Darling (24 page)

Of course she could.

He climbed from bed and started toward her bathroom. He stopped, suddenly aware of how naked and exposed he was. He grabbed his jeans from the floor and slid them on. The feeling was ridiculous. They had just seen and felt each other nude for the past hour. But his insecurities were comforting in an odd way and he embraced them.

He shut the bathroom door behind him and stared at himself in the mirror. His face was painted with vivid color. His chest sparkled with sweat. He giggled at the sight of a spike of hair standing on end. It reminded him of Alfalfa from
The Little Rascals
shorts.

The bathroom was as indicative of Margot’s taste as the rest of the apartment. She had a fondness for candles, much like his sister had. There were hundreds of them scattered around the apartment, different heights and colors, and all of them half burned. The walls of every room were brightly colored, the bathroom’s deep red providing an interesting contrast to the blue of the bedroom and the green of the living room. Two Mark Ryden prints hung on the bathroom wall, small poster-sized oddities encased in black frames. One showed Jesus pulling himself from a red

T-Bone steak while a wide-eyed Christina Ricci looked on.

The other bothered Mike. It was a butcher shop where a grotesquely tall rabbit wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a butcher’s apron sliced meat with a giant wood saw. Cuts of meat littered the counters and strings of blood-red sausage hung from the ceiling. A pig lay on its side in the background, its cold glassy eyes staring at the wall as blood leaked from a wound in its neck. A little girl in a Sunday dress stood by the meat counter. She held the hand of a squat and miniature Abraham Lincoln. The odd jumble of otherwise innocent (though bizarre) imagery in such a bloody setting, with the expected heights of the rabbit and the former President switched, unnerved him.

He turned away and studied the shower curtain instead. It was a furry pink thing, reminding him of his grandmother’s shag carpeting. He brushed his hand through it and marveled at how soft it was.

He lifted the toilet lid, did his business, and flushed. He returned to the sink and scrubbed his hands clean. Catching sight of his hair again he decided it could use similar treatment. He rinsed it with cold water and rubbed his head furiously with a towel. It felt surprisingly good and so he grabbed some scented face wash from the shelf, clenched his eyes shut, and lathered his face.

A splash echoed through the bathroom.

He paused. Had he done that? Maybe he just imagined it. He scrubbed the lather around his face, but stopped when he heard it again.

It had come from the tub.

“Margot?” As soon as he said it he knew it hadn’t been her. He had locked the door behind him and she would have had to come through him to get to the tub even if it wasn’t.

He shrugged it off and rinsed his face with cold water. Through the running suds, he glimpsed movement in the mirror.

Someone was behind him.

He froze, breathless. The soap burned his eyes and blurred his vision, but he was positive he had seen someone. He turned, squinting, and scanned the room. The bathroom was a fog of shapes fading in and out of focus.

“Margot?” Again, he felt foolish.

He turned back to the sink and rinsed the remainder of the soap from his face. He dried quickly and examined the room in the mirror.

He was alone.

He shrugged it off, grabbed one of Margot’s brushes, and went to work shaping his hair into some semblance of order.

Another splash.

He stared at the shower curtain, unsure of what he expected. The sound came again. It was like the tub was full and someone moved around inside of it. But that couldn’t be possible. They were the only ones here.

Weren’t they?

The thought that someone had been hiding in the tub all night was absurd, but that didn’t keep his pores from leaking a nervous sweat.

He took a step toward the curtain.

Splash.

Water scrambled down the side of the tub and darkened the yellow bathmat.

“Hey...” It was all he could manage to say.

Again, there was no answer.

The light flickered above him.

He gasped. Retreated a step. Fumbled for the doorknob.

The light flickered again.

Splash.

Water flooded down this time, rushing over the mat and across the floor, attacking the soles of his feet with its warmth.

His body reacted irrationally, throwing the brush into the shower curtain. The curtain folded into the tub and the brush fell under it with a loud clink.

But no splash.

Mike shook his head. Inhaled. Marched to the tub. Grabbed the curtain. Yanked it open.

The brush lay on dry porcelain.

Had he imagined all of that?

He stepped closer to retrieve the brush and his foot came down onto the wet bathmat. Warm water pressed out from the sides and ran across the floor.

He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. There was no one in the tub, no water filling it and splashing over the sides. But he had seen something, heard something. And the damp bathmat? He was tempted to say it had been wet since Margot last showered, but it was still warm, too warm to have sat there for hours.

He grabbed the brush and returned it to the wire basket he had pulled it from. He sat on the toilet and tried to wrap his mind around what had just happened. None of it made any sense. Had he spilled the warm water somehow and didn’t realize it? No—he had been using cold water to wash his face. But he had washed his hands with hot water...

He was going around in circles. There was no explanation. It must be stress, he thought. Between poor Lucy and losing his virginity (what did they call that? Performance anxiety?), he must be experiencing some type of altered state. That was the only thing that made sense.

To prove to himself that he was right, he closed the shower curtain before leaving the bathroom.

He followed the bathroom’s trail of light back to the bed like a path cut through the carpet. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep now, and curious how Margot had judged him, he sat beside her and ran his hand up her stomach and over the mound of her breasts. He stopped at her nipple, gently circling it until he heard her sigh. He leaned over, his mouth meeting hers, and was soon lost in the excitement of her.

Later, when she had gone back to sleep cuddled up next to him, he thought he heard the splashing again. He refused to acknowledge it and forced himself into a fitful sleep.

That night he dreamed of his sister knocking at his door, crying, begging him to talk to her. He ignored her like he did the splashing and pretended to sleep.

* * *

The room had grown cold. Dennis shivered and clutched the blanket around him, tucking it under his sides like a cocoon. He hovered on the edge of waking, parts of his mind still anchored deep in his dreams, the rest wondering why the temperature had dropped so much.

Creak.

The chair...

Was he having this dream again?

He refused to fall victim to his imagination. That had been happening far too much lately. He rolled onto his side, the blanket twisting tighter around his body.

Creak.

He was fully awake now. His heart beat against his ribcage. Freezing beads of sweat formed all over his body.
This
is absurd. Go back to sleep.

But he couldn’t. Just as before, he had the sense that someone watched him. Just as before, he untwisted himself and sat up to look.

Faint trails of moonlight trickled through the window, barely enough to illuminate the rocking chair.

It was empty.

He scanned the room, saw nothing out of place, and grunted. His head pressed back into his pillow.

The room smelled off. The usual scent of dust and dirty laundry hung around him, but there was another scent there. It was sweet and smelled faintly of flowers. There were other fragrances as well: dirt, strawberries, and something exotic. It smelled like—

“Karen?”

He whispered it to himself as a way to make the thought concrete, but now felt awkward having the syllables hang in the air. It felt like a betrayal somehow. He shook it off. He had to be dreaming. His mind was shifting its stored information from frightening to erotic, creating Karen’s perfume from nothing.

But why the smell of dirt?

He didn’t feel like puzzling it out. He was too tired for that. Maybe tomorrow.

There was another creak, this one more metallic than wooden, and he thought he felt pressure on the end of his mattress. He looked up again, wondering if Mike had come into the room with some ridiculous problem at three in the morning that only Dennis could solve. But aside from the faint light on the rocking chair, the room was black.

The pressure grew heavier and his foot slid down into a newly formed valley on the bed.

“Mike, what do you want?”

There was no answer. The smell of flowers, fruit, and dirt grew stronger.

His arms fought their way free of the cocoon and he rolled over toward the weight. A deeper patch of black was almost visible against the dark of the room. It was small. No,
petite
. It was turned toward him and, though he couldn’t see anything, he had the impression that whoever sat there was smiling.

Fingers lightly brushed his arm, gently they made their way to his hand and gripped it tenderly. It was a soft touch, a feminine touch, and the smell seemed to intensify around him.

He suddenly realized why Karen’s scent was so intoxicating to him. It wasn’t only an inherent sensuality, it was also a familiarity, something experienced years before, a scent that had imprinted itself deep inside his brain and was connected to all things romantic and erotic. How could he have forgotten?

His eyes filled with tears and he couldn’t see. He blinked twice and they were sent running down his cheeks, hot and thick, some pooling on his lips. He could taste the salt. His breathing quickened again, and the pressure building inside of his chest threatened to break his ribs.

He had to be dreaming. There was no other explanation.

“...Allison?”

The fingers squeezed tighter.

He sat up and pulled her into his arms. Her scent overtook him completely, not just the perfume but also the smell of her hair, that unique scent of a shampoo he had never known anyone else to use. The scent of her skin, even; a soft, feminine musk accented with perfumed soap, lotion, gymnastic chalk, and a hundred other tiny fragrances.

Her arms enveloped him, blanketed him in warmth.

He had never forgotten the feel of her against him, of her softness, of how she pressed her head against his chest and how her small frame seemed to vanish inside of his arms. She shook against him and his heart broke all over again.

“I’m so sorry,” he muttered between sobs.

—Me too—

Her voice lit up the memory centers of his brain and, if he had any doubts that he held her, they vanished instantly.

He reached down and grabbed her face, held it in his hands, tried to study her, but there was only black. He leaned in anyway, his nerves guided him to the exact spot where he knew he would find her lips. They were like warm velvet and tasted of raspberry lip-gloss and tears. He kept his hands on her face as he kissed her over and over again, desperate with his intensity, as though she could fade away at any moment. The palsied trembling of his hands wouldn’t stop and it made him miss her lips several times. He could feel her mouth smile at that.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

She placed her own hands on his face and held him back, studying him.

—I’m sorry for everything

you’ve gone through since then.

I didn’t know.

If I had known, I never would have done it—

She kissed him again, this time slow and gentle.

“Am I dreaming?”

—I don’t know.

If you are then I must be, too—

She giggled. God, how he had missed that sound.

“But how—”

—Shhh.

That’s not important, is it?

What’s important is that I’m here—

He nodded and kissed her again. “I killed you,” he said, and fresh sobbing shook him all over again.

This time she cradled his head to her chest.

—Oh God, darling.

No. No. No, you didn’t.

You were just young and confused.

I’m the one who slit my wrists—

“But you needed me. You needed help. And I wasn’t there.”

—Don’t blame yourself anymore.

Please.

I hate that you’ve blamed yourself all these years.

If anyone’s to blame it’s me.

Maybe my father.

But not you—

He sniffed and pressed closer against her. Her fingers ran through his hair and he burrowed as deep as he could into her small breasts. “I should have been a man. I could have gone with you to the clinic, or married you and—”

—Please, Dennis. Please.

Don’t do this to yourself any more.

I’m here, baby.

I’m here and I love you

and that’s all that matters—

They kissed again and fell back onto the bed. She wedged herself into the contours of his body like she always had. It was as though the two of them had been made for one another, carved from the same piece of stone to fit so perfectly together that there was barely a seam. She rested her head on his chest and their arms found the old places on each other’s bodies where they were meant to lay.

—I’ll have to leave in the morning—

“...no...”