T neve neb gerg
I’m outside your apartment in fake dawn. I’m wearing a tube top, and there’s dew on the grass. Come with me. I don’t think there is a God, anymore. I have proof.
I stare at the text message - my phone is the only light in our room. If I blink, it could disappear. My eyes strain as I sit up on the bed, careful not to wake Zabet. The bed creaks, and I suffer a breathless moment until Zabet mumbles in her sleep.
I worry that my phone is going to be so full of text messages from April that I’ll have to delete some - several years worth of double dates, advice, weight loss tips (for me), and veiled flirting.
Zabet turns over in her sleep; the sheets slide off her back. I don’t know how she can sleep on her side.
I grab a piece of paper, and write carefully, deliberately, wary of loud, passionate scribbling. I want to tell her the truth. I want to lie. I want to be right.
I want to get out of here.
I write that I’m out for the night with friends. And she shouldn’t get mad, because… because…
“The hell with it,” I think to myself. “Because if I can forgive you for sleeping with your ex I should be able to go out drinking.”
The piece of paper fits cleanly underneath Zabet pillow. Out the window, I see April tapping her foot, her sandals in her hands. Her tube top is black, her red toenails glisten in the early morning wetness. Shaking my head, I step out into the pale blue light, meet her; we share a moment - quiet.
**********************************
“You know I broke up with him?” She says casually, shifting gears. The Corvette lurches onward past the 70 MPH mark.
Seven years of dieting. Countless, lost hours of exercise. Thousands of dollars to go to college, plastic surgery and wardrobe...
“So, what’s this proof, huh?” I ask, eyes innocent and questioning. She smiles wickedly.
“You didn’t believe me there wasn’t a God when you were fat. You didn’t believe me when you were broke; when Zabet cheated on you…what would it take now?”
“I’m sorry that I try to live a life of faith.” Although, I seem to be on a field trip tonight.
“I have a surprise for you.” She floors it, taking us past an elementary school, narrowly missing a picnic bench. I stop thinking, and enjoy the ride.
Then, we get to her place. “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened?” I say, trying to avoid the broken glass. It’s everywhere - I thought there were only five or six framed pictures of April and Dave. From the broken glass, you’d think there were sixty.
“He told me he needed to talk,” she slumps on a nearby couch cushion. “He had these cuts all over his chest. He said he’d run here. I figured he’d gotten cut up in the woods.”
I sit down next to her. She doesn’t speak for a moment.
“I’ve been wrong all these years,” she whispers. “That’s what he said, just like that. He just looked at me, all wild-eyed and shit - it was crazy. He pushed me down onto the couch. He grabbed my hands, like this…”
She puts my two hands together, and puts her fingers around the wrists.
“He looks me in the eyes, and I figure he’s about to lay it all on me: You’re the only girl I’ve ever truly loved, how could you leave me, et cetera. He looks around, out the window. I thought he was running from the cops or something. He pulled me close, his forehead against mine…”
We do this. Neither of us says anything. A long, great moment.
“He looks me in the eyes, and says, “You’re not going to believe me, but you must. I was looking for porn online…”
I cracked up laughing. Immediately, I regretted not eating at least three Altoids before leaving. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh…”
“No, I laughed too,” she drawls. “But then I stopped. He wasn’t smiling. He said he was just looking at pictures, beautiful, naked girls, just a click away…and then it got cold. I saw things out of the corner of my eye, like when you look at a bright light, then look away. I didn’t really think about it, I was…you know.”
“Oh, I know.” I smile at her. She doesn’t smile back.
She stands up and walks to one of the pictures - her and Reed at a club.
“He said he heard a low voice and a guy in a brown robe appeared in front of him,” she said flatly, then turned to look at me, waiting for my reaction. I sat stoic. Her voice wasn’t as dripping with as much sarcasm as I would’ve thought. Or liked. “The robed guy says he’s a monk or some shit from before medieval times. He said the guy looked like Sean Connery in The Name of the Rose. You ever seen that?”
I shook my head.
“He didn’t scream, or call the cops? He just let this brown-robed guy come into his house and catch him jerking off? That’s something.”
“Dave tried fighting him. He said the guy had a knife, like a piece of rock. He said the guy was pretty good with it, and that’s how he got all the cuts. So, after the guy stops slashing at him, Dave agrees to listen to the guy. And this robed guy goes off on some wild shit - it turns out, there is no God, no religion, none of that…”
“Well, that’s a relief.” I try not to wince. She steps to another side of the room. She continues:
“But there is a heaven and hell. He told Dave that you don’t get into heaven by being a good person, or doing good things. You do it through greed. Greed gets you into heaven.” She gingerly walks around the broken glass, pacing as she says this, like she’s remembering a lecture she studied.
“Not just rich people. He goes on to say that greed isn’t just money. Greed is conviction. He kept saying that. Greed is conviction.” I watch her step between the glass shards, and the pictures, careful to step on neither. She loves to pace. I watch her feet, it’s like she’s dancing.
“Anything you want greatly, you’re greedy for. It disrupts balance.” Ginger step after ginger step, a tentative ballet around her room. “I told him that was bullshit.”
“Naturally.”
She grabs an old magazine from the floor and sweeps off a picture with it, but never stops moving. She doesn’t look at me.
“Greed is conviction. If you believe in something strongly enough, religion, friends, yourself - greed. If you fall in love…” she trails off. I walk over to hold her again, but she flits away. Only she isn’t dancing. Instead of between the pictures, now she’s stepping on them.
“He tried to escape. He couldn’t move. The priest wanted Dave to get to heaven. Dave shouted back he was an atheist, and the figure told him, ‘If you really believe that, you’re on your way.'" She doesn’t step now; she stomps on the pictures, the glass. Clink. Crunch.
“The brown-robed guy didn’t believe. He was a monk, a priest; he took a vow of celibacy. He sat in hell with the other repressed people, tormented not just by fire but their own desires. He spent an eternity watching game show hosts, sports fans and Hitler ascend into heaven.” Crunch. Dave and April at a fair. Clink/clink crunch. April’s birthday party.
“But, by that logic, the only things that would send a person’s soul to hell would be…repression, and fear,” I say. She ignores me.
“They only let the brown-robed asshole out if he’d spread the word, and save people’s souls. He doesn’t know how, he never talked to God…” she puts her hands against the window. The blue light glows on her pale, down-turned face. “He asked Dave what he believed in. What he was greedy for.” I catch my breath.
No.
She laughs; a short, sudden staccato. “Believe me, I know…because then, he didn’t stop.” She looks at me, her eyes steely and wet. “Greed is conviction. Conviction is love. Love is…” She lifts up her shirt, revealing a series of cuts on her breasts.
“He wanted to go to heaven, he said.”
I run over and hold her. I pull her down to the couch and kiss her neck. I’ve never done it - “The Lord works in mysterious ways!” my mind blurts in - and I just hold her, rocking her. I whisper into her ear - a frenzy of “It’s all right, it’ll be okay. “ She looks at me. I move in to kiss her - she doesn’t. I stop, sigh, and stand up.
“What are you going to do?” she asks, pulling her shirt back down. I laugh.
Lying on her stomach, covered in bruises, she still looks almost regal.
“Wrong door,” she says, quietly.
She points to her bedroom door.
“I did a little myself,” she says as she slithers up between me and the door, much too close. I can’t think straight as she unlocks it. And throws it open-
So I am unprepared when she screams.
Dave hangs above her bed, his feet nailed to the wall.
God help me, my first thought was “Maybe I should’ve just stayed in bed.”
Thinking far too rationally, I take her hand and sit her on the bed. I grab her chin and pull it towards mine:
“Did you do this?”
Her answers are wild, frenzied. “No! I tied him up! How did he…” and she collapses into tears again. And my arms.
Dave looks peaceful, if that’s possible. Long, dark hair pointing straight to the ground. Six-pack abs, nice slacks, even with the blood on them. I can’t make out what’s holding his feet in the wall, some kind of brown…spike. I reach up to his neck-
She looks, her lip quivering.
I grab one of his wrists, glaring at her, and hold it. The flesh is clammy, sickeningly cold.
“No,” I say simply.
“Jesus,” she mutters, and slumps in the chair, her hair falling all over her computer, touching the mouse. Her “Avril Lavigne Must Die!!” screensaver turns into: “A Kiss between the Legs - Free Nudes and No Pop-Ups.”
We both stare at the screen for a moment.
“I tied him up,” she says, slowly, feeling the words out. “I tied him up and left him. I fought him off, knocked him out, and tied him up. I didn’t…” There’s a piece of rope on the ground, two pieces. I pick them up - they’re icy cold. She chuckles, her head in her hands, throaty and dark.
“I told you I’d prove God doesn’t exist.” She says, fighting tears. “You’d better start getting greedy.”
I run over and stroke her hair. She pushes my hand away, then relents.
“You just showed me I need to have greater faith.” I try to smile, “After all, wouldn’t enough faith, even in the wrong thing, be conviction, and thus get me to heaven?”
She dazedly turns her head up at me. “Oh? You aren’t repressed or afraid?” I stare at her, struck. She shakes her head, “Jesus, what are we going to do? If you take him in, they’ll think I…goddamnit. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“We can’t leave him like this.”
“Don’t preach to me! I loved him! But what if…”
I look at her, as she goes on about how there is an evil spirit trapped in a pornographic website that’s coming to kill us, and how this proves it’s true. Her tears somehow make her eyes look even bigger, and even with lipstick her lips look pale. I squeeze her hand and kiss her forehead.
“I see what you’re doing.” I say. She looks at me.
“This whole night. You dragged me out at night because you knew I’d follow you anywhere. And you knew I’d help you cover up your boyfriend’s murder.”
She looks at me. She cocks her head to the side and stands up, pushing me away.
“What was the next step?” I spit, skin almost as hot as it was when she was telling me about Dave beating her. “We were going to dump the body? You’d have me take it somewhere? No one would ever suspect me, we weren’t together!” I advance on her with each question -
“I didn’t kill him.” She states levelly, into my face.
“Of course you did.” She glares at me. “Or… what? A thousand year old dead priest? You’re…damnit…” I walk to the door. I’m almost crying.
“So you’re going to tell the cops?” She asks, eyes welling up again.
I chuckle.
“I love you.” I open the door. “I’m greedy, too. Just, shut up.” The door is colder than the dead man.
“If you’re going to throw me away, you should give me a chance to prove it.” She says, and I freeze. Her head cocks to the computer.
I should walk out. I should go home. I should slam the door and call the cops. But I’m greedy, too.
I slam the door shut and sit in the chair. She moves the mouse, standing next to me -
“No,” I say, and put my arm around her, putting her onto my lap.
“Who’s the best looking girl here?” she asks me. I point to a naked blonde girl blowing a dandelion.
“It’s artistic.” I say. We click on a few more grainy pictures. I look at up her, sad to be right. She puts her hand on my leg. I look her in the eyes and unbutton my pants. We click on a few more pictures - I kiss her neck. She sits on my lap - we both click a picture occasionally, but I don’t care. She is right - I came here tonight to find God didn’t exist. I’m kissing her. I’m ripping off her shirt.
“You’re surfing porn and she’s chewing your lip. This is heaven for greedy people. The Promised Land is here - let that brown-robed bastard come.”
The power goes out. She jumps, startled. I don’t let her go. I attack her neck, and chest. She reciprocates…then stops. She whispers…
“Why is the computer still on…?” She sits up on one of my legs - I look at the screen. In the dark, the naked woman is the only light source.
I click on a couple more of the pictures. They’re taking longer to load now.
She hugs me tightly, whimpering in my ear. Her teeth are chattering.
I click on a couple more pictures - now back at the home page, A Kiss between the Legs. There’s a picture I didn’t notice before - I click on the image -
It’s April in a brown robe. But the picture’s still loading -
“Where’s your conviction now?” April screams. That voice wasn’t in my head.
The computer screen goes black.
A crash. She shrieks. I turn -
Dave is gone. The wall is bare.
I swivel wildly - the door’s locked. The windows are closed.
We turn to each other, and mutter about where he could’ve gone. Our eyes never meet.
“You were a shitty saint, and you’re an even bigger failure as a sinner.”
She puts her shirt on around 10am.
**************************************************
I stagger into my apartment at 2pm, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep.
Zabet still hasn’t woken up. She’s rolled over onto her other side now, her face buried in a pillow. The afternoon sun peeks through the blinds, and lights up her face. Not gorgeous, but cute.
I drove April to her parents’ house. We didn’t talk much in the car. She said we should make plans for lunch or something tomorrow. I don’t remember what I said.
I know April was quiet in the car because of what we experienced, and because she was tired, but…I hope it wasn’t because she realized she was right about me and God.
There is a God. There is a heaven. I look at the cross above my computer. I look at the electric plug - hard to pull out. Thank the lord April’s was easy. Thank the lord I pulled it out in time - before she could see that picture.
I make it home and check my email. Nothing but spam. I click on one of the links - “Younger Chicks! Bigger pics!” Cold sweat as the page loads.
Relief washes over me as the screen reveals ugly, naked women with bad boob jobs. I touch the screen - are they pictures? Or is each of those just someone trapped in there…and if so, how would they reach out? Is there an escape?
April was beautiful in the brown robe. That damn picture. She couldn’t have seen Dave, with a man in a brown robe sitting on a cloud. They were eating chicken wings and smoking cigars.
She couldn’t have seen me at her feet, covered in broken glass and massaging her calves.
“Does the picture mean that you lived a life of too much fear and repression and that was hell, and that you had to watch Dave and his brown-robed man in heaven…?”
I gently climb into the bed, carefully, so as to move it as little as possible.
“Or does it mean that you had enough conviction and you had made it to heaven? A heaven at her feet, constantly in pain, all because you had such amazing conviction…”
I lay my head on the same pillow Zabet’s is on. I feel the slight warm breath from her nose on my face.
I kiss her on the forehead. She smiles. I hope she’s having pleasant dreams. I roll over onto my other side, and pull the sheets up.
But I can’t close my eyes.
“Mysterious ways…?”
I don’t think I’ll be sleeping for a while.
Nice DreamS