Gods & Monsters(58)

“They don’t know you’re in New York,” she says. “Everything is fine. I’m fine. They’re not looking for you. You go get married, okay? Focus on your big day.”

I want to ask more but I leave it at that and say my goodbyes. “Okay. I miss you. Talk to you soon.”

So they don’t know. They’re not even looking for me. All this angst of the past days have been for nothing. I’m relieved. Well, I should be relieved but I think it’s not very many little girls’ dream to be married without their parents. Up until a month ago, I thought they would be there when I married Abel. I knew they might not like it, but I had no idea that I wouldn’t even see them on this day.

They are not looking for you.

But it’s okay. I survived the humiliation of being paraded around in a bedsheet by my own mother, I can get married without them. Happily.

I wear my pink dress and hold a bouquet of sunflowers in my hand. Abel wears a white shirt, with sleeves rolled up to expose the veins of his forearms, and black dress pants. Ethan and a bearded guy from their work are our witnesses.

We stand in front of a judge and in a matter of minutes, it’s done, and Abel kisses me in front of everyone, like he said he would long back when we were in that town. His kiss is both desperate and relieved, and when he breaks it and looks down at me, for the first time in weeks I think he’s truly happy. I don’t see currents of desperation running under his skin or flashing in his eyes.

And I don’t have any doubts. Everything is right; I can feel it.





“I have to tell you something.”

Those are the first words my husband says to me the day after our wedding. They are somber and spoken in a hushed tone. They don’t shock me, though. No. Isn’t that scary? Petrifying, terrifying, alarming.

I’ve been driving myself crazy for the past weeks thinking something was going on and now I have my proof. I almost don’t want it. I almost don’t want him to tell me something.

But I nod, clutching the sheets to my pink wedding dress. After the short ceremony, we walked around the city and then, Ethan scored some beer for us to celebrate. I had my first taste of alcohol, directly from my husband as he poured the liquid from his mouth into mine. It was decadent and amazing, and I got drunk only after one bottle. I’m pretty sure I crashed before we could consummate our marriage.

“Will you go with me somewhere? I have to show you something.” He scans my face, tracing his finger down the side of it, looking at me with such intensity, such passion.

“Okay, let me go freshen up.”

He nods, still staring at me before bending down to kiss my forehead. “I love you, Pixie. I’m nothing without you.”

With that he gets up from the mattress and leaves, and I’m left with a sense of foreboding. I go and freshen up with wooden limbs so he can take me wherever he wants to take me.

It’s in Brooklyn. The thing he wants to show me. We ride the subway and get there in about half an hour. In those thirty minutes, we don’t talk. Abel’s uneasy and maybe even afraid, and that’s making me afraid. What can possibly be so bad that he can’t even say it? Hasn’t been able to say it for weeks.

Our destination is a brick warehouse. This entire area is lined with metal fences and big trucks lugging deliveries. In all the times I’ve come to this borough, I’ve never set foot here.

As we approach the metal door, Abel squeezes my hand tightly. In the silent, still air, his gesture is loud.

“You trust me?” he asks, with open, vulnerable eyes.

It’s the same thing he asked when we got to Ethan’s apartment and heard those sex noises. I answered him yes, then. I realize I didn’t even have to think about it. But I do now and that cuts him – cuts me – deep.

Taking a heavy breath, I nod. “Yes.”

There isn’t any other answer when it comes to him. But somehow, I know that my life will never be the same after this. He nods at me before pushing the metal door open and a screech sounds, breaching the sanctity of the quiet.

I step in with trembling feet.

Honestly, I’m convinced I’m going to see dead bodies. I already know that they’ll be hanging from the ceiling. There will be blood everywhere. I’ll see plastic sheets stuck to the walls and people in jumpsuits wielding weapons. Anything that warrants the kind of silence Abel’s maintaining has to deal with death.

I’m wrong.

Silence is the last thing that I hear in this place. What I hear is what I never in a million years expected to hear. Moans. Loud and aroused and shameless. It matches the moans I hear through our apartment walls, only these are ten times louder.

And what I see is wilder than any dreams I might have had. There are beds with white sheets. Three of them, actually. They are scattered around the large, loft-like space, at an angle to each other. Though they are partitioned with black curtains, from where I’m standing by the door I can see all of them.

They hold bodies. Naked bodies, tanned skin against white sheets, and they are writhing and arching and slipping and thrusting.

They are having sex.

As if that wasn’t enough, there are people gathered around the beds. Yup, people holding cameras. People holding lights. They are circling, bending this way and that as they take shot after shot after shot.

Click. Click. Click.