Sometimes I hate him. When he does the dishes, he shakes off each one before setting it in the drying rack. Water flies everywhere. A couple of drops always hit me in the face. I have to leave the room to avoid smashing a plate against his head. He hums in the shower. I can hear him from all the way downstairs, mostly AC/DC and Journey. He wears mismatched socks. He squints his eyes when he reads and then insists that there is nothing wrong with his eyesight. He closes the lid of the toilet. He looks at me funny. Like, really funny. Sometimes I catch him doing it and he doesn’t even bother to look away. It makes my face and neck get this tingly burn feeling. He barely makes any noise when he moves. He sneaks up on me all the time. When you’ve been kidnapped it’s never a good idea to be too quiet when entering a room. He’s received countless elbows in the ribs and loose-handed slaps as a result.
“Is there anything I do that irritates you?” I ask him one day. We are both in irritable moods. He’s been lurking; I’ve been stalking. We bump into each other as I come from the kitchen and he comes from the little living room. We stand in limbo in the space between the two rooms.
“I hate it when you go comatose.”
“I haven’t done that in a while,” I point out. “Four days at least. Give me something more tangible.”
He looks up at the ceiling. “I hate it when you watch me eat.”
“Gah!” I throw my hands up in the air—which is completely unlike me. Isaac snickers.
“You eat with too many rules,” I tell him. There is humor in my voice. Even I can hear it. He narrows his eyes like something is bothering him, then he seems to shake it off.
“When I met you, you didn’t listen to music with words, “ he says, folding his arms across his chest.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Why don’t we discuss this over a snack.” He points to the kitchen. I nod but don’t move. He takes a step forward, placing us impossibly close. I step back twice, allowing him room to move into the kitchen. He sets crackers on a plate with some beef jerky and dried bananas and puts it between us. He makes a show out of eating a cracker, hiding his mouth behind his hand in mock embarrassment.
“You live by rules. Mine are just more socially appropriate than yours,” he says.
I snicker.
“I’m trying really hard not to watch you eat,” I tell him.
“I know. Thanks for making the effort.”
I pick up a piece of banana. “Open your mouth,” I say. He does without question. I toss the banana at his mouth. It hits his nose, but I lift my hands in triumph.
“Why are you celebrating?” He laughs. “You missed.”
“No. I was aiming for your nose.”
“My turn.”
I nod and open my mouth, tilting my head forward instead of back so I can make it harder for him.
The banana lands directly on my tongue. I chew it sulkily.
“You’re a surgeon. Your aim is impeccable.”
He shrugs.
“I can beat you,” I say, “at something. I know I can.”
“I never said you couldn’t.”
“You imply it with your eyes,” I wail. I chew on the inside of my cheek while I try to cook something up. “Wait here.”
I sprint up the stairs. There is a metal chest in the carousel room at the foot of the bed. I found games in there earlier, a couple of puzzles, even some books on human anatomy and how to survive in the wild. I rifle through its contents and pull out two puzzles. Each one has a thousand pieces. One depicts two deer on a cliff. The other is a “Where’s Waldo at the Zoo.” I carry them downstairs and toss them on the table. “Puzzle race,” I say. Isaac looks a little taken back.
“Seriously?” he asks. “You want to play a game?”
“Seriously. And it’s a puzzle, not a game.”
He leans back and stretches his arms over his head while he considers this. “We stop at the same time for bathroom breaks,” he says firmly. “And I get the deer.”
I extend my hand and we shake on it.
Ten minutes later we are sitting across from each other at the table. It is so large in circumference that there is plenty of room for both of us to spread out with our respective thousand pieces. Isaac sets two mugs of coffee between us before we start.
“We need some rules,” he announces. I slide my mug over and hook a finger in the handle. “Like what kind?”
“Don’t use that tone with me.”
My face actually feels stiff when I smile. Other than my manic laughing the first day we woke up here, it’s probably the first time my face has moved in the upward direction.
“Those there are the laziest muscles on your body,” Isaac announces when he sees it. He slides into his chair. “I think I’ve seen you smile one other time. Ever.”
It feels awkward to even have it on my face, so I let it drop to sip the coffee.
“That’s not true.” But I know it is.
“Okay, the rules,” he says. “We take a shot every half hour.”
“A shot of liquor?”
He nods.
“NO!” I protest. “We’ll never be able to do this if we are drunk!”
“It levels the playing field,” he says. “Don’t think I don’t know about your puzzle love.”
“What are you talking about?” I drag a piece of my puzzle around the table with my fingertip. I make figure eights with it—big ones then small ones. How could he possibly know something like that? I try to remember if I had puzzles in my house when…
“I read your book,” he says.
I flush. Oh yeah. “That was just a character...”
“No,” he says, watching the path my puzzle piece is making. “That was you.”
I glance at him from beneath my lashes. I don’t have the energy to argue, and I’m not sure I can make a compelling argument anyway. Guilty, I think. Of telling too much truth. I think about the last time we took shots and my stomach rolls. If I get a hangover I’ll sleep through most of the following day and be too sick to eat. That saves food and kills at least twelve boring hours. “I’m in,” I say. “Let’s do this.”
I pick up the piece underneath my fingertip. I can make out colorful pant legs and a tiny bulldog on a red leash. I set it back down, pick up another, roll it between my fingertips. I’m bothered by what he said, but I also just found Waldo. I set him underneath my coffee mug for safekeeping.
“I’m an artist, Senna. I know what it is to put yourself into what you create.”
“What are you talking about?” I fake confusion.
Isaac already has a small corner put together. I watch his hand travel over the pieces until he plucks up another. He’s getting a good head start on me. He has at least twenty pieces. I’ll wait.
“Stop it,” he says. “We’re being fun and open tonight.”
I sigh. “It’s not fun to be open.” And then, “I was more honest in that book than I was in any of the others.”
Isaac hooks another piece onto his growing continent. “I know.”
I let spit pool in my mouth until I have enough of it to hang a really good lugie, then swallow it all at once. He’d read my books. I should have known. He’s at thirty pieces now. I tap my fingers on the table.
“I don’t know that side of you,” I say. “The artist.” I collect more spit. Swirl it, push it between my teeth. Swallow.
He smirks. “Doctor Asterholder. That’s who you know.”
This conversation is pricking where it hurts. I am remembering things; the night he took off his shirt and showed me what was painted on his skin. The strange way his eyes burned. That was my peek down the rabbit hole. The other Isaac, like the other mother in Coraline. He’s at thirty- three pieces. He’s pretty good.
“Maybe that’s why you’re here,” he says, without looking up. “Because you were honest.”
I wait awhile before I say-”What do you mean?”
Fifty
“I saw the hype around your book. I remember walking into the hospital and seeing people reading it in waiting rooms. I even saw someone reading it at the grocery store once. Pushing her cart and reading like she couldn’t put it down. I was proud of you.”
I don’t know how I feel about him being proud of me. He barely knows me. It feels condescending, but then it doesn’t. Isaac isn’t really a condescending guy. He’s equal parts humble and slightly awkward about receiving praise. I saw it in the hospital. As soon as anyone started saying good things about him, his eyes would get shifty and he’d look for an escape route. He was all clickety-clack, don’t look back.
Sixty two pieces.
“So how did that get me here?”
“Thirty minutes,” he says.
“What?”
“It’s been thirty minutes. Time for a shot.”
He stands up and opens the cabinet where we keep the liquor. We keep finding hidden bottles. The rum was in a Ziploc bag in the sack of rice.
“Whiskey or rum?”
“Rum,” I say. “I’m sick of whiskey.”
He grabs two clean coffee mugs and pours our shots. I drink mine before he’s even had time to pick up his mug. I smack my lips together as it rolls down my throat. At least it’s not the cheap stuff.
“Well?” I demand. “How did it get me here?”
“I don’t know,” he finally says. He finds the piece he’s looking for and joins it to the ear of his deer. “But I’d be stupid to think this wasn’t a fan. It’s that or there is one other option.”
His voice drops off and I know what he’s thinking.
“I don’t think it was him,” I rush. I pour myself a voluntary shot.
I don’t have much of an alcohol tolerance and I haven’t eaten anything today. My head does a little flipsy doosey as the alcohol runs down my throat. I watch his fingers slide, clip into place, slide, search, slide…
100 pieces.
I pick up my first piece, the one with the bulldog.
“You know,” Isaac says. “My bike never did grow wings.”
The rum has curbed my vinegar and loosened the muscles in my face. I fold my features into a version of shock mock and Isaac cracks up.
“No, I don’t suppose it did. Birds are the only things that grow wings. We’re just left to muck through the mire like a bunch of emotional cave men.”
“Not if you have someone to carry you.”
No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. I read a book about that once. A bunch of drivel about two people who kept coming back to each other. The lead male says that to the girl he keeps letting get away. I had to put the book down. No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. It’s a concept smart authors feed to their readers. It’s slow poison; you make them believe it’s real, and it keeps them coming back for more. Love is cocaine. And I know this because I had a brief and exciting relationship with blow. It kept my knife-to-skin addiction at bay for a little while. And then I woke up one day and decided I was pathetic—sucking powder up my nose to deal with my mommy issues. I’d rather bleed her out than suck her in. So I went back to cutting. Anyway … love and coke. The consequences for both are expensive: you get a mighty fine high, then you come barreling down, regretting every hour you spent reveling in something so dangerous. But you go back for more. You always go back for more. Unless you’re me. Then you lock yourself away and write stories about it. Boo-hoo. Boo f*cking hoo.
“Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.” Even as I say it, I don’t entirely believe it. I’ve seen Isaac do things that most wouldn’t. But that’s just Isaac.
“Maybe lifting someone else’s weight makes yours a little more bearable,” he says.
We catch eyes at the same time. I look away first. What can you say to that? It’s romantic and foolish, and I don’t have the heart to argue. It would have been kinder if someone had broken Isaac Asterholder’s heart at some point. Being stuck on love was a real bitch to cure. Like cancer, I think. Just when you think you’re over it, it comes back.
We take another shot right before I snap my last piece of the puzzle into place. It’s the Waldo piece from underneath my coffee cup. Isaac is only half finished. His mouth gapes when he sees.
“What?” I say. “I gave you a good head start.” I get up to go take my shower.
“You’re a savant,” he calls after me. “That wasn’t fair!”
I don’t hate Isaac. Not even a little bit.