-She may have looked normal on the outside,
but she was deliciously complicated inside.
-Jeffrey Eugenides
Time passed quicker than I had expected as we eventually fell into a rhythm. It wasn't perfect though, things were still a bit akward because we were forced to go everywhere together. Everyday we danced around eachother on eggshells, but on the road out of 'agonizingly uncomfortable' we kept hitting potholes and blowing tires, stranding us in the limbo of stuffy silences and pink-stained cheeks on my part. Potholes like the time he had to come with me to my gyno appointment. And the time he burst into the master bathroom and saw me naked in the shower after I slipped and crashed to the floor. And the time we were in the building laundry room switching loads over and somehow one of my new lacey red thongs had gotten into his wash of whites, effectively staining all of his socks and white under shirts Pepto-bismol pink.
It was the strangest thing. I had spent years alone, nearly isolated from the world like Rapunzel high up in her tower. For the first time since high school I had someome to talk to who didn't know my secret. Someone who wasn't taking a blood sample or injecting me with a virus or asking when I'd finished my last period. For the first time ever, I had someone in my apartment. This was something I had always dreamed of! I had spent so many lonely days and nights out on my fire escape, looking out on the streets below wishing desperatly for someone to talk to. Someone to bond with. But always knowing that I would never have the chance to know another person until I was ready to step away from the military. Now I had someone here. Everyday I had this intelligent, well-traveled, smart-mouthed character in my home, and I had no idea what to do with him. If you had asked me a month ago what I would do in a situation like this I would've seen myself relentlessly picking his brain, hanging on his every word, trying to soak up as much information he could offer about the world and what it was like to actually live in it. But we filled the silences with noise from the tv, or him on the phone with Mustang or some other government official, or with the loud rock music that echoed from the guest bedroom when he was working out.
"We need to go out," He stated one evening. "I'm going stir-crazy, we need a drink and some greasy food."
I looked up at him over the top of the book my nose was stuck in.
"I'm not really supposed to go anywhere that isn't military grounds." I lied nervously. He raised an eyebrow.
"Well what Mustang doesn't know won't kill him. Come on, The Rangers are playing Toronto in a few minutes, and there's a 70 inch flat screen at Kildaire's." I fidgeted in my club chair. Its not that the military wouldn't allow me to have a life, it's that going outside made me nervous. As much as I dreamed of being a part of the world, my mind would always flash back to being a little kid who didn't understand why everyone knew my name, and why strangers in the street would sob on their knees in front of me, begging me to heal them. All I could remember was the fear and confusion, and how after taking a stab at going to a public highschool I couldn't take it anymore and I shut myself off from the world.
"Someone's been threatening my life," I reasoned. "Is this really a good idea?" He grabbed my wrist and pulled me to my feet. The contact was all-too brief.
"Nothing's happened in weeks. Just relax, you'll be with me." I pulled on my boots and jacket and we left.
"Besides," He continued as I locked the door behind me. "If shit hits the fan just remember, I'm licenesed to carry concealed." This did very little to calm my nerves.
Kildaire's Irish Pub was only about 6 blocks from my apartment, and sat on a corner at an intersection crammed with small restaurants, bars, sketchy tattoo parlours and head shops. We'd only walked for 5 minutes but looking around I suddenly could relate to Dorothy when she said "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore". That's the crazy thing about New York. Just a few minutes of walking could be the difference between million-dollar residences with uniformed doormen, and dirty rock clubs with vomit on the front step. We entered the crowded bar and got lucky, finding two seats at the bar in perfect view of the game which had just dropped puck. We ordered a couple glasses of whiskey and hunkered down. An hour into the game and three glasses of whiskey later I was finally feeling relaxed. I had a burger in my belly and a warm tingling in all of my extremities, and I was also feeling brave. The game went to intermission and I turned to Ed.
"I never knew you were into sports." I said, stealing a french fry from his plate. "Do you play any?" He drained his glass and made eye contact with the bartender, silently asking for another.
"Yeah I played hockey when I was a teenager. It was a good outlet for me at the time."
"Any others?" I prodded, trying to keep conversation going.
"Well, I tried baseball for a couple weeks but it was too slow-paced and I kept getting thrown off the field for fighting." He smirked. "Hockey is great because it's constant action, and when you punch someone in the face all they do is sit you in a box for 4 minutes." This earned a giggle from me, and a genuine smile from him. It was interesting to say the least, finding out that Edward previously had a violent streak. Considering that he was protecting me for the military, I wondered how violent he still was and my thoughts drifted to the large duffel bag he'd brought with him at the apartment. I had poked around in it one day while he was in the shower and it looked like Rambo's wet dream. 3 different hand-guns, leather rolls full of large knives along with throwing daggers, boxes of ammunition, a couple shotguns, and a sniper rifle. It was more than excessive. As alarming as the arsenal was, what truly concerned me was finding the first aid kit in his room. It was larger and better-stocked than any kit I had ever encountered, and contained more than just band-aids and alcohol wipes. Along with the usuals I found things like numbing sprays, gauze, liquid colodion, and needles and thread for stitching wounds. Just what did Ed think was going to happen to me? And what had happened to him that made him keep things like that on hand?
My mind snapped back to the present when I heard alot of yelling behind us. Ed and I looked over our shoulders at two men in the bar who were drunk and extremely angry at eachother. They slurred their insults and stood nose-to-nose, cursing over the noise from the resumed game that not many people were paying much attention to anymore. One of them pushed the other, and that started the wrestling. I couldn't help rolling my eyes. The tension in the room continued to rise as on-lookers and friends of the brawlers started yelling back and forth, before starting their own fights. My heart began to race. Seeing people punching and pushing eachother, tearing at clothes and screaming only flashed me back to being a child and the scary things I had witnessed when going outside. It flashed me back to when I was 9, trying to shop in the Union Square open market with my Grandmother Pinako. I incited a riot when a desparate homeless person recognized me and bit me, trying to drink my blood because he thought I would cure his hepatitis. He attacked me, people attacked him, other homeless folk joined in the fighting, riot police showed up; vendor's booths were destroyed, crushed bundles of lavendar and daisies littered the street and the petals floated away in the currents of maple syrup from the smashed bottles on the sidewalks. Entire tables of pies had been turned over in the hysteria, canvases belonging to local artists had been torn or stolen, and as the dust settled all that remained were the crying eyes of the vendors, shaking their heads in disbelief. And even though my Grandmother claimed it wasn't so, I knew it was all my fault. It wouldn't have happened if I had just stayed home.
Edward was watching the scene unfold with amusement, biting into his burger and chewing happily, very entertained by the unfolding pandamonium. He turned to say something but his smile quickly evaporated when I locked eyes with him. He could see my anxiety, the shakey hands, the worried brows, and he leaned close to me to shout above the noise.
"Are you okay?" I looked to the swarming crowd and shook my head slowly. The crunching of broken chairs, the smashing of bottles over peoples heads, it was all too much. Suddenly a man with blood running down his face was shoved out of the fighting mass. He lost his footing and stumbling, went head-on into my gut and knocked me clear off my barstool and onto the floor with a thud. I heard Ed curse loudly as he threw his food aside to shove the guy off of me. The fall caused my head to collide with the concrete floor, and the room began to spin. I couldn't focus. There was so much noise, so much shouting, so much breaking glass. The flashing red and blue lights from outside only made it worse. My throat squeezed involuntarily and tears sprang to my eyes as terror filled me when I realized I couldn't catch my breath. I was having a panic attack. A pair of golden eyes came into focus, and I could hear my name being said over and over. I found myself being pulled upright, and I was only a few inches away from these beautiful golden orbs that peirced through the fog around me. First there where four sets, circling eachother. Then the four became two, and the two morphed back into one as the fuzziness of my vision faded and I could see the detail of Edward's face close to mine, asking If I could hear him. I finally managed to nod my head, and he helped me stand. I still couldn't catch my breath, and my head felt like it was splitting. The urge to cry was building rapidly in my chest, and I wanted to run out of the room badly but my knees felt too weak to move. My eyes caught a gleam of light, a reflection bouncing off black metal, and that's when my mind caught up to what was happening. Someone in the brawl had brandished a gun. My heart lept in my chest and I latched onto Edward's arm, my mind screaming to alert him but my damn mouth just couldn't get the words out. He became alarmed when we made eye contact, and thats when the shots rang out.
I watched a police cruiser pull away from the bar, the backseat holding the raging gunman. He had shot his opponant in the foot, but we all know it could've been so much worse. I sat on the short brick wall that stood flush against the bar, a place for smokers usually, as I watched a few police officers take statements from Edward as well as a few other witnesses. I held a zip-lock baggie of ice on the side of my head and pulled my jacket closer around me. It was late, and I was cold and tired and still trying to come down from my anxiety attack. After what felt like forever he finally came over to me and helped me up so we could walk home.
"I'm sorry about that," He started quietly. "this wasn't supposed to happen. How are you feeling?" I wanted to yell at him for convincing me to leave to house. I wanted to scream at him for all the awful memories that had been brought to the surface by this. I wanted to clobber him over the head for being the reason that I was cold and shaken, with a raging headache and dread in my stomach. But I knew it wasn't really his fault. He didn't have anything to do with the fight. My bubbling anger subsided when I felt his hand hovering at the small of my back, his fingertips making contact ever-so-slightly supporting my slow, careful steps home. This small touch, this barely-there contact, somehow gave me the small ability to whimper, asking him to please just get me home.
It felt like an eternity, but we finally made it back. Elric used his copy of my house key to open the door and gently ushered me inside shutting the door behind us. He tured on the side-table lamp casting the apartment in soft, low-wattage incandecense and my heart lurched. A tall and dark figure was standing on the opposite end of the room, near the windows in front of the master bedroom door. Someone was in my apartment, waiting for us. Fear had me frozen in place, but Ed moved in a flash. The gun that was previously hidden in his waistband was drawn on the figure and he was shouting for the man to put his hands up. We couldn't see any details, the room was too dark. We could only make out the silouette of the figure, his head cocked to the side in contemplation. After a few tense seconds went by with no movement from the figure and Ed's orders being ignored, he shifted his gun's aim and fired. The figure barely moved. Ed and I stared at eachother in confusion, then back at the man. His silouette swayed slightly from the bullet's contact with his leg, but he didn't utter so much as a moan. I watched Edward and could see the gears turning in his mind. His alert eyes snapped towards me.
"Turn on the ceiling light." I still couldn't move. My raging anxiety was back with full force and my chest was heaving. I felt stupid and useless, and it only made me want to cry. I felt him stride past me as he lowered his weapon and flipped the switch on the wall just past me. The sight I was met with was worse than anything I'd ever seen. My world went black and I crumpled to the floor, and I could vaguely recall hearing Ed shout my name over the static in my mind.