A/N: This is very old indeed; special points to those who can find literary allusions in this work--hint: mostly from a prominent modernist who is American but pretends to be British.
Disclaimer: Naruto and Sasuke don't belong to me.
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The yellow fog was caressing prostitutes the night I met you; the night I think now must have been fate. London dust was obscuring the streets, spinning and doubling over the women like Salome's veils, until the men couldn't help but take them inside and strip them of their cumbersome clothing. Rooms didn't help much though; the winter damp crowded beneath their skin, the reek of the city burrowed between their bones.
You were piss drunk.
You were staggering down King's Cross with two horrific whores under your arms and singing songs about atheism or anarchy or some other dead thing. You were laughing, smiling that dangerous smile that has grown so familiar, with the ladies until they started pulling you toward the apartment where they kept their mattresses. You shook your head with a cough-chuckle and said something American, "I'm sorry, I didn't know," I think. The women—girls if you looked closely—frowned. Their bleeding lipstick sunk through their dimples. They pulled at you harder.
One of them looked like she had cold legs; she said, "Come on, love, you bought us drinks, now why don't you buy something else to go with the pints?"
The other one looked pubescent, boyish, her flat chest sat obedient under her shirt, "That's right, we'll show you a good time, darling."
You shook your head more and tried to leave. You said, "I thought you girls just wanted to hang out."
"But we do!" said the blue-legged one. She rubbed one booted ankle over her calf.
"Yes, yes!" cried the other, still tugging at his sleeves. "Let's hang out upstairs!"
You shook your head and apologized more. You had never been with a prostitute before. Kansas must have been small and dull.
I walked up to the girls and caught one by the wrist. She looked at me with smoke-ringed eyes, dead in the light of the pubs. She had a sharp jaw and a cocky snap of teeth. A bruise peeked over the rim of her left cheek. I slapped her over the right one.
"He doesn't want any," I said.
"Who do you think you are?" said the other girl. She let go of you and threw herself at me. She swung a fist at my head but I caught it easily. She was weak, crumpling; I could see the track marks.
"Get away from me, you junky," I said, pushing her away. She fell into a puddle.
"What the fuck is going on down there?" A beer bottle missed my head by half an inch. I looked up and saw a man in his undershirt glaring at us. He was hanging out of his second story window with a glower swinging from his mouth. He spat at me. The wind carried it away.
He pulled himself back into the apartment and disappeared. A door creaked inside. I swore and grabbed you by your stiff, protesting hand and dragged you through the arteries of Camden. Our breaths beat like hearts through the streets. I heard the smash of a bottle echo past the buildings, but we kept running like we were born to run. I lugged you through alleyways and corridors—left, left, right, left, left, left—twisting and turning in our escape until we reached the pulse of Queensway.
Lights creased over our heads as we huffed winter smoke. Your hand was still in mine, warm but still stiff and unwilling; my fingers were folded over your palm. We over our heads; we made out the lettering of the signs. We saw towers crowd the sky; they obscured the mystery of the stars. You threw you head back and howled a laugh. Then you vomited your dinner on my shoes and blinked into darkness.
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You made crop circles on my mattress that night; your body molded into the springs until the sheets were tangled and webbed around your limbs. You groaned in your whiskey fever. I sat in my chair and watched you suffocate in the heat of my quilts. I kept a mirror close. I watched the smudges of consciousness creep under my eyes.
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London was dusted with silver by the time you woke up. You opened your eyes slowly; you closed them again just as slow. Then they flew open like curtains. You sat up quickly. Blood rushes when you do that. You touched you temple, just the fingertips, a pained look circled your eyes. You looked at me first. I was crouched on my chair clawing at my panted knees. The pants were new, there weren't any holes in them yet; the fabric tore up my nails. I was staring at you. You looked like you were shocked, like I should have been looking away.
"Where am I?" you said.
"My flat," I said. I sniffed; I reached for a tissue. "You fainted last night." I caught a smudge on the mirror next to me. I ran a thumb over it—made it disappear—and licked my finger in bitter satisfaction.
"Oh." There wasn't much else to say.
I reached into the drawer and pulled an orange bottle from the mess of pill boxes. They were lolling their heads in drowsy excitement. The bottle fizzled in anticipation. I popped the cap and handed you four. "Percocet."
"What?" You took the pills anyway.
"For you head."
You nodded and swallowed them dry.
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You were blurring like a bad transmission thirty minutes later. My apartment was wreathed in cigarette smoke. You were slouched in my bed, blanket drawn around your shoulders like an Indian; a cigarette peeked through the folds. I was still crouched in the chair, shaking, feeling good. Smoking felt good. Breathing felt good. Yellow fog yawned across the window.
"So you're looking for a job?" I said. You nodded with a sluggish dip of your chin. The pills were racing through your body. "Where are you from?"
You mumbled a couple of times. Your voice wasn't working. It never did the first time. I forgave you. "America—Kansas."
"That's a far ways away," I said.
You nodded again. Chin to the chest. Slow.
"What are you doing here?" I said.
"Don't know."
I spun my smoke for a bit. I eyed you. I studied your features: calm jaw sloping quiet to the ear, which was tucked in scraggly blond hair; unfettered forehead struck with loud streaks of brow hovering over lidded eyes; blue peaking through swollen lashes; jabbing nose; wet, glistening mouth.
"Are you a cop?"
"What?" you said; blue flickered through—glare. I was glad it was as sore for you as it was for me.
"Never mind."
"Not a fucking pig," you said. The words bled together.
"I could use some help around town," I said. "If you don't mind working for me, that is."
You shook your head sheepishly, the world spinning as you did.
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I showed you the different ways to squander an inheritance. One: rolling up the smoking paper. Two: rolling off the pill cap. Three: rolling up the bank note. Four: rolling back the shirt sleeve.
You watched in stiff amazement.
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There were three things I told you not to do: sell without the money first, open the door for pigs, and let the junkies stay. I pinned Polaroids on the wall in groups of three; I taught you the pathology of friends, the hegemony of enemies, and the agonism of commerce. Lonnie gets vicious if it's been too long since his last line; work fast or else he'll stab you. I showed you the scar running down my shoulder. Knives are in the cupboard, guns are under the bed, and your fists are attached to your wrists. Take care, don't die, will be back for dinner.
I liked the sound of my door clicking behind me, your sideways-swinging smile the last thing I would see before slipping between the gaps of the yellow fog.
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I noticed some things about you as you nestled into my flat.
It was a painful experience at first, like you were imprinting yourself into everything. Things moved: furniture, paintings, mirrors, lighters, pans, remote controls. It was like a ghost had moved them. It would have been easy if it had been just been things—stuff—but you were borrowing into the crooks of my body as well. You were jostling my lungs, snapping my ribs, molding my heart, rearranging my arteries... All to imprint yourself in a place where nothing better had been.
—But did you know I noticed:
You gnaw your lip when you read the newspaper. You even bit through your lip once. You set the paper down and went to the bathroom to wipe the blood from your chin. I looked at the newspaper. It said, 'Missing Son of US Senator Suspected to be in London.' I turned the paper over and pretended to watch television.
Your eyes glow a soft, furious blue in the dark. I always know when you're not sleeping. I will look over and see moonlight transcend the depths of your eyes and bounce back to shine in the night.
You don't smile at anything particularly funny; I think you smile because you're afraid. I know this. They are always more like grimaces—a mere drawing back of lips to show teeth—than smiles. There you are, smiling again.
—Did you know I noticed?
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I bought a car five months after I met you. It was April, early. Everything reeked of passion and fever. The soggy earth sprouted lilacs from pores. It was a horrific ritual of animation—things came to life on their own; memories danced autonomous from bodies. We drove to Rye in celebration. The windows were down the entire drive; cigarette smoke streamed behind us like confetti.
I got lost when we got there. I grumbled as I circled the ocean over and over again. You pressed your cheek against the window and looked out in awe. Kansas is landlocked; I didn't know that then.
We eventually parked at a pier away from the tourist bustle. The sky was dark and grumbling; it had been cloudy the entire day. It was going to rain. The ocean churned in anticipation. We sat in the car smoking our third pack each. There was half a bottle of scotch between us. You sat drinking the last of my Johnny Walker.
You had gotten the revolver out from the glove compartment; there was one bullet in the chamber. You pointed the gun at me and looked at me through the holes. You spun the chamber and pushed it back into the body with a click.
You were smiling.
"Me?" you said, that fearsome smile still tugging at your face. You pointed the barrel to your temple for a moment before pointing it back at me. "Or you?" It never left. I wished you would frown.
"Why do you do this?" I said. I folded my hand over the barrel. I forced you to lower the weapon.
You shrugged. The same fearfulplayful light shimmered behind your eyes. The dark clouds made your eyes glow like pools I could never see the bottom of—like a moon in the water. Long shadows fell over your face; your features sharpened in obedient chiaroscuro. But your eyes—and smile—remained.
"I need the money," you said. You opened the chamber again and spun it with nervous flicks of the wrist. "There's no two ways about it."
"For what?" I said. I watched the dizzying spin of lead.
"I'd like—" You broke off, your smile wavered. "I'd like to be a good person."
A thick silence fell between the cracks of your words.
"One day."
You pushed the chamber back into the body of the revolver, cocked the hammer, and pointed the barrel at me again. You looked at me with your brows knit and your mouth grim as a grave plot. Your eyes glowed and glowered in the dark. You pulled the trigger. Fate could have killed me then—there was a one in six chance it would have—and I wouldn't have minded; but it had other plans for me. I knew that; you knew that too.
Click.
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Sam was the first to go. The needle was still stuck in his arm.
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His funeral was a soggy affair. The sky was marbled with clouds swept from Ireland—the Emerald Isles' drenched us to the creases in our limbs. The birds were busy picking away at the spoils. Worms had wiggled onto the pavement to escape the angry rain that seeped into their homes uninvited. The birds slurped them into their mouths. Spaghetti.
We stood before Sam's body with mud on our shoes. You crowded close to me so the rain wouldn't dribble from the umbrella onto your shoulder; we stood like Siamese twins—our black suits melted together.
His mother was wailing. She turned to me and said, "You were Sam's good friend. You're a good boy. Do you know who gave him the drugs? Please tell me if you know. I know you're a good person. You'd tell me, wouldn't you? Oh my poor Sam. My poor Sam."
I looked at her swollen eyes and bitten lip. I opened my mouth slowly and said, "I'm sorry miss; I didn't even know Sam did those things."
She nodded several times as if to rinse the image of Sam slumped on the bathroom floor out of her mind. "Yes, yes… Sam was a good boy." She repeated the words over and over until her husband took her by the shoulders and led her away.
You glared at me for the rest of the service. I pretended not to notice; I kept a stone face. I am good at keeping stone faces—it shuts people up quickly.
We took a walk after Sam was packaged in satin and sent on his way under the earth. I gathered my jacket around me and muttered, "At least it will be warm there." You glared at me again. I kept my stone face. I stared at my smoke-breath. London never seemed to get warm.
I stepped over a tombstone. There were at least three hundred lined like baby teeth in the graveyard—all of them just waiting to fall out of the obituaries and be forgotten under a pillow. You tripped over one. Joanna. You kicked her and stubbed your toe.
"Why do you do this?" you said.
I shrugged and loosened the knot of my tie. Humid weather made it hard to breathe. I dug a cigarette from my coat pocket and lit it under the umbrella. "I need the money." I puffed on my cigarette and watched how it hovered in the windless weather. "There's no two ways about it."
"For what?" you said.
I looked down at Joanna. Her identity was running all over her face. I couldn't tell her age through the erosion. Lucky for her. The grass was lush and unshaved over her body. No one had visited Joanna in a long time, but she seemed content, like she had never wanted company to begin with. Lucky for her.
"To live," I said. I walked away from Joanna. She seemed grateful for it.
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Jack was the fourth. He danced so crazy his heart exploded.
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I kissed you for the first time under the carnage of Queensway one night in February. It was Valentine's Day—one of my best business days—and we were so trashed on gin, I can hardly remember—you're smiling broader now, the hinges of your mouth seem like they're going to break.
I guess I shouldn't talk about it.
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The window was broken the next day. Snow was falling through the hole you had made with your bloody fist. It colored my shoulder white. Your mouth was blue when I woke so I passed you a bottle; it put some color back into your face. The hot water was broken so I just slipped my arms through the holes of a sweater and lit a cigarette.
"Why did you do that?" I asked. The hole wasn't there when I had fallen asleep.
You looked to me and smiled. You said, "It's a painting. For you."
I look into the powdered city. Snowflakes, large as sixpences, were falling from the sky. The white of the city melted into the white of the sky. I didn't understand. I asked if you had been taking any of Lonnie's crazy pills.
You laughed and elaborated. "It's a special painting. It changes constantly so you'll never get tired of it." Your hand was wrapped in an old rag. Spots of blood dotted your knuckles.
I thought this over before picking myself up from the bed. I tried to walk carefully out of the room; a shard of glass got me in the sole anyway. I swore and picked it out of the callous of my foot. I disappeared into the living room for a few minutes.
I came back to the bedroom to find you smoking and drinking and looking at the painting you had made for me while I slept. I handed you a broom and dustpan.
"Clean it up."
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Samantha was the seventh. She couldn't tell when the dream stopped and death began.
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You started fidgeting in mid-March. They had just gotten Lonnie for possession, and none of us knew if Lonnie was going to break under the pressure of four walls so close together. He had been walking out of the grocery store smoking a cigarette and gnawing on a cream cheese bagel when the pigs surrounded him. Lonnie screamed and said everything was in his left pocket—the idiot. The cops had gotten a call about Lonnie beating up a bloke in the pub the night before. They weren't even looking for anything. The cops hauled Lonnie back to the station where they drilled and questioned him about where he had gotten his stuff. We didn't know if Lonnie was going to crack.
You had been pacing around the living room with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth for days. You were muttering little American sayings about Kansas—something about rainbows and English terriers. You made circles in my carpet; you dropped ash everywhere. I didn't bother to clean the mess up. I took liberal swigs from my bottle instead.
You finally stopped one day and looked me straight in the eyes despite your fearful smile and the cigarette hanging off the corner of your mouth. You gripped me by the shoulders and kept me firm in my seat.
"Let's get out of here," you said.
"Where to?" I looked at you with calmness. Our cigarette breaths mingled. "There's a movie playing down—"
"No," you said. You let go of my shoulders and started walking again. You puffed furiously before settling before me. "Away; forever."
I guffawed and took another swig. Things were getting hazy around the edges—I called it warm. "Because of Lonnie?"
"No," you said. You were getting angry and I was delighted because it was the first time I had ever seen you angry before. You grabbed my shoulders again and pushed me so my back was against the cushions. "Because of Sam and Rachel and Jason and Jack and Aaron and Michelle, and Samantha and Henry and Rick…" The procession of the dead stirred you into a frenzy, but it didn't interest me. I was used to it.
I laughed at you again. "People die all the time."
"We're killing ourselves." I didn't know when you had gotten so dramatic.
"Everyone's dying." I didn't know when I had gotten so existential.
"You're a good person, you don't belong here," you said. You looked at me with saucer eyes that seemed to alien for my tastes. I recoiled from your gaze and showed my teeth in disgust. I snubbed my cigarette in the ashtray. "Let's leave before something bad happens to both of us."
"What does it matter?" I said. "It's all part of the rules of the game. It's all a matter of fate—something bad happens to everyone eventually."
"Game?" you said. You drew back and looked at me with your glowing, glowering eyes. You turned and paced a couple more times before going into the bedroom. I heard the mattress being lifted. I didn't give it much thought. I took another drink.
You came back into the living room with my revolver in your hand, you mouth drawn like red curtains for the opening act; you were smiling ferociously. Your hands shook as you opened the chamber and shook all the bullets out but one. You gave the chamber a deft spin and closed it with a click.
"This is a game," you said. You cocked the hammer. You looked at the gun in your hands. You were pointing it to the coffee table. You? Me? Youmeyoume…
You finally put the barrel to your temple. "And this is fate." You were looking at me with those bottomless blue eyes. I swore and put the bottle down. Fate had a one out of six chance of fatality. I rose to my feet and started to climb over the coffee table. But you were too fast. You pulled the trigger.
Click.
The probability of life overwhelmed you. You let the gun slip from your hand. You sank to the floor. I stood with my shoulders heaving for a long time—enough for the silence to seep between my joints. Then I raised my fist and struck you across the face.
Your entire body seemed to shift. Your head flew to the left until it seemed to look at your right shoulder, your neck craned and twisted from your body, and your torso pivoted around your pelvis. You sat still and silent with your calves tucked beneath your thighs. Your eyes were hidden from me, and your smile—if you were smiling. I hoped you weren't.
I lit a cigarette.
"I'm leaving," you said. It was just a breath in the silence. You turned back to me slowly: your torso snapping into place first, then your shoulders, then your neck, and then your head… It was an eerie process of reassociation, of pulling yourself back together. You always had a knack for it though; I shouldn't have been surprised. You looked at me. Your gaze fell like tacks on my skin. "Come with me."
I didn't say anything. I looked at you for a couple of minutes before walking into the bedroom and shutting the door.
You were gone the next morning.
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The cops burst through my door in early June. They didn't even knock. I was dozing in my bed. The early summer heat dragged through my lungs as I counted the cracks in my ceiling. I heard the door come down. I should have known something was going to happen—but I was too hazy from medicine. The entire world was in slow motion, and I was too far gone to care.
"Get your hands up," shouted one pig; his mouth seemed to stretch too wide for too long. I looked at him with a cloud hazing my vision. I struggle to rise from the bed. Another fascist grabbed me by the arm and hoisted me up. I tried to stand, jostled, it was difficult.
"Get your hands up where I can see them." I complied slowly. Satisfied I wasn't holding any weapons, the police cuffed me and dragged me to the police station.
They told me you were the son of some big shot American politician who has been missing for the last two years. They told me I was some sort of terrorist. They asked me where I was keeping you—like I could ever lock you in an underground basement—and who my co-conspirators were.
I told them I couldn't believe you left home without leaving a note explaining you were not being kidnapped.
It seems plausible a dolt like yourself would forget though now that I have had some time to think about it.
They told me about all the stuff they found in my apartment, and how, if nothing else, I would be going to prison for a long, long time for possession. I had psychologists who told me I had an inferiority complex—that I needed to dominate someone in order to feel alive—which was why I wouldn't give up your whereabouts.
I told them I simply did not know where you were. I didn't tell them anything else, though I could have.
.
Now you're sitting in front of me with that ridiculous grin plastered over your face, half peeling with time, half bitten by moths. You're smoking a cigarette and looking at me with pity-eyes that chew at my sanity. Really, you shouldn't be so sympathetic, I am allergic to sympathy. I'd like to kiss you, make you frown, but you wouldn't have that. You never know who is watching.
"What would you have me do?" you say.
A thick silence falls between the cracks of your words.
"Be a good person," I say.
You nod, and I know you know what I mean.
You open your jacket and pull out a revolver. It is the same kind I used to own. You place the gun on the table. The wood echoes the revolver's weight; it sounds heavier than usual.
"Let's leave it to fate," you say. I look at you and smile as you frown, calm and dignified for the first time in a long time. I nod.
You don't spin the chamber; you simply pick up the gun the way it was loaded. You rise from you seat and walk toward me in somber strides. You look at me with your furious, glowing eyes. You press the revolver to my chest. You cock the hammer.
Fate has a one out of ten chance of misfire.
You pull the trigger.
The bang is softer than I had imagined—a whimper; a faint echo rumbling from somewhere far, far away.