CHAPTER FIVE

 
Dark and as stiflingly close as the inside of a coffin, Lady G's choking coughs woke her. Her eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the dark. Something thickened the air, unseen in the night-time shadows. The darkness seemed to move. Her heartbeat throbbed in her throat. Her still-waking mind slowly processed the smell. Smoke. Something was on fire.

  Scrambling out of bed, her foot caught in the tangles of her blankets and spilled her onto the floor. She ran to her window and ripped open the blinds as if she'd never looked out her window before. Her grandmother's two-story home was old, kindling with a mortgage payment. She could shimmy out; the slanted roof's steep pitch was survivable. But what about her baby brother? Or her mother? One hand covered her mouth and nose, the other searched along the hardwood floor. The smoke burned her lungs. She tried to hold her breath, but when her air ran out, she only gulped down more of the acrid air. The sting of smoke brought tears to her eyes, further blurring her vision. She crawled toward the door. It was marginally easier to breathe down there. She opened the door cautiously. Events happened so fast, the surreal movement of time when the mind couldn't cope with all of the contradictory images.

  Thick columns of smoke undulated with a knowing intent. They turned toward her, a predator catching a new scent. The flash fire roared through the house, hungry and desperate. Orange and yellow tongues licked at the curtains. Pictures charred in their frames, the faces, and background turning brown then black. Golden flames crawled along the thick carpet. She banged on the walls. So hot. She sucked in smoke, to the protest of her scalded lungs.

  The house creaked as if assaulted by a gust of wind. The wall cracked and buckled, a filigree of ashy veins. Crickety things at the best of times, the stairs lurched in unsteady and tentative steps. Her head throbbed as if ready to explode, racing with wild speculation. Her grandma (Grandma!) sometimes burned a candle on a chair; maybe it had tipped over. Keeping her back to the wall, fearing the flames devouring the banister and her tumbling into the heart of the inferno, she sobbed, scared and anxious.

  The door to Michah's room canted ajar. His crib used to be her cousin's and another cousin had already called dibs on it once Michah no longer needed it. Heedless of the fire, she swatted at the flames with her hands. Tendrils flared and bit into her with each swipe. His form tiny and still, his skin hot and bubbling. Lady G scooped up the bundle of flesh, the smell of burnt skin, both his and hers, seared her nostrils. She cooed at him in hushed reassurances that everything would be OK.

  "Is he dead?" a hoarse voice whispered from the shadowed corner. "I just need to make sure he was dead."

  Her mother's dark skin steeped in a cloak of night. Wizened fingers tugged at the edge of her shirt, threatening to pull herself into it. Vacant eyes, unfixed and filled with psychotic detachment, silently pled for understanding. From above, the ceiling cracked with the peal of thunder, then something hot fell onto her face.

  Lady G snapped awake. Remembering the old hurts, she shivered in her bed and held herself. Not unlike when she woke from her two-month-long coma after the fire. January 22nd, 2001. The date burned into her mind. Pain reared up when least expected and had a way of never quite going away, but rather burrowed itself deep within. Like a wound healed over a piece of shrapnel, mended enough to make her drop her guard, but pain flared afresh when something bumped against it. She no longer wanted to feel, but only desired the lure of a morphine drip. The dreamy haze where nothing hurt as bad as it could. She just kept packing down the pain, stuffing it deep inside and moving on. Each hurt a tiny brick, each brick stacked upon one another, with her mother the source of many, many bricks in that terrible wall.

  "I live with it, Vere." Her mother's name for her. Lady G hated her name and only ever recalled it whenever she had to fill out government forms. Or thought about her mother. She could still picture her mother on the chair across from her bed. Her first sight after she had clawed herself out of the darkness of her coma, struck by how small her mother looked. So very, very small. The fire had been ruled an accident, but Lady G knew. They both knew. The pain, the memories, they were too much. Lady G peered at her, a tube down her throat, her hands in soft restraints, probably to keep her from pulling the piece of plastic out of her mouth.

  "I was so young when I had you. Children change your life. You love them and they drive you insane. Bit by bit. And you love them some more. But Michah… Michah had his father's eyes."

  "Momma, did you ever love us?" Lady G's mind called out, needed to know. As always, her mother didn't hear her and went on about her own concerns.

  "I remember those eyes. How they'd follow me when I walked past him. How they lingered on my behind or down my chest any chance they got. How they sneered whenever I shut his game down. How angry they got. How quick they were to fill with hatred and something animal. And dangerous. I just couldn't help but keep wondering: would Michah's eyes glaze over, see me as less than human, as a piece of property or meat? Would I just be a pair of tits, a piece of ass, or a slick piece of pussy for him to decide to take? He had his father's eyes, Vere, and I couldn't take him looking at me, needing me, or depending on me anymore."

  Her mother collapsed into hard tears, hard because she never quite broke the way truly sorry people did. Her tears were defiant, sure, and angry, but tears nonetheless. She laid her head on the hospital bed. Lady G stretched out her hands. Her burnt hands. Third-degree burns, incisions had to be made to release the heat. In her last act as "Vere", Lady G stroked her mother's hair in hard forgiveness. Hard because she didn't forgive, though part of her understood, and knew that she needed to release her mother. Her touch feigned love, but was concerned, scared, and angry. She resolved at that moment, "I don't want to make someone else." And she vowed not to get involved with them.

  Men.

  They were brutal and couldn't help but use others. Bottomless pits of selfish need they vented upon women and called it love. Or sex. Or fucking. It was a silly vow, young and foolish, like love. Her "no men" rant became almost its own persona, a routine she put on for her friends. Going on about how she didn't need a man, how she was a princess who saved herself. How she'd remain single and unsullied by these dogs, these boys who played men games. She knew the image she projected, how people assumed that she was strong, capable, wise, and independent. Her life was her own. And she wanted to be the woman people guessed her to be. She presented that woman as if she had arrived. Yet she felt hollow.

  A part of her believed she "doth protesteth too much" when it came to men, but another part of her was equally adamant. She really didn't want to make someone else. She had no interest in bringing another messed-up person into her messed-up world so she could mess them up and have them go off and mess up others. She simply opted out of that life plan.

  Dreams and memories. Lady G seemed trapped by them, not knowing how to move past them, becoming entombed in a morass of emotional quicksand she couldn't escape. The need for love, to fill the ever-present hole inside her; she remembered desire, but she had forgotten how it worked. How to lower her guard, allow entry past her wall of bricks, and allow someone in to see the most precious parts of herself. She had forgotten what it was like to have someone touch her heart. She only knew the cold comfort of loneliness and had learned to grow comfortable with it. Her heart had numbed over.

  Then King brought her back.

  The months since finding him had been good. Made her whole and rekindled desire in her. She enjoyed the flattery of his attention. It drove her girl Rhianna insane with jealousy. And Lady G enjoyed being needed and seen as special. Things were cute early on, but they turned into something selfish. She didn't think she misrepresented her intentions. He wasn't enough. No, that wasn't quite it. He couldn't complete her the way she wanted to be completed. And she knew part of him resisted her. He wouldn't let her in, not all the way, not to his most precious part: he loved her the best he was able, she knew that, but it wasn't enough.

  She wanted more.

  

Big Momma fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat. Every quarter she attended the condo association meetings. Every meeting played out the same way. Roger Stern, president of the board, sat front and center. Officious glasses rested on the tip of his nose to not only study the papers before him, but to be able to peer over them in his condescending manner at whoever was speaking. His wife Holly, a frumpy, pear-figured woman, dressed in floral patterns too bright for the season. Any season. She took the minutes as vice president and secretary. Lipstick smeared across her mouth with a clown's sneer, and blush applied by the brushstroke, she obviously got made up for her appearance as First Lady of Breton Court. On the other side of Mr Stern sat Neville Sims, the groundskeeper for Breton Court. The only black person at the table, but also the only one of the three who did any real work. His cap pulled low on his head, lifted whenever he wiped the sweat from his forehead. His matching blue coveralls had a thin film of grime on them. Leaning forward, hands clasped in front of him, he spoke with a hint of hesitation and appeared as uncomfortable as Big Momma.

  A reporter from the community paper scribbled her notes. Perhaps the reporter's presence caused Mr Stern to go through the motions of paying more attention. Big Momma upticked the side of her mouth in mild derision, making a note to have her niece show up in a skirt, sensible shoes, and waving a notepad around during the next meeting.

  The crowd went through the usual litany of concerns every meeting: the trash bins were ugly, unsightly and not emptied often enough; the street lamps along the parking lots needed to be fixed; the whole place required a face lift, something more cheery and inviting; the patios were in need of repair and uniform appearance because with half knocked over, the wood rotting through, others unpainted or with huge holes in them, they looked like a thirdworld nation.

  Big Momma played the "remember whens" of the neighborhood. Remember when he used to be clean? Remember when she used to be pretty? Remember when they did good in school? Remember when the neighborhood was calm, with none of this shooting? Remember when they played real music? Ironically, none of those memories were as true as she believed. He was never that clean. She was never that pretty. They never did that well in school. The neighborhood was always jumping and the music played was complained about by their parents, too.

  "What are we going to do about them boys?" A dapper-dressed older gentleman asked. Big Momma knew him as Old School, one of the barbers from up the way. She had no idea he lived around here. Gray salted his beard, but not in an unattractive way. But his eyes roved a little too much for her tastes. Even as he asked his question, he had time to check out the hem line of the reporter.

  "What do you mean?" Mr Stern made what appeared to be a note on his sheet of paper, either noting the issue, checking it off his list, or doodling for the appearance of paying attention.

  "They play their loud music at all hours of the day and night. They congregate on porches, on the sidewalk, in little packs."

  "We can't punish people for being in a group."

  "A gang is more like it."

  "And we can't go around treating every group of boys like a gang." Mr Stern wasn't a liberal by any definition of the word. He didn't care about political correctness, civil rights, profiling, or anything like that. He was, however, lawsuit-averse.

  "So you ain't gonna do nothing?"

  Mr Stern met eyes with the reporter. Her pencil raised, poised for his next words. "We will talk with the police. Increase patrol runs. Maybe look into private security." He smiled at her.

  "Talk, talk, talk. I'm tired of talking. We need to do something." Old School turned to the audience for approval.

  "Or get someone who can," someone echoed.

  "Mmm-hmm," the rising chorus began.

  The same song every meeting. Frustrations rose to a crescendo, peaking with the calls for elections. Mr Stern caressed the stack of papers in front of him. A political animal firmly in control of his little fiefdom, the elections were already locked up. For all of their talk about nominating and running someone else, the idea never occurred to anyone before a meeting. The actual occupants attended the meetings; the votes were cast by the homeowners. The paper stack in front of Mr Stern were the homeowners' proxies and allowed him to do whatever he wanted.

  Big Momma rose. Her pudgy fingers folded the paper detailing the meeting's agenda. Slowly, but with intent, she made her way to the center aisle. Diabetes stiffened her movements, but she remained stout and formidable. Her eyes focused on Mr Stern.

  "Folks around here call me Big Momma."

  "We know who you are, Big Momma. You're a fixture around here," Mr Stern said with a grimace of indigestion.

  "Exactly. So I know the neighborhood and its people." She nodded to the reporter as if checking to see if she spelled "Big Momma" correctly in her notes. "Don't pity us. Don't condescend to us. Don't hold us to a lower standard."

  "I don't–" Her hand wave cut him off. She would be heard. Mr Stern could just turn beet-red and glower over his glasses until she was through.

  "We live in a community. We here every day. We see what's going on because we live here. Here in this community. Where do you live, Mr Stern?"

  "I don't think that's–" Another hand wave. Another deepened glower.

  "I've always lived in the community. We may not have much, but we have each other. We share what we have, we look out for each other as best we can, and we help each other as much as we can. That's the way folks around here brought me up. My parents had their problems. Abandoned me. But the adults in the neighborhood decided to raise me and hid me from CPS whenever a social worker came around, because they would just have sent me to foster care. The people here moved me from spot to spot so I could stay in the neighborhood and go to the neighborhood school. That's how I finished high school. So I know the value of education and I preach it to everyone I take in. I got married to a man from the neighborhood, God bless his soul. And when he passed, some five years ago, I stayed. In the community. I'm Breton Court through and through.

  "You want to make us promises? Fine. You want to talk to folks? Talk. But in the end, we're a community. And we take care of our own."

  The room burst into applause.

  The reporter kept taking notes.

 

Near the heart of downtown, on 16th Street just east of Pennsylvania Avenue, one of the major prostitution boulevards in the city, Herron High School provided a classical liberal arts education. With an emphasis on the arts, it steeped their students in great historical thought, the school aimed to prepare them for college. According to the brochures, the school's curriculum was structured around an art history timeline and emphasized the classic art and literature of many cultures.

  The five minutes until homeroom bell clanged, sharp and grating. Isabel "Iz" Cornwall closed her locker after slipping her backpack into it. Sunken cheekbones bookended a face with a long nose with a stud, slightly notched where it had been broken in the past. Slim, short, hair dyed black, she had an unadorned face of simple beauty which would rise to gorgeous with the right make-up application. A tattoo of a dragon crawled along the base of her back. This was the third day this week she wore her blue jeans. Her nose was no longer sensitive to her own smell. She pulled a white cardigan over her pink T-shirt, covering her braless, small breasts. The T-shirt was worn yesterday, but she hoped no one would notice under the cardigan. She pressed her books to her chest, eyes downcast, slouching to be unnoticed.

  "Damn girl, you wearing those clothes out." A black girl with a thick frame, large breasts, and thighs like oaks, her thick black hair had been processed into straight hair. Blue contact lenses didn't hide a wide nose and full lips which faced her in the mirror, and she took out her self-loathing on the world around her.

  "Leave me alone, Andret."

  "Just saying, you may want to give your outfit a rest. It's getting ripe enough, I bet them jeans could find their own way to school by now."

  Iz lowered her head to push by. Andret hooked her arm in front of her.

  "What? You too good to speak to me now?"

  "She ain't got nothing to say to you. I might have a word or two though." Tristan Drust spoke with the timbre of command though she chewed a piece of gum with an open-mouthed flourish. Draped in a hoodie, her head crested with a thick nest of braids, most of which were dyed mauve. Big-boned and sturdy, without a trace of fat, anyone who knew anything about posture would have noticed how balanced her stance was. She knew more about fighting than most men. Her amber eyes with gold flecks counted off the girls with military precision. Andret was the mouth, the alpha of the group. Her wing girls could tussle, but if Andret was taken out quickly, they'd lose heart for a fight.

  "Enter the dyke," Andret said.

  "Now you've gone and hurt my feelings." Tristan squared up against Andret. Her eyes flashed challenge, a silent push. Andret inched forward, a tacit shove back.

  In the end, much of life could be reduced to lessons learned on the playground. Random encounters, bullies and bullied, friends and foes, the workplace of life all gathered in the same place. There were those who were simply not meant to get along with one another. Spaces not meant to be inhabited by both parties without rage bristling off each other, ready to jump off. Without boiling up in them, a living fire that needed to lash out and scorch the earth about them just under the surface, a seething they didn't know what to do with; once the veneer was scratched it erupted.

  Iz appealed to Tristan's better nature, preaching about finding better ways to respond to hostile situations rather than let them control her. "Blessed are the peacemakers" was a luxury Iz could indulge, but there was a reality she didn't understand: not everyone played by the rules of peace and some people just needed to be knocked on their ass. Folks who believed others infringed onto what was theirs and what the world owed them. Otherwise the world walked over you, the way so many had abused Iz. People like Iz needed people like Tristan.

  Moving her weight to her back foot, Tristan knew how to throw a punch. She struck with her shoulder, not her arm. She pivoted her hip into her blow, punching through her target. The jab flew with an angry whisper, not wasting any more time with idle talk or the pantomime of threat. She wasn't one to waste a shot. Andret's neck snapped back, nose exploding on impact. At heart, Tristan was a fighter. The other thing about fighting was knowing how to take a punch. Tristan loved going up against people who sparred against heavy bags or practiced shadow boxing, because no matter how exquisite their technique, a fight was won or lost based on how well they handled having their bell rung. Andret fell into the arms of her compatriots, the group piling onto the floor. Students crowded around them as Tristan loomed over them. She read their eyes: they wanted no part of her.

  "You OK?" Tristan asked Iz. Whenever they were together, the rest of the world retreated.

  "I'm a full-time student, so I got to lay it off." As a kid, she wanted to study math. She had a head for numbers and loved their patterns and symmetry. Numbers measured the world. Unfortunately, the path of education was discouraged by her father. As far as he was concerned, she was an incubator on legs: he regularly informed her that her duty was to get married and have kids. As her brand of rebellion, she became studious and intense and developed a love of reading.

  "You takin' notes?"

  "Right here."

  "All right then." Tristan took her in her arms and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  "What's going on here?" A teacher popped his head out of his classroom.

  "Nothing," Tristan said.

  "You know her?" He glanced at Andret, who cradled her face and slinked off with her friends.

  "I don't know anyone."

  "Go to the office, young lady."

  "I don't even go to this school." Tristan flipped her hood over her head, turned on her heel, and flashed two fingers. "Deuces."

  Before the teacher could summon security, Tristan was gone.

 

King couldn't afford to be sensitive. He lived in a hard world, a dangerous world. Pastor Winburn called it a fallen world. Fallen into what King was never sure. A state of disrepair, an invisible "unfinished business" sign lodged on someone's to-do list when they… He… got around to remembering the people left behind. Much like the church he used as a meeting place.

  Out of habit, King grabbed a nearby broom and King swept the floor of the abandoned, burned-out husk of a church, keenly aware of the futile gesture. Vandals would one day break in and loot anything the owners missed. Crackheads would use it as a safe haven from the elements to get high. Prostitutes would throw discarded mattresses in the corners and use it as a flophouse for their johns. But King straightened up anyway because he had to do something, no matter how small or ultimately futile.

  "You appear haggard and worn." Merle sat, legs crossed over one another at the ankles. Black cracks veined the surface of the circular table, browned with rain rot.

  "Not enough sleep."

  "You wear your dreams."

  "Something like that."

  "Hmm." Merle ran his finger along the top of the makeshift table. He licked the soot from his fingertip. "I won't always be with you."

  "You dying?" King stopped sweeping and focused on the man for the first time.

  "We're all dying. I know my death will be shameful and ridiculous. If you find my remains and I'm in a closet with a belt tied around my neck, wrists, and my gentleman's gentleman… all I ask is that you cut me down at least."

  "So you are dying?"

  "My safety word is 'apples.'"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You have to be prepared. Events are in motion, some courses set, but we are not Destiny's concubine. We have decisions to make. Choices."

  King trusted few people. Yet from the beginning, he knew he could talk to Merle. Perhaps it was just that with his brand of lunacy, anything King said would be forgotten moments later. More in truth, King sensed there was something ancient about their bond. "Can I get your advice on something?"

  "Most people don't want advice, only agreement."

  "I want your honest opinion."

  "I know nothing but half-truths and veiled interpretations, but I'll do my best."

  "What do you think of Lady G?"

  Merle tapped his lip with his sooty forefinger. "If I should tell you she was a poor choice, young, foolish, and empty-headed, would you believe me?"

  "She's not even close to that." King's pulse quickened, as if his heart reared at a threat to be confronted. Something about Lady G stirred an over-protectiveness within him, as if he couldn't stand even the thought of anyone speaking ill of her. "That's not the woman I know."

  "A grown man fixed by a girl." Merle etched his finger into the table, drawing pictures only his mind envisioned. "What if the girl was not a girl?"

  "A monster? An enchantment?" King's mind raced with possibilities. Anything to explain the… hesitation he felt with her.

  "No. A plug."

  "What?"

  "She stops up the hole in you." Merle adjusted the fit of his cap as if tuning in the proper signal. "Somewhere between birth and burial, people learned to twist the simple longings in their hearts – rest, belonging, affection, validation, peace – and tried to fill them with other things. Food. Drugs. Sex. Yet try as they might, the hole remained."

  "Try again."

  "I see that's too much for you to get your mind around, O Hesistant Spirit. Let's try this more practically then. What if I was to say she would betray you for another, perhaps one of your closest; would you believe me?"

  "I'd say you were way off. She's not that type of girl, Merle."

  Merle threw his head back and began to sing. "When a man loves a woman…"

  "I haven't said anything about love."

  "Here's the thing about love," Merle continued, ignoring him. "It goes against the laws governing the universe. Laws of probability. Laws of nature. Laws of common sense. None of them need apply. Love trumps all."

  "It all comes down to the right girl."

  "The future is like love: something we don't have the luxury to believe in," Merle sniffed. "I need to attend to the others."

 

Little more than a fallen museum, a curator preserving theologies no longer relevant to the community it served, a layer of dust settled upon the church like a burial shroud. Three chairs presided on a raised platform behind a toppled altar. Promises of health and wealth reverberated in the empty anteroom, echoing only along the cobwebs strung between the chairs. The choir loft cracked under its own weight, a broken bow on the ship of the church stage; an abandoned stage whose dwindling audience found better speakers, better empty promises, or greener pastures to lose themselves in.

  His steps pronounced and precise, a boy entered with the solemnity of a wedding's ring-bearer. Except instead of a ring, he carried a white gun – with a pearl handle grip and white shaft – rested atop a purple pillow. With each footfall, flames erupted from candle stands. Two boys, both with the scrawny physique of angry twigs, trailed him, each holding candelabras with five candles.

  Last in the processional was a young girl, short and curvy with engorged breasts. Her arms outstretched before her as she held a cup. Pure gold inlaid with precious stones, the cup produced its own luminescence. The hall filled with a suffuse light, dimming the lights produced by the candles. The girl turned and presented the cup to Percy.

  "What do you think it means?" Percy asked, his voice held the slightest hitch of a restrained stammer.

  "Means you dream of being a pimp," Merle said.

  "Really?" Percy sat up, surprised at himself.

  "Simple Percy, pure and true. Simple Percy, purehearted fool."

  "I'm not stupid." Percy's eyes turned downward, stung by the words of someone he wanted to be his friend. Merle put his hand on the boy's beefy shoulder.

  "No, no you're not. Far from it. You're probably the best of us. Thus a pure fool. And still, here you are yearning for the infinitely desirable, yet unattainable."

  "A woman?"

  "Her love? See, you aren't so dim."

  "Why won't King let me come along when they go out?"

  "It's dangerous work." Merle turned from him.

  "I ain't scared."

  "No you're not. And you're more ready than they realize. Don't worry, your time draws near."

  "How do you know?"

  "Your dream says so."

  A nearing thwack-thwack-thwack interrupted them as Rhianna Perkins padded along the carpet in a pair of flip-flops with an orange band. With good hair, though tender-headed, and fine-boned, she walked with a slight waddle, a stride developed because of the fullness of her pregnancy. Her breasts, swollen and tender, stretched out her black and white striped tank top over a lacy pink bra. Her belly protruded as if she attempted to hide a basketball under her shirt. She bent forward. Percy caught a glimpse of her panties rising above her jean line.

  "Boys." She caught him peeking. His eyes retreated and he turned his head.

  "Milady." Merle bowed. "I see your most sacred of ovens bears up nicely. May I?" He reached out his hands.

  "Sure."

  Merle placed his hands on either side of her belly. Then pressed his ear to it. "Oh my. Yes, you are. Be patient."

  "What's he saying?" Percy asked.

  "What happens in the womb stays in the womb." Merle winked.

  Life made her tough, not brave. Sex was a position of surrender, a searching for sorrow, a space to fill the loneliness. There was nothing special between her legs or in her center, and she went to bed with men – boys really – with easy aplomb. The idea of rejection or abandonment or being used never entered her calculations. She was a tabula rasa of femininity. One could write any story onto her and she was happy to oblige for the semblance of a relationship; the presence of a man was all the illusion of a relationship she required. She found it easier to open her legs than her heart: a brash emotional laziness. Her mental efforts focused more on figuring out how to stay alive from day to day.

  "He active though." Rhianna grimaced, then pressed her palms into her lower back. "Got no sense. Just like his daddy."

  "A hard road, raising a young one alone," Merle said.

  "She's not alone," Percy said.

  "True." Merle, again, patted the young man.

  "Anyway, I'm looking for a new man. King's taken." Rhianna toyed with the gangsta set. She believed that she wanted a thug, just not too much of a thug. Enough to be tough, because she definitely didn't want a softie.

  "What about Lott?" Merle asked. His voice had the timbre of urgency, a desperate urging.

  "I don't do yellow men, but he's nice."

  "Love. It never ceases to baffle me."

 

Sweating in the field, King's back ached, stretched by the day's labor. Little more than a boy stripped from his mother; man enough to do the work and live the life. A bit filled his mouth. With an angular face and tubercular frame, the white overseers had checked his legs and teeth on the auction block, little more than a work horse's inspection. They didn't take full measure of the wildness in his eyes when they put it in his mouth. Chains clanged with his every movement. The twinge of anger burned, a constant fever beneath his sweaty skin. Drawn up and yanked back, his lips parted. He tasted the iron in his mouth. Spit pooled in it but he couldn't swallow. He vomited, choking as it oozed back down his throat with nowhere to escape around the bit. His tongue brutalized, both by the bit and the bile. And the clenched hatred. His eyes untamed, savage and unbroken, yearned to be free. Not letting anything – not the pain, not the humiliation, not the self-hatred – into his personal world.

  King snapped awake on the green checked futon in his living room, legs akimbo. The cuff of the chains still bit into his waking flesh, where he rubbed his wrists. Lady G sank between his spread legs and nestled her back into him. His arms wrapped around her and she felt a rare moment of being safe. He shifted slightly, but there was no hiding from the erection her very proximity caused. She didn't mind. She rather enjoyed the effect she had on him, if only because she knew he'd never make a move she wasn't comfortable with, no matter how much he burned. She liked that.

  The living room of his Breton Court town house doubled as his bedroom. He might as well not have owned the second floor as he never ventured up there. He lived without roots. Sweatshirts, T-shirts, and jeans in their respective piles between where the futon stretched out into a bed and the wall. A large television was on another stand, a tray of burning incense beside it. A small stereo system and a stack of books were the only other furnishings in the room. A basket held folded socks and underwear (which he covered when Lady G was over). An end table held an array of colognes, an odd affectation, as if he were never pleased with his own scent and was constantly in search of his true one.

  This was their time, their special time. Away from their friends, away from their family, away from their responsibilities, they carved out this space, this time for them, if only to sit and hold one another. They shared the little things, the secret things and the unspoken things.

  "What is it, King?"

  "I haven't wanted anything in a long time. Haven't felt…" He didn't know if he could find the words to express that, around her, the pain in his chest ebbed and died. It was dangerous to love anything too much. Better to love just a little bit. How he feared that he might be desperately in love with a woman, little more than a girl, whom he should not risk loving because he couldn't afford to lose her. How he had spent a lifetime shying away whenever he thought he found such a love, but she managed to slip under his radar, his wall, and sneak upon him. He leaned down and whispered. "I don't want to give you up."

  "I have no intentions of letting you."

  "You're a… I should know better." He couldn't stem the spread of weakness, love, when it came to her. His foolishness made him think fondly of himself. So feeling. So ordinary. So full of the helplessness of love. What was it about her that penetrated his defenses? Her woundedness, her strength, her light, her innocence? She had a bird-like defenselessness, fragile pieces of glass, which was his to protect. And he swelled at the idea of being her champion. In his arms, she came to feel unorphaned. He had grown addicted to their moments together and often bent his schedule to maximize their time together. To live for her, to die for her, to never want to let her go. She was his drug of choice and he planned to ride the high for as long as possible.

  "You're a child molester!" She exclaimed in faux shock. He talked to her, really talked to her, not talking down to her. He not only listened to her, but expected intelligence and great things from her. She liked being seen and treated that way, though she wasn't always present with him. Not in any real way. Bereft of a part of her soul, she thought. Stingy with her affections, she guarded a virtue only present in her own mind.

  "Don't joke." He touched her face. "You're not just eighteen. You talk and act much older."

  "There are no children out here."

  "I should have the sense and strength to send you off to find someone your own age. Some simple boy."

  "You want to be with me. I want to be with you. Eyes wide open." She thought there was space for her in him. Not love, possession. The longing for her. When she looked at him, the thoughts behind the gaze were distant. He wanted to be pulled into her view. He wanted those eyes, that attention, that hungry intent for himself.

  The fine bulges fascinated his fingers as he caressed her neck in body worship. She exposed more of herself to his touch. His breathing deepened. Trailing to her breastbone, without protest, he traced the swell of her breasts. He slipped his hand down her top. Her head nuzzled him. Cupping her full breasts and encircling her nipple with his thumb, he found the edges of her areola and circled it. Even a flick failed to elicit a response. No low moan, no sound of any sort. Only non-protest. It was as if she couldn't feel. She didn't feel the kiss he pressed on her. Her internal elusiveness, preserving part of herself as if by instinct.

  He turned her head and kissed her. Hungry and probing, his tongue pushed past her lips. He ran his hands along her belly, pressing his hand along her shirt. He kissed the underside of her neck. Pulling at her jeans, he lowered them. To a tremble, a hint of resistance. He slowed. He turned her onto her belly and tugged at her shirt. Her hand gripped it. He knew her worry. The scars. He held firm to the shirt, determined, until she let go. Her back a filigree of scars, spider webs of raised welts and keloids. He followed each delicate bend with his finger. Then with his mouth. Tender, he kissed her back, each kiss an acceptance of her body, of who she was, of her sum of scars. He lowered his attentions, trailing further down her back.

  And she offered no protest.

  Two broken lovers poured out their sorrow on one another. Not making love as much as reaching for a life preserver before they drowned in a sea of their own pent-up pain. Theirs was the connection of tragedy, even if they never spoke a word of it.

  King laid next to her, watched her the entire night, indifferent to his fatigue. He matched his breathing to hers as to not disturb her. To listen to her more clearly. Anything was better than the silence. Yet even her sleeping form threatened to overwhelm him, fill every part of him.

  And he couldn't afford to lose her.