A party breathes across the street. The people there, they're drinking, dancing, dropping in and out. When the door opens, music bellows, and laughter catches.
She sees them from the middle of the street, but the glaring lights from their curtain-closed windows and those from the barreling car confuse her. The car, though, isn't what rocks her, rather, she's rocked onto the car from the force of something pushing into her body which staggers her, the scrape of wheels slamming and veering; but the driver doesn't stop.
There, in the middle of the street, she lies crumpled in with her hand glitching. No one inside the house can hear what's going on outside, but someone's standing on the sidewalk smiling, the gun holding warm in her happy-trigger hands.
In the dark, with her body by the tree, it's hard to make her out. So maybe the men running down the hill don't notice her or, if they do, she's since put the gun in her purse and started walking toward the party, with a smirk still sitting on her face.
The fastest of them reaches the dead woman first, quickly crouching to feel her breathing. Trembling, he moves her body toward his, cradling her body on his thighs as he turns her head toward him. Kissing the top of her head, he lightly sidles his fingers through her hair, then leans in to her lips and, with just a space of air between their lips, he starts to cry, shuffling hands off his shoulders while pressing in closer to her and squeezing her body against his, trying with kisses to wake her up.
"Look at her with her eyes closed, like Sleeping Beauty. Should I kiss her on the lips to wake her up?" he'd asked his friend just a week ago while they'd stared at her lying on the couch, her hands holding a book on her stomach.
When the Dean saw them in the English house, she'd said, "I'm really worrried about her health. Can't you see she came in here to study? I think you need to leave her alone."
"But -"
"I mean now. Look, she's opened her eyes."
So he'd waited for her behind the building she usually crossed to get to student housing. As she approached, however, he'd changed his mind again. Instead of taking her hand in his to walk her home, he'd smiled at her and stepped back from the street to follow her home; if she'd noticed him at all, she didn't acknolwedge him. A few minutes later, when she'd stopped to look behind her, he'd hid from her.
He just hadn't known how to talk to her. When she'd looked at him, he'd always felt the weight of her eyes on his; it scared him the way he'd felt about her. At the party, he'd thought, I'll ask her out for sure then.
"I love you," he whispers, "I've always loved you."
Even if she wanted to, she couldn't answer him. But he knew she loved him, he'd heard her say it while she was sleeping the other night and he'd snuck into her open room to watch her sleep; it was an easy thing to do because she'd started lately to leave the front door and her bedroom unlocked whether she was home or not.
"I love you," he'd whispered, crouched down on the floor by her closet in case she was just napping and he needed to disappear.
"I love you, too," she'd answered and, for a moment, he'd startled at her movement, her head turned toward him but her eyes still closed.
He'd left shaking and happy, bragging to his friends, "She loves me!"
And this night, when he'd finally been ready to kiss her with her eyes open, she never would be. Yet, despite the sirens and people shouting, he hears only her silence and, when he finally looks up, there's only one pair of eyes staring back at him that angers him. Not tonight, he thinks, I won't kill her tonight...
No comments:
Post a Comment