just add me.
I'll make you a god, she said.
That's what I heard. At the Mirror, in the streets. She said, Move in with me. I'll give you anything you want. How could he refuse? Me crying on the phone. Or her. And everything. It wasn't much of a choice.
Then he disappeared.
She was alone at the Mirror, surrounded by girls and boys who looked ready to lap her up like walking candy. Where is K.? they asked.
She just smiled. So pretty it could blind you. Snowflakes in the sun. Rumors started that he was dead. OD'd. Gun to the skull. She was a killer, you could see it. Someone should go check it out.
But the boys and girls were being fed on her. She started performing for them. They forgot about him.
I'd stare into his dark, empty apartment and see him in the window playing his his guitar, dancing around like a puppet with his hair in his face. My beautiful boy. He'd stop, look up, shake away his hair, look across at me with his shadowy eyes. But he wasn't there at all.
A bird landed on my flower box. I asked it had it seen him? The bird said, Ask the flowers. All the ones he and I had planted had died. I walked down by the lake where we used to go. Some roses were struggling up. I asked them. They said they'd been under the ground and he wasn't there. They said I should go to see her.
She lived in a house high above the city and ice was on the ground. Everywhere else it had started to melt. The numb pain came back in my toes and fingers. I walked through the iron gates, up the icy path among the snow-covered trees, over the threshold of the white palace. The floors were cold marble and echoing. Everything was white. The chill was so harsh that I could see my breath, even inside. I went looking for him.
Up white marble stairs into a white marble room decorated with giant crystal snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, catching-refracting the light. He lay sleeping at her feet in a little lump. He was barefoot and his feet looked so cold. The blue veins stood out, vulnerable. I wanted to warm his feet in my armpits but I was cold too. She was even more beautiful than I remembered her. I thought that I had made a mistake. There was no way he could love me after seeing her even just once.
But at least I could touch him again, wake him, something. See if he was still alive inside. Then I'd leave.
She said I really shouldn't come barging in like that, didn't I know he didn't want me anymore? She touched her hair and light leaped off it like diamonds. She touched her throat and I felt mine close with fear.
I remembered how love is supposed to break evil spells. Only if you love purely. I understood how he had come to her. He wanted something to make him forget. There was something bad enough inside him that he had to forget and I couldn't help him. I always wanted to remember, wanted him to remember.
But now I thought that if he opened his eyes I would leave, never come back to bother him again. I just had to see if he was all right. Maybe I could tell him that I understood about forgetting.
I knelt beside him and put my hands on his cheekbones. His neck was limp. I breathed on his face, whispering his name. My breath made a cloud and it melted the icicles on his eyelashes. I said, Come back here. I just want to see if you're okay. Then I'll leave if you want. I promise, I'll leave.
She was watching us, amused, I think. She stood up and stretched languidly and slipped off her white satin gown and waited there naked, burning white and not shivering at all in the chill air. She was so beautiful that I thought I had really gone mad this time, even trying to get him to look at me.
My tears were so hot that they didn't freeze on my cheeks. They poured off of me onto him. They splashed on his upturned face. They poured over his eyelids, dripped into his eyes, seeped into him. I wanted them to wash away the particles of glass.
He looked up at me. He seemed to have shrunken, gotten even paler. He said my name. I wanted to drag him away, covering his eyes, but instead I let him see her there, behind us. Naked and glistening. He stared and I could feel his palm start to sweat, his heart beat fast like it was going to jump into her. I wanted to die, then. I wanted to destroy the body I was trapped in, become what she was, no matter what it took. No matter how much mutilation or pain. But he looked away, at me. He pulled my face down and pressed my lips against his like he was almost trying to suffocate us both.
Once he and I were children, before this happened.