Author's Note: Before we begin, allow me to emphasize that all love mentioned in this chapter is strictly brotherly/sisterly/friendly, in no way romantic. Of course the characters aforementioned are not siblings, the mutual feeling is still that of a near family connection. Got that? This'll all be developed later, no worries. Just keep in mind this is not a love story, not in the traditional sense. With this said, enjoy, and don't forget to leave me a review on your way out. Pretty please? And, of course, thanks for reading.
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He woke to the ping-pong racket of soft-spoken footsteps echoing off the fire escape. The glare of light through curtains told a tale of early afternoon, and screaming bones as he lifted himself from blankets and pillows near ceased his impromptu awakening. He peered down at yesterday's clothes, his legs draped over the arm of the couch, and shook himself awake, groaning at whomever outside thought it wise to rouse him. A sharp crack! panged against the windowpane, followed by another and another. He flinched once, twice, and caught a glimpse of her knuckles rapping on the window, splintering the glass.
Regardless of the great quantity of time since he had seen her last, since he had even expected to see her anew, he had no doubt that it was she.
Bo picked himself up off the couch, wandering out into the hall. Opting to slide down the curling banister rather than walk the crooked steps of the staircase, he transcended the ceiling, as he might a wide-open trap door, and let himself into the room with the bookcase walls. Unlike his late father's study, photographs and books adorned these shelves, as opposed to medical texts and surgical equipment and dead creatures only partially formed, swimming in formalyde putridity. His living in the other houses, trying on the lives of the long gone or long deceased townspeople, was a way of entertaining himself throughout the intervals of time when no travelers made their way through Ambrose. Aside from the pastor's picket fenced home a couple of blocks from the church, this was the only building he'd spent almost no time in.
Down another set of stairs, he found himself on the ground floor of the Confectionary. It had been a penny candy store when he was a kid, next door to the soda fountain. The owner of the place, who'd earned himself a spot in the House of Wax, had hated Bo with a startling passion. Not such a surprise, as he had much preferred stealing fistfuls of candy than paying for them way back when he'd frequented this place.
Now, the barrels of chocolate and lollipops had long since melted or spoiled, the rock candy coagulating into a sticky purple mess on the counter. Years back, when Vincent, Lester, and he systematically rid Ambrose of all life, they had let the children be. The handful of kids had flocked to this place, and, without parents, subsequently died. They'd no notion of proper food, he remembered thinking, watching them run listlessly about the town. In pools of vomit he found a few, their stinking insides gilded and honey coated, face down in peanut butter and apple juice and sticky blood that clung to shoes like black glue. Stupid fucking kids, he used to tell himself. This place isn't a damn labyrinth. They could have found a way out.
A rack of plastic two inch soldiers, parachute clad, stood to one side of the barrels. He took hold of one, smiling vaguely and unraveling the toy. He let it drop, its descent lessened by the parachute, before landing in a heap by his feet. He shook his head, kicking it away, but nevertheless grabbed a handful to take up to the roof.
Outside, the air was biting as he hoisted himself onto the fire escape, clinging to any exposed skin. Bo had lost all sense of time long ago, as well any desire to figure it out, and knew only it must be the end of summer or the beginning of fall. Whether it was September or October or even November he did not know and did not care.
Up the wrought iron steps and up top the roof he met her, as he'd expected. If she saw him, she didn't acknowledge it, and she certainly didn't dress for spectacular company. She wore his blue canvas work pants, petrol stained and otherwise malformed, the crotch of which hung far below what would have been fitting. They were held up by some salvaged man's belt, though almost ineffectually. She had told him once she simply didn't like wearing her own clothes, but he suspected it had more to do with trying to understand him or be more a part of him. It was often he found her swamped by a wife beater of his, or plodding along in his boots or worn baseball cap. She told him she missed being, in her own words, "In On It." Being one of the brothers. She took a swig of ginger beer, cringing at the peppery sting in her throat.
Her hair was short, dandelion and ochre dusted, reaching only to the nape of her neck. It curled upward beside her ears, testing her patience unless pinned back with the large marmalade hairclip she'd found in some decrepit beauty salon. She was long lashed and owl eyed and red lipped, a scrawny sort of thing; he and Vincent towered over her.
She saw him, thrusting her shoulders back noncommittally, so that her small breasts were shockingly visible beneath the skimpy scrimmage cut-offs, revealing a flat expanse of midriff. His gut went thump-thump, getting all hot-sick and beggarly straight to his groin.
Why haven't you fucked her yet, Bo? he asked himself.
He replied with an incredulous, Because she could have been your sister. Very nearly was.
"You woke me up," he called to her, drowsy, dropping the parachute men onto the building's asphalt roof. She, the sentry, staring off into space as if watching for something, lapsed in her duty and shut her eyes, the still-cool bottle of ginger beer held against her forehead. Flushed by the heated stucco, she turned to face him.
"Roo, I missed your pouch," she said, softly. Smirking.
Grinning, he thought back on their childhood, how they'd referred to each other as Kanga and Roo, and Vincent as Joey when he felt left out. How old had they been? Seven? Eight? He and she; they'd chase each other across town, wrestling, ignoring the chastations of the older folks. Later, in the woods, they might curl up in some abandoned animal hovel or hollowed out tree stump, and she'd knot her fingers in his hair, scratching his scalp carelessly, as he'd bury his face in her messy, nettle-grove tangles.
After she'd been sent away – he supposed that's when he'd gone bad. He'd engage in petty vandalism or reckless driving or some kind of troublemaking just to fill up on all the time he spent missing her, escalating into his most calamitous, his most dire, behavior. After Mama died and he'd been years without the girl he'd gotten on so well with, he supposed he got impatient and spiteful, and he and his brothers took that out on the Ambrosians. He'd forgotten almost entirely about her until the day she showed up in town; nineteen, wide-eyed, and not so young anymore. She'd made her way to the home of her childhood and, upon discovering her mother still and waxen and long since dead, stroked the figurine's palm and said, "He's done an awful thing, Mama. Real awful."
He felt guilty only then, and knew if she hadn't been sent away when all the dying occurred he may very well have killed her, too.
But that was all years ago.
She'd always had a peripatetic streak, wandering in and out of Ambrose when the notion struck her. And this time, she'd been gone more than a year. There had been days he thought she must be dead, and now that he looked her up and down she seemed halfway there already. He was shocked by the rust colored cigarette burns that mingled with the cracked skin 'neath the underbelly of her jaw, the grey-green faintness situated within the hollows of her throat.
He stepped forward, grabbing her chin roughly and tilting it upwards. "What happened?" he asked.
She shrugged, staring blankly. "I forget things, sometimes." Nudging the parachute men with her feet, she asked, "For me?"
He nodded.
She stooped, lifting one cautiously. The string came undone easily, and, loosing its parachute, she threw it upwards and over the edge of the roof. It drifted, becoming entangled in a bush on its way down. She held herself noiselessly, still before the shuddering foliage behind her, watching her own hands. They shook violently.
"Turns out I'm dying, Bo."
Her name was Oleander, Olie with a single "L" for short. Lee for even shorter.
"I wanted to talk to you about getting older," she continued, "and thinking back. I think a lot of times people get older and think back about someone from their past – the one who got away. Like from the movies. I thought maybe if I didn't hurry up and get back here, that I would be that girl for you."
Almost your sister, he told himself. He loved her like one, but couldn't help but want her tousled and undone in his bed. Perhaps there was something indomitably wrong with this, but regardless they were so far from reality it hardly mattered anymore.
"Kiddo, you've been gone ages and ages. I didn't let you get away. You up and left yourself." He smiled large and proper and took her hand, brought her fingers to his face. Her thumb in his mouth, she bit down on her bottom lip, arching her back. What little he had of her screamed of acidity – turpentine, petrol, acetone. Out of the corner of his mouth, he asked, " How far from me you feelin' now?"
She scrunched up her nose, chiding, "Don't make fun, Bo. I'm dying."
"You don't look too bad, darlin'."
"That's a damn lie. Don't look bad, maybe, but I look doomed."
He ignored her. "How far from me you feelin' now?" He stepped closer, stomach to chest. She pointed down below, at the parachute men entangled in the leaves and kindling.
"That far."
"Better than the clouds, anyway," he teased. She pulled away, frowning. An expert at distancing herself, he supposed.
Roo, I missed your pouch.
"The brain weighed 1255 grams and showed parasagittal atrophy with sulcal widening," she said, monologue-like, as if she had practiced. "Sections of the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal cortices showed numerous senile plaques, prominently diffuse type, with minimal numbers of neurofibrillary tangles. Cortical Lewy bodies were easily detected in H&E stained material. The amygdala demonstrated plaques, occasional tangles, and mild neuron loss."
He stared at her, narrowing his eyes. "What're you saying, Lee?"
Her eyes got big and her lips quivered. "Your mama's autopsy report. Mine'll be the same, Bo. In a later or earlier state of decay maybe."
"Better not be kidding with me," he said, angry. "For your sake, you better not be kidding."
"I'm not. I've got a tumor and it's eating up my brain, just like Trudy." She paused, chewing on her lip. "You'll get me an autopsy report when I die, won't you, Bo? I want the end of my life wrapped up nice and tidy, too, in a manila envelope and everything."
He didn't speak; he already knew the answers to all the questions that tickled the inside of his skull. Can't the doctors do anything? Can't you get better? Will it be painful? Will you go crazy like mama did?
"But you better not turn me into wax. I swear to God, if you do that I'll haunt you." She teased him now, grinning. "You don't want your pants back, do you?"
He shook his head, solemn. She laughed at his gravitas, snatching his hat off his head and seating it on her own. It tipped rakishly, hiding an eye and an ear. She gazed at his gas attendant uniform, amused. "You pumping gas now, Bo?"
He looked her in the face, mouth and eyes grim. Severe. "How long have you got left?"
Her face grew less animated, more contemplative. "Ten months. Maybe a bit more."
"Ain't you supposed to be in a hospital?"
She shrugged. "I haven't got a lot of time to waste."
He latched a finger around her belt loop, hooked, and reeled her in. He leaned in, mouth on her collarbone, and spoke into her neck. "I never would have let you get away, Lee."
"Wouldn't you?" She laughed. She reckoned she ought to do plenty of that before the pain kept her from finding anything funny at all. She'd always admired middle-aged women with laugh lines, like they'd enjoyed life so thoroughly they couldn't help but show off how immensely amusing they found everything to be. Even if she was doomed to die young, Lee was determined to let-go-of-the-grass with a wrinkle or two. Perhaps they'd be shallow, more implied than substantial, but that at least would be some testimony to her nature.
"Never," he repeated. And then, "What have you been doing all this time, anyway?"
A lot, quite frankly. There'd been three months of wandering and sleeping in some junkyard car she'd bought cheap. Quite a bit of wondering why her head hurt so damn much (she knew, now, that it had something to do with her brain pressing up against her skull, or the tumor rotting all her insides to quivering appendages and sickly hell-ridden shit). Then she'd had that first epileptic attack, waking up in a hospital to a diagnosis and a death sentence. Another four months of pursuing recovery before she discovered absolutely nothing could be done. Until she made up her mind to return to Ambrose, she'd driven cross-country – seeing what was out there before she ran out of time. And now, she wanted to live out whatever pertness there was left in her the way she'd always wanted to as a kid. Yes, she and Bo; living Some Kind Of Life.
"Plenty," was all she told him.
He resigned himself to silence, knowing full well that she never answered a question, if she could avoid it.
"I missed you, Bo. Swear to God I did. I don't know why I leave the way I do – I just get so restless sometimes." She stepped forward, wrapping her arms around him awkwardly and uncharacteristically, staring up at his face with mild interest. He smelled constant and familiar – musty and archaic and omniscient. She trembled – seized by some paroxysm, some haphazard spasm. The desultory shiver startled him, prompted him to ask, "You ain't cold, are you?"
She shook her head into his chest. "No, just someone stepping over my grave, is all. Some harbinger ringing me a death knell." She was silent for moments, as if impatient for the tolling of her passing's bell, until she stepped back so abruptly his arms flew from her shoulders. "Jesus, I'm starved, Bo. What have you got for me in this dead beat town?"
"Not much," he said, grinning. "'Less you like dried soup." She made a face and he laughed.
"I can do without."
"Thought so."
She was silent, again – thinking, he assumed. He recognized this instance from a thousand separate occasions. There was no stillness in her, the graveness of her face interrupted by tapping feet, twitching fingers, teeth biting down on lips. When they were kids, this would be followed by some vehement compulsion. He could recall a time when he was eleven and she nine, fidgety and restless as she was now. Taken by some sudden notion, she had cocked her hand back and punched the stucco wall of the schoolhouse, busting her knuckles and splitting her fist wide open. Her agitation satiated, she sat back on her haunches and nursed her hand, the blood contrasting eerily with the pristine white uniform shirt. Afterwards, when the teacher had ceased shrieking and cooing, having instructed Bo to accompany Lee to the nurse's office, she tried to explain to him why she did it. Something about feeling fizzy and having been filled to the brim with impatience and needing to lash out or scream and there'd been a hiss of indiscretion that whooshed through her and she couldn't help it and she'd never felt better after the crunch of bone had met her ears and liquid consistency on her hands and how she was curious as to whether blood really is thicker than water, and guess what? It is, Bo. She had felt it on her fingers and loved the sibilation quaking upwards her throat. It felt good, Bo, to do something and not have to wait for the sensation! There is a smell to this ambiance and it is infecting!
"Do you believe me?" she had asked him.
"Yes," he had replied, and as an adult he blamed her for giving him this knowledge, blamed her for letting him onto the secret of violence as a past time and blood as a sport. It's all her fault and he is glad of it.
After the nurse had bandaged the fist, the other hand wrapped around Bo's, she had returned to the schoolyard and continued with recess despite being told to call home. Despite the blood staining her shirt. It wasn't until the teacher insisted angrily that she agreed to wear Bo's jacket for the rest of the day, indignant as she zipped up the front.
Of the two of them, he'd always considered her the more (how to say?) reality disinclined.
"Anymore sculptures in town?" she asked, snapping Bo out of his reverie.
"'Course."
"Show me, then."
She followed him down the fire escape, handing him her beer as she dropped from the ladder to the ground. Holding it aloft, he asked, "Ain't you startin' a bit early?"
She laughed. "Hardly. It's near five in the afternoon."
"Can't be. I don't sleep in – you and Lester do."
"Not today. He gave me a ride into town from the interstate. I helped him touch up the paint on the sign down the road." She paused, rocking on her heels and staring tentatively at the beer bottle. Before she could toss it at something, he snatched it away. She grinned, appreciating that he anticipated her actions as if she'd dictated them. "Kid's got a hell of a sense of humor. He had me laughing the whole way through."
Bo scoffed. "Only because he wants to sleep with you."
She frowned. "Does he really? For fuck's sake."
"You should see the look on your face."
"I hope you're fooling with me."
He feigned insult, smirking wolfishly. "Now, why would I go and do a thing like that?"
"Bo, don't. He's like my little brother. I gave him baseball cards for his seventh birthday. I helped your mother bake the damn cake."
"Did you now? I don't recall."
She shuffled, looking not entirely uneasy, glancing at his wrists. "You were in the basement. You tore up Vincent's mask, then destroyed the mould." He remembered that. He'd spent the day trying to fall asleep in his father's surgery chair, his injuries making him soporific, but the straps cut too hard and the guests upstairs spoke too loudly, singing Happy Birthday. He remembered listening for her voice and not hearing it. He remembered drifting off for moments, and waking to find her curled up beside him, in a polka dotted party dress and partially undone apron. He remembered being embarrassed, or ashamed, when his father walked in on her pressed up against his chest, sleeping. He pretended to do the same and his father never mentioned this inappropriate behavior to his mother.
It was his favorite memory of his dad, actually. If you ignored the blood and the duct tape it'd all be peachy.
She trailed behind him as he led her through the town, her feet scuffing the ground in time to the lilting coo of her humming. She'd always been a tad bit empty-headed. Intelligent, yes, but with not much thought or bearing. She could tell you something genius, something you had never known and could scarcely conceive understanding on your own, then follow up with an observance so cursory you could do naught but shake your head. She had once described to him, at great length, the chemical composition of paraffin and its being a member of the alkane series and how to balance the equation when compounded with fire and a solid hydrocarbon mixture and whether or not it was soluble in benzene and on and on and on. She'd explained it all so thoroughly it had actually become mildly feasible.
And then she had paused mid-sentence and exclaimed, "The sky's so blue! Is it always like this?"
She hadn't understood when he chuckled, not until he answered her question, saying sardonically, "Nah, doll face. Been blue since only yesterday."
By and large, he was often more awed by the things she said than not. But sometimes he could not help but slap his knee and laugh.
Roo, I missed your pouch.
He loved her, though. Something in the back of his mind shrieked, Keep her safe! Don't let anybody hurt her!
This did not exclude himself. He had imagined her many times, in various degrees of undress or dramatization. But she was out of reach, unobtainable. Not to be touched. No matter the things she did – she was innocent and could not be exposed to such crudities as sex. She was no virgin; he knew that of course. But yet, after she'd been sent away, and parents and teachers alike whispered about how she had been marked by immorality, many blaming this on him, he'd known that this just could not be true. Lee was simply not corruptible. He'd always known some people are just like that, and any who refuse to believe so are naïve, ignorant, having never met such a person themselves. Which is their loss.
He'd thought the same of Vincent, up until he himself had ruptured that probity, instructing him to make the House of Wax more realistic. Lester, even, until he first saw him look at a woman and lick his lips. Oh well. Meeting just one of these people in his lifetime had rendered all ramifications null and void.
"Here," he told her, pausing before the pet store. "This ones newer 'an the rest."
She peered in through the window, unable to contain a smile as she watched the wax animals wagging their tails and swinging on their perches. Like the church, and the old woman who swept back her curtains, the pet shop was activated by a separate generator than the one in the Sinclair's basement, coming to life all on its own.
"Damn, that's a hell of a likeness," she said, her hand pressed up against the glass, parallel to a wax dog's nose. "Are they real under that? Or did he make these ones from scratch?"
"They're real."
"You didn't kill them, did you?"
He shook his head. "Their mama up and left them. All died 'cept for one."
"What happened to it?"
"Vincent kept her. Her name's Lady, though she's anything but."
She laughed. "Animals never did like you."
Down the streets they went, he pointing and she staring in though the windows. Nothing new in Flannery's grocery shop or the drug store, but in the town's bar (Flannery's again – he'd been more affluent than even Bo's father with his medical practice) a man sat forlornly on a stool, staring at an empty mug of beer. He told her when the power was switched on the bartender cleaned the countertop with a dishrag, arm rotating back and forth. In the theatre, a man had been added to sit at the box office, another at the concession stand, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? playing nonstop through the double doors.
It was the church, though, he knew would really tickle her fancy.
She stepped inside, taking one look at the pastor's face and gasping. "God, it looks just like him."
Before, the congregation had faced only the coffin, no man of the cloth there to recite them a hymn. But since the old man, who'd been on his way to his niece's wedding, was in need of a fan belt nearly six months ago, the wax citizens had found themselves a holy man. Well, hallelujah.
She stepped up to the pastor, making her way down the aisle as he watched from the doorway. "He's got the double chin and everything," she said. " Looks like the same guy."
The original pastor, who had been on of the few remaining townspeople after the Sugar Mill shut down, had been victim number one. In fact, Bo had gone after him so viciously none of his face could be salvaged or reconstructed after the beating, and was useless to Vincent. The Man From Illinois, as Bo often called him, was an acceptable enough replacement, however less authentic he may be.
Contempt was first and foremost as Lee once-overed the figurine, kicking at his robes in disgust. Before she had been, in Doctor Sinclair's own words, "Removed From Proper Society," the pastor had led a tirade of godliness against her, preaching to the congregation about sinners and whores and the burning sulphurous pits of hell. She'd been barred from attending any service, excommunicated as good as any a word to describe it. Though not in tune to the teachings of Christ, she had been at least more a believer than he, and it hit her hard to be regarded as so wicked she was unfit to enter a House of God. It wasn't long after that he, at seventeen, was found to be similarly unhallowed, though less so, and instructed to no longer attend. He was marginally faithless anyway, and paid such belligerence no heed.
"You'll stop this one day, won't you? It has to end. Someday it has to end," she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear over the grinding organ music playing on the tape deck. She laid a hand on Trudy's, susurrations sonorous in her fingertips.
He shook his head, crushing a newly lit cigarette into the toe of his boot, pitching it against the furthermost pews. "Not a fucking chance."
She exhaled audibly, her back still to him. "Trudy told me, 'Make sure Bo doesn't get into anymore trouble, Lee.' On Lester's birthday. I stuck the cake in the oven, then I went down to the basement, with you. You were sleeping. Your hands were bloody and you were sleeping. Happened so often you could just doze through it, and Trudy cared not if I saw." She laughed. "That's fucked up."
He didn't answer – she made him so damn angry sometimes. Enmity ripped through him, and he thought of fucking her.
"I'll be dead soon, and I still haven't changed a thing." She turned, leaning up against the coffin. "And all our veins are intertwined. It'll never stop if I never make you stop, will it?"
"You won't do a damn thing, doll face. You'd do anything I tell you to, and right now I'm telling you to shut the fuck up."
She was silent, obeying. True, she'd so anything he said, anything he asked. She listened, and he'd not a clue as to why.
He smiled and she frowned.
"You're my best friend, Bo," she used to say to him in the schoolyard, she nine and he eleven, through the monkey bars and jungle gyms.
Willowy and lithe, older now, biting hard on the inside of her cheek. She belonged solely to this place, situated within his very memory of how it once was. She should never have left, ever. Not a year ago and not the many times before. She belonged.
She sighed; to emit a similar sound – as in weariness or relief. She shivered once more, hugging herself and approaching–
Sylphlike.
He, himself, rough; grating. Waspy and mean.
"My best friend," she whispered, appraising him with a scrutinous gaze before departing through the double doors.
He grinned, appreciating that she anticipated his ruminations as if he'd dictated them.