L.

[4.] Charon's Star

I woke this evening to hands patting my cheek in the dark of my bedroom. I lay deathly still until there came a familiar voice saying, "Honey, didn't you even hear me open the door? Wake up, baby." Stroking my hair. "Come on now. Are you decent?" 

He's liking me because he was mad before. He's calling me names. He's irresponsible. When Dasius is sorry he thinks of us as lovers. 

"I brought a newspaper. I'll read it to you. I've got a friend who is being very quiet in the kitchen." 

"Morphine," I tell him.

"Are you in pain?" 

"Please."

"Will you get up and get dressed and we'll talk about it?"

I sat up in bed, and Dasius pushed my covers back. I tipped up my cheek.

"Kiss?" he asked. He kissed the side of my nose. "How long have you been asleep?"

I sat rubbing my eye, and he was combing my hair with his fingers.

"Come on and wake up now," he said. "Did you watch some television?" My television set, across from the bed.

"Some sort of a Western."

He took my hand away from my eye and looked in it, checking me over. "You look good. You look fine."

"Have you seen my Nicky?" I asked him.

"Are you thinking about him? It has been so long." He was trying to fix my hair. He smelled like that soap from Provence he likes so much. I smelled it on his fingers. 

"I saw him just last year. I thought you might have."

"No, my darling. You haven't seen him in a very long time. A very very long time."

"I saw him last year," I insisted.

"No, no," he said.

"Morphine."

"I'm preparing an apartment for you in New York. I want you in America. Will you come? In the new year."

"I don't like to speak English," I murmured to him, because he was close to me in the dim room. 

"Oh, I know that. Why did I not think of that? That is why I need you near me, to remind me of things. Where will you agree to live then? What about Montreal? There is a train that goes there directly. Would you agree to go there?" he said it in English, to prompt me toward teasing him.

"Quebec?"

"I know you think it will be provincial, but I've been to Montreal on business and it's nice."

"Nice?" I asked.

The thick mattress caused him to lean against me. I bit his ear gently and his hands sprang to my face.

*

I shouldn't hate my minders, my keepers. But there is no one in my life like they were, and never was again after they left. Vasvius, Vivacio. Those slaves who kept us others in line, who we could hate so that we wouldn't think to hate the master. They, in return, felt superior to us, special, and that feeling sustained them. Privileges also from the master. I hated them. My special status, unnamed, undefined, poked at Vivacio like sticks beneath his fingernails. He despised me in turn. I hate him still. I hope he is alive so that I can kill him. 

But even so, that hatred is a tool, just like it was then, something to keep me awake at night so that I cannot properly hope to die. I have a goal, and it is to find out if he is alive, and if he is, to kill him.