White Horse

“Salt, corn syrup, what does it matter?” I ask the walls, but they’re short on answers.

There’s movement behind me. I turn to see Lisa No-last-name filling the doorway, although there is less of her to fill it than there was a week ago when I arrived. She’s younger than me by ten years. English, from one of those towns that ends in -shire. The daughter of one of the men in the next room, the niece of the other.

“It doesn’t matter what caused the disease. Not now.” She looks at me through feverish eyes; it’s a trick: Lisa has been blind since birth. “Does it?”

My time is running out; I have a ferry to catch if I’m to make it to Greece.

I crouch, hoist my backpack onto my shoulders. They’re thinner now, too. In the dusty mirror on the wall, the bones slice through my thin T-shirt.

“Not really,” I tell her. When the first tear rolls down her cheek, I give her what I have left, which amounts to a hug and a gentle stroke of her brittle hair.

I never knew my steel bones until the jar.

The godforsaken jar.

DATE: THEN

My apartment is a modern-day fortress. Locks, chains, and inside a code I have three chances to get right, otherwise the cavalry charges in, demanding to know if I am who I say I am. All of this is set into a flimsy wooden frame.

Eleven hours cleaning floors and toilets and emptying trash in hermetic space. Eleven hours exchanging one-sided small talk with mice. Now my eyes burn from the day, and I long to pluck them from their sockets and rinse them clean.

When the door swings open, I know. At first I think it’s the red answering machine light winking at me from the kitchen. But no, it’s more. The air is alien like something wandered freely in this space during my absence, touching what’s mine without leaving a mark.

Golden light floods the living room almost as soon as my fingers touch the switch. My eyes blink until they summon ample lubricative tears to provide a buffer. My pupils contract just like they’re supposed to, and finally I can walk into the light without tripping.

They say it’s not paranoia if someone is really out to get you. There is no prickle on the back of my neck telling me to watch out behind me, but I’m right about the air: it has been parted in my absence and something placed inside.

A jar.

Not the kind that holds sour dill pickles that crunch between your teeth and fill your head with echoes. This looks like a museum piece, pottery, older than this city—so says the grime ground into its pores. And that ancient thing fills my apartment with the feel of things long buried.

I could examine the jar, lift it from the floor and move it away from here. But some things, once touched, can never be untouched. I am a product of every B movie I’ve ever seen, every superstition I’ve ever heard, every tale old wives have told.

I should examine the jar, but my fingers refuse to move, protecting me from the what-if. They reach for the phone instead.

The super picks up on the eighth ring. When I ask if he let someone into my place, his mind goes on walkabout. An eternity passes. During that time I imagine him clawing at his balls, out of habit more than anything else, while he performs a mental tally of the beer still left in the fridge.

“No,” he says, eventually. “Something get stolen?”

“No.”

“What’s the problem, then?”

I hang up. Count to ten. When I turn the jar is still there, centered perfectly in my living room between the couch and television.

The security company is next on my list. No, they tell me. We’ve got no record of anyone entering apartment thirteen-oh-four.

“What about five minutes ago?”

Silence. Then: “We’ve got that. Do you need us to send someone out?”

The police give me more of the same. Nobody breaks in and leaves things. It must be a gift from a secret admirer. Or maybe I’m crazy; they’re not above suggesting that, but they use polite, hollow words designed to make me feel okay about hanging up the phone.

Then I remember the answering machine’s blinking light. When I press Playback, my mother’s voice booms from the speaker.

“Zoe? Zoe? Are you there?” There’s a pause; then: “No, honey, it’s the machine.” Another pause. “What—I am leaving a message. What do you mean, ‘Talk louder’?” There’s playful slapping in the background as she shoos my father away. “Your sister called. She said there’s someone she wants you to meet.” Her voice drops to a whisper that’s anything but discreet. “I think it’s a man. Anyway, I just thought you could call her. Come over for dinner Saturday and you can tell me all about him. Just us girls.” Another pause. “Oh, and you of course. You’re almost a girl,” she tells Dad. I can picture him laughing good-naturedly in the background. “Sweetie, call me. I’d try your cell phone, but you know me: ever hopeful that you’re on a date.”

Normally, I feel a small flash of anger in my chest when she calls to match make. But today…

I wish my mom were here. Because that jar isn’t mine.

Someone has been in my space.

DATE: NOW

The human body is a wondrous thing. It’s an acid manufacturing plant capable of transforming simple food into a hot burning mess.

I vomit a lot now. I’m great at it. I can lean forward just right and miss my boots completely. If the world wasn’t gone, I could go to the Olympics.

As soon as breakfast comes up, I poke down an apple. It takes.

“Do you have to go?” Lisa asks. She’s chewing her bottom lip, working the delicate skin into a pulpy mass.

“I have to get to Brindisi.”

We’re standing in the farmhouse’s yard, encapsulated in a constant damp mist. Plush moss springs from pale stones that make up the house’s exterior walls. My bicycle is leaning against a long-abandoned water pump. Somewhere along the way, the owners had resources enough to reroute the plumbing and enter the twentieth century, but they left the pump for charm or lack of caring. The bicycle is blue and not originally mine. No money changed hands. It was purchased for the paltry sum of a kiss outside Aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci di Fiumicino. No tongue. Just the surprising taste of tenderness from a Norwegian man who didn’t want to die without one last embrace.

“Please,” Lisa says. “Stay.”

“I can’t.” There’s a tightness in my chest from the mountains of regret heaped upon it. I like her. I really do. She’s a sweet kid who once dreamed of nice things. Now the best she can hope for is survival. Thriving is not an option and it may never be.

“Please. It’s nice having another woman here. It’s better.”

Then it strikes me, the note of desperation in her voice. She does not want to be left here alone with these men. They should be bound to protect family, and they do. But shared blood isn’t the only reason: I suddenly realize they see her as a possession. A way to while away the hours until humanity draws its last ragged breath. I should have sensed it sooner, but I was so bound to my own agenda that I failed to look beyond my borders.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know. I should have, but I didn’t.”

A pale pink flush creeps over her fair skin: I’ve guessed her secret. Although she can’t see me, I glance away to give her a moment to recoup. My cheeks buzz with shame.

The silence lasts long enough for the precipitation to congeal into raindrops.

“You can’t stay any more than I can. Come with me.”

I should regret the words, but I don’t. If she agrees, it will add who knows how many days to my journey. Time is a luxury when you can’t see what’s left in the hourglass. But with humanity limping along as it is, kindness is rare. I have to hold on to what makes me human.