Kissing Carrion (5 page)

I wanted to take him to the hospital, but Jos wasn't having any of that. He said it would be fine, I'd see. He said he'd make us some Ichi-Ban Chicken Noodle and buy Rennie some Tylenol on his way home, and just not to freak out, cause it was a busy day ahead for him, and he didn't need any of my bullshit bringing him down.

Then he took off, leaving us entwined. Rennie still puking. Me sober and already a little shaky, gone hard, the way I'd so often found it better to go—more efficient. More effective.

Caught in the grip of some red dream, whimpering in my arms, Rennie seemed to sweat the rest of his pubescence out along with his humanity, while I slowly got straight for the first time in at least two years. Like his sickness had cured me, somehow, of mine.

And whenever it got almost too bad to bear, all I had to do was hug him tighter, hearing him husk:

Ro, it hurts, it feels like I'm dyin'. Oh, Ro, it hurrrts. Ro, man, what's happening to me?

At which point I'd whisper back:

I'm here, baby. I'm here, I'll never leave. I'll always take care of you, Rennie. Always.

But always, as it since turns out, is one long Goddamn time.

* * *

I put the sheets in to soak, turned one of the Loons back into quarters and made some calls from the back of the Laundromat, doing a little business. Scouted out some of Jos' erstwhile friends, trying to line up future meals for Rennie; paid our overdue cable bill, using my Interac card and the Canada Trust Bankline. It was the second week of the month, and I had all the classic signs of impending menstruation: No appetite, lousy skin, a PMS headache that'd been building at the base of my skull since the very early morning, finally coming to full, pulsing bloom whenever I closed my eyes. It was like a sparkler going off behind my lids—open them again, and for a split second or two, the whole world rained light.

Then it was an hour later, and I looked up from folding to find Leo in the doorway, already headed my way.

“Rohise!”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Curran, burly ex-con Street Outreach worker-cum-superhero in his own private comic book—
Leo the Lionheart, Understanding Guy
, maybe; or:
How I Saved the World, One Reluctant Convert at a Time
!

He pulled out a nearby chair, settled his bulk into it. Looked at me over the rims of his sunglasses, all easy frankness—let's you and me just have ourselves a little heart-to-heart and get our differences squared away right now, ‘kay?

“Nice to see you, Leo,” I said, rolling the sheets back into a conveniently baggable size. “Like always.”

You big fuckin' freak.

“I knocked at your door, a little while back,” he said. “Your brother sent me over.”

“Oh yeah.”

“He wouldn't let me in. Sounded like he was still in bed.”

I shrugged. “He's sick.”

Leo just smiled, and shook his head in a sad, slight way, clearly meant to imply: Well, of course you'd say that—but we both know better, now, don't we?

“Sick?” he repeated. “When people are sick, Rohise, they get better. Somebody's been sick for eighteen months straight, what you do is you take 'em to the hospital—because there's obviously something genuinely wrong with 'em—and you find out what the story really is. Or you cut 'em loose.”

“Uh huh.” I slung the bag over my shoulder. “Well, gotta go. Rennie'll be waiting.”

“If he's awake.”

I paused, squinting against the light. “Meaning?”

“Stop me if I'm wrong,” he said. “But if your brother wasn't sick, you could go back to school, right? Get a job. Have a life.”

“True. But since he
is
sick—who cares?”

“I do.”

He was a nice guy, Leo. Meant well. But I had neither the time nor the energy, just right now, to fully appreciate his good intentions.

Not to mention that my head now felt as though it were rapidly approaching the point of cranial meltdown.

“You deserve better.”

“I'm doing fine, thanks anyways.”

“Playing fake dealer? Rolling addicts for extra cash?”

“Prove it,” I snapped. “Or get the fuck out of my face.”

We looked at each other. My eyes pounded.

All of a sudden, my backpack felt almost unbearably heavy.

“I just worry about you, Rohise,” Leo said, finally. “You can take care of yourself, I know that. You always have. You always will.”

Damn straight, fat boy.

Adding, after a pause: “But at the end of the day, I still find myself worrying about you. A lot.”

I opened the door. Quick tic pulling my smile up on one side, lop-angled, like the reaction to some psychic stink.

“So don't,” I told him. And left.

* * *

I still don't know who did this to Rennie. Anyone could've—I mean, it's not like I was watching; I don't even really know what was done.

You see your little brother sweating, tossing and turning. Hissing like an unfixed cat under every blanket you have. He can't eat, can't get out of bed, can't get near a window, or the pain makes him cry tears of blood. A week ago, he was just another lanky teen geek, so obsessed over movie shit like whether or not Antonio Banderas does his own stunts that he'd wave his hands in the air and start to stutter. Now he looks brutish, full-grown and all filled out, big enough to frighten.

And you sit there and wonder why all of this would have to happen to him, not you—you, who are responsible for his whole sad, sick semblance of a life, and always have been.

Sometimes, early on, I would get these abrupt moments of clarity, and I'd think:
He's just crazy, and I'm making him even crazier by acting like I can solve his problems. 'Cause after all, living on Queen West don't mean the world is actually full of vampires.

But get this:

On the first day, his gums started to bleed.

The second day, he puked up most of his teeth.

On the third day, new ones started coming in, calcium whiteness slicing up through puffy pink flesh. Serrated, triangular, packed in double rows. Like a shark's.

And I can still see the look on that plainclothes pig's face when Rennie took out his voicebox with a single, juicy bite, like he was eating a peach. Came by the morning of Day Number Four to hit Jos up for money; he wasn't there, but I was. So down came Officer Friendly's fly, and down I went with it—‘til Rennie came padding up behind in that filthy bathrobe of his, so quiet the guy almost didn't notice what was happening. Except that it hurt too much to ignore.

His feet drumming on the tiles, flopping in Rennie's hug, screaming soundlessly. His shirt turning red.

And Rennie sighing, satisfied at last—like he'd just popped his cherry, and couldn't wait to do it again at the earliest possible opportunity.

Jos went to jail for what happened in his kitchenette that day, and I never said a thing about it. Premeditated murder, twenty-five to life. Which I guess seems pretty cold, on my part.

I know this much, though: He wouldn't have been a damn bit of help to either of us, and Rennie would probably just have ended up killing him too. So in a way, he got off easy.

Easier than me, that's for sure.

* * *

By the time I got home, my scalp was crawling. I felt like I could've fried eggs on the top of my head. The TV was still on, strangely enough; Rennie, even more strangely, lay jumped in on himself before it—pungently robed, freshly-dried and sleepy-eyed, half-submerged by his own long limbs. I threw my keys in the corner, turning the bag of bed sheets inside out all over him. He made a noise that might have indicated protest, had it only been a little more conscious.

“Move over, Rennie,” I said, flopping down on the futon's edge. Methodically shucking and chucking jacket, boots, jeans, bra. Then, still receiving no reply: “Move the fuck
over
, Rennie. Now, not later.”

He squirmed lengthwise, as if scalded. I kicked enough of the rest of him out of my way (lightly, gently) to slide in beside him, pull the sheets as far up as they could possibly go and curl up there in the red dark, breathing slowly, holding my head. Hoping the next thought I had wouldn't be the one to finally make it shatter.

A minute or so of blessed silence. Then, tentatively: “You okay?”

“No.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Your head hurt?”

I sighed. “Yes.”

Another pause. A few more breaths, staggered and stretched. Heartbeat and aftershock matched pulse for pulse, lighting my skull's fault-lines up like a neon map.

“Want me to get you anything?”

Oh, just the last five years to do over. And another whole life before that, while you're at it.

“I'm tired, Ren. All I want is to sleep.”

“Sure,” he said, like he understood. Adding: “Man, you know I know the feeling.”

* * *

I slept through most of Friday, part of Saturday. I needed it. Something had run out in me without warning, like an emptied engine, leaving nothing but fumes; as far as I could see, there wasn't much worth waking up for. I heard Rennie moving around, flipping channels, snickering to himself as he mimicked the cast of
Law & Order
. Once, somebody knocked at the door—maybe Leo, maybe our legendary landlord. But neither of us answered, so they went away again.

Later on, when the credits of
Neon Rider
were just starting to blare, Rennie called: “Hey, speak of the devil—Leo catch you, at the Laundromat?”

“I saw him.”

If you've been in really bad pain for a long time, its absence becomes almost good enough to qualify as pleasure. That's where I was now, caught in languorous inertia, barely listening while Rennie rattled on.

“That guy's a serious perv. I mean it, Ro—he wants your body.”

“Uh huh.”

I could feel his tension mounting. I knew what I had to do, but I couldn't get myself awake enough to care. Maybe I just wanted to see what would happen, the longer I let it slide.

And would it have killed him to do it himself, just this once?

3:00 AM. Global went out in a whine of test-pattern, and Rennie slipped back into bed.

“I'm cold,” he complained.

I turned on my side, fetus-curled away from his desperation. “You're always cold,” I muttered.

“Rohise, I'm cold. I'm hungry.”

“I'll get you something.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

With no TV, the apartment seemed twice as empty as it actually was—like some semi-permanent party had all just decided to go out for pizza. Rennie touched my shoulder, his hands chill with need. Asked, hesitantly:

“Hold me, Ro?”

“'Kay,” I said, rolled back the other way, and drew him to me.

* * *

There's something about a sibling, either having one or being one—less intimate than twindom, less escapable than marriage, so much more chancy than any other relationship. Jos saw Rennie like a bad Xerox of me, unfuckable and uninteresting. Our Dad saw us like owned things, principalities in the familial city-state. Mom saw us so rarely, between trips to the Clarke, it was kind of like she never saw us at all.

I looked at Rennie and saw myself, echoed but not reproduced, hero-worshiped into a flesh reflection at least twice my natural size. An addictive image.

But just like anything else addictive, it's hard to go cold turkey.

* * *

I slept, I dreamed. Warm, pulling threads of sexual abandonment, hooking deep and cracking me apart. Sticky heat on my thighs. A mouth on either breast, wet and insistent, sucking hard on nipples gone tender as rudimentary clitori. Fragrance rising like incense smoke. A mouth between my legs, lips on lips, latched into me like a leech. Digging for buried treasure.

I woke up on the blind edge of climax, riding somebody's face, my feet already starting to cramp. My hands in their hair, on their working jaw. That big, familiar head, slick from chin to moustache with dark, sweet menstrual mess.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear his tongue out by the roots.

I wanted to come, so bad I wanted to vomit.

Aroused and revolted in the extreme, I snarled, breathless:

“Loren Gault, get the fuck
away
from me!”

I kicked, pushed, slapped. He wouldn't let go. Moaning curdled nonsense syllables. I felt them vibrate up inside me. I slugged him across the face, hard—and he
snapped
at me, little son of a bitch, with those sharp red teeth. Panting, hands spanning my hips, bruising me. Sweating blood. Holding me down—‘til I kneed him in the nose, scrabbled back, and fell ass-first against the floor, already twisting up onto my feet.

From whence I fled to the john and slammed the door behind me, barely making the sink in time.

Jos always used to keep his second-best gun wrapped in a plastic bag, taped up under the toilet-tank lid. After he got arrested, I took it with me, and did the same; in such matters, I never saw much point in not following Jos' example.

Out in the room, I heard the TV snap back on.

I caught my breath, spat bile. Rinsed out my mouth.

Stepped back out of the bathroom, carefully—gun trained, at a classic gangsta angle, on that sheeted blur slumped in front of
The 700 Club
.

“You ever do that again,” I said. “Ever. And I swear to Christ I'll kill you in your fucking
sleep
.”

Rennie, lost in the redemptive power of the cathode image. Not turning. Even to ask:

“Do what?”

And him still licking his pussy moustache for the very last of my blood.

I nodded, slightly.

“Fuck you, Rennie,” I said. And shot out the screen.

* * *

Dressing on the fly, jacket and jeans, barely time for underwear—just a wadded-up pair of panties in the crotch of my jeans, to staunch the flow. I got my boots on, toed up one of the floorboards and grabbed the last dead junkie's roll from our designated “escape stash,” with Rennie all the while keeping step, gesturing and pleading—at a safe distance, after I'd showed him the gun again.