Invulnerable

I

"Never love a wild thing. If you let yourself love a wild thing, you'll end up looking at the sky."

― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?"

"Pretending you never get hurt."

"Who says I'm pretending?"

Severe. Even unspoken, the word invokes vestigial admiration in him. A hiss first, a fricative next, then a soft rustling r, a susurration of the mouth: a snake twisted into word, serpentine, caught in letter-bars. Slender as a climbing vine. Drop by drop, it takes shape in his mind: a long meandering rope, dark green, striped, tubed and lustrous. A vertical pupil, a forked tongue flicking, tasting the air. The sound of scissors slicing through crimpled ringlets: snip, snip.

You're the expert, she says, frowning at her inverted reflection who frowns back at her. You decide.

That's what she reminds him of, the word severe. Just the word, of course, not the definition, just the shell, a fruit with its flesh carved out; the leftover rind. He glances at her mirror-twin: still staring at herself, at the jumbled mess she calls hair, at the errant strands pricked up, the split ends, suggestive of piles upon piles of hay. The Holstein-print hat is missing; she knows how much he hates it. She's murmuring to herself with a mouth that barely moves, he catches snippets, brief snatches: chin-length—no, too short; past the shoulders, maybe? Or a trim, yeah, sounds good, nothing too radical, he can do that, no problem.

He stands behind her, straining to keep his face impassive; vulnerability becomes a problem in a place like this, where every wall is plastered with a mirror, where someone in front of you can still shoot you a glimpse without even turning around. Every time a look bounces, it gets sharper, until it's sharp enough to dart right through whitewashed pretenses, through wandering thoughts. It works both ways, true, but there's a reason why people don't grow eyes at the backs of their heads.

Do you think cutting it short would do me any good? she asks.

Eh, he says.

The shell-word severe personified, that's her. It matches her, complements her. It folds itself around her and brands its name into her arm: severe, my darling, you are severe, I hereby christen you so. Like a tattoo. Like a price tag, like an inmate number. A prisoner of words.

Light from outside filters in through the windowpanes, transparent shafts speckled with dust, liquid sunlight stained yellow. It smears umber squares on the floor, picks out falcate locks of hair on the parquet, black and blonde and brown, a bit of red here and there, probably his own. He would sweep again, later, when he's alone.

Your hair, he says, is a hot mess. How can anything be this ugly?

He runs his fingers through it, through her hair, runs them with a sodden relish he takes care not to show, and makes himself focus on the dryness of the strands, stiff as a broom, the brittleness of them, the faded coloring. She hasn't combed it yet; it's knotted and snarled and a little greasy, a little dampened with sweat.

Sighing, he grabs a brush and untangles her hair, gently, without yanking, without pulling; he's excellent at what he does, he takes pride in it, his reputation is at stake. His ego, too.

It's too quiet. Silence is everywhere: wedged in corners, daubed on walls, dripping to the floor and soaking his shoes. Trapped in a reflected world behind the mirror, leaving handprints on the other side, mouth open: screaming without a sound. If he takes a hammer to one of those, will the noise rush out?

She asks, You think I'm ugly?

Their eyes meet. Nothing but a fleeting glance, a momentary contact, scalding, almost; it's gone in a moment, it evaporates with their breaths, and he only remembers the color blue, as an afterimage hovering at the peripheries. The washed kind of blue, world-weary, scrubbed over and over, more gray than blue. He grunts in reply.

Grunts are primitive, but yes is a foul word: too short, too simple, not the elegant kind; it's the sort of simple that brings to mind crossed eyes and glistening threads of naked saliva, pockets of black under the eyes, a greasy nose. Pockmarked cheeks, the stale odor of an unwashed human body. The disgusting kind of simple.

And yet, no matter how foul yes is, no hurts more.

He wraps the cape around her shoulders. It covers her up to the forearms, falls down to her knees; he secures it with a clip at the back of her neck. Now she's a crumpled umbrella with a head stuck on top and calves peeking out at the bottom, booted feet swinging.

Well, she says. Can't you make me pretty?

I'm the best there is, darling, but I'm not a miracle worker.

So you can't.

He snorts at this. Not that I can't do it, he says, annoyed. I only choose not to.

You confuse me sometimes.

Part of the charm, princess. He swivels her chair so she's turned away from the mirror. Up, he says, tapping her on the shoulder. To the wash station.

She obeys without a word; she stands up and heads to the washbasin, sits at the vinyl-upholstered chair. She leans backward into the sink, her hair a shimmering tapestry of sun-bleached straw yellow, pooling into the white enamel. Golden crescents frayed at the tips. As he bends over her head, their eyes meet again; this time it's she who looks away. This time he's sure: blue-gray. Not as blue as they used to be, not as comely as they once were. She clears her throat.

Floral, please, she says.

Why not citrus?

Preferences, guy. Ever heard of 'em?

He screws the tap on. Water rushes out, white foaming water, cold and clean and drip, drip, dripping. It soaks into her hair, her tapestry of hair hanging down, and darkens it to a dull light brown, soggy clumps with droplets trickling off the ends.

He turns the tap off; there's silence, again. He squeezes the shampoo bottle and the contents pour out. The scent of flowers curls up from the sink, seeps into his clothes, into his nose.

Allen, she says, so softly he almost misses it.

I'm working.

Are you still mad at me?

A corner of his mouth twists up; it tastes bitter on his tongue, probably looks bitter, too. Because you're a legendary idiot? he says. Hah. No, I pity you.

She closes her eyes and doesn't say a thing. Her eyeballs move behind the eyelids; he sees the skin rippling. He works the shampoo into a lather, massages it into her hair, taking pains to be gentle when what he wants is to coil the wet tapestry around his fist and yank it back as hard as he can and listen to her cry out in pain and stare into her eyes and—

…Allen?

She blinks her eyes open, her blue-gray eyes. They focus on him, upside-down, her face upturned, the chin above and the forehead below.

I'm working, he says again.

I'm sorry. I really am.

Fingers, hair, fingers, hair. He's used to this; it's almost mechanical. Every procedure is ingrained into his mind, into his hands, that he's able to shut his thoughts off and let his hands do the work. He can almost ignore her, occupied like this. Almost. If only she would close her eyes and stop watching him: Even he gets tired of attention sometimes. He feels her scalp on his fingertips. How come something as common as this becomes just about intimate all of a sudden? He's washing her hair, damn it, he's not touching her because he wants to, not because he feels the need to. It's not intimate. Far from it, too far.

He grunts again, an ambiguous sound.

She frowns. From where he stands, it seems like a smile, because that's what smiles are: inverted frowns. She says, It's not that I don't like you—

I'm working, princess, so kindly shut up.

She clamps her mouth closed. Everything is suffused in silence, wreathed in a breathless hush; even as he works, nothing produces a sound. No ragged staccato of labored breathing, no swishing of wet hair; he doesn't even hear his own thoughts: he imagines them as fractured phantoms with zippers as mouths, faceless thoughts with no eyes and no bodies.

The windows seem to eye them, giggling, if windows could giggle: Look at those humans, they would say. How pathetic. Look at that beautiful man, that tortured man who thinks he's above getting hurt. Way to give him a wake-up call.

Her stomach rises and falls, he observes it with furtive glances thrown her way, she doesn't notice a thing: Keep breathing, darling. Breathe for both of us.

The washing is done; he rinses the suds off.

What am I to you, he thinks, just a pair of hands on your head, washing your hair? He will never admit it, not even to himself—especially not to himself—but the thought stings a bit.

Allen, she says.

Are you deaf or stupid? There's no cure for either.

He dries her hair, towels it off with care. There's a mirror on the opposite side of the room. In it, where everything is echoed and flipped without permission, her head is bowed, her hair unruly, swathed with the off-white towel he rubs back and forth; he catches a fleeting expression on her face: her eyes are closed again, she's hurt, his words have found their mark and cracked it, like an egg, like a drinking glass dropped on the floor. He's glad, in a morbid way.

Not so nice, isn't it, he thinks, when you're on the receiving end of something painful? Well, poor you. Go ahead and cry. I'm ready to laugh.

The pain that showed on her face is gone now, replaced by something smooth and placid, blank to the point of artificial: he knows fake when he sees it. Emotions are impossible to fake, unless you truly believe in your own lies, unless you get entangled with the very threads you spin, but by then you've become a victim as well as the accused, trapped in a hopeless blunder, forever falling. Facial expressions, though, are another thing.

Or perhaps she's simply fallen asleep.

He does laugh, but still she doesn't cry.

He wakes up to a moldy half-moon cradled by clouds that glow silver-gray in the sky. Glorified cigarette smoke, blown from heaven's puckered lips, sprayed with a fixative to keep them in place. A thin, white cylinder propped between the Goddess' first two fingers: inhale, pause, exhale. Stars are out, not many of them tonight. Nosy things, those heavenly bodies, always looking down, always watching; condescending, even; they remind him of the smell of hair bleach. Hydrogen peroxide, sprinkled on the clouds: lighten up, nimbus.

The windowsill is rough under his palms; his breath fogs the glass. He starts counting the stars. An old pastime that's become a habit, charming in its futility; he does it because he knows there's no end to it, it's impossible, he would have stopped long ago otherwise. A task he can begin but never finish. It reminds him he's still human, after all, that there are things he can't do, however he tries.

One, two, three, four.

Star light, star bright, he says. Even I get hurt. Why couldn't you?

But what can stars do? Peel themselves off from the sky, descend from above, through layers and layers of air, of dust, take him by the hand, kiss the wound and make it better? Hah. There, there, Allen, dear. Don't cry. Everything will be all right. Clasp your hands together, like this, close your eyes and make a wish.

He thinks, Goddess bless you, stars above. You're pretty to look at, but not good for much else.

On an impulse he opens the window, slides it up so the chilly evening air seeps in. He welcomes this, the cold; it comes in and carries the scent of leaves, of dew, of trees. No hair bleach here, in the middle of the night, when people are curled under blankets, stuck in the world of dreams. Tick-tock, the clock says, thumbing the dark away: Go to sleep, Allen, you bastard of bastards. Crickets chirp, a rhythmical grating song; or is it just one cricket he hears, hidden in the grass somewhere nearby? He waits for an owl to hoot; nothing comes.

His eyes feel as if they're covered in sand, powder-fine but grainy, like the shell of a raw egg pounded to dust. Not enough sleep, or too much of it. Both, perhaps? He's a cast-off, now: a reject, a yard-sale item. A stuffed bear with a missing eye, a moth-eaten fur coat. A paperback on the shelf, taken down, its spine tentatively fingered, its cover appraised, ultimately wedged back among smutty novels, skipped for a better title.

Who's the better title, then? She insists there's no one else. We have to think this through, she said. That's all there is to it.

So he thinks it through, every night, sometimes all night, with only the lightening sky as his companion: sagacity itself, rolled out overhead, privy to his innermost conflicts. There would be a moon, some evenings, a sliver or half, silent and knowing. He doesn't track lunar cycles; it's always a treat to gaze out and spot a full moon: You've grown fat, he'd say to it.

Rejection does things to people.

Five. Six, seven, eight. No, he's counted that one already. Start over.

Red stars, blue stars, yellow, white. Twinkling as if nothing else matters, sky-glitter in rainbow colors. Look at us, they're saying. Stare at us. Behold our beauty, our magnificence; without us your skies are dead.

Never mind that the stars he stares at now have long been dead themselves.

Nevertheless, he makes a wish. He doesn't clasp his hands together, no way, but he tilts his face up and takes a deep breath and sends a mumbling thought skyward. How emasculating, how degrading, that someone like him should be reduced to an emotional wreck, stooping so low as to make demands of celestial objects. If only they could see him now; if only Rio could watch as his hands tighten on the windowsill, gasp as splinters dig into his palms.

She would ask after the ring he doesn't wear anymore.

Pondering these things make him feel like a dog: he's being yanked around on a leash by something—someone?—he can't quite keep up with, someone whose back is a habitual sight, whose front remains ever unknown, the dark side of the moon. Going around in circles, a dog chasing its own tail. Plot twist: the dog is a cat. Hah, how gloriously his mind works, groggy with sleep-dregs as it is.

I wish, he thinks, she could feel what I feel. I wish she'd cry every night, die every day only to live again at dusk, that stupid hillbilly.

How cheesy: I gave you my heart on a silver platter, Rio, and you ate it. Want some gravy with that?

He laughs, snorts like a pig, doubles over with his hands clutching at his sides. He's shaking with mirth; oh Goddess, how delightful it is to laugh at something so pointless. An ability people shed, he figures, as childhood falls away from beneath them, sometimes visiting at night, when you open your window and it finds you awake and contemplating. So innocence comes to us, not the other way round.

What he needs is a needle and some thread to sew his eyes shut. A razor blade, too, to slit the stitches come morning, but razor blades are a grim portent: there are many uses for one that doesn't involve shaving.

He stops laughing, straightens up, wipes away tears at the corners of his eyes.

Three wishes, then: two wishes too many. And why not? Go ahead and share the pain. If one despairs, another might as well. Go forth and multiply like the mangy rats you are.

Oh, boohoo, boohoo. So you went ahead and got your heart broken. You poor, poor thing. You deserve all the tears in the world, let the moon cry for you, let the heavens howl in your stead, let the oceans boil and the mountains crumble; none can understand the pain you feel, you're the first one to feel this way, none can sympathize, who can comfort your poor, poor soul? Boohoo, boohoo.

What a big baby he is. A whiner, a hedonistic cretin with shadow-saddled eyes and mussed hair, with a gilded mirror where his heart ought to be. He doesn't exist during daytime, this man; he comes out only after the sun has set, when no one's looking, when all eyes are darting back and forth behind closed eyelids. During mornings, when the same eyes linger on his face, on his clothes, he becomes Allen again, stylist extraordinaire, the man who would one day be perfect or die trying. Perfection is, after all, subjective.

One, two, three. Four and five and six.

He climbs back into his bed with stars in his thoughts.

Disclaimer: I own a pair of pants that were freshly laundered two weeks ago. I also own a washing machine that worked fine until two weeks ago. Harvest Moon? No, I don't own that.

a/n:

Guys. GUYS. My monitor is being weird right now. It turns cyan and magenta and yellow every minute, without warning. Like it's drunk or something. It's spooky. It's distracting. It's fabulous. It's like a rainbow, only it's not, because it's an old LCD monitor. Why am I excited by this?

I don't even know why I put this in the Author's Note.

Also, I don't know whether this thing's going to remain a oneshot or what.

Thanks for reading!