8

HEART

Till now I always got by on my own
I never really cared until I met you
And now it chills me to the bone
— Heart, Alone

SAN FRANCISCO
NOVEMBER 27

TOUCH ME. HOLD ME. KISS ME. That’s what Mari says before throwing herself into my arms and assaulting my lips with a suddenness that is unexpected. It’s a kiss for the ages. Long, slow, and forceful. It’s what I’ve always wanted, what I’ve needed.

She falls backward onto the couch and I climb on top of her. Her lips are as sweet and innocently ardent as mine are bold and lustily demanding. Suddenly the room explodes into a technicolor dreamscape of radiating colors that explode in showers of fireworks. Rock music erupts all around us in high definition surround sound to accompany Ann Wilson belting out the chorus to Heart’s Alone.

Her hands touch my face and run through my hair. She smells of red ginger, labdanum, vetiver, and cistus, and her taste is red wine and lust. I ache to rip her clothes off and bury my face in her.

With my bottom lip between my teeth my eyes find hers. She’s staring up at me with desire in her eyes, begging me to do it, to take her right now, finally, after all this time.

So why do I hesitate?

“Well, what do we have here,” says the Other Me as she leans over my shoulder until her head is next to mine, staring down at Mari’s face frozen in euphoria. The theatrics come crashing back down into the mundanity of my living room.

She says, “Looks like your little scheme has finally come to fruition.” Her fingers slip up and down my back through my thin t-shirt, toying with my spine.

“You’ve only been trying to get in her pants for a year and a half.”

She’s right.

She cackles. “Of course I am, sweety. From the moment we first laid eyes on her, we wanted to get in her yoga pants. Now here she is, offering herself to you, but this girl can’t help but to feel left out.”

I look over at my Dark Self and ask what she means. Her finger twirls a lock of my hair.

“I mean, if you and her end up together, where does that leave little ol’ me? I don’t want to get locked away so you can go live out your 50 Shades of Fitness fantasy. I’ve spent too much time as it is twiddling my thumbs in your head. Sure, you let me come out to play with Azurine and Trixie, but those were short lived flights of fancy.”

“What about Angel?” I ask her.

She rolls her eyes. “Puleeze. Don’t get us wrong, precious. We do love abusing that poor girl but it’s not as much fun when they’re already as fucked up as you are. Angel’s like a Barbie Doll that wants her arms ripped off and skin melted.”

Her neck cranks to direct her eyes with an obsessive glee. “But this one…” She drags the back of her hand across Mari’s cheek and says, “This one is special and you expect me to flick my bean like some pervy Peeping Tom every time you two Get. It. On. I don’t think so.”

She disappears from my sight in a snap, then I hear her voice again. “Besides, she knows too much.”

The Other Me is now kneeling in front of the couch on her knees. Her grimy fingers are carefully moving stray, tousled hair from her face.

“You killed her grandfather,” she continues. “She may not know the details, but she knows. If you were to ever piss her off enough, she might decide to chirp chirp that little tune to someone who might cause us some problems. In fact…”

Her eyes, ice blue like mine, tick upward like a broken clock hand as a hacksaw grin tooths its way across her face. “What if she is the one who sicked that private detective on us. What if she got a little guilty over the vanishing act we did on her abuelo. It’s a little convenient that she showed up tonight, of all nights, amirite?”

My attention turns back to Mari. Her eyes shut, her lips slightly open, begging for another kiss. I say, “You heard what she said. Ari called her. She freaked out and came to see me.”

That’s right. Mari got a call from Ari this morning threatening to expose her if she didn’t cooperate. Combined with her sexual fantasies about yours truly, it was enough to make baby girl hop a flight to California. As soon as I opened the door she was all over me with her lips and hands in all the right places. It was only after I put the breaks on the horny express that she told me about Katz.

My Dark Half blows a raspberry.

“Convenient story,” she says.

Is the Other Me right? Did Mari set us up? Did she fly all the way from Florida to come here because Ari Katz was no longer answering her calls?

I don’t want to believe it.

“I trust her,” I say.

“How can you know,” the Other Me whispers in a strained voice. “Do you think this is what love is? You’ve never loved anyone in your life!”

“I loved my father.”

“Of course you did. We both did. I’m talking about romantic love, precious. The kind of pure, absolute love that is so powerful that you hate how it makes you feel. You’ve lied for Marisol. You’ve killed for Marisol. What has she ever done for you, huh? What has she ever sacrificed to earn that level of trust?”

I pull away from Mari and sit up on the couch. Her eyes open and her face sours in disappointment. Quickly she pushes herself up, curls her legs underneath her and sits up next to me.

“I’m sorry,” she says in a broken voice while her arms nervously wrap around her like a cloak of shame she must feel at the rejection. “I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” I tell her. “It’s not that. You did nothing wrong. It’s just…complicated.”

She looks up and says, “How?”

My hand finds hers and pulls it to my lap as my other reaches to caress the side of her face. She leans her cheek into my palm while her mocha-colored eyes focus on mine.

“We’ve never talked about certain things. Things that would need to be said if we were to be more than friends.”

“Okay,” she says with a rushed enthusiasm. Her body language shifts from sulking to hopeful exuberance. “You can tell me anything, Yelena.”

The Other Me creeps behind Marisol’s shoulder, her damp, filthy hair hanging down over her discolored face and blood red lips which are split open like a wound in a nightmarish Gorgo-like smile.

“Repeat after me,” she says in her sing-songy way.

Her words come out of my mouth.

“Marisol, I kidnapped your grandfather. I strapped his naked body to a table. I denied him sleep. I denied him food and water. By the sixth day he was shriveled like a raisin and lost in a perpetual living nightmare. His life ended in a state of misery few deserve. I cremated him, crushed his bones to ash and washed him down the drain. I erased him like a misspelled word written in pencil. I did this because he hurt you. Because he would keep hurting you. I did it for you. I did it to protect you. I did it because I love you.”

The shock of my confession makes Mari go quiet. Her hand quickly moves to cover her slightly-open mouth and her big doe eyes look away. Did I make a mistake listening to my Darker Half? Have I destroyed any chance of being with Mari already?

And will I have to kill her now that she knows the full extent of the truth?

“Wait for it,” the Other Me says in a low drone.

Mari looks down and takes a deep breath in and out. When her head lifts, tears have spilled out of her eyes and wet her cheeks. She sees me. For the first time, she really sees me. No more half-truths. No more hiding.

Her pouty, adorable lips part and three simple words slip through effortlessly.

“You love me?”

Now before we get all sappy, let’s consider the word love and what it means to most people.

My Dark Half walks around the room in business casual with her hair up and a pair of smart-looking glasses on her face. In her hands is a dense book, spread open, with Merriam-Webster stamped on the binding.

She reads, “Love. Noun. A strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.”

Check.

“An attraction based on sexual desire.”

Check.

“An affection based on benevolence.”

Two out of three ain’t bad, as the song says.

I grab Mari and pull her to me. Our lips part to allow our tongues to dance together as our hands explore one another’s bodies. I do love her but it isn’t out of benevolence. By anyone’s accounting, there is nothing good in the way I feel about her. My love for her is malicious, like the way a tumor loves its host. She is mine and death is the only thing that will ever separate us.

She takes my hand and slides it up her thigh. You don’t have to tell me twice. It moves under the the hem of her cotton shirtdress and then further up, only a breath away from the promise land when—

A harsh, clanging alarm rattles in my ears. I pull away and search for the source to find the Other Me holding an oversized cartoon clock. The hands are positioned to signal the time as eleven o’clock.

Shit.

“What’s wrong,” Mari says.

“Nothing, nothing,” I start to explain. “Remember when you arrived and I told you I was supposed to meet someone?”

I can already see it on her face. She thinks I was on the way to a date. That’s technically correct, but it isn’t a romantic rendezvous.

“It’s not like that, Mari. I have to take care of something. Something important. It’s for both of us, actually.”

She laughs. I can see the relief come over her, but that anxiety leaves a void, and flooding into that empty space is a nervous curiosity.

She looks at me and says sweetly, “Mind if I join?”

Before I can respond, she quickly waves her hand in the air, saying, “I mean, if it concerns the both of us like you said.”

The Other Me slithers back into my ear, whispering a terrible idea. A terrible, wonderful idea.

“Actually,” I say with a smile fit for a Cheshire cat, “I think it would be great if you tagged along. It concerns you just as much as it does me, and I think it’s important for us to take advantage of this opportunity.”

“Where are we going?” she asks with her eyes on mine.

“I have an appointment. Do you remember Mr. Katz?”

Her face sours at the name as I stand from the couch. I offer my hand.

“Yes,” she says as she takes it. “Why are you going to see that comadreja?”

I love it when she speaks Spanish.

I pull her to her feet before wrapping my arms around her narrow waist. I look down at her longingly and say, “I’m going to convince him to end this silly investigation of his.”

“How?”

I lower my head and we exchange a gentle, quick kiss, then my lips turn into a devilish little smirk.

“I can be very convincing.”