting me back to me, now, he was showing me another different him. The soft, malleable Robert he'd once been. The one who cared so much and was so affected by the troubles I couldn't shake that he responded to them as though they were his, as though he were living my life along with me. He was putting the Robert I used to trust on display. The one who had offered me alternatives at that time in my life when I'd reached the limits of my possibilities and been lost and drowning in Dinkytown, the one who, with Sarah already six years gone, had been the only person I could confide in. He was showing me— taunting me, trying to bribe me with—the Robert I'd taught myself how to love.
Well, I could be tricky too. I narrowed my eyes. “Fine,” I said. “I'll take your stupid fucking pills. But”—nose quivering, finger jabbing in his face—“Dr. Rahajafeeli has to stay out of it. And Cheryl—” I had to stop myself so I wouldn't cry. Crying would give him control over me.
“I'm doing everything I can to find Cheryl,” he said, as if I would somehow be comforted by this.
“Keep away from her,” I snapped.
His eyes picked slowly over my face, searching for soft spots he could exploit and attach his barbs to, but I was hard, I was glacial and barren, and when he knew there was nothing to hold on to, he dipped his head slowly and whispered, “It's going to be okay.”
My pills. They were worse than a straitjacket, restraints on my mind, making me foggy, dizzy, meaningless, unable to discern the meaning in anything. Even the new ones, the atypical ones. They rid me of myself, destroyed my reality and forced me into an alternate one, a reality of surfaces without substance and life without living that wasn't really an alternative at all. They thinned my blood. They made me fat. If I took them long enough, I'd get diabetes. But by then, diabetes would be a gift, a step closer to death and escape from them. Robert knew this. He'd sympathized, years ago. He'd been the only one. And now he'd changed his mind. This most recent episode had changed his mind. Dr. Rahajafeeli had finally convinced him. Well, I still had me, and it was my body and I'd faked taking these pills before.
I hissed at him, “Stay away from my daughter, and I'll take your stupid pills.”
He'd find out, eventually, that I'd lied to him. Then he'd release the voices again, send them stampeding back, and call Dr. Rahajafeeli in for reinforcements, to provide another front and block any possibility of escape. If I worked fast, though, I might be able to build my defenses before this happened. I had to. For Cheryl's sake as much as my own.
Rolling over, pushing myself up, I turned my back on him. As I scurried away, I checked the sewing kit—scissors, yes, needles, thread, yes, thimble—everything was there.
In Cheryl's room, I threw the bolts, turned off the light and lay down on her bed. I listened. I closed my eyes and looked past the room. Nothing.
I dug through the clothes piled up on her bed. Burrowed. With scissors and teeth, I ate at the seams, split them open and separated each item into its parts. First the cashmere sweater that had been Sarah's, then the brown cords, the nylons, the North Face jacket. I cut the political slogans off the t-shirts and piled them together for later use. Then I began sewing, constructing something new from what I had destroyed, knitting the pieces into one large cloak that contained everything she'd left behind. I had to keep sewing, as quickly as I could, create a tapestry big enough for us both. When I was done, I wrapped it around my shoulders. I stood very still in the center of her room, arms spread, ready to embrace her.
I called out her name and waited.
Gremlin was at the door, digging, mewling to be let in. I opened it a crack, bolted it behind him. He tipped his head. He was listening too. We waited together.
And waited.
And waited.
Until we found her, the only one still awake, stumbling through the dark Wreck Room, her hand trailing along the unfinished wall from one wooden strut to the next. She was able to see—gray on gray on black on gray—that wasn't the problem, the problem was moving, the problem was thinking, the problem was convincing her feet to land in the places she tried to put them, and doing all these things without tipping over or vomiting. She reeled her way toward the cubby off the kitchen where, behind a black flag nailed to the doorway, the toilet—that cracked basin, rust stains licking from its drain—was hidden. One step, another, one more. She had to rest. The room careened around her. She had to shut her eyes. She longed to wrap herself around something hard and immobile, cling to a buoy and keep herself afloat. She wavered in the dark. Her stomach twirled. There was a gypsy inside her, thrashing and swinging and clamoring to get out. She lurched and grabbed at the blackness, her whole weight pulling on the lump of fabric until she heard a tear— the flag ripping from the nail—and she fell.
A noise like cicadas pressed at her from all directions, and somewhere on the other side of it, she faintly heard her boyfriend calling out to her. “Fucking … what's going on out there … Betty?” She couldn't respond. Just getting her brain to turn his sounds into meaning was hard. She broke into a sweat. Pulling herself along the floor, she found the toilet and propped her head on the lip. The spins wouldn't stop. She'd used up her energy. All she was capable of doing now was opening her mouth and letting the water, the bile and everything else, the various colors of her self-loathing, flow out.
As I stood in the bedroom she'd deserted in Plymouth, Trent pulled himself from the sleeping bag to navigate around his walls of books and tiptoe across the dark space of the Sabotage Café, searching, whispering her name, until he found her. He knelt beside her, rubbed her back through the dry heaves, gave her a knee on which to rest her head and a piece of cloth to wipe her chin. He brought her a half-empty bottle of Coke and held it to her lips so she could wash the taste of vomit from her mouth. Then an arm around her ribs to shoulder her weight, he walked her through the Wreck Room and past the sleeping forms of Mike and Devin, into the corner of the bedroom they shared. He laid her down, careful not to let her fall, and watched her sleep.
I was too late, but at least I'd found her again.
I SAW HER AT PARTIES that erupted out of nowhere.
One night it would just be the four of them, silent in the Wreck Room, each with his own bottle of Midnight Dragon, all of them separately regressing into the stricken soft tissue of their pasts— those memories, so similar and shameful, that they could neither obliterate nor share: that one time Mike's Army Ranger dad had snuggled up next to him on the couch, feeding him cognac while they watched The X Files, and his hand inching up Mike's inner thigh, boasting how he'd been inside Area 51; the time Devin had finally hit his father back and instead of laughing or pummeling him harder, his father had said, “Finally, you pussy. What took you so long?”; Trent's long week of holding his mother down, braced like a brick over her shaking body, while wiping the sweat away with a warm washcloth and whispering, “Everything's okay, it's going to be okay,” telling himself as much as her, erecting one last edifice of hope for her to later shatter; and Cheryl, Cheryl, secretly missing me—and the next night, the kids would be at their door, demanding that Sabotage open for business, bursting in and overrunning the place, every rat in the Twin Cities suddenly squatting inside its dilapidated walls.
Kids sat in circles, passing one-hitters disguised as cigarettes. They hovered over the portable boom box, rifled through the CDs scattered around it, laughing and scoffing, and sometimes, when they found an especially awful disk—anything by Green Day, Devin's stolen copy of Hanson's Snowed In—they'd whip it across the room like a saw blade. They stomped to the rushing beat of the Rollins Band, bowing and bouncing the floorboards. They punched more and more holes into the wall.
