The first time they meet it is raining. The wind is blowing in a way that slaps one in the face; a sort of monolithic change in weather, like something that is coming but there's no telling what exactly that something is.
She meets him outside of a library, ironically enough. He's standing, drinking brandy from a silver flask under the overhang; over the noise of passing cars he asks if she needs a ride.
And she, being a trusting associate, being young and perfect; she accepts.
They drive, talking about things; they find their parents might have known each other.
There is no discretion, and as he pulls over for gas he makes sure everything appears like a horror movie. They kiss and he pulls at the buttons of her pants, she wriggles out of them not knowing what she's doing and sees his excitement rise.
He rides her for the first time, the smooth curves of her ass bumping against the side of his car. He has such a strong hold, plowing her in every sense of the word and he's whispering things she's only read about in her ear and it doesn't hurt but feels like it should; he makes her feel putrid and dirty and she wants to hate it if she could remember what it is she should hate about it.
Her brothers keep calling, she doesn't answer. She has been given a man, a frivolous sort of romance, and she's terrified of it being taken away from her.
Every night they go to a bar six blocks away from her apartment. Every night he tries to tell her things but she never listens, just drinks and drinks and he always finds a way to take the opportunity to ferociously fuck her.
There is no love, but she doesn't mind. When she feels lonely, she knows she can call him. She knows she can tell him anything because he never listens anyway. Communication, she supposes. Communication must be their problem.
The loose ties between sex and love she begins to notice while they sit, eating breakfast. He fixes her tea sweet without knowing the consequence; in a desperate attempt to pay homage to her job as an associate to an organization he pretends to have never heard of.
A few drops of absinthe on a sugar cube in a cup of Earl Grey, he only wants to make things more interesting. He wants her in ways she's too scared to comprehend.
She wakes up, he's never there. She doesn't realize what's happening until it already happens. She doesn't realize she loves this man.
It takes her nearly all day to scrub the smell of him out of her house, her body, she gets on her hands and knees and scours her bedclothes, tries to erase the liquid reminder of their struggles.
In the shower her skin turns pink from boiling water, she cries but no one hears her because no one is there, and the water is on.
He hates her because she makes him feel something. She hates him because she doesn't know who he really is.
She hangs the sheets on her balcony, still stained with God knows what, she has no idea what she's doing anymore and wants to believe no one else does either.
Lemony, she muses. The denouement began with Lemony. She remembers an opera, a mediocre opera but still an opera; she is forced to see with her brother. She wants to believe he won't be there to recognize their plans, but she knows he's in the parking garage, a scowl on his face evident from the illumination of his cigarette.
She wants to believe he left after finding the need to drug her; wants to believe what pain she felt wasn't anything real but rather a look into his own sick fantasy.
She remembers, and it hurts her.
She walks with Lemony to their car and sees him waiting there, like an ill puppy that needs attention. She sees him waiting there and panics because Lemony opens his trench coat and pulls out a gun; she panics because her brother knows this man and she's confused and in struggle with herself; she hates her life because she doesn't understand it anymore.
He blindly shoots at her Olaf, her first love, her first real obsession; he's dodging of course, Lemony was never a gun sort of man.
All the while dodging, he's making his way closer to her. When he finally reaches her Lemony is screaming profanity, throwing his weapon to the ground and she can tell he will never trust his sister again.
But he's kissing her, and it's all she can think about. She tastes alcohol, smoke even, and wonders how she had ever become so ridiculously infatuated. She tastes him in her and she realizes that everything is over; she can live her life now.
"Promise you'll never do that again," she whispers and he stares at her, perplexed; she knows he loves her in a strange sort of way.
"All you Snickets are alike," he says, staring at the ground but she grabs his face, staring into him trying to find something, but she can't. "You can't just kill off all your threats,"
"Promise you'll never do that again," she repeats herself because she wasn't sure if she'd said it the first time. "Promise you'll stop,"
"I promise," he says, seconds pass before she lets him walk away; she wants to hold him for awhile, remember him, so that she can forget him.
Lemony had started the car; she hears the engine and wants desperately something different. She killed a man's parents, and a man was once a child. His footsteps are echoing in the parking garage, her brother is screaming for her to get back in the car; they can talk about this later and she wants to run after her dark dream, her Olaf; but she can't and she doesn't.
The car seat is cold and she feels Lemony's words before he says them.
"Well who do you think that was? A kind man?"
Her affair is playing over and over in her head in a manic frenzy; she is no longer a breathtaking maiden and it bothers her, slowly setting in.
She wonders why she is a Snicket.
What's in a name? She wonders, a tear falling down her cheek. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.