Luminous (30 page)

They sheared through on a knife of dull silver light.

 

SHe
fell into her bathroom, borrowed strength bleeding out of her all at once.

Consuela, the skeleton, hit the tile floor with a clatter. V, a heavy, wet thump, landed beside her. She'd expelled him. Or he, her. Self-preservation. Alien meat. Separated, they were wholly apart and miraculously whole. They flopped around spastically like fish without breath.

For a moment, she felt the loss, a frantic need to pull him back onto her—her into him—like a security blanket. But then she realized that he was not part of her. Not really. She forcibly kept herself to herself.

They spent long moments coughing on the floor, using their own lungs, their own air. Thrashing and stumbling on their own hands and feet, learning to be separate and in control once more. Neither of them looked at the other.

“Can I take a shower?” V asked the tile floor.

Consuela waved her skeletal hand toward the closet. “Towels in there,” she said as she lurched to standing. Racing to her bundle of self-skin on her bedspread, she pressed it protectively to her chest. Consuela closed the bathroom door and heard the shower's splash-applause.

She shouldered herself over her body, slipping on her raiment of hair, eyes, and skin. The water changed tempo as it drummed against something solid, and Consuela tried not to think too much about V naked in her shower. Dressing quickly, she hooked her birthstone cross around her throat as the water squeaked to silence.

She heard the glass door of the shower click open and closed, the heavy footfalls on tile and the flump of thick towels. She listened to his every step and move as he dressed. She could picture his feet slipping down pant legs. She could hear his fingers fumble with the buttons of his shirt. Consuela heard V approach the door, conscious of her consciousness of him, and how aware she was about where he was, even outside herself. When his hand touched the doorknob, she felt it on her skin.

He opened the door shyly. V stood, wet and dressed, whole and alive. His hair still dripping, the water turned his tousles to curls. He rubbed at his face and neck.

He tried to smile, but it was weak, unsure. “I told you that you could do it.”

Consuela self-consciously combed her hair with her hands.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Well, I've never had anyone ‘in' me before.”

Consuela grinned. “I think that means you lost your virginity.”

“Ha ha. You wish.” V laughed. Or tried to laugh. She tried, too. They sounded like crumpled paper.

They were laughing off the nervousness, but the awkwardness remained.

Then they were laughing off the awkwardness, but the nervousness remained.

Ruffling his hair with one of her towels, V spoke first. “It was frightening and
// intimate //
nice.”

Consuela smiled, wondering if he ever heard the thoughts he gave off. She toyed with the cross on her chain.

“We should go,” she said.

“Wait—” He stepped forward. Her face hovered near his chest. Consuela's chin grazed the very edge of his shirt. She could see a button up close—black threads, four holes. She felt the warmth of his closeness. She smelled bar soap and lavender mist. V sighed and she felt his breath in her hair.

This felt very different with skin.

V noticed her paint-splattered room and the lack of exits.

“Did you do this?” he asked.

“No.” That was all she needed to say. They both frowned.

“The obvious route's the door,” V said.

“I wouldn't.”

He sensed her nervousness. “You don't trust it?”

She shook her head. “No. I think Tender did something to it. Booby-trapped it, like the mirror.” Tender had wanted her to go through it. She didn't want to go there now.

“Okay,” V said, throwing the damp towel over the back of her chair. “So here's the plan: you suit up in your skin of fire and we'll go check on Sissy. Use the window.” He headed back to the bathroom, pointing. “I'll get my mirror.”

Consuela trailed after him. They returned into the steamy warmth of the bathroom, perfumed with her own herbal shampoo. Now V smelled like her, she thought. Or she smelled like V. Would there be something residual, like the scent of lavender soap, after she'd worn his skin? Would she be able to walk through mirrors? Could he create skins?

V picked up the compact by the sink.

“Tender took this and left it for you,” V said. “He probably painted all the other ones over so you'd have no choice but to use this.” He gripped the case in his fist. “Open it,” he said, handing the compact to her.

Consuela clicked the top back and saw a small circle of oily film floating like a flattened bead.

“It's not a mirror . . .”

“It's the Flow,” V said. “Tender laced it with the Flow. Or something like it,” he said. It was shiny, black, and gummy.

“I think that's what he eats,” Consuela said, looking at her own palm. “What he digests.”

“Lovely.” V grimaced and, grabbing a hand towel, wiped the surface with one hundred percent Egyptian cotton. Ghosting his breath upon it, he polished it neat, scrubbing it clean. On the towel, the darkness clung like gum. “Remind me to get a new one if we make it out of this.”

Consuela's smile faltered. “Don't talk like that.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm here. You're here. We made it. We're going to get out of this and we're going to get you home.” V projected the confidence he'd always had with that promise, but now it lingered, tinged with regret.

“V . . .”

“We should really go now,” V said quickly. “I'll head out and you get going. Be sure to bring this with you so Tender won't get his hands on it.” He tried to look reassuring. “I'll see you soon.”

V lifted the case to his eye. Nothing happened. His gaze jumped erratically, searching; still nothing. V frowned, closed his eyes, opened them, and glared. Consuela eyed the clean bit of mirror.

V shifted from foot to foot, agitated.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don't know.” He shoved the mirror at her like an accusation. “You try it.”

“Me?” Consuela asked. “I can't.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “Try it anyway.”

She took the compact and tried to ignore his eyes on her as she looked deep into her own brown windows of her soul. Consuela blinked and handed the compact back quickly.

“Nothing,” she said. “Maybe it's the mirror . . . ?”

“No,” V snapped. “I can't see it. The doorway.”

He glanced around helplessly, his fingers in fists.

Consuela searched for something to say. What she saw was a tiny white spider on the ceiling.

“Wish,” she whispered.

“Where?”

“No. One of his wishes,” she said, titling her head to follow the tiny arachnid's tread. “What was he doing here?” Consuela asked aloud. It seemed like everyone had been in her room.

V shook his head, wiping the condensation off his face. “Probably looking for you,” he said. “Making sure you're okay.”

“I don't know,” she said. “He's Tender's ‘best friend.'”

Consuela felt their time growing shorter, their options shrinking, pushing to one, lone conclusion: confrontation on Tender's terms.
See you at the end of the world.
And where was Wish? Was he still alive? How much did he know? Whose side was he on?

“Do you trust Wish?” Consuela asked.

V dropped his eyes. “I don't know . . .”

“Do you
trust
him?”

“I. DON'T. KNOW!” V shouted. It rang off the tile.

Consuela hopped her butt up on the counter, slipping a foot in the sink.

“Well, I don't,” she said, and slapped her hand flat against the spider.

V slammed against the floor.

—OCTAVIO PAZ

 

 

 

Consuela jumped down, but her outstretched hands passed through his body as if he wore a skin of smoke. Her left palm burned. V rolled over, watching his chest move through her hands, pushing himself to sit up—looking more astounded than pained.

“It doesn't hurt,” he said, more to himself than her. He sounded surprised.

Consuela met his eyes. “V?” she whispered.

“It's happening again,” he said vaguely. “But it doesn't hurt.” His eyes met hers. He looked afraid to be happy, afraid to believe it. “I'm going back.”

“Back?” Consuela said, her throat constricting around the word. “Back where?”

V stood up, glancing through his ephemeral body.

“Back,” he said wondrously. “Back up. Back home, I guess. Back.” His face was full of relief and an odd sort of joy. The masterpiece portrait revealed.

The next moment, it crumpled with the sound of violin tears.

“V . . .” Consuela shook her head. He was dying. Living. Going back to life. “No, V . . .”

“Consuela.” He said her name slowly. It hurt to hear it said that way. Like good-bye, despite anything they wanted. He raised his hands but they were insubstantial as ghosts. “I can feel it . . .”

She wanted to be generous and let him go, but she was crying and afraid.

“V, please, fight it. Stay!”

He raised a misty hand to her face. He couldn't touch her. She couldn't feel him. The shampoo smell hung wet in the room.

“Help me fight it,” he said, trying to find purchase in her hair. “Help me stay.”

“How? V!” She tried grabbing his hand and holding his knuckles to her face. If she closed her eyes hard enough, she could feel them there.

“Stay with me!” she begged, selfish and scared. “I can't do this!”
Not against Tender! Not alone!

V was growing more tenuous by the moment, particles of him blowing away as if under a steady breath.

“I feel it coming,” he said. “I'm sorry.” He meant it. She was crying. His gentle eyes sparked dark once more. “They're calling me . . . and I'm ready to try.” V spoke from far away, a distance that was growing deeper.

“You can do this,” he said. “You can do anything. Remember: you don't need me—you don't need anyone.”

“Thank you for believing me.” He smiled again, that portrait smile.

“Don't give up,” Consuela pleaded through tears. “I have to save you.”

“You did save me, Bones,” he said softly. “And I was supposed to save
you
.”

She looked at his eyes and every panic softened. He was here. He was with her. He'd saved her from death. He'd given her this. And time. And a chance. And him.

Consuela whispered, “You did.”

Giovanni smiled like the sun.

“If there's any way, I will find you again,” he said. “I promise.”

He gathered himself with effort, tried one last time. His hand passed through her face as he reached.

. . .

Gone.

She groped at the space that twinkled with shorn stars, the dwindling, last moments of V.

Now she was alone. The shock of it washed over her. She'd wake up soon.

An echo of electric hums thrummed through the room.

 

BONES
walked into the basement room. She was unsurprised to find the door unlocked, she was unsurprised to find the fax hanging useless above the door, and equally unsurprised to find the room exactly as she had left it, save for a few returned cardboard boxes and Sissy slumped in her father's chair.

Sissy's honey-brown hair shrouded her face, her creamy skin still beautiful, her fingernails immaculately filed—one hand had been attached sickeningly backward and bent into a crude gesture, the middle finger raised. Her body caved around the gaping hole in her torso, which had hammered her into the leather chair back. The seat and the floor were soaked in her blood; her pretty shoes dangled in the puddle and the weight of the chair sank its wheels into wet carpet. Consuela knew that it would never change back.

The Watcher had been pinned like a butterfly and, just as casually, discarded and left as a message. For her.

Consuela turned away. Sissy was gone. There was no one here to tell anything anymore.

She touched the shelves briefly, the chair, the books, the hidden Scotch. Sissy'd never gotten the shower she'd asked for, not really, just a cold, hard slap to sober her up.

That one, lonely thing made Consuela sadder still.

The rest of her burned as black as her palm.

She snatched the roll of paper off its tacks, tearing the pulp and dried blood to shreds, sprinkling them like snow on the sleepover floor. Consuela pushed behind the ruined thing in the chair and pecked the keyboard keys with her finger bones so that they'd stay.

Cecily Amelia Gardner,
she typed.
I will remember you.