Nothing But Blackened Teeth(14)

The words came together, but I swallowed them stillborn. It was too esoteric, too ambiguous to get across. Maybe I’d been wrong.

But if I wasn’t . . .

I got up, Lin bellowing protests, and staggered after the clack of sandals on wood, half-blind as I followed my Dantes into damnation.





5



He caught me by the nape of my collar as I stumbled onto a bridge, its blackwood railings corniced by sculptures of maidens in repose, their bodies twisted around one another, so that at a glance, they resembled a strange garden. Below: an ornamental pond rendered tar-dark and fathomless. How had we gotten here? We’d been above ground level. But the doors had opened nonetheless to lightless sky and cold air.

“The fuck, Cat. The fuck. No. We’re not—”

“They were there for me when you weren’t.” I blotted tears from my eyes, slowing, thought for a moment on the value of pointing out what had happened as the world smeared into a sodium haze. Somehow, Lin had taken no notice of the spatial weirdness so I said nothing. We were fucked, clearly. Might as well die without any bad blood. “They kept me going. They got me to come out of the house. They made me feel normal.”

“Well, if you’d just called me—”

“You didn’t even tell me you were getting married.” The words melted together, no syllabic definition, just sound: awkward and delicate. “You have no idea how much that part bugged me.”

Lin winced like he’d been slapped, staggering to a stop, fingers spasming. A slight tug on my collar, as though that would be enough to rewind everything, replace it with something better. Pull me back from the ledge, put down the knife, undo the hurt that curled its cold finger around the trigger.

“I didn’t think you’d want to know.”

“Why?” Just a whisper in the autumn-blued air, one word, the sound of it raw and desperate. Moonlight seeped through cuts in the trees, striping his cheek like wounds scratched across my thigh.

“Because you were so unhappy.”

“Is that why you didn’t visit me either? Didn’t reach out?” The words swayed like a body on a rope, finally slack. Emotional distance reframing that previous incarnation as a stranger, without body or nuance, a monochrome despair decanted into the slumped mouth, a six-month affair with cigarettes and self-loathing. I wasn’t that person, couldn’t possibly be, and the evenness in my voice had to be testimony to the fact. “You could have said something. You could have been there for me. Instead, you went and . . . I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m trying to say anymore. Life’s kinda messy, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” Every part of that sentence ached through its recital.

“It’s not your fault. You’re allowed happy.” I shed my hoodie, tossed it into the pool below us. The algae, clumping filthily around the bulrush, kept the garment from sinking, and something else floated it away. A fish broke the surface tension, gasping, green clinging to its lips. “It really isn’t. You don’t have to—look, this isn’t about that. I’m just trying to make a point. These guys kept me from doing anything too stupid. So, I owe them. Kind of.”

Close enough. There wasn’t time for anything else.

The nature of my announcement pressed down, and I watched for a long minute as the light sieved from his face. He swallowed. I reached out and bent my forehead to his.

“I was scared and stupid and, frankly, selfish. I just . . .”

“You came back and that’s what is important. We’re friends again.”

“I’m still sorry,” Lin said, threading his fingers with mine. “It—”

“It’s okay. You’re here now. But we gotta go. Now.” This time, Lin didn’t argue.


*

By the time we found them, Talia was all dressed up in someone else’s wedding clothes.

She looked radiant in the dim hall into which Lin and I stepped, illuminated by the lantern set down at her sandaled feet. Her jūnihitoe was sumptuous, palatial in architecture, every single color from the palette of a perfect dawn, each drape of silk embroidered with faces from a children’s book, glimmering with reflected candle-glow. Against the vermillion of the overcoat, Talia’s skin seemed depthless. Not brown, but black as ink on teeth.

“Where the fuck—” Lin wasn’t smiling for once, no attempt to defuse, disarm. “You know what? Doesn’t fucking matter. You know this probably belonged to a dead person, right?”

“The hell is wrong with you?” Faiz trotted out from a side room, wearing executioner blacks: a regular suit, slightly rumpled, bowtie and everything. “If you’re going to be an asshole, get out.”

“Sorry,” Lin said, not sounding like he was at all. “Just pointing out the obvious.”

Faiz pinched his brow. “You two are drunk idiots.”

I slid down to a knee, gritted my teeth against the headache painting lights behind my eyes. “This is a mistake.”

“Are you talking about the ghost girl?” Phillip circled around from behind me, cupped me below the arms, and lifted me straight up, propped me against an alcove where a vase blooming with dead flowers sat. The petals crumbled to ashes as I leaned back. The air tasted like honey, had a chewiness to it. “No one’s seen her. Don’t worry.”