Elastic Heart (3 page)

With my head firmly planted on the pillow, I breathed in dust mites and stale shampoo. I really needed to wash my fucking sheets. And hair. And body. Okay, I needed to wash everything. To my left, Raskol had taken up half of the pillow, his snoring a clear sign he was also okay with the plan to spend the rest of our lives there on Planet Couch.

Despite my dirty sheets, Couch felt like a safe place. On the rectangular safe haven, I felt like I was buoyed against the world. A raft just floating away from all the bullshit.

I sighed, turning over to face the ceiling. Despite how wonderful a notion it was to just stay on Couch forever, I knew it was impossible. Mainly because I had to pee. That gnawing urge in my lower gut reminded me that the world kept revolving, and I had to revolve with it. Even if I really didn’t fucking want to.

I got into the habit of following
him
. Maybe that meant something inside me had cracked and I was insane now, or maybe that meant I was the sanest one in the city. After all, I was the only one who saw
him
for what he was: rotten, dirty, and utterly corrupt. Still, I couldn’t help but remember the saying “If everyone’s insane, then you’re the mad one.”

Shrugging it off, I followed
him
as he walked into a relatively low-key restaurant. I noted it was odd because
he
always ate at higher class establishments. I didn’t take too much time to ruminate on the fact, though, because at least it meant I could follow
him
inside.

When
he
ate at high-end places, it meant my tail stopped at the door. Most days I looked like a wet rag, wrung and hung out to dry. Fancy restaurants only let rags hang in the back with other rags.

I slid in the door, took a seat facing
his
back, and thanked my waitress for the menu. The glass of water she gave me was slightly dirty; a faded lipstick stain kissed the glass. I ordered a basket of fries so she would leave me alone for a bit and settled in, my face obscured by the drink menu.

“Well I can’t see why I would support that.”
His
nasally voice drifted to my ears. I perked up, trying to hear more. “A lot of my constituents have cancer or friends and family with cancer, and that drug would help them. Unless you have something that would make me change my mind…” It was no secret that politicians took bribes, but hearing the conversation occur so casually over cheap food and dirty dishes was nauseating.

“We have our reasons for needing the drug stopped.” The voice that spoke next stopped my heart. My menu nearly slipped from my grasp as my palms grew sweaty. It couldn’t be…could it? I looked over my menu to see the owner of the voice. It was him—the other him—the guy from the coffee shop, the one who had asked me out. I
knew
it, I just knew the guy was an asshole. Clearly the fucker had asked me out because he worked for
him
.

Clearly
he
wasn’t done with me.

I wanted to vomit, but I swallowed the bile and kept listening.

“Our company is willing to offer you full financial support for your next campaign,” the coffee shop fucker continued. “We’ll even help you create a small cancer charity walk to show you care.”

Senator Morris took a slow sip of his drink. “All for my support against the bill?”

The man from the coffee shop smiled. He was attractive, his smile all Colgate and his sharp jaw lined with the hint of a five o’clock shadow. His eyes were a warm golden hazel, inviting almost. I knew better… The house in Hansel and Gretel was inviting, too.

“Well for such a big donation from us,” Coffee Shop Fucker went on. “We would of course expect you to garner support from your friends in the Senate and House.”

Senator Morris lowered his drink, a small smile on his thin lips. “Of course.”

I listened to the rest of their conversation, but after they finished discussing the cancer drug it was nothing but small talk and flattery. I followed
him
to his car and waited until he went inside his home.
He
would kiss his wife and two daughters, take off his tie, brush his teeth, then read the news in his study until about one in the morning. That was
his
nightly routine.

He
never watched porn.
He
never masturbated.
He
never had sex with his wife (I was beginning to think his daughters had appeared by immaculate conception).
He
never did anything remotely unseemly at home.

I supposed
he
got his jollies from strangers. From people like me.

I watched
his
nightly routine until he crawled into bed at one-thirty, and then I went home.

I’d moved after
he
had attacked me. My old apartment never felt the same. My bed wasn’t mine any more; it belonged to
him
. Even my shower didn’t belong to me; it belonged to the memories of how I’d tried to scrub
him
off. When I moved, I thought it would get better. Even though I bought a new bed, it still felt like
his
bed. Even though it was a new shower, I still remembered scrubbing
him
off.

I slept on the couch now.

My appetite was one of the first things to go, one of the first things
he
took. So, despite having only eaten half a basket of fries hours before, I still wasn’t hungry. I lost a tremendous amount of weight in the months following the attack. I looked sickly for those months, not that anyone noticed.

There was no one
to
notice. My parents were dead and any “friends” I’d had disappeared when they found out. Even my “best” friend Effie disappeared. We’d been as close as sisters, but she completely abandoned me when the news got ahold of the story.

Her desertion still cut.

I let myself wallow in the shame and misery, contemplating death by starvation for a good two months, before finally giving myself a kick in the ass. I didn’t exactly bounce back, though. I crawled back.

After everything that happened, to get back to a sense of normalcy was like climbing from the bottom of a snake-filled ravine. I clung to slippery rocks, I kicked the venomous snakes trying to bite at my heels, and eventually I pulled myself up and over the edge.

When all was said and done I wasn’t the same Nami. I was changed.

I thought back on the previous months as I opened my refrigerator and pulled out a bag of “meatless” meat for tacos. That was another thing that changed: I became a vegetarian. BH—before
him—
I was a ravenous carnivore. I ate steak and burgers and hotdogs like they were going out of style. Now I couldn’t stand the sight of them. I wasn’t not really sure why. At a certain point, though, I stopped questioning the changes that happened to me and just accepted them.

The stove sounded just as Raskol’s feet pitter-pattered across the linoleum. I glanced down to see his furry face, ready for any offering that might fall into his mouth. I reached into the skillet and picked out the only cooked piece, dropping it into his hungry maw.

At least all the shit and fuckery had brought me Raskol.

I turned on my computer as I shoved a taco into my mouth. I wasn’t hungry and eating actually made me nauseated, but if I didn’t fuel up, I would be worthless and then
he
couldn’t pay. The red meatless meat slid down my chin, but mess didn’t bother me much any more. Raskol inched closer, tongue out, as if I wouldn’t notice the fact that he’d gone from sitting on the edge of the couch to licking my chin. I shoved him away and wiped it off hastily, the red smearing against the back of my hand. My slightly sticky finger moved against the track pad, looking for the USB icon.

I recorded everything I did when following
him
. The police wouldn’t help me so I figured I had to help myself. It had been about six months since the incident and that meant I’d had about six months to stew. To ruminate. To contemplate how I’d been violated not once but multiple times.

By
him.

By the police.

By the media.

By everyone: people who were supposed to protect me from the dregs of society. Dregs like
him
.

I guess you could say I was a little bit mad.

My plan was an ever-evolving thing. It wasn’t as though I had practice in these things, in revenge. When I first crawled out of the dark hole
he
had placed me in, I was filled with almost too many emotions to process: anger, shame, humiliation, sadness, anger again.

Despair.

How had this happened? How had
he
gotten away with it? There were so many different things I wanted to do to
him
. I envisioned hot pokers. I imagined ancient torture techniques (even looked up a few). Scaphism didn’t sound too bad an end for
him
.

To be honest, I still wasn’t entirely sure
what
my plan was. It had started out as me wanting to gather my own evidence, to be able to prove without a doubt what
he
had done to me. The police wouldn’t be able to turn me away.

Then it metamorphosed.

As I followed
him,
I began building a sick obsession.

I wanted to know
him
.

I wanted to understand the way
he
ticked.

Each day I hid under the cloak of shadows, watching
him
go about his daily life, I peeled away another layer. What was I after? I still wasn’t sure. Maybe a reason for why
he
did what he did. Maybe to understand why
he
chose
me
and why he ruined
my
life. Still, as I kept going, nothing became clearer. If anything, it got murkier, and that just emboldened my obsession.

It had been two months since I’d started my convoluted journey. Two months since I’d started following and evidencing everything
he
did.

I had gone through one external hard drive already and my second was nearly full. As I uploaded the day’s work, my mind drifted back to Coffee Shop Fucker.

I thought I’d been stealthy the past two months. I thought
he
didn’t know I was following him. Was it possible
he
knew? Why else would that man have followed me and asked me out? If I hadn’t beaten him up or pulled a gun on him, what would he have done to me? Perhaps
he
had told the guy I was an easy target.
He
probably thought I was the same girl he’d violated six months ago and so his lapdog wasn’t expecting a fight.

I shuddered just as the computer dinged, indicating that my file was finished uploading. It snapped me out of my spiraling train of thought. I didn’t want to confront the idea that I hadn’t been predator these past few months, but instead had been prey.

Crouched down amidst the trash and forgotten things, I wanted to scream. I didn’t like what I was seeing. It didn’t fit in my perfectly constructed view of
him
. There I was, standing outside
his
home collecting evidence on his violation of me, and instead of acting how he should have been—you know, like a raping monster—he was carefully tending to his wife’s wound. After
his
wife cut her finger while cooking, he came to dress her wound.
He
came to care for her.

He
even kissed her tenderly on the forehead while applying antiseptic to the bleeding finger. My stomach roiled. Who was this man? A person capable of completely annihilating someone like me without any hesitation, yet, at the same time, capable of tenderness and compassion for another. What did that even mean?

I put down my camera for a moment, steadying myself against the garbage. It smelled like rotting vegetables. Growing up, I’d had a compost pile in my backyard under a big pine tree. I would play under that tree; there was room enough for lawn chairs and mattresses the neighbor kids and I collected off the streets during spring cleaning. The pine tree was
that
big. You walked under it and it was like a teepee of needles overhead. At least, that’s what it felt like as a child.