I keep quiet and use all my energy to focus on not allowing any of my facial features to move.
At last, she lets go of me and steps back. “Going to be like that, are you?”
“Yeah,” I say softly.
“Very well.” Her large, green eyes advance and retreat, then they soften. “But just so you know, I know something happened to you. I can see it. I can smell it. You’re different. Something about you is different.”
“Good different, or bad different?”
“Too soon to tell.”
After that, she takes mercy on me and we curl up on the sofa in our usual jumble of limbs and she spends a very, very long time telling me, verbatim, about a fight she had with her sister, whom she calls The Lesser Me during times of strife.
When it’s time for her to head home, she hugs me at the door. She holds on for longer than usual, and whispers into my ear, “It’s okay if you can’t tell me. I understand, Boo, but I hope you understand thatmebeing okay is dependent onyoubeing okay. I can’t do this shit without you.”
*
The funeral is on a Thursday. It’s a dull, dreary late April day. It’s gusty, overcast and threatening to piss down with rain. Lacey is in her element.
“What a gloomy day for a funeral,” she says brightly. Lacey loves funerals. She finds them inexplicably beautiful and pathetic at the same time. She’s wearing head-to-toe black, of course. Her dress is long-sleeved and skin-tight. She has a leather corset cinched so tightly at the waist, it’s hard to work out how she’s managing to remain upright. She’s wearing a severe black face mask and heels so high; it’s giving a serious case of Haute Couture Funeral Fetish.
She lets me look her up and down and waits patiently for her compliment.
“You look like the sort of person Morticia Adams would gladly take style advice from.”
She gives a little squeal of satisfaction, and says, “You look like the lovechild of Bruce Wayne and an incubus.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I’m going for low-key.” I’m wearing a black suit with a relaxed fit, a low-cut black T-shirt and a full complement of rings. I’ve stacked chains of varying lengths around my neck. Some of them are tangled. It doesn’t matter. Only one of them matters. Only one has a pendant. It’s a bejeweled human skull. It’s bespoke, made for me by a well-known artist. It’s large and macabre. It’s a message for Saint.
I know what you did.
I know what you are.
I remember.
I remember it all.
Fine, maybe I don’t know exactly what I want it to say. I only know I want him to see it. I want him to know I’m wearing it for him. I want him to be confused. Amused. Maybe I want him to feel threatened. I’m not sure. But I want him to see it around my neck and I want him to feel something about it.
I’m not pleased to be stooping to this level, but there you have it.
*
The funeral is long and dead boring. I spend the whole event being ‘on’. Greeting people, smiling, and saying appropriate things.
It’s a fucking nightmare, that’s what it is.
I feel a fresh rush of anger toward my uncle for putting me through all this. There are hundreds of people. So many people. Too many. Most of them old and dull as hell. All of them want something from me. A word or a smile. I want something, too. Something for me. Every time I have a moment of respite, I sweep the crowd for dark eyes and broken noses. I know it’s ridiculous. Saint’s many things, but one thing he’s not is a man who wants to get caught. I know there’s less than no chance that he’ll be here, but I still look.
I look for him on the way home, too. My driver drives the speed limit exactly, which usually irritates the hell out of me, but this time I let it go. I look out of my window through lashings of rain. I seek out scarred features on every face I see. I search the shadows in the garage of my building for the shape of a monster, and when I close the front door of my apartment, I spin around quickly, as if I’m expecting him to be lurking behind the door.
Watching me.
Waiting for me.
Biding his time before he takes me again.
Of course, he’s not here. Obviously not. That would be ridiculous. It’s been a long, draining day, that’s all.
