Jared Del Rosso

(the man said)

1.

mmmmmIn America, New York State, Orange County, between Pine Bush and Ellenville, without asking me, Ez's got it in reverse.
mmmmm"52's closed ahead," he says. "I just remembered. Fallen rocks. Right down the side of mountain."
mmmmmHe points at a sign.
mmmmm"Fallen rock zone." I read it out loud. To him. I open my window. "Appropriate."
mmmmm"Yep," he says. "Boulder big as a car."
mmmmmSo Ezra Marsh's got the car in reverse, backing out of someone else's driveway. There's no flag on the front porch in the spot where a house in this town flies a flag. In case you were expecting that, I mean. It's just not there.
mmmmmThere are no tracks, no fallen ladders crossing/scarring (take your pick) the country, in the towns in upstate where the freight train never bothered to come.
mmmmmThere's only the now broken promise of mobility along the roads.
mmmmmThere's only the sun still bleeding over the horizon.
mmmmmWest; we're headed back east to Pine Bush.
mmmmm"Jack's house," I say.
mmmmm"Yep," says Ez.
mmmmmHe doesn't know we're coming, but somehow Jack's already opening the door before we're knocking.
mmmmm"Party's been over since before it began," he says.
mmmmm"Whaa," says Ez.
mmmmm"You'll see," Jack says. "Come in."
mmmmmThere's only one car in the driveway other than Jack's. It's Ez's. There are two dozen drunks inside. There are two could be drunks lying on top of each other in the corner. There are a couple of girls looking through Jack's drawers.
mmmmm"She means to do me harm." He points at one of the girls, the thinner of the two, brown hair, glasses. "Common thief." She doesn't notice but seems to smile. Somehow, a wine bottle appears in Jack's hand. "But there's nothing in there but porn," he says.
mmmmmThe girls pull out some magazines and start flipping pages.
mmmmm"Where'd they come from?" I ask.
mmmmm"I dunno." he says. "They just came. Like they just came running in from like across the fields outside. And it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like." Jack's looking around at everyone. "It's like I don't exist."
mmmmm"Huh," says Ez.
mmmmm"Watch," Jack says.
mmmmmAt this point, Thinner Girl puts down the magazine, glances at Jack, raises her eyebrows, shrugs, and Jack climbs onto the counter.
mmmmm"Get outta here! Everyone! Depart from me! Depart, depart, partpartpartparpapuh!" Jack's screaming, mumbling hysterical and no one stops moving to listen. He starts splashing wine everywhere. Strawberry wine, from this town's own vineyard. The taste sticks on the lips. Jack proves it by climbing off the counter and kissing the Thinner Girl. She takes him by the arm. Licks her lips then his.
mmmmm“Shh," she says all sexily.
mmmmm“Shh," Jack says.
mmmmm"I'll take you. Secretly," she whispers, right in front of me.
mmmmmI almost tell them that I heard. There's no secret. Just a no good situation - a bad omen - a ruined prophecy. But I don't. Instead I watch them take off for the south side of the house, where the sun never sets and the moon never rises and there's no one watching. Even Ez doesn't bother noticing. Instead, he moves to Jack's bookcase, sort of leading a couple girls by the elbows and telling them about how men feign liberty for the women.
mmmmm"It's not nothing really," he says. Then he takes and swallows a mouthful of something.
mmmmmOnly one girl is listening to him. Ez is staring at the one behind her.
mmmmm"Girls, women, madams, damsels. Can I still call you that, fair damsels? Yes?"
mmmmmThe girl who's listening nods. The girl Ez is staring at sneezes.
mmmmm"Walking and chained, we are. Symbols, see, I'm sick of symbols. I offer you my hand, see, and that's not it." Ez hands his hand to the Sneezing Girl, and she looks down at her hand, wipes it on her pant leg, and takes his.
mmmmm"You could take my hand, see, see." Jack swallows more drink. There's a flap of skin below his left eye that's twitching. “Symbols, I'm sick of symbols. Your hand." He lifts Sneezing Girl's sneezed on hand. "Possibility. The Future, I mean of course. Your eyes - The Soul. Breasts - Mother. Thighs - Shelter. Cunt. - America. Every pioneer imagines himself a Big Dick. Penetrating the wilderness and poetic truths. Just give me the blowjob."
mmmmmI swear, this rant has actually worked before.
mmmmm"So poetic," snarls Listening Girl.
mmmmm“That's exactly what it's not," Ez says.
mmmmm“Then what about love?" says Listening Girl.
mmmmmNow even Sneezing Girl is listening.
mmmmmEz bites his lip, takes another drink, then turns to her.
mmmmm"Love?"
mmmmm"Yes, that thing," she says. "Another symbol, yes?"
mmmmm"I believe in the lovers," Ez says. He stops and glances at Sneezing Girl, who finishes his thought.
mmmmm"But not in their ideas," she says.
mmmmmEz kisses her mouth.
mmmmm"Not in their love," he says.
mmmmmSneezing Girl is convinced, I know it, and Ez has won. Before he can hide away with her, I get the keys from him.
mmmmm"Leavin?" he asks.
mmmmm“Maybe," I say.
mmmmm“Drinkin?" he asks.
mmmmm"Not tonight."
mmmmm"Why?"
mmmmm“Too late. I can't catch up with everyone."
mmmmm"Kay," he says. The girl pulls on his arm. "Come back for me one day."
mmmmmStepping over bodies, bottles, both, I make it out of the house then to the car. When I open the door there's a shriek and a body falling out and me screaming “shit" and something spilling on my foot.
mmmmmIt's another drunk girl.
mmmmm“Sorry for what I've done, sorry for what I've done, sorry for." She's mumbling to herself. I pick her up, put her back in the seat, and she goes right for the plastic cross Ez put up around the rear view mirror as some sort of ironic, unfunny joke.
mmmmm“Sorry," she mumbles, "for what I've done, what I've."
mmmmm"What?" I say.
mmmmmShe fingers the cross then leans out of the car against my hip.
mmmmm"Look, you've gotta get out," I say.
mmmmm"Na," she says.
mmmmm"Come on." I pull on her arm.
mmmmm"Give me a choice," she says.
mmmmm"What?"
mmmmm“Something to choose. Like, we'll fly together."
mmmmm“There's no choice," I say. "Get out." I pull her out, she rolls on the ground, gets up, puts her arms out for wings, and tries to fly. It doesn't work. She's on the ground again, now crying.
mmmmm"I'm sorry," she says.
mmmmmThis is it.
mmmmmI imagine lifting her, her clinging to my skin with her fingers, apologizing for God knows what - a life, cremating her last mother last winter, and how she can't visit or find her great-grandmother's grave, so did they ever really cross the Atlantic in that big tinfoil boat, and a life. Some girls get drunk and tell life stories.
mmmmmSometimes the girl needs saving.
mmmmmSometimes the story.
mmmmmI pick her up, put her in the passenger's seat, and let her let me take her home.
mmmmmI go home with the girl. She tells me that her name's Abby then she shows me her room. Then she undresses, down to the bra, right in front of me. Then I don't touch her. She tells me she's sorry for not asking my name, or being in the car, or not thanking me soon enough for the ride, and for being this drunk.
mmmmmI stare at her. She talks.
mmmmm"It's a mess. My room. It's too hot, no a/c. Sorry. And the window won't shut, but I guess it doesn't matter right now."
mmmmmHer skin moves through the hot, sticky air. I try to shut the window that she claims is stuck. It won't budge.
mmmmm"It's stuck," I say. "Why?"
mmmmm“Dunno," Abby says. "Came like that."
mmmmmAbby sits down on the edge of her bed, links her feet together, then sings,
mmmmm"Abby, Abby unmade the bed."
mmmmmShe stacks the pillows on the floor, then falls on them. The sheets - powder blue baby boy - she wraps around herself. Right now, what, or all, she has is a face and a body connected beneath sky. An entire atmosphere of her sheets and breasts. Even if she drops them (the sheets) she still won't be naked behind the bra and everything else implicated in her hiding.
mmmmmBut instead of dropping them, she tightens the sheets around her waist, yawns, looks at the ceiling, then falls asleep on her bed's mattress.
mmmmmI stare at her, scribble down my name and number on a piece of paper, and head back to Jack's to get Ezra. When I get there, the place looks like a dug up cemetery. Prostrate people are everywhere. From the living room, I see Ezra and Jack sitting in the kitchen, staring at the ceiling and mumbling. Ez is holding an empty bottle and trying to burn off the label with his cigarette. Jack notices me first. He hops off the counter, runs over to me, and wraps his arm around my shoulder.
mmmmm"Cute girls are cute," he says. "Hot girls are hot. Perfect girls are perfect. Man, you missed a lot."
mmmmmJack smiles. Ez does too.
mmmmm“Man," Ez says to Jack. "As drunk as you are, man, you'll never be drunker than yourself."
mmmmm"Huh," says Jack.
mmmmm“Dunno. Read it in a book once," says Ez.
mmmmm"You can't believe anything you read," I say.
mmmmm"No, suppose not," says Ez. He frowns, thinks to himself, then hops off the counter. "Hey! You came back for me!"
mmmmm"Yup," I say.
mmmmmJack follows Ez and me to the door. He kicks a bottle off the front steps and sits down. Ez and I leave him there and get in the car, but before I have a chance to get it into reverse, Jack runs at us with this big, dumb grin and hurls his body at the windshield. Ez rolls down his window, leans out, and tries to push Jack off. I put on the wipers, but before they hit Jack, he rolls away and sticks his head through Ez's open window.
mmmmm"Beware the ides of March!" he shouts.
mmmmmThat it?" Ez asks.
mmmmm“Read it in a book," says Jack. He runs away before Ez has a chance to find something to throw.

mmmmm In the summer, the swamps that you have to drive past to get to Ez's smell like semen.
mmmmmLike life bubbling in the muck.
mmmmmEz sniffs the air and says, "I wanna write a book called Our Homoerotic Heritage."
mmmmm"What?"
mmmmm"How the Washington Monument's really a hard on, how we erect giant, bronze statues of our Founding Fathers. You know what they say about an eight-foot tall bronze man?"
mmmmm"What do they say, Ez?"
mmmmm"Nothing, really, but I bet he'd have a big, bronze cock."
mmmmm"Except you can't get a statue's pants down."
mmmmm“That's what worries me," he says.
mmmmm"What's that?"
mmmmm"We might be the sum total of everything we can't have."
mmmmmEverything Ezra can have he has. In its entirety. Hence, the "just give me the blowjob" speech before. All the cigarettes. All the liquor. But he's worried about what he can't have.
mmmmm"Like," says Ez, stopping himself as we pull into his driveway.
mmmmm"Like what?"
mmmmmEz gets out of the car and comes around to my side. I roll down the window. Somehow, suddenly, Ez looks very serious and very sad. "Like to find Tom Paine, we can't even take 17 east to 87 down to New Rochelle."
mmmmm"What?" I never know why Ez knows these things. Or why they matter.
mmmmm"Cuz back in the 19th century, without asking me, they took his body from his farm there to England and they lost it. We can't get to him from here."
mmmmmEz seems sincerely hurt by this. And I don't even know what to say.
mmmmm"Yeah," I say.
mmmmmLooking up at the sky, then his door, then skipping away, Ez shouts back, "But I guess no one should have to spend a death in Westchester." -

mmmmmAlone now, I could lose myself for hours, days, lifetimes, and no one would know. Instead, I drive home, fall asleep, and wake to a message from Abby.
mmmmm“Sorry to pass out - naked, almost, I guess. Don't know how that happened. Or why. Sorry. Anyway. Like to see you again. Call me. Seven four four two six three nine. Yeah, so, see ya."
mmmmmI start to call her back, but get stuck half way. On the twoooooooooooo. “Meeeeeeeeeeeee," it sounds like, and I hang up about then.
mmmmmI realize that I don't know what I'd have done with Abby had she stayed awake.
mmmmmI realize that I've got to bring Ez his car. I drive to his house, bang on his door until he wakes, and he drives me home. On the ride, the short one it is, back through the swamps, past the cardboard box post office, past the Presbyterian Church at the intersection, ... past the church's cemetery, called Hopewell, Ez tells me all about the girl.
mmmmm“Don't know her. Don't remember her name. She told me. Can't have her."
mmmmm"Why not?" I ask.
mmmmm"Already taken," he says.
mmmmm"Ah."
mmmmm"You?"
mmmmm“Me what?" I ask.
mmmmm"Any girls last night?"
mmmmm"Abby something or another."
mmmmm"Abby?"
mmmmm"I think. Don't really remember," I say.
mmmmm"You didn't drink," Ez says.
mmmmm"Right, but-."
mmmmm"Abby sounds familiar," he says.
mmmmm"Yeah?"
mmmmm"I think I fucked her once. What she look like?"
mmmmmYeah, huh, sure, god. Ez stops staring through the windshields and looks at me. He notices my silence.
mmmmm"Kidding, man. Never had her. Don't know her. Don't think I do, and probably never will."
mmmmm"Ah," I say.
mmmmm"Kidding," he sighs.
mmmmmI guess it's not awkward really, because I know he's kidding, but I can't think of anything to say. Ez drops me off, says, "I'll come back for you one day," and I decide to go back to Abby's.
mmmmmI don't call. Instead, I knock and Abby opens the door. She's fully dressed. The room smells like cigarettes, and I don't remember that from last night.
mmmmmThere's a fan in the jammed window. It's not running.
mmmmmI don't remember that from last night either.
mmmmm"I try to keep the air moving when he's here," Abby says. She points at the window.
mmmmmI don't remember anything about him from last night.
mmmmmEverything should stop. Hands should go white, should be thrown in my pockets, where they'd stay. Cheeks should pause on their way down to the floor, that black vacuum of a mouth writhing. I imagine what it'd look like if everything stopped. Not pretty.
mmmmmBut nothing stops. Something under my stomach, maybe it's my intestines, fall behind the wall of my abdomen, into my hips, holding right above everything that's down there. Abby sighs.
mmmmm"I tell him smoking's no good."
mmmmm"Ah," I say.
mmmmm"But he does it anyway." She pauses. “So how are you?"

mmmmm(How am I?
mmmmmI'm a little too hot. Turn on the fan. Get this air out of here. I can't breathe.
mmmmmI'm a little too -
mmmmmI'm a little too -
mmmmmSee, the problem is that I'm still remembering you naked and now you've got your hand in your pockets and I notice the difference. How it disrupts the slope of your hip. All five fingers, I've counted them. They could press against the spot above my belt, find their way, slide down beneath, and I'd still be thinking about them in your pocket.
mmmmmYou naked yesterday.
mmmmmHim smoking.)

mmmmm "I'm a little warm."
mmmmm"Oh," she says. "Well, I've been thinking about getting a/c, but they cost so much to run."
mmmmmI begin to leave Abby at that. I take steps towards the door, too small to notice, more like a slide that I could blame on the earth's rotation. Half an hour of this, and I'm out of there. I head home and listen to her message again.
mmmmm"Naked, almost, I guess. Don't know how."
mmmmmWhile I was gone, Ez left a message.
mmmmmI don't listen.
mmmmmEverybody wants everything.

2.

mmmmmI go back to Abby every Friday night.
mmmmmI leave Abby every Saturday morning, before we ever fall asleep.
mmmmmTonight is no different, except this time she gets naked around midnight, instead of quarter after and says, "he's on his way."
mmmmm"Now?"
mmmmm"Now."
mmmmm"Again?"
mmmmm"Again."

mmmmm(He...-, he...-, he - until it sounds like me laughing, I repeat to myself the name of his unnamed, bodiless body. The one that she lets in after she makes me leave. I imagine what he must look like: stone thighs, rope veins. Then I imagine him reaching his hand into my pocket.
mmmmm"Can you see me now," I call.
mmmmm"No." He breathes.
mmmmm“Then fuck you."
mmmmmI see his breath: white, fog, burning white breath.
mmmmmOne time, Abby described his shirt moving for me. His chest heaving, I didn't ask about that. I envision a peninsula sinking and her sighing, groaning, moaning, loaning her-her-her - whatever she says 0he's calling it this week, her:pussycuntthisthinghersyoursmine and)

mmmmmMy shirt moved, (she tugged it), and I stand, buttoning the second button underneath my chin. I still haven't even touched her yet.
mmmmm"He doesn't wait for conclusions," she once told me.
mmmmmThe doorknob seems to turn itself. Abby opens the door and I leave. She shuts it behind me and locks it. I imagine her peaking out the keyhole, then I put my hand into my pocket and finger the key that I don't want to have to try.
mmmmmShe gave me it a week ago. She stood in this very same doorway, the one the key supposedly, allegedly, presumably unlocks, with her eyes closed for a long blink. Her lips barely touched each other and I could hear the breath slip out between them. Then she reached her hand into her pocket, took out the key, and handed it to me. I left then like I'm leaving now.

mmmmmThen, every Saturday, after I leave Abby's, I meet Jack and Ez at Cronin's. The place is a bar in an old farmhouse. The red paint is still on it outside and it stills almost seems to smell like cows, flies, and sweat. When I stomp the mud off my shoes (the parking lot was never paved), Ez tells me that he swears he can hear hooves banging against the floor boards.
mmmmmThe plan tonight, like every previous Friday night and Saturday morning since Abby, is to get me drunk, while Ez and Jack watch over me. Tonight, though, everything seems to move quickly. Maybe it's because Abby kicked me out fifteen minutes earlier than usual, but Jack takes off with his girl - that Thinner Girl - before I'm even drunk. That's never happened, and I notice the difference when the two of them leave. As the brush by me, there's a harmonica solo screeching out of the jukebox. Jack whisper to the girl, “the harmonica always blows back." She puts her hands in his pocket and they leave. I go looking for Ez, who (and I can only notice this because I wasn't drunk enough) stopped drinking about fifteen minutes ago. I find him in the bathroom. Actually, I spot him before that and follow him in. He doesn't notice me until he hits the stall.
mmmmm“Ready?" he asks.
mmmmm"For what?"
mmmmm"Leaving?"
mmmmm"It's early," I say. "I'm not drunk either."
mmmmm"Yeah, but."
mmmmm"I don't know why I go and see the girl," I say. I'm not waiting, I decided, to get drunk to moan - shriek almost - about her. They let me do that every weekend. Anyone around us who hears me chalks it up to the alcohol. But I know what I'm doing.
mmmmm"I thought you only bitched Abby out when you drank." Clearly, Ez doesn't know what I'm doing.
mmmmm"I did drink."
mmmmm"You're not drunk you said."
mmmmm"I'm serious this time. I don't know why."

mmmmm(Why: to listen to her voice, watch her naked. She always gets naked right before she kicks me out. I listen to her voice, stare at her eyes, and imagine him fucking her. But I have the key, I know. I've never used the key, because she lets me in. I listen and she always gets naked while I'm around. She calls me Saturday, around sunrise, while he sleeps, stone asleep, and she sits on the edge of the bed telling me things.
mmmmmShe's never mentioned his name, or how he treats her.)

mmmmm"You're serious? This time?" Ez asks. He puts himself away, walks to the sink, then slaps me across the head, just hard enough to sting.
mmmmm"Wash your hands first," I say.
mmmmmHe throws the water on, keeps it running, stares into the mirror at me, and doesn't say anything yet. I take a step away from the sink, but keep my eyes on him.
mmmmm“Shit. You're really serious, aren't ya?"
mmmmmI nod.
mmmmm"You called her, 'the girl,’ that's why." Ez never even tries to make sense. He looks away from me and at the water, still running in the sink and finally hot enough to steam. He plunges his hands into it, rinses, then pulls them out, cursing the germs.
mmmmm"I know her name. It's Abby," I say.
mmmmm"But you don't call her that. Every week here, "why do I go to the girl, the girl, the girl. And you call him, her little fuckmate, Him."
mmmmm"I don't know his name."
mmmmm"What do you think it is?"
mmmmm"What?"
mmmmm"You imagined it?"
mmmmm"Ez. What? Come on now."
mmmmm"Exactly what you're doing. I know it and she knows it too. You've got her, this life, but you're obsessed with what she won't give you. Body, sex, not even that. You want the name, a picture of his dick."
mmmmm"What?" Ez never even tries to make sense, but I worry that he does anyway. A picture of his dick, though, no.
mmmmm"What, what? Fuck it man. She gave you a key, she talks to you, gets naked, naked, fucking naked. Have you even touched-."
mmmmm"No."
mmmmm"What are you waiting for?"
mmmmm"I don't know-."
mmmmm“Don't know. You know. You want to create all of her. Her - as a fucking." Ez turns and walks out. I follow and strain to catch his words in the darkness of the bar. "As a fucking entire thing. Body lining up with voice. With him around - with him around."
mmmmm“He's fucking fucking her, Ez."
mmmmm"You can't win with him around. You can't lose either. But once you do either, it's over. Nothing to need her for. The Fucking Potential. No dream of that entire thing cuz you'd have it all as it is or else none of it."
mmmmmEz is now stalking through the crowd, letting his elbow catch people's sides. A wave of drinks splash as he pushes through a crowd of girls. He stops for a second, just long enough to stick his tongue out at the bartender, some blonde, almost like the ones you see in commercials. Then he pushes his way through the door and brings me to his car.
mmmmmSober, one notices more than when drunk. Like how we're leaving the bar fifteen minutes before it closes. Like how the swamps don't smell in Autumn. Instead, when air blasts through the window, I actually feel it on my face and think, "I'm not drunk." The wind makes me smell the cigarettes in Ez's car. I'm sober and I'm finally noticing how neatly the night ran and how it does that every Saturday. How Ez likes women, naked women especially. How he worries about what he can't have.
mmmmmWhen he leaves me in my driveway, I stand in the lawn and watch him pull out. He could turn either way out of the driveway and still get to Abby's. And anyway, even if there could be a wrong way to Abby's, he could turn around at any point and backtrack. Sober, I finally realize that I've never asked where he goes after leaving me, or who does Abby after she makes me leave. Never even asked his name.
mmmmmI run inside, grab the phone and dial Ez's number. I know he's not there and his machine will answer.
mmmmm"Ez you - you - you."
mmmmmEz, she isn't your version of America. You can't just have the blowjob without it all - future, eyes, souls, promises. Voice, her voice, I've got it. In my pocket. They key you don't have.
mmmmm"Ez you - you're right."
mmmmmI don't take Abby's call that morning. She leaves a message that I erase. I'm not too worried about what I can't have anymore, because eventually you have to get to the story's ending.

3.

mmmmmAlone, I could lose myself for hours. I spend the week and let Friday come. When I arrive at Abby's, she's already naked.
mmmmm"On his way?" I ask.
mmmmm"No. I didn't think you were coming. You didn't take my call."
mmmmm"I'm here."
mmmmm"Yes."
mmmmmAbby stretches across her bed. Her foot runs slowly up and down the wall. She doesn't say anything. I stare at the wall behind her flesh and count the roses that are printed on the wallpaper. This is the first time that I've noticed them.
mmmmmAbby doesn't say anything when I sit down next to her on her bed. She doesn't say anything when I put my hand on her hip, or when I start writing on her with my finger - infinities, loops, letters, words. I put both hands on her - I hold tight to her hips - look up with my head above her abdomen - that spread of muscle twisting beneath me. Then she doesn't say anything when I remember he's coming and it's quarter after and I get up and leave. She doesn't say, “Stop." She doesn't say, "Go." I think I hear her mumble, "I don't know why we do this," but that's just me actually saying it for real. When I cross through her door I tell myself it'll be the last time. I don't bother shutting it.
mmmmmAt Cronin's, I down shots of something. Some guy at the bar throws his arm round my shoulder at number four or five or whatever and keeps with me. At some point, Ez replaces that guy and tells me to stop.
mmmmm"Not even feeling it," I say.
mmmmm"Not yet," Ez says. He drags me into the bathroom and leans me against the stall door.
mmmmm"I know," I say.
mmmmmHe leans close to the stall, keeps one hand on the wall and pulls down his pants with the other. I drag myself closer to him, clinging to the wall to keep off the floor.
mmmmm"Yeah? What do you know," he says. "And stop looking at my dick."
mmmmm"I'm not," I say, but my head won't even support itself anymore.
mmmmm"And what's it you know?"
mmmmm"You. And Abby. Every time I leave. Man, I'm feeling it now. Beginning to." I step away from the stall. The light in the bathroom flashes on off on.
mmmmm“Me and Abby what?" Ez says, pulling his pants back up.
mmmmm"Fucking."
mmmmmI make a fist and hit him in the mouth. He stumbles. I lunge towards him. We both end up on the floor. He's on top and there are arms and legs flailing. My head starts bouncing, and I realize that I'm on the floor. In the stall. On the tiles. There's only the toilet and now someone's pushing on the door.
mmmmm"You've got a friend out here."
mmmmmWhose voice?
mmmmmI push the door back. Legs slide out underneath me. My ass is wet. Black stuff covers my lips.
mmmmmI can't even try to get up.
mmmmmI don't dream anything.
mmmmmI can't.-
mmmmmBut I must have dreamt something, because I wake on the floor near Abby's bed. There are two bodies on it. I crawl to the bathroom and throw up. A light goes on in the bedroom. I crawl back. Abby is sitting on the edge of the bed naked.
mmmmm“That's what he gets," I say.
mmmmm"What?"
mmmmmI point at the other body in the bed.
mmmmm"Ez."
mmmmm"Who?"
mmmmmI stare, best I can, through the half lit room at the roses on the wallpaper. My eyes trace a path to Ez's thigh. I point at him, proving it all to Abby. That I know.
mmmmm"He left me in the bathroom," I say.
mmmmmAbby turns on another light. The room and the night it keeps inside itself flash and I suddenly remember that I had Ez's car the first night that I left Abby.
mmmmmI realize that it's not his thigh under the roses. Everything stops. For real this time. It's not pretty. I can taste the black stuff on my tongue. There are threads of it between my teeth. I can smell it on my arm.
mmmmm"But you came and got me anyway?" I ask Abby. "How'd you know?"
mmmmmAbby shakes her head.
mmmmm"How'd I get in?"
mmmmm"You have a key."
mmmmmI drop my hand into my damp pocket and find nothing.
mmmmm"You didn't come get me?"
mmmmmAbby shakes her head again. "You're so sad."
mmmmm“Sad?" Here it comes. The refusal at least.
mmmmm"And the saddest thing is - you make me a better fuck for him."
mmmmm"What?"
mmmmm"Your keys over there." Abby points at a dark spot on the floor then crawls beneath the sheets and falls back asleep. I stare at her then crawl into the bathroom, flush the toilet, and fall asleep on the bathroom floor.
mmmmmWhen I wake, I go back to the bedroom. Abby's gone and he's sitting on the bed, still naked and staring at the open window. I pick up the key and sit down on the floor. My pants are still wet. Probably not worth saving. Neither of us says anything, because:
mmmmmWithout Abby in bed - with only me here - there's nothing around that he wants to fuck.
mmmmmWith him staring back at me, with the key in my hand, without Abby, I can't figure out how this is ending.

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