Merritt Tierce - Love Me Back

I did one line and Cal told me not to touch the rest till I saw what happened, said it was real shit and all I’d ever had was baby laxative because he knew I got it from the Mexicans at work. I don’t know why I listened to him, that wasn’t my practice usually, but within about thirty seconds my brain had melted. Why did you just do that to me, I said, sounding to myself like the gigantic demented rabbit in Donnie Darko . Why did you do that why did you do that why did you do that, I said. My face was falling apart. My face is falling off, I said to him, my face is falling falling you fucking cunt. You did that to me on purpose.

I didn’t do shit, he said, you the one did the line just now when you know you got to be at work! How you gonna work now? How you gonna drive?

What is all your talk about coming through for yourself, showing up, flying right if you’re gonna sabotage me like this?

You sabotaged yourself! Coulda waited till after work or done anything in the world with that. I asked you if you wanted it and you coulda said no! Don’t blame this on me. You do gotta show up and fly right in your own life or you gonna lose everything.

How can somebody who rubs his fingers all over every woman he passes and wonders why his wife won’t put out talk to me about fly right?

This contorted exchange continued until Cal said Look I got to go, I got to get ready myself. You better get it together. You shouldn’t be doin that stuff you don’t know how to snap out.

Get the fuck out with your goddamned I can be sober if I want cause I’m such a badass voodoo! I said.

He left. I went into the kitchen and turned on a burner. I had slipped into such synesthesia that the clicking of the pilot made me have an orgasm. Propped on the back of the stove was a piece of a broken mirror, a mirror I broke when I moved into that apartment. In the piece of mirror, which was shaped like Tennessee, my irises were gone. All-pupil looks vacant and deadly. And my movements had contrails as I looked away from the mirror and opened a drawer to find a steak knife. I heated the blade over the flame and then raised my cocktail dress — this was back when I still worked mostly in the bar at The Restaurant — and pulled down my panty hose to get to my abdomen. I burned Cal’s initials into the skin to the right of my navel, each about one inch square and made of straight lines, like letters carved into a tree. I felt and did not feel the pain. Skin melts like wax. I cut a big hole in the waist of the pantyhose so I could pull them back up and they wouldn’t stick to the wound.

I don’t know how I drove to work, all I remember is I had to sit down with Danny in the office and explain to him why I couldn’t close my mouth or stop crying. I said something about my daughter. What I said was true, in the sense that it’s true that that kind of coke will napalm your emotional synapses and whatever you care about most will suddenly be getting a sky’s worth of air.

Why isn’t she with you? Cal had asked me on one of the first afternoons when we were getting to know each other. I don’t know what to give her, I said. Bullshit, he said, you give her love, you give her time, you give her attention. Is that what you give Elena, I asked. Much as I can, he said. I want to do it right, I said, not much as I can right, just right.

You got to do it some kinda way to start, he said.

Danny let me go home the day I did the Baron’s line — it wasn’t the first time he granted me some clemency when he knew what was up, I don’t know why. He’d fire anybody for nothing. I guess he could keep people around on the same capriciousness but he said to me once that I was golden there. I was worried because we fucked up Doc Melton’s sea bass and his mom’s pork loin all in one night. Neither was my fault but that never mattered. Honey, you’re golden here, Danny said to me, don’t worry about it. We could have served that old bitch cat meat and she probably would have loved it.

Cal wouldn’t look at me as I passed him on my way out the day I went home blitzed. He pulled this junk where we’d be cuddling and playing and necking and laughing at three p.m. upstairs on the corner of Morningside and Greenville and at six p.m. under the domed ceiling of The Restaurant suddenly he was tired, he was busy, he was clipped and distant. I think it was even worse that day because he didn’t want to acknowledge any connection to the wreck of me. He did not shift his gaze to look at me as I left; he was looking up at the specials board dutifully copying down the features and counts. Made that look like the most important thing a body could be doing. I saw his fingers roll the pen slightly and that was what said I see you but I want you to know I’m not looking at you . I imagined slapping his waiter book from his hand on my way out. It would fly down on the floor, he’d suck his teeth and bend over like a man who’d been working in restaurants for three decades, because he had. Mindful of the back, a slow careful squat of the legs. He’d give me a disgusted look over his shoulder, a shake of his head, eternal dismissal. I would never be loved again. At least until tomorrow afternoon. I knew his routine by then, but I didn’t whack the book because I thought I might fall down.

On the nights that Cal and I were both at The Restaurant it was agreed between us that we couldn’t leave without tracking down the other to say good night. I did it once, just finished my shit and left, and he called me the next day. Said What you think you doin walking out without saying good night to me? I couldn’t find you, I said. Lame, he said, that’s a weak-ass excuse. You got any more weak-ass excuses for me today? No sir, I said. Good, he said, you can walk out whenever you want I’m not there, and I don’t care who else you don’t say good night to but don’t be like that with me. Okay, I said. All right missy, I got to run back into this bank, will I see you tonight? Yes, I said, love you. Love you back, he said. I always knew I was good with him if he said I love you back, not I love you too. If he ever said I love you too it meant I’m unhappy with you, I don’t feel it, it meant I’m just talking to you, meant My mouth is making some meaningless sounds. I love you too meant nothing so much it almost meant I don’t love you.

I didn’t even try to speak to him as I walked out that day. If I’d said Bye Cal, love you see you later he probably wouldn’t have even said I love you too. He would have said Mm-hmm. Or just Mm.

Fuck him. Fuck him back and fuck him too and fuck him, I thought. I called my friend Clark, a beautiful specimen of a man who used to be a licensed chemical dependency counselor before he left that behind to deal the most divine hydro. I wanted to come down as fast as possible and I wanted someone to take care of me. I wanted to hide my self somewhere where I couldn’t get to it. I wanted someone to take it from me, let me think it was safe. How dumb. He got me stoned but it didn’t put my face back together at all. I still felt razed. I almost latched on to a Shirley Horn album but missed. I sat in the bottom of the shower forever, water running over me and taking nothing with it. He left for a previously arranged dinner with a friend and I felt abandoned. My teeth sang.

I did not sleep. I stared at the ceiling in Clark’s place, to which was affixed a tapestry with a giant embroidered om character. Clark came home from the dinner around three a.m. and I begged him to get me some narcotics so I could have eyelids again. He said he didn’t know where to get any. I was lying naked on the bed, covered partly by a towel and partly by the clothes I was clutching but hadn’t been able to put on. He asked me what happened here, where CDC was illegible for blisters I knew would deflate and turn to pus the next day, from having branded myself with lesser, simpler marks in other places. I said Calvin D. Colson, Calvin D. Colson, ochre, terra-cotta, golden Colson.