“No golden remedy,” he says with affected sorrow. “No three men. Hope this doesn’t mean you’ll run off, Miranda.”
Miranda, did he just call me Miranda? His pale eyes burn into me, and I suddenly feel vivid, like I’ve gone from black-and-white to crackling color. All my skin humming now, not just my hands. The pit of my stomach electric.
“No.” I shake my head.
I notice he’s wearing a necklace. A pendant of three silver skulls on a black leather cord. They catch the light, the silver gleams as he leans in, looks at me.
“So what’ll you have instead?” he says. “Anything. On me.”
* * *
I wake up to the smell of smoke, the smell of the sea. I brace myself for the pain, a reflex. But there is no pain, there’s nothing.
Nothing?
Nothing.
I’m lying in my bed, naked, vibrating. Smiling, actually smiling, at the morning light pouring into the windows. Smiling at the melted-down candles, the twisted sheets, an empty bottle of Scotch on the floor beside a cord of black leather, a pendant of three silver skulls. What looks like pale blue confetti is scattered all over me, the bed, the floor. The medical gown, I realize. Ripped by hands and teeth into tiny shreds, was it me or the Scotsman who tore it up? Can’t ask him. He left along with the dark.
On the ceiling, flashes of the night play for me. Me leading the Scotsman backward down the hallway of my building. Tugging on his skull necklace like a leash. And though he was a towering figure, he allowed himself to be led down the long, ugly hall to my front door.
You sure you’re all right there, lass? he asked again and again.
I’m wonderful, I said, wonderful.
Dancing with him in my living room to some music he cranked on the turntable, a record I didn’t even know I had. The drums, the swell of strings like a roar. The neighbors thumping on the walls while the Scotsman spun me round and round, and there was smoke, there were flashing lights, right here in the living room, and we were turning and laughing in the fog.
I smile at the memory of pushing him onto the couch the color of my former lips. Straddling him, that can’t be right, can it? Leaning forward to bite his pierced ear, his shoulder, my spine supple as a snake. Him lifting me, putting me under him. My legs wrapping tightly around his back, my ankles propped on his broad shoulders, easy, easily. The Scotsman’s whiskey mouth on my neck, my ear, and how I shuddered and shuddered, my fists full of his long, dark hair. How he pulled the ice out of our shared whiskey glass with two fingers. Slipped the cube into my mouth, then his. Iced tongue of velvet on my jumping thigh, my hip, right where the surgical scar was. Still is. Three pale prong-like marks as though someone stabbed me with a pitchfork. How he licked each mark, all three, while I moaned at the ceiling, spine arching, neck tilted back.
Impossible, I think, sheets snaked around my body, still light as air, light as the breeze in my hair, lifting it lightly off my shoulders. My window’s open, but I’m not cold. I stare at the blue, blue sky through the window screen. A bright blue that reminds me spring is coming. Right around the corner, Miranda. Almost here. And for once, I feel no fear. No pain. Nothing. Nothing? No. Not nothing. Something. Something else is here. Inside. Deep, deep, what is it? Whatever it is, I’m humming with it. Limbs buzzing with it. Heart brimming with it. Eyes filling with it. Bones brightening with it. Blood singing with it. Lips smiling with it. Smiling at three black crows perched upon the branch outside.
“Good morning,” I say.
And they fly away.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 15
“SUCH A BEAUTIFUL day today, isn’t it, everyone?” I ask them, my voice reverberating richly through the theater. Afternoon rehearsal. They’re seated in their usual semicircle on the stage, awaiting my instructions. Not a whisper among them. Not a yawning mouth or a phone in sight. All eyes on me as I stand absolutely straight before them, smiling.
“A beautiful day,” I repeat. And it is. Outside the theater, the buds are beginning to bloom brightly on the wet black branches. Buds of the palest green. The sun isn’t so weak anymore; the sky isn’t so sick. No more deathly white for the sun or the sky. No more pale orb glowing tremulously through the gray mist, no no. The sun is bright today, golden.
“Lovely, isn’t it. And we deserve it, don’t we? After such a hideous winter. Don’t we deserve it?”
I turn to them. They nod at me. They nod at whatever I say these days.
“Yes, Professor Fitch,” they say. “We do, we do.”