Under Things

Part 3

The boy had been content in the basement but after a time he began to feel restless.  He no longer took pleasure in the beans and pies the woman gave him.  They left a metallic taste in his mouth.  He no longer was content to sit in the small room reading and writing and translating ancient texts all night long, sleeping all day.  He was less vivacious with the woman and less enthusiastic when he comforted her through her heartbreaks. The woman was concerned about the boy so she went to the office where she worked every day and brought home a girl.

The girl had a weak-looking body and dark roots encroaching on her blond hair. She cried easily for her heart had been broken, just like the boy’s. Both of their hearts were so brittle that they could have been made of bone.

The boy was delighted with the girl at first. She was such a nice diversion! She told him lovely stories about castles and monsters and flying angels and, once, about the broken bird she had found, taken home and nursed back to health before she set it free.  The girl sat on the boy’s little bed and kissed him with her soft, fierce mouth. He had no idea that the ferocity of her kisses came from the depths of her grief.

Once while they were kissing, the woman came into the room in a flesh-colored bra and silk pajama pants, brushing her long gray hair, blocking the door with her sturdy body, put her hand on the door frame, leaning into it, and asked how the boy was doing.  The girl looked up, startled. She did not want to be rude to the woman who had brought her to the boy but she was disturbed by the woman’s presence in the room. The boy calmly answered the woman, that he was fine. They made small talk about the birds and the weather and then she left.

The next day the woman came to the door, wearing Victorian lace underwear, with a package for the boy.

“This is from Tabitha,” she said.  “She just stopped by to see how you were doing.”

“Thanks,” said the boy, sitting up eagerly to receive the package.  It was an old leather bound book with illustrations of people with the heads of birds, donkeys in dresses and goblins eating cake.

“Who is Tabitha?” asked the girl when the woman had left.

“She’s just a neighbor,” said the boy. And the girl left it at that.

The next day the woman returned wearing a pink lace negligee and holding a pink bakery cake box. She entered without knocking. The boy and girl were taking a nap. They sat up blearily and looked at her.  The girl covered her bare chest with the sheet.

“This is from Rebecca,” said the woman. “She wanted to honor you with this.”

Inside the pink box was a chocolate cake from a fancy bakery.

“Who is Rebecca?” this girl asked, not bothering to wait until the woman had left. 

“Oh, she’s one of his admirers,” the woman said, not looking at her.  “He has lots of female admirers. What young lady wouldn’t admire him?” And she smiled at the boy but her eyes were dull and expressionless. 

The girl felt jealous that the boy had so many female worshippers but what disturbed her more was how the woman barged into the room with the packages (not to mention the fact that she was only wearing her underthings) when the girl was kissing the boy.  She had no way of knowing that the admirers were fabricated and the packages were actually from the woman herself. 

It also bothered her that the boy’s sheets were marked with the faded bloodstains of the past but she felt it was not her place to ask about them since she had no sheets of her own. 

One day when the woman was out and the boy was sleeping, the girl climbed the stairs and looked around the house. It had been too dark to see much when she had first been brought there to eat beans and a pie in the boy’s bed. The rooms were big and full of antique furniture and pretty, fancy things like piano shawls, fluted glass perfume bottles with silver filigrees toppers, antique stained glass table lamps, a leather rocking horse and a little antique baby carriage with silky fringe. There was one photograph, in a frame of silver roses with jeweled centers, on the woman’s dresser; it was of the woman and the boy with their arms around each other.  On the picture someone had written in a flourishing hand, “Come dance with me!” 

The girl shivered, as if something unseen was watching her, the way she had shivered in bed at night as a child, waiting. She left the room.

The boy and the girl spent hours together in his small bed. They read from his antiquarian books and told stories about magical worlds full of powerful elves and wise dwarves and faeries who never grew old and they laughed and kissed and ate canned beans and an occasional pie and they were happy.