"Mr. Evans, your test results are in, Doctor Moran will be out in a minute to talk to you."
Thomas Evans, poet, pot-head, and some-times student slumped into a plastic waiting-room chair. The cloud he had carried since Star's phone call settled about him, and whether it was that, or the dark look in his eyes that caused the woman he had sat next to shift away from him, he could not tell.
'C'mon Tommy, what're you worrying about?'
'I-w-I…'
'Don't you trust me?'
Damn the girl to hell and beyond. He chuckled nastily, wasn't she damned, though? Damned to the hell she'd bequeathed him? And God knew how many others… Slut.
It was one thing to take risks, but he liked to know what dice he was rolling…
'Hell, Thom, okay. I swear, there is nothing you don't know about me…Now will you relax?"
And she'd left him what, the next day? Day after? The woman was vile. Then, when she'd called… How he'd wanted never to hear her voice again but… When she called…
"Mr. Evans?"
He stood, he didn't know why, it just seemed appropriate. Dr. Moran was, as he remember, a little man, full of energy, who could not stand still without snapping his fingers or twitching his wrist, or fumbling with a pen. Normally, a broad smile lit his wide, mobile face, but now he was solemn, and held himself like a man…
Like a man delivering a eulogy, Thomas realised, I have it.
He didn't listen as Moran read off a list of meaningless condolences. He had it. He was dead. Maybe he could squeeze out a few years…but why? What good would it do him? Living a life of hospitals and drugs, knowing any moment he could fall prey to a common cold?
His footsteps echoed coldly on the linoleum lined stairs, as he dragged himself lifelessly up to his apartment. It was a sloppy little set of rooms, cluttered with papers and clothes and more papers. It was, he thought sadly, a perfect picture of his life. Right down to the single beaded earring taped to his fridge with the note 'mail to star'.
He reached out and touched it, thoughtfully, setting it to swaying and jingling against the white plastic. The sound chimed deep within him, mournful, beautiful, lovely and cold. It was Star's sound, evoking memories of softly swishing skirts and thick-lashed, half-lidded eyes.
'I love you.'
He had hated her, for a single, passionate moment in that waiting room, but now he missed her again. Warm and soft and smelling of cotton and sandalwood and sweat.
Hard and cold was the edge of the knife, and unkind the lines in the skin. Cuts, and deep ones, he smiled. The bloody wrists he held to his face smelled of women. And he'd only known one of those…
"Star…"