Please Don't Go (18 page)

“
Young lady!” I half shouted, pulling myself down into a chair across from her, my eyes twitching at the insolent tone that she was employing with me. Had any child ever been so bold in their words? Added to this, she was exhibiting a vocabulary that defeated my ego on some infinitesimal level. Perhaps I was not so much disgusted as I was fascinated by this precocious troll. “Your mother is a fine woman, and I could not dare to trace the root of this speech. You speak like a vicious dog, and I do not appreciate it,” I said. I imagined that Emily’s father may have talked like this, hypothetically speaking, if he had made an unwise decision to stay on in Aleesha’s and his apparently short tryst. Maybe the father of this child was no different than myself; a fleeting tourist, seduced by the allusive fairytale mesmerism of Aleesha’s mere presence.

Emily snickered, adjusting her little white pajama suit and inching across the table with her dainty fingers. She had been sketching on paper with a pencil before I had interrupted her work, and now she pushed all of this aside to prop her elbows upon the table, dragging herself closer to me. Her small black eyes penetrated my good nature, and I could feel a coldness in the child that bled like thick syrup into the air around us. “If you stay, I’ll make you breakfast,” she said, her face stony and purposeful. I looked at her long black hair, which looked freshly cleaned. It spilled over her shoulders and down to the surface of the kitchen dining table like thin ebony tree roots.

“
I would like that,” I said, unsure of what I was enunciating to this young lass. In reality, I dreaded the idea of spending one more minute with this child and her seductive whore of a mother. I stayed on as a quiet rebellion against the child, becoming vicariously infantile in such an act. “I have heard you make a wonderful spread for breakfast,” my lips spoke words that I could not account for inside of my head. What on earth was I saying? What madman had traded tongues with me?

“
Yes. Delicious. You will not soon forget it. You’ll have quite the appetite, I am sure.”

She seemed to insinuate so very much.

We stared at each other for what may have been a decade or more, or possibly a minute, or possibly a nanosecond. Her gaze shifted my insides, the very organs of my physical being adjusted to fit around the tendons that she was stretching across across the table towards me, like invisible tentacles of dread. I thought to myself, with thoughts that felt not entirely my own, that there was a genetic mesmerism, that the same techniques used by the Siren Aleesha were taught to her young daughter. The difference, I felt, was that Aleesha had done so with an almost smoking sexual desire, yet her daughter utilized a more primal connection. Alien, even. Her methods for speech and social fiber were devious but angelic, punishment mixed with pleasure. Her eyes twittered with hidden thoughts, unblinking retinas that grew and retracted in the study of the fabric of my wretched, weakened soul. I wanted to scream aloud, to tear the young child’s face away from her skull, but could do none of this within my own means, even if law permitted such treachery upon a child.

“
My little angel,” Aleesha whispered, waltzing into the kitchen with perk in her stride, rubbing the silky black scalp of her daughter with her gentlest hand. “Isn’t she darling?”

I smiled the best I could, though wordlessly.

Laura, the backroom babysitter who I had yet to meet, tiptoed past us without even a glance or word. She offered no exit salutations to her friend Aleesha, nor the same respect to Emily. As she brushed past me as one would expect of a ghost, I could see a stark absence upon her face, a lost sense of abandonment. A zombie. A pod. A dead leaf, flitting in the autumn wind.

“
Goodbye, Laura,” I addressed her. Aleesha and Emily acted as though they had not seen Laura, and this rattled my nerves.

“
He’ll be staying, mother. He’ll be staying after all!” burst Emily, portraying a sort of false exuberance that had previously not existed in my presence. I snapped free of my hypnosis and felt my bowels move back into their original home positions, the translucent tentacle of Emily’s trance removed. I took a deep breath when it dawned on me that I had not exhaled or inhaled in several minutes time.

“
Gladly,” I said, my eyes heavy from a terribly long day. How had I ended up in this place? I wanted then to sleep, and nothing more. It seemed, though, that Aleesha had other plans for me. She put her odd conniving daughter to bed and we continued our lurid affair, very much against my wishes. I ached for something like a home, but could not picture my own.

***

When the day began its brightened treachery upon my forgetful, sleepy mind, I watched the pinkish sun fishing its way through the rooftops, so slow that you did not notice an alteration. If there was anything outright abominable to be said about Aleesha’s eerily unwelcoming apartment (was it the place itself, or the small child asleep in the next room?), it would never be that the view was anything short of phenomenal. I rose from the bed, a sheet wrapped around my waist. I looked through the tall glass window of her bedroom, which had been left slightly cranked open after our fitful moment together the night before. I could hear an early bustle on the streets, vendors chatting and pedestrians clomping their dedicated feet on the cobblestones.

I could live here, I thought to myself. I could live here, and I
would
live here. I shook this thought away from my sandy brain, resigning my misconceptions to an absence of coffee or strong Irish tea. Though I would live in a place like Galway, it was more of an ideal that I supported in theory only. I would live in a place like Galway, but maybe not Galway itself. I could have boxes packed and shipped to me in three days time, with only a handful of phone calls. A transfer of funds from my bank to an Irish one. My house would practically sell itself, and in less than a month’s time. Not as impossible as somebody with proper senses of the mind would have you believe.

“
Sleep in a bit longer, dear,” Aleesha said from beneath the sheets, shielding the morning’s light from her eyes as she worked through any logical reason that I would be awake at such an ungodly hour. “Another hour at least,” she moaned, her voice garbled by a pillow mashed into her pleading face.

“
I need to leave,” I confessed as I plodded my way through a checklist for moving myself to this city, for abandoning America with a real permanence, for taking Aleesha as my wife. I would uproot my life and slide into this obtuse, yet sweet-smelling, apartment. “I shouldn’t be here,” I said, against my throbbing heart’s wishes.

I could feel Emily in the next room. I imagined her, as I had before I had met her, in her bed, staring at the ceiling, whispering devilish curses beneath her breath.

“
Emily is making breakfast, though,” Aleesha replied, inconsolable in her tone. “You’d break her heart if you leave now. Please don’t go.”

“
I’m hoping to be on the road again by lunch. I need to return to the hotel and gather my things, have a quick bath, and be on my way,” I said, turning to look at the splash of red hair spilling out from beneath the mash-up of pillows, sheets, and blankets. I could hear her sighing, repeatedly, in an attempt to outwardly express her discontent with my decision.

“
You’ll break both of our hearts,” Aleesha stated as she pulled herself into an upright sitting position in her dirty, mussed bed, coyly covering her breasts beneath the sheets. “Have you given consideration to staying on with us?” She spoke of my potential immigration into Ireland as one would a job opportunity.

All I thought of was escape.

All I thought of was staying.

“
Emily took a real shine to you. I can see it in her eyes. Isn’t she darling?”

“
Yes. She is.” No, she wasn’t.

Aleesha stood up from her bed and walked towards me. I could feel a magnetism changing in the room, a barometric drop in pressure that I could almost visibly detect. Her hand ran along the small of my back and I pulled away from her disillusioned gesture, my skin quaking at the mere touch of her, though I had taken her to bed only hours earlier. The conflicts of my mind and heart had not subsisted as I had hoped they would overnight. With the same blindness I had enveloped myself into the passionate clutch of Aleesha, so had I done with her odorous home.

The peachy smell returned, as if called upon to remind my drunken senses, and my skin crawled. It invited me with a saccharin voice, but repulsed me at the same time. I thought, again, of the mythical Sirens, standing on the shore to seduce sailors towards their devilish claws. Aleesha and Emily and that fragrant odor had done something similar to me and I felt trapped, shackled in place. I was a pickle in their jar. These thoughts bounced about my skull and I vomited through the partially opened window of Aleesha’s bedroom.

“
Let me get you a towel, my sweet,” she said to my expulsion of the previous evening’s dinner and lager. “You should go back to bed. You don’t look well!” She seemed unfazed by my unexpected vomiting, and this only made the depths of my stomach feel even more uneasy.

“
He’ll stay for breakfast?” the tiny voice of Emily came from behind the bedroom door. I looked to the door and then the window. I could squeeze through the window, where a fire escape awaited me. I could scamper down and be back to my hotel in less than ten minutes. Though I was entirely naked, I would be able to swipe a tablecloth from one of the outdoor cafes, that which I could fashion myself a toga from. Or better yet, I could stay. I would call my mother and father first. Tell them the big news of my new Irish residence. Jobs were not easy to come by, but my current employer would give a glimmering recommendation, even with the terribly short notice of my resignation, or so I convinced myself. I had originally planned to spend all of my time writing, and so maybe this was the charge I needed to continue down that path, to break free of the corporate structures that employed me and live a Bohemian lifestyle. Aleesha and Emily would become my collective Yoko Ono.

“
He’s staying for breakfast,” Aleesha responded to her daughter as she handed me a bright pink towel. I put it to my face, rubbing at the corners of my mouth in disgust, and noticed that the towel smelled of wet, rotting wood. I vomited a second time, on Aleesha’s polished oak floor. “He may be staying even longer than that!”

I nodded, saying, “No, I cannot do that.” I vomited a third time.

***

Emily was a lauded cook by her mother, but delivered something unidentifiable and putrid upon my plate. I fought to keep my head upright, and I prayed that my vomiting was through.

“
Eat,” Emily insisted. “Eat your breakfast.” She had a similar plate sitting before her as myself and Aleesha, though she had not eaten any of it herself. She was setting an example, I would soon find, but not committing to the fare herself.

I looked to the plate with clenched lips. I would not eat the food that she had created for me. It was simply impossible for any sane human being to do so. “No. I won’t eat this trash,” I said. Most times, in such a situation, adults force-feed a nibble of food into their mouths, pretending to enjoy it, but in reality they stuff it into a napkin which they will dump into the toilet when the sensitive emotional child is not paying attention. I could do no such thing, for Emily was not the kind of child I cared to spare the feelings of. If anything, I hoped to hurt the child, which only made me feel more ill. What kind of monster had I become, and so very quickly? My mother would be ashamed of what I had turned into. I looked to Aleesha, shaking my head, insisting again, “I cannot eat this.” I averted my eyes from Emily for as long as I could, but soon found that I was unable to do so of my free will, turning my head back to the child who was permanently branding me, setting me afire like ants beneath a magnifying glass.

“
Eat. Don’t make me ask again,” she declared, pushing the food around on her own plate, trying to motivate me. I wanted to ask if she was having a laugh at my expense, but knew that she was not.

“
Please eat,” Aleesha pleaded.

I stared at the food, trying so very hard to discern what the nefarious young lady had put together. A yellowish mass of mucus-esque lumps sat along one edge of my plate. I would have hazarded a guess that it was some sort of egg preparation, but I could not be sure. As I studied this offensive slop, Aleesha forked a mound of it into her mouth, likewise motivating me as her daughter had. I shut my eyes at that sight, but quickly opened them again, perusing the plate a second time. A small reddish pile of uncooked chicken livers were coated by a layer of what I believed to be chopped white onions, sprinkled with what appeared to be rotting tomatoes. The brown tint of the tomatoes was not nearly as bad as the pungent stench that they emitted, like little sacs of summer garbage plopped upon my plate. I looked next to my drinking glass, filled high and deep with a hunter green sludge. In it, I could see coagulated bits of something foreign and gritty swimming and floating and diving as if they had a life and mind of their own, but were permanently trapped in my dangerous drinking glass.