I'm gonna take a little time, a little time to look around me
I've got nowhere left to hide, it looks like love has finally found me
(-Foreigner, “I Wanna’ Know What Love Is”)
Nicky looked up from his water bowl when Josephine ran into the apartment and collapsed on the floor, shaking. He nudged her arm with his nose; she only kept shaking and did not respond. There was some dried blood, but no cut, just a thin scar. He started licking it off, grimacing at the metallic taste. She finally lifted her head from the floor and looked at him, her pupils dilated wildly. Something about her scared him. He stepped back and looked at her from a safer distance.
She shifted her gaze from him to some point on the wall. “It can’t, we can’t. . .” she whispered. She lay there, nearly catatonic, for a long time, while the rain sang a dim song against the windows that eventually faded into a grey, still dawn, and Nicky fell asleep in a furry pile next to her.
When the sun pierced sharply through the windows into her eyes, she sat up, the sudden movement giving her a dull headache. She looked around at the walls and wondered where she was, and then remembered, and then remembered what had made her lie shuddering on the floor for hours. She’d been faced with her own immortality a few times before, and the reaction was always something like this; worse now, with him, who she was never supposed to see again, who might die if he was with her because she couldn’t; worse now with a shrunken grey corpse and an opal; worse now with two magnetic norths, and an untouchable heaven seen through blue screens.
She stood and walked to the window, looking out over the street below. It all looked the same. She thought it had no right to, not after that. The creature was not what she found unacceptable- surprising, perhaps, but considering everything else she’d seen, not unacceptable. No, it was him. She didn’t know how it could have happened. She didn’t know why it scared her so much when it had been all she wanted for so long.
There was a box against the wall labelled ‘Pictures’ in steady, black ink. She pulled off the tape sealing it shut, bent the flaps back, and saw him looking up at her in a frozen approximation of a smile, with a camera flash reflected in his eyes. She knelt and took the poster out of the box and tentatively reached out her hand. It trembled uncertainly in the air. She put it gently on his cheek, and carressed the picture, feeling the smoothness and cool of the glossy paper instead of warm, soft skin.
This is all I have, this is all I can have. I’ve learned to live without it, and I don’t know if I can learn to live with it. And now. . . you can’t show me heaven and never let me in. But it’ll have to be like that. This is all I have. This is all I can have.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
Nick was irrationally, stupidly, compulsively hoping he’d see her in the audience that night. He was a wreck backstage, vibrating with unfocused energy, pacing relentlessly back and forth, back and forth. If he walked far enough maybe she’d be there, just one more length, two more, three and she was there. . . if he could just believe that that would work.
He jumped when Brian put a hand on his shoulder.
Brian did not skirt the subject. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Nick shrugged. “I’m just hyper, I guess.”
“You’re always hyper. It’s not that. It’s. . .” He looked at Nick. “It’s the girl.”
“Speaking of girls, where’s Leighanne?”
“She said she had to go somewhere else tonight. It’s not like she needs to be at every show. Stop changing the subject. It’s the girl.”
Nick sighed. “It’s the girl. I want her to be here, tonight, I want her here so much, and she’s not even so beautiful, hardly even pretty, but there’s this something in her eyes, like home. But I don’t mean like my house home-”
“Now I’m sure they based the stupid guy from 2GE+HER on you.”
“Brian!” Nick looked pleading.
Brian rolled his eyes. “I know what you meant, Nick.”
“But what’s up with her? She like hates me, and she’s not dead when she should be.” He looked panicked for a moment. “Not that I want her to be. And what if I never see her again?”
“You will though. The stones, the opal- she can’t run from this any more than we can. She’s only running from you, and I don’t know why she’s so scared. She doesn’t hate you though.”
“How do you know that?”
“She would have had more contempt for you.”
“You mean like Kevin?”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“But he has contempt for me.”
“Sometimes. And she would have been revulsed.”
“Like Kevin when he sees my hotel room?” Nick grinned, for the first time in hours. He really did find genuine pleasure in annoying people- well, at least certain people.
Brian grinned back. “Yeah. Look, you’ll see her again. I doubt tonight though.”
“But she could be here.”
“Let it go.”
“Hey, Leighanne hasn’t come to any shows for a while. And she stayed home for a couple weeks.”
“She’s probably sick of the travelling, and the stage show. Why, do you think something’s wrong?”
“No. Just everything’s weird right now, you know?”
“Oh, you noticed?”
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
Josephine bought a ticket outside from a well-dressed man with beady eyes. She reminded herself that she wasn’t Josephine anymore, but Chloe Armstrong. Ugh. At least she had liked her previous name a little bit; she’d been able to choose it. The men downtown hadn’t allowed her to, and she was sure she could have found someone who would, but she didn’t want to wait.
It wasn’t a good seat. That was quite intentional. She didn’t want to be too close to him, in case she reacted too strongly, and she didn’t want to throw him off. She’d left her jacket in the park, covered with her blood, enough blood for a fatal injury, and then she’d been fine. She wondered if he was scared of her, or if they’d even noticed.
When she was inside, the other girls assessed her threat to them. Most just smirked, the ones in tight pants and scant black tanktops. She was nearly lost inside a mammoth Tampa Bay Lightning jersey. The bunch of twelve-year olds wearing glow-necklaces she was sitting next to whispered, a little too loudly, that she was weird.
It was her turn to smirk. You have no idea.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
A cascade of lights and fireworks accompanied their landing on the stage. As he sang, he scanned the rows for her face. He didn’t see her. There were pretty girls there, beautiful, the kind of faces that men had died for and men would die for. He didn’t want them. He realized that he never really had.
Nick looked and looked for her. He made eye contact with many other girls in the process and they screamed when he looked at them or anywhere near them. Fan concert reviews would mention how intimate he was with the audience, but he had rarely felt so detached.
He heard the beginning of ‘As Long As You Love Me’ sound clear and pure through the hot air and the frantic screams that filled it. At the appropriate time, he turned around to face the audience, and began to sing.
“Although loneliness has always been a friend of mine,
I’m leaving my life in your hands
People say I’m crazy and that I am blind
Risking it all in a glance
“And how you’ve got me blind is still a mystery
I can’t get you out of my head
Don’t care what is written in your history
As long as you’re here with me”
Suddenly, he knew she was there. He couldn’t see her, but she was there, way up- where, he wasn’t quite sure, but she was in the building, and she was watching him. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did, and as if to confirm his suspicions, he felt the magnets, but weakly.
You can’t show me heaven and then never let me in. . .
“I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did
As long as you love me
Who you are, where you’re from, don’t care what you did
As long as you love me”
Somewhere, he felt her smile.
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