What Keeps Our Hearts Beating

Chapter 14

It was a week until the Halloween dance, but Brasen lay huddled in his room at the top of the tower, his insides burning from yet another testing done that morning, the poison making him nauseas, throwing up in the bucket by his cot, shivering from the cold dampness of the room. He rubbed his nose, a cold settling in. When they had moved here 3 months earlier in the summer months it had been insanely brutally warm. Now, the cold was seeping in through the cracks and the flimsy 19th century (asbestos shingles...). He felt feverish and then cold and then like his heart was about to burst out of his chest. A body wasn't meant to endure this...what kind of life was he living that he had to suffer like this? He felt cold again, wrapping the flimsy blanket closer over his shoulders. He wished he had Victor there to keep him company but he was too weak to trust his muscles down the rope. He just kept repeating the poem from his memory from the Dorothy Parker book he was reading.

I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.
Though you may wander sweeter lands,
You will not soon forget my hands,
Nor yet the way I held my head,
Nor all the tremulous things I said.
You still will see me, small and white
And smiling, in the secret night,
And feel my arms about you when
The day comes fluttering back again.
I think, no matter where you be,
You'll hold me in your memory
And keep my image, there without me,
By telling later loves about me.

Despite the pain, a smile crept across his lips thinking about Lacey. She had read the poem with him at their meeting that night, the two of them reading through the small light of the window.

"What the hell!" she cried out when she got to the last line. "And I thought my life wasn't sad enough. This is how you are occupying your time."

"You're just jealous because a poem has enraptured my attention," he goaded her.

"I was curious to know what you've been reading, but wow I'll take Wuthering Heights over this any day."

"Like that is a jovial story," he laughed outright. "Catherine and Heathcliff don't even end up together. What a beautiful romantic, MORBID, story."

"Well, in death they supposedly meet again, where their love can be free to love each other without family or friends judging them or putting obstacles in their way."

"Well," he said turning the page and sighing, "I'd prefer to love in life than death. But that's just me."

Victor hovered over Lacey and she still looked uncomfortable in his presence and Brasen liked to play tricks with Victor to spook her and fly out at her through one of the book shelves. It was pretty entertaining.

"Have you ever been in love?" she asked him.

He felt a trickle of her hair on his bare shoulder, his arm stitched up and a cold compress she held against the bandage while he read to her. She had helped mend him back to health again. It was like she chose Tuesday to help him because it was the one day that he needed her the most. His eyes darted over her body, down the length of her curves and he longed to feel her but knew this was the closest he could come to holding her. She was beside him but not touching except for the simple string of hair that lay innocently on his bare skin. But her impact was more sensual than just by touch. It was by her words, her kindness, and her heart.

"I thought I was in love," he said finally. "But it wasn't meant to be."

"But you believe in love. I mean, based on your choice of reading, you are a sap for hopeless romantics."

"Yes, and I can say the same about you." He paused, knowing he needed to ask the next question but dreading it. "Are you in love with Raiph?"

She stood up, her gray skirt sashaying as she walked toward one of the book shelves. "Zoey told you?"

"She said the two of you were going to the dance together."

"Yes," she said, turning to face him, the moonlight illuminating her beautiful oval eyes, so scintillating and strong. "I know the two of you don't see eye to eye, but he's a good person."

"I know he is," Brasen stood up, moving toward her and said, "You choose your own destiny, Lacey.

He looked like he was in too much pain to climb up the rope and though he tried to jump up, his muscles gave way and he collapsed onto the floor. She ran to him, holding him up, not caring about his no touching rule. She rested his head on her lap, caressing his dark curls. "I think you'd better stay down here tonight," she had said slowly.

He shook his head. "No, I'll be fine. When the pain gets too hard I recite one of those poems in my memory."

He reached into his pocket and held the poetry book out to her and said, "I'd like you to read this. It helps me when the pain gets too much. I hope it will help you too."

She took the book in her hands and held it close against her chest. "More morbid poems to read?" she said raising her eyebrow at him.

"Just something we can argue and debate about next time I see you."

"Always a next time?" she asked, helping him as he struggled up to his feet.

"You're the one who said that even in death, love can find each other."

She hadn't answered him then as he clenched his teeth and mustered all the strength left within him to jump up. His hands grasped the rope and he climbed up the rope, miraculously making it to the top and collapsing as soon as he closed the trap door behind him. Her bandage on his arm had ripped slightly but still held and he wished he could have held her hand in his or kissed her cheek and held her body in his arms. Instead, he resorted to holding his chest to stop the pain that had resurfaced, reading the line over and over in his mind:

I think, no matter where you be,
You'll hold me in your memory
And keep my image, there without me,
By telling later loves about me.