HIM .. Joe Goldberg

RABBITS

THE WHITE RABBITS AND I are in a thick fog that wafts through the air like we're in the Smokey Mountains instead of my stuffy apartment. Cigarettes, joints, blunts and cigars. Its been a few hours since we met at the bar, Joe. You hailed a taxi, rode with me, offered to pay full though I refused. You eventually allowed half, after a brief and stubborn debate. You're such a gentleman, Joe, but I need to show you that I can handle myself. Don't worry, you'll be able to spoil me all you want later.

You watched me go into my apartment, and you don't try to fuck me like I expected, like I wanted. You see me as a girl who doesn't do that on the first date, someone classier and more elegant than I truly am. You smile at me, kiss my lips. Once. Precious. You say you're really looking forward to seeing me tomorrow, and you wink at me before you say Bukowski is waiting! I watch you disappear back into the taxi, my heart thudding and limbs going numb. I wave before I cross the threshold. You don't wave back, you're too busy memorizing the street numbers. 1969. It's not hard, darling. It happens to fall on the most important year of all of modern civilization. The year we went to the moon, baby. The taxi drives away with you inside, and immediately I miss you.

Charlie takes especial notice to the book I bought earlier at your shop. He likes the occult (something you'd say). He keeps flipping through the beige pages, reading a few lines out loud under his breath. Lists of commands. Brief sermons. He looks at the picture of Anton LaVey on the back cover and kisses it tenderly, even slapping it afterwards. "Thaaaaank you, my lovely goddess!"

Mira is sitting with Emily's head on her lap, who is drooling in her sleep. There's a lit blunt in Mira's possession, and she's wary of passing it to the person beside her, which was Charlie himself. Mira runs her fingers through Emily's strawberry blonde hair, hits the blunt as her eyelids fall low over a red glaze. Then she passes it to Charlie. "She's going to be okay, right?" She asks hesitantly, her voice hushed as she runs her hand through Emily's hair faster. Anxiously.

"Of course she will," Charlie says as he puffs the marijuana. A cloud of smoke forms in front of his face, drifting above his head slowly, and a pungent odor swarms the apartment. In a paranoid consideration, I think that the whole floor can smell it. "She's one of us, right? I only choose fighters."

Hannah is looking at me and she's smiling with a cigarette between her lips, but she doesn't bring up your name. She knows that Charlie wouldn't like it, she doesn't want to get us in trouble. Instead, she's more discreet. "You have a nice night, Brit?"

I give her an expression that matches her own, sly and playful. Charlie thinks we're just being flirty, a couple of bisexual whores. He likes it. "Yeah. Got a good buzz on tonight, even met a few nice girls." All a lie, but Hannah could decipher the meaning. She winks at me.

"Nice girls, eh?" Charlie chimes in as he passes me the blunt. He licks his lips. "You give her the news, Britney?"

"Don't I ever?"

He laughs and pats my shoulder and I wish so badly that it was you instead, Joe. "Atta girl. We runnin' low on bread, need a few NYU suckers. No one born in state, I want outsiders. You mention us for sure?"

"I mentioned everything, Charlie. Everything that matters." I've learned to keep secrets from him other the years, though I know that if he found out he'd kill me. Would you keep me alive, Joe? If you ever saw him attack me? Fight for a soul already sold off? As I imagine the situation unfolding, I find myself getting turned on.

I pass the blunt to Hannah. She's looking at me with childish curiosity, an adolescent's first taste of gossip and desperately wanting more. "They were cute, huh? What else were they like? Smart?"

"More than I imagined." That's a lie, Joe. I knew you were brilliant during the time you dated my sister, but I needed to keep up appearances for Charlie. "Johanna," ha! "likes to read. She likes Stephen King, she likes his novel Misery."