CHAPTER SIX
After a long, disorienting moment, I understood that I hadn’t, in fact, been buried alive. Weak light pushed under the door, illuminating the shapes of a toilet, a hamper, a wall-mounted sink. A band of pain tightened around my head as I hauled myself out of the empty bathtub and groped for the light switch, shielding my eyes from the sudden flood of brightness. Fruit flies darted all around me, dotting the walls, coating the damp towels on the floor. The toilet seat was up, the bowl flecked with vomit. I filled the sink with cold water and lowered my face into the pool. At the count of ten, I reared back, making glancing eye contact with the creature in the mirror: a pale, bloated thing dragged up from the bottom of the sea. The one lit bulb above the vanity mirror hummed.
I opened the door and found that fruit flies had colonized the entire apartment. Takeout containers and empty bottles and cans had exploded through the living area. A pile of unopened bills lay below the mail slot. Kim’s door paintings were gone, along with her clothes, her CDs, her books—any evidence of her presence in my life having been erased. I picked up the phone, but if I’d ever learned Kim’s number, I’d forgotten it. After listening to the dial tone for a moment, it occurred to me to push redial. The line rang.
Kim answered warily, as if fairly sure who’d be calling. The moment I heard her voice, I started to cry. She sighed. “You have to stop calling here.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice was thick with tears.
“Jesus, Felix! Don’t do that. Don’t cry at me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t fair. What you’re doing right now is not fair.”
“I miss you so much,” I sobbed, and as I said the words, I realized they were true. When we were together, I’d disliked everything about her. But now that she was gone, it seemed that she’d been just about perfect. “What can I do?” I moaned. “Tell me what to do.”
She exhaled slowly. “What, exactly, do you think you miss about me, Felix?”
“Everything.”
“Can you be a little more specific?”
I came up with what felt like a safe answer. “Your eyes.”
“My eyes,” she said flatly.
“Yes.”
“What colour are my eyes, Felix?”
I could hardly picture her face, let alone her eyes.
“I…”
“You have no idea, do you? What about my middle name? My sign? My favourite movie?”
“Tell me,” I said. “I want to know everything.”
She gave a hollow laugh. “It’s too late, Felix. Stick with whatever caricature of me you had. It’ll be easier that way.”
“Why are you doing this?” I wailed.
“Me? You did this. You’re the freaking ringmaster.”
“That’s not true!”
“Look, I have to go. Can we say goodbye like adults? I really don’t want to have to hang up on you again.”
“Can’t we just—”
“Goodbye, Felix.”
“Wait!”
“For fuck’s sake!” She took a long breath and exhaled. “Okay… Do you remember my friend Shauna? The therapist? I can give her a call if you’d like. I’m sure she’d fit you in.”
“I don’t need a therapist.”
“Really. Then what do you need?”
“Another chance.”
“Felix, we don’t even like each other!”
“That’s not true!”
Someone laughed in the background on Kim’s end, a high-pitched, tinkling sound.
“What was that?”
“What was what?” Kim snapped.
“That laugh. Is someone…” I sat up straighter, my extremities buzzing. “Oh god. She’s there, isn’t she? She’s sitting right next to you.”
“Who?”
“Jasmine.”
“Who?”
“Angela.”
“Angela? What does she have to do with anything?”
The woman laughed again, derisively, it seemed to me.
“Ask her what’s so funny,” I said.
“Felix…”
“Ask her! Ask Jasmine what’s so funny. Or better yet, ask her about the pink room. I’ll bet she hasn’t told you about that.”
“Oh, wow,” Kim said. “You’re actually crazy…”
“You can’t do this,” I sobbed. “You can’t just breeze into someone’s life, then walk away like nothing happened.”
“As a matter of fact—”
I was done listening. I shouted and hurled the telephone across the room. It bounced off the wall and skittered along the floor. The impact almost broke the receiver in two, but somehow it didn’t sever our connection. I could hear Kim’s tinny voice coming from the open line on the floor: “Felix, what just happened? Are you there?”
I sat on the couch, coolly watching the phone for a moment, before leaning down and gently severing the connection. My finger was still on the disconnect button when the phone rang a few seconds later. I lifted my finger. “Kim?”
“Felix?”
Not Kim after all, but my sister, sounding concerned.
“Eileen?”
“What’s happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been crying. I can hear it in your voice. Did someone die?”
Another wave of grief hit me and a sob broke out of my mouth. “Oh god, she left me, Eileen!”
My sister sighed, all sympathy draining from her voice. “Oh.”
“I don’t know what to do!”
“This was a girlfriend, I take it?”
I curled on the couch, clutching the broken phone to my ear. “I can’t live without her!”
“I’m fairly sure that’s not true.”
I cried like an overtired child, ignoring Eileen’s halfhearted attempts to console me.
“Well, I’m glad no one’s dead,” she said, once my crying jag had passed. “I had a terrible dream. That’s why I called you. I was feeling superstitious. I thought something might have happened.”
“What kind of dream?”
“It was about Mathilda. She was older. Grey around the muzzle, like she was towards the end, you know? Anyway, I’m back in the old house and I’ve got this paper cut on my arm. A tiny little slice that’s hardly bleeding at all, and Mathilda comes over and starts to lick it. I want to push her away, but I don’t because I feel like she needs it. So I’m holding my arm there and she’s licking and licking. And the more she licks, the bigger the cut gets, until she’s not just licking my arm, she’s licking inside my arm. Lapping, like a dog drinking water from a bowl. And then, God, I’m feeling sick just remembering this, then she starts to nibble. Delicately, at first, with her front teeth. I’m still not doing anything to stop her, because it doesn’t hurt. I could move if I wanted to, but I’m fighting to keep still. I’m letting it happen. Even when she starts tearing off little chunks of skin and meat—not aggressively, but gently, looking very peaceful while she’s doing it—even then I don’t pull away. Because it’s my obligation to feed her. But when I see my own arm bone hiding under all that gore, I can’t hold still anymore and I start to scream. I start to fight… That’s when I woke up.”
“That’s horrible,” I said, forgetting Kim for the moment.
“Like I said, it was a nightmare.” She yawned. “There was no way I was getting back to sleep with that image in my head and Peter snoring beside me, so I got up to make myself a cup of tea. I saw your number on the fridge. I figured you’d be around.”