Total Victim Theory (37 page)

“Was your great-aunt a spy, Nicole?”

I can't take it anymore. “Just stop doing this and tell me what you fucking want,” I shout and double over weeping with my face in my hands.

45

Colorado

I stand here watching Nicole sob away.

She's surprisingly expressive today. She is an actress after all, so you would expect a broad emotional range. Not to suggest these are crocodile tears she's shedding. It's just that before she struck me as more
reserved
.

I put the bracelet on the windowsill so it’s out of reach—that game's obviously played out.

This business of eliciting emotion is such a tightrope act. I'm not bad at it, but there are times when things get out of balance. When an unexpected gale of feeling comes up and you’re left wind-swept and teetering, on the brink of a great fall.

It’s people that are the underlying problem. With their impish and brazen unpredictability. It’s as if they all believed being intricate and quirky was the whole purpose of existence. Sometimes I think they do it just to get under my skin. To illustrate some obscure point about the human condition that they insist will always elude me.

But it makes no sense to blame the victims. Their role is to be themselves. My role is to accept them as they are. To encompass them, unconditionally. Therefore, any surprises that arise reflect a deficiency in myself. A failure to grasp some nuance, some shifty eccentricity that darts about beneath the surface, unfettered and misunderstood.

And so it is with Nicole. My playfulness has overshot the mark and produced a reaction more suitable to the endgame than the overture (if you’ll excuse the mixing of metaphors).

Now it's time to even the keel.

But in spite of her tantrum, she does ask a valid question. Why am I here?

Not to offer a dodge, but aren't we ourselves often the least competent people to perform these delicate self-assessments? By delving inward, don't we merely run the gauntlet of our defense mechanisms and delusions, ultimately, illuminating nothing?

But why am I here?

I suppose the truth is that I don’t know.

And it's not that there is no truth. It's just that we can't know it. We’ve all hidden our motives where we can never find them. All we can ever do is entertain beliefs. But inevitably, the more certain of those beliefs we are, the more we can rest assured of being deceived. Because conviction is just a decoy of the mind, forever leading us away from that unassailable inner sanctum.

We are destined to always be strangers to ourselves.

But let's go back to the tightrope walker. Let’s imagine that he—the tightrope walker—is Nicole, not me. Now I'm the breeze. The challenge in all of this is to keep her constantly teetering between surety of death, on one side, and an unequivocal belief, on the other, that I harbor an inexpressible love for her—or that I at least have no intention of killing her. If she becomes wedded to any single conception of reality, her brain ceases to struggle, the turmoil ends, she falls. Game over. But as long as the breeze cuts both ways, she hobbles along. Wrestling with every burst and flutter of emotion. And expressing herself beautifully in the process.

And there is so much beauty inside her.

“You want to know why I’m here, Nicole?” I ask, repeating the question she asked me before. “You want to know what I want?”

She looks up at me. Looking like she's ready to claw my eyes out and hurl herself from the window all in the same instant.

“What I want is peace and quiet . . . for my head to be the sunny happy place it used to be.” I take a deep breath. “What I want is to feel normal again. Because right now I'm feeling a little unmoored. Like I'm a stranger in my own skin.” I rub my temples with my fingers, as if I’m overwrought with emotion. “What I want is to rid myself of all these knots in my stomach and all this pounding in my head. To stop distrusting myself and telling
myself I'm wrong. To not feel lost, and to not feel crazy . . . that's all I want, Nicole.”

She sniffles and clears her throat. “What does all that have to do with me?”

Long melancholy sigh. “Only everything.”

“I don't under—”

“It all started that day in the apartment. All this turmoil inside me. It all started with you.”

She says nothing.

“The more I thought about it, the clearer the solution became. It’s a solution, Nicole, where I can cure myself of all these new afflictions—so I can go back to being the happy-go-lucky guy I was before.” I feel my jaw nervously twitch. “Can you guess what my solution is?”

“No,” she says, voice cracking. “No, I can’t.”

“Come on Nicole, just guess. It's not rocket science.”

She shakes her head. A tear rolls down her cheek.

“The solution, Nicole . . . was to see you again.”

A long silence, as my words sink in.

“That's why you're here?” she asks. “That's the only reason?”

“Well, I really hate to put things in boxes . . . but, yeah.”

My astonishment renews itself when Nicole begins to cry a second time. Instinctively, I take a half-step back. I just stand here, waiting. Hoping for some clarification.

Finally she looks up.

A strange, intense look.

A look of astonishing openness. As if she’d stripped away some armor plating and were allowing me for the first time to peer inside.

God, her eyes are so green. And there are things in that gaze that make me want to cringe or run away or beat her to a pulp. Shapes that blaze and flicker like the flames of a campfire. Terrible shapes I can’t help but recognize.

She wipes her tears away and studies me. “When you took my glasses . . . did you see?”

I make a small cough. “Did I see what?”

“Did you try them on?”

“Why would I try on your glasses?” I say. “I . . . don't follow.”

She hesitates. Says something inaudible.

“What?” I ask.

“Can I show you something?” she finally says, in a whisper.

I give a shrug. “Okay.”

Nicole slides her glasses off her nose and gives them to me.

I hold them in my hand—unsure what's expected. But trying my best not to look confused.

She's staring at me like she wants me to do something and I'm just supposed to know what that is. “Do you want me to put them on?” I finally ask.

She makes a barely perceptible nod, as if unwilling to acknowledge a wish she clearly possesses.

She's very weird about these glasses—recalling how she freaked out earlier.

Odd girl—this one.

I slide her glasses on. They’re too small for me and the sides bow out as they pass above my ears, my head being somewhat larger than average. Hopefully, I don't break them. Would hate to see what she’d do then.

Just as I’m about to ask her what I’m being called upon to notice, I see the point. A creepy-crawly sensation comes over me. This girl has given me goosebumps. “There’s no prescription in the lenses,” I say.

She doesn’t say anything.

“I don't understand. Does this have something to do with
my glasses
?”

Again, she says nothing.

“How long have you . . . been doing this?” I ask.

“For seven years,” she says.

“Why—why do you do it?”

No answer. I think she’s very subtly shaking her head
no
. Maybe I'm supposed to understand without an explanation.

Now something dawns on me—what that look meant that I saw earlier in her eyes. It had something to do with her glasses.

“Did something happen to you?” I whisper.

But she just stares stubbornly at her feet.

Whatever's happening now is quite moving to me. I really want to do the right thing here. Whatever it is she needs me to do.

I feel very unsure of myself. I oscillate between a number of possible responses like a jammed chess program.

But finally, I just start doing something.

I don't know if this is right, but I reach out and take her hand.

The room obtains an eerie meta-level of silence.

She bends her fingers cautiously around mine.

Without thinking, I draw myself closer to her and rest my free hand on her shoulder. Her body makes small muted convulsions. I’m wanting her not to feel this pain she’s feeling.

Suddenly, a feeling of intense unease stirs inside me.

I can't believe this is happening.

This has gone too far. It's me that's the tightrope walker again. It's me that's falling.

This isn't what's supposed to happen tonight.

I shake her hand loose and turn away. Sink my head in my hands. “I can’t,” I say. “I can't do this.”

A few memories from long ago. Not ones I want to see. Emilia, Tad, things on the ranch. And then a picture of that worst thing. Like a lightning flash, it fills up my mind. You might not think there could be a worst thing. With all that's happened. But there is.

The little pink nightgown floating in the tub.

Feels like someone's tied a cord around my windpipe.

What’s wrong with this girl? Is she just drawn to sickness and insanity and death? Because that’s all I have to offer.

There’s never going to be a happy ending here.

There's so much darkness in me. And it's screaming now. Like a demon that's had holy water thrown in its face.

I don't want any part of this.

I turn to the windowsill and pick up the bracelet. I run my finger over the alarm button on the inside of the band.

Now I turn back to Nicole, step forward, and place the bracelet in her hands. Force her fingers to take it. Close them like the petals of a Venus flytrap.

She looks at the bracelet and then back up at me. Terror, affection, bewilderment. I don't know. I wish I had a picture of everything that's in those eyes. You could study it for a million years and not get to the bottom of it.

“Why?” she asks, as if I've betrayed her.

I can't speak.

She stares at the bracelet, as if its very existence were a riddle.
Her fingers tremble. Indecision pulls her perfectly in all directions. And somehow it all cancels out. Into a stillness. Like a penny floating at the very center of the Earth.

Finally, she breaks free of its crystalline hold. There's motion again. But it's not her index finger pushing down, calling the police and ending this. As it should be. As you would have the right to expect.

Instead, it's her arm, reaching out.

She sets the bracelet on the nightstand. Pushes it away like an entree she's had enough of.

Do I imagine the half-formed smirk I think I see on her face? Is she gloating over this inane and inscrutable defiance? Is this somehow a victory for her?

Now I smile. A smile that's probably genuine. But the kind of genuine smile you see in wards for the criminally insane.

I like your style, Nicole. This could have potential.

If not in this life, then surely in the next.

I step over to the end table and pick up the bracelet. Then, holding it out, so she can witness the act, I push the button.

46

Colorado

Chris sets the bracelet back down on the windowsill. His eyes look glazed over, as if he's in a trance.

Now would be the time to run. To spring to my feet and bolt past him and be halfway out the door before he's registered that I'm missing.

But I don’t run.

I sit motionless on the edge of the bed. Not because I'm in shock or terrified or confused. I stay because there’s a wager between the two of us and I’m going to see it through. When I showed him my glasses, I entrusted him with something sacred and I'm betting he won't mishandle it. No, I'm daring him to.

When he peered out through the lenses, I claimed a faith in him. I committed myself to believing in something good. To walk away now would be to betray us both. To crumple up things closest to my heart like a wad of trash. Because there’s so much more than life and death at stake. I don’t know what the possibilities are—for him, for me. None of them are good. The cops are on the way. It will all be over in just five minutes. But it's not about what ultimately happens. It’s about what we intend to do and what we show each other in these next few moments.

At some point in life, you've got to bet on something.

The focus comes back to his eyes. Still dabbed with emotions—confusion, anguish, but they’re clear and present again.

He makes a sigh. “Well, I guess that's settled,” he says.

I have trouble thinking of something reasonable to say. “That
was kind of self-destructive, wasn't it?”

“That could be one interpretation.”

“Are there others?”

“Sure. Another is that you're the underdog and I just want to give you a fighting chance.” He reaches into a pocket of his Darth Vader costume, grasping for something. There's a flash of silver and all of a sudden, he's holding a large knife in his hand. It's got a black handle and a serrated edge. He lowers it slowly to his side.

I don't say anything.

Something—in his demeanor or his voice—makes me disbelieve him. Something makes me think it’s bluster. An act to convince himself of something.

Or maybe my hope just has me backed into a corner.

He steps toward me, but I hold stubbornly still, like a protestor at a sit-in.

In a flash his hands are on me, gripping me by both shoulders and hoisting me to my feet. Suddenly our faces, our lips are close. I make no effort to resist. I can see every pore on his face. Feel the vapor of his breath condensing on my skin.

For a moment, I have this crazy notion he’s about to kiss me.

But that hope yields nothing more substantial than his stare.

His face hardens, as if through some inner resolve to turn away from what he’s feeling. A chill runs through me when I see it. “Every man kills the thing he loves, Nicole.”

My voice is calm, but my body trembles. It's like he wants to look away. Like he can't hold my gaze. “I don't think you're going to kill me, Chris.”

“No one ever thinks I’m going to kill them. Death is only something that happens to other people.”

“I don't think you can do it.” My words almost sound like a question.