Perhaps she would try the medication.
He laid his unshaved cheek against her hand. He closed his eyes. He was peaceful, a deception. He did not say a word. She talked. He leaned against the wall and she moved to keep her hand on his cheek. She said nothing about the Players. He did not ask a single question. She found herself just speaking to him. He did not respond. She continued because he was listening. She found herself telling him about her brother. She told him about her brother in the present. She went backwards. She had never told anyone about it. He listened as though he was asleep. He sighed once. She told him about her brother tricking her. She had wanted to learn from him. It had taken her a few years to realize it. The first time she had sex was without her knowledge. She was raped because she did not know that sex is when a man penetrates a woman. She did not know that her nudity would be exploited. He had seen it happen.
Elisa laid her head against a pillow and threw the book onto her nightstand. She looked towards the half-opened door to her bathroom, a stream of light invading her room. They were in there. If she just started taking the prescriptions properly, there would be no problem. She was afraid of what might happen otherwise, she knew she couldn’t continue for much longer, they were onto her. Vincent had been protecting her. She was deathly afraid of the proposition that she may be sent for rebranding.
She had met women who had been to those places, women who could no longer think, who took their meds without question, who said things like: “well isn’t that nice” and “my I’m happy” in a sluggish drawl, as if they had heard it repeated so many times, as if they’d been forced to listen to it over and over again so that any reaction was met with one of those two sayings. Your husband was killed in a fluke accident: well isn’t that nice. You don’t love me, you’ve never loved me, you’ve only been using me, my I’m happy. Elisa had no superior notions, no ideas that she could handle the pressure, that she could go to a rebranding facility and manage to avoid conforming, she knew that she would fall just like all the other women.
He had not said a word while she spoke. He had crouched down against the wall and she had knelt down with him, keeping her hand against his face. He curled himself into a small bundle. She moved over beside him. He opened his eyes when she moved her hand. She took his head and laid it against her chest, her arm around him. He closed his eyes.
She could try it for one night.
He opened one eye, the one that was brown. He started to speak and she stopped herself. He did not go on and she didn’t either. They lay in the corner. No one was in the room. She had been left with him. He was vacant while Nicholas spoke. She would entice him to join. He did not say a word about the proposition. He stared at her with his one eye.
“Do you think I could have ever been normal?” She touched his cheek with her thumb, running it around his eye. He kept the other eye closed. She lifted up his hand and kissed the spot on his wrist.
“No, but you could be rebranded, re-taught to believe in everything they say and then, maybe you wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be here and we would be unaware of the aching desire for something more, something else besides this medicated tranquility, this façade of perfection that permeates every atom and every person. But that wouldn’t make you who you are anymore, nor would I be whom I am. We would be blissfully ignorant, but it would not be real.”
“I could marry Vincent, I know that’s what he wants and take my medication and live a very long, harmonious life, but I would be rebelling inside forever, I would never been truly content and then, on my death bed, or late in life, when Vincent was gone and all of this was just memories, I would weep bitterly into my tea, and I would wonder what would have happened if I would have been strong and would have let myself continue to fight, to go along with you on your quest, to end the misery of perfection, to be the advocate of the antithesis of the myth.”
Elisa had not said any of this, but he had looked at her as though she had, as though he had heard her thoughts and was pleased that she had said them. She looked into the camera, took a bottle of Revivoderm from her nightstand, read the instructions to take it every morning and took out four (not the two prescribed per dose) and gulped them down with a glass of bootleg wine. She kept her eyes on the camera as if she was staring into his eyes…
* * *
Elisa wandered through the next few weeks like she was a passenger in her own body. She uncontrollably thought about him. She did everything involuntarily, as though it was a reflex. Arthur had broken in and strapped her to the bed, he spanked her, whipped her venomously, inserted things into her, dripped hot wax onto her, lubed her body with oil, and finally, fucked her with his limitless force, and she faintly enjoyed it, she remembered when he left that she had not said a word, not cried out once, because she had never given a moment’s thought to what he was doing. She let him do as he pleased, received the normal gratification from an excessive orgasm and the exhaustion that followed, without considering it, without veering her thoughts. He was still controlling her.
Elisa was no longer her own person, she shared her body with a man she’d met only once and who had said those things to her. She realized that all she had been doing was for him. She finally woke from her trance and saw what she had been doing. She had purchased things for him, clothing, a chair, special sheets for the bed, shaving crème, a razor, shampoo, new lingerie for him to see her in, new clothes she thought he’d like to see her wear, food for them to have for dinner, and she had not known what she was doing, whether he would ever use these items or see her again. She was satisfied though with him inside her, she didn’t feel as though she’d lost control, she felt as though she’d given it to another because he should have it, like the keys to lock of a cell. Elisa sat for hours enjoying his presence.
When she saw people, when she went to those pesky parties and social engagements that were required of her, she was not annoyed because he kept her company. She appeared to others as though she’d changed, become more sociable, more amiable — almost happy. Elisa realized it, she enjoyed that they were so misdirected, that they were so simple that they believed she’d come to her senses, when in reality, she’d never felt so senseless, so mad, in her entire life. She could not tell you what she’d done three hours before because he was in control of her and he had decided what they were going to do; she simply followed. When she slept, he spoke to her, and when she awoke, he was quiet, communicating to her without speech. She liked herself with him.
And she very much enjoyed that no one knew of him, that while Ms. Abernathy retold the same story for the sixteen millionth time she was thinking of him, that while the duplicitous Captain fumbled over some ludicrous story about engineering that they both knew was completely false, she was remembering his gaze. People would make remarks about it, Elisa Greene was actually (meaning: perhaps, possibly) smiling and not with that coy, I know something you don’t know grin, but a pleased smile of happiness. Something had happened and it was so strong she would smile despite herself. Even Vincent, with whom she tried to be on guard, had said something about her constantly breaking out in a smile and she let the agent believe that it was because of him. Elisa would say Joseph’s name under her breath when Vincent was making love to her, she would compare every man she met to him, she would spend hours contemplating where he was and what he was doing. Nothing made her more happy than when she sat around a table of old wives and pretended to listen to their ruminations, only to think about him touching her skin, when Vincent was groaning below her, when his hands cupped her thighs and she felt his fingers tear into her flesh, she was dreaming of his lips against her breasts, when Arthur Dodger tied her arms behind her back and forced her to prostrate herself, she was imagining him against her, when Graham called and began his lengthy diatribes, she was thinking of him cradling her crotch with his arms and feasting on her moist, dripping lips. That was why she smiled.