A/N: I hope you all enjoyed Lila's role in my story. When I started writing this I never actually intended to include her. A series of whims and random inspirations fueled her inclusion, and eventually, she became the dramatic foil that kept the story moving. I was always conscious of her existence as a tacked-on nemesis to Helga, however, and have been writing steadily towards her exit.
I wish Lila Sawyer nothing but the best. I treated her far more poorly than I ever intended. Craig Bartlett surely never intended her to be such a sinister villain!
She's done her part, now. This has always been a Helga and Arnold story, and now that she has done the hard work of airing out their closets, we can return to the core of the tale.
Let's all thank Lila in our hearts as we wish her the ultimate punishment for her twisted actions, and continue onwards in this sad tale of past love struggling to survive the present and make a future.
I may have exaggerated in two ways: 1) the time I would be away before an update. 2) how close we are to the end. I realized today I am not quite done jerking you around. Expect another 3 or so chapters after this one before the final chapter and then the epilogue. Sorry, not sorry.
Also, this chapter is rated pretty M. Be warned, there's some adult situations involving consenting adults to come.
On with the show!
Keeping Arnold: Chapter 17, There is No Kindness; There's a Different Kind of Crime
"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing." ― Sylvia Plath
Phoebe Hyerdhal knew turmoil.
Over the years she had been Helga Pataki's best friend, the studious, thoughtful young woman had run through the gamut of disasters and tragedies, and been part of and foiled far too many plots and schemes of sinister design. Fuzzy Slippers had been the preoccupation of her teenage mind for so long, she'd begun to understand and even adopt the various logical methods her once unknown foe used to navigate this unruly life. Most of the tools she had at her disposal prepared her for moments like these.
She still found herself rapidly trying to figure out what in the world was going on inside that closed house with Helga, Arnold, and Lila inside.
Phoebe loved her best friend. Truly loved her, in a profound way that sometimes shocked even her. Helga was very much a piece of her very body, and she was fiercely protective over her as if she was a lioness and Helga was her cub. She wanted with every fiber of herself to be with her right now, in her triumph or her trouble. But she knew that beyond the threshold of the door was a world that didn't belong to her. It was a particular universe only Helga, Arnold, and Lila occupied. She orbited it, and was keenly aware of her gravitational attraction to the triangle, but, she was not part of it.
So she held her breath and wished she had some nasty compulsive habit to satisfy while she spent these agonizing minutes waiting.
Finally, it happened. The door cracked open, slowly and quietly. That's a bad sign, Phoebe immediately recognized. No spirit, no energy. Something happened.
Helga bounced down the stoop, into the expectant, forgotten crowd. The door to the private universe closed behind her. Outside, in this tumult, there was only mess and disaster. Her friends were crowded around in an instant, expectant demands for the results flying from each of their mouths as fast as they could get the words out.
"What happened, Helga?" Rhonda demanded of her. Helga looked up at her, eyes staring right past her. Rhonda recoiled at the haunted, empty glare in Helga's tired expression.
"Nothing that any of you need to worry about. We're done here." Helga's tone was uncharacteristically curt. It worried Phoebe intensely.
"Just a minute, what does that mean," Gerald started to interject, but he stopped when he felt Phoebe's small hand touch his. He looked down at his side to see the concern on his girlfriend's face, understanding that something went wrong.
"It means it is none of our business what happens to her anymore," Helga spat. "Criminy with the Spanish Inquisition here! Some bullshit happened, and it has nothing to do with you! So scram! Get out of my face! MOVE!" A familiar light in Helga was seemingly lit when she was pressed.
Phoebe slipped up next to Helga, instinctively understanding that she needed to help. Here, she could be the friend Helga needed from time to time. That pillar of support that could rise up unbidden, from places Helga never expected but was always glad to have.
"I think it is exceptionally fair to say that we could all use some time to digest the events of today in a sober, responsible manner. It is therefore my recommendation that we disperse with all speed to our respective safe spaces, and calm down. One of our oldest friends was revealed to be out ultimate betrayer today. Gerald and myself, particularly, could use the time to come to terms that one of our best friends was leading the two of us along, hook, line, and sinker. There's wounds to tend to, both literal and figurative, so let us make the wise decision and regroup once we have given the events of today their deserved gravity and consideration over a healthy night's recuperation."
The crowd turned as a single unit to Gerald, expectantly.
"She means we gotta sleep on it, sheesh, ain't any of y'all read? Pick up a thesaurus, damn."
Phoebe glowed with pride at Gerald's annoyance at the crowd so stubbornly refusing to hear her. Sometimes her boyfriend did just the right things without ever needing to be told so. She loved him especially much those times.
Some shoving indicated that Helga had actually escaped the scene. She cleared the crowd with a barrage of cursing and rough pushing, finally walking quickly out of the crowded scene with the weight of absolute exhaustion crushing her every step away. Phoebe started after her, but it was Brainy that stopped her.
"No," he said, a hand up to firmly block her way. Phoebe was once again surprised by how much he communicated with so few words.
Helga needed to be alone, definitely so. The crowd began to disperse, with some talking of hanging out in groups and others openly longing for a lonely shower and an evening of Netflix bingeing, but more or less settling in their own routines of normal, everyday life. Somehow, Phoebe knew that this was not nearly over for them. They needed catharsis, somehow.
Because that was how her mind worked, Phoebe was already making the plans for how to give it to them.
"Babe," Phoebe finally heard Gerald interrupt her, as she stared off at Helga's back growing more distant down the block.
"Hm?"
"I've been calling you for damn near a minute, you okay?"
"Hm, I think so. As well as I can be, given the circumstances of today's events. I could use a drink, and a long hot bath. Oh that sounds lovely, now that I say it."
Gerald nudged her. "A bath? Sounds nice. Where they got a bathtub big enough for both of us? Maybe the Hilton downtown, but man those prices!"
Phoebe took a second to understand his meaning, and then bubbled in a delighted peak of laughter. "Gerald you charmer, I meant by myself. I love you, darling, but there's no way I will share a bath with you."
"HOLD up," Gerald held up a hand with a smile. "First of all I am gonna return to your dumbass bath statement in a minute. But did I just hear my girl say she loves me? You love me?"
Phoebe blinked with the terrible realization she had never said so, but that she did, in fact, love Gerald. The awkwardness of how this information came to light caused the petite girl to flush deeply in her pale cheeks. "Y-yes, I thought you knew," she awkwardly admitted.
"Naw, I mean, yeah, but, you said so. Damn! Wow. Hold on I gotta get my face to stop smiling to reply proper."
Phoebe became profoundly aware of all the remaining faces turned towards them in curiosity, watching with intent another Hillwood couple confess itself directly in front of them again. Phoebe twitched and fidgeted in anticipation, a warm squirming feeling in her lower abdomen rising at the awkward moment of love's first confession.
"I love you too, Phoebe," Gerald finally laughed. "Now c'mon let's go get somethin' to eat. I'm starved."
Phoebe figured she could begin the arduous task of plotting the Hillwood cathartic process after she had paid her boyfriend in gratitude for loving her so openly. The flutter in her belly demanded attention, and she longed to satisfy that call.
"Anywhere," she breathlessly confessed. "I'll go anywhere with you, Gerald."
His broad, bright smile on that handsomely toned face simply made her knees jelly every time. Even now, at what was effectively Ground Zero. It was a quality he had that she hoped would never diminish. He was her King in those moments.
"Good to hear, baby," he smirked. "You wanna wait to see if my man comes out? Maybe he can join us, I'd hate to leave my boy alone after all this."
"A fine notion, although I remain hesitant to intrude in this tender aftermath. Brian interceded on Helga's behalf, it leads me to believe we should allow Arnold the same sort of healing solitude that she is getting."
"Yeah you are probably right, but I wanna wait on him just the same. Gonna ask the man myself. Helga does most of her talking with the shit she pulls, but my Arnold will probably wanna say his piece."
Phoebe nodded at the wisdom of his assessment, lowering to sit on a step of the stoop. It occurred to her how massive these last 48 hours had seemed. So much had happened, crammed into such a short time, it was practically unreal. Exhaustion the type she had only ever theorized to be possible was beginning to creak into her joints and ache in her bones. A moment's respite was enough to remind her that she needed to recover.
If I'm this bad off, imagine poor Helga, she mused. She was surely ready to simply drop like a stone from the terrible exhaustion of it all. Finally defeating a lifelong nemesis, fleeing an angry lynch mob, and spending a day catching Arnold's toughest pitches, Helga was surely ragged.
Phoebe once again wished she had a bad habit to nurture while she waited for Arnold to emerge, sure that Helga needed some help.
She just didn't know what kind.
He doesn't love you.
It was easy enough to understand. Afterall the years, abuses, and dirty secrets, the good hearted Arnold had given it a try and just didn't feel the same as she did.
Hey, at least he was nice enough to try.
The sting wasn't nearly as painful as she had always imagined it finally would be. It didn't feel like anything, actually, it was more like the totally unfamiliar sensation of a total lack of something. Helga felt like disappointment and despair ought to be crushing her to death, squeezing her heart shut, and emptying her veins out all over the concrete of Hillwood. But Helga felt a sort of absolutely numb, logical silence in her soul, a mysteriously clean nothing that made her feel quite...calm.
How different this felt from the disastrous manic dissociation from the night before. Where that was a mad, tangled riot of confusion, blinding pain, and what can only be described as a lightning of the mind, this was a lead, cold feeling of being absolutely within the boundaries of herself, and knowing the entire empty expanse - every wrinkle, every bruise.
Helga felt the ground pushing back up onto her feet, rather than the fall of footsteps carrying her weight. It was a fascinating new sensation, quite like she was only being held in place by the kiss of the earth on her baseball sneakers, and if that contact lapsed for too long, she and her empty cold shell would just lift off the ground and float away.
It was a nice thought, the idea of simply going away. Am I going away now? She wondered, unsure if she had any idea where she was going. Home maybe? A shower would be nice. She could cry in a shower, if she needed to cry.
Are there any tears left in me for Arnold Shortman? She wondered. So many tears had squeezed out of her, distilled by perfect longing and teenage despair, refined into absolute suffering that burned her eyes and cheeks, and left her a hot swollen red mess. She didn't feel much like crying, actually. She realized, she felt like laughing.
"It's all so funny," she heard herself begun to talk as she neared the apartment she shared with Brainy. "I spend my whole life pining after the stupid football headed idiot from a distance, and miserable for it. I finally confess my stupid feelings and the punchline is that he tries to love me back and can't. Hahaha!"
Laughter the color of dessert wine and the scent of steel escaped her, carried in the wind of her lungs that was as stale as old furnace smoke.
"And Lila's done, finished, buried in her defeat, but it didn't matter in the end because he believed her first! Of course Helga could have done all those things, she's Helga! Awful, terrible, mean-spirited, scheming Helga. Always a bully, Helga. A stupid, smart-mouthed, hard-hearted fear monger that ruled the schoolyard with a glare and a snarl. That's me!
"And Lila was perfect and paralyzed and pretty and of course he believed her! What a simple conclusion, perfectly logical! I can't even complain he came to it! It's what anyone would think!"
Helga started up the steps to her apartment door, hand automatically fishing her keys free as she had the nicest conversation with herself about the end of the world.
"I can't even be mad at the sweet stupid kid because he did his best, bless him, he kissed me and fucked me and tried his best to care. Sweet, simple boy. That's what I wanted. That's what I expected. Everything went exactly to plan and I tricked him just enough to get the one night I wanted. Everything worked out great!"
She stepped into the cleaned apartment, Brian and Phoebe's hard work evident. She dropped her keys on the kitchen table as she automatically proceeded to her room and the sole bathroom, peeling off her shirt as she talked.
"And he's committed to one last date with me, that stupid lovely idiot, what a boon. I'm thankful," she grunted as she turned the hot water of her shower on, the quickly steaming water screaming forth as it was summoned. "I have so much to be thankful for!"
Helga stepped out of her dirt-caked shorts, then the sweat-soaked panties, and lumbered into the blissfully razor-like heat of the shower on full blast. She let the outrageous heat of the water pelt her forehead and silver-white bangs, standing dully with her bra still on for a few full minutes before an arm mechanically swung to her back and popped it free. She shrugged it off and let it fall to the tub in the collecting pool of water at her feet, sweat and red dirt tinting the tub as it soaked from her undergarment.
Realizing she probably didn't want to ruin one of her bras, she grumbled and stooped down, flicking it still-soaked out of the shower in the general direction of the sink and counter, aiming as best she could haphazardly manage. How much time had passed in her solitary walk back to her apartment? Half an hour or so? Time seemed like a distant, pesky resource that simply trickled away from her unceasingly, while she only dimly perceived its steady flight away from her.
Somewhere in the space of wondering about the time, she'd started to wash herself. It was rote muscle memory, just mechanical maintenance of the husk she inhabited, an obligation of ritual. She felt nothing, even as the heat of the shower steamed her fair skin pink and red. She felt nothing except the massive yawning gulf inside her that she'd been psychically staring at since she left that stoop.
"I guess I've got to make this date count," she finally spoke to herself again, staring at the foaming accumulation of soap and red dirt washing against her feet under the cascade of the shower's waters. "There won't be a repeat. This, and last night, are the two things Arnold's giving to me. I guess as his parting gift, that softy. What a sentimental boob. What a...what a fool."
She became aware that at some point in her speech, she'd begun to finally shed the last tears she had for Arnold Shortman.
"What a stupid, lovable fool," she whispered against the grasping lump of emotion in her throat. Her fists balled, then lowered to her sides as she began to slowly crouch. The ground was pushing up against her more and more, clasping itself to her with that precious contact. She lay as much as her lanky, muscled form would allow, reclining in the tub, the coursing stream of steaming water spraying her bare breasts and belly. She knew she needed to let the ground push her up as much as possible, to keep her weight buoyed with the insistence of its reach up, and up. She needed that press from below so she didn't fly apart, suddenly bereft of any substance inside and terribly, terribly light.
Helga Pataki lay in her bath tub, shower pounding endlessly, and finished all the crying she'd ever do again for the boy she loved but couldn't love her, tear by tear, sob by sob. Only once did the volume of her mourning wail reach past the insistent hiss of the shower head, so private were the last moments of her dirge.
The emptying of Helga's heart was a surprisingly gentle gesture, in the end.
Arnold closed the front door of the Pataki household with all the business of Lila firmly sorted and behind him, literally shutting the door on that mess of his life once and for all. Everything would sort itself out, in the end.
Miriam Pataki was surprisingly alert, sober, and attentive when Arnold very firmly told her what was going to happen. She seemed to agree, adding her own ideas about the whole situation whenever she could. Arnold quite patiently had also offered her a place to stay at the boarding house should anything happen to her. The gesture clearly had touched her, though Olga assured him it would never be necessary.
Regardless, Arnold had left without another word to Lila. The last image he had of her was her sitting with a wan smile on her face, eyes closed, in the solitude of the living room he left her in.
It's over. Arnold breathed in a heavy sigh, expecting the crowd but surprised to see…nobody.
Almost nobody.
Gerald leaned his head back so he could see Arnold from his spot sitting on the stoop steps facing away from the door.
"Finally done?"
Arnold nodded and went to sit next to him. The two of them sat in thoughtful silence, Arnold silently thankful he had such a considerate best friend to stick around. Really, to stay by him after all these years was pretty remarkable. He said so.
"Gerald, thanks for sticking by me for so long. I know I've been a handful lately. Glad to know I got someone in my corner."
Gerald shrugged and smiled for his friend. "Arnold my man, you're the only sidekick I got. Gotta make sure you don't stay in trouble for too long, man."
Arnold cracked a smile, just tickled enough at the thought that he was Gerald's sidekick. Really, that was probably true, he realized with an amused thought. Of the two of them, Gerald had his shit way more put together. Easily, he was the cool frontman of the group, and Arnold was just the messy busybody always stirring trouble. He liked the thought. It made him feel less like he was always the cause of every problem.
Every orphan blames themselves for being alone.
Gerald was apparently waiting for the right time to say something, Arnold could tell by the way he kept licking his lips like he was about to start a big speech. It was an old habit from when they were kids. Even all grown up, Arnold still saw that snot-nosed lanky braggart from his childhood in his best friend.
"Don't keep me waiting, Gerald, I still got a date to get cleaned up for. Say whatever it is on your mind. I'm your best friend."
"I guess why I hesitate is 'cause I don't know if that will still be true after all I gotta say," Gerald chuckled. "Sounds silly when I say that shit out loud."
"That is silly. We're basically brothers man. Almost were if your sister had her way that one time."
Gerald laughed at the memory of when his kid sister had crushed on Arnold hard.
"Yeah, I suppose you're right on. I just gotta bust your chops a bit man. You mind if I'm honest?"
Arnold smiled and shook his head. "I could use some more honesty in my life, Gerald. By all means."
"Aiight man just know I'm gonna give you a rough time 'cause you need someone to knock some sense into you. Bad."
"Knock away."
Gerald went quiet, seeming to compose his thoughts, staring up at the sky. Arnold listened to the street noises and the beating of his own heart while he waited for the talking-to he so badly deserved and needed. It would feel good to get some reprimand for what he was sure was a week - no, a lifetime - misspent.
Finally, Gerald started speaking.
"I think you left a big piece of yourself here in Hillwood when you left and I think you never got it back. When we talk I don't sense that crazy, bold optimism that you just...just flagrantly defied anyone to challenge you on. You used to be the wildest kid I knew, man, stupid wild, just about willing to do anything and take any risk to set something right that didn't sit with you. Maybe that's still somewhat true, I don't know anyone our age out chasing illusion justice in South America."
"I think I know what you mean, though." Arnold had to agree, he'd lost that special reckless spark once he found his parents. Now he had something worth living for. Something precious he couldn't risk losing. It made him too cautious, perhaps. Even if he chased drug smugglers with his family.
"And I dunno I guess it just, just wrecked you. You're in stupid pieces, dude. All over the place with your motivations and desires and actions. I can't predict what the hell you'll do one moment to the next but I know it will probably seem stupid. Not bold. Stupid."
"I deserve that one," Arnold winced. He had been acting quite, quite stupid.
"Helga…" Gerald paused, seeing the light in Arnold's eyes when he mentioned her. "She worked her fuckin' ass off for this reunion. I know she's spent her whole life waiting for it, damn girl said so in her letters she put on display. And even though you guys ended up reconciling I guess, it just feels...off. Like, where's the smiles and happy ending, man? This shit don't feel right. And I know it ain't her fault this time. So that makes it yours. You know how shit that feels to say? It's your fault this shit isn't right. I wish I could side with you on this one. But I can't, Arnold. I just can't."
Arnold was quiet for a few minutes, digesting the thrust of Gerald's argument. He'd made a mess of things in his return. Every step seemed like a mistake to him now, even when they had positive results. Where was that guiding light of confidence he'd known as a kid?
"And I think the problem is nobody has ever told you to your face how stupid you can be, and how wrong you are sometimes. I think you left Hillwood the wrong way, for the right reason. I think you came back to Hillwood the right way for the wrong reason. And I think everything having to do with Helga so far has been done wrong for the wrong reasons. And forget Lila for a second,"
"Oh I am done with her." Arnold interjected.
"Yeah so forget her for a second 'cause that shit is past us now. You gotta do right. You gotta do right by Helga and by yourself. Don't do the right thing for the wrong reason or the wrong thing for the right reason. Be right and do right. Whatever that is."
Arnold nodded, understanding completely.
"I'm going to make more mistakes, though, Gerald, I'm not perfect."
"Oh I know that man, I'm not saying not to make any more mistakes. You're Arnold, you fuck up repeatedly. But there's a world of difference from trying to do the right thing for the right reasons and being wrong versus knowing you are wrong and doing it anyway."
"So...wise, friend. What should I do?"
"You've always been the bold one, Arnold, not me. I do the smart thing, cause I'm not half as stupid as you, my friend. But that means you're free to do a stupid thing if it's the right thing. So just...try to do right by Helga, I guess."
Arnold chewed those simple words of wisdom thoughtfully, tasting their measure and truth. Gerald was right. Regardless how he felt if he had failed her, betrayed her in his heart, whatever other high-minded, romantic notions he had, if she loved him this much, she deserved him.
He knew what he had to do.
Slowly, Arnold stood on creaking, pissed-off legs. He still hadn't had a chance to stretch his legs properly since pitching for Helga all morning, and needed to clean off for their date.
"Thanks, Gerald. I got a date to catch. Real romantic spot, so I hear, and with a total knockout. Can't keep her waiting."
Gerald nodded, staying put.
"You gonna be okay, man?" Gerald asked.
"Yeah. I am. Thanks for the talk. You're right about everything. I think you set me down the right path. Thank you."
Gerald nodded solemnly. "Always listen to me, my friend. Gerald Johannsen always knows best."
Arnold fist-bumped his best friend and set off to the boarding house to get cleaned up and ready. Gerald waited until his friend was out of sight, and slowly stood up. He turned to face the front door of the Patakis, clearly wrestling with a decision. He rose two steps, and held his hand out to take the front door knob. Anger etched the lines of his face, a deep frown pulling the sides of his cheeks down. His hand rest on the door for a split second, then lifted off.
Shaking his head, he turned and skipped down the steps of the stoop, and walked across the street to meet Phoebe somewhere far away from Lila Sawyer.
Helga stood to finish her shower once she noticed the heat begin to wane from the downpour. She very quickly and efficiently washed her hair and scrubbed her skin with a dispassionate precision, getting out just in time for the water to start getting icy cold.
The steam of her prolonged soak had fogged the bathroom mirror beneath the large bulbous vanity lights, obscuring her features into a Helga-esque blob. She dripped in place, groping for a towel to at least get herself dried off before she started shivering.
Routine fell into place. After towel drying her hair she decided she should blow dry it and give it a thorough brushing, to really make that silvery bleach job shine. The treatment had made her hair cloud-soft and so light it seemed like it would just lift off her head once she had thoroughly dried and combed it. That ought to draw the eye, she mused with a kind of detached amusement.
I ought to be giddy with anticipation. And freaking out a tiny bit. Helga stared at the long haired siren in the foggy mirror, which she wiped into clarity with her tired hands. The well developed musculature of her shoulders and arms, the modest but still alluring swell of her breasts, the secretly cute and dainty nipples; Helga was a knockout topless. She liked that about herself, and normally, she would be nervous sick about showing her torso off in the little black dress she had picked for just this very occasion, but instead, she was merely regarding the grace and beauty of her body as a museum curator might assess his enviable collection of masterworks.
Her cell phone rumbled, lighting up with a text from Phoebe on the lock screen.
"Are you all right?"
Helga snorted and replied quickly.
"Last I checked I have a left foot and a left hand."
The outraged reply came quick.
"Helga be serious! I'm concerned!"
"Hi concerned, I'm Helga. Why did your parents name you that by the way?"
"I take it by your flippant replies you're fine! Where are you?"
"Home. Prepping for the date."
Helga sent Phoebe a closeup shot of her pursed lips for emphasis. Had to keep the appearance up that all was well.
"Do you need my help?"
Helga yearned at the text on her cellphone screen. Absolutely, she wanted Phoebe there to comfort her, to worry over her, and to prop her up in this time of emotional desolation. But Helga was through with the dramatics of herself. She was done with everything. She would continue being alive, being Helga, and she'd pursue her interests and her amusements and the little flavors of her particular corner of the universe with genuine sincerity.
But she was done living.
There was no point to pursuing a life worth suffering for, any longer. A life without that suffering edge of tragedy wasn't really living, it was just occupation. Or preoccupation, to be more precise; Helga's life was hereafter a collection of pleasurable preoccupations, and nothing more. Helga's passion was snuffed out, and with it, everything she would willingly weep or mourn, everything she would struggle and strife for. She had resigned herself to this pitiable, pithy existence as she allowed her heart to finally finish breaking over Arnold Shortman.
A wounded heart may heal, given time and proper nourishment of affection. A broken heart is broken forevermore.
And so it was that New Helga plucked up the phone and gave her merry reply, no hint of the devastation that was lying beneath her happy mask.
"You know I'm not sure if he's into threesomes but I'll definitely ask. Been dyin' to see that cute little caboose a'yers in action for ages now. Do some stretching, he's hung."
That ought to shut her up, she chuckled to herself. Phoebe had a perverse streak in her, Helga knew, but any hint of impropriety from her tall blonde best friend was usually enough to overheat the half-pint faster than anything. Freedom to finish primping for this date. The thought made her frown.
How far would she go? How far indeed, just last night you were his perfect little sex kitten, and now you're all in conflicted knots over the idea?
Helga scowled at herself in the mirror, rubbing a rose-scented moisturizing cream into her cheeks.
"How far will you go?" She demanded of herself, studying every tiny flaw she saw in the disturbing reflection staring back at her. "As far as he goes, any time he wants, anywhere. That's where. You've finished the war, Helga old girl, it's time to enjoy the spoils. Don't you dare ask for his heart when the rest of him was hard fought enough. Coward. Hoarder. Slut. If he kisses you, take that kiss. If he fucks you, fuck him back twice as hard. And if he rejects you, so be it. If there's nothing left between you, not even this," she grabbed her bare breasts for emphasis, holding eye contact with that awful specter in the mirror. "Then there's nothing left between you at all. And you accept that. You already have. There's no more tears left in this body for him. If there's friendship left to spare, be glad you can even manage that."
She broke eye contact with herself, and quickly splashed water on her face to shake her gathering nerves. It seemed she was still not quite impervious to the anxiety of uncertainty, despite her hardened heart.
Her cell phone had come alive with fussy, meddling texts from her concerned and scandalized best friend during her little pep talk. Helga busied herself with intermittent, partially flirtatious and intermittent replies to Phoebe while she finished getting dressed and her makeup on.
She didn't look in the mirror the same way again. There was nothing in her eyes when she looked there except the windows to an empty attic that used to have a box labeled Important, but now merely held dust and memory.
Arnold adjusted his tie for what felt like the ten thousandth time, absolutely sure that the half Windsor knot was an insidious invention by a seven-fingered madman born without morals or empathy. He'd had his grandfather or his dad to tie all his ties until this point of his life, and he'd quickly discovered that observation makes a poor teacher when you are attempting to mime the movements in the reversed image of a mirror.
At last, he'd given in and had his grandfather help him after all.
He'd watched his grandad at approximately eye level as Phil patiently undid the mess Arnold had made of the simple knot in order to re-tie the fine lavender silk garment once again. Phil's knowing, paternal smile belied how proud he was of his grandson, the slightest hint of amusement in his gap-toothed grin.
Grandpa Phil sent him off with a crisp twenty dollar bill, tucking it lengthwise into Arnold's grey suit jacket pocket conspiratorially with a wink.
"This is for the garçon, my boy. Slip him this baby and you'll get the soup they don't wizz in, you know for the good customers."
Arnold couldn't help but laugh as he nodded, plucking the twenty from his pocket and replacing it with a small lavender pocket square, the same silk fabric as the tie. Together the two accessories set off the slightly off-white natural cotton of his dress shirt, a conservative South American cut with pearl snap buttons and an almost raw look to the material. It was very smart under his grey wool suit, not quite an Armani but you'd never tell the difference for the quality of cut and fit. The suit had been a present from Phil, as had the tie and pocket square.
Arnold sat to tie the rich brown wingtip leather dress shoes he'd brought from home, the flash of his silver wrist bangle peeking out from the cuff of his shirt and jacket. He'd dabbed to his wrists and throat a natural cologne he'd bought from a hemp farmer in Nicaragua, something with nag champa, orange blossom, and musk.
He even allowed some tentative styling of that wild hair, mostly just constructively mussing it into a loosely defined part off the left ear.
It turned out that when he took the situation seriously, Arnold cleaned up very well.
He'd been frank with Grandpa Phil, of course, telling him he had a serious date with Helga.
"Oh you and that unibrow girl are finally sealing the deal, eh? Good for you Arnold, I always liked her spunk. A'course, not as fecund as pretty miss Sawyer, but goodness gracious who could be? Except your grandmother of course."
"Grandma was...fecund?" Even asking the question felt gross, but Arnold was nothing if not voraciously curious about his family.
Lurid details twinkled in his grandfather's eye, but the grinning sprightly old man didn't answer except for a wink.
"Go on, Shortman, don't keep her waiting now."
Arnold's quick walk to the restaurant seemed to pass him in a total blur. Logically, he knew it took about twenty minutes by foot to reach the little French eatery, and yet he couldn't tell you a single event that had transpired or a single sight he laid eyes on for the entire duration of his walk.
For Arnold, his path took him clearly, directly to where Helga stood in front of the restaurant, face kissed with a slightly indifferent frown while she waited for his arrival.
He slowed to take in the details.
Helga had chosen a simple, little black dress. A low sweeping collar, off-the-shoulder cut number with a deep back that fell about three inches below the centerpoint of her shoulder blades. It was slit above the knee, and shimmered slightly with the sheen of a sheer fabric. Arnold imagined it felt quite supple against her body, and became instantly agitated at the thought.
Her arms and wrists were bare save for a small silver wristwatch, barely visible but for the glint of the sterling against the warm streetlight. She checked the watch, still unaware of Arnold's approach. He used the moment to get a better look at her in a candid peek.
Her lips were subtly pinker, glossy, with a more intense berry shade towards the center of her cupid's arch. Tasteful contouring made her appear to be wearing almost no makeup at all, but Arnold could tell that she'd done it up. For me. He knew this was true.
She was wearing a pair of black peep toe pumps, as well, with little ankle-strap buckles to accentuate her shapely calves. Her legs were otherwise bare and visible up to the top of the knee. She held a little cat-face shaped clutch purse - a cute little affectation Arnold hadn't anticipated. It looked like she was wearing pearls in her ears, or something else small and silvery white.
Which set off the high twist of her slightly curled silvery white hair quite nicely. Little curls fell at the nape of her neck and in front of her ears. She'd obviously spent time making her hair look like a delicate, high puffy cloud.
The overall effect was stunning. Simple, understated even, but undeniably feminine.
Helga is beautiful, Arnold realized all over again. His stomach felt tight and hot and squirmy just looking at her. His knees almost didn't cooperate to carry him forward.
Something else made him hesitate, as well. She looked bored.
She looked utterly uninterested in her surroundings, more accurately. As if she was there merely to participate. No trace of excitement, no bounce in the long legs which were so tantalizingly pushed up by the tasteful little black pumps. She was stock still, maybe even impatient
I hope I didn't come too late, he suddenly worried. Closing the distance quickly, he checked his time. He was a little early. What's her deal? Another mystery from Helga Pataki.
"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," he finally called out once he was close enough to be heard at a low volume. He was maybe five or six feet away from her, and could just make out the scents of honeysuckle and coconut in her perfume.
Helga dropped her clutch purse, blue eyes wide with abject surprise. Her mouth hung open, clearly shocked at the sight of Arnold cleaned up before her. Her big eyes blinked rapidly, and she finally closed her mouth and stammered out a response.
"I-I-I wasn't waiting long, football head…" She had gathered her jaw off the ground, it seemed, but was still lost in the sight of him. He had to admit, he felt the same about her. She was just a knockout. He felt quite nervous, just being in her presence.
"Good," he managed, awkwardly gesturing to the front door of the restaurant off to the side. "Shall we dine, mademoiselle?"
Helga almost choked on a single outburst of laughter as she was stooping to get her dropped purse off the ground. Standing, she shook her head with a slightly sad-seeming smile. "You know I don't think I'll ever stop being surprised when you speak other languages."
"Oh I don't speak French, not fluently, just enough to insult a cab driver by mistake. I just speak Spanish and Portuguese."
"Oh only Spanish and Portuguese."
"And the aboriginal language of the Green Eyes Tribe."
Helga tucked a coil of hair behind her ear, just shaking her head again with a mystified smile. "See? Never stop surprising me."
Arnold felt his heart in his throat when he managed to get out, "I never will."
Helga and he stared at each other, the atmosphere between them unmistakably charged. The chemistry between them was so profound, so singular, Arnold couldn't help but marvel at how comfortable it felt.
Is that why you doubted her, ultimately? Is that why your heart betrayed her? Arnold felt the ugly thoughts come unbidden, but they came nonetheless.
"Let me get the door for you," he finally spoke, breaking his thoughtful silence, and her strangely submissive deference to his musing. She felt different somehow.
Probably just me noticing the difference in going on a proper date with her finally, Arnold figured. Some part of him had to rationalize the slightly unexpected air that so far characterized their date.
"Yeah I guess I'll let you do that. Don't bother pulling out my seat though. The wait staff does that anyway." Helga patted Arnold on the shoulder as she passed him through the open door, and Arnold got a good look at the slightly distant look to her eyes.
Chalking it up to stress from the day, once again dodging the elephant in the room with the adroit deftness of a seasoned football player with shit hot jukes, Arnold checked in their reservation, and in short order they were seated at an intimately small circular table, tucked against a brick wall with a large Edgar Degas print hanging in a faux gold frame.
Not bad for Hillwood, Arnold thought, his gaze casting over the intimate, clever decor. It wasn't Michelin starred by any stretch of the imagination, but such ostentatiousness wouldn't settle with Arnold's sensibilities. The humble approach to elegance charmed him. He realized he'd sat down without acknowledging his date, and re-focused his attention on Helga.
She was staring at him.
The whole time they sat down, she'd kept that same distant, slightly sad-seeming smile on her face, hands folded under her chin, resting on her elbows. A small votive candle in a fat little merry red glass flickered amber light on her striking features.
He studied her face closely, scrutinizing her adult appearance intimately for the second time since he came to Hillwood. The first had been their disastrous coffee date.
Puberty had ultimately been kind to Helga. She'd always had a slightly bulbous nose, and big ears that stuck out from her head, and a strong chin that was prone to pulling her frown into a scowl. Of course, as a kid, she'd had that powerful unibrow. She'd always had plump lips with a big cupid's bow, but as a kid it just made her snarl seem more menacing. And her hair - long, silky, straight, soft - had that precocious habit of sticking straight off her head in the ubiquitous twin pigtails she wore.
As a grown woman sitting across her, he could see the ghosts of those features - some would call them flaws - in the striking beauty she'd become. Her nose had kept its round tip, but the lengthening of her face made it less clownishly bulbous, and more button-like. Her head had caught up to her ears in the end. That chin now gave her face an almost almond shape, even when it carried her frowns and scowls. The unibrow was now bisected into two very prominent, bold eyebrows, kept no less dark over her eyes, and just as prone to arching in anger. Her lips had taken a sensuous fill to them, and made that frown all the more scandalizing. And that soft silky hair, now a ghostly silvery white, looked like a big soft cloud of spun moonlight.
She just looked beautiful. Arnold felt like he'd never get tired of her face. He longed to tell her so, but the anxious strain in his heart as he studied that wan smile kept his flood of compliments at bay.
He settled for small talk.
"I'm really glad we're finally doing this," he said as he plucked up a menu to break eye contact. He was aware she didn't do the same, and merely stared at him from behind the menu.
"Yeah, it's nice," she admitted. "You clean up great." Even her compliment sounded somewhat remorseful.
"Why thank you Helga, it's nice to hear you say so." Arnold tilted the menu down to smile at her. "I, uh, got too nervous to say so but you look absolutely beautiful tonight. You...clean up great, too."
Helga's eyebrows knitted and she flushed just slightly, looking away to bite her lip with a small smile. It seemed his words still mattered to her a great deal.
"I'm glad we got all that pitching in today," Arnold continued, setting the menu down on the table, forgetting it entirely to focus on her. "It felt great to slam some pitches into my partner's glove again. It's been way too long."
"P-partner?" Helga continued to remain being flushed.
"Yeah. That's how I saw it, anyway."
"I did, too," she replied softly, and left it at that.
Silence, the enemy of all dates, seeped into the space between them. Arnold pawed at topics to discuss while they waited to order, simply too nervous to act naturally. "I can't believe you're such a talented musician, too," he finally said, keeping the compliments rolling. "That whole concert was amazing, I didn't have a chance to say so yet. Too bad about your guitar."
Helga shrugged her bare shoulders, moving quickly to sip from her glass of ice-chilled water rather than answer him.
"I mean, it's all smashed up now right?" Arnold pressed, hoping to get her talking to him. Why's she being so quiet? Is she nervous?
"Yeah, generally when you smash a guitar it stays that way. Don't worry about it, Arnold, there's other guitars out there."
"Wasn't that one special?"
Helga leveled a stare at him. "Yes. What's it matter? I destroyed it, now it's gone. Move on, football head."
Arnold shrugged, not quite getting it. "Do you want me to fix it? I'm pretty handy with woodworking, I've done a lot of carpentry in South America."
"No, Arnold," she sighed. "I don't think you'd be able to do anything for it since it's splintered into a million pieces, and anyway, I'm done writing and playing music."
Arnold was shocked. He was sure she saw the disbelief on his face. "Done? What do you mean you're done writing and playing music?"
Helga clucked her tongue, crossing her arms in front of herself defensively. "Just what I said. What are you hard of hearing, football head? I gotta draw you a diagram or something? What do you need it played back to you on a recording before you'll believe what I say?"
Arnold blinked, slapped with stinging sharpness at the cut of her words. She's still upset about Lila. Obviously, Arnold had been avoiding that particular issue, to his detriment. Helga returned to a slight frown, icy silence overtaking the pause in their conversation.
"I didn't mean it like that," Arnold returned after a moment to let her comment sink in. "I was just trying to be nice."
"Yeah, I know, and you're very good at it. But it's also going to to be the end of you."
"Probably so," Arnold tried to smile, desperate to get the conversation - really, their entire date - back to happier territory. "It's already landed me in hot water more times than I care to admit. I didn't mean anything by that, though. Let's move on, I don't want to spoil our date."
"Yeah it'd be a pity if our long-awaited date was spoiled by some unintentionally stupid but well-meaning mistake you made," Helga snapped back, and then shut her mouth with a pronounced click of her teeth. Arnold stared at her. Something is definitely wrong. I've upset her somehow, maybe even before the date even started. It has something to do with Lila.
"I've messed up somewhere, didn't I?" Arnold finally asked, desperate to fix the evening. His stomach was in sickly knots.
A look of pity and compassion caressed Helga's angry features into a more gentle, patient smile. "Oh yeah, big time. But, you just made me realize I've been ruining the date I've been dreaming of my whole life. I'm sorry, can we start over? I'll be nicer this time, scout's honor."
"You were never a scout," Arnold cautiously teased.
"Hey, true, but they're notoriously honorable. I can invoke their solemn name in an attempt to make peace, can't I football head?"
"Whatever you say, Helga," Arnold laughed.
"Hey there he is!" Helga smiled, reaching a hand out experimentally on the table. Arnold placed his larger hand in hers, and squeezed it. "I'm really glad we're doing this, I really am. I'm just a mess over this stupid Fuzzy Slippers thing. I still want to go wring Lila's stupid sexy neck. It's only been a couple of hours since all that stuff happened; a shower's not gonna wash it all away and makeup won't cover up my frown. I'm sorry."
Arnold felt the tension in his stomach untie, ease up, and wash away at her kindness.
"I'm the one who should be sorry," Arnold started, intending to tell her everything. He was about to confess the error in his heart when the chips fell that day, and drench her in the sorrowful remorse he had for how much doubt he'd felt, how difficult it was for him to trust her on faith. And ultimately, he would tell her how he realized thanks to Gerald's help that none of that mattered, it could be worked past, and he would do right by her. But as he looked into her slightly sad smile, those big blue eyes almost watering as they stared into his, Arnold made his final, fatal mistake that would haunt him for many months to come.
He didn't choose fight.
"...I didn't really want to think about today, so I was trying to change the subject." He technically told her the truth, but it wasn't the full scope of what he was thinking.
"It's fine," Helga assured him. "We don't have to talk about that tonight. I'd rather if we didn't, actually."
"I'd rather talk about us, myself." Arnold admitted.
"Us?" Her lips twitched into a twist of a grin at the word.
"Well, Helga," he started, taking a big breath to steady himself for what he had rehearsed saying.
A throat clearing itself politely at their table interrupted him just before he was about to get started. The waiter. Of course, he would arrive to delay this inevitable moment.
"Let's wait till after the grub, hairboy. I hope you brought your good credit cards, 'cause I brought my appetite."
"Charming, Helga."
The waiter did his best to not awkwardly smile at the couple, knowing that something intimate had been briefly paused by his presence. Luckily, he was good enough at his job that the interference was short lived, and their orders quickly taken along with the small, simple menus.
"It's a shame neither of us would pass for 21, I could use some wine," Helga sighed once the waiter had left them. "I've heard good things about this stuff called Merlot, mostly that it's like a fistful of berries socked you in the jaw and got you drunk. My kinda time."
Arnold snickered, nodding. "I can only imagine what kind of hellion you become drunk."
"Hellion, you cad? How dare you, first of all, and secondly, fuck you." Helga flicked some water at Arnold with a fingertip dipped into her glass, resting her cheek on her other hand.
"Hey, watch it! Believe it or not, I actually did try to make myself look nice for like an hour."
"Just an hour? Male privilege."
Arnold and Helga laughed together, and it almost sounded genuine from her, just almost. Noticing the slightly affected difference slowly brought Arnold's laughter to an end. The pair studied each other with slightly dishonest smiles in silence, neither aware that the reason they were faking it was just beneath the surface. Arnold finally broke the silence, folding his hands together on the table and leaning closer before he slowly began to speak.
"Helga, as much as I love goofing off with you, I would kick myself for life if I didn't say what I've been meaning to say."
"Arnold, wait." Helga interrupted him, looking down at the table, her hands gripping the edge of the tablecloth with white knuckles, trembling slightly.
"I'm sorry, are you okay?" Arnold suddenly became concerned. She looked so...fragile. It was not a sight he wanted to see.
"Arnold, I know how you really feel." Her voice barely carried across the tiny space between them, she whispered it so tightly. "And you don't have to say anything. I understand. We don't have to ruin this nice night, this perfect little date I've been dreaming about since I was three, do we?"
She looked up at him, a profound, bottomless sadness creasing her pretty face. Arnold was shook to his core by that expression. It was like staring in the eyes of a dying woman in her final moments.
"And...and this night can go anywhere you want it to. I'm fine with...whatever you decide. I'm just happy to have it. That you've given me this dream. I'm not ready to let go just yet, I thought I was, but I'm not. I just want tonight. I'll be fine after that. Is that okay?"
Arnold tried not to gape at her, but could barely help the surprised expression he was wearing. What does she think is happening? What have I done to her to make her so timid?
"Helga," he started to try to argue with her, to figure out this strange dissonance in her behavior, but something stopped him short. She was begging him for a calm, drama-free date. Maybe she was just tired of the drama between them, all the misery and misfortune and mistakes. Maybe she was just sick of the back-and-forth, the uncertainty, the madness. Maybe to do right by her, he had to just agree with her wishes, and not belabor the issue with his clumsy confessions of love. If she didn't want to hear him say he loved her just yet, he'd wait, even if he didn't understand why.
"I get it. I'll wait until the evening is over, okay?"
Helga looked both relieved and heartbroken. It was so confusing for him to twist around this painful romance game with her, and her baffling expressions just pushed the pain deeper.
"Okay, football head. Once the date is over, I'll...let you say what I already know. I guess it's better that way, so there's no possibility for confusing the issue. We'll put the nail in the coffin. Until then, tell me I'm pretty and buy me expensive food and pretend like everything is fine, okay?"
"Deal. And I won't be pretending, everything is great. I have a pretty date that makes me laugh, what could be better?" Arnold's kind smile seemed to relax her a bit, melting the tension like the rays of the sun.
"The passionate, desperate, messy sex at the end of the date?" Helga flashed him a brilliant grin. There's the foul-mouthed girl I love, he rejoiced.
I just have to wait to tell her so, he understood at last. Happily ever after had to come cleanly, or not at all. As he laughed at her dirty joke, he resolved to do it the right way for the right reason at last.
Helga leaned back in her chair, rubbing her belly rustically, a massive, unctuous French meal pressing up against her dress satisfyingly.
"Shit, those Frenchies can cook," she said. Arnold chuckled for the thousandth time that evening. At least he's put at ease finally, she was glad to realize. It had taken a lot of work to ameliorate his worries, a lot of playful banter and flirting, and Helga was mentally exhausted. How did LIla do this her whole life? Helga wondered, silently respecting her hated rival's stamina.
After she'd begged Arnold to hold off on dumping her outright in the middle of the date, his mood had gone from optimistically playful to downright grim and determined. Getting him off that track and back onto the optimistic, joyful Arnold she loved and wanted to remember was hard work.
But now, as they relaxed and enjoyed the warming sensation of being full of animal fats and starches, she was able to relax herself again with her work finally paying off.
"I didn't know you could cook and stuff an animal with all the other animals until today," Arnold groaned, holding his hand over his eyes as if to hide from God for the gluttonous behavior he'd just displayed. Helga took the moment to smile fondly at the boy she'd be saying goodbye to soon, genuinely thankful for this last evening. She'd already mourned him, said her goodbyes in theory. But it was a different thing altogether to actually pull it off in person. It was a bit like having your arm trapped under a huge boulder and needing to cut it off yourself to survive with a tiny survival knife.
"Stick with me, Arnold, you'll learn a lot more about animals and stuffing," Helga teased. She'd flirted quite sexually with him, boldly daring to hint at her willingness to do whatever he suggested or desired. From where she sat, her body was just about one of the last things she had to offer Arnold, who didn't love her, but seemed to want her to be happy at least. Sweet kid, she regarded him fondly.
She frowned, remembering that roughly this time yesterday, she was deeply worried she would be cheap if she just slept with Arnold for the hell of it. And now she was so blithely accepting it. It's funny what giving up allows you to do. There's basically no reason to care anymore if he thinks I am a slut or cheap. Kinda liberating.
"You know, that sounds like a great idea, Helga," Arnold smiled flirtatiously.
"Let's see how you feel after dessert."
"I thought you were implying you were the dessert."
Helga's thick eyebrows went up high, a hot steaming churn in her abdomen immediately roaring into place. Her legs trembled, and her breathing hitched. Shit he can still do that? It appeared that knowing he was not in love with her - really, regarded her only as a friend he cared for - did nothing to diminish her body's immediate response to his overtures.
"Down boy," she flicked a baguette crumb at him, grinning despite herself, cheeks awfully red.
"This date doesn't have to end here, though, I mean it," Arnold continued. "I'd kind of like to keep it going. You don't mind do you?"
"Mind? Arnold you stupid boy, nothing could make me happier." That's a lie, nothing that happens from here on out will make me happy. A bitter, sour thought, one she had unbidden. And yet, this bittersweet evening had more in store for her than she could anticipate.
Once the bill was paid - an eye-popping amount Arnold insisted he pay for without her help - the two stood outside the restaurant in the warm late summer evening, an awkward distance between them.
"So, football head, what do you have in mind?" Helga was sincerely curious. Her flat, emotionless disappointment didn't prevent her from wanting to know what was in store.
Arnold seemed unsure himself, but extended his hand for her. Helga looked at his hand like it was the executioner's axe. He seemed to notice her trepidation, so she quickly scooped his hand in hers and put on her best tsundere frown.
"I'll hold yer hand you sap, but hurry up and tell me what we're gonna do next!" Just the right dash of embarrassment and outrage in the delighted lilt of her voice. It sounded almost perfectly sincere.
"I thought we could just walk and talk for a bit."
"Sure, lead the way."
Arnold turned them out towards the city center and they walked, hand-in-hand, just like a real bona fide couple. Helga's belly was still fluttering, despite her grim outlook, and the disorienting dichotomy of her feelings and her physical reaction made her anxious and unsure. I'm not over him, I'm just resigned to never getting him. She realized the distinction, and felt terribly sad for the revelation.
Arnold, for his part, seemed lost in thought at first as well.
"You know why I came back to Hillwood, the real reason?" He finally broke their silent stroll with typical Arnold fashion, an outright bombshell of a topic. Of course Helga was dying to know, to hear from his lips the real reason all this was happening.
She just knew in her heart it wasn't for her, not really, not the way she'd hoped.
"No, but, you're holding my hand and this is a date, so your answer better have Helga G Pataki in there somewhere." Teasing was the best way to hide her impending disappointment, she decided.
"That's true," he started, laughing at her jovial answer. "I wanted to see you again, and see how life had treated you. I wanted to see if you ever stopped being so transparently mean to everyone, when really you were just vulnerable and wanted to be liked."
"Hey! Fuck you pal, I'm perfectly pleasant. And I'm not vulnerable, I'm sensitive. Big difference."
"Right, whatever you say, Helga. But it really was about seeing you. Of course I wanted to see Gerald and Phoebe and all the others, but, it was you I had to see."
Helga chewed on her bottom lip, dead sure that this boy was lying to her or to himself just like always, and thinking she had witnessed the proof that he didn't know he didn't love her himself. She had never considered - could never consider - that what she witnessed with Lila was a moment of admitted weakness and confusion. Arnold was lost to her, and in fact, Lila was right, she never had a chance.
So why was she begging Arnold internally to keep going, keep talking sweet, and lie to her? I'm so weak, i'm so weak. I want him to lie and be stupid and pretend to love me, I want the pretty fake lie, I want it.
"Go on," was all she managed to croak out.
"Well, being engaged to...someone else," he cautiously avoided her name, "meant that I had to set right in myself all the confusion and misgivings and mystery about you. Why you didn't write. I was unsure, and, I couldn't let myself do something so serious being so unsure."
"So it was for her sake." Helga flatly accused him.
"No, no, it was for mine. Selfishness, it was just selfishness. I had to see you, and figure out if you felt anything for me, anything like that passion I saw from you as a kid. It haunted me, and I wanted to know more."
Arnold went quiet, and so did Helga. Why is his every word so sweet to these stupid ears? I know he's either a snake lying to butter me up or just an idiot confused about today. I already mourned him, I can't let this get to me.
She hardened her heart further, and broke the silence.
"So what do you think now?"
"After that show, the night we spent together, and that baseball field? I know my answers. But I want you to hear my reply now."
Helga was dead positive she was about to feel sick. Nothing good was about to happen. And yet I am so very ready to hear this sweet lie, I've waited so long. It was odd to be prepared in dread for the killing stroke, even as you welcomed it as a long lost lover.
"Well, Arnold...I'm listening." Helga stopped, turning to face him. They stood under a lone street light, the amber glow casting an unearthly warmth to their expressions. She stared at him, a big part of her starving mad for the secrets he was about to spill, even if she didn't believe a word of them. She wanted to etch, bore the way he looked in that moment in her mind for future recollection.
I love him, she desperately pleaded in her thoughts. It was the most solemn prayer she'd ever uttered.
"Helga," he started, pausing to search her features. What does he see right now? A desperate woman at the end of her pitiful rope? Someone he so desperately, foolishly thinks he needs to try to love? What am I to you, Arnold? Her thoughts raced in the pregnant gibbous pause that hung in between them.
"I'm in love with you."
Deep, deep down beneath the bottom of Hell, further down than the backside of a black hole, wretchedly deep and under the firmament of the cosmos, there is a hole where the souls that have lost all hope and purpose end up. They must plummet for an eternity, dragged down at speeds of such meaninglessness that description is impossible, and tumble in this void without purchase or pause to reach it. Only the loneliest, most crippled souls end up there, forsaken by all light and that which might comfort. Helga felt the world open up and drop her there in an instant once those long dreamed of, most hated, most treasured, impossible perfect wretched words were uttered.
Arnold said he was in love with her and it shattered her heart to pieces.
Learned men have attempted to tell of a painful joy, and there are collections of poems filling libraries the world over that attempt to grasp for this tragic paradoxical imprisonment. None can do it justice, for none who have ever experienced it and lived will ever speak a word of that dark time and place, that yawning void below, below, far beneath anything and everything that swallowed them up. It breaks the words as they come to the page, shattering them like a hammer on crystal rapping smartly and with intent to kill, even as the bottomless emptiness struggles to reach out and be known. It's unnameable. It's nothing.
That bleak ebon gulf folded Helga Pataki within it like a hospital blanket and called her home.
"Helga, Helga are you okay?" Arnold shook her gently, his hands clutching her arms. She blinked free a sudden deluge of fresh tears, aware suddenly that she'd welled some up, and took a gasping breath, aware suddenly that she'd been holding it.
"Okay?" Helga choked out, her hands rising to smear the tears she'd so unexpectedly cried out when she was so certain she was done crying for him. It seemed that well was bottomless, and the gallows irony of it was crushing and absolute. "Arnold, you just said that you're in love with me. I've...I've waited to hear those words my whole life." She felt a laugh bubble up through the mucous and tears, and it fell out of her unwanted, unbidden.
"But, you're crying. So much." The concern squeezed the aching numb of her heart.
"It seems I am," she smiled at him, struggling to make the expression less pitiful than she was sure it seemed. "I'm okay though, I promise."
Arnold sort of watched her helplessly while she kept frantically smearing the tears off her cheeks and sniffing hugely, struggling to keep a happy face on while she felt herself dying as the moments hurtled by.
"Do you want to go to a more private place and talk about this?" Arnold's concern sliced through her again.
"Y-yes, I can't stop, I don't know what's wrong with me?" Helga smiled up at him, feeling absolutely gutted, hollow, destroyed, and so desperately trying to keep his mind at ease. "But where can we go? I'm such a mess."
Arnold took her hand and started walking quickly down the street. "A hotel. I'll get us a suite. It'll be big and private."
"A suite? Where do you get all this money?" Laughter continued to trill her voice, as if the emotions in her soul were simply erupting out at random.
"Does it matter right now? C'mon."
Helga fell into step behind him, holding his hand, watching his back, feeling nothing.
Arnold had not expected Helga to literally pounce on him the instant the hotel door was closed. She was all lips and teeth and tongue, hands roughly pushing him against walls, doors, the bed. Tearing clothes off him, ripping sheets off the bed, scattering them behind her in her pursuit.
It was equally as terrifying as it was thrilling and erotic.
He'd shoved his hand up between her legs, fingers pressing against fabric so lacy and soft and skimpy it made his stomach flip hard in his abdomen at the sheer sin of it. She'd prepared herself for something like this to such a degree, and now he was enjoying the mewling sounds of pleasure she made against his neck while he enjoyed her efforts with fingers and palm.
Everything about Helga was hot.
Before her, he'd never even really been preoccupied with sex. He'd been a typical teenage boy, of course, and had the awful riot of hormones pound in his veins and make him stupid and single-minded around pretty girls. He'd even had a few clumsy groping sessions with a girl or two, getting as far as under a bra before the circumstances and his own lack of guts shorted the experience. But he'd never been a very bedroom-minded person; Arnold had other concerns that consumed him.
And yet, when he was with Helga, and she was scratching his torso like she was a cat marking her territory, Arnold felt so sexual and so sublimely masculine and virile that he could barely comprehend a moment he wasn't mentally shrieking "SEX!" as loud as possible.
If their evening after the party had been intense, passionate, and profoundly cathartic like a wedding night, this was vicious, animalistic, and desperate like a conjugal visit with a death row inmate.
Helga had a filthy mouth, too. It made the experience so profoundly sinful and erotic, as she growled and purred and quite directly encouraged him with exactly what to do. She said things to Arnold that made him almost sick with embarrassment even as they made him work twice as hard.
It turned out when he had Helga at the helm of this sexual partnership, he had a nearly inexhaustible stamina as well.
Something around their sixth time rawly coupling, against the television cabinet, loudly rocking the flat screen in the flimsy wood he had Helga pinned against, she had stopped using words altogether and was simply filling her teeth with him. Arnold was dead certain that he would look like a wild animal had attacked him the next day, covered in scratches, bites, and bruises from tip to toe.
And in a way, a wild animal was attacking him.
Eventually, long after they'd broken one of the small chairs at a desk table, tipped the television to the floor, yanked the shower curtain right off the wall, and alerted everyone in a six room radius that their hotel room was a den of befoulment and unabashed fucking, their bodies had at last given in to the demands of staying alive and forced them to stop. They lay in rough proximity of one another, helga with a bruised and spank-reddened thigh draped over Arnold's bruised, inkvine-scarred pelvis. Both had been catching their breath and struggling through a devastating afterglow. Arnold was dimly aware of the various wounds he'd sustained in their many sessions, but more than that felt the muscles in his legs, abdomen, and back screaming with the burn of lactic acid build up.
He was steadying his breath when he looked over at Helga, who was slowly rolling over towards him, hand creeping spiderlike towards his groin.
"Hold...hold on," Arnold breathed, his hand moving to catch hers and merely squeeze it. "Needs more time."
"More," she begged, in a way that sent a shiver of thrill up Arnold's spine.
"The spirit's willing but the flesh is weak." Arnold rolled over as well, meeting her halfway, his hand leaving hers to cup her face.
He kissed her, a kiss of forgiveness and love.
She kissed him, and though he didn't know it, it was a kiss of resolve and mourning.
"Arnold, please don't leave," she whispered against his mouth, and it filled him with such passion he was fit to burst.
"I won't," he lied, and rolled on top of her.
Helga awoke feeling like someone had liberally scrambled her insides with an egg beater, and then walloped her thighs and ass with a baseball bat for good measure.
A groan of the dying escaped her as she tried to sit up in the dim light of the morning. The sun had not yet risen, but Arnold was standing at the foot of the bed, staring at her.
"What time is it?" She grumbled, curling over her abdomen when the muscles in her gut outright refused to allow her to sit upright.
"Just before sunrise, maybe five thirty," Arnold answered her quietly. He was toweling himself off, she recognized, and then noticed the slight light from the bathroom, the smell of soap and shampoo. Arnold had taken a shower.
"When's checkout?"
"Eleven. I ordered breakfast for the room, it should be here around nine. You should go back to sleep." His voice was so soft, and so lovely. She wept inside herself that this would be the only morning after she ever got with him.
"I don't wanna," she fibbed, pulling a pillow over her face to blot out the light. "I wanna be awake if you're awake."
"I'm still not quite off Brazil time, babe." She felt him plop into the bed next to her, and her skin ached to be touched by his hands again. "I couldn't get back to sleep and needed a shower after last night. I'll lay her with you and watch some television quietly. Get some sleep."
"No," she whined, her fingers creeping around the bed, looking for his. "Don't wanna."
"Liar," he teased, his big fingers finding hers and knitting them together. "Besides, you snore, and it's so cute I wanna see it again."
I guess it's the last time he could see it, so he wants to make it count, she thought. It was an unwelcome, depressing thought, made all the more tragic for it's truth.
"Just...come over here and fuck me, I'll stay awake, I promise," she began, but a yawn cut her short. "I'm not sleepy."
"You need a break, Helga," he laughed, and she felt his warm, soft lips kiss her shoulder. Her back instinctively snuggled backwards to curl up against his bare belly. She reached down behind her and felt nothing but a slightly damp towel where the prize she sought she be.
"Lose the towel," she warned. "I want breakfast."
"You're kidding me. Dude, I am so sore. How are you not sore?"
"I am, I just don't care, I want you inside me somehow so hurry up." Her voice lacked any of the sexy purr she intended it to have, and instead as a petulant croak.
"What a charming invitation," Arnold chuckled, a big strong arm curling around her as he spooned her into the bed and covers. Helga immediately felt the warmth of him begin to seduce her to sleep again. "I'll take you up on the offer after you've iced your sensitive bits and taken an advil. Deal?"
"Deal…" she sleepily agreed, too blissed out and fighting the creeping sadness and dread to care that this was all a lie.
"And Helga?"
"Hmm?"
"You're my girlfriend now." Not a question, just a statement.
"Mhm." Sleep overtook her, sure that such a nice dream wouldn't last, but falling into it just the same.