The woman was gone. The house was empty but for two children, and a blood-flower grown of sacrifice.
* * *
The church burned down that year. Christmas morning, I think. I wasn't there myself, but I remember hearing about it. Juliette's father pacing back and forth before the blaze, screaming for the firefighters, screaming for god, for anybody to come down and put out the blaze. I heard how the snow melted away from the building, how the virgin and the child in the manger blistered and blacked, nativity plastic warped and melting.
A lot of the kids who saw it say that they saw Brian somewhere inside, engulfed in flame. We all knew he'd started the fire, we knew as soon as it happened. I could see it from my house, flame licking the sky just over the horizon like a sun settling to earth. I knew it was Brian. They say Juliette just watched, just stood there so close to the fire that her hair was singed and her dress dried out like paper in the sun. Nobody could call her back. She just stood there with her face to the sky and her arms out, eyes shut.
The next day there was nothing left but a ruin smoldering. They never rebuilt it, there wasn't money and nobody seemed to want to contribute. It was just gone, erased from the earth by something stronger than fire.
Brian wasn't dead. We never saw him again, but we heard Juliette speaking to him as though he was beside her. We knew that his spirit was alive, still burning, moving like an unquenchable fire through the horrors of the world.
I asked her once, in a moment of rare courage, why he'd done it. She just looked at me, and she smiled. I don't mind saying that I didn't understand it. I didn't understand her. I don't suppose I ever will. There's so much of the story left to tell, but there aren't many of us left now who witnessed it. I only remember snatches, bits of memory, feelings. It's all so distant now, almost like a dream.
* * *
Juliette stood on the edge of the field, looking out across the grasslands where she had once lived. Her hair was tangled about her face, whipping in the wind like a living thing. She brushed it aside, feeling the long gray strands slip through her fingers.
She stepped into the ruin where her father's church had once stood.
It had been sixty years since last she'd stood on this ground, watching the fire burn. It could have been yesterday, nothing grew in the ash and rubble, it was a dead scar upon the earth. She stepped into it, her shoes disturbing ash and char.
She went to stand at the center of the ruin, where once had been the great alter, the place from which her father had spoken every untruth of the old order. She knelt, sifting ash, and she smiled.
There, blooming still, the only living thing in the wreck, she found a red flower – Brian's flower and hers – turning its open face to the sky.
* * *
Fragment
Our growing need took us all over that miserable city: Groping in the cold back storerooms of the Mr. Templeton's grocery store, accidentally at first, then with a purpose, our hands cold and blue and all around us dead carcasses swaying. Clandestine masturbation in the record store downtown, one hand shoved deep in our pockets and squeezing at the funny spot between our legs, gaping-wide eyed at the pictures of exotic creatures like David Bowie and Madonna. Trading kisses in the park while old men slept on the bench with their open paperbacks clutched in weary hands, and we, boundless, scrabbled about the fortress-like jungle-gym, clambering up slippery plastic tube-slides with both feet braced on the sides, nervous giggling lips pressed together with those of strange children known only by the commonalities of age and innocence. A desperate hormone-charged screw on the sun-drenched black rocks on the far side of the reservoir, where – if you swam far enough out – you were pretty much hidden from all the world by the steep rock walls hewn into the earth, and could do anything you wanted. In the reflective surface the sky would turn upside down and ripple outward from where her feet entered the water.
* * *
Coital
They turned onto the chalky dirt road. The Station Wagon rumbled, shuddering over uneven ground and rocking James against the confines of his tight cinched seat-belt. The edge of the strap gnawed at his bare chest; he shifted his towel so it rested between his body and the wide synthetic belt.
His friend Ryan rested his head against the window, his skull knocking dully against the glass with every jolt. He wore a ratty yellow Laker's T-shirt, and the untied laces of his sneakers and swim-suit were spread limp as loose rigging trailing behind a sailboat.
James saw his mother's face in the rear-view mirror, directed intently at the road ahead. Strands of wispy brown hair curled across her cheeks, framing her features to a diamond shape. Her eyes were invisible behind silvery reflective sunglasses. Over the seat-back he saw the tanned nape of her neck, curls suspended above with a fuchsia hair-clip. He could see her bare shoulders, and the pale lines like stripes of cream where her swimsuit had kept off the sun.
“How's your mom doing, Ryan?” his mother asked, her voice interrupting the car's mechanical drone.
“She's okay, I guess.” Ryan's voice always sounded the same when he talked about his parents: quiet, tense. He sounded older than fourteen when he talked about them.
“Is she seeing anyone?” He saw his mother adjust her glasses in the mirror, and could imagine her eyes behind them, wide and desperate to know.
Ryan replied with a shrug and an inconclusive grunt. James looked out the window, embarrassed, trying to make it as clear as possible that he was in no way responsible for anything his mother might say. Why did she always have to ask?
The parking lot gravel crunched beneath the car's tires as they pulled in. There were a dozen other vehicles there. Beside them a family was maneuvering a card table from the trunk of their blue-gray SUV. A tall girl with dark hair stood a few paces away from the rest, her weight on one hip and a ribbed cooler held with both hands; she watched the others wrestle free the table. The cooler was damp with condensation, the ice inside shifting noisily.
Her eyes flickered at him for an instant when he stepped from the car, and he felt a wave of crushing shame. What prompted the emotion, he couldn't say for certain. He felt naked, horribly on display, as though ever motion were an act and not an especially convincing one. He could feel her dismissing him. Just a kid, just another thirteen-year-old. She shifted her wight to the other leg. What was she thinking about?
“Hey James!” Ryan called, already moving along the path. There was a shimmer of reflected light showing iridescent through the trees. James nodded and hurried along behind his friend. Ryan's t-shirt hung on him like a poncho; it had been a gift from his father and was several sizes too big.
James was scarcely conscious of his mother following tiredly after. He was sure he could feel the dark-haired girl watching him. Or what if she was ignoring him? He didn't know which would be worse.
They emerged from the trees and walked together onto the beach area. Gold-gray sand was scattered in a dirty circuit around the deep hole of gleaming black water.
Water filtered into the pool from half-a-dozen tributaries rushing to the far edge, where it spilled over smooth stone in a sun-catching mist. The sound of falling water filled their ears, a great roar that swelling over the slap of bare feet on damp rock and the muted shrieks of swimmers paddling on the surface of the abyss.
Black rock shone wetly, and glassy little pools in the mangled topography trapped bits of reflected sky. There was a good crowd of people assembled at the diving line, clutching their shivering bodies, wet hair plastered down over their foreheads and about their faces. Those who chose to stay out of the water lay on the crafted beach, stretched out on striped towels with their cheap broken-spine paperbacks.
James and Ryan established themselves, stretching out their towels on a patch of promising beach. They covered the ground, clenching warm sand in their toes as they knelt to brush the rough grains from the swaths of bright fabric. James' mother arrived, depositing herself in her parental seat behind their towels and turning her
attention to her phone.
“Don't forget sunscreen,” she called after them, stretching in the sunshine.
There was a faint wind. It meant nothing now, but James knew how it would feel when they were emerging, dripping, from the chill depths. It would cut then, as it did now at the straggling line of people assembled ahead of the officially sanctioned jumping-off point. A white stripe was painted on the black rock, and below it a ceaseless pale ripple spread on the liquid surface. Each jumper renewed the constantly dissipating impact before it could fade completely.
The two of them joined the line just behind a pair of older girls. The ground was hard and wet, smooth stone roughened by a scattered layer of sand. The girls' swimsuits clung to their bodies, wrapped like slimy undersea weeds over their smooth backsides and the high protrusion of their breasts.
“What'd she say then?” one of the girls asked the other, her teeth chattering and her long blonde hair darkened and clumped in damp strands on her shoulders. The girl's bodies seemed to strain and pull against the wrapped strands and wet suits; he could almost feel his fingers at the knots. The pleated material of their swimsuits seemed painted on, close as shadow. He could see the imperfections of their skin, the fiber-thin hairs rising from their goosebumps. He felt almost delirious, his stomach clenching.
“Look at that.” Ryan said, tapping his arm and half-pointing at an older boy with a whistle hung around his neck – the lifeguard. He was leaning against the chair, not bothering to sit. James looked, and he saw immediately what Ryan meant. The lifeguard was erect under his tight wet trunks. “Jesus,” Ryan made a disgusted face, “do you think he knows?”
The older boy seemed oblivious, he was completely relaxed, draping himself languidly over the wood frame of his chair and eying the swimmers passing by.
James looked back at the older girls. The second wore a bird-egg's blue one-piece, the suit detailing her hips and the curve of her belly. She tugged at the wide shoulder strap, laughing at something the other had said. Her hair was the color of rotten straw.
He glanced at Ryan. His friend's legs were crossed one awkwardly over the other, revealing nothing. James felt himself stir, the sensation uncoiling from low in his abdomen and slipping warmly downward.
The air around the dark pool seemed to thrum with energy. He imagined those sprawled on their towels and staring from behind their sunglasses as observers on a space station, watching from safety as a young sun went unexpectedly supernova. Another of the burning children fell shrieking to the water, vanishing under in a white splash and emerging face-first, gap-tooth smile skyward.
The line crawled forward, falling off and growing again as those below clambered back up to take their place dripping at the rear. The rock seemed a living thing beneath James' feet. There were only a few people now between him and the white line. Why were they doing it? What energy drove them on?
The blonde girl jumped, plummeting swiftly downward in a sharp arc. All her poise vanished in the fall, the careful way she had held herself on the rim was abandoned in the moments before impact. She seemed naked, revealed as she tumbled through the air. Where had she gone?
He watched her as she swam away, her legs kicking dimly under the water, near the surface but never breaking it. He watched her swim into the colorless mist beneath the falling water and felt the near irresistible urge to leap in after her, to swim to her.
“You wanna go first?” Ryan asked. The pale stripe on the rock seemed to glow. The empty distance separating them from the marker was near-volcanic black.
James shook his head. “No, you go.”
Ryan nodded. He sucked in a breath, his thin chest convulsing, ribs pressing against his tight skin, too tight to be real. James could see right into his friend: the organs, the lungs, the coiled guts. He could not sense his own physicality, so aware was he of Ryan's. He felt like he could cease to exist at any moment.
And then Ryan was gone, feet slapping at a run over the four feet of rock, and outward. He made no sound as he fell, arms windmilling and feet pumping for some kind of traction. He seemed to be clawing for something to grab onto.
The splash stained the black mirrored water, spreading slow. Ryan surfaced wet and gleaming, and he swam out, further into the pooled shadows.
The lifeguard waved James to the line. It was time to go.
James stepped out to the edge. His toes curled on the sharp edge. The rock fell away below in a sheer wall, like the jagged igneous at a volcano's throat.
He wondered what it would feel like to drop below the surface, to penetrate the thin layer of tension and sink into the mystery below. To sink toward the algae-clad boulders down so deep they seemed part of the darkness, silt-stirred water thickening around him. His feet would press into the soft mud on the bottom, his ears popping from the pressure, and there, at the lowest point, his knees would bend, his body would make its furthest descent, and he would straighten, kicking down and propelling himself upward to the surface.
James drew in a breath of cold air. The lifeguard leaned towards him, expression hardening to concern. “Hey, kid,” he said putting a hand on James shoulder, “what are you waiting for?”
James nodded. And the lifeguard took away his hand.
James let himself tilt forward until he knew that he was beginning to fall, and his legs pumped once against the stone. He sprang out and, as he went breathless through the air, he felt himself awaken in the cold.
And the water beneath, yawning like an immense mouth, took him in.
* * *
Fragment
She's the sort of girl, she'll drive you to despair. You're with her, and sometimes you even feel like you might love her. But it's so hollow. You feel like you've crested a hill and can look back the way you came and it's all wrong. You made all the wrong choices, turned the wrong way every time.
Now it's too late, and there isn't anything you can do. You're lost out here, and it was all for nothing. What's worst is that, as bad as it seems looking back, you cannot bring yourself to look forward for the dread that clutches at you.
It seems you're facing an eternity, and no time at all.
There doesn't seem to be any way out.
* * *
Beauty
Unfortunately, you've seen Martin's videotape so you pretty much know what you're in for when he gets up from the cheaply upholstered chair and reaches for your hand in a gesture that's like so transparently needy and infantile that you don't have any choice but to take it and follow him blushing and hand-in-hand up to the podium and you're pretty sure that he knows just how manipulative he's being, but you've got to go along with it because you'll basically end up looking like a total bitch in front of everyone if you don't give him what he wants because he's asked for it in such a transparently needy and infantile sort of way. This is essentially the same kind of like emotional trap that he used to get you to watch the tape in the first place: you, standing at his front door and he opens it still smelled faintly of the hospital this like sick sterile odor and he ushers you in and says that you're the only one he's called since he got back. So you follow him into the house, all the way to the basement stairs, which he trudge-slash-waddles down with such laboriousness that it like nudges the line between pathetic and funny in that nasty America's Funniest Home Videos kind of way, and all you can do is just stand there on the step above and watch him go and just wait while he pants and sobs pretty much on the verge of tears, saying he knows how unpleasant an experience this must be for you and he's so grateful that you're making an effort to hide the total contempt and disgust that he knows you're feeling. This also really gets under your skin because you're pretty sure he's just saying it to make you feel guilty for feeling the way you do but it's not like you can help it, now can you?
It's a Saturday night in November and the city above is slick with this clingy wet hard-crystal slush that just won't stop drizzling down. You're in the basement of one of those drab inner-city churches that seems to be ma
king like a conscious effort not to appear in any way affiliated with quote religion unquote and basically looks and functions like a shitty community center except for a few tacky (in your opinion) posters like this one in the foyer of a really particularly Caucasian-looking Jesus like clinging to this little sheep-thing is a manner which strikes you as sort of humorously needy and above them in big drop-shadowed baby's-first-Photoshop letters is the vaguely Orwellian and creepily adolescent-directed: The Great Shepard watches over even the smallest of his flock.
Martin grabs the sides of the podium and begins to sway and he sucks his lips the way he does when he's about to start talking with no anticipation of stopping anytime soon and you stand behind him alternating the position of your hands from crossed across your chest to stuck in your pockets to brushing back your hair over your ears to clasped behind/in-front-of you to just kinda swaying at your sides thinking about the last time you went into a basement with Martin which was of course the time when he showed you the videotape.
The tape that goes something like this:
Martin is in the bathtub, which is one of those old fashioned bathtubs that stands on four ornate stub legs and looks like it was made from the ribcage of a grotesquely huge buffalo-type animal. It is the sort of tub that very tasteless people (in the parenthetical: Martin's parents) put in their ground-floor washrooms in an effort to appear wealthy and sophisticated, only to discover far too late the dreadful impracticality of the thing. And by that time they're stuck with it.
Martin is up to his chin in lukewarm and rather rosy-hued water, having apparently retained the presence of mind to drape his arm and loll his head in the romantic fashion of the post-mortal Jean Paul Marat, whose image he confides to you as an aside he has always admired on an aesthetic level. The Martin on the static-clenched basement television screen is holding a pair of chrome scissors and is letting them clatter against the hard shell of the bathtub. The sound is like that of a broken metallic clock, clicking not quite in time to anything, but relentless.