And when I didn’t do anything, when I let the gun just hang limp in my hand, he yelled at me, “Do it.” And then softer he said, “You’ll do each thing I tell you.”
I stared at the gun. It was heavy and looked old-fashioned. It had a long, dull-gray barrel, and the wood of the handle felt smooth and worn like he’d fondled it for years.
I still held it awkwardly, with my hand wrapped around it, around the trigger guard and the wood. The weight of it dragged my arm down, then started it shaking until I trembled all over.
“Cock it,” he said.
It took some effort to pull back the hammer. I had to use both my hands to accomplish this. Had to rest my arms in my lap to steady them some. And while my body kept up this terrible shaking, my mind stayed completely still.
“Go on, fuck yourself,” he said.
And here too I was slow and my dawdling got him yelling again. “Go on,” he said first, and then the soft voice again. “You wanted it bad, right? Well, sweetheart, here you have it.”
I put the barrel between my legs. I put my feet up on the bed and held myself open, and the rest of me upright. I slid it back and forth between my legs, felt everything go slippery there and in my head.
“Put it inside.”
I did this easily, though the sighting notch caught me up a little, tore at me some.
“You like it?” he asked, but it wasn’t a question. “You like it,” he said, again.
I moved the barrel in further and then out some. I found myself moving my hips in a way that sickened me, though the shaking had passed, taken over by arousal and nausea.
“Pull the trigger,” he said. And I didn’t feel fear or even anything like it. I didn’t even pause. I just squeezed the trigger and felt myself squeeze round the barrel, and then I heard a cold click and the sound of his laughter.
I curled on to my side and curled up, still with the gun there inside me. He came over and opened my legs, which was not so easy to do. He took the gun back. Pulled a shirt from the floor and wiped the barrel off, still laughing but quieter.
I lay there and watched him, watched him flick the chamber open. Tip bullets into his hand – just two of them, clinking dully together.
He put the gun into his briefcase, the bullets into his pocket. And he plugged the phone in, had a curt conversation with Jeremy, and then he was gone.
This left me alone – alone with the packet. It didn’t have much left in it. I searched around for a needle, already knowing I didn’t have one. Still I went through everything. Looked in every drawer and every pocket with insatiable need. I kept searching and searching despite knowing I’d never find what just wasn’t there.
Finally I gave up and went to bed, saving that last bit of junk because I figured I’d need it later. That it might not be so easy to get more. Or that what I’d have to go through to get it would take some days to face. This was what my life looked like now, looked like to me – just resting up for more of the same kind of thing that took me nowhere good.
I did rest. But I slept in that nodding, incomplete way. I’d expected this to feel comforting. The way it had when I was a kid, using that stuff in the beginning and it working so well. But it wasn’t working now and I knew it had nothing to do with the method of delivery. I knew none of this old stuff would help me now. That Beth had opened someplace in me I might never get closed.
So I went to her office the next day, still addled and jangled. Sloppy from the rest of the dope, different but not different enough. Enough that she noticed, though. That when I went into her office and sat down, she took one look at me and said, “What’s with you?”
And I said, “Huh?”
“You look like hell.”
These statements were so plain, so direct, which still seemed so unlike her.
I said nothing in return. I just sat there because I seemed to have no idea what I was doing, where anything was going. Only had this horrible want to be in her bed and not mine. Strong enough I said, “Take me home with you.”
It came out in that same reckless way, like the things I’d said to Burt. She looked startled. Like she was calculating things in her head. Things I couldn’t know like the whereabouts of her husband.
Finally she said, “All right.”
I felt a crazed glee. This fantastic belief everything would be okay now or at least better. I knew it showed. I knew I was smiling, and I could tell it concerned her.
We drove in silence pretty much. Once in a while she patted my thigh the way a mother might when something’s not right.
We got to her house and once inside I went up the stairs. I’d taken my clothes off and gotten into her bed before she’d gotten into the room. She stood in the doorway for a bit. I couldn’t look at her, turned my head away. I said, “Come here. I need you.”
Hearing these words come out of my mouth unnerved me. Her, too, I’m sure from the way she sat beside me, still fully dressed and seeming unsure whether to touch me.
I touched her. I pulled her down beside me. Began kissing her, grabbing at her clothes. First her shirt, then her skirt, unable to stay focused on one or the other until I’d begun kissing her breasts and then sucking them.
She gave in then. I felt it. I felt her body change. She lay back and let me, and I was surprised at my energy. Didn’t know where it could’ve come from, all in this sudden way that made me feel stronger.
I didn’t take off her skirt, I just pushed it up; pulled her underwear aside and pressed into her. She tensed a little, and so I was the one telling her to take it easy. But then I stopped being easy myself, or maybe never had started.
I drove my hand into her. I wasn’t sure what kind her cries were, not at first. I was afraid I was hurting her except it was clear I wasn’t.
I didn’t remember this, doing this before, seeing her this way. And her saying my name over and over – my real name. She hadn’t done this before. Or, if she had, I hadn’t let myself hear it. But that didn’t matter, not exactly. Except that it did. It mattered most of all.
But now she’d left off this and was just making sounds, sounds I could get lost in. I watched her face intently. Watched her while she was coming. And when she’d finished she looked shy and defenseless as she curled into my body.
I had this sense of gathering her up. I pulled her as close as I could and this did feel better – having things the other way around. Somehow, through this, I felt all right. That we were all right – the two of us together. That we were together.
Feeling this way lasted a long while. Lasted until she shifted a little, was shifting me on to my back with her looking down on me. I wanted to change it again, change it back the other way, but something in her eyes kept me from trying, made me close my eyes instead.
I felt her body pressing the whole of mine, felt her hands along my sides, her thigh between my legs. And I was glad when she kissed me because I’d had the uneasy sense she was smiling, smiling out of wanting me, and I didn’t like it.
I knew what she’d do before she started. Before she began to move her mouth down my body. And I knew her doing this would get me lost again. That she’d take me back to that place I loathed and craved.
I didn’t bother anymore with trying to stop it. I just let it happen. And either the drug wasn’t there anymore or it wasn’t enough. That big wailing thing had taken up the whole of my chest and seemed to go further. I could feel it right through to my back, hurting me there. And I could feel it when she put her hand in me; I could feel it there, too. And I feared I couldn’t keep the noises inside. That this sound echoing up into my mind was bigger than me.
But when the tears started, they weren’t big. They trailed my cheeks slowly. I turned my face into the pillow to hide them, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t seem to hide anything. The whole of me, all my insides, mingled with what she was doing and I wasn’t used to this overlap.