Chapter 4 #3
The glass door of Silver State breathes out, and she’s gone.
The visor on my helmet is fogged, and I try to slow my breaths.
In, slow. Out, slower. One, two, three. I fight like hell not to rip my helmet off and follow her in.
I sit there with the engine quiet and the city loud and admit what the knife tap already knew: I’ll never look away.
I roll the Harley across to our warehouse and kill the ignition.
Metal ticks as it cools. I tell myself I’m not escalating.
I tell myself I’m watching the block, the warehouse, not the woman.
I might be watching men who might watch the woman who might be mine, but that’s neither here nor there.
The lie is elegant enough I almost buy it.
And still, the picture of her walking into work guts me.
When she walks, the whole city turns to face her.
The pressure of the air changes. My thumb finds the knife.
One, two, three. The tap answers back with the only prayer I’ve got.
Watch her. This makes sense. It isn't an obsession. She’s gravity.
It isn’t her fall people are drawn to her, but monsters need gravity too. So I count, I tap, I watch.
I text Sava.
I’m losing it over her.
Sava:
Are we talking keeping her safe or are we talking stalker?
I don’t text back. She calls.
“Which one is it?” she says by way of hello.
“Both.” I click to speaker phone so I can keep watching Melinda move through her day.
“You need rules.”
“I have rules.” My thumb finds my knife. One, two, three.
“Say them out loud.” She waits. When I don’t, she fills the silence. “Do not approach. No touching. No speaking to her. No gifts. Keep your thirty-minute buffer between any impulse and any action. If it still itches after thirty, call me or one of your brothers before you do anything stupid.”
“Talking about this is stupid.”
“Talking about this is what’ll keep you out of trouble. I hope.”
“What if I can’t stick to the rules?”
Her voice thins, the way a string does when a bow drags too slow. “If it’s real, it’ll still be there tomorrow. Practice patience.”
“Since when do you preach patience?”
“I understand what it is to want something so badly you think you might truly lose your sanity. Someone so close you can touch them, but you can never allow yourself to,” she says, soft and ugly-honest, “and I learned I don’t get to. Not now. Not ever.” She clears it away.
I lean on the bar of the bike. “And you can do that? Just ignore that pull every day?”
“I try.” She sighs. “Every fucking day I try. But, you may have to travel more. I wouldn’t say the distance quiets my mind, but at least I can’t reach him from across the world.”
“I’d ask who you’re talking about but my guess is you’ll hang up on me.”
“You’d be correct.”
“I destroy people.”
“Then don’t touch her as a weapon. You can’t consecrate with the same hands you use to carve.”
“I thought you said no touching.”
“That was a metaphor,” Sava says. “But, if you touch her it can be applied literally.”
“So no faith that I’ll stay away?”
“None whatsoever.”
“She’s the closest I’ve been to sacred in my entire life, Sava, and I’ve barely interacted with her. That pull, that connection, it’s the realest thing I’ve ever experienced and I’ve held death’s face in my hands.”
“I’ll help you protect her,” Sava says. “I recommend we do that from a distance, but either way, even if you give in, I’ll make her my religion too.”
“Say a prayer for me then,” I mutter.
“I don’t think God listens to prayers from me.”
“Yeah, he never took much interest in mine either.” My thumb is already tapping the knife. One, two, three. “Timer’s on.”
“Good. I’m hanging up before you talk yourself into a felony.
” The line clicks dead. I pocket the phone, then pull it back out.
Thirty minutes counts down. I set the knife on the table to stop tapping and immediately tap the wood instead.
One, two, three. I don’t text. I watch the currently empty square.
It’s vigilance. That’s what I name it so I can breathe.
That’s what I name it so that tonight when I’m at home I can take my boots off and lie down on top of the covers, and pretend to sleep in slices, waking every ten to make sure she stays safe whenever the city blinks.
At five fifty the next morning a shift happens in the square.
The light at the coffee shop two doors down from Silver State warms up.
A custodian props the door with a rubber wedge.
The lobby reflection stops being a smear and turns into a mirror with a pulse.
Something in my chest rotates to face it. She’s never been out this early.
The timer ends.
Good morning Lindy girl.
Knife. Hip. One, two, three. The count used to mean: wait to cut. Now it means: wait for her.
The streetlight girl still sits under my skin like a splinter I refuse to pull. The calm of the Melinda is the salve I use to keep dabbing around it. One day, maybe the wound heals. One day, maybe the universe lets me keep a good thing, two good things.
Not today.
Today I practice the only faith I have, the faith in my control. Count, watch, wait. Knife taps. One, two, three.
I pull the leash tighter.
But I still drive past the glass box at eight where I know she’ll be, pretending the camera angles and motion detectors are for the safety of my city and not for a woman I haven’t earned yet.