Among the Dead and Dreaming. Samuel Ligon
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Just by how careful she was, how she pretended not to care. She had to wonder what was going on between them, even if she didn’t care. And her knowing and not caring made my knowing and caring seem more stupid and pathetic, her strength or indifference—or maybe just privacy—somehow feeding my weakness.
Nikki
Back in the banquet room, his eyes are on me all the time, something empty behind them, like part of him drained onto the lawn outside, and whenever I look up, whenever I wake from myself, there he is, looking at me. Cynthia’s family surrounds him, and rich people come and go, as if he’s been coronated, which makes me sort of sick, to think he’s been elevated by her death, but I’m probably just projecting that because of how disconnected I feel from Kyle’s family. Maybe her family’s always been like this with him, having taken him into their wealthy embrace long ago, something always so horrible in me regarding rich people and their money, because, I’m sure, of how the lack of it has governed my own life. Even now. Especially now. I look to his eyes fixed on me over Diana’s shoulder as she hugs him, and it’s like he’s lost, like he’s calling for me.
Alina reaches out to me, and I squeeze her hand, both of us strangers in this room full of rich people, and shy, the only reason she clings to me. Burke said he’d arrive next week, and I still don’t have a plan for the money, still don’t know if I’m going to run. My job selling ads for the paper has led to writing reviews and interviews lately, the arts editor practically promising a move to the editorial side of the paper. I’ll never find a job as good if I run again. I just need to get to Kyle’s studio and see what I can find. It’s possible he’s got money stashed or something to sell, if the place hasn’t already been emptied by Celia.
“When can we go?” Alina whispers.
“Soon,” I tell her, petting her hair. She drops her head to my shoulder.
Cynthia’s sister is pretty and flushed, and she keeps touching Mark, holding his hand, while the rich people say whatever they say to him and he looks at me. I wonder what he wants from me, what he has that the rich people want to touch. He obviously knows what I know, that there was something between Kyle and Cynthia, the way she touched Kyle the night the four of us ate together downtown, her hand on his arm, his shoulder, looking for a reaction from me every time she touched him. And her eyes in his paintings, too. I didn’t care. I didn’t have anything invested that could be taken away, part of why I should have just let him go, so they could have had each other. But I also wanted to love him like I hadn’t loved Bobby in Portland. I’ve been too careful too long, holding myself too tight. Mark was going to let it eat him alive, the way he looked at their hands on the table that night at the restaurant, the way he questioned me just an hour ago on the lawn. I didn’t care where they’d been or where they were going the night they died. Kyle and I loved each other—but I didn’t own him and he didn’t own me. We didn’t owe each other anything, except kindness and respect. But that thought makes everything so much worse, rubbing it in my face again, how I held him back and kept him from the real love he could have had with Cynthia. I put my hand to my face, shading my eyes, and let myself feel it all in this room full of rich people, trying not to shake Alina’s head on my shoulder and failing.
She runs her hand up and down my back, sniffling, “Can’t we just go?” and I pull myself together and say, “In a minute,” because I haven’t spent enough time with Kyle’s father. I don’t want to close any doors.
I watch the rich people come and go, Mark looking at me like, Get me out of here, and for just a second, I see myself in that look, a sort of recognition washing over me, and I wonder if maybe, with all the rich people around him, if maybe—because it’s only fifty thousand, impossible for me and nothing to them, Burke out there waiting to be paid, what I have to take care of before I can feel or do anything else, but as I look at Mark still looking at me, as helpless as I am, I dismiss the possibility of asking for anything, promising Alina and myself in my head, almost like a prayer, that we’ll be okay, we’ll be okay, we’ll be okay, that we’ll survive this bullshit with Burke unscathed, intact, that we’ll come out of it stronger and better than ever. And then I’ll let myself feel the loss of Kyle and forgive myself, maybe, hopefully. But Mark won’t stop looking at me. And I can’t tell if I recognize something in him or if I’m just seeing money.
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