Songs of Love & Death

“He made it all the way through ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ last week,” he said.

“All five parts?”

“Yep.”

“Kid’s going places,” she said.

“Please God that it’s places out of earshot.”

She brushed her fingertips across his chest. His skin was several tones darker than hers, and the contrast made her hand seem paler than she was, and her scars as white as the snow. He had his first gray hair in among the black, just over his ear. His dark eyes shifted over to her, his smile riding the line between postcoital exhaustion and melancholy. Quick as the impulse, she rolled the few more inches toward him and kissed his shoulder. He raised his eyebrows the way he always did when he knew that she was nervous.

“What’s your plan for the day?” he asked.

“Housework,” she said. “You?”

“Get up early and hit the Laundromat,” he said.

She nodded.

“And since that didn’t work?”

“Do an emergency load in the sink to get through work tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got to meet up with Gemma at three to get back my scanner.”

“You’ll need to get hopping. It’s past noon now.”

“Another few minutes won’t make a difference,” he said, putting his hand over hers. He wasn’t pretty—his face too wide, his nose bent where it had broken as a child and never been put right, his jaw touched by the presentiment of jowls. Handsome, maybe, in an off-putting way. “Is there something to talk about?”

“Is,” she said.

He took a long, slow breath and let it out slowly. Not a sigh so much as the preparatory breath of a high diver. Or a man steeling himself for bad news.

“I think you should come over tonight,” she said. “Take a look at the place. Bring your laundry, too.”

He sat up. The blankets dropped to his lap. She looked at him, unable to read his expression.

“You’re changing the rules?” he said. Each word was as gentle as picking up eggs.

“No, I’m not. I always said that the not coming over part was temporary. It’s just… time. That’s all.”

“So. You really aren’t breaking up with me?”

“Jesus,” she said. She took the pillow from under her head and hit him with it lightly. Then she did it again.

“It is traditional,” he said. “Girl gets a house without consulting her boyfriend, moves all her stuff out, tells him he can’t come over. Says she’s ‘working through something’ but won’t say what exactly it is? It’s hard not to connect those dots.”

“And the part where I tell you in simple declarative sentences that I’m not breaking up with you?”

“Goes under mixed signals,” he said.

She took a deep breath. On the street, a siren rose and fell.

“Sorry,” she said. She got up from the bed, pulling one of the sheets with her and wrapping it around her hips. “Look, I understand that this has been hard. I’ve asked for a lot of faith.”

“You really have.”

“And given that I don’t have an entirely uncheckered past, and all,” she said. “I see why you would freak. You and my mother both.”

“Your mother?”

“She’s been reading me the riot act ever since she heard about it. She really likes you.”

He leaned back, surprise and pleasure in his expression.

“Your mother likes me?”

“Focus, sweetheart. I’m apologizing here.”

“And I don’t mean to interrupt,” he said.

Relief had left him giddy. Between his brave face and her attention being elsewhere, she’d managed to ignore the sadness and dread that had been seeping into him. Now that it was lifting a little, she saw how deep it had gone. She found her pants in a heap on the floor, sat down at the dressing table and lit a cigarette. The taste of the smoke helped her to think. When she spoke, her voice was lower.

“I’ve had a rough ride this life, you know? I used to be ashamed of that. I used to think that after Nash I was… broken. Damaged goods. Like that. And feeling like that has…”

She stopped, shook herself, laughed at something, and took another drag.

“Feeling like that has haunted me,” she said, with an odd smile.

“And this house is part of not feeling that way?”

“It is.”

“Then I already like it,” he said. “Sight unseen. If it helps you see yourself the way I see you, then it’s on my side.”

Corrie chuckled and shook her head.

“That might be going a little far,” she said. “But anyway. I want you to come over. I want you to see it. You should bring a sweater. It gets kind of cold sometimes.”

“I’m there.”

“And I want you to think about whether you’d like to move in.”

“Corrie?”

“There’s enough room. The neighborhood’s a little sketchy, and the jet noise sucks, but not worse than the jukebox hero practicing all the time.”

“Corrie, are you saying you still want to live with me?”

Her smile was tight and nervous.

“Not asking for a decision,” she said. “But I’m opening negotiations.”

He slipped to the side of the bed, slid to the floor at her feet, and laid his head in her lap. For a long moment, neither of them moved or spoke; then Corrie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Come on, silly,” she said. “You’ve got to get ready for Gemma. Go get that scanner back.”

“I do,” he said with a sigh. “Come shower with me?”

“Not today,” she said. And when he raised his eyebrows, “I want to smell like you when I get home.”

1532 LACHMONT DRIVE seethed around her. Every noise—the hum of the refrigerator, the distant roar of the furnace, the ticking of the wooden floors as the push-pull of heat and cold adjusted the boards—had voices behind them, screaming. The faintest smell of hair and skin burning touched the air. She knew they were meant to be hers.

Corrie hung her coat in the closet. A shape flickered in the basement doorway, dark eyes and inhuman teeth. She set a kettle on the stovetop and smoked a cigarette while it heated. When the clouds outside broke, the doubled light of sky and snow pressed in at the blinds. The kettle whistled. She took a mug out of the cupboard, put in a bag of chamomile tea, and poured the steaming water in. When she sat down, there was blood on the floor. A bright puddle, almost too red to be real, and then a trail as wide as a man’s hips where the still-living man had been dragged across to the basement door. When she looked up, the air had a layer of smoke haze a foot below the ceiling. It might have been her cigarette. It might have been gun smoke. She sipped her tea, savoring the heat and the faint sweetness.

“Fine,” she said.

She stood up slowly, stretching. The stairs down to the basement were planks of wood painted a dark, chipping green. The years had softened the edges. The basement had none of the brightness of the day above it. Even with the single bare bulb glowing, the shadows were thick. The furnace roar was louder here, and the voice behind it spat rage and hatred. She followed the trail of blood to the corner of the basement, where washer and dryer sat sullen in the gloom. She leaned down, put her shoulder to the corner of the dryer, and shifted it.

The metal feet shrieked against the concrete. The scar under it was almost three feet wide, a lighter place where the floor had been broken, taken up, and then filled in with a patch of almost-matching cement. She sat down on the dusty floor. There was blood on her hands now, black and sticky and copper-smelling. A spot of white appeared on the odd concrete and began to spread: frost. She put her hand on it like she was caressing a pet.