We Live Inside You (22 page)

I’m close enough to smell him now. No longer overwhelmed by the morgue, I can really take him in.

His cologne—Drakkar backed with a hint of formaldehyde, giving me fetal pig flashbacks. He’s been chewing on breath mints, some sort of spearmint.

My perfume—Arden’s Sunflowers, thinned by salty sweat, slightly undercut by the smell of sex on my right hand, which I hope he can detect.

He tries to talk to me from the doorway but I turn and walk into the room, sitting on the bed and leaving an obvious space for him next to me. He hesitates, but follows.

It’s his responsibility to be sure I’m okay.

His right hand is holding a thin slip of something papery that looks almost like a grocery receipt against the span of his fingers.

Those hands… the idea of his hands underneath my shirt, wrapped around my ribs, forcing me down onto him, it’s flooding through my brain and I can barely remember his name.

“Mrs. Broderick…”

“Elloise, please.”

“Elloise, I brought you a short pamphlet about the grieving process that I think might help you to understand how you’re feeling right now.”

I doubt this pamphlet can tell me why I’m ready to tear the shirt off the man who showed me my husband’s corpse today. Even if the person writing it understood, they wouldn’t write about what I’m feeling in there. There are truths about this that will never make pamphlet-grade. But I don’t want to understand this experience. I just want to smash it away.

“Brad, will you sit down by me?”

He sets the pamphlet down on the coffee-table to the side of the television hutch and has a seat.

Before he can say anything I shift my body right up next to his and put my head on his shoulder. He doesn’t move away. I start to hitch my body and blow puffs of breath from my nose like I’m crying.

It works. He’s got his arm around me now, and my body sinks into his. I let my left breast push against his ribs. My t-shirt’s so thin he can’t avoid feeling my nipple harden. He doesn’t move away.

My left hand moves toward his neck, fingers drifting into his hairline. My right hand drops down and brushes the inside of his thigh.

With my head positioned like this I can actually watch him get stiff. Pavlov should have worked with men instead of dogs. They train easier.

Then his left hand reaches down and lifts up my chin.

His lips do not hesitate and mine are already open. This was a simple threshold to cross. Need is need. This is what people do. People that see death do this even more. A show of will, screaming at the ocean.

Soon we’ve got our shirts off and I’m kissing his chest when he picks me up and tries to set me down in the
other
bed.

The one Darry slept in last night.

I scream. Like I’m being stabbed. Like the knife is twisting and pulling back out at wrong angles.

I can’t. I can’t touch that bed. It’s the last place
he
slept. It’s the last place that I can picture Darry alive and peaceful and happy.

Reeling from my scream, Brad almost drops me. I probably blasted him deaf in his left ear. He sets me down and backs away.

“Jesus, Elloise. What’s going on?”

Good question. And one with zero decent answers. I just shake my head from side to side, not acting upset anymore, but genuinely confused.

I mean, if I really love Darry, why is Brad the Coroner shirtless in my hotel room? What makes touching Darry’s bed so wrong? Haven’t I already proven how little Darry meant to me?

“Brad, my head’s all twisted up, and I don’t want you to go away, but I’d understand. I’m probably not a healthy person to be around, but I think I need someone to talk to, I mean, I’m sure I do. This has been the most messed-up day of my life… I’m not acting like myself and I’m not sure that I’d recognize who I am right now if I looked in the mirror. I can’t… I mean, I’m just going to take a shower for a little bit. Try to calm down. You’re welcome to stay… ”

Before I finish the sentence he drops onto the bed where Darry’s luggage used to sit and picks up the remote control.

He’s still hard, biding his time. When he asks, “Are you sure you’re okay to take a shower?” it seems like a courteous afterthought. Then I realize he’s probably afraid I’m going to carve a y-section down my forearms.

“Yeah, I just need to relax for a moment. Sorry, this is weird. I’ll be back in a sec.”

I lock the bathroom door behind me, knowing the sound of the bolt clicking over will keep him around, wondering if I’m ever coming back out or if he’ll be seeing me on his slab tomorrow.

The shower runs hot, near-scalding, to where the steam is hard to breathe. My face pushes into the water until the full force of the shower is focused on the spot where my hairline starts, dead-center. A wish floats through my mind, that the water would turn to white light and bore into my head and wash this whole day away. The wish goes un-granted, leaving me with the steady, pulsing streams of heat coursing down my face.

I wash myself with the credit card-sized bar of hotel soap that Darry had already unwrapped. The thought of his hands holding the same soap, rubbing it against his body, his warm, moving body, I can’t bear it.

I block it out and turn the water temp up even hotter, to where my skin is turning beet-red on contact. The little fan in the ceiling can’t keep up with the steam. There’s a desert-hot fog bank in this bathroom I should never have known.

I sit down in the tub and curl up at the back of it, letting the water blast against my shins and the top of my feet. Somehow, I sleep for a couple of minutes like this.

I pop up out of my cat nap and for a second don’t remember where I am. Then I see the little soap in the corner of the tub and try to fall back asleep.

No chance. Now I’m just bone-wet, and too hot, and ready to move past the reality of this day. Maybe Brad wants to lick me dry….

What? No, that doesn’t sound right. Who am I now, without Darry? I’ve got to get my head straight.

I grasp the shower curtain in my hand, the new hotel plastic squeaking against my skin. I pull the curtain back and almost scream for a second time tonight.

The steam on the mirror is not a steady sheet of moisture.

There are lines where the condensation is thinner. These are lines I recognize from a hundred mornings with Darry, evenly drawn letters on the mirror spelling out these words:

I Love Elloise.

Pavlov should have studied men. Darry’s been writing the same thing on our bathroom mirror ever since we moved in together. He always left for work before me, always took a hot shower, always wrote this message.

Even hundreds of miles away, he wrote these words.

Even hundreds of miles away, I’m sure he meant them.

It’s too much.

I wrap myself in a towel and rush out of the bathroom, steam twirling behind me. Then I’m yelling at Brad, who’s watching music videos, probably unaware that he’s stroking his crotch with the palm of his left hand.

“Get out. Get out. Go, please. Please get out of here.”

“Are you okay?”

“No, but I don’t want you here. I can’t have you here right now. This isn’t your place!” I hate my voice when it shakes like this.

“Listen, Elloise, you’re obviously distraught. Maybe it’s better if I stay here, just for the night, to make sure…”

He still wants to get laid. If he really cared he wouldn’t have initiated that kiss, and right now he would be making eye contact, and he sure wouldn’t still have his left hand on his dick.

“Fuck you, Brad. Get out.”

He’s putting his shirt on and moving toward the door. He stops and turns back toward me with his eyebrows scrunched together like he’s never been so confused in his life. I know the look. I don’t want to hear his voice.

“Go, Brad.”

“I’m going, but I just want you to know… “

“Go.” I don’t want to hear this dejected little coroner telling me that I’m sick, or that I’m confused, or crazy, or anything. I just want to be alone. “Get out of here, Brad.”

The spoiled bastard, he slams the door so hard that the corporate-approved watercolor painting by the entry falls off the wall. The frame breaks and there’s shattered glass on the carpet.

I’m not cleaning it up. I hit the POWER button on the remote control by the bed stand and the television winks out.

When I feel truly lost, truly afraid, I try to fall asleep as quickly as possible. I have to do this now.

My towel drops to the floor. The A/C gives me instant goosebumps.

The bed Darry slept in last night is cold too, but I get in and pull the covers up to my shoulders and hope my body will warm the fabric.

The smell of Darry’s skin is on the sheets, but each time I inhale it feels like the scent is fading.

I’m breathing him away.

And down below, between my legs, I can still feel my pulse.

I let my fingers seek out my heartbeat. I open myself up under the disheveled sheets and feel drips of water running from my skin to the bed beneath me.

I close my eyes, and now all I can see is Darry.

Thoughts of warm ointment, a still bleeding tattoo, and I’m moaning.

When I’m finished, I can feel tears tightening the skin of my face as they dry. The whole time, while my hips rolled and I remembered every sweet and every rough way Darry had ever touched me, I was crying and didn’t know it.

I roll out of bed, slowly, and I’ve got hollow bones. I step around the shattered glass on the way to the bathroom.

I run the shower and the sink as hot as I can and fill the room with steam, sheathing the mirror and every other surface in tiny droplets of water.

Then there’s just my finger, tracing trails on glass for longer than I’ll ever remember.