Exposed (Madame X, #2)(26)

Do you notice that I do not kiss you back?

I am reeling. Your emotional manipulation has left me exhausted, empty.

You reach into the hip pocket of your slacks, withdraw a slim white rectangle. A cell phone. You hand it to me. “It’s yours. I programmed my number into it. Len’s, if you need a driver or anything.” You glance down at the pile of fabric that is my clothing, my dress, my underwear. There is a small square of folded paper. You bend, retrieve it, unfold it, read it. You toss it, let it flutter back down. Take the phone back, tap at it for a moment. “There. Now you’ve got his number, too. This is me giving you choices.”

You hand the phone back, and I take it, still and silent. I am so tired now that I can barely stand upright. You just stare at me, your expression characteristically inscrutable.

“You want to be her?” You point at the square of paper. The name written thereon. “Then be her. Be the immigrant girl.”

You turn, open the elevator, step on, insert your key. I am within reach. You palm my hip, tug me to you. Kiss my mouth again, the way you never have before. And then you release me, and I stumble backward.

“You are Isabel, and I am Caleb.” You leave off the rest, and somehow that is worse than if you’d said the rest.

As if by leaving off the rest, you are acknowledging the lie. That there was no bad man. That you did not save me. I suddenly want the lie.

I want the lie.

But you only repeat the new truth: “You are Isabel, and I am Caleb.”

You twist the key, and the doors close, and I see your frame in a narrowing perspective, until there is just a sliver of you, and then you are gone.

And I am alone with your words.

You are Isabel, and I am Caleb.

Oh, you are cruel. Even if I am her, I am still yours.

I take a shower, a long, scalding shower, and I scrub myself until I am pink and raw, and the water runs cold. I brush my teeth until my gums bleed.

None of that scours away the scrim of ugliness on my skin, or purges the mire from within me.

I fall onto the bed, wrapped in a towel, mind spinning in dizzying circles.

I am Isabel.

You are Caleb.

I am Isabel.

He is Logan.

I am Isabel.

I think of a line from a Bible I once read, in my library, long ago, back before everything changed: “I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.”

I didn’t understand those words then, but I do now.

I am an addict, and you are my drug.

I am Isabel.

If I want to be anyone other than the addict, the Caleb-junkie, the no one, the girl on her knees, taking what you give as if it’s all I’m worth, then I have to choose someone else to be.

I choose Isabel, a dead immigrant girl I may or may not have once been.

I am Isabel.

Sleep is a long time coming, and when it does claim me, it is with tear tracks drying on my cheeks; the walls echo with the ghosts of my sobs, the specter of X writhes in my soul, and the memory of choking on you is a livid scar across my mind.





EIGHT


There are no blackout curtains in your bedroom; there is no noise machine. Those are the weapons with which I fight the demons plaguing my sleep. I haven’t slept well in the months since moving up here; the nightmares wake me up, and you are always gone.

I cannot wake up, this time. I am trapped in the dream, trapped in the darkness, with sirens howling like wolves in the shadows, rain slicing my face like icy knives. Lights flash, blue and red, white lights piercing the black. Searching. Eyes, searching. Pain stabs me, grips me. I am confused, disoriented. I do not know what happened. All I know is pain. Agony. I burn. My skull throbs, my face aches. My bones shake and my muscles tremble and it hurts to breathe, hurts to sob, hurts, hurts, hurts. I crawl across cold wet hard ground, fingernails scrabbling and ripping away. I do not know where I am trying to go, just away. Away. Away from the pain, but the pain is me and I cannot escape it. I cannot escape myself. The pain is all.

I wake abruptly, sobbing, sweaty. Alone. The penthouse is dark, and silent. I know the various sounds of silence, the silence of someone waiting, the silence of emptiness.

This is the silence of absence.

You are gone.

I am not upset by this. I do not know if I can ever face you again.

I am assaulted by a wave of memory: your fingers in my hair, my jaw cracking wide and your essence on my tongue.

I barely make it to the bathroom in time to empty the contents of my stomach into the toilet. Acid burns my throat, bitter and hot. Coats my tongue, my lips. Drips down my chin. I rinse my mouth with tepid water from the tap, then brush my teeth again and wash my face with hand soap.

I am exhausted, seeing as what little sleep I did get was wracked by the nightmare and provided no rest. I am slow, sluggish, lethargic. Empty. Numb. As if by vomiting, I purged myself of any capacity to think or feel.

On autopilot, I dress myself. Black lingerie, because I do not own anything except lingerie. A simple dove-gray dress, A-line, knee-length, with a wide crimson belt and matching red pumps. I brush through my hair and leave it loose in glossy raven-wing waves. I do not know why I am getting dressed. I do not know where I intend to go, only that I cannot stay here any longer.

As I near the elevator, I trip in the darkness over a pile of cloth, and my toe kicks something hard, which skitters across the hardwood floor. I retrieve it.