Zoetrope: All-Story Extra: I Would Never Hurt you

I WOULD NEVER HURT YOU

--1--

My love died when she was sixteen, in a concrete tunnel where bad-ass kids wentto get high and mess around and be their bad-ass selves. But after they foundSara's body, people only went there to gawk, to hunt for bloodstains ongraffiti-covered curves of wall. The tunnel became a haunted place. Less thana year after she died, Sara was the star of her own urban legend. Her ghosthuddles on the concrete shelf and bleeds an endless death, crying and mewlingas the thin arm of light reaches past. Nothing for her to see but graffiti onthe walls and a ground littered with crushed pop cans, food wrappers, usedcondoms, cigarette butts; nothing to hear but the gurgle of water and overheadthunder of cars; nothing to breathe but dank, underground air that smells ofearth and sewage. Nothing to do but die.

Her ghost. Kids claim to have seen it.

Naturally it's all bullshit. Sara died when the bullet entered her brain.There was nothing lingering about it.

--2--

In my dreams, she turns to me with my name in her mouth.

She says: I'm still waiting.

She says: Remember your oath.

This is my own private legend.

--3--

Angelina calls me on a day in mid-April when the winds blow, then stop longenough so that you can feel the sun, the warmth; the summer that is coming; andthen just as you slip off your jacket the winds start blowing again. I amcontemplating what to microwave for dinner when her voice emerges from myanswering machine.

"Here's a blast from your past," she says. "I just took a job in Palo Alto andheard you were living in the city. Give me a call. If you dare." She recitesher number.

I stand there with a can of Chef Boy Ar Dee ravioli (beef, not cheese) in myhand and stare at the machine, as if it would suddenly transmogrify intoAngelina herself, Angelina as I remember her: fifteen, sixteen years old, askinny, good-natured girl who took home the math and science prizes. The yinto Sara's yang. They'd known each other since childhood. Angelina was the onewho came up to me in study hall and told me Sara liked me, if she asked me tothe movies would I say yes? Yes, I said. Yes, yes, yes. Ididn't even try to play it cool. I grabbed on to Sara as if she were my liferaft, my dark-haired 911.

The ravioli tastes bland and burnt. I throw it out, pick up the phone andpunch in Angelina's number. I mean, why the hell not? It's been a long time.Not long enough, of course. Never that. But a long time.

--4--

After Sara's funeral Angelina and I drove to the top of Armor Hill, sat on thedamp green grass, and looked out over the town. I rolled a fat one and wesmoked it together. We didn't talk much. Angelina leaned back on her elbows,tipping her head so that her long dark hair spilled across the ground. Thescent of pines got lost in the smell of weed. I felt the loose heavy warmthmove through me. Angelina looked at me, her eyes bloodshot and heavy-lidded,and mumbled, She didn't leave a note.

I know, I said.

She looked at me for what seemed a very long time. I can't believe shedidn't leave a note.

Later, she came up to me in the school corridor and asked if I'd go to thetunnel with her. She wanted to scatter rose petals on the shelf where Saradied. She was the kind of person who found solace in things like that. Shedidn't want to go there alone, and she didn't think she could go there withanyone else. Just me.

No, I told her.

Her eyes widened. But--

No, I told her, and walked away. I might have slammed my fist againstthe locker wall as I did so; I don't recall. In any case, she didn't speak tome for months.

--5--

Angelina wants to meet in the bar on the top floor of an old Nob Hill hotel;she's heard about the place and wants to check out the view. I get there tenminutes early, a Joyce Carol Oates novel in hand. I'm wearing jeans, a blacktee shirt and a thriftstore leather jacket; I have piercings in my eyebrow andbeneath my lower lip, and I recently shaved my head again. I'm shamelesslyproud of the shape of my skull, and I like to run my hands across the stubble,the bristly angry feel of it. The maitre d´ leads me past tablesof thirty-somethings who look affluent and pampered. I sit down, check themenu, and wonder if I can possibly justify an eight dollar martini. I can't,of course, and order one anyway.

I keep an eye out for Angelina. I recognize her as soon as she steps inthrough the door. She's thinner now and urban-cool, but still has that long,rangy way about her, that doe-like thing that isn't grace exactly butfascinating to watch. Her hair's chopped to just below her chin and is darkerthan I remember; she wears a black sleeveless turtleneck that shows off hershoulders and bootcut jeans that look dirty and beaten-up and probably costabout a hundred and fifty dollars. Her eyes light on me, and she grins a grinthat seems to take up half her face. She heads right over, and I can tell fromthe way she looks and moves that she is successful, that life is going well forher. Well, good. She deserves it. She never hurt anybody.

"Keith," she says. "Baby."

I grin and haul myself to my feet. She flings her arms around my neck and hugsme tight, and I'm so surprised by the warmth of her greeting it takes a fewseconds for me to react. But I hug her back, and I breathe in the faint spiceof her cologne, the wild-berry scent of her hair. She steps back and smiles atme. Her eyes are dark and elliptical and set a bit too closely together. Shehas a long, angular face, a small mole on her cheek. She is not a beautifulwoman but she's grown into her face, the bones of it. She's takenownership.

"You look fantastic," I tell her.

She smiles, taking this as a given. "You too."

We sit down. The waiter materializes and Angelina orders a Heineken. The factthat she orders a beer, instead of some sweet pink drink in a cocktail glass,impresses me. "Tell me about you," and she says it like she means it, so Ido.

I tell her about grad school. I dropped out midway through my MA and Angelinawants to know why. I find this difficult to explain so I grope for ananecdote. "In one of my first classes in freshman year," I explain, "the profwas talking about Wuthering Heights, and whether or not the woman whotells the story is a `reliable narrator'. She mentions offhandedly that saidreliability of said narrator is actually a hot topic of contention in certainacademic circles. I was sitting there thinking, what the fuck does this haveto do with life as we know it? I mean, who cares if the chick's reliable ornot? It's still a frigging good book."

Angelina laughs and nods.

"Flash forward," I continue, "and I'm sitting there in a grad seminar andwe're talking about the very same book and suddenly I remember this moment infreshman year, what the prof said. And I think, of course it's important! Ifthe narrator is reliable or not -- of course it's important! And then I stepback and I see myself at that moment and I see myself in freshman year and Ithink . . . " I pause. I don't know how to finish this. Angelina is watchingme, attentive and amused. I say, finally, "I think, Fuck it. And thatwas . . . " I shrug and grin, trying to charm her. " . . . the beginning ofthe end."

Angelina laughs again. "Well," she says, "I know that when I read a book, Iwant to trust the narrator. So what do you do now?"

"I manage a bookstore on Market. And bartend four nights a week. Andsupposedly contemplate what to do with my life. And you?"

She tells me her story. She became a software engineer and fell in love with adoctor fifteen years her senior. She moved to Chicago to be with him andeventually reached a point where she couldn't take it anymore. "He wasn'taround that much," she says, "and I kept hearing and reading about SiliconValley -- I kept feeling like I belonged there, like I was missing out on oneof the biggest things to happen in my lifetime -- I felt like I was making allthe sacrifices in a relationship where I couldn't even depend on him to show upfor dinner on time. Or at all. Plus his friends bored the hell out of me,and--" She blows hair out of her eyes and suddenly laughs. "So here I am,"she says. "Finally. And I feel really good, you know? I feel free. I loveit out here. Although it's insane. Finding a place to live in or around PaloAlto is just hellish. Hellishly expensive. I like the idea of living in thecity but the commute to Palo Alto just seems so . . . " She fiddles with hernapkin. It occurs to me she might actually be nervous.

"Hellish," I say.

She nods and grins. She tells me she is currently condo/dog-sitting for ayoung couple who've gone off to Europe for four months. "So I've got a bit ofa reprieve," she tells me. "For now."

I order another eight-dollar martini. Our conversation blows around: fromwork to books to the California climate to movies to books again. There'ssomething else, though, rising up from beneath to press against the surfaceuntil the surface finally pops. We're silent for a moment and I crush thegin-soaked olive between my teeth. Angelina cocks her head at me and says,"How has it been for you?"

I know what she means but I pretend not to. I look at her.

Angelina clears her throat and shifts around in her seat. "Living after . . .I mean, after the suicide. Sara's suicide. Do you still think about her?"

"Yes." I could just leave it at that but something about the way Angelinakeeps looking at me compels me to say, "Every day. I think about her everyday."

"You really loved her," Angelina says. Her face softens, her dark eyes turngentle and moist; and I feel a surge of contempt, bitterness, aimed at her ormyself I don't know.

So I hear myself say, "Badly."

"What?"

"I loved her badly."

"I know you did. That's what--"

"You mistook me. I mean," I pass both my hands across the stubbled surface ofmy scalp, "I loved her in bad ways."

--6--

Sara had some curves on her, but she was small enough so that I felt like Icould pick her up and throw her around like a woman-shaped football. I nevertried this, of course, but her compact body and the way she was forced to lookup at me made me feel big, strong, powerful. I wanted to use my powers forgood. I wanted to protect Sara. Sometimes when I was stoned and alone in myroom with the music turned loud -- the whole 80's rock sound left me cold eventhen, so I reached back for Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd -- I driftedoff into bizarre fantasies where Sara was living in my closet. I would feedher, bathe her, read to her, bring her drugs. I recognized these fantasies as,well, maybe slightly sick, but even when I was sober, they made me feel relaxedand warm inside.

She had long light brown hair and we dyed it black one Sunday afternoon. Ittook away her high-school prettiness and made her seem pale, fragile: "You arean exotic orchid of a girl," I pronounced solemnly, and she cracked up andrepeated that phrase over the next several days. I am an orchid of agirl. Her skin was very white against the black hair. She startedsmudging dark eyeliner around her eyes and I liked that, too: the wounded,vulnerable look it gave her.

After we started having sex in her parents' basement room -- those earlyevenings when her parents were still at work and her two younger brothersshipped off to hockey practice -- after I kissed the scars on her wrists andtold her over and over again how beautiful her body was, she started dressingdifferently. She lost the baggy jeans and the sweatshirts and started wearingthings that were tighter and darker.

I love you, she told me. She left notes in my locker that smelled ofthe Obsession cologne I'd given her for Christmas. I was already at the pointwhere I knew I would love her forever -- but I couldn't bring myself to say it.She made me nervous. It was as if her essence, or whatever the fuck you wantedto call it, had crawled under my skin and taken up permanent residence; my bodyno longer belonged to me alone. She had claims on it. So I needed to bearound her, to keep her close, to keep everything under control.

Jesus, it was amazing the way we could talk: on and on, about everything, fromthe dumbest shit about TV or school to stuff about books, our childhoods, ourfamilies, our various bouts with depression. We'd both played with pills andrazor blades, although never anything serious, staying back from the edge. Themore I got to know her, the more it became clear to me why we were meant to betogether. Despite all the ways she differed from me -- her family with theircareers and their cars, their nice middle-class neighborhood -- we were fromthe same dark and freaky tribe. As she changed her style, changed her tastes,it was as if the false parts of her were falling away and the real, true, Sarawas emerging. I didn't like her friends, so she stopped hanging out with them.I thought the drama club was stupid, so she quit the cast of Guys and Dolls.She started dropping acid.

I was enthralled.

--7--

"I think about her a lot, lately," Angelina says. "Her. And you. The way youtwo were together. So I think it was -- well, not fate, exactly -- but goodtiming nevertheless. That we'd end up in the same area. That I'd find youagain." She leans towards me, folding her arms across the table. The color ofher lipstick makes her look like she's just been brutally kissed. "You guyswere, like, the Romeo and Juliet of Woodward High."

"You're romanticizing it," I say. "Her friends hated me. Her parents hatedme."

"They didn't understand you."

I don't respond to this. It strikes me as the kind of thing aningénue says to the serial killer because she likes his puppy-dogeyes. I think of Sara's father, a big barrel-chested man with a sunburnedface, crossing through the cemetery towards me. Leave, someone hadhissed in my ear. Leave now.

Angelina tilts her head to the side. "Would you ever go back there?" she asksme. "Have you been back?"

My hometown is like a raft on the ocean; I stand on the shore and watch fromthe corner of my eye as the waves sweep it further and further away. I glanceback to Angelina. Her dark eyes are glistening, intent; there's an edge ofcalculation to her expression that catches me off-guard. I have no idea whatshe's thinking. "No to both questions," I say.

I look at her throat, the graceful naked line of her shoulders.

I hear her breath catch, as if she was about to say something but stoppedherself just in time.

"I have to go," I say, and push back my chair.

She nods. "Me too."

I drop a twenty on the table but she reaches out and touches my wrist. "Let metreat you," she says. She picks up the twenty, folds it neatly and hands itback to me.

"All right," I say, taking it back from her. "Thank you."

Again she pauses, staring at me, and I can feel whatever it is that she wantsto say trembling between us. She is standing close enough so that I can feel-- or imagine I can feel -- the animal heat of her presence.

The moment passes, and she turns away in silence.

--8--

The act of loving Sara made me feel like a photographer in a darkroom, watchingher image come more and more into focus. I gave her books to read and wetalked about them over glasses of white port she'd swiped from her dad's liquorcabinet. Camilla, Dracula, Byron, Keats. I told her thatDracula thought he owned Jonathon Harker -- who was a wimp anyway -- butin the vampire stories before good ol' Drac, vampirism was about sharing, aboutcloseness, not just sucking blood and that kind of shit. We sat on the couchand sipped port and sucked on frozen brownies. I hugged her against me andtalked about the dance between predator and prey: how they moved towards eachother, merging together to share one soul, one identity.

I did realize that I was full of shit, but I also knew I was trying -- howeverineptly -- to figure out something important. I couldn't explain what it was Iwanted. I wanted us to be together; but more and more, togetherness didn'tseem like enough. At some point Sara's eyes would close and she drowsed in myarms, and I whispered things into her hair. I couldn't tell if she heard me ornot. But I liked the words, the rhythm of them, the way they rolled in mymouth. I said them to her, silently, over and over.

I would never.

Hurt you.

--9--

One week later I drive down to Palo Alto and meet Angelina. She works for adot.com company that has just outgrown its old office and moved into a redbrickbuilding on the main downtown strip. Boxes are piled on desks and against thedingy cream walls. It's eight-thirty at night and there are still people intheir cubicles; one guy in khakis and sneakers is playing Quake and two otherguys are eating cheeseburgers and arguing over a plot point in TheMatrix.

Angelina is wearing jeans and boots and a black fitted jacket. She looks toocool and sexy to be a computer engineer. I tell her this, and she laughs."Just for that," she says, "I'm going to buy you dinner." Fine by me.

She takes me to a small sushi place tucked between a shoe store and a clothingboutique. We take a wooden table by the windows, and I look out at thePorsches and BMWs parked along the street. I don't remember the last time Iate sushi and I let Angelina order for both of us.

"What are you thinking?" She touches my hand.

I look at her. "Guess."

A smile curves her lips. She turns my hand over and draws the tip of her indexfinger along the lines in my palm.

After the dinner, after the movie, Angelina takes me home. The condo is sleekand modern, done in earthy tones that make me think of the desert. A littlered dachshund greets us at the door. When Angelina bends down to pet her, thedog drops and rolls onto her back, exposing her long tender belly.

Angelina goes off to make a private phone call and I wander around on my own.I wonder if she's calling her ex-husband but don't particularly care. I checkout the bookcase, the art on the walls, the Egyptian-ish statue at the end ofthe hallway. And then she comes back to claim me. But I claim her first:pushing her against the wall, running my hands through her soft thick hair.And Angelina puts herself in my possession. I feel it in her sigh, the way herbody shifts in my hands, and then the heat and wetness of her mouth.

We make love on smooth yellow sheets. Her body is lithe and agile,long-limbed. I turn her over on her stomach and take her from behind. I burymy hands in her hair and pull her head back. I make her cry out, and thenafterwards I make her cry out again, using my fingers until she shudders andmoans and pushes me away.

We lie together, her head heavy on my chest. I stroke her hair, listening tothe gentle swish of traffic beyond the open windows, breathing in the musky,briny scent of sex. The dachshund nudges open the door and trots inside. Shejumps onto the gold-colored recliner and settles down, keeping her brown eyeson us, as if determined to play chaperone. A little late, I tell her.She yawns grandly, and I see the long pink curl of her tongue.

"I have a confession to make," Angelina murmurs.

"Mm-hmm?"

"I always liked you. In high school. Even though you were Sara'sproperty."

"Sara's property," I echo.

She nestles her face against my shoulder.

And the room goes thick with Sara; the breeze that comes in through the windowsseems to carry her on it, her scent, her image, thin and insubstantial, herghost relocating from the concrete tunnel to here, this spacious stylishbedroom; I can see her in the corner, flickering like an uncertain TV image,watching us. Watching me. Remember your oath, she says, and my heartkicks in my chest like a goat.

Angelina stirs, lifting her head. "What?" she says sleepily.

"Nothing," I tell her, then say it. I can't stop myself. "Remember youroath."

"What was it?" There is a pointedness to her voice that surprises me.Angelina pushes herself off my chest, her elbows digging into my ribcage. Herface glistens in the half-light. I want to taste her, to lick away the salt ofher. "What was your oath, Keith?"

I don't answer.

"What was your oath, Keith?"

I don't have to answer. I can just keep quiet. But Angelina is looking at me,this bright steely woman who is linked to me through Sara; Sara is our commonground, we met each other on it, we're standing on it now; hell, we've justfucked on it. Why not go all the way and tell her? She probably knows anyway.She probably suspects.

And it's been such a long time.

Not long enough, of course. But a long time.

"It was a pact," I finally say. "A suicide pact."

"You and her." There is a grim edge of satisfaction to Angelina's voice, as ifshe's pouncing on something and clutching it to her. "You were supposed tokill yourself as well. You were supposed to do it together."

"She went--" My voice cracks. I wait a moment, clear my throat, and tryagain. "She went first. I told her I'd be right behind her."

"But you chickened out."

"No. I was prepared. But I--" My throat is so dry. I want water. I want toswallow back my words. I want to be in my shitty apartment in San Francisco,alone and lonely and safe. I want Sara, Sara, Sara. I would never hurtyou. I hear a strange, strangled little cry, and realize it's my own."She died and I took the gun from her but my hand was shaking so badly Idropped it. I couldn't find it. It was in all this garbage and mud and shit-- you remember what it was like in there -- and it was too dark and it wasraining, the rain was drumming and slashing and splashing all around, and I wasstumbling around, I was sobbing and screaming, I was out of my mind." Thesound of the gunshot. The sudden overpowering stench of blood and death. OhChrist. Oh Christ. Sara's brains on the graffiti-covered concrete. Nothingromantic about it. It was so fucking ugly and she was so fucking dead.

I say, "So I just broke. I ran. She was -- she was--"

"And you never told anyone," Angelina whispers.

"I'm telling you."

Angelina sits up, wrapping her arms around her chest. The knobs of her spinelook as delicate as bird wings. She says, "Was it her idea or yours?"

"We talked about it for over a year. And then we found out her parents weregoing to send her to her aunt's place in Maine, because they wanted to, as herfather so eloquently put it, `get her out from under me', and..." Myvoice falls away.

Angelina turns her head just slightly towards me. I can see her profile,strong and angular, in the streetlight that slants through the windows.

"It was your idea," she says flatly. "You were the one who ruled thatrelationship. Sara had no spine by then. You'd ripped it right out ofher."

"I never saw her as spineless."

"I did," Angelina says. She twists towards me, saying suddenly, "The odd thingwas, I didn't despise you. I despised her. For being so weak like that. Forletting . . . " I see her throat shift as she swallows hard. "For letting youkill her."

I don't say anything. I swing my legs over the edge of the back and grope formy clothes. I pull on my jeans, my t-shirt. As I step towards the door I feelpain explode on the right side of my back, hear the thump as something falls tothe ground. It's the brass candlestick off the bedside table. I whirl and seeAngelina, staring at me, her eyes strangely bright. "I wanted you," she saysslowly, "so I despised her. How fucked is that? Tell me. How fuckedis that?"

I don't say anything. I turn my back on her.

She says, "Are you a reliable narrator, Keith?"

I close the door behind me.

--10--

I remember the funeral. Standing in the cemetery, the earth summer-softbeneath my boots, the birds going crazy in the trees. As her father locked mein his line of vision and put his head down and came towards me. Leave,someone hissed in my ear; I think it was one of Sara's brothers. Leavenow. But I didn't. I let him approach. I let him yell in my face. Ididn't say or do anything to stop him. I remember staring at the blunt fleshyend of his nose. I remember the smell of whiskey that emanated from his pores.Easy, I said. That was the only thing I could say. I was afraid he'dhave a heart attack and drop right there in front of me. Go easy. Iwas trying to be kind. I remember how kind I was trying to be.

I remember other things as well.

I remember how at first she thought I was joking, looking at me with a strangehalf-smile. And then the color bled from her face, and she started to cry. Iremember how I held and rocked her.

--11--

I mostly believe that what I told Angelina is the truth; that if I'd found thegun, I would have followed her. There are times, though, when other thoughtssnake out of me. But I try not to listen to them. The rain washed away myfootprints, and my fingerprints weren't on the gun.

--12--

This morning I pulled the small lockbox from the back of my closet and openedit, took out the one and only item it contains. A ragged piece of paper, tornout of a spiral notebook. The handwriting has faded a bit, but you can stillread it. It's Sara's handwriting. She wanted to write the note, although weboth discussed what to put in it.

It reads now like sentimental high school crap. Stuff like: Keith and Ihave the same destiny. We were meant to be together. It hurts too much to bealive and apart in a world like this one. I'm sorry. I would never hurt anyof you, but we both have to do this.

I take the note and slip it inside a white business envelope. I scrawlAngelina's name and address on the front. Later I will buy a stamp and postit. She was the one who always wanted it, who felt betrayed because they neverfound it, because I took it with me when I ran.

For now, though, I sit up here on the roof of the building, enjoying the breezeand the sunlight, looking out over the edge. A long fall but a quick one.

I remember my oath, Sara. I feel you waiting. And I swear to you, it's only amatter of time.

* * *