Running right down to some cheap gallery showing wouldn’t do. Meeting Amelia would be easy, if there was chemistry already great, I’d supply the grease for that, if not, okay, there’s always a way in if you know where to dig. I got to digging, I went to where her old work was still showing to get a few samples of the goods. I was immediately impressed, as much as I was disturbed. I observed the slick haired, grave haunts that dwelled in the nearly empty spaces and I determined to take my own steps to impress.
I also hit the clubs in town, the places that weren’t well known, the sorts of pretentious watering holes where the faux elite figured themselves at home. I needed to get a feeling for how the scene had changed and evolved since those heady not quite punk, and certainly not yet goth days of 1979-1980 in Hicksville, Mass. I got the appropriate clothes, brought a whole lot of tapes and even a few cd’s home to get hip to. It was all fun, but completely unnecessary. I wasn’t a spy in some action flick going deep behind enemy lines. I was an accountant, rapidly approaching my thirties, with a few developed fetishes and a willingness to explore the ever-changing terra infirma of the burgeoning goth scene.
I didn’t bother with subtlety or subterfuge. I got gussied up, making sure to wait until you got home to see if you had anything rhetorical to add. You looked at the dyed hair and those black clothes and only smiled benignly at me. Your performance on that dining room chair had been grand but all those sweat, empty smiles since then told me so much more. I pressed the moment, “So, tell me, would you have gone out with me ten years ago?”
You laughed, genuinely, that fucking witch cackle. “Ten years ago, I would have thought you were some old dude trying way to hard.”
You were quick to follow it up though, you’ve gotten better at softening the blow since those old days. “But…if I was an immature, girl child, who still felt it necessary to dress and act the part now, yeah, I’d be all over you. Amelia will never know what hit her.”
When I arrived at the current showing, I got a chance to examine some of Amelia’s more recent artwork. The stuff on display was dark, frustrated, bloody, and brilliant. I forgot my purpose for being in the gallery as I spent nearly an hour looking at canvases covered in distorted weeping eyes, howling, bloody mouths, and spatters of paint that perfectly matched the colors of a misery I felt at any given point of my day.
I found myself staring at polaroid photos scattered randomly along the walls, some were framed, others merely pinned to the white drywall with thumb tacks. Some of the photos were little different than the ones you brought home to me, others were of the artist covered in gory make-up and prosthetics, some of them were hauntingly beautiful, others just haunting, and a few were down right grotesque.
One of the framed pieces was a collage of cut up polaroid photos, I saw a wide ass and a pair of perky breasts that were all too familiar, along with a platinum blonde bob cut belonging to a head I could still make out even though the face had been carelessly scratched away.
Was this another test? Another game that was sure to put me in my place? I nearly walked out without meeting the woman of the hour. Fuck us, fuck our little game, if you wanted to destroy me so badly, to ruin every remaining shred of my ego, it would have been so much easier to go home and have it out, once and for all.
I turned away from the polaroid of you, the one that spelled out a relationship I didn’t want the details of, and I headed for the front door of the rented gallery space. I nearly ran over Amelia as she was showing a small assembly of guests around the room. She didn’t even acknowledge me as she spoke about one bit of her work or another, sounding about as thrilled to be showing her work as I would imagine someone would sound pointing out their personal failures to total strangers.
I shot past the beautiful woman who smelled like, what else, cloves, and I reached for the handle of the door when I heard my name. “Robert van Patton, you stop right there!”
It was like hearing my mother’s voice shouting from the kitchen window, I was six all over again and I had been caught digging in the back yard.
I turned around, my fears completely confirmed about the sort of trap you had laid for me.
Amelia looked at me and pointed to one obvious bit of blank space near the corner of the room. “You need to go stand over there, please.”
No, not my mother’s voice, it was a dead ringer for Ms. Marcel, my fourth-grade teacher.
God how I loathed that woman.
I smiled, knowingly and turned for the door but Amelia ignored the rest of the room, including the important looking guests she had been poorly presenting her work to. “Don’t you dare walk out on me, I told you to go stand over there.”
There was nothing keeping me in that gallery except for the demanding tone of her voice, I could have kept walking, I could have walked out to my car, driven home, put my fist in your eye, packed a bag and given up on us. With every new surprise it was becoming easier to imagine that scenario though and that made me hate myself all the more.
I wasn’t done being humiliated it seemed, I walked over to the bare spot near the corner of the room and stood there, casually leaning against it with my hands jammed in my pockets. Amelia made a point to stalk across the room, to pull my hands out of my pockets and stand me up straight. I had become a reluctant, department store mannequin, sticking out like a sore thumb against the rest of her exhibits.
“That’s my wife’s body over there in the photo on the wall. This has gotta be the shittiest, see through, prank she has ever pulled.” That was all I got out, all I managed to whisper as Amelia pulled and pushed at me until I was in a suitable position. She put one cold hand over my mouth. “This is not one of her little games, this is my life’s work. Now, you’re going to stand here, just like this while I put you on display. You’re going to do it because I have answers to your questions and because I’ve been waiting weeks for this moment and no one is going to ruin this for me.”
With me positioned properly, my back straight against the wall, my head forward, my hands at their sides and my feet parted slightly, Amelia turned away from me and cleared her throat. “Assembled guests and fellow artisans, please step forward and bare witness as I present my single greatest artistic achievement to date.”
Nearly one hundred people formed a rough school circle around the corner of the room I stood near. Amelia waited until they had all assembled and the chatter died down.
“I call this piece, Robert van Patton. Although he has been alive for twenty-nine years now I’ve only been involved in the last ten months of his life. I started this creation by involving myself with his wife, Lisa van Patton. Seducing her was no easy feat but I managed to gain her trust with promises to invite her into our society, promises I later reneged on of course. I convinced Lisa to involve Robert in an ever-evolving conspiracy of extra-marital defeatism that ultimately lead to him convincing himself that the only way to regain the spark of sadism that holds their relationship together was to seduce a co-worker, eliminate her self-esteem and ultimately drive her to commit suicide in their home, thus pulling the couple closer and back into his preferred alignment.”
Amelia paused for a moment and I attempted to move away from the wall, what I was hearing was pure insanity. I couldn’t bear to stand against that wall like some kid waiting for their parent to measure their height against the wall with a tape measure. Amelia was quick to motion with one finger to the crowd, the universal sign for “hold on just a second.”
Amelia turned on me and I saw a face wild with rage. She spit her whispers at me. “You need to stay in place until I’m done. This isn’t just about me, this is about you, and your place here. Stay still, be a good boy, or else…”
I shrugged away from her grasp and attempted to walk away from the wall, that’s when I noticed the two goons standing in front of the door leading out of the gallery. I also noticed the gallery audience, still waiting, most of them looking at me the same way you looked at me back in that abandoned house when you asked me to show you my dick.
I wasn’t standing straight against the wall anymore and one hand had found its way back into a pocket at random but I didn’t move any further. That was enough for Amelia, she turned back to the audience, straining to smile as she spoke. “When Robert was handed the woman that I convinced his wife to seduce, unwilling to comply with the plot he had contrived, he attempted to murder her. He was quick to improvise and just as quick to attempt to fake that attempted murder as a suicide.”
Amelia waited for a round of applause before she continued, “Also of note, Robert has shown a pattern of creativity and initiative in spoiling his wife’s college hopes by making calls and mailing manifestos, he also showed little regard for his financial future as he set her up for a job ending confrontation by giving her herpes which he himself contracted in the course of exerting his revenge for her amateurish attempts to ruin his chosen career in life. I would ask that you consider his candidacy in our society at the coming meeting.”
There was another, hastier round of applause, one aimed directly at me. The leering crowd made my stomach turn but the praise excited me. You hadn’t handed me that sort of praise since your genuine smile as I told you about the Amherst prank.
The crowd dispersed and I watched the goons as they continued to block my exit.
Amelia waited for the crowd to go back to looking at her other, smaller works, before she turned on me. “You’re flushed, angry, embarrassed, frustrated. You feel belittled and confused. I know how you feel because I stood against a wall very much like the one you’re up against now.”
Amelia leaned in and whispered, “The society will keep those guards at the door, if you run at them, you fail, and I don’t want you to fail. You need to stand here, you need to let them gawk at you, even poke at you if that’s what they prefer. Just for tonight, for a few ugly hours, you are art on display, you are what we do and that is the entry fee to the biggest thrill of your life. Once more, if you promise to stay, right now, you can ask me all the questions you want, and do whatever you want to me after they all leave.”
I nodded at her. I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I stopped looking at the goons at the door and I didn’t bother returning the gaze of the ones who came up to gawk at me as I stood there on display. What ate up my time as I stood there, red faced, leaning against the bare spot on the wall, was you.
How did you fit into all this madness? What was your angle? Where did you come into play, you had to, you were my better, the master to my student. Surely you calculated this outcome, you had your contingencies in place to be sure. Having a beautiful, dark haired, pale skinned, woman waving at herself as though she were nothing more than a collection of choice cuts of meat. Having someone who seemed so capable, offering herself up to me once the crowds dissipated, no, you had to be close by.
I got busy spending an hour or so thinking in the wrong direction and ignoring the obvious. I was no different going into my one on one with Amelia. She saw the last stragglers out as I stood and listened to them congratulate her on her latest piece as they leered at me and pointed in my general direction.
The goons were the only ones who staid as Amelia turned the lights off in the gallery and walked over to me. She took my hand in hers and moved me away from the gallery proper towards another room lit by blue lights. It wasn’t a demand, she didn’t pull at me, she stopped easily when she realized I wasn’t going to follow along behind her.
I felt a sudden absence of the authority that came before. Her crowd was gone, her responsibilities laid to rest for the night. Amelia looked at me then, her eyes were still fierce, perfect mirrors of yours, gun metal gray and full of purpose and intent, but the rest of her face was soft, yielding, almost pleading.
You never would have looked at me like that, you never would have given me that sort of power over any moment had with you. I was lost, I didn’t know what to do with that moment, and to be fair I didn’t know what to do with Amelia, she might have looked like you if you had never aged out of the scene, but she wasn’t you. I was awkward and in the dark all over again and that it was terrifying.
I followed Amelie into the room lit with its blue party bulbs. She stood in the middle of that room, as though she were suddenly the one on display, and she looked to me as though she were the one waiting for instruction.
“What does Lisa know about tonight?”
I’ll spare you the next forty variations on that theme. You’re dead and I’m dying and we both know the answers anyway.
I must have grilled Amelia for a solid hour before I was satisfied that you were completely in the dark about that night and what she had planned for me. I couldn’t imagine a world where you were the one on the outside looking in. I also couldn’t comprehend a world that would chose little, insignificant me, over deep, meaningful and all powerful you. Who the fuck chooses to observe the worm when they could bask in the glory of the bird?"
The answer was Amelia and her twisted society.
I never asked after them, I made a point not to but Amelia told me anyway. You and I weren’t alone, we weren’t unique, or even original. That knowledge ate at me, and I’m sure it ate at you too, but not as much as the knowledge that Amelia chose me over you. She made sure to tell me that. I was always the focus, the star of their play between us. How absurd.
It seems there is a whole society of people like us, we stretch into every facet of humanity, the society makes art from human misery like a slaughter house makes hamburger out of cows. It does so for similar reasons too, there is profit to be had from everything under the sun.
Amelia recognized my boredom in her casual explanations of how her secret world worked, she marveled at my indifference. “You really only care about her, huh?”
I answered, “Us.” I didn’t need to think about it or contemplate the variables.
Amelia smiled at me then, the same way you had started to of late. “Well I guess that answers the only question I had for you. I suppose you don’t want to get imaginative on what to do with me, given my generous offer.”
“All I want from you, and these other people, is to be left alone. Leave us alone and let us be.”
Amelia’s face changed to stone then. She looked at me under those blue lights and sneered at me. “She’s so fucking bored with you. Your worship, your meekness, your tired resignation to being her faithful fucking foot stool. She’s already one foot out the door and you’re busy telling me to stay away from the ghost of what you had with her. You really are just as pathetic as she said you were.”
It would have been so easy to launch myself at Amelia then, and every fiber of my being was ready to do just that. Endless scenarios unfolded in the few minutes while I stood there and stared at the heartbreakingly beautiful and oh so cold, woman who stood before me under those blue lights. None of those scenarios would have done anything to further our cause.
I’ll tell you now because I know it ate at you later on as she refused to return your calls or meet with you, but my last words to Amelia as she stood there under those blue lights were a repeat of my intention. “Leave us alone and let us be. We want nothing to do with you people.”
Amelia leered at me. “You don’t, but she does. We chose already, and I guess we chose poorly, you two deserve each other. Neither of you will hear from us ever again.”
My careful examination of your phone calls and financial transactions since that night have proved to me that Amelia and her absurd society have never attempted contact, but I know you have.
The only call I have ever made to Amelia or her precious society was the phone call I made earlier today. There should be some record of us, some measuring of our final few years and the new depths we reached together. I imagine we’ll feature heavily in some upcoming gallery of hers, perhaps stills or maybe video. I also imagine Amelia will traipse through our inner sanctum, maybe take some hair or a pair of underwear or two before she calls the authorities in a faked panic…and the award goes to.
I drove around the city after my encounter with Amelia. My head was full of angry bees and I had no idea what the next step was going to be. Amelia’s words were already digging holes in the landscape surrounding my idea of us.
I was boring, predictable, meek, and I had so easily resigned myself to being a second-class citizen in the nation of us. Our little pranks were our horrors, spelled out on our skin and the skins of everyone we had ever encountered together, they had also been the glue that bound us. I was boring and predictable because you could see me coming. I was meek and resigned because that was my nature, if those traits had ever played out in the bedroom I was most certainly the sub to your dom. You had grown bored of the game and I was determined to change that as I turned my car around toward home.
The ultimate prank, the ugliest one I ever pulled was the one I landed on you that night and it took me a good, long while to realize it was a prank at all. I might as well have walked in and put a fist in your eye before climbing into bed and turning off the lights, and the glorious bit was my masterwork required no lies, no effort, and no pranking to speak of. It also didn’t end in either of us packing our bags in a fit of angst, yet it was the only prank you could never forgive for.
You were already in bed and reading when I came in. You didn’t ask about how my night went, you didn’t look up at me or even acknowledge my existence. I wrenched the book out of your grasp and tossed it out into the hallway. Hearing that book scatter across the tile was the most satisfying sound I think I heard in years. Seeing the look on your face was priceless.
Incensed is as close as I can come to explaining how you looked at me then. I pulled you up on your knees on the bed and kissed you, there was no reward involved, there was no that a boy. I held you lips against mine because I wanted to, and when I was done I looked you in the eyes and said, “Amelia and her precious society made a spectacle of us and I told them all to blow it out their asses. We’re done with them and that’s final.”
You starting stuttering, trying to ask me what I meant and I obliged in stuttering half sentences while I yanked and pulled off your night clothes. “They picked me over you. She, picked me over you, that was their plan all along, it was so absurd. Amelia put me on display like some fucking department store mannequin and told a room full of strangers about all the things we’ve done. She drug all our personal horrors out and read them aloud like a resume. It was ridiculous.”
You grabbed at my hands as they found their way into the waistband of your panties and you started to push me away. “You were supposed to seduce her! We could have played her together, gotten them to notice the both of us!”
“I don’t want her, and I don’t want them either. It’s ridiculous, a society of sadists? Give me a fucking break.”
You were on your knees on the bed, nearly naked before me but not on display, you were defiant but nearly as vulnerable as Amelia had been, “So, that’s it, whatever you want to do, whatever you say, that’s how it is and I’m supposed to act like some miserable, wispy haired, hausfrau?”
I kissed you again, sure as sure could be that I had reached some magical part of you that would see me for what I really was, for what I was really worth. Naïve to the last, that’s me.
Maybe you kissed me back, I think you did, I hope you did. Even now I still want to believe that we aligned that night without the need to hurt each other or someone else for kicks. I whispered to you after that kiss, you told me later that those words worked for you and I hope you were being honest.
“You’re supposed to be mine, and you are, and I am supposed to be yours, and I am, and if we don’t love each other then what is any of this worth.”
We had fucked each other before, countless times. That night may have been the first, and last time, we ever made love, and I can’t ever be certain that you weren’t under duress of some nature. Quietly calculating how to get back in Amelia’s and their good graces while I pumped away like some love sick high school kid.
Three days went by and we weren’t doing the boring nightly rituals anymore. There were no bed clothes, no reading calmly before bed. There were no more silences and moments of quiet desperation to be had between us. We were outraged together, despondent together, totally feral for the time being. I felt as though it was a golden age for us, clearly, I was wrong.
I kept the black hair for a while and you kept the same white blonde and neither of us were busy making our own clothes, but we made our presence known at all those local clubs I had checked into. Our days were for work, and our nights became reserved for whatever fancies interested the two of us.
For me, those months following my run in with Amelia will forever be our golden age, the bright light, the swollen garden of our life together. Nothing killed that time until we were ready to end it, we knew what we expected from one another after that. What we became was the sacrifice for that period of time, I know that now. Our love consumed all it touched, and for anyone who needs confirmation of that fact, well, just look at us now.
We became so practiced, so confident in the ruining of the lives that happened to come in contact with us that we could meet a single man or woman at the club and have him or her codependently hooked up with someone on a Saturday, only to have them both single again and in complete despair by the following Friday. We didn’t need to sleep with anyone else to spread an STD, we just farmed our own little dirty birdies and pushed them around the most recent circle of friends until there was no one left who wasn’t ruined and itching when they thought no one else was looking.
Over the last year, our time in the sun plying our chosen proclivities, there was no possible way to account for how many people we effected on our little weekend and weeknight incursions. The police who show up, after Amelia has had her way with us, will point out curiosities as the crime scene techs take their stale pictures and place their numbered placards and none of them will ever understand what the little black, red, blue, and yellow, circled and highlighted names in my address book indicate.
How many women did we get pregnant by miserable proxy? How many abortions did we foster? How many cases of the clap, or syphilis, or even A.I.D.S did we hand off to our casual, single serving friends? How many suicides, how many murders only whispered by down trodden acquaintances? It got to a point where even we had to rely on mere speculation to calculate the wages of our conjoined sins.
It wasn’t just the club scene either. We did a little fostering of our own during this last year, didn’t we? How many times did we pussy foot around the idea of turning your fascination with serial killers into a real hobby? Twelve times, twenty even? We never had the guts to do it though. All the junkies, all the runaways, all the losers down on their luck that we let stay in the guest room for a night or a week. I point out that part because today was all about you.
Our ending, as in the dark as you may or may not have been about it, your fascination, your all-consuming hobby became the spring board for what has become of us. Your revenge for my ultimate prank and that dark fascination with those who choose to kill their fellow man, that culminated in where we find ourselves today. That’s the last thing I want you to know, for certain, from me to you. I pulled the trigger but you bought the gun, you loaded it, and you handed it to me.
We didn’t leave each other alone during our golden age. We loved our money, and the power that came along with it intertwined our financial futures, so intertwined in fact that it was the only bar we refused to jump, knowingly. Your abortion is as good a place as any to spell out the end of our golden age. You were nearly ten years on the pill by the time I got the bright idea to further our own ventures against one another. Siphoning placebos into your little sun dial was easy, a little too easy maybe. The first false alarm was nothing more than a few uncomfortable weeks and your steadfast refusal to go to the doctor. That one ended on the toilet, and I never even heard about it firsthand.
You told one of the dupes that you were embarrassed about the whole thing and they had to clue me in. You were already well under way into your careful examination of serial killer habits by then and you weren’t so much talking to me anymore so much as at me. I never brought it up, it was equal parts realizing that it was a C- prank at best and my anger at not being involved in the outcome.
I stopped shuffling your pills but it was too late. The second time around was procedural and I didn’t smile or smirk as I drove you dutifully to the clinic. You were incensed once again, threatening to file a law suit against your doctor and the company who sold the pill you had been so dutifully taking for so long. I had plans to wait until your birthday to spring the notice on you. I was still planning out the best way to let you know that I had willingly knocked you up just to get you scraped out like a Halloween pumpkin when I stepped carelessly into your revenge. Talk about a land mine.
Two weeks later and I was looking forward to coming home to you, to fucking you as we counted up our kills, excited at the possibilities of another weekend touring the club circuit when he sprung out at me near my parked car in the underground lot.
He outweighed me by half and he was as quiet as the grave. I was so confident, so sure, so knowing in the course and direction of how our little play was supposed to end. You didn’t know about my lamest prank of all, how could you? He punched me in the back of my head once and that was enough to complete the entire act. I was too dazed to fight him as he shoved me into the backseat of my car and yanked my pants off.
If you were still breathing now, still sucking in wet breathes through blood-soaked lungs I might see fit to lean in and put a steady hand on your forehead while I explain in gory detail how the hired help drove home your last painful lesson but since you’re already dead let me assure you that I learned something from the revenge I couldn’t dare to imagine.
With every thrust I learned a new lesson. You liked our new arrangement, you made sure to tell me so, but you hadn’t agreed to it, and that was my real crime. The difference was easy to understand as I felt him pressing down on me, working at my clothes. Your displeasure at being kissed in the name of love became clear to me as I was violated ruthlessly into the wee hours. Your message was clear as I arrived in the hospital and laid there, face down, for three days, always wondering if or when you would arrive to see me.
After they let me go I limped through our front door on my own two feet and I didn’t need to review our finances to see the link between what I had done to you and what had been done to me.
Dalton Alan Meegs, now there is the name of a serial killer if there ever was one.
I found the check stub, left conspicuously atop my desk at home. I was almost honored to see that my rape had cost a kingly ten thousand dollars, even more so given the obvious joy the man took at harming me. You had done your homework, and then some.
A line had been crossed. I walked over it casually then you brought a pole and vaulted the son of a bitch. We would never leave each other, divorce was never mentioned, but there was no going forward, no moving on. You knew that, you didn’t come home alone, a small troupe of our most recent crop of dupes came in with you. I could hear them asking after me in the wake of my car accident as I stood in the shower letting the water burn every inch of my skin.
I heard you walk into the bedroom, you took your shoes off and you had one of them in your hand. It was white knuckled. I had no doubt that you would have buried that high heel in my temple if I came charging at you but that was as close as you were willing to come to being worried about my reaction to your revenge.
Revenge.
That’s the business we were in from then until now. Maybe I’m fooling myself, maybe it was always revenge, but I like to lie to myself and pretend that we had kept it fairly harmless until my little pill shuffle game and your retaliation.
I felt that we were suddenly in new territory either way. You had never felt the need to arm yourself before. I walked out of the bathroom and passed you on my way to the closet. I wasn’t going to forgive you, I wasn’t going to tell you everything was alright, but I wasn’t going to pack a bag either, and I certainly wasn’t going to charge at you like some sort of deranged animal.
I tried to settle your nerves, at least for the time being. “So, where are we all going tonight?”
The prolonged silence that followed was the greatest validation I had felt in weeks. You wanted to say something but you wouldn’t or couldn’t. Instead you stood there and watched me begin to dress. You walked to your side of the closet and started putting an outfit together.
We didn’t say a word as we dressed, we didn’t touch, there were no questions about how you knew about my pill shuffling or how my lonely stay in the hospital was. Nothing. We went out and greeted our guests and went back to the work we both enjoyed most.
There were a few more days and nights like that. As sad as it was, after what had been done to me, as painful and humiliating as it was, you were the one who acted like the victimized party. We went out every night that week, you would come home with a bevy of dullards and our only discussions involved how best to mentally dissect them or feed them to one another, whole and screaming. Otherwise, we didn’t talk at all. Every night at least one of the dullards came home, and every night you found your way into the spare bedroom.
One night I woke up and tried the door. It was locked of course, and you weren’t asleep. It took me the better part of that week to realize why you were acting like you were living with a ghost. Why my things were rifled through when I returned from the hospital, and why you never visited me while I was there. You were fresh out of games, out of motives, and unsettled every time you caught me looking at you.
Suddenly that ten thousand dollars didn’t seem like such a kingly sum. My death was supposed to be cheap. There was nothing cheap about today.
Dalton Alan Meegs.
I found him living in a basement apartment that instantly reminded me of our first place together, right down to the dirty shag carpet and the stench of old mold. It was my time to be apprehensive, my time to be armed. The gun was surprisingly easy to come by. I felt ridiculous with it bulging inside my coat, like I playing the heavy in some gangster movie.
One look at the man of the hour and I knew that gun would have been useless anyway. I never got to see him before. The instrument of your revenge had been so careful. When I got a look at the man I was thankful that he hadn’t attempted to introduce himself. Dalton was no boy next door. Far more Ed Gein than Dahmer to be sure.
As I spoke to him I wasn’t even sure he understood me. Not until I explained briefly where I knew him from. A slow, ugly sort of recognition came over Dalton’s face and he was quick to start edging toward me. I didn’t have the courage to explain that I had the gun, or that I intended to use it. Bravado wouldn’t do.
“50,000 dollars.” Money, it’s a universal language. At the very least it got him to stop moving.
I can’t imagine how or under what circumstances you spoke to that animal. I wonder if you did the same thing, finding yourself sputtering money figures at a human abyss, hoping that it wouldn’t do to you for free what it did to me for ten grand.
While I had Dalton’s attention I spelled out my intent. He never spoke to me, only nodding that he understood what I wanted him to do. I never asked him about your intentions, why would I? We both acknowledged that the unwritten rules of us didn’t include asking after a prank already pulled.
I didn’t set a time table for Mr. Meegs. I wasn’t sure if the hulking, uni-browed, galoot even owned a watch, much less if he knew how to tell time.
Three more days went by, you were still busy acting like you were living with a ghost and I was busy watching the world crawl by, feeling every ugly second of it. Would he be waiting for you in the parking lot at the gallery? Would I get an awkward phone call from the police or the hospital? Another botched plot? Would we both circle each other until it was time for a dinner time duel? Steak knives at 7pm?
My nerves were completely frayed by the time I pulled up to the house two weeks ago. I had spent most nights finding or creating a reason to be late, meeting you at the club or begging off our plans altogether. I didn’t get in until nearly eight and everything was dark. Your car was waiting in the drive way.
I felt heartsick. It was time and I knew it. I would find you in here, cut to ribbons, bashed to pieces, or maybe just shot. I wasn’t specific with Mr. Meegs on the how of things. I didn’t want to lose you, I could never walk away from you. You payed a deranged lunatic to kill me and he wounded me instead. You assumed it was you or me, not you and me. As I lay here now, a nearly dead testament to faithfulness, I assure you, my plans at that time mirrored where we find ourselves today. I was never going to outlive you.
I steeled myself for finding you, no matter what condition you might have been left in. Instead of finding your torn up remains I found you waiting for me. You were sitting conspicuously in the dining room, the lights off, wearing that same black coat you wore when you began to write the final chapter of our lives.
“I can’t do this anymore. None of it. Not between us. I’m so fucking scared of you. I don’t want to be scared anymore.”
That was your opening salvo. You came clean about your intentions, and how profoundly hurt you were by my last, shitty prank. You explained your action as an impulse, something you regretted instantly. You also told me how scared you were of me and what I had planned next.
I didn’t even recognize the person I was talking to that night. You were someone else entirely. The stoic, mean girl I adored was gone, suddenly replaced by a completely vulnerable girl child. You begged me, you begged, for us to return to our truce, and to uphold it this time, once and for all. You still wanted to wound the world but you didn’t want to be scared anymore, and certainly not scared of me.
I didn’t want you to be scared of me either.
We didn’t fuck that night or make love. We slept in the same bed that night like strangers, you and the ghost of me. Me and the shade of you.
I went by Meegs’ place the next morning. I had the gun with me and I had every intention of offering the lunatic more money to leave us both alone for good, or else. Of course, he wasn’t there. The super had no idea who I was talking about as I tried to explain the creature that I found living in apartment B3. He waved away at me as he talked and chewed, “That apartment has been vacant for months.”
We could have packed our bags and taken a nice long vacation while a moving company came in to pack up and shift all our worldly possessions. I could have driven up to your gallery and whisked us both away for good. We both talked about making a calculated move to New York anyway. Could have, should have, but wouldn’t have. I’m a coward to the last.
Even now.
Another bland Tuesday in the great sea of accounting, another day waiting for the hammer to fall. I wasn’t prepared to find you like I did. You were already laid out, just like you are now. Curled up and fetal, one cut up arm still trying to protect the ruin of your face. Our Mr. Meegs is a fan of knives as it turns out.
The rest is all spelled out isn’t it. I couldn’t let you die alone. I couldn’t pretend this world is worth living in without you. I made my calls and laid myself down next to you. Mr. Meegs was kind enough to wait for me to put my affairs in order, he was careful and patient, there was no extra charge. We were two for the price of one.