He told her to put her mouth on it. She was afraid. She looked at him. He nodded with understanding eyes.
“You’ll feel better,” he said. “You won’t feel nothing at all.”
She realized that this was why she’d come here. And that was why she was so afraid. She wanted this. She looked at Bile in his soiled slip. He was staring at her with concern, like a worried school nurse.
“One big breath. Just do like this,” he said and then mimicked sucking on his thumb.
She put her lips on the bitter rubber. He nodded and smiled at her, revealing the brown rot of his teeth. She bit the glove. She thought of Will. And it cut her in two. Tears fell down her cheek. She was sorry. She was so sorry.
Your baby is dead.
Lucy let her teeth part, and inhaled. Bile squeezed the plump glove to make sure she got it all. The taste didn’t hit her until she’d finished taking the breath in. The smell of shit was on her tongue. It was in her throat, in her lungs, and she wanted it out of her at once. Bile put his rough hand over her mouth and pinched her nose shut between his thumb and knuckle.
“You gotta hold it!”
She pried at his fingers, trying to get them off her as her lungs marinated in methane, and the taste sunk into her tongue. It was becoming part of her. She struggled but he was too strong. Her vision began to darken. Her lungs kicked. Her legs went soft.
He let go and she fell to the ground. The back of her head smacked against the wall but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt anymore. She couldn’t even feel her head. It had become a dandelion puffball, and a breeze scattered all her seeds into the air. She was everywhere at once, moving, traveling away, and soon the room, as she knew it, was a memory, even though she understood she was still in it. The filth, the garbage, the stinkers, the scabby kid in the back of the room who was defecating into a bucket that his friend had just pissed in—none of it meant a thing.
“Lucy.”
She looked up. David was there. His white hair shined. He picked her up like he was carrying her over the threshold after their wedding. And then it was true, he was in a tux and she was in her mother’s wedding dress. Her veil was over her face, and she wanted so badly to lift it and kiss him, but when she tried, she found that it was just too long. No matter how much fabric she tugged up over her head, there was always more, the veil was infinite.
She hugged his body and buried her face into the dry-cleaned fabric of his suit. She let her tears soak in. She could hear the heavy thump of his heart and with every beat she felt a wave of heat come through his tuxedo.
He sat her down on a bed in a room with clay-colored shag carpeting. The bedspread was paisley and pillow-soft.
“I miss you,” David said.
“I miss you too. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I’m always with you.”
“So am I,” Will said.
Will was on her other side on the bed now. He took one of her hands, and David took the other. They both wore gold wedding bands on their ring fingers.
“Will,” Lucy said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“I already know. It’s okay.”
“You do?”
“Kelly’s fine.”
“Kelly?”
“We made a beautiful daughter,” Will said. He smiled and turned away. She followed his gaze to the doorway where a five-year-old blonde girl stood, on the edges of her feet. The fabric had just started to pill on the fuzzy flannel pajamas she wore. The light from the hallway was radiant and the little girl seemed to glow.
“Mommy, are you scared?” the little girl said.
Lucy’s eyes flooded.
“No baby, come here,” Lucy said, and it felt so natural to say it.
Her daughter ran to her. Little feet taking quick little steps. Pudgy arms reaching out. She hugged her daughter’s tiny body close. When Lucy had been a little girl, she had always wanted a teddy bear that would hug her back, and this was sort of like that, but so much more. The love she felt for her daughter drowned out every other feeling. It filled the room. It filled everything that there was in Lucy’s world. She promised herself she would never let go, and for what must have been an hour, she didn’t. It wasn’t until the glow of her love seeped away, and the warmth of her daughter’s body grew chill, that Lucy opened her eyes to find herself lying on the floor of the Burnout drug den, clutching the hydrangea flower to her chest.
Just like that, it was over. The aches began to return to Lucy’s body. Bile sat near her, swaying forward and back with eyelids hanging low and a gasoline-soaked sock in his hand. There was soil on her belly. She realized that she’d pulled the flower out of its pot during her hallucination, and the pot lay in shards on the floor by her feet.
The foulness of the stinker still lingered in her mouth. Her trash bag was stowed safely behind Bile. Lucy crawled over to it and dug through until she found her toothbrush, and small sliver of soap, her only soap left for bathing. She popped the soap sliver in her mouth and chewed. Once she got a lather going she got the brush in there. She scrubbed relentlessly and when the suds would get too big she’d spit it all on the floor, and keep going. Eventually there was no suds left, just the bitter taste of soap inside her raw mouth.
Bile’s eyelids eventually flickered wide.
“I watched over you,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“You don’t have to worry.”
Lucy shivered. For a brief beautiful time she had known escape, and love, and safety, but now those things were gone, and everything that she had run from was still here, still true, still too much for her heart to handle.
Bile brought the sock to his face and cupped it over his nose and mouth. He dragged in a full lungful, and she watched his ribs puff out. He stared at the ceiling as he held it in. Bile finally let his air out, and his swaying grew more pronounced. His eyelids drifted closed, then pulled themselves halfway open again, then drifted shut again.
“What does that feel like?” Lucy said, pointing to the sock in his hand.
Bile moved like he was underwater. He uncapped the jug of gasoline and dribbled a bit of gas into the sock. Bile held the sock out for Lucy.
She took it.
13
THE MORNING SUN ROASTED HILARY’S FLESH. She lay absolutely still on her towel, with the gun at her side. Her bikini had to stay in the exact same place for her entire tanning session or her tan lines would be blurry. Blurry tan lines were for slobby girls, and Hilary was no slob. She didn’t understand how other girls didn’t care. Some didn’t have swimsuits of their own, so they’d borrow whatever one they could get and they’d be laying out with a different-shaped suit each day. When they’d wear a low-cut top, their chests would be a mess. Who were these girls who could put up with weird triangles of paleness all over their tits? Didn’t they have any self-esteem?