Kissing Carrion
“No.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Your head hurt?”
I sighed. “Yes.”
Another pause. A few more breaths, staggered and stretched. Heartbeat and aftershock matched pulse for pulse, lighting my skull’s fault-lines up like a neon map.
“Want me to get you anything?”
Oh, just the last five years to do over. And another whole life before that, while you’re at it.
“I’m tired, Ren. All I want is to sleep.”
“Sure,” he said, like he understood. Adding: “Man, you know I know the feeling.”
* * *
I slept through most of Friday, part of Saturday. I needed it. Something had run out in me without warning, like an emptied engine, leaving nothing but fumes; as far as I could see, there wasn’t much worth waking up for. I heard Rennie moving around, flipping channels, snickering to himself as he mimicked the cast of Law & Order. Once, somebody knocked at the door—maybe Leo, maybe our legendary landlord. But neither of us answered, so they went away again.
Later on, when the credits of Neon Rider were just starting to blare, Rennie called: “Hey, speak of the devil—Leo catch you, at the Laundromat?”
“I saw him.”
If you’ve been in really bad pain for a long time, its absence becomes almost good enough to qualify as pleasure. That’s where I was now, caught in languorous inertia, barely listening while Rennie rattled on.
“That guy’s a serious perv. I mean it, Ro—he wants your body.”
“Uh huh.”
I could feel his tension mounting. I knew what I had to do, but I couldn’t get myself awake enough to care. Maybe I just wanted to see what would happen, the longer I let it slide.
And would it have killed him to do it himself, just this once?
3:00 AM. Global went out in a whine of test-pattern, and Rennie slipped back into bed.
“I’m cold,” he complained.
I turned on my side, fetus-curled away from his desperation. “You’re always cold,” I muttered.
“Rohise, I’m cold. I’m hungry.”
“I’ll get you something.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
With no TV, the apartment seemed twice as empty as it actually was—like some semi-permanent party had all just decided to go out for pizza. Rennie touched my shoulder, his hands chill with need. Asked, hesitantly:
“Hold me, Ro?”
“’Kay,” I said, rolled back the other way, and drew him to me.
* * *
There’s something about a sibling, either having one or being one—less intimate than twindom, less escapable than marriage, so much more chancy than any other relationship. Jos saw Rennie like a bad Xerox of me, unfuckable and uninteresting. Our Dad saw us like owned things, principalities in the familial city-state. Mom saw us so rarely, between trips to the Clarke, it was kind of like she never saw us at all.
I looked at Rennie and saw myself, echoed but not reproduced, hero-worshiped into a flesh reflection at least twice my natural size. An addictive image.