Abel
Hell has a stained tile ceiling.
There’s nothing welcoming about this goddamn place. I start counting the splotches above me.
Pretty soon I’m blinking slower and slower and then I’m not seeing the ceiling anymore.
Before I can sink deep into sleep, I feel my chair jerk and I sit up quickly.
“What the fuck?” I say, not so loud that I scare people but loud enough that the person standing beside me hears.
“They don’t like it when we fall asleep.”
Her voice is soft, tinkling with quiet humor, and the violence Dr. Brown warned me about is so far from my mind in that moment. Soft lips and soft words. Even though her eyes seem calculating, looking over me and taking stock of me, they aren’t angry, or crazy, even.
“They?”
She sways her head a little toward the nurses’ station near the door. They’re looking over at us and I wonder what has their attention. They aren’t even speaking. Just watching us.
“Are we not allowed to talk to each other?” I glance at her before looking back at them.
“They’re just waiting to see how long it takes me to try to hurt you,” she answers.
I almost laugh but as I look at her, I realize she’s serious. Mami would call her crazy. Mira, esa blanquita. Que peligrosa. Que toxica, she’d whisper in my ear, smelling like stale cigarettes, confirming the strangeness of the woman speaking to me. Maybe toxica is what I need because I don’t let it stop with that sentence. “Why would you want to do that?”
She stares at me like she’s trying to figure out what comes next. I’m eager to see what she decides. Her blonde hair is so long. I want to run my fingers through it, maybe wrap the strands in my fist as I kiss her pink lips. There’s something serene about her and I’m thinking maybe she’s a contradiction. Violent serenity.
I haven’t gotten laid in so long. Girls don’t like fucking homeless guys, and I don’t blame them. I don’t have money to woo anyone, or any place to take them back to.
I know men who have enough game that some girl ends up taking them in, feeding and housing them for years before they got tired of them driving their cars while at work to fuck other women. Como un vividor. I just don’t have that type of shit in me. Using and manipulating women is a pussy move.
But, man, do I miss pussy .
Is it the fact that my dick hasn’t felt anything other than my own hand since I can remember that makes me react to her like this?
It’s not like I have a ton of options.
But then her eyes squint a little like I’m a puzzle she’s trying to piece together and I can’t stop staring at her. She took in all of me and now she’s trying to put the picture together.
“You keep looking at me and I don’t know how to read you.”
I draw my brows together. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Who wants to know everything ? That doesn’t sound fun. Fucking stressful, if anything. I can’t even handle all of my thoughts, most days.
She surprises me by sitting next to me, not close enough to seem intimate but I still take it as a good sign. She tucks her hair behind her ear and those blue eyes stare at me like I’m the most important person in the room. She’s dazzled by my newness if her eyes tell me anything.
“I think I’ve been waiting for you,” she announces and there’s a youthfulness that brightens her. It makes her intoxicating and maybe it’s my loneliness, maybe it’s her beauty, maybe it’s the fact that I always find my way into some trouble. But sitting here with here, I feel better than I have in a long time.
And I silently vow to never look at her the way Dr. Brown did. I don’t even know her fucking name. I’m making promises to a nameless girl at this point. Anything to help the time go by.
Welcome to The Shit Show, I think to myself as her eyes sparkle with excitement. That I elicit such a response from her should be worrisome but what the fuck kind of trouble can we get into here?
“How old are you?” she asks, and I doubt she notices that she’s leaned closer to me. But I notice, basking under her attention.
She doesn’t even know my name. At least, I haven’t told her my name. “Twenty-one now.” I remember spending my birthday working and to say it fucking sucked wouldn’t do the experience justice at all. If I hadn’t been working all damn day, I would’ve cracked a beer and had a cheap meal somewhere before passing out in my car. Still, it would’ve been a day full of choices I decided to make as opposed to hearing my boss screaming at me.
“I want to guess your name but I don’t think I’d get it,” she conspires, leaning forward just a little more. “You don’t look like you have a normal name.” The hair that slid from behind her ear is tucked right back there again. “I’ll be a little disappointed if your name isn’t special.”
“Why?” I ask, knowing that she probably thinks I have a different kind of name because my looks are hard to place. Not quite white, eh, blanquita?
I remember there was a time where I could walk outside and get pussy; when there was no shortage of women wanting to fuck me in my dead mother’s bed, let alone the back of my hooptie. As an eighteen-year-old, that shit was okay.
But those days are gone. I’m not in high school selling drugs anymore. I gave all that up when I realized they made my hallucinations worse. Walking away from that type of money makes me feel even crazier now, but if I’d still been dealing, I would be dead. I’d watched most of my old friends meet that fate before I even climbed on that damn ledge that led me here.
I take stock of the conversation as she mulls over her answer. Are we flirting? In a mental institution? Is this really happening? I smile because fuck it. There wasn’t anything like her outside of this place.
“You don’t look like everyone else.” She leans back a little, placing an arm around the back of a nearby chair. “Your eyes look like dark magic. So how could you have a name like everyone else?”
Dark…magic? I’ve never heard that one before. The brownness of them is pretty fucking unremarkable to me.
Her own eyes aren’t losing their sparkle and I find myself trying to come up with something flirty to say as quickly as I can. But screw that. I want to take my time and say shit I’ve thoroughly thought out. She waits as I think of the best way to answer her.
“Well, what’s your name?” I ask, mostly because I really want to know and I can’t think of anything better than that. My game is way off.
“Rose.”
Simple. Elegant. I feel like I should be reciting some fucking Shakespeare quote when she says it. And now it’s my turn to speak.
“Rose.” I say her name, hoping it sticks in some part of my brain. The part that knows about destiny and all that shit because sitting next to her feels like I’m not in a crazy house. It feels like we’re two normal people, just talking.
Until some vieja screams across the room and I jerk out of my chair to see what’s wrong.
Rose makes a sound of stifled amusement and grabs my hand to pull me back into my seat. One touch and I’m staring at the way her hand feels in mine.
When she sees me notice the contact, she pulls her hand away. Does she think I didn’t like it?
“Tell me your name,” she says when my ass hits the chair.
It’s quiet but it’s a command. I don’t mind it. These people watch her like her touch hurts but I’ve only witnessed the softness of it. I already want more.
“. Like Cain and . Cartagena. Like…I don’t know.” I’m happy I was able to offer the correct pronunciation of my last name to her because when non-Spanish speakers say it without hearing it, all types of sounds come out of their mouths. I shrug one shoulder and she smiles. I wish there was a polite way to ask her to touch me again without sounding like a fucking weirdo. But, I mean, I’m in the right place to act a little fucking weirdo.
“For once, I’m not disappointed,” she whispers.
I don’t know if I was supposed to hear it, but I’m glad I did. I look back at the nurses and they are whispering amongst each other as they continue to stare at us. “Are they afraid of you or something?”
Some of the nurses are walking around the room, engaging with a few of the other patients. But they don’t come near us. They stare, they talk, but they don’t approach.
“I’ve been here too long to care.” Those eyes don’t take a break from their direct stare. They catch every move I make, like I’m something to be studied.
“How long have you been here?” Before I can wonder if it was wrong of me to ask that, she offers her answer easily.
“Over three years.”
Mira la toxica. Cuidate, mijo, mami ’s voice is warning me.
Three years in here and everyone is afraid of her. I should stop flirting with her. I should stop imagining how good it might feel to fuck her. I should stop wondering what her lips taste like and if she would open like a rose if I spread her legs—soft pink petals, ripe for plucking.
I should.
I should.
I should.
But I don’t.
I’ve done worse things than this.
What’s the worst that could happen?
There’s something about the shade of blue I’ve come to search for every time I enter the large rec room that’s feeling more and more familiar to me than I’d like.
Blue like a clear spring day, the birds chirping as the day begins.
I snort at the thought, knowing my crazy ass life didn’t grant me many mornings like that. For most of my life, my days started with yelling and fear. Then after mami died, they started with a grogginess that I often smoked to make it through. I was high most of my high school career, but staying under the radar so no one went sniffing around. Foster care was never going to be my future.
I’m tripping over the potholes of my past when I finally see that shade of blue as Rose heads toward me, her eyes clear.
Like spring .
Barely a fraction of a smile and I offer her a full grin.
She sits beside me and I try not to hyper fixate on how closely she’s allowed herself to be to me. Sometimes I wonder if the space she often puts between us is a sort of safeguard to give me time to shield myself against her violence.
But I’ve never witnessed it, so I don’t know.
“What were you thinking about?” She asks, launching into her millions of questions.
I think it’s adorable, how she never tires of learning about my mediocre ass life. It makes me feel special…important.
“I don’t remember ever having peaceful mornings,” I muse aloud, giving sound to nonsensical thought. “ Ay , it doesn’t matter pero I think it’s a little sad.”
“You’re so quick to dismiss your feelings,” she counters, tilting her head as she peers at me, trying to dissect me. When Doc does it, I can’t stand it. When Rose does it, I want to ask her what she sees.
“I don’t think anyone has ever cared about my feelings.”
She leans forward, peering around the room on her way closer to me.
“I do.”
It sounds more like a vow than a declaration and I fight the grin desperate to show itself.