She awoke to the sound of things falling. Dull thuds like the pounding at the base of her skull, winding its way through her mind until it almost spoke to her. The thump thump of his heartbeat. A low whisper through the papery wall. Shhh, baby. This won’t hurt a bit. Then there had been a soft cry of pleasure pain. A woman in ecstasy. In abandon? The cool sharpness of the water glass against her ear.

Her sleep-worn eyes opened reluctantly, slowly, to see him. Fumbling around the room, searching. What was he searching for? Her? Himself? She had been searching for this all her life. Searching for their elusive shadows, flickering against the shade. Coming together only in her head. She got out of the bed, her legs still unsteady with sleep and the missed closeness of his body. He was running his narrow hands over the things on her dresser. Over her hairbrush, a dusty bottle of tuberose perfume; a seventeenth birthday gift from her mother. Long empty. She put her hand cautiously on his bare shoulder. He half jumped, half turned, bumping his elbow into her side.

“Where are they?”

“Will? Where’s what?”

He gestured emphatically with one arm and she stepped back to avoid getting smacked in the face.

“The cigarettes. I can smell them.”

“Oh.”

She retrieved a half-empty pack from the window sill. Led him to her chair and watched as he slumped into it, spine bowed against the slatted wooden back.

“They’re for you.”

She lit one white cylinder and puffed on it to get it to burn. Then placed it in his shaky hand. He sucked on it, his eyes closed, face slack.

“Thank you. I haven’t had one of these in so long.”

She smoothed down his rumpled hair and shivered in pleasure when he rubbed his head against her hand like a lazy cat. Watched him sprawled naked in the chair, blowing perfectly round grey smoke rings into the air. Cigarette dangling in his long pale fingers. Dropped to her knees at his side and laid her own head against his chest, feeling the ebb and flow of him drawing in breath and nicotine. The room was dark, her curtains closed against the sun, shutting out the world. This inner place, her secret place was only for them. His pale form gleamed like a single match being struck into flame against the inkiness of her room.

“I wish…”

His free hand curled into her hair.

“What do you wish?”

She sighed against his neck, her lips at his Adam’s apple.

“I wish I could give you my eyes. So you could see how beautiful you are.”

When he bent his head and brushed his lips against her forehead, her cheeks, and finally her mouth, he tasted like the first tart burst of an unripe cherry on her tongue. The bitterness of her wanting years. He whispered against her lips.

“I can feel us. That’s enough.”

Her head dropped from his chest and she nestled it into his lap, smoothing her hands along his lean, thin haunches. Her breath making him awaken for her. He stroked her hair with one hand as she ran her lips up and down his length. He groaned.

“Come up here. Come to me and give me your mouth.”

She lifted her head from his lower body and clambered onto his lap, taking the extinguished cigarette from his hand and tossing it aside. Taking him into herself. Their lips pressed together, just sharing breath while he caressed her sides with his hands. His hips matching the rise and fall of hers. She could not get enough of this. Of his gentle hands and urgent mouth. Shaking her apart in heat and desire and completion. Oh, how she needed him. How she needed this. All those productive, grey years. All those years of books and learning and loss. All dust and empty pages without him. Even her body, her heart, her mind. She didn’t need them. They had always been his. His to touch to life. With his darkness, his sweetness, his sadness, his weakness. Without him, she was a crumbling abandoned house waiting to be torn down. A slow dying flower. The frost killing hour. A ghost girl crying out for her long gone father and never understood, forever lost mother. A woman crying in her everything’s arms.

He licked the tears from her cheeks and swallowed down her sorrow. Taking it into himself, onto himself.

“Oh God…the things you do. The way you see to me. You break my heart.”

She kissed his breath away. Tried to kiss his broken heart back whole.

“I see you.”

And with that, he jerked and muffled his gasp into the hollow of her throat. Filling the hollowness within her. He slumped against her, their labored breaths echoing in the room. When his breathing evened out, she rose from his lap and took his hand.

“Come with me.”

He smiled lazily, a flash of white teeth and his old irreverence.

“I thought I just did.”

She laughed and tugged him out of the bedroom and down the hallway.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m going to draw you a bath. You smell like smoke.”

He let her lead him into the bathroom and sit him down on the bathtub ledge as she ran the water, testing it on her wrist to make sure it was just the right warmth. His teasing hands exploring the pearls of her spine, the soft dimples at the base, her backside. She squealed and danced away.

“You know how ticklish I am.”

“I know. I love that about you.”

She looked sharply at his face, her heart in her throat. He had never ever said that word to her before. Searched his face for any sign that he had realized it. He seemed not to. She must be rational. It was hardly a confession of undying love. But…it was something.

“Okay, in you go.”

She put a steadying hand at his elbow, just in case he lost his balance. He got into the bathtub carefully but without any great effort. She had forgotten how intuitively graceful and liquid he was. Always sliding like a satin ribbon through her covetous fingers. He laid back in the water and sighed quietly as she ran a washcloth over his limbs. Down his arms, leaving goosebumps she kissed away. Down the planes of his chest. She whorled her index finger gently around his left nipple, watching it harden. Delighting in his responsive shudder. She sat at the side of the tub and tended to him.

“Aren’t you going to join me?”

“No. I just want to watch you. And…take care of you.”

He rubbed his cheek against her hand.

“You do. You always have.”

She bit her lip, her mind full of dreams of this. Being able to wake up with him, live with him, care for him. Having him care for her. Years of them blending into a shared life.

“Will…”

“Hmmm?”

“It’s not enough. It’s just not. I want this forever. I want us.”

His eyes grew dim and flat.

“You don’t know that.”

She drew back, stung.

“Yes, I DO. You want it too, I know you do. I can see it in your eyes.”

Now it was his turn to draw back.

“There’s nothing in my eyes. Nothing.”

“Don’t…don’t say that.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Why? I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t.”

She clutched his arm.

“Then explain it to me. Tell me everything.”

“What do you want from me?”

“TELL me. About that night. About then and afterwards and every year we’ve been apart.”

His lips thinned and for the first time, she saw him not with the softness of her girlish eyes but with those of the woman she now was. The broken shadow man he had become.

“I don’t remember. It’s just this red, rushing pounding in my mind. It makes my head hurt. All I remember is the pain in my head and this…this fucking blackness. Always this dark veil over me.”

He was agitated, twisting his hands together violently, his movements sloshing water over the side of the bathtub. He wrapped his arms around himself. Scrabbling at his skin with his fingernails, leaving angry red welts. She grabbed his hands in hers, stilling them.

“Don’t…don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I don’t want to hurt you. I would never hurt you.”

He slumped in the water; his head dropping so low his chin was tucked to his chest. She murmured soft, incoherent sounds and ran her hands over his trembling body.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Everything will be okay. I’m here.”

His teeth were chattering. She supported him out of the bathtub and wrapped a large fluffy white towel around his shoulders.

“I-I’m cold.”

She put her arms around him and tried to rub warmth back into him with her hands.

“I’m here.”

She led him back into the bedroom and helped him back into his pajamas, doing up the buttons when his fingers shook too badly to fit them through the holes. He pulled away from her and stood silent as she dressed. Her hands shook when he spoke.

“I have to go back. What time is it?”

“It’s almost five.”

God, she fucking hated this. Her life being eked out in each miserly hour until five o’clock dropped like a guillotine.

“I have to go. I’ve already stayed too long. She’ll be back soon.”

“What will you tell her? She’ll realize I’ve come back.”

“She won’t ask. She thinks I have given you up. She was listening before. Up on the stairs when I sent you away. I could feel her listening.”

“She’s not an idiot, Will! She’ll know.”

He stared blankly, not at her face, but just left of her into the empty corner of her bedroom.

“You don’t understand. You don’t understand her. This is her test of me.”

“What…what do you mean?”

“She knew you would come back. She will wait and see if I fail. I have already failed by coming here.”

“Does this mean I won’t be able to see you again?”

“It means we have to be careful. Now more than even before. Any hint I have let you in again and everything will be over. You will never see me again.”

She could not speak. It was like a great stone was pressing on her chest.

“I…I understand if you don’t want to go on like this. I will understand if you never want to see me again. I can offer you nothing and I am asking you to hide and act like a coward. Like me.”

She flinched and had to stop herself from slapping him. How could he even think she would abandon him? She had already risked so much for this. She couldn’t go back. This was no longer in her control.

“How can you even think I would stop seeing you? How can you even doubt me like that? When I say I love you, I don’t mean I love you when it's convenient or easy. It just is. Here inside of me. I don’t know how else to be. I don’t even know how to not love you. Goddamn it Will, don’t you fucking understand? You have never been easy to love. Never. But I’m still here. I would never leave unless you sent me away.”

She could have said more but he stopped her mouth with his. Whispered their truth against her lips.

“I know. I have always known. You are the only thing I believe in.”

“Then believe. Believe in us.”

He nodded.

She walked him down the stairs and through the kitchen. Out of the backdoor and into the yard. Helped him climb over the fence. Kissing him one last time, their lips together, their bodies separated by the fence.

“I’ll come tomorrow.”

He found her lips with his fingers and traced them.

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

Watched him walk slowly back into the white house, eyes dry, mind steely. This was her crossroad. She could not go back. She would leave this town with him or not at all.

She went back into her mother’s house and watched from a slit in the curtains, waiting. She did not have to wait long. Soon, the shiny black DeSoto pulled into his driveway and his mother got out, hair immaculately pulled back into a bun, dressed in a pressed cream blouse and tan skirt. She watched as his mother walked into the white house. Then she picked up the phone and dialed.

“Hello? Mr. Giles? It’s Buffy Summers. I’m fine, thank you. Yes, I’m feeling much better. I need to ask you something. Is Dr. Travers still around? Please, Mr. Giles…please, I need to see him. Is he still living in the same place? No, I know what I’m doing. Please, just tell me. Thank you. I know you think I may be making a mistake but understand, I have to do this. Please, try and understand. Yes. Goodbye.”

She hung up the phone. Mr. Giles was very unhappy with her but she would not rest until she knew. She would speak to every person who could tell her anything about that night. She would turn the town upside down to save him. She picked up her purse and went outside. Got into the Buick and turned on the ignition. Pulled out of the driveway and pointed the car towards the oldest, wealthiest section of town. She did not even bother to linger and admire the stately brick houses as she drove by. She used to dream that princesses and princes lived here. Stopped in front of a ivy-choked, slightly crumbling red-bricked Victorian with three gabled turrets. According to her mother, the Travers family had always lived in this house. And now Dr. Travers lived here on his own, a forever bachelor. She got out of the Buick and walked up the porch steps. Knocked firmly on the white beveled double doors. A black butler opened it.

“Yes?”

“I’m here to see Dr. Travers. My name is Buffy Summers.”

“Is he expecting you?”

“N-No. But it's very important that I see him. I must speak with him.”

The butler’s eyebrows almost reached his hairline.

“Just a moment, I will see if he will receive you.”

She bristled and waited on the porch as the butler disappeared back into the darkness of the house. God, he acted as if she were a pauper trying to see the king. Finally, after what seemed an eon, the butler returned.

“He will see you. Please follow me.”

She followed him into the house, mesmerized by his catlike walk and the stuffed and mounted birds that stared down at her with their empty beady glass eyes from every wall. The paintings were equally frightful, all either dour weak-chinned people in black or scenes of men with bird heads in jagged gardens seething with strange, vicious-looking vegetation. She tried to remember the art history class she took in college and the pictures reminded her of the works of Bosch. As the butler led her into the parlor, she suddenly realized why he seemed so surprised when she had asked to speak to Dr. Travers.

Dr. Travers lay on a settee, eyes closed, a plastic tube extending from a hole at the base of his throat, an oxygen tank on the floor at his side. She turned to his butler.

“What…”

“Throat cancer.”

Dr. Travers would not be speaking to anyone.

“Maybe I should leave…”

She almost shrieked with surprise when the wizened old man’s eyes popped open, staring at her with that same sharp malicious gleam. When she turned to his butler, she saw nothing but empty air where the man had once stood at her side.

Dr. Travers motioned her forward with a thin hand, his fingers so gnarled they resembled a hawk’s talons. She hesitated but ventured up when the hand motion became more insistent and demanding. She watched as he reached for the tablet of yellow paper and the pen on the end table. For what seemed an interminable length of time, there was no sound but the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner and the scratching of penpoint against paper. Finally, Dr. Travers held up the tablet and she saw two words written upon it in spidery, wavery script.

FOOLISH GIRL

I lied to you. That is all I am. A coward. A liar. Nothing. Someone told me love is dead, there is only power. This is the truth of the world. Not love but power. Your power over me, my power over you. Only she has no power. And she is afraid. The power of the past. Of Him. Of HER. And the most terrible power of all…Knowledge. Once you know, you cannot unknow. She knows just as I know. And we are both doomed. What are we but hollow vessels for our memories? Skin and bones and hair mean nothing. Just the finite containers for the infinite Past. It never dies. It always rises again.

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