Funerals for Horses (17 page)

His apartment felt too bare. Pictures were missing from walls, a statue from the table. The bookcase stood empty.

On the table in front of him I saw a bottle of Scotch and a twin-edged razor blade.

He lifted his head to reveal red, swollen eyes, and took a pull from the bottle.

“Oh, Ella,” he said, more disappointed in himself than I could ever be in him. “I’m sorry, Ella.”

I sat with him on the couch, close, and wrapped an arm around his knee. He said Jason was gone.

“Gone gone?”

“Looks that way.”

I leaned my head on his shoulder and told him not to cry.

“Your big day,” he said.

“This is better than dancing, anyway.” And it was, pressed up against him on the couch, making him feel better by understanding, by postponing feeling hurt until he was done hurting.

He took another drink, and I took the bottle out of his hand and had a long swallow myself, and felt the burn of it going down, the way it made my muscles loose and fuzzy, all along my arms and legs. I wrapped my arms around his waist and he held me close, with his cheek on the top of my head. His tears fell into my hair.

“Ella, don’t fall in love with me,” he said at last, and my stomach burned to hear the words, because I would have done anything for Shane, anything at all. Why did he have to ask the one thing I couldn’t do if I tried? “Find yourself a nice straight guy, a guy who’ll be all the things you want him to be.” He stroked my hair, his voice mellowed with drink and pain into a sort of spoken song. “You have so much love, Ella—don’t throw it away on a guy like me.”

But until I met Shane I thought I had no love at all.

“Too late,” I said, because it was the only thing that fit, and rang true, and my voice cracked when I said it, almost like crying, but without the help of my eyes.

He held me so tight around the ribs that I couldn’t breathe all the way in, and I didn’t care.

I kissed him on the mouth, and he kissed me back.

Then he stood up, and I thought he’d ask me to leave, but he took my hand and pulled me into the almost bare bedroom, and pulled off his T-shirt, and smiled in a way that made him look sadder.

He reached for my shirt and I lifted my arms for him. As he pulled it over my head, I smiled back at him. It came all the way from a place that could feel, and I thought it would break me, or that it did, and when I was still able to reach for him I was so surprised.

We just hugged each other for the longest time, with my breasts pressed up against his bare chest. He rocked me a little, like slow-dancing, and I didn’t know or care if we would ever do more. I remember thinking I could die right then and it wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other.

He walked me backwards to the bed, and laid me down, and I raised my hips for him; he pulled my jeans away, threw them on the floor, took off his own before he lay down on top of me with a lazy half-erection.

I could see his face in the light from the living room, his hair falling from his forehead, touching mine, and I thought, this must be what it feels like to love someone, and if Simon feels this way for Sarah, then he should have her, and nobody should ever get in the way.

When Shane kissed me again I tasted cigarettes and Scotch, and a trace of his sweat; and when his face brushed against mine, I felt the stubble of his whiskers burn my cheek.

I told him I loved him and he just smiled. “Big mistake,” he said. Then he pushed inside me. I yelled out in pain and surprise, but I would do it all again if I could. I don’t think he knew why I yelled.

He rocked me slowly, like we had all night, his eyes still swollen, his face ruined in the half-light. Every thrust brought pain and reawakened the pain of the moment before, and I never wanted him to stop, but in time he did.

He lay still with a little shudder, and as he pulled away I saw the shock on his face. I looked down to see the sheet soaked with blood.

“Oh, Ella, honey. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I thought you’d been around a little.”

He brought me a wet towel, and wiped gently between my legs. As he did I kissed him and told him I wanted to do it again, but I knew we wouldn’t, because he’d gone groggy and spent.

“Tell you a little secret,” he said. “This was my first time too. I never did this with a girl before.”

“Really? Never?”

Instead of answering, he whispered in my ear. “You saved my life tonight.” Then he fell asleep or passed out in that position, half on top of me, without ever telling me how I did that.

I figured I’d ask him in the morning, but in the morning his side of the bed was empty. I woke up with the covers on the floor, Shane’s leather jacket over me. When I searched the apartment for him I found only a note.

It said I should keep the jacket, because he was going home to Phoenix, where it’s too hot anyway, and that I was way too good for him, and I’d figure that out some day.

I’d been to Phoenix, and I knew it got pretty cold, too, at night. I couldn’t see how anybody could be too good for Shane. “Maybe that was the worst thing I could have done to you, I don’t know. But if you’re sorry it happened, then I’m sorry. But if you’re glad, I’m glad. Look around the apartment, keep anything you can use,” the note ended.

I carted home everything that belonged to Shane, his left-behind clothes, his safety razor, even the unused bar of soap from his shower. I took the rest of the bottle of Scotch.

Simon had already gone to school.

I sat home all day, didn’t go to work, didn’t call, drank most of the Scotch and felt nothing. I tried to remember having felt something the night before, but it seemed I must have dreamed it. Not the event, the feeling of it.

Just before Simon got home I climbed up a drainpipe onto the roof. I wore Shane’s jeans, too baggy for me, damp in the crotch with leftover blood and semen, and a long, untucked T-shirt, and I stuck my head over the edge and talked to the guys down in the pool.

“You better get out of there. I’m gonna dive.”

Most of them said they wouldn’t do that if they were me, but we talked it out, back and forth, until Simon came home with Sarah, and as they came in from the parking lot, I took my stance.

The trick, I knew, would be to push off the roof, push away from it, hard, to propel myself out instead of straight down. If I messed up, I’d land headfirst on concrete—a detail which seemed unimportant at the time.

I stood with my toes curled over the edge and thought one more time about Shane. This time I felt it, which helped, because I knew that if I missed, at least I would never have to feel it again.

As I pushed off, Sarah screamed. And then I was freefalling, a helpless, bottomless sort of feeling, but too familiar to scare me. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see how I was doing, and as my hands and face plunged into the water, I felt the tops of my feet smack the pool’s edge, and scrape going in. I hit the heels of my hands on the opposite wall of the pool, then surfaced to shouts and cheers and Simon with no blood at all in his face, and eyes cold and angry.

I pushed up and climbed out of the pool. Simon grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me inside, slamming the patio door behind us. Sarah stood frozen, looking unsure of her next move.

“What in god’s name did you think you were doing, Ella? You could have been killed!” It was the loudest I’d heard him yell since the disposable-lighter incident.

“But it worked out fine, Simon.” As I said it, I followed his eyes down my body, and saw the tops of my feet bleeding and swollen, the thin red blood mixing with the pool water I dripped into the carpet.

He stepped in close to me, his voice deep. “You could have broken your neck. You could have crippled yourself. Don’t I have enough trouble taking care of you now?”

As I walked for the door, I heard him call after me that he didn’t mean that, that it came out wrong, that he was only scared for me, and I needed to come back so we could talk. I slammed the door behind me.

I walked back up to Shane’s apartment, where I thought I could still smell him, and sat on his couch, just the way he had the night before. On the table before me I saw the only pieces of Shane I’d forgotten to claim—a half-empty pack of Kools and the double-edged razor blade.

I lit a cigarette, which made me dizzy, trying to smoke the whole thing by myself. When I picked up the razor blade, I heard Shane in my head, saying you saved my life tonight.

I stared for a long time at the inside of my wrist, the little section just below the scraped heel of my hand, which was normal skin, just above the scar line. The tighter I clenched my fist, the clearer I saw the little blue veins.

I touched it with the corner of the blade, so sharp I felt nothing as it bit a short slice. I saw a well of bright blood collect and drop onto the floor, and I screamed. But not for myself.

I screamed for DeeDee. And I knew then what I wasn’t supposed to do.

I found a washcloth in the cupboard, and held it to try to stop the bleeding. Then I used Shane’s phone to call Willie. I asked her if I could come over.

She said she’d never heard me so upset, and offered to come to me, but I needed to stay away from Simon for a while. I drove to her house.

She met me in the driveway, in sweatpants and her good blouse from work, and she looked at my wet hair and clothes, my bare, bleeding feet, my scraped palms, the bloody washcloth on my wrist, and didn’t even ask questions.

I fell up against her and she held me, and I sobbed and heaved, and I tried hard to make tears come out, but they wouldn’t move. I wanted to use an ax to break into the place where they lay hiding. I wanted to free all the prisoners.

“Willie,” I whispered, “DeeDee killed herself.”

And she held me, and rocked me, and said, “I know, Ella. I know.”

The sky clears, but my clothes still drip, and the day turns to dusk. With the sheer stone wall of the mesa against my back, I climb onto Yozzy, and as we stand, considering our options, three long-eared jackrabbits break out of nowhere and head east.

So we do the same, only more slowly. I fear the cold that will come with night, with a wet sleeping bag, in wet clothes, on wet ground.

I think only of this, and how far we will ride.

The world has dropped out from under me. Why did I allow myself to see the touching of the mesa as a journey’s end? The mesa is miles long, maybe longer than we traveled to get here. How far will we ride it, until we find what we’re looking for, or until we don’t?

And somehow, one way or the other, we must go back.

I pull the damp paper package from my sleeping bag and chew on a sheet of beef jerky, and think of Everett and May. They would have a fire tonight, and a hot bath. A hot dinner. Why would anything in the universe envy me?

And then, in the murky dusk, Yozzy stops suddenly, and I fall forward against her neck. In front of her feet, I see a circle of three jackrabbits. If she moved into the circle, surely she would disperse them, but she won’t.

She takes a step backward, then pivots sideways. She repeats this process three times. Then, facing the mesa, she waits patiently until I see it.

The cave entrance is puddled with leftover moisture. The fire pit is flooded with water and ash; it has a spit on forked sticks. It is not a tent, as in Everett’s dream. There is no animal skin across the door, as in mine. No animal skin anywhere. Sam was the best dreamer, so far as I can tell, in that he has provided no inaccurate details. And Sam said Simon was home.

I wonder if my heart is beating.

I sit straight on Yozzy’s back, cup my hands to my mouth and shout Simon. In my peripheral vision, I watch the jackrabbits scatter. The mesa echoes it back to me, but when the sound fades, nothing rises to take its place.

I am a better dreamer than I thought.

I slide down, scramble up the rock to the plateau facing his door. Now my heart is beating, I know. I hear it, and feel it. I wade through the puddle to the mouth of his cave. I call his name again.

I step inside. The entryway bends, and it’s dark further in. I trip over something and fall onto the heels of my hands, scraping them. I lie still until my eyes adjust to the light, and I see I’ve tripped over one of a pair of five-gallon plastic water bottles. It’s nearly half full.

I look and feel further around, until I’m satisfied with the dimensions of the cave. It’s just a hollow. A hole in the rock. The broadest expanse of floor is covered by a pair of faded overalls.

There is nothing else to be seen. No hunting rifle. No big knife. No Simon, alive or dead.

And yet I can honestly say I’ve found Simon’s house.

I lift the half-full plastic bottle to carry it outside for Yozzy, and as I do, I see several boxes of ammunition hidden between bottle and wall, and a flat, black object. I pick it up and carry it out into the half-light.

A wallet. I hold it in my hand. I want to open it, but I’m afraid. Do you hear that, Simon? I’m afraid, and I know it. As I try, my hands shake, and I drop it onto the red-brown, dirt-coated rock. When I bend to retrieve it, it’s open.

I see a row of credit cards peeking from their separate slots. I grasp the top of a gas company card and pull it out into my hand, holding it under my nose, straining to read it.

It says Simon Peter Ginsberg.

When I’m done reading, still half unsure of my vision, I touch the raised letters and read them again, with my fingers. It says the same. I return the card to its slot, open the money compartment, and find five bills, at least three of which are twenties.

I slip the wallet into my wet jeans pocket.

Maybe I have found Simon. Maybe he’s around the corner urinating, fetching water, watching the stars come out. Maybe he’s long gone, but considerate enough to pay my way home.

I go back for the water bottle, pour for Yozzy into my muddy, battered hat. She drinks two hatfuls.

I remove her blanket and hackamore, and she wanders a hundred yards away, to the thickest scrub, to nibble.

Knowing she is satisfied, I tip the bottle back and drink, water spilling down my chin, soaking my already soaked clothes. I watch her graze in the dark, watch the moon rise, and it smiles at me. It says, nobody knows. Some things no one can tell you.