Devotion 11
Edward went far away to buy the wine. That was it. Farther than the hardware store.
He walked it home, the single bottle wearing the brown paper shroud. Like sackcloth.
It was one bottle, and he bought it at the grocery. Along with a loaf of bread.
He knew what he was doing. That was his control.
If he kept it like this…hard to get to…he wouldn't get carried away. Hey, who was he hurting?
The sins we are least comfortable talking about are the ones we're still committing. Yes, his head was full of this crap.
He bought the easy open twist off cap, and it cracked like bones getting stretched while you waited in bed for your lover.
He guessed. He thought in sexual imagery now? He laughed. He passed a woman, selling it. His heart wrenched because that was the trained response, but something darker wondered how far in he'd have to be to get sucked off in an alley. A woman on her knees, pretending to worship him by drawing on the nectar of his penis. He'd die of grief then.
Many broken souls didn't know…there was a safe shelf against the animalistic sexual activity the culture gagged them with on a daily basis. A higher foothold where one might find purchase. But it took your whole life to stay balanced. It took more than you had inside, more than the animal drive to get your genitals stroked by someone else's need for the same fleeting…stroking.
The animal ruled Bella's need. That was it. Her dark, unthinkable, something was different from his. She would laugh at what he considered the worst he could suffer. He'd have to build so much of his story to try and make her understand. There was nothing there she would recognize from her own experience. She had never been protected, that was his guess, and he, on the other hand, had been walled in by layers of applause until he couldn't breathe.
He could unpack his own fallenness with a stern intellectualism. That's how he stayed in check. But she would never be captured in a similar philosophy. Her fence was made of things he'd stepped over, even unaware they existed.
The first swallow from the cheap bottle was great. And shit. He knew the big three when it came to the vine: oak, time, terroir. This batch never had a chance. It was screwed on the vine—the wrong plants, the wrong soil, no destiny to be great.
And that was all of life and everything in it. Throw in eternity and wine explained all of it—how some of the plants that produced the fruit had been bred for perfection, and they had nothing, nothing to do with their own good future. While others…it was never going to happen. But in the end, all of them trampled underfoot, squeezed into something to be consumed.
He took a deep breath and leaned against a building and took another swallow. A longer one and oh God, it was horrible and…great.
This was survival wine.
Speaking of. Someone tapped his arm and he knew it was the whore. She'd followed him.
"No thanks," he said.
"I have a drink?" she said. He closed his eyes and laughed a little. He wasn't that far gone. He didn't even drink after his mother. He dug in his pocket though. A wad of cash. The change from one of Emmett's twenties. He shoved it into her waiting hand.
"You giving it away?" she said.
He laughed because…well, she wasn't giving it away in the truest sense. "It's all I have," he said, as much to any watching pimp as to her. He gave her the bread, too.
"What about that drink?" she said.
Edward smiled at her and shoved off the wall and continued on.
By the time he was near the apartment, he dropped the still half full bottle in a trashcan.
He stared into the can. He could retrieve it. He had these ridiculous long arms.
It stank, and he'd still do it—reach into the blackness for that bottle.
How many lifetimes would it take a man to get it anywhere near right? Five? A hundred? More messes. More bodies piling up behind him.
He scrubbed his face, his heavy stubble.
He was scared. Offering her the gun case had moved something in him, and all there was now was the uncertainty. He'd hoped to get here slowly. Along with the discovery of fear he'd hoped to have learned strong reason against it, but trying to offer the help…to Bella…had unraveled the last illusion inside himself that he was put on this earth to do good. To be something more than hopeless. But his strength was gone. His motivation was completely fucked. His understanding of the steps to a good goal made no sense. The straight paths that had ruled him, the paths he'd called others to were deceptively crooked after all. Inside he was a ruin. And nothing and no one could save him.
He would not go down in rage. He was drifting. He was drifting. Getting smaller. Smaller. Until one day soon, he'd disappear.
He reached into the black mouth of the can, and the bottle came into his hand.