Page 64 of Adam, Mine

This sort of closeness? It was blasphemous.

It made him want to tear off his skin at the worst of times and sob uncontrollably at the best.

“If it was your wife,” Alain had said, standing in his empty house with lace doilies and pink walls, “it would be worth it.” And by God did that have new meaning.

Currents

Elias bought a room close to the train station and a ticket for a ride that left that night. He had no reason to stay here.

He soaked himself in a porcelain bathtub and washed the filth from his chest with water scented like lavender.

He dragged his fingertips over that place until his skin pebbled with goose bumps.

Alain was right: it did come to him easily. He closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers across the string that joined them like a bow across a violin but didn’t pluck it.

When Elias touched it, he could feel Victor’s emotions like they came from far away. Like someone was whispering them in his ear instead of being forced to feel them in his body.

Victor was somewhere feeling very embarrassed and vulnerable. It was such a childish emotion that Elias laughed aloud. It was petulant. The way Gida got when she did something foolish in front of the other children at church.

Elias thought about strumming the string so he could force over an extra helping of derision, but he stayed his fingers. Let it go.

He leaned his head back and thought about Alain’s hand on the back of his neck. Elias stretched in the water, slinging his legs over the side of the top to curl his toes. This was perhaps the first time in two weeks that he actually felt good. Every inch of him buzzed with goodness. He was full, he was warm, he knew he had enough money. His head didn’t hurt at all anymore.

The feeling didn’t last. His chest tightened out of nowhere and he sat up, electrified. Elias clutched his heart and screamed, silent as he always did now.

It felt like someone was prying his ribs open.

He slammed his eyes shut, found the thread, and strummed it hard. He had to find out what was going on.

That only made it worse. Secondhand agony radiated from his center. Wherever Victor was—whatever was happening to him—felt like fire in the veins.

Elias clutched the edge of the tub and panted. He let the thread vibrate. This was pain enough to die, and if Victor expired, Elias knew he would feel it here. He had to know if Victor survived this.

The pain eventually faded to weakness, then a wave of sorrow and embarrassment crashed over him. So potent it forced tears from Elias’s eyes.

He swiped at them, furious. He refused to cry again for this man.

Victor felt small where he was. Felt guilt. Elias reared back in disgust and shut off their connection.

He got out of the bath and dried himself off. He gritted his teeth as he dressed. The entire experience was ruined.

Oil

Italy, then.

Elias knew how to say “hello,” “thank you,” “please,” and the speech he rehearsed every night before bed.

He practiced it once more with a woman in a café who giggled at him in amusement. Poking fun at his accent. Italian was her second language, too. German, her third, and Spanish, her first.

She said the scars on his face made him look “asustado y guapo”* and Elias flushed.

He could spend all his days in the company of women; how he loved them so. He loved the perfume they rubbed in their hair, their soft little hands, the way their laughs ranged from high and deep to low and throaty. How they were full of play, even when they got older.

His mother still rolled in the snow and threw snowballs if they made sure there was no work to be done. There was a woman, Annie—born last century—who liked to put sugar in the church wine and play other small pranks. The mothers at the tavern in his town would giggle and tease each other; the sound of their squealing made his heart ache.

He could have done this. Could have laid his head on a soft belly, nails scratching through his hair. If he wasn’t so utterly unsuitable. Unable to rise for them, and set to die young.

Elias ate this moment up, laved his tongue against it like rich cream from a spoon.