Hollywood Nights
Part Five
Howie was setting the phone back on the receiver and walking back to the living room. He wasn’t as close to you as I was, he didn’t see your face, or the mess, or the blood.
“Oh, thank god.”
I didn’t wave Howie away or dare to speak up but I walked around you and over to the kitchen. I cut him off, physically, so that neither one of us was too close. I wasn’t afraid, not on any conscious level. I should have been. It’s a shame that we lose our best instincts as small children. Instead I was concerned, for you absolutely, but for everyone else as well. You hadn’t suffered from a nose bleed. Nose bleeds didn’t dump a gallon of blood down the front of a person. Nose bleeds also didn’t spew wads of what looked like berry preserves. There was something wrong, very wrong. Howie had hung up on 911 in the middle of a call and I found myself wishing he hadn’t.
You stood up and turned with me and I heard Howie gasp. No one was moving, no one was saying anything, the television in the other room was blaring but I wasn’t paying attention to what it had to say. We all stood like that for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t want you to come closer, I didn’t want Howie walking past me over to you. What if you had something? What if you were sick and contagious? What if this was a horror movie fucking nightmare?
You cracked that smile you always had for me and then you shifted your eyes and kept that smile locked on your face as you looked over at Howie. It was almost like you didn’t really remember who either of us were. You started walking over and I found myself backing up and pushing Howie back behind me. You didn’t stop walking and you didn’t stop smiling, not as you reached us, and not as you passed us on your way into the kitchen.
We both turned with you and watching as you opened the fridge and closed it in disgust. You opened a cupboard and stared at the boxes curiously before you shrugged and closed it. The faucet seemed to gain more of your interest until you ran your hand under it and brought some of the water up to your lips. You didn’t spit the water out in disgust but you stood up over the sink and let it all fall out of your mouth like you just got done trying to chew a mouth full of cardboard.
You looked back at us and tried smiling again, looking from one of us to the other until you realized the smile wasn’t working.
“I’m sorry guys. Did I do something wrong?”
We were both so happy to hear you talk, to hear coherent, reasonable words come out of your mouth. I nearly ran at you and pulled you into me, I didn’t care about all that blood as I wrapped my arms around your waist and hugged you tight and I felt your arms come up over my shoulders but they didn’t feel like your arms anymore. Your waist didn’t feel like your waist anymore. You were cool to the touch, and light as a feather in my arms. Touching you and holding you tight felt like trying to hug the cushions on our leather couch. You smelled right, but you felt so wrong.
I let go of you and then pulled away as you kept trying to hold onto me. I pushed you away, for the first and last time as I tried to search for reasonable explanations for wanting you off of me. “You had an accident in the bedroom. There’s a lot of blood. We were worried.”
That easy smile died on your face and you reached up and touched your mouth, coming away with a handful of residues of all natures. “Oh shit, let me go clean up.”
You started walking away from us back to the hallway that held our bedroom and bathroom before you stopped “Could someone fix me a drink? I am so fucking thirsty.”
I turned around but Howie was already clamoring over to the kitchen counter. The fucking couch smurf cut me off and left me with the dirty work. I was miffed at the time but hey, it was his final victory, let him have it. I looked at him and turned around at the still dark hallway. I knew what my job was then. I got to walk into our bedroom where you were. I got to see what was left of our bed after you emptied out onto it. I got to experience the hell that was about to be mine while you washed yourself off by the light of the bathroom mirror.
I owned my initial time share in hell. I walked into our bedroom as you started to wash yourself off in the bathroom. I saw the faint light shine onto the ruins of our bed. You didn’t dump a gallon of blood out of your nose, you exploded several gallons as well as tissues and matter plus change.
You looked up briefly in the mirror while you tried to clean yourself and you shrugged at me as I yawned in horror at the scene laid out before me. “I’m sorry, babe. I don’t know what happened. I’ll pay for it okay? Please don’t be so bent out of shape. We can pull the sofa out in the t.v. room for tonight.”