"When's the last time you think it snowed in New Jersey?"
He didn't slow for an reply, but pressed on as if the sentence betrayed a hopelessness he wants to hide from the world, or maybe just me. He let a hand drift close enough to brush against the dress I wore, and it made me miss him. I called after him that I don't know what's going to happen to me next week, but he didn't answer.
Adam left the candles burning, casting little pools of light into the recesses of the ivy that blankets my cabin. He was slung across the bed on his stomach, wearing only gray pants, and smoking a cigarette over a glass ashtray. He looked up when I came in, and recognizing the dress, he ground it out with malice.
"If you go to him tonight," he said, his voice low, "I'll follow you and kill him with my bare hands."
"I wore it for you," I corrected him, and I watched his face change from intellectualizing his violence to enacting it on the source of all his insecurity: me.
"I like it," he apologized, sitting up and trying to smile in a way that didn't mean he'd won something. "You look beautiful."
How fast I become a girl in front of him, and how small, could never be measured with any instruments yet known to man (and that man is him). I clutched at the skirt with my nervous hands, made them into small balls of gingham fabric, and stood in the center of the room while he ran his hands down my bare arms to pull me close enough to dance with him.
I wanted to tell him all these things I know, from a place far from the one in my cabin where I stood with him, our feet bare on the wood floor, swaying to music he hummed into existence for us. I wanted to tell him, from a place in me that was dark and quiet, that girls are often seen as strong for what they might become, and not for what they are. That my wanting to belong to him was the most dangerous thing about me; dangerous for the reason that it's the one part of me not afraid to stand in front of anyone, much less God. That as Lucy, I really didn't know better.
We danced instead, because those thoughts didn't matter at a time like that, except in their smallest incarnations, which was to remind me that what gods really need are girls who have no concept of their dominion and want instead to be the purpose of it. While we drift, I can feel that he's thinking about Clyde as much as I'm thinking about Bonnie, and all the paths ahead of us they marked with the blood of their sacrifices. They made a beautiful trail for us, which we stood on and revolved slowly, like tourists following highway markers all the way to Oklahoma.
Moments like those are begotten of a strange mental inversion; that which once was small becomes not only greater, but imperative. I could feel him becoming preoccupied with the kinds of things that pull his focus from the inevitably approaching result, to the details which establish it. The shine of the light against surfaces in the room, and the brush of our bodies close to one another arrived paramount under his watchful eyes, dark and obsessive.
"I wore it for you," I corrected him, and I watched his face change from intellectualizing his violence to enacting it on the source of all his insecurity: me.
"I like it," he apologized, sitting up and trying to smile in a way that didn't mean he'd won something. "You look beautiful."
How fast I become a girl in front of him, and how small, could never be measured with any instruments yet known to man (and that man is him). I clutched at the skirt with my nervous hands, made them into small balls of gingham fabric, and stood in the center of the room while he ran his hands down my bare arms to pull me close enough to dance with him.
I wanted to tell him all these things I know, from a place far from the one in my cabin where I stood with him, our feet bare on the wood floor, swaying to music he hummed into existence for us. I wanted to tell him, from a place in me that was dark and quiet, that girls are often seen as strong for what they might become, and not for what they are. That my wanting to belong to him was the most dangerous thing about me; dangerous for the reason that it's the one part of me not afraid to stand in front of anyone, much less God. That as Lucy, I really didn't know better.
We danced instead, because those thoughts didn't matter at a time like that, except in their smallest incarnations, which was to remind me that what gods really need are girls who have no concept of their dominion and want instead to be the purpose of it. While we drift, I can feel that he's thinking about Clyde as much as I'm thinking about Bonnie, and all the paths ahead of us they marked with the blood of their sacrifices. They made a beautiful trail for us, which we stood on and revolved slowly, like tourists following highway markers all the way to Oklahoma.
Moments like those are begotten of a strange mental inversion; that which once was small becomes not only greater, but imperative. I could feel him becoming preoccupied with the kinds of things that pull his focus from the inevitably approaching result, to the details which establish it. The shine of the light against surfaces in the room, and the brush of our bodies close to one another arrived paramount under his watchful eyes, dark and obsessive.
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