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Well, it's the end of the road now. Really, and for good.
S.
I don’t know what I did or how I took it all in, but all I know is that I’m still here.
I might have screamed or I might have cried when I found her, or I might have just sat there in shock. I’ll never remember what I did, but I’ll always remember how I found her.
I first noticed that her warmth wasn’t next to me when I drifted into consciousness again in the morning, probably somewhere around three or four A.M. – you know, that time when it was still dark but the dusk was beginning, so that everything was still in shades of black and grey so you could barely see anything with your sleep-coated eyes. That time of secrets and that time of the mad lucid world when everything stood still because the sun stood still below the sky.
That time of sorrow.
I remember getting out of bed at a sluggish pace, trying to smooth my slumber-ruffled hair as I dragged myself to the bathroom. And when I opened the door and found her with a pillow over her face and her skin in a lifeless bluish tint, I barely remember anything from then.
So she wasn’t kidding after all. It had to be her, because who else would kill my Violet and get away with it? I should have listened to her even when she was stoned and senile. I should have listened to what she said.
It’s funny how the things that you doubt will happen are always the things that happen. Especially when you least expect it.
The only part from then that I remember, one of the things that I remember the most vividly, was stumbling back to the bed and finding something that would stay with me forever. I was about to bury my face in a pillow as well, not to kill myself but to stifle the pain of my scream, when I saw the blur of a thin white object lying on top of the nightstand. With damp hands I grabbed it and smoothed it out, realizing that it was a piece of paper with messy, slightly boyish handwriting on the lines. It took a while for the words to register sense with hysterical me.
He who loves me, he who cares
He who tugs on all my snares
He who hurts me, he who rides
On the wave of my heart, he abides
Oh, blessed be he from high up above!
Who smothers me kindly with thoughts and love
I know his voice and I know his name
I know in him what is never the same
What I know is his heart, the way it lives
And in my own, it always gives
It gives to me what I need
Ways to beat and ways to bleed
The craft of love around me flows
And where it stops, nobody knows
For if I were to die today
I know his heart in mine would stay.
That’s the last thing I remember before fainting and supposedly smacking my head against the nightstand in the process, giving myself a mild concussion.
I would learn all this later from the police, when they found both of our bodies and all the evidence and all the other useless shit from our lives.
Hell, we were a modern-age Sid and Nancy – two improbable lovers with a knack for destruction and passion, intent on death but not even realizing it. But we weren’t Sid and Nancy. We were Sid and Violet. And that’s the most important part.
I don’t know who tipped the cops off or how they found us, but I’m guessing it was a certain someone whose name I can’t even speak now to myself.
The meter maid.
I kept the poem on the piece of paper, but I only got it after I told the police the whole story. The whole damn story, except for the murdering Vince part, which I assumed they already knew. I told them the story of our love, but I didn’t specify whether or not it was me who killed her. Obviously it wasn’t, but I wasn’t quite sure what to say. Because honestly, I didn’t want to hurt Rita.
I just never want to see or hear or speak to her again, that’s all.
But my trial is tomorrow, so I guess I’ll have to say something then. I could either tell the truth and everyone could doubt me, or I could lie and create even more controversy than what is already on the news.
Oh, the people that make the news and watch the news love it now. They think it’s such a sinister, romantic murder story – love, blood, and prostitution. They just eat it up, they do. They know all about Violet’s and my romance and Vince’s murder and me escaping jail and just the whole goddamn fucking shebang and I have no way of keeping anything private anymore. The only thing that’s been kept private is who really killed Violet. Everyone clearly thinks it’s me, but they don’t know the whole story.
No, they don’t know the whole story. Unless I tell it tomorrow in court, that is. Then the whole world could know about the manic depressive burlesque dancer Rita Robertson and her tendency toward the homicidal. Or, if I take all the blame for it, then it’ll just be me in jail and no more controversy after that.
No matter what I do or say, I’m screwed in some way or another.
But none of that matters, because I’m allowed to go to her funeral.
-----
I don’t know how, but they’re letting me go to her funeral and her funeral only – but on the one condition that I have to be escorted by a couple of guards. Quietly I asked if I could pick up some flowers along the way, and they reluctantly agreed to go with me.
I was looking at some sunglasses just before now in a little boutique across from the florist’s, browsing racks of them with severely trembling hands. Eventually I picked a pair of very dark aviators, large enough to cover even the apples of my cheeks.
When you’re afraid to show your tears even at a funeral, you know that there’s no way you could ever understand yourself at all.
Now I was at the florist’s, chewing on the end of one side of the sunglasses as I looked for a certain type of flower that I was certain they would have. Spotting them, I picked up a bouquet of yellow ones with one red one in the middle.
I was following what she told me to do so long ago, and I think she’d appreciate that.
I wonder if she can see me right now.
The guards ushered me into a certain car to be taken to the funeral, both of them eyeing me strangely as I sat in silence with my sunglasses and my flowers. Later, one of them told me I was white as a bone and shaking. I don’t remember that at all.
At the funeral, the tears started streaming down my face as soon as I caught the slightest glimpse of the coffin. Thank god it wasn’t an open-casket affair; I would have died there looking. I wondered if that would have happened, would they have buried me with her?
I wouldn’t have minded that at all.
And at the time when they were lowering the casket into the ground and we got to take one last long look, I took off the sunglasses, no longer afraid. Slowly but surely I brought the bouquet of flowers out from under my arm, taking care not to crush or damage them. I ran my thumb over the soft petal of the single red one in the middle, feeling its supple delicateness for one last time. And then with an almost fluid motion that seemed to last forever since then, I tossed the flowers in and watched as they landed in the perfect bouquet form on her coffin.
I had gotten her tulips instead of roses or carnations or daisies or lilies or even violets. No, no violets for my Violet. She wanted tulips.
Because they stand tall but never open up.
Training my eye on the singular red tulip in the middle, I whispered something that only the faintest angels in heaven could hear.
“A Tulip for a Violet.”
And then they started closing up the tomb.
-----
V.
I’m not looking down now, but neither am I looking up. All I’m looking is ahead. Ahead at everything, ahead at the future and the past.
I don’t know where I am. Could be Heaven, could be Hell, but I doubt it. Nothing has happened so far; I haven’t gotten a pair of wings and a halo or a pair of horns and a trident. No clouds and no fire, no golden harps and no torture devices.
All I’m doing is looking ahead.
And I’m looking ahead at my funeral, seeing everyone there. Everyone in my family is crying – even the ones that I’ve never seen cry before. Grandma Dolly and Uncle Garrett and Mom and Dad and Sister, all there, tears welling in or spilling from their puffy, bloodshot eyes.
But I’m looking for someone in particular.
When I see him, I feel a tug somewhere inside of me, as if he’s begging me to come back to him. And I wish I could, I wish like hell I could. But it’s impossible to do that now.
Maybe I could leave him little hints, or give him ghostly experiences or energy or something just to show that I’m still with him. I’m still watching him and I’m still inside him all the time, every single minute of every single day. He’ll never be alone, and I wish there was some way to tell him that. Maybe I can one day, but as of right now, I’m just looking ahead.
As I watch him toss flowers into the grave, I take extra care to check what kind they are.
Tulips. Yes, he remembered.
I smile, or at least try to, as I hear him mutter or whisper something. What was it?
“A Tulip for a Violet.”
This time, I smile with him.
I’ll always love that lovely, foolish boy.
