The words yank at my heart, and for a second I feel something familiar.
“That’s unfair.”
“So’s LIFE!” she bellows, and in a single movement throws a lit candle at me. I dodge, but a drop of wax hits me in the cheek, sending a jolt of pain through my face. “Things never go right. People never stop hurting one another. It’s all bullshit, and I was a moron to think you would be any different.”
“Renée,” I say, measuring my sentence, “when I was dealing with the venom, I didn’t know-”
“Why do you get it?” she yells, throwing her arms out behind her. “Why do you get the venom? Why can’t I call my dark side some superhero name and give it a personality? I just have to be plain old crazy, while you, you and fucking Casey get to be monsters and all of this shit? Christ, maybe I should just fucking design a fucking costume! Or maybe you should go on the fucking pills! Sure! For a week, I’d have the parasitic emotional entity, and you can have the Zoloft and the Dexedrine. And let me tell you, all your soul-searching bullshit can be performed with a single capsule.”
“Stop it,” I say through gritted teeth. “This isn’t you.”
“You’re right!” she says, waving her hands in the air. “It’s my evil twin! My dark side! It’s the black, or the venom, or whatever the fuck I’d like it to be! How dare you talk to me like this is a fucking therapy session? Guess what, Locke, I’m not some big-titted shrink chick, I’m someone who hurts too!” Her face is inches away from mine now. “Answer me! You haven’t answered me! Why do I have to be crazy?” She screams, somewhere between weeping and laughing. “Why do I have to be medicated? Why do I have to look after you?”
I feel it flex. I can almost hear it crack its knuckles.
“That’s not fair, Renée.”
“You said that already. Fuck you. Fuck fair. It’s the truth. I’m just as fucked-up and miserable and ready to die at any fucking second as you are, and it’s not because of the goddamn venom, it’s because there’s something fucking wrong with me. THAT’S the truth. How does it feel?”
“It feels like something you don’t mean to say,” I whisper, trying to be the bigger man despite the blood pounding through my face. “It feels like air. Like nothing.”
Her mouth bunches up in a grimace and her right shoulder goes back and her hand goes flat, which means, no, hell no, she wouldn’t dare-
CRACK!
“Feel that?”
Whoosh. Venom.
I have her wrists gripped in my hands just a little too tight, considering the cry she gives when I grab them. I let out a noise of rage and confusion and thrust my face right at hers. Her eyes turn from malevolent to terrified in a matter of seconds, and we’re standing there, frozen, her breath ragged with fear and sorrow and mine heavy with pure hatred.
“Well, go ahead,” she snarls. “Just fuckin’ hit me.”
“I don’t want to hit you,” I yell back. “I love you so fucking much. I came here to tell you that, and instead-”
“THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT,” she screams, wrenching against my grip. “If you love me so fucking much, LET ME IN! PUT ME BEFORE THE BULLSHIT, AND LET ME IN!”
She gives me one final shove and I stumble to the floor, my war wounds crying out in agony. She’s on top of me, clawing at my clothes, screaming bloody murder into my face. I try to pull her off, but she bears down hard, pushing, screaming, her face all black tears and open mouth. Finally I let go and let her empty her anger out on me, pushing her face into mine until her mouth clamps onto mine, and suddenly we’re kissing, gripping each other in both anger and love, pushing our faces together like blind people trying to find each other. My mouth breaks off and latches onto the side of her neck, and she moans softly under her breath. We start tearing clothes off until we’re a mass of sweating flesh, snot, tears. We make love like animals, screeching and groaning. Our noises rise and rise and peak at the exact same moment, and we stay there, together, with nothing in the world to care about but each other.
Hours later I hear a rattle and look up to see Renée, curled in a fetal position at the end of her bed, smoking one of my cigarettes.
“Renée?”
She doesn’t look up, just stares at her smoke.
I crawl over to her and put a hand on her knee. She flinches at first, but then settles under my touch. “Renée, what’re we gonna do?” I ask.
She finally looks me in the eye and shrugs. “I don’t know, Locke. I love you, but if you can’t…” She gathers her words. “I can’t take the venom anymore, hon. And I don’t know if you can give it up. It’s a part of you, like you said.”
“The venom doesn’t matter. I’m in control.”
“Are you?” she says, motioning to the room around her. “Someone hits you-are you going to kill them? Is the venom going to whisper evil thoughts into your ear?”
“I don’t know,” I say, running my other hand through her hair. “That’s the thing, Renée. There’s no simple answer in this situation, I just have to work on it.”
Renée’s eyes close, and she smiles, and it’s beautiful. “Taking you back would be a risk, and it might not be worth it, all things considered. At one point, maybe. Risky used to be sexy. Now, after this…”
“I know.”
She stares at me a bit longer and then we kiss, long and soft. Pulling back, she speaks into my mouth, her breath smelling of smoke and sweat. “It was a strange day when you wandered into my life, Locke Vinetti.”
“Likewise, Renée Tomas.”
“I should probably call my doctor and get my prescriptions refilled.” She sighs, putting out her smoke in an empty bottle. “He’s gonna be pissed when he hears I ruined another order, but I think I’d rather be embarrassed and medicated than otherwise.”
“That’d be a good idea.”
“I don’t know why I flushed them. I guess I was tired of feeling like I could control and structure things. I wanted to get rid of any scaffolding to my life and just…see where the pieces fell when things collapse. Does that make sense?”
“Absolutely.”
She gets up to get her cell phone, and watching her, I realize that it’s all a scaffolding, a form of preset preparation. The venom is as much a part of me as my friendship with Randall or wearing glasses. Everyone can be poisonous, whether or not they’re psychotically angry, and I’m no different, save for being way too imaginative for my own good. The venom’s just my way of not being scared of possibility, of all of the crazy shit that can happen to a kid, dads leaving and friends deserting you and so on. With the venom, the outcome is easier to predict, the deck is always fixed. It’s nothing special, but I am, so maybe it’s all been bullshit all along. Maybe I just need to gamble a little and see.
“Okay. Thanks so much, doc, I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Okay. Bye.” Renée snaps her phone shut and faces me, eyes worried but sympathetic.
“Take a risk,” I say.
“Pregnant women and people with severe heart conditions should leave the room!” My mom steps out into the living room, lifts her arms, and gives a mighty “TA-DAAAA!” Lon walks in, and everyone gasps in mock terror while I begin to choke up.
He wears a trench coat stitched together from torn black vinyl à la Michelle Pfeiffer ’s Catwoman. Torn pieces of gauze smeared black and red dangle from his hands. He stands a full two inches taller than normal, thanks to Renée’s donated combat boots. On his face he wears a black stocking, opaque, with evil-looking red eyes and a torn scarecrow’s mouth.
“The night is mine!” he growls in the lowest voice he can muster. “The city’s song calls to me in a…a…”
He looks at me pleadingly.
“Funeral dirge.”
“A funeral church! I! Am! Blacklight!”
Appropriately uproarious laughter and applause ensue. Halloween’s a big day around this household, as it’s both Lon’s birthday and the creepy kid’s Mardi Gras. Each year my mom and I spend countless hours designing and piecing together Lon’s getup, and every Halloween it’s bigger and better (the Swamp Thing costume was a bitch, for the record). This year he’d asked for something different-“scary but original,” he’d said. “Something that most people won’t get.” So Renée and I sat down, drew up some designs, talked to my mom, and, well, here we are.