Chemistry (12 page)

Still I can’t shake the vision of her struggling for her life. I see her tears, in my mind’s eye, soaking into the rope I’ve slipped around her perfectly sculpted neck. I see the discoloration of her face as she suffocates. The blood. The sweat. The fear dripping off her.

My knees give way, and I fall to the ground. I’m shivering with horror, gasping for air. My skin tingles. I recognize hyperventilation, but I can’t seem to stop it. I bring a hand to my face, only to find I’ve been crying all this time. I am soaking in my own tears. I can’t even hold myself up any more. My vision tunnels. And I collapse.

III

The first thing I see when I open my eyes is a dewdrop glittering on a blade of grass. The first thing I hear is a bird singing gleefully as though spring has come early this year. Cattle low in the distance. A cool breeze sweeps through the pasture and pushes the hood from my head. The day is crisp and the sun is high in the sky.

By now, Esmeralda is dead. And I am laughing. I can’t do anything but sit in the mud and laugh. Probably there’s something wrong with me. This is not your typical laughter; there’s no joy in it. Perhaps this response is, as I have heard, the relief one feels at the passing of danger. But though the danger has passed, I feel no relief.

I hate that the earth continues to turn after Esmeralda is dead. I hate that the sun still rises and the cows still come out to pasture, that ants still build their nests and birds still sing. I hate that nature is still lovely, even though today, Esmeralda will begin to rot.

I’ve got to get out of this damned fresh air. It’s too normal, too exhilarating. I want to remain in my stupor. The last thing I need is a lucid mind. I start back the way I came and take the bus into town. Each person who boards after me is a shining beacon of innocence. Every one of them condemns me, and they’re right to do so. I’m a murderer like Esmeralda said. I proved her right, in the end.

I swim dizzily through this dream and imagine the bus I’ve boarded is, in reality, a train headed straight for hell. Hours later, I begin to wonder whether the smoke will get to me before the fire does. And I wonder how long it will take me to beg for death, as the scriptures claim I will do. Somehow, I doubt I ever would. I’d be the only person in hell too cowardly to ask for annihilation. Even in that situation. Even then, I would fight to go on living.

At dusk, I find myself walking the streets of a strange city. I don’t remember getting off the bus at all. I’m just… here. I wander aimlessly until I find another bus stop and climb aboard another bus. I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s better this way. Let me wander until I’m thoroughly lost.

I lean my face against the window and feel the chill on my fevered skin. The bus stops, and I hear the snake-hiss of its brakes. Someone sits beside me. I don’t show my face. He smells like liquor and smoke. He smells like Gene. When his phone rings and he answers with an audible lisp in his voice, I know it’s no coincidence. This
is
Gene. Drunk. Alone. Stupid.

“On my way, bro,” he slurs into his phone. “Naw, I’m not nearly wasted enough… Well, I had to catch up to ya, didn’t I?… ‘S cool, man. My brother was good for it… He’s always good for it….”

I wish I could cover my ears without being obvious about it. Every word Gene says is rock-solid proof that it’s my fault he turned out this way. It’s my fault for being selfish—for giving in to him because he made me laugh and because I wanted him to love me.

“Man, the guy next to me is passed out already. Bet he’s having a hell of a night.” He laughs and laughs. “Naw, it’s nobody we know. Some old guy.”

Some old guy. My hood had fallen from my head, but I cradled my face in my arms in the hopes that I wouldn’t be recognized. What good did it do me in the end? He saw me for what I am.

My brother gets off two stops later, and I’m left alone again.

The last stop is just outside my church. I shouldn’t have picked a bus at random. I should have expected this. I am in hell, after all.

I can hear Valentine practicing from outside the building. It still sounds like home to me. I wonder how it’s possible that earlier today, I became a monster. I don’t feel like a monster. I feel just as I always have. Does this mean I was a monster all along? Does it mean there never was a transformation, just a sad pantomime finally coming to an end?

Inside, the church is dark, which is fine by me. Valentine is all about the conservation of energy. He often practices in the dark, letting his fingers read the keys far more accurately than any concert organist. Strange as that probably sounds to you, to us it’s comfortable. The organ is our hearth, and the shadows have always been our safe place, our shelter, our sanctuary.

Normally, I move through the darkness with ease, but tonight, I find myself gripping the backs of the pews as I stagger toward the altar. The floor is a tumble of waves beneath my feet. Somewhere in the shadows, I know a beast waits to devour me. Valentine’s music spills over the loft like a waterfall that threatens to wash me away. My once-home has become a perversion of itself. It’s a horror-movie funhouse, filled with the distorted familiar.

The Virgin Mother waits for me at the altar, holding her baby in her arms. The child looks like a miniature adult, with his perfectly understanding eyes, his slender arms and hands reaching out to the darkness. In some distant, other place, I hear a clock announce the midnight hour. Have they found Esmeralda? Is she waiting on a cold slab in the city morgue? Or is she still hanging in that tree, slowly becoming food for the local wildlife. I prefer to imagine her alone in the forest, where she’ll only be seen in the dreams of her killers, who will tremble and sweat when they realize they’ve destroyed the only beautiful thing in the world. I imagine the tree wrapping its branches around her, holding her close, keeping her warm in my place.

I should have been there. I should have saved or killed her, but I should never have run away.

The moon is bright tonight, and it sends its light through the stained glass to the altar below, pointing the way to the enormous, antique Bible the priest keeps on his podium. He has his own highlighted, tab-filled Bible that he carries around with him, so he never uses this beauty. I’ve often envied that kind of faith. I wish I could believe that an invisible father loves me and guides me through my mess of a life. I don’t even need him to be all-powerful or all-knowing or anything like that. I just want him to be there.

I cling to the podium, eyeing that Bible with more desperation than I’ve ever felt in my life. There must be something to it. There must be. Science has failed to save me from myself. Maybe its old arch-nemesis will succeed. I bow over the podium and close my eyes. I shut the book and slowly open it again, letting gravity decide which page will land on top. Then I drag my finger over that heavy, cotton paper until I feel the need to stop.

Here. Here will be my answer, my invisible father’s message to me. I whisper a prayer and open my eyes.

My finger has landed on Job: chapter four, verse fifteen. It reads,
Then a spirit glided past my face; the hair of my flesh bristled up.

I tremble, first with fear, and then with a suppressed, sardonic giggle. God’s message to me is pure nonsense. How appropriate. I teeter back and stumble away from the book. If Valentine could see me now, he would swear I was as drunk as my brother. I wish I were. For all the judgment I’ve heaped upon Gene, he outranks me in goodness. He may be irresponsible, reckless, and downright destructive at times, but he’s an altogether decent human being when compared to someone like me.

I feel so hung over. All I want to do is find my room and crash in it. My sleeping quarters are the size of a large closet, but that’s all I need. I prefer closed-in spaces; they feel safer. Tonight, I would give anything to lock myself in and never open the door again.

I drag my hand along the walls, feeling my way down the dark hallway. It isn’t that I couldn’t find my room otherwise. I just need to touch something solid. I keep imagining myself pitching forward into a rippling lake of blue fire. My mind is reeling. The heat is more than I can bear. Even when I stop walking, I feel it drawing nearer to me. And when I finally look ahead, I see why.

The ghost of a white-hot flame moves toward me. It flickers in the darkness, and sometimes I have to squint to see it. But I do see it. No doubt about that. For all the strange ideas I have in my head, I know this is no hallucination. It’s shaped like a person, but Valentine is practicing the organ still, and no one else should be here.

For every step the flame takes toward me, I take one backward. I hold my breath as it draws so close I can hear the sound of its footsteps resonating down the hallway. I flatten myself against the wall in the hopes that if I let it pass, it will not burn me. I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge, hiding from ghosts, and for good reason. When the flame comes close enough, I see the contours of her face.

It’s Esmeralda.

Esmeralda, dressed all in white. And trotting right behind her is little Djali, equally pale. They are ghosts. My heart is going to explode; it beats so heavily I fear the sound of it will alert them to my presence. If Esmeralda is a ghost and she has chosen my church to haunt, what other reason can she have than her much-deserved revenge? She’s here for me. I’m petrified, but I refuse to close my eyes as she passes by.

I watch her. She’s so close I can feel the breath of her movement, the warmth of the air that wafts from her, but her gaze never falls on me. She doesn’t see me.

I stay pressed against the wall long after she’s gone. The sweat from my forehead drips into my eyes. I feel singed, horrified and humbled.

When I finally reach my room, I close myself in, bury my head under my pillow, and weep. My muffled, pathetic cries sound like they belong to a child, but I’m unable to stop. I cry so long, my eyes burn and my head throbs. My mattress is soaked with tears and sweat. I curl into a ball and drift in and out of nightmares, floating on a sea of dead ambitions and lost identity.

I recall, with a trembling fever and need, the warmth of my mother’s arms. And I hear her voice whisper,
Then a spirit glided past my face; the hair of my flesh bristled up.

IV

When I wake, I feel disgusting. My skin is clammy with old perspiration. My mouth tastes like a mixture of iron and bile. I grab a towel and my old bathrobe and head for the shower. The church shower room has a sink, counter, and one stall with an old, yellowing curtain. When I enter, I find the shower in use. Valentine is up earlier than usual.

I sit on a three-legged stool in the corner and lean back to wait. Steam fills the room and sends me into a doze. I haven’t slept enough, and now I feel like I’m dreaming. I recall my hallucinations from the night before and wonder whether that’s what my brother feels like when he does his drugs. The idea that anyone would actually want an experience like that is so absurd to me I almost laugh. Then I hear a sound that stops my breath. It’s the organ. Valentine is practicing, which means…

All the memories of last night’s delirium flood my mind. What if I wasn’t hallucinating? What if Esmeralda is alive? On cue, the shower stops. My heart thuds in anticipation. She may be on the other side of that curtain right now. I rise from the stool and brace myself. If it is Esmeralda, I don’t want to appear as surprised as I am that she survived the night. I hear the quiet padding of bare feet on the floor and that terrible metal on metal sound as the shower curtain is pushed aside. And yes, it is Esmeralda.

As I feared.

As I hoped.

She steps out, wrapped in a towel, the steam rolling off her naked shoulders like smoke. Her face lifts and she sees my shape in the mist she’s created. She starts at the sight of a stranger, but it isn’t until her eyes finally focus on my face that she panics.

She’s a rabbit, the way she bolts for the door, but I am quicker. I don’t even know what I plan to do when I have her, but my instincts scream at me to trap her. I leap in front of the door and spread my arms out before she can get by me. She recoils, backing into the far wall. Her towel is slipping, and she fumbles to hold it in place. I expect her to scream, which won’t trouble me. Valentine won’t hear her. But she doesn’t make a sound. She just stands there, holding her towel in place with one hand, ready to fight with the other.

“Don’t be afraid,” I say, though really, I think she should be. I could not argue for my own sanity, at this point. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She holds her position.

I lean against the door and try to look less threatening. “I just need to talk to you.”

She waits.

This kind of improvisation is not my thing. I’ve never been good at it. I try to channel Peter’s more dramatic nature. Faking it is all I have left. “I know you won’t believe me, but I’m glad they let you go.”

“They didn’t.” She scowls. “Valentine got me out.”

I stare at my shoes. Of course. I should have known. He even managed to find her goat. “He’s a better person than me,” I say.

I expect to hear some kind of sarcastic response from her like,
You can say that again
, or,
I’d call that the understatement of the year
. But she doesn’t say anything. When I look up at her, the smirk on her lips is far more stinging than any words she might have spoken. It’s condescending, like a teacher who’s been waiting for a correct response and finally gets it after too much prodding and too many hints.

“You’re so cruel,” I say, and then I bite my tongue. I hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but having had this ghost waltz through my dreams all night seems to have affected my motor skills.

“
I’m
cruel.” She clutches the folds of her towel with whitened knuckles. “You stalked and threatened me. You murdered my friend…”

“Friend?”

She glares. “Yes, friend.”

“Do you even know what I stopped him from doing to you?” I lift myself from my slouch. I no longer care whether I look threatening. She wouldn’t know a threat if it stripped her down and then tried to have its way with her after she passed out.