Give Me That Body (Oneshots)

Jackie - "Are You in Bed Now?" (January 3rd, 2002)

"Are you in bed now?" I asked, closing his door softly behind me. His walls were painted a delicate shade of gray. Though the blinds on his windows were shut tight, still a little light filtered in. 

He was lying across his covers as if he had been dropped there, and as he heard the clacking of my heels on the hardwood floor, he pulled back the slender hand with which he had been hiding his face from the light. "Is that him? C'est ca, il est mon fils?" Is it my son? 

"No, but I will take the place of him for a little while," I said, climbing his bed, and sinking into the pillowtop mattress. 

"It is Jackie," he said, Laurent, turning his face to me to check. "Do they know that you are here?"

"Are you afraid of me?" I asked him, sitting still atop the covers. 

He shook his head gently, turning his face against his hand, palm resting against his cheek. 

"My father isn't here. I thought of going home," I said. 

"No," he said, softly, looking into my eyes as I lay down across from him. "May I tell you a secret?"

I didn't say anything. It was dark, and if I had wanted to, I could have crushed him like a little bird in my hand. Perhaps I did not think to do it because of that. He was dying, and I loved him. 

He smiled a little slyly. 

"Well, tell me."

"You are more my son than theirs. What I did to you, though you are not my blood at all you love me. Rather than speak of the pain I have caused you, let me talk to you of how I love you. Do you know that love is the best thing that we can give each other?" he asked, reaching for me across the sheets.

I twined my fingers with his. Familiar hand. 

"Do you remember what it was like, learning that we loved each other?" he asked. 

It hurt me that I still loved him. Numbly, I tried to think of the son he had killed, to prove that I didn't, but could not remember his face. My child. "I don't remember him at all." His hand was full of sparrow bones. I could feel them through his skin, and it was true, what Dasius had written me in the letter, that somehow Laurent looked stretched thin, though he had not lost any weight. He had not lost a single hair. 

I knew that he would not apologize for what he had done to me. I knew that if he had it to do all over again, that he would kill my child again. He would break my son's neck. He would do it in front of me. And yet these were things only that I knew, and I could no longer feel anything about them. So clear to me now are what I felt as a child, and there is so very little of my early years as one of them. I think perhaps that he knew what would happen, that a fog would take my son's face away from me. He felt no remorse. He had done it because he loved me, and because he did not want me to suffer, because my son was weak and could not have survived a life like ours. What is there to be done? Even now, I thought, I am running away from what I know I should do, which is kill him. That is what I would do if I were in my right mind. 

And he had always been there for me as a child, when I was confused. "Laurent, I am tired. I am so confused."

"The pieces don't fit how you think they should, do they?" he asked me, using my school French, the way he had spoken to me when I was living, because he loved me. Because he loved me, he always spoke so gently. He always answered me honestly.

"Did you only visit me when I was a child because you wanted to see my father?"

"I visited you because you cared for him, didn't I?" he said. 

But Laurent did not want me to care for him, even in that room, and dying. The light from the blinds hurt him, but he refused to ask me for anything. I think it was because he thought of himself as my friend, and because of thought the same, I did not offer to shut the curtains. His hand tightened in mine. 

"It's hard when you are young," he said. Quand vous etes jeune, c'est tres difficile. "When you are older, you will understand that it is all right to feel strange." 

"Maybe I came here to kill you," I said, softly.

"Does it scare you?" he asked, features just as soft and loving of me as they had been.

"No."

Between us it was that it would be all right if I did. 

"But I cannot remember my son's name. Can you tell me?" I asked.

"I cannot remember it either," he said, without hesitating. "Does it bother you?"

"Why is his son here?" 

"He was here when his father died. Leechtin has cared for him since. You will see that there is nothing for us to do about it. Oh come close, darling. You will not cry alone. You are confused. Oh, we want to kill him badly. He reminds us of our son. Why should he live?" He pulled me in, he said cu cu. I called him a murderer, and his familiar lips kissed my ear. "Our heart says, 'What should we kill for? Because God says that is not for men to do.' Wonder, 'Is this the heart of man that calls for blood? When it should call for the blood of murderers', like me. I did it. I know. Oh cry. 'Is it a man still, this body?' It is still confusing, and why does it forget what we want to remember most? If we do not want his blood, the man we love who killed our child, what do we want at all? It does not make sense. Shouldn't we love our son's child? Why does it seem right that he should be dead?"

Yes, I told him, without speaking, yes.

"Oh, let's kill him. But Leechtin is older than us. Won't he be much sadder than we are? Won't he feel more lost than we do? Won't we let him alone."

"I don't want to," I said.

"The child will die and you will forget about him. Leechtin calls him 'Saumana', but he will never be like us. I promise you."

"But that is why he must die," I said. Do you not know that? 

"It is not fair. I know that," he whispered. "It is not fair to you. I know that."

"I will go back abroad."

He nodded, and he took a deep breath of my hair, his forehead resting against mine. 

"Perhaps you will not be here when I return."

"Perhaps not. And will that be all right?"

"Don't go away," I said, quietly. 

"When I met you, you were five years old," he told me. "I was angry about you. I told your father that. I told him that he should kill Quinn, and you, and come away with me, and he laughed. You know that laugh he has. He washed and starched your school shirts by hand. I mocked him. And then I saw you, because you were looking for your shirt. They were beating you at school, and your father washed all the blood away. He knew how to do that. You needed a shirt. You were wearing short pants and your socks were falling down. I asked you to come near to me, and you put your fingers in your mouth, and you looked to my child, and I saw that you loved him, though he said he did not like you."

"He always said that."

"But he did," Laurent whispered. The air conditioner kicked on then, and he shivered, because he was cold. I felt it in his fingers, like a bird in my hand.

"I know."

"Smart little face. Fearful. Respectful."

I had never seen anyone so beautiful in my life. I still haven't. "They always lied to me and said we weren't like other people. You have always been honest."

"We should not lie to each other. You were always going to be one of us."

"Or dead," I whispered.

"Not you," he said, looking into my eyes fiercely. "Never. You would always have come, quietly and fearfully. Always."

It was true. And I am not so confused about that anymore.