You Love Me(You #3)(82)

I hate having my picture taken and Melanda is in the trough in the backdrop and the world is full of murder podcast people who want to think the worst of people and I see a headline from hell. ACCUSED MURDERER SAYS CHEESE IN FRONT OF THE SPOT WHERE HE BURIED LOCAL FEMINIST.

But I didn’t fucking kill her, I really didn’t, and you snap a picture and whistle. “Now, that was a real smile.”

Life is for the living—it’s a well-known fact—and on we go, and you are my tour guide, telling me about the origins of the bunkers that are right around the bend. “They built a base here over a hundred years ago. It was the last line of defense for the Bremerton naval shipyard.”

“Pressure much?”

You smile like a teacher intent on finishing her lecture. “This was a lookout and soldiers watched for any warships entering the sound. And then it was a camp for needy kids…” And then it was a place for us to fuck. “And then it was a camp for sailors…”

You glimmer at me the way you did that day when you were pushing Murakami on that old man and I want school to end. Now. “You really know your Fort Ward, Mary Kay.”

“No questions just yet,” you say. “See, it really gets interesting in 1939. This was a radio base where they intercepted messages about the war, trying to protect us from an attack… but then they shut all that down in the fifties.” You scratch your head in your head but you make eye contact to make sure that I’m in there too. And I am. “Well,” you say. “That concludes my lecture but I just… I love it here because it reminds you of how things change and don’t change all at once. I mean look at these fucking bunkers!”

You jump onto a step and I join you and I do what you want. I look at these fucking bunkers. “They’re still here,” I say.

“Yeah,” you say. “Bunker rhymes with hunker, you know? That’s what I thought for a long time, that I had to be like those soldiers, you know? Hunker down in the bunker in case something bad happens and well… here we are.”

I kiss you but you deflect and grab my hand like we’re in high school and you just have to show me your favorite graffiti—GOD KILLS EVERYONE—and I cringe at the big brown poop emoji and you don’t like that either and you show me what you do like, the lower levels of the bunkers, and I squeeze your hand and you squeeze right back. “I knew you’d get it.”

“Well of course I get it. I get you.”

There is no more getting Closer. Finally we are there. Here. The sidewalk ended and the pavement gave way to dirt and your hair went from a bun to a ponytail to a mane that runs down your back and you lead me down steep, deep steps into a little square cave and it’s a filthy, musty, rectangular hole in the ground and you pull off your black sweater and sigh.

“Well, City Boy, tell me there’s a blanket in that backpack.”



* * *



We did it.

Your favorite place is now my favorite place and we’ve had sex in the bunker at Fort Ward and we feasted on beef and broccoli—I came prepared—and we passed out and woke up and did it again and went back to sleep and the floor is fucking concrete and isn’t that how you know you’re in love?

“Come on,” you say. “I can play hooky but I can’t disappear.”

You want to know where I had sex in high school and I tell you about a guidance counselor and you’re mortified but I assure you she wasn’t my guidance counselor and… you’re still a little mortified and I let you take more Polaroids and I take some of you and we reach the parking lot—it’s just us—and I want to tell you this was the best day of my life.

You hand me the pictures. “You should probably hang on to these.”

I unlock my car and you unlock your car. You grab your phone and turn it on and I turn on my phone and you sigh. “I’m so glad we did this.”

“Me too.”

Your phone comes back to life and my phone comes back to life and my news is no news—Oliver wants more Eames chairs and Shortus wants beer—but your news is bad news. I know because you’re listening to a voicemail. I know because you gasp and turn away.

“Mary Kay.”

You thrash an arm at me. Bad sign. Did someone see us?

You drop your phone onto the pavement and you turn around and all the red I put into your cheeks is gone. You are white as RIP Melanda and do you know? You scream at the sky and is it your father? Did he have a stroke?

I reach for you but you crumple to the ground and your voice is a horror movie and your hands are in your hair and then you say it, barely yet loudly.

“Phil. He… he’s gone. He… I wasn’t there and he’s gone and Nomi…”

Phil. Fuck. I reach out to you and this time you don’t just flinch. You shove me away and you run to your car and you are in no condition to drive and you can’t even get the door open but you warn me to stay the fuck away from you right now—Why Phil? How?—and you are too mad for motor skills and you throw your backpack at your car and you look at that roof and all the rage transforms into sadness—you are sobbing—and then just like that, it turns back into rage.

You point a finger at me. “This day never happened. I wasn’t here.”

It’s not a request. It’s an order. It’s a sit. He’s gone—I am in shock, I didn’t do it—but the way you peel out of here and leave me in the dust, it’s like you think I did.