raw bleeding stomach and raked chest and old ribbed scars from older hatreds turned inward, he met her eyes just once…
Then followed the needle all the way to his arm.
As many times as it took.
*
It was the curse of the evening shift: One could never get off at midnight and have enough time to drown workday sorrows in a long night of binge drinking. She'd be lucky to get in three rounds before last call.
Home, then, home and a bottle. Nobody could run her out of home before she was good and ready.
Adrienne turned on the stereo before pouring the first drink, volume low because Sarah was already asleep upstairs. Music had its charms, a companion that never judged failures. She could listen to the enchantment of Celtic song and believe in the magic of beautiful dark-haired women with the throats of angels.
She found the note in the kitchen, taped to the freezer door, where she wouldn't miss it. Sarah's expansive, loopy hand:
I invented a new drink tonight: the peanut butter daiquiri. It sticks to the roof of your liver.
Are you smiling?
I love you and I think you're working too hard.
Adrienne peeled it away from the door — smiling, yes — and brushed it with her fingertips, some new kind of Braille, seeking love, any connection. Such mementos she kept in a small box upstairs, always meaning to get around to sorting them and giving them a proper scrapbook home, but never finding the time.
Her drink of choice tonight was gin over ice with a squeeze of lime. She carried it to the sofa and sank into both.
And what of Clay, this late hour? Calmed out of his senses, strapped into his bed in case he was feigning stupor, or woke up cranky. Three and a half weeks of lithium might as well have been breath mints, for all the good it had done him. Given enough of a trigger, he could have exploded at any time.
Still…
He had not.
So which had been the greater force within him: self-control, or medication? Her every assumption about him was now in a tenuous new light. Oh, she could talk, all right, could spin textbook reassurances in accordance with proper methodology: no reason to believe his genetic condition had anything to do with behavioral affect, cognitive defect, emotional maladaptation, nothing to indicate any connection at all…
And it would have been miraculous if this had reassured him. She wasn’t even fooling herself. This was simply beyond all understanding.
Adrienne got a second drink and returned to the sofa with the rainstick kept propped in one corner. It had been made in the shadow of the Andes, a meter of thin Normata cactus. While dead and drying, its spines had been pressed into the hollow body, which some peasant artisan had then filled with pebbles and fragments of bone, before sealing the end.
She upended it slowly, like an hourglass, and listened to the cascade of pebbles and bone over delicate spines, a rippling sound like a sweet July shower. Sarah had bought this for her for their first month's anniversary, after Adrienne's passing remark that she missed the rains of San Francisco.
Prayers for rain; the Diaguitas of Chile used rainsticks to serenade their gods. In more superstitious moments, she fancied she could do likewise: serenade elder gods of the mind, summoning the spirits of Jung and Fromm; prayers for a deluge of insight.
"Paper didn't say anything about rain."
Sarah slouched in the doorway to the hall, frowzy-headed and squinting against the light. She wore rumpled socks and a T-shirt that fell to mid-thigh, promoting some den called Club Cannibal, on the Ivory Coast. She braved the light and came on in.
"I woke you, I'm sorry."
Sarah, waving it off, half-asleep and squinty, shuffled around the sofa to lean over and wrap her arms around Adrienne's shoulders. Their heads knocked lightly together, black hair on blond. She felt the tender press of lips to her neck.
"You look whipped," Sarah murmured.
Adrienne fought it, finally shut her eyes and nodded. "I'm sitting here
Then followed the needle all the way to his arm.
As many times as it took.
*
It was the curse of the evening shift: One could never get off at midnight and have enough time to drown workday sorrows in a long night of binge drinking. She'd be lucky to get in three rounds before last call.
Home, then, home and a bottle. Nobody could run her out of home before she was good and ready.
Adrienne turned on the stereo before pouring the first drink, volume low because Sarah was already asleep upstairs. Music had its charms, a companion that never judged failures. She could listen to the enchantment of Celtic song and believe in the magic of beautiful dark-haired women with the throats of angels.
She found the note in the kitchen, taped to the freezer door, where she wouldn't miss it. Sarah's expansive, loopy hand:
I invented a new drink tonight: the peanut butter daiquiri. It sticks to the roof of your liver.
Are you smiling?
I love you and I think you're working too hard.
Adrienne peeled it away from the door — smiling, yes — and brushed it with her fingertips, some new kind of Braille, seeking love, any connection. Such mementos she kept in a small box upstairs, always meaning to get around to sorting them and giving them a proper scrapbook home, but never finding the time.
Her drink of choice tonight was gin over ice with a squeeze of lime. She carried it to the sofa and sank into both.
And what of Clay, this late hour? Calmed out of his senses, strapped into his bed in case he was feigning stupor, or woke up cranky. Three and a half weeks of lithium might as well have been breath mints, for all the good it had done him. Given enough of a trigger, he could have exploded at any time.
Still…
He had not.
So which had been the greater force within him: self-control, or medication? Her every assumption about him was now in a tenuous new light. Oh, she could talk, all right, could spin textbook reassurances in accordance with proper methodology: no reason to believe his genetic condition had anything to do with behavioral affect, cognitive defect, emotional maladaptation, nothing to indicate any connection at all…
And it would have been miraculous if this had reassured him. She wasn’t even fooling herself. This was simply beyond all understanding.
Adrienne got a second drink and returned to the sofa with the rainstick kept propped in one corner. It had been made in the shadow of the Andes, a meter of thin Normata cactus. While dead and drying, its spines had been pressed into the hollow body, which some peasant artisan had then filled with pebbles and fragments of bone, before sealing the end.
She upended it slowly, like an hourglass, and listened to the cascade of pebbles and bone over delicate spines, a rippling sound like a sweet July shower. Sarah had bought this for her for their first month's anniversary, after Adrienne's passing remark that she missed the rains of San Francisco.
Prayers for rain; the Diaguitas of Chile used rainsticks to serenade their gods. In more superstitious moments, she fancied she could do likewise: serenade elder gods of the mind, summoning the spirits of Jung and Fromm; prayers for a deluge of insight.
"Paper didn't say anything about rain."
Sarah slouched in the doorway to the hall, frowzy-headed and squinting against the light. She wore rumpled socks and a T-shirt that fell to mid-thigh, promoting some den called Club Cannibal, on the Ivory Coast. She braved the light and came on in.
"I woke you, I'm sorry."
Sarah, waving it off, half-asleep and squinty, shuffled around the sofa to lean over and wrap her arms around Adrienne's shoulders. Their heads knocked lightly together, black hair on blond. She felt the tender press of lips to her neck.
"You look whipped," Sarah murmured.
Adrienne fought it, finally shut her eyes and nodded. "I'm sitting here
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