1. Resting on a shoulder
Maria's fingers stroke his chest, finger the flashlight in his pocket and toy with the collar of his shirt, and James, he almost wants to push her away: her head fits perfectly into the junction between shoulder and neck, exactly how Mary's head did on their wedding day.
2. Reminiscence
In Lakeview Hotel, Room 312, in the gray, rain-drop-shadowed light coming through the windows, James Sunderland stares at the bed, runs his fingers over the covers, and nearly sobs because he can still feel her shape in the mattress and oh god, he remembers.
3. Knife blade and fire
The tip is stained with something red, the knife's tip, and he won't let her have it as they swelter in the hellfire, James falling farther, to Cocytus, and Angela rising to Paradise, her voice echoing in the stairwell as she mocks love and trust and steps forward to meet death.
4. Conversation over a drink
It's inappropriate, he knows, but he can't help but smile and talk as Maria pours him a drink in deserted Heaven's Night, describe the angles of Mary's wrists and her bones beautiful and curved under pale skin, and laugh, nervously, when Maria raises a bottle of vodka to her lips and measures the flow with her tongue and says she can Mary to him, if he wants her to be.
5. In fascination
The first time he sees the Mannequins, shiny-wet legs on top of legs, he can't help but stare, stare at that grotesque femininity, that patchwork abomination, and he is almost struck by one in that moment of morbid fascination before he draws his handgun and riddles his nightmare with bullets.
6. To sing an enchanting song
The music box in the hotel plays so loud it hurts, and the song is so familiar and heartbreaking that he wants to just smash the boxes, all of them, stop that stupid fucking melody, but James resists the urge as he runs up the staircase and through a pair of oak doors; it's not the volume that scares him--it's that Mary, she used to sing that song.
7. In the middle of reading
He's reading Mary's letter over and over again, sitting by the molding hospital mattress, when Maria wakes up and grabs at his shoulder, coughing, and frowning when he blushes and stuffs the letter back into his pocket, reminding him that Mary's dead, and why linger on the memory of her when you've got me?
8. A cold warmth
When James lifts Mary's body from the bed, hugging the rapidly-cooling mass of blood and muscle and skin and bone to his chest, leaving a kiss on stiffening blue lips, when he slips into the car and guns the engine, the fingers of one hand entwined in the stiffy bony ones of Mary, James has never loved his wife more in his life.
9. Across the distance of the telephone
James is walking down Bradbury Street, holding his board in front of him, when a payphone rings, the sound tinny and faraway; he picks it up without knowing why, he doesn't care what he does, not anymore, and when he hears Mary's voice, Ja,James, Jajajajames, he throws the phone back into its cradle and wipes away tears: She's really in this town.
10. The words I want to tell you
Standing there in the park, looking out into the fog, blind to sight and sensation, James looks at Maria and the curve of her jaw and her high cheekbones and the way her hair falls across her face at that certain angle, he wants to tell her that Mary, that late wife of his, she didn't really die because she was sick, she died because he killed her, euthanized her like she was some sick animal, but James, he knows Maria knows this, he knows Maria knows this because Mary knows this, and he says nothing, only reaches out and holds her hand against the brick wall.