Adam and Eva
Dinner on Sina’s rooftop. She and Eva had cooked—lasagna, salad, pudding with chunks in it, exactly how I liked it. Adam talked about the business, the club, how hard it was to keep a place running with all the competition, customers getting weirder but funnier. I nodded and nodded but didn’t really hear him. I was one of the glittering figures in this business and it all passed right by me anyway. Sina caught me not listening and gave me this knowing look while she took a huge bite of lasagna, mouth full, and I liked that.
Adam was tall with enormous tattoos covering both arms—lions, eagles, stars, roses. Piercings on a face eaten by madness, a deep voice that underlined everything with inescapable weight. Eva was small and thin, blonde hair to her shoulders. She turned into something like a pale fairy in my head. Soft voice, composed. I would have let her read me bedtime stories.
Walking home I asked Sina why this world made her so happy. ’Which world?’ She wrapped her arm around me loosely and started dancing across the cobblestones. ’The parties, the clubs, the crazy people. The drugs and all of it.’ She stopped, turned slow to face me. ’Because you live in it.’ I looked at her like she was insane. ’I hate it. You know I do.’ ’Why though?’ ’Because nothing in it is real. Everything’s overdone, artificial. People bury their problems and wash them down with alcohol, push themselves into drug-induced headspaces before they hit the ground even harder the next morning.’
She smiled and came close, took my hands and kissed me—tender and fierce at once. ’I’m real,’ she whispered. ’And we’re both in this world.’ Some bright light broke through the dark thinking. My demons shattered into a thousand pieces and made room for something green and healing breaking through the cold dead earth.
I smiled for what felt like the first time in forever. ’See?’ she said, running ahead with her arms spread wide. ’Come on, let’s fly!’ she yelled around the corner. Wait for me.
Sina was a whirlwind, like a kid. She reminded me of my own convictions, promises I’d lost living like this. Always cheerful, carefree, full of surprises. She was Ernie, I was Bert. She’d tell me to stop being such a Bert. In hindsight I enjoyed every minute with her, but the truth is she got on my nerves sometimes with how naïvely she saw everything. Maybe I was just jealous.
I watched her pale body constantly, photographed it, touched it. I knew every freckle, every scar, every small hair. I knew how to stroke her belly to make her giggle like a chicken, which places she didn’t want touched, how to push her to quiet desperation and beyond, to orgasm. Sina was an open book for me, but so many pages were still unread, maybe blank. Those terrified me. Her past waiting somewhere, something I didn’t want to know about. Because it would change everything. It would destroy our world, end what we had.