The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [218]
Little Emily was a bag of contradictions, her mood as quick-shifting and unpredictable as mercury. Some days she would be all smiles for me, and other days I would say “Hello” to her and she would look away and say nothing in return, pointedly ignoring me—leaving me to wonder if I had said anything at all, or if I had only hallucinated my saying something to her, or perhaps even that I had only hallucinated my entire existence. Then the very next day—nothing that I am aware of having changed in the nature of our relations (I’m moving from the general to the particular here)—she took me fiercely by the hand and led me into a small, dark area of the performance space, between two long racks of costumes. They were long pink silk dresses with ruffled hems and poofy shoulders. What were they doing there? I don’t even recall their being used in the performance. The silk closed in around us, two whispering soft dark silk walls. My eyes dimmed. I could hear her breathing a foot or two away from me, and I could just barely discern the whites of her eyes, but otherwise, darkness.
“Hold out your hand,” she whispered, and I knew it was a command.
I did as she said. I opened my long purple hand and held it out palm side up. Then I heard a very faint squelching noise, and I felt a hot globule of runny, sticky fluid land bull’s-eye in the center of my palm.
“What in the world—?” I may have said, but she was gone, having already fled, stealthy as a jaguar, through the two rows of rustling silk dresses.
I was not revolted. When I had clawed my way out of the dark, I examined my hand, held it up to the light, watched the wetness glisten, watched the generous dollop of her spit break like an egg in a pan and slide easily down my wrist and forearm. Was this, I wondered, a gesture of affection?
During this time, a deep and brooding melancholy overtook me. What I felt like doing was taking long walks in very foggy weather while wearing an overcoat and an inwardly pained expression of perfect ennui, pausing occasionally to lean against a railing and gaze at a misty winter seaside, a picture of deep and brooding melancholy. I was alone, Gwen. I was a fugitive. I realized that I had to return to Chicago. I would try to push from my mind the fact that I was a coward for not trying to return to Chicago a long time ago. Truth be told, I was enjoying the adventure of my freedom in the world. I was deliberately not thinking about Chicago and Lydia. I knew I had to go back. I knew she might be dead. I was so afraid to think this that every time I felt the thought creeping into specific articulation in my mind, morphing from a vague dread to an actual full-on conscious thought rendered austere and finite with words, I would push it back, push it down, suppress it like an urge to vomit. I would briefly buckle over with pain, clutch my stomach, and let it pass, let it pass—then cautiously stand up, take a few steps, okay, better, better, all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
(I had also become a bit of an alcoholic, if that’s the right word for someone who drinks not just for fun but also to stave off anxiety, shame, and terror. That’s partially why I’m on such experientially intimate terms with feelings of bucking, stomach-clutching, holding back vomit, trying not to picture my insides corroding like steaming green acid eating through metal. I had begun to drink furtively in the daytime before drinking openly in the nighttime. I bought whiskey or vodka