a legacy of smoke and shadow - part 1

“I've seen her again. She was different, again. I knew her.” The man shrugged and unscrewed the lid from his flask. He drank indifferently, but the smokey liquid burned deeply and the man winced and collapsed in upon himself.
Across the table sat a woman he had been going with for quite some time. She had a pleasant face, but the man's statement made her ugly. “It was just a girl.”
“I knew her,” the man repeated. He stared longingly at the flask but replaced the cap and pocketed it.

They paid the bill, it was cheap because he only ordered the bread, and she alone ate it. The man kept the flask close to his heart, in his coat pocket, never buttoned. He hired a driver and had the car drop them on a busy street, downtown. He said he wasn't ready to go home yet. There was only dark there. Corners and shadows, and who knew what lived in the shadows. The woman was beyond amusement, she didn't find him quirky anymore.
“Why are you with me then?” the man would ask. “I must make you laugh.”
“No.” She argued sparingly, and only when she could win.
The man put a hand to his chest, to check his pocket. It was safe. “Why then?”
“You fuck like a beast.”
Whenever she said it, he acted surprised. “You can't be serious.”
“I am.”
“Hm. I don't remember.”
“Tonight,” the woman said, and she shrugged one shoulder loose of its dress strap, “I will show you the scars.”

He was sitting on a bench, facing the fountain, when the girl passed in front of him. She was throwing crumbs to the pigeons. The water sprayed his face and when he looked up, she was gone. “There she was,” the man pointed.
The woman had gone into a shop and had come out with a bag. “You're ridiculous. What is it about a silly girl that makes you want to see her, an apparition? I'm right here, before you. See, I am spending your money.”
The man reached into his coat and pulled out the flask. It was like molten lead, he needed it to survive, it was killing him.
“Drink up,” she said, “take me home now.”

Afterward he rolled over gasping, remembering what the woman had said earlier. He wondered where he found the strength, such rapacious unleashed vigor, and then thought about the flask that was never far away. The woman was sunk into the disheveled sheets on a sprawling mattress with her limbs flung about like tentacles from a jetty. She sighed long and deep. He drank much the same.

“I need a glass of water,” was all she said. It was like a broken record and anticlimactic after the ordeal they had just thrust upon each other. But even astronauts need gasoline for the ride home. He stretched out his legs and swung them to the floor.

In the bathroom he looked into the mirror. His face was breaking out with a moon shadow and he'd be a full blown werewolf by morning. He rubbed a hand over the stubble then turned on the tap. Cool water splashed out and he cupped some of it, foamy white from the aerating spigot, and threw it into his face. He filled a glass and took it to the woman, setting it by the bedside.

She hadn't moved. The final thrashing moment had left her limp and unmotivated. “I've been thinking about Sans Bernadine in the outer shell again. I want to go this year.” He sat on the bed and jostled the woman. She rolled over, pulling the sheets over her chilling body. Why didn't she ever drink the water, he wondered. Did the sweat drenching the sheets, the perspiration that bubbled to the surface of her glistening naked body just soak back in, assimilate into her thirsty core?

She sighed again. She pushed a loose curl out of her eyes. “You bring up Sans Bernadine every year. You're crazy, you know. Only fools go there, which you may be, but talk all you want, I guess you aren't stupid enough to follow through.” The woman's eyes were open and she stared into the corner of her pillow, seeing the folds and furrows like alien valleys, blue in the gloaming light.